“Something, at any rate, that caused him to leave the cloakroom by the outer door and wander off into the night. Miss Tottenham says he did smell pretty strongly of liquour.”
“Did he? Did he? Yes, well, perhaps in the excitement he may have been silly. In fact — In fact, I’m afraid he was.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because when he found me all tied up in my robe and having a Turn, he helped me out and put me to bed and I must say he smelt most awfully strong of whisky. Reeked. But, if that was the way of it,” the Colonel asked, “where is he? Out on those moors like somebody in a play? On such a night, poor feller? If he’s out there,” said the Colonel with great energy, “he must be found. That should come first. He must be found.”
Alleyn explained that there was a search party on the way. When he said Major Marchbanks was providing police dogs and handlers, the Colonel nodded crisply, rather as if he had ordered this to be done. More and more the impression grew upon Alleyn that here was no ninny. Eccentric in his domestic arrangements Colonel Forrester might be, and unexpected in his conversation, but he hadn’t said anything really foolish about the case. And now when Alleyn broached the matter of the tin box and the dressing-room, the Colonel cut him short.
“You’ll want to lock the place up, no doubt,” he said. “You fellers always lock places up. I’ll tell Moult—” he stopped short and made a nervous movement of his hands. “Force of habit,” he said. “Silly of me. I’ll put my things in the bedroom.”
“Please don’t bother. We’ll attend to it. There’s one thing, though: would you mind telling me what is in the uniform box?”
“In it? Well. Let me see. Papers, for one thing. My commission. Diaries. My Will.” The Colonel caught himself up. “One of them,” he amended. “My investments, scrip or whatever they call them.” Again, there followed one of the Colonel’s brief meditations. “Deeds,” he said. “That kind of thing. B’s money: some of it. She likes to keep a certain amount handy. Ladies do, I’m told. And the jewels she isn’t wearing. Those sorts of things. Yes.”
Alleyn explained that he would want to test the box for fingerprints, and the Colonel instantly asked if he might watch. “It would interest me no end,” he said. “Insufflators and latent ones and all that. I read a lot of detective stories: awful rot, but they lead you on. B reads them backwards but I won’t let her tell me.”
Alleyn managed to steer him away from this theme and it was finally agreed that they would place the box, intact, in the dressing-room wardrobe pending the arrival of the party from London. The Colonel’s effects having been removed to the bedroom, the wardrobe and the dressing-room itself would then be locked and Alleyn would keep the keys.
Before these measures were completed, Mrs. Forrester came tramping in.
“I thought as much,” she said to her husband.
“I’m all right, B. It’s getting jolly serious, but I’m all right. Really.”
“What are you doing with the box? Good evening,” Mrs. Forrester added, nodding to Mr. Wrayburn.
Alleyn explained. Mrs. Forrester fixed him with an embarrassing glare but heard him through.
“I see,” she said. “And is Moult supposed to have been interrupted trying to open it with the poker, when he had the key in his pocket?”
“Of course not, B. We all agree that would be a silly idea.”
“Perhaps you think he’s murdered and his body’s locked up in the box.”
“Really, my dear!”
“The one notion’s as silly as the other.”
“We don’t entertain either of them, B. Do we, Alleyn?”
“Mrs. Forrester,” Alleyn said, “what do you think has happened? Have you a theory?”
“No,” said Mrs. Forrester. “It’s not my business to have theories. Any more than it’s yours, Fred,” she tossed as an aside to her husband. “But I do throw this observation out, as a matter you may like to remember, that Moult and Hilary’s murderers were at loggerheads.”
“Why?”
“Why! Why, because Moult’s the sort of person to object to them. Old soldier-servant. Service in the Far East. Seen plenty of the seamy side and likes things done according to the Queen’s regulations. Regimental snobbery. Goes right through the ranks. Thinks this lot a gang of riffraff and lets them know it.”
“I tried,” said the Colonel, “to get him to take a more enlightened view but he couldn’t see it, poor feller, he couldn’t see it.”
“Was he married?”
“No,” they both said and Mrs. Forrester added: “Why?”
“There’s a snapshot in his pocket-book —”
“You’ve found him!” she ejaculated with a violence that seemed to shock herself as well as her hearers.
Alleyn explained.
“I daresay,” the Colonel said, “it’s some little girl in the married quarters. One of his brother-soldiers’ children. He’s fond of children.”
“Come to bed, Fred.”
“It isn’t time, B.”
“Yes, it is. For you.”
Mr. Wrayburn, who from the time Mrs. Forrester appeared had gone quietly about the business of removing the Colonel’s effects to the bedroom, now returned to say he hoped they’d find everything in order. With an air that suggested they’d better or else, Mrs. Forrester withdrew her husband, leaving both doors into the bathroom open, presumably with the object of keeping herself informed of their proceedings.
Alleyn and Wrayburn lifted the box by its end handles into the wardrobe, which they locked. Alleyn walked over to the window, stood on a Victorian footstool, and peered for some time through Hilary’s glass at the junction of the two sashes. “This hasn’t been dusted, at least,” he muttered, “but much good will that be to us, I don’t mind betting.” He prowled disconsolately.
Colonel Forrester appeared in the bathroom door in his pyjamas and dressing-gown. He made apologetic faces at them, motioned with his head in the direction of his wife, bit his underlip, shut the door, and could be heard brushing his teeth.
“He’s a caution, isn’t he?” Mr. Wrayburn murmured.
Alleyn moved alongside his colleague and pointed to the window.
Rain still drove violently against the pane, splayed out and ran down in sheets. The frame rattled intermittently. Alleyn turned out the lights, and at once the scene outside became partly visible. The top of the fir tree thrashed about dementedly against an oncoming multitude of glistening rods across which, in the distance, distorted beams of light swept and turned.
“Chaps from the Vale. Or my lot.”
“Look at that sapling fir.”
“Whipping about like mad, isn’t it? That’s the Buster. Boughs broken. Snow blown out of it. It’s a proper shocker, the Buster is.”
“There is something caught up in it. Do you see? A tatter of something shiny?”
“Anything might be blown into it in this gale.”
“It’s on the lee side. Still — I suppose you’re right. We’d better go down. You go first, will you, Jack? I’ll lock up here. By the way, they’ll want that shoe of Moult’s to lay the dogs on. But what a hope!”
“What about one of his fur-lined boots in the cloakroom?”
Alleyn hesitated and then said: “Yes. All right. Yes.”
“See you downstairs then.”
“O.K.”
Wrayburn went out. Alleyn pulled the curtains across the window. He waited for a moment in the dark room and was about to cross it when the door into the bathroom opened and admitted a patch of reflected light. He stood where he was. A voice, scarcely articulate, without character, breathed: “Oh,” and the door closed.
He waited. Presently he heard a tap turned on and sundry other sounds of activity.
He locked the bathroom door, went out by the door into the corridor, locked it, pocketed both keys, took a turn to his left, and was in time to see Troy going into her bedroom.