“Is there a car of sorts I could hire for the time being? You’ll need the official bus for your own work, of course.”
“As a matter of fact, I’m afraid we shall. It’s a tidy stretch over to Moorton Park, and we’ll be going backwards and forwards. No doubt about our men being Posh Jimmy & Co. Typical job. Funny how they stick to their ways, isn’t it? About a car. As a matter of fact, the Biggins have got an old Ford they hire.”
“Splendid. An admirable method of approaching Mr. Georgie. How old is he?”
“In years,” said Blandish, “he’s about thirteen. In sin he’s a hundred. A limb, if ever there was one. Nerve of a rhinoceros.”
“Well see if we can shake it,” said Alleyn.
The superintendent departed, lamenting the amount of work that lay before him.
ii
Alleyn and Fox lit their pipes and walked through Chipping. By daylight it turned out to be a small hamlet with a row of stone cottages on each side of the road, a general store, a post office, and the Jernigham Arms. Even the slope of Cloudyfold, rising steeply above it from the top of Pen Cuckoo Vale, did not rob Chipping of its upland character. It felt high in the world, and the cold wind blew strongly down the Vale road.
The Biggins’s cottage stood a little apart from the rest of the village, and had a truculent air. It was one of those bare-faced Dorset cottages, less picturesque than its neighbours, and more forbidding.
As Alleyn and Fox approached the front door, they heard a woman’s voice:
“Whatever be the matter with you, then, mumbudgeting so close to my apron strings? Be off with you!”
Silence.
“To be sure,” continued the voice, “if you wasn’t so strong as a young foal, Georgie Biggins, I’d think something ailed you. Stick out your tongue.”
Silence.
“As clean as a whistle. Stick it in again, then. Standing there like you was simple Dick with your tongue lolling! I never see! What ails you?”
“Nuthun,” said a small voice.
“Nuthun killed nobody.”
Alleyn tapped on the door.
Another silence was broken by a sharp whispering and an unmistakable scuffle.
“Do what I tell you!” ordered the voice. “Me in my working apron, and Sunday morning! Go on with you.”
There was a sound of rapid retreat and then the door opened three inches to disclose a pair of boot-button eyes and part of a very white face.
“Hullo,” said Alleyn. “I’ve come to see if I can hire a car. This is Mr. Biggins’s house, isn’t it?”
“Uh.”
“Have you got a car for hire?”
“Uh.”
“Well, how about opening the door a bit wider and we can talk about it?”
The door opened very slowly to another five inches. Georgie Biggins stood revealed in his Sunday suit. His moon-face was colourless and he had the look of a boy who may bolt without warning.
Alleyn said, “Now, what about this car? Is your father at home?”
“Along to pub corner,” said Georgie in a stifled voice. “Mum’s comeun.”
The cinema has made all little boys familiar with the look of a detective. Alleyn kept a change of clothes in the Yard in readiness for sudden departures. His shepherd’s plaid coat, flannel trousers and soft hat may have reassured George Biggins, but when the boot-button eyes ranged farther afield and lit on Inspector Fox, in his dark suit, mackintosh and bowler, their owner uttered a yelp of pure terror, turned tail and charged into his mother, who had at that moment walked out of the bedroom. She was a large woman, and she caught her son with a practised hand.
“Now!” she said. “That’s enough and more, for sure. What’s the meanings of these goings-on? You wait till your Dad comes home. I never see!”
She advanced to the door, bringing her son with her by the scruff of the neck.
“I’m sure I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” she said.
Alleyn asked about the car and was told he could have it. Mrs. Biggins examined both of them with frank curiosity and led the way round the house to a dilapidated shed where they found a Ford car, six years old, but, as Alleyn cheerfully remarked, none the worse for that. He paid a week’s rental in advance. Mrs. Biggins kept a firm but absent-minded grip on her son’s shirt-collar.
“I’ll get you a receipt,” she said. “Likely you’re here on account of this terrible affair.”
“That’s it,” said Alleyn.
“Are you from Scotland Yard, then?”
“Yes, Mrs. Biggins, that’s us.” Alleyn looked good-naturedly at Master Biggins. “Is this Georgie?” he asked.
The next second, Master Biggins had left the best part of his Sunday collar in his mother’s hand and had bolted like a rabbit, only to find himself held as if in a vice by the terrible man in the mackintosh and bowler.
“Now, now, now,” said Fox. “What’s all this?”
The very words he had so often heard on the screen.
“Georgie!” screamed Mrs. Biggins in a maternal fury. Then she looked at her son’s face and at the hands that held him.
“Here, you!” she stormed at Fox. “What are you at, laying your hands on my boy?”
“There’s nothing to worry about, Mrs. Biggins,” said Alleyn. “Georgie may be able to help us, that’s all. Now, look here, wouldn’t it be better if we went indoors out of sight and sound of your neighbours?”
The shot went home.
“Mighty me!” said Mrs. Biggins, still almost as white as her child, but rallying. “Mighty me, it’s true enough they spend most of the Lord’s Day minding other folks’ business and clacking their tongues. Georgie Biggins, if you don’t hold your noise I’ll have the skin off you. Do us go in, then.”
iii
In a cold but stuffy parlour, Alleyn did his best with mother and son. Georgie was now howling steadily. Mrs. Biggins’s work-reddened hands pleated and re-pleated the folds of her dress. But she listened in silence.
“It’s just this,” said Alleyn. “Georgie is in no danger, but we believe he is in a position to give us extremely important information.”
Georgie checked a lamentable roar and listened.
Alleyn took the water-pistol from his pocket and. handed it to Mrs. Biggins.
“Do you recognise it?”
“For sure,” she said slowly. “It’s his’en.”
George burst out again.
“Young Biggins,” said Alleyn, “is this your idea of being a detective? Come here.”
Georgie came.
“See here, now. How would you like to help the police bring a murderer to justice? How would you like to work with us? We’re from Scotland Yard, you know. It’s not often you’ll get the chance to work with the Yard, is it?”
The black eyes fastened on Alleyn’s and brightened.
“What are the other chaps going to think if you, if you”—Alleyn hunted for the right phrase—“if you solve the problem that has baffled the greatest sleuths of all time?” He glanced at his colleague. Fox, looking remarkably bland, closed one eye.
“If you come in with us,” Alleyn continued, “you’ll be doing a man’s job. How about it?”
A faintly hard-boiled expression crept over Georgie Biggins’s undistinguished face.
“Okay,” he said in a treble voice still fuddled with tears.
“Good enough.” Alleyn took the water-pistol from Mrs. Biggins. “This is your gun, isn’t it?”
“Yaas,” said Georgie; and, remembering James Cagney the week before last at Great Chipping Plaza, he added with a strong Dorset accent: “Sure it’s my gat.”
“You fixed that water-pistol in the piano in the hall, didn’t you?”