Ricky started to speak, but H.M. shushed him fiercely.
"I gave my name and address to the local policeman," Stannard added. "But I was not needed. I took the train from Newbury: giving (I recall) a very callow statement to a newspaper reporter at the train. I have no connection with the Fleets, and never met any of them from that day to this."
"And that's all"
"That's all," smiled Stannard, and Ruth joined the smile. "Stung!" said H.M.
From the desk he picked up the pen with the long blue feather, and seemed to meditate aiming and firing it at one of the brass andirons opposite.
"Whole great big beautiful bloomin' possibility," he said, "and yet—" H.M. threw down the pen. He adjusted his spectacles, peering at Ricky over them. "I say, son. That roof. It's our last hope. Is there any possibility of seeing it?"
"Certainly. We use it more nowadays, for parties, than we ever did like to come along, Martin?"
"Not for a minute,'‘ replied a bedevilled man whose thoughts churned round and round Jenny. "If you don't mind: in spite of what the old poisoner said—"
"Poisoner?'
"Lady Brayle. I was speaking figuratively. In spite of what she said, I’d like to use your telephone."
"At your service, old boy. Beside the stairs in the hall"
That was how, a few minutes later, Sir Henry Merrivale and Richard Fleet climbed several flights of dark steep stairs, and emerged under a metal hood with a door opening on the northwest corner of the roof.
Clear evening light, with a softness of air which could be felt like a touch, lay over the concrete surface. The roof, a hundred feet square and perhaps forty-five feet from the ground, had its floor painted light brown. At equal intervals, from north to south across the middle, stood the low white oblongs of the chimney stacks.
Just-before-the-war porch-furniture, of dulled chromium tubing and orange canvas seats, stood scattered about the roof. There were tables with orange tops, like the colour of the awning down over the front door. Two beach-umbrellas lay on the floor, ready to be put up. All these H.M. surveyed with displeasure.
A faint breeze moved here. Some distance over across the road you could see the three higher gables of the Dragon's Rest; and, on slightly rising ground behind them, the vast expanse of Guideman's Field and the wood called Black Hanger. To the north, much farther away, you could distantly study the round grey bulk of Pentecost Prison: its tiny windows unwinking, its air repellent even from here.
H.M., fists on hips, turned round.
"Oi! Son!"
"Yes, sir?" Ricky, the muscles tight down his lean jaws, kicked moodily at the floor.
"Don't let Jack Stannard get your goat" H.M. hesitated. His face seemed to swell and grow cross-eyed with embarrassment "Looky here. Did you like your old man very much?"
"It wasn't that" Ricky shrugged it away. "The governor's very dim in my mind. He had his faults; he could wallop you like blazes. But—"
"But?"
"Well, he never minded how filthy dirty you got, or if you were in a fight. If you wanted something to do with games, he'd buy it for you before the words were out of your mouth."
Ricky dismissed this. "No; I was thinking about Mother. That swine of a lawyer must have said something… no, he couldn't have! Ruth swore he didn't upset her, and Ruth's as honest as the Bank of England. Never mind. What did you want to know?"
"I want to know," roared H.M., "the colour of the beach-chairs."
At this particular point the roof-door in the corner opened. Chief Inspector Masters, wearing a bowler hat and carrying the brief-case, overheard the last words as he stepped out on the roof.
"Goddelmighty," said Masters, very softly and wearily.
"By the way," H.M. told Ricky. "This weasel is the Chief Inspector I was telling you about Don't pay any attention to him."
Ricky, though considerably more impressed by Scotland Yard than he could ever have been impressed by H.M, nevertheless turned back.
"You mean — the beach-chairs then?"
"Yes! Not this chromium stuff now. Do you remember?"
"Ho! Do I remember!" snorted Ricky. "The old lot stayed here from the early days practically to the time I was at Cambridge."
"Well? Colours?"
"The beach-chairs were striped green and black. There was a combination of settee and wicker chairs, also striped green and black."
"What about the floor?"
"It was painted dull grey, like the chimneys then." "Nothing pink?"
"Pink? No; not unless it was carried up here like a coat or something."
H.M.'s expression grew murderous. "Looky here, son. I'm not doubtin' your word, but it was a long time ago. Can anybody verify what you say?"
Ricky considered.
"Miss Upton — no, she left two years later and they pensioned her off. MacAndrews, the gardener and handyman? No: Crawshay! Crawshay was the butler. Nobody has a butler nowadays except Grandmother Brayle. But he still lives at Reading; Mother can give you his address. And he'll tell you it's gospel truth!"
"Very interesting, sir," Masters observed satirically, to the surrounding air. "Are we getting on the track of that pink flash at last?"
H.M. stood for a moment, blinking. Then he turned round and lumbered towards the front of the roof, standing at the very edge. Masters, on the spot, could see the impossibility of anyone attacking Sir George Fleet in that fifty feet square beyond the chimneys of what had been bare concrete.
H.M. faced front, his feet apart and his bald head glistening. Then he turned round. His mouth was open.
"What a cuckoo I've been!" he breathed in a hollow voice. "Oh, my eye! What a thundering dunce!"
Now Masters had heard this tone before. And Masters, even with his mind made up, started a little. Both he and Ricky joined H.M. at the edge.
"Do you mean—?"
"No, no, dammit! I'm not quite on to something yet But there were two pieces in the evidence I was forgetting. Was there anything white on the roof?"
Masters and Ricky exchanged glances. "No," the latter said, "unless—"
"Unless, as before," growled Masters, "somebody carried it up"
"Y’see, I was forgetting that very bright-glowin' and lurid red sky everybody commented on. It might make something white seem pink, if only…"
Again H.M. paused.
"Also," he plodded on doggedly, "I had the whole conception and direction maybe a bit scrambled. I'll admit fully and with a spit that it's still an impossible crime. But look across at the pub there!"
"Ah, ah. Well?”
"Our witness named Simon Frew, the one with the powerful binoculars, was sittin' astride the centre gable. Just opposite us. Now Arthur Puckston, with the brass telescope: where was he?"
Masters pointed to their left
"Astride the north gable. There!"
"That's right. Therefore he was lookin' sideways. Sideways." H.M. ruminated, like an ogre with a bone. "And there was nobody on the south gable. And… y'see, Masters, I didn't like Puckston's testimony one little bit He didn't like George Fleet either."
Masters gestured impatiently with the brief-case. "I told you there wasn't much in that! Sir George thought a pub across from his house was undignified and spoiled the view. But he couldn't even get Puckston's license revoked by the magistrates, let alone snaffle the land by some legal…" '
"Legal, hey?"
"Maybe you've heard the word, sir?"
"Once or twice. That's what Stannard was do’in’ here on the day it happened, as sure as Moses had a beard." H.M. nodded vaguely. "Finally, you were goin' to tell me something more about George Fleet's field-glasses, only you didn't"