It was the same as all the others: a sash window with a snib locking the upper to the lower frame.
“We’d better not handle anything. The damn’ bore of it is that with this high standard of house management the whole place will have been dusted off. But if you look out of this window, Jack, it’s at the top of the sapling fir where Bill-Tasman picked up the poker. His study is directly beneath us. And if you leant out and looked to your left, it would be at the southeast corner of the east wing. Hold on a jiffy. Look here.”
“What’s up?”
Alleyn was moving about, close to the window. He dodged his head and peered sideways through the glass.
“Turn off the lights, Jack, will you? There’s something out there — yes, near the top of the fir. It’s catching a stray gleam from somewhere. Take a look.”
Mr. Wrayburn shaded his eyes and peered into the night. “I don’t get anything,” he said. “Unless you mean a little sort of shiny wriggle. You can hardly catch it.”
“That’s it. Quite close. In the fir.”
“Might be anything. Bit of string.”
“Or tinsel?”
“That’s right. Blowing about.”
“So what?”
“So nothing, I daresay. A passing fancy. We’ve still got a hell of a lot to find out. About last night’s ongoings — the order of events and details of procedure and so on.”
“Mrs. Alleyn will be helpful, there, I make no doubt.”
“You know,” Alleyn said, austerely, “my views under that heading, don’t you?”
“That was before you took over, though.”
“So it was. And now I’m in the delirious position of having to use departmental tact and make routine inquiries with my wife.”
“Perhaps,” Mr. Wrayburn dimly speculated, “she’ll think it funny.”
Alleyn stared at him. “You know,” he said at last, “you’ve got something there. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she did.” He thought for a moment. “And I daresay,” he said, “that in a macabre sort of way she’ll be, as usual, right. Come on. We’d better complete the survey. I’d like one more look at this blasted padlock, though.”
He was on his knees before it and Wrayburn was peering over his shoulder when Colonel Forrester said: “So you have found it. Good. Good. Good.”
He had come in by the bathroom door behind their backs. He was a little bit breathless but his eyes were bright and he seemed to be quite excited.
“I didn’t join the ladies,” he explained. “I thought I’d just pop up and see if I could be of any use. There may be points you want to ask about. So here I am and you must pack me off if I’m a nuisance. If one wasn’t so worried it would be awfully interesting to see the real thing. Oh — and by the way — your wife tells me that you’re George Alleyn’s brother. He was in the Brigade in my day, you know. Junior to me, of course: an ensign. In the Kiddies, I remember. Coincidence, isn’t it? Do tell me: what did he do after he went on the reserve? Took to the proconsular service, I seem to remember.”
Alleyn answered this inquiry as shortly as, with civility, he could. The Colonel sat on the bed and beamed at him, still fetching his breath rather short but apparently enjoying himself. Alleyn introduced Mr. Wrayburn, whom the Colonel was clearly delighted to meet. “But I oughtn’t to interrupt you both,” he said. “There you are in the thick of it with your magnifying glass and everything. Do tell me: what do you make of my box?”
“I was going to ask you about that, sir,” Alleyn said. “It’s a clumsy attempt, isn’t it?”
“Clumsy? Well, yes. But one couldn’t be anything else but clumsy with a thing like a poker, could one?”
“You know about the poker?”
“Oh rather! Hilary told us.”
“What, exactly, did he tell you?”
“That he’d found one in the fir tree out there. Now, that was a pretty outlandish sort of place for it to be, wasn’t it?”
“Did he describe it?”
The Colonel looked steadily at Alleyn for some seconds. “Not in detail,” he said, and after a further pause: “But in any case when we found the marks on the box we thought: ‘poker,’ B and I, as soon as we saw them.”
“Why did you think ‘poker,’ sir?”
“I don’t know. We just did. ‘Poker,’ we thought. Or B did, which comes to much the same thing. Poker.”
“Had you noticed that the one belonging to this room had disappeared?”
“Oh dear me, no. Not a bit of it. Not at the time.”
“Colonel Forrester, Troy tells me that you didn’t see Moult after he had put on your Druid’s robe.”
“Oh, but I did,” he said, opening his eyes very wide. “I saw him.”
“You did?”
“Well — ‘saw,’ you may call it. I was lying down in our bedroom, you know, dozing, and he came to the bathroom door. He had the robe and the wig on and he held the beard up to show me. I think he said he’d come back before he went down. I think I reminded him about the window and then I did go to sleep, and so I suppose he just looked in and went off without waking me. That’s what Mrs. Alleyn was referring to. I rather fancy, although I may be wrong here, but I rather fancy I heard him look out.”
“Heard him? Look out?”
“Yes. I told him to look out of the dressing-room window for Vincent with the sledge at the corner. Because when Vincent was there it would be time to go down. That was how we laid it on. Dead on the stroke of half-past seven it was to be, by the stable clock. And so it was.”
“What!” Alleyn exclaimed. “You mean —?”
“I like to run an exercise to a strict timetable and so, I’m glad to say, does Hilary. All our watches and clocks were set to synchronize. And I’ve just recollected: I did hear him open the window and I heard the stable clock strike the half-hour immediately afterwards. So, you see, at that very moment Vincent would signal from the corner and Moult would go down to have his beard put on, and — and there you are. That was, you might say, phase one of the exercise, what?”
“Yes, I see. And — forgive me for pressing it, but it is important — he didn’t present himself on his return?”
“No. He didn’t. I’m sure he didn’t,” said the Colonel very doubtfully.
“I mean — could you have still been asleep?”
“Yes!” cried the Colonel as if the Heavens had opened upon supreme enlightenment. “I could! Easily, I could. Of course!”
Alleyn heard Mr. Wrayburn fetch a sigh.
“You see,” the Colonel explained, “I do drop off after my Turns. I think it must be something in the stuff the quack gives me.”
“Yes, I see. Tell me — those fur-lined boots. Would he have put them on up here or in the cloakroom?”
“In the cloakroom. He’d put them all ready down there for me. I wanted to dress up here because of the big looking-glass, but the boots didn’t matter and they’re clumsy things to tramp about the house in.”
“Yes, I see.”
“You do think, don’t you,” asked the Colonel, “that you’ll find him?”
“I expect we will. I hope so.”
“I tell you what, Alleyn,” said the Colonel, and his face became as dolorous as a clown’s. “I’m afraid the poor fellow’s dead.”
“Are you, sir?”
“One shouldn’t say so, of course, at this stage. But — I don’t know — I’m very much afraid my poor old Moult’s dead. He was an awful ass in many ways but we suited each other, he and I. What do you think about it?”
“There’s one possibility,” Alleyn said cautiously.
“I know what you’re going to say. Amnesia. Aren’t you?”