At that point they stopped dead, stared aghast at each other and then, for the first time since the slanging match had set in, at Alleyn.
He finished his notes and shut the book.
“I could,” he said, “and perhaps I should, ask you both to come to the police station and make statements. You would then refuse to utter or to write another word until you had seen your respective solicitors. A great deal of time would be wasted. Later on you would both state that you had been dead drunk and that I had brought about this pitiable condition and made false reports about your statements and taken them down in writing. All this would be very boring and unproductive. Instead, I propose that you go back to Greengages, think things over and then concoct your statements. You’ve been too preoccupied to notice, I fancy, but I’ve made pretty extensive notes and I shall make a report of the conversation and in due course, invite you to sign it. And now, I expect you will like to go. If, that is, you are in a fit state to drive. If not you’d better go to the lavatories and put your fingers down your throats. I’ll be in touch. Good evening.”
He left them gaping and went out to his car where he waited about five minutes before they appeared severally, walking with unnatural precision. They entered their cars and drove, very slowly, away.
ii
Fox had not gone to bed at their pub. He and Alleyn took a nightcap together in Alleyn’s room.
“Well, now,” said Fox rubbing his hands on his knees. “That was a turn-up for the books, wasn’t it? I’d’v;ve liked to be there. How do you read it, then, Mr. Alleyn? As regards the lady, now? Dropped in on the deceased round about nine p.m. and was watched by crepe-soles from the alcove and is being blackmailed by him. Which gives us one more reason, if we’d needed it, for saying crepe-soles is Claude?”
“Go on.”
“But,” said Fox opening his eyes wide, “but when the Doctor (which is what he isn’t, properly speaking, but never mind) when the Doctor rings through an hour or thereabouts later and tells her to come to Room Twenty and she does come and the lady’s passed away, does she say—” and here Mr. Fox gave a sketchy impersonation of a female voice: “ ‘Oh, Doctor, I looked in at nine and she was as right as Christmas’? No. She does not. She keeps her tongue behind her teeth and gets cracking with the stomach pump. Now why? Why not mention it?”
“Schramm seemed to suggest that at some earlier stage, in a fit of jealous rage, the Jackson had threatened she’d do some mischief to Mrs. Foster. And was now afraid he’d think that on this unmentioned visit she’d taken a hand in overdosing her with barbiturates.”
“Ah,” said Fox. “But the catch in that is: Mrs. Foster, according to our reading of the evidence, was first drugged and then smothered. So it looks as if he didn’t realize she was smothered, which if true puts him in the clear. Any good?”
“I think so, Br’er Fox. I think it’s quite a lot of good.”
“Would you say, now, that Sister J. would be capable of doing the job herself — pillow and all?”
“Ah, there you have me. I think she’s a jealous, slighted woman with a ferocious temper. Jealous, slighted women have murdered their supplanters before now but generally speaking they’re more inclined to take to the man. And by George, judging by the way she shaped up to Schramm tonight I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“By and large, then, these two are a bit of a nuisance. We’d got things more or less settled — well, I had,” said Mr. Fox with a hard look at Alleyn, “and it was just a matter of running Claude to earth. And now this silly lot crops up.”
“Very inconsiderate.”
“Yerse. And there’s no joy from the Claude front, by the way. The Yard rang through. The search is what the press likes to call nation-wide but not a squeak.”
“Southampton?”
“They’d sent a copper they don’t reckon looks like it, into The Good Read, in Port Lane. It’s an accommodation-address shop all right but there was nothing for ‘Morris.’ Very cagey the chap was: sussy for drugs but they’ve never collected enough to knock him off. The D.I. I talked to thinks it’s possible Claude Carter off-loaded the stuff he brought ashore there. If he’s thinking of slipping out by Southhampton he could have fixed it to collect Sister J.’s blackmail delivery on the way.”
“Suppose she’d posted it today, first-class mail, it wouldn’t arrive at the earliest until tomorrow,” said Alleyn.
“They’ve got the shop under obbo non-stop. If he shows, they’ll feel his collar, all right,” said Fox.
“If. It’s an odd development, isn’t it?” Alleyn said. “There he is, large as life, mousing about up at Quintern Place and in and around the district until (according to Daft Artie) twelve o’clock or (according to Bruce) nine, last night. He comes down the lane with his pack on his back. He opens the squeaky lych-gate and leaves his prints there. And vanishes.”
“Now you see him, now you don’t. Lost his nerve, d’you reckon?”
“We mustn’t forget he left that note for Mrs. Jim.”
“P’raps that’s all there is to it. P’raps,” said Fox bitterly, “he’ll come waltzing back with a silly grin on his face having been to stay with his auntie. P’raps it was somebody else blackmailing Sister J., and we’ll get egg all over our faces.”
“It’s an occupational hazard,” Alleyn said vaguely and then to himself: “ ‘Into thin air’ and but for the footprints at the lych-gate, leaving ‘not a rack behind.’ Why? And then — where to, for pity’s sake?”
“Not by the late train to London,” said Fox. “They said at the station, nobody entered or left it at Great Quintern.”
“Hitched a lift?”
“Nice job for our boys, that’ll be. Ads in the papers and what a hope.”
“You’re in a despondent mood, my poor Foxkin.”
Mr. Fox, who, although an occasional grumbler, was never known to succumb to the mildest hint of depression, placidly ignored this observation.
“I shall cheer you up,” Alleyn continued. “You need a change of scene. What do you say to a moonlight picnic?”
“Now then!” said Fox guardedly.
“Well, not perhaps a picnic but a stroll in a graveyard? Bruce Gardener would call it a Gothic stroll, no doubt.”
“You don’t mean this, I suppose, Mr Alleyn?”
“I do, though, I can not get Daft Artie’s story out of my head, Fox. It isn’t all moonshine, presumably, because there are those prints, Carter has disappeared and there is the lay-by in the hedge. I suggest we return to the scene and step it out. What’s the time?”
“Eleven-ten.”
“The village ought to be asleep.”
“So ought we,” sighed Fox.
“We’d beter give the ‘factory’ a shout and ask if they can raise an acetylene lamp or its equivalent.”
“A reconstruction, then?”
“You find it a fanciful notion? A trifle vieux-jeu, perhaps?”
“I daresay it makes sense,” said Fox resignedly and went off to telephone.
Sergeant McGuiness on night duty at the station did produce an acetylene lamp, kept in reserve against power failures. He had it ready for them and handed it over rather wistfully. “I’d’ve liked to be in on this,” he confided to Fox. “It sounds interesting.”
Alleyn overheard him. “Can you raise a copper to hold the desk for an hour?” he asked. “We could do with a third man.”
Sergeant McGuiness brightened. He said: “Our P.C. Dance was competing in the darts semi-finals at the local tonight. He’ll be on his way home but if he’s won he’ll be looking in to tell me. I daresay if it’s agreeable to you, sir—”