“I suppose,” she snapped, “you think you know what you’re about.”
“What is it, B?” asked her husband. “Is something wrong with the window?”
“It’s being attended to.”
“It’s awfully stiff. Awfully stiff.”
Alleyn returned to the bed. “Colonel Forrester,” he said. “Did you wrestle with the window? With your hands above your head? Straining and shoving?”
“You needn’t rub it in,” said the Colonel.
“Fred!” cried his wife, “what am I to do with you! I said —”
“Sorry, B.”
“I’ll open the other window,” Alleyn said. “I want this one left as it is. Please. It’s important. You do understand, don’t you? Both of you? No touching?”
“Of course, of course, of course,” the Colonel drawled. His eyes were shut. His voice was drowsy. “When he isn’t the White Knight,” Troy thought, “he’s the Dormouse.”
His wife put his hands under the bedclothes, gave him a sharp look, and joined Alleyn and Troy at the far end of the room.
“What’s all this about wedges?” she demanded.
“The houseman or whatever he is — ”
“Yes. Very well. Nigel.”
“Nigel. He may have wedged the sashes to stop the windows rattling in the storm.”
“I daresay.”
“If so, he only wedged one.”
As if in confirmation, the second window in the Forresters’ bedroom suddenly beat a tattoo.
“Ours haven’t been wedged,” said Troy.
“Nor has the dressing-room. May I borrow those scissors on your table? Thank you.”
He pulled a chair up to the window, took off his shoes, stood on it, and by gentle manipulation eased a closely folded cardboard wedge from between the sashes. Holding it by the extreme tip he carried it to the dressing table.
“It looks like a chemists’s carton,” he said. “Do you recognize it? Please don’t touch.”
“It’s the thing his pills come in. It was a new bottle.”
Alleyn fetched an envelope from the writing table, slid the wedge into it and pocketed it.
He put on his shoes and replaced the chair, “Remember,” he said, “don’t touch the window and don’t let Nigel touch it. Mrs. Forrester, will you be all right, now? Is there anything we can do?”
She sat down at her dressing table and leant her head on her hand. With her thin grey plait dangling and bald patches showing on her scalp she looked old and very tired.
“Thank you,” she said. “Nothing. We shall be perfectly all right.”
“Are you sure?” Troy asked and touched her shoulder.
“Yes, my dear,” she said. “I’m quite sure. You’ve been very kind.” She roused herself sufficiently to give Alleyn one of her looks. “So have you,” she said, “as far as that goes. Very.”
“Do you know,” he said, “if I were you I’d turn the keys in the doors. You don’t want to be disturbed, do you?”
She looked steadily at him, and after a moment, shook her head. “And I know perfectly well what you’re thinking,” she said.
When Alleyn arrived downstairs it was to a scene of activity. Superintendent Wrayburn, now dressed in regulation waterproofs, was giving instructions to five equally waterproofed constables. Two prison warders and two dogs of super-caninely sharp aspect waited inside the main entrance. Hilary stood in front of one of the fires looking immensely perturbed.
“Ah!” he cried on seeing Alleyn. “Here you are! We were beginning to wonder —?”
Alleyn said that there had been one or two things to attend to upstairs, that the Colonel had been unwell but was all right again, and that he and Mrs. Forrester had retired for the night.
“Oh, Lor’!” Hilary said. “That too! Are you sure he’s all right? Poor Uncle Flea, but how awkward.”
“He’s all right.”
Alleyn joined Wrayburn, who made quite a thing of, as it were, presenting the troops for inspection. He then drew Alleyn aside and in a portentous murmur, said that conditions out-of-doors were now so appalling that an exhaustive search of the grounds was virtually impossible. He suggested, however, that they should make a systematic exploration of the area surrounding the house and extend it as far beyond as seemed feasible. As for the dogs and their handlers, Wrayburn said, did Alleyn think that there was anything to be got out of laying them on with one of the boots in the cloakroom and seeing if anything came of it? Not, he added, that he could for the life of him believe that anything would.
Alleyn agreed to this. “You’ve got a filthy night for it,” he said to the men. “Make what you can of a bad job. You do understand the position, of course. The man’s missing. He may be injured. He may be dead. There may be a capital charge involved, there may not. In any case it’s urgent. If we could have afforded to leave it till daylight, we would have done so. As it is — do your best. Mr. Wrayburn will give you your instructions. Thank you in advance for carrying out a foul assignment.”
To the handlers he made suitable acknowledgments and was at some pains to put them in the picture.
“On present evidence,” he said, “the missing man was last seen in that cloakroom over there. He may have gone outdoors, he may have gone upstairs. We don’t know where he went. Or how. Or in what state. I realize, of course, that under these conditions, as far as the open ground is concerned there can be nothing for the dogs to pick up, but there may be something in the entrance porch. If, for instance, you can find more than two separate tracks, that would be something, and you might cast round the front and sides of the east wing, especially about the broken conservatory area. I’ll join you when you do that. In the meantime Mr. Wrayburn will show you the ropes. All right?”
“Very good, sir,” they said.
“All right, Jack,” Alleyn said. “Over to you.”
Wrayburn produced the fur-lined boot — an incongruous and somehow rather piteous object — from under his cape and consulted with the handlers. The front doors were opened, letting in the uproar of the Nor’east Buster and letting out the search parties. Fractured torch beams zigzagged across the rain. Alleyn shut out the scene and said to Hilary, “And now, if you please, I’ll talk to the staff.”
“Yes. All right. I’ll ring —”
“Are they in their own quarters — the staff common-room, you call it, don’t you?”
“Yes. I think so. Yes, yes, they are.”
“I’ll see them there.”
“Shall I come?”
“No need. Better not, I think.”
“Alleyn: I do beg that you won’t — won’t —”
“I shall talk to them exactly as I shall talk to any one of you. With no foregone conclusions and without prejudice.”
“Oh. Oh, I see. Yes. Well, good. But — look here, don’t let’s beat about the bush. I mean, you do think — don’t you? — that there’s been — violence?”
“When one finds blood and hair on the business end of a poker, the thought does occur, doesn’t it?”
“Oh Lord!” said Hilary. “Oh Lord, Lord, Lord, what a bore it all is! What a disgusting, devastating bore!”
“That’s one way of putting it. The staff-room’s at the back through there, isn’t it? I’ll find my own way.”
“I’ll wait in the study, then.”
“Do.”
Beyond the traditional green baize door was a passage running behind the hall, from the chapel, at the rear of the east wing, to the serveries and kitchen at the rear of the dining room in the west wing. Alleyn, guided by a subdued murmur of voices, tapped on a central door and opened it.
“May I come in?” he asked.
It was a large, comfortable room with an open fire, a television and a radio. On the walls hung reproductions of post-impressionist paintings, chosen, Alleyn felt sure, by Hilary. There were bookshelves lined with reading matter that proclaimed Hilary’s hopes for the intellectual stimulation of his employees. On a central table was scattered a heterogeneous company of magazines that perhaps reflected, more accurately, their natural inclination.