“Well — fleetingly, I suppose I did.”
Verity said: “Would you excuse me? I’ve got a telephone call I must make and I must see about the flowers.”
“Are you being diplomatic?” Mr. Markos asked archly.
“I don’t even know how,” she said and left them not, she hoped, too hurriedly. The two men sat down.
“I’ll come straight to the point, shall I?” Alleyn said. “Can you and if so, will you, tell me anything of Dr. Schramm’s history? Where he qualified, for instance? Why he changed his name? Anything?”
“Are you checking his own account of himself? Or hasn’t he given a satisfactory one? You won’t answer that, of course, and very properly not.”
“I don’t in the least mind answering. I haven’t asked him.”
“As yet?”
“That’s right. As yet.”
“Well,” said Mr. Markos, airily waving his hand, “I’m afraid I’m not much use to you. I know next to nothing of his background except that he took his degree somewhere in Switzerland. I had no idea he’d changed his name, still less why. We met when crossing the Atlantic in the Q.E. Two and subsequently in New York at a cocktail party given at the St. Regis by fellow passengers. Later on that same evening at his suggestion we dined together and afterwards visited some remarkable clubs to which he had the entrée. The entertainment was curious. That was the last time I saw him until he rang me up at Mardling on his way to Greengages. On the spur of the moment I asked him to dinner. I have not seen him since then.”
“Did he ever talk about his professional activities — I mean whether he had a practise in New York or was attached to a hospital or clinic or what have you?”
“Not in any detail. In the ship going over he was the life and soul of a party that revolved round an acquaintance of mine — the Princess Palevsky. I rather gathered that he acquired her and two American ladies of considerable renown as — patients. I imagine,” said Mr. Markos smoothly, “that he is the happy possessor of a certain expertise in that direction. And, really, my dear Alleyn, that is the full extent of my acquaintance with Basil Schramm.”
“What do you think of him?” said Alleyn abruptly.
“Think of him? What can I say? And what exactly do you mean?”
“Did you form an opinion of his character, for instance? Nice chap? Lightweight? Man of integrity?”
“He is quite entertaining. A lightweight, certainly, but good value as a mixer and with considerable charm. I would trust him,” said Mr. Markos, “no further than I could toss a grand piano. A concert grand.”
“Where women are concerned?”
“Particularly where women are concerned.”
“I see,” said Alleyn cheerfully and got up. “I must go,” he said, “I’m running late. By the way, is Miss Foster at Quintern Place now, do you happen to know?”
“Prunella? No. She and Gideon went up to London this morning. They’ll be back for dinner. She’s staying with us.”
“Ah yes. I must go. Would you apologize for me to Miss Preston?”
“I’ll do that. Sorry not to have been more informative.‘’
“Oh,” Alleyn said, “the visit has not been unproductive. Goodbye to you.”
Fox was in the car in the lane. When he saw Alleyn he started up his engine.
“To the nearest telephone,” Alleyn said. “We’ll use the one at Quintern Place. We’ve got to lay on surveillance and be quick about it. The local branch’ll have to spare a copper. Send him up to Quintern as a labourer. He’s to dig up the fireplace and hearth and dig deep and anything he finds that’s not rubble, keep it. And when he’s finished tell him to board up the room and seal it. If anyone asks what he’s up to he’ll have to say he’s under police orders. But I hope no one will ask.”
“What about Gardener?”
“Gardener’s digging the grave.”
“Fair enough,” said Fox.
“Claude Carter may be there though.”
“Oh,” said Fox. “Aha. Him.”
But before they reached Quintern they met Mrs. Jim on her way to do flowers in the church. She said Claude Carter had gone out that morning. “To see a man about a car,” he had told her and he said he would ba away all day.
“Mrs. Jim,” Alleyn said. “We want a telephone and we want to take a look inside the house. Miss Foster’s out. Could you help us? Do you have a key?”
She looked fixedly at him. Her workaday hands moved uneasily.
“I don’t know as I have the right,” she said. “It’s not my business.”
“I know. But it is, I promise you, very important. An urgent call. Look, come with us, let us in, follow us about if you like or we’ll drive you back to the church at once. Will you do that? Please?”
There was another and a longer pause. “All right,” said Mrs. Jim and got into the car.
They arrived at Quintern and were admitted by Mrs. Jim’s key, which she kept under a stone in the coal house.
While Fox rang the Upper Quintern police station from the staff sitting-room telephone. Alleyn went out to the stable yard. Bruce’s mushroom beds were of course in the same shape as they had been earlier in the afternoon when he left them, taking his shovel with him. The ramshackle door into the deserted room was shut. Alleyn dragged it open and stood on the threshold. At first glance it looked and smelt as it had on his earlier visit. The westering sun shone through the dirty window and showed traces of his own and Carter’s footprints on the dusty floorboards. Nobody else’s, he thought, but more of Carter’s than his own. The litter of rubbish lay undisturbed in the corner. With a dry-mouthed sensation of foreboding he turned to the fireplace.
Alleyn began to swear softly and prolifically, an exercise in which he did not often indulge.
He was squatting over the fireplace when Fox appeared at the window, saw him and looked in at the yard door.
“They’re sending up a chap at once,” he said.
“Like hell, they are,” said Alleyn. “Look here.”
“Had I better walk in?”
“The point’s academic.”
Fox took four giant strides on tiptoe and stooped over the hearth. “Broken up, eh?” he said. “Fancy that, eh?”
“As you say. But look at this.” He pointed a long finger. “Do you see what I see?”
“Remains of a square hole. Something regular in shape like a box or tin’s been dug out. Right?”
“I think so. And take a look here. And here. And in the rubble.”
“Crepe soles, by gum.”
“So what do you say now to the point marked bloody X?”
“I’d say the name of the game is Carter. But why? What’s he up to?”
“I’ll tell you this, Br’er Fox. When I looked in here before this hearth was as it had been for Lord knows how long.”
“Gardener left when we left,” Fox mused.
“And is digging a grave and should continue to do so for some considerable time.”
“Anybody up here since then?”
“Not Mrs. Jim, at all events.”
“So we’re left—” Fox said.
“—with the elusive Claude. We’ll have to put Bailey and Thompson in but I bet you that’s going to be the story.”
“Yes. And he’s seeing a man about a car,” said Fox bitterly. “It might as well be a dog.”
“And we might as well continue in our futile ways by seeing if there’s a pick and shovel on the premises. After all, he couldn’t have rootled up the hearth with his fingernails. Where’s the gardener’s shed?”
It was near at hand, hard by the asparagus beds. They stood in the doorway and if they had entered would have fallen over a pick that lay on the floor, an untidy note in an impeccably tidy interior. Bruce kept his tools as they should be kept, polished, sharpened and in racks. Beside the pick, leaning against a bench was a lightweight shovel and, nearby, a crowbar.