“It’s our job to forget insignificant details.”
“Yes, I know. Of course. All the same—”
“Mr. Dodds, I really think I can promise you I won’t go galloping down a false trail with blinkers over my eyes.”
Bimbo smiled. “O.K.,” he said. “Fair enough. No doubt I’m behaving like the original Silly Suspect or something. It’s just that, when it comes to the point, one doesn’t exactly fancy trotting out something that may turn out to be — well—”
“Incriminating?”
“Well, exactly. Mind you, in principle, I’m for weighing-in with the police. We bellyache about them freely enough but we expect them to protect us. Of course everybody doesn’t see it like that.”
“Not everybody.”
“No. And anyway with all the rot-gut that the longhaired gentry talk about understanding the thugs, it’s up to the other people to show the flag.”
Disregarding a certain nausea in the region of his midriff, Alleyn said: “Quite.”
Bimbo turned away to the window and seemed to be contemplating the landscape. Perhaps because of this, his voice had taken on a different perspective.
“Personally,” Alleyn heard him say, “I’m in favour of capital punishment.”
Alleyn, who was one of an extremely small minority among his brother-officers, said: “Ah, yes?”
“Anyway, that’s nothing to do with the point at issue,” Bimbo said, turning back into the room. “I don’t know why I launched out like this.”
“We can forget it.”
“Yes, of course.”
“You were going to tell me…?”
“Yes, I was. It’s about this bloody fellow Leiss and his ghastly girl. They hung on to the bitter end of the party, of course. I’ve never seen anybody drink more or show it less, I’ll say that for them. Well, the last car was leaving — except his bit of wreckage — and it was about two o’clock. I thought I’d give them the hint. I collected his revolting overcoat and went to hunt them out. I couldn’t find them at first, but I finally ran them down in my study, here, where they had settled in with a bottle of champagne. They were on the sofa with their backs to the door and didn’t hear me come in. They were pretty well bogged down in an advanced necking party. He was talking. I heard the end of the sentence.” Bimbo stopped and frowned at his cigarette. “Of course, it may not mean a damn’ thing.” He looked at Alleyn, who said nothing.
“Well, for what it’s worth,” Bimbo went on. “He said: ‘And that disposes of Mr. Harold Cartell for keeps.’ And she said something like: ‘When do you think they’ll find it?’ and he said: ‘In the morning, probably. Not windy, are you? For Christ’s sake, keep your head: we’re in the clear.’ ”
CHAPTER SIX
Interlude
With this piece of reportage, spurious or not as the case might prove to be, it appeared that Bimbo had reached saturation point as a useful witness. He had nothing more to offer. After noticing that a good deal of unopened mail lay on the desk, including several bills and a letter from a solicitor, addressed to Benedict Arthur Dodds, Alleyn secured Bimbo’s uneasy offer to sign a statement and took his leave.
“Please don’t move,” Alleyn said politely, “I can find my way out.” Before Bimbo could put himself in motion, Alleyn had gone out and shut the study door behind him.
In the hall, not altogether to his surprise, he found Désirée. She was, if anything, a little wilder in her general appearance, and Alleyn wondered if this was to be attributed to another tot of brandy. But in all other respects she seemed to be more or less herself.
“Hullo,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for you. There’s a sort of crise.”
“What sort?”
“It may not be a crise at all, but I thought I’d better tall you. I really feel a bit awkward about it. I seem to have made a clanger, showing you P.P.’s funny letter. It wasn’t meant for me.”
“Who was it meant for?”
“He wouldn’t say. He’s just rung up in a frightful taking-on, asking me to throw it on the fire and forget about it. He went on at great length, talking about his grand ancestors and I don’t know what else.”
“You didn’t tell him I’d seen the letter?”
Désirée looked fixedly at him. “No,” she said. “I didn’t, but I felt like a housemaid who’s broken a cup. Poor P.P. What can it all be about? He is so fussed — you can’t imagine.”
“Never mind,” Alleyn said, “I daresay it’s only his overdeveloped social sense.”
“Well, I know. All the same…” She put her hand on his arm. “Rory,” she said, “if you don’t awfully mind, don’t tell him I gave you the letter. He’d think me such a sweep.”
At that moment Alleyn liked her very much. “I won’t tell him,” he said carefully, “unless I have to. And for your part, I’ll be obliged if you don’t tell him, either.”
“I’m not likely to, am I? And anyway, I don’t quite see why the promises about this letter should all be on my side.”
“It may be important.”
“All right, but I can’t think how. You’ve got it. Are you going to use it in some way?”
“Not if it’s irrelevant.”
“I suppose it’s no good asking you to give it back to me. No, I can see it’s not.”
“It isn’t, really, Désirée,” Alleyn said, using her name for the first time. “Not till I make quite sure it’s of no account. I’m sorry.”
“What a common sort of job you’ve got. I can’t think how you do it.” She gave one of her harsh barks of laughter.
He looked at her for a moment. “I expect that was a very clever thing to say,” he said. “But I’m afraid it makes no difference. Good-bye. Thank you again for my lunch.”
When he was in the car he said: “To Ribblethorpe. It’s about five miles, I think. I want to go to the parish church.”
It was a pleasant drive through burgeoning lanes. There were snowdrops in the hedgerows and a general air of freshness and simplicity. Désirée’s final observation stuck in his gullet.
Ribblethorpe was a tiny village. They drove past a row of cottages and a shop-post-office and came to a pleasant if not distinguished church with a big shabby parsonage beyond it.
Alleyn walked through the graveyard and very soon found a Victorian headstone to frances ann patricia, infant daughter of alfred molyneux piers period esquire and lady frances mary julia, his wife. she is not dead but sleepeth. Reflecting on the ambiguity of the quotation, Alleyn moved away and had not long to search before he found carved armorial bearings exactly similar to those in Mr. Period’s study. These adorned the grave of Lord Percival Francis Pykke, who died in 1701 and had conferred sundry and noble benefits upon this parish. The name recurred pretty regularly up and down the graveyard from Jacobean times onward. When he went into the church it was the same story. Armorial fish, brasses and tablets all confirmed the eminence of innumerable Pykes.
Alleyn was in luck. The baptismal register was not locked away in the vestry but chained to a carved desk, hard by the font. In the chancel a lady wearing an apron and housemaid’s gloves was polishing brasses. Her hat, an elderly toque, had been, for greater ease, lifted up on her head — giving her a faint air of recklessness. He approached her.
“I wonder,” Alleyn said, “if I may look in the baptismal register? I’m doing a bit of extremely amateurish research. I’ll be very careful.”
“Oh, rather!” said the lady, jollily. “Do. My husband’s over at Ribblethorpe-Parva with the Mothers, or he’d help like a shot. I don’t know if I—”
“Thank you so much but it’s really quite a simple job,” Alleyn said hastily. “Just a family thing, you know.”