“Well,” said Bruce dourly, “if you say so.”
“I do say so.”
Fox joined them, carrying his doused lamp and the shovel.
Bruce, who wasted no ceremony with Fox, whom he seemed to regard as a sort of warrant-officer, asked him in scandalized tones what he thought he’d been doing up yon. “If you’ve been tampering with the grave,” he said furiously, “it’s tantamount to sacrilege and there’s no doubt in my mind there’s a law to deal with it. Now then, what was it? What where you doing with yon shovel?”
“It was dumb show, Bruce,” Alleyn said wearily. “We were testing the boy’s story. Nothing’s been disturbed.”
“I’ve a mind to look for mysel’.”
“Go ahead, by all means if you want to. Have you got a torch?”
“I’ll leave it,” Bruce said morosely. “I dinna like it but I’ll leave it.”
“Goodnight to you, then. I think, Br’er Fox,” said Alleyn, “I’ll get in the car.”
His face throbbed enormously and the ground seemed to shift under his feet. Fox piloted him to the car. The sergeant hovered.
When they were under way Fox said he proposed to drive to the outpatients’ department at the nearest hospital. Alleyn said he would see Dr. Field-Innis in the morning, that he’d had routine tetanus injections and that if he couldn’t cope with a chuck under the chin the sooner he put in for retirement the better. He then fainted.
He was out only for a short time, he thought, as they seemed not to have noticed. He said in as natural a manner as he could contrive that he felt sleepy, managed to fold his arms and lower his head, and did, in fact, drift into a sort of doze. He was vaguely aware of Fox giving what is known as “a shout” over the blower.
Now they were at the station and so, surprisingly, was the district police surgeon.
“There’s no concussion,” said the police surgeon, “and no breakage and your teeth are O.K. We’ll just clean you up and make you comfortable and send you home to bed, um?”
“Too kind,” said Alleyn.
“You’ll be reasonably comfortable tomorrow.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t push it too far, though. Go easy.”
“That,” said Mr. Fox in the background, “will be the day.”
Alleyn grinned, which hurt. So did the cleaning up and dressing.
“There we are!” said the police surgeon, jollily. “It’ll be a bit colourful for a day or two and there’s some swelling. You won’t have a permanent scar.”
“Most reassuring. I’m sorry they knocked you up.”
“What I’m there for, isn’t it? Quite an honour in this case. Good morning.”
When he had gone Alleyn said: “Fox, you’re to get on to the Home Secretary.”
“Me!” exclaimed the startled Fox. “Him? Not me!”
“Not directly you, but get the Yard and the A.C. and ask for it to be laid on.”
“What for, though, Mr. Alleyn? Lay on what?”
“What do you think? The usual permit.”
“You’re not,” said Fox, “—you can’t be — you’re not thinking of digging her up?”
“Aren’t I? Can’t I? I am, do you know. Not,” said Alleyn, holding his pulsing jaw, “in quite the sense you mean but — digging her up, Br’er Fox. Yes.”
Chapter 9: Graveyard (III)
i
When alleyn looked in the glass the following morning his face did not appear as awful as it felt. No doubt the full panoply of bruises was yet to develop. He shaved painfully round the dressing, took a bath and decided he was in more or less reasonable form to face the day.
Fox came in to say their Assistant Commissioner was on the telephone. “If you can speak, that is.”
Alleyn said: “Of course I can speak,” and found that it was best to do so with the minimum demand upon his lower jaw. He stifled the explosive grunt of pain that the effort cost him.
The telephone was in the passage outside his room.
“Rory?” said their A.C. “Yes. I want a word with you. What’s all this about an exhumation?”
“It’s not precisely that, sir.”
“What? I can’t catch what you say. You sound as if you were talking to your dentist.”
Alleyn thought: “I daresay I shall be when there’s time for it,” but he merely replied that he was sorry and would try to do better.
“I suppose it’s the clip on the jaw Fox talked about. Does it hurt?”
“Not much,” Alleyn lied angrily.
“Good. Who did it?”
“The general idea is a naughty boy with a brick.”
“About this exhumation that is not an exhumation. What am I to say to the H.S.? Confide in me, for Heaven’s sake.”
Alleyn confided.
“Sounds devilish far-fetched to me,” grumbled the A.C. “I hope you know what you’re about.”
“So do I.”
“You know what I think about hunches.”
“If I may say so, you don’t mistrust them any more than I do, sir.”
“All right, all right. We’ll go ahead, then. Tomorrow night, you suggest? Sorry you’ve had a knock. Take care of yourself.”
“There is none that can compare,” Alleyn hummed in great discomfort. “With a tow, row bloody row to / Our A. Commissionaire. It’s on, Br’er Fox.”
“This’ll set the village by the ears. What time?”
“Late tomorrow night; We’ll be turning into tombstones ourselves if we keep up these capers.”
“What’s our line with the populace?”
“God knows. We hope they won’t notice. But what a hope!”
“How about someone accidentally dropped a valuable in the open grave? Such as — er—”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” said Fox crossly. “A gold watch?”
“When?” Alleyn asked. “And whose gold watch?”
“Er. Well. Bruce’s? Anytime before the interment. I appreciate,” Fox confessed, “that it doesn’t sound too hot.”
“Go on.”
“I’m trying to picture it,” said Fox after a longish pause.
“And how are you getting on?”
“It’d be ludicrous.”
“Perhaps the best way will be to keep quiet and if they do notice tell them nothing. ‘The police declined to comment.’ ”
“The usual tarpaulin, et cetera,I suppose? I’ll lay it on, will I?”
“Do. My face, by the way, had better be the result of a turn-up with a gang outside the village. Where’s the sergeant?”
“Down at the ‘factory.’ He’s going to take a look at Daft Artie.”
Alleyn began to walk about the room, found this jolted his jaw and sat on his bed. “Br’er Fox,”, hesaid, “there’s that child. Prunella. We can’t possibly risk her hearing of it by accident.”
“The whole story?”
“Upon my soul,” Alleyn said after a long pause, “I’m not at all sure I won’t have recourse to your preposterous golden watch, or its equivalent. Look, I’ll drop you in the village and get you to call on the Vicar and tell him.”
“Some tarradiddle? Or what?” Fox asked.
“The truth but not the whole truth about what we hope to find. Hope!” said Alleyn distastefully. “What a word!”
“I see what you mean. Without wishing to pester—” Fox began. To his surprise and gratification Alleyn gave him a smack on the shoulder.
“All right, fuss-pot,” he said, “fat-faced but fit as a flea, that’s me. Come on.”
So he drove Fox to the parsonage and continued up Long Lane, passing the gap in the hedge. He looked up at the church and saw three small boys and two women come round from behind the chancel end. There was something self-conscious about the manner of the women’s gait and their unconvincing way of pointing out a slanting headstone to each other.