“So I did. You were wet. The window came down with a crash, didn’t it, as I walked in.”
Nigel stared at him and nodded.
“Why?” Alleyn asked.
Again, a feeling of general consternation.
Nigel said, “To see.”
“To see what?”
“They don’t tell me anything!” Nigel burst out. “I seen them talking, I heard.”
“What?”
“Things,” he said and became sulky and uncommunicative.
“Odd!” Alleyn said without emphasis. “I suppose none of you knows who wedged the Colonel’s window? No? Ah, well, it’ll no doubt emerge in due course. There’s only one other thing I’d like to ask you. All of you. And before I ask it I want to remind you of what I said at the beginning. I do most earnestly beg you not to think I’m setting a trap for you, not to believe I’m influenced in the smallest degree by your past histories. All right. Now, I expect you all know about the booby-trap that was set for my wife. Did you tell them about it, Cox?”
After a considerable pause, Mervyn. said: “I mentioned it, sir,” and then burst out: “Madam knows I didn’t do it. Madam believes me. I wouldn’t of done it, not to her, I wouldn’t. What would I do it to her for? You ask madam, sir. She’ll tell you.”
“All right, all right, nobody’s said you did it. But if you didn’t, and I accept for the sake of argument that you didn’t, who did? Any ideas?”
Before Mervyn could reply, Nigel came roaring back into action.
“With malice aforethought, he done it,” Nigel shouted.
“Who?”
The other four men all began to talk at once: their object very clearly being to shut Nigel up. They raised quite a clamour between them. Alleyn stopped it by standing up: if he had yelled at the top of his voice it would have been less effective.
“Who,” he asked Nigel, “did it with malice aforethought?”
“You leave me alone, Mr. Blore. Come not between the avenger and his wrath, Mr. Blore, or it’ll be the worse for all of us.”
“Nobody’s interrupting you,” Alleyn said and indeed it was true. They were turned off like taps.
“Come on, Nigel,” Alleyn said. “Who was it?”
“Him. Him that the wrath of the Almighty has removed from the midst.”
“Moult?”
“That’s perfectly correct,” said Nigel with one of his plummet-like descents into the commonplace.
From this point, the interview took on a different complexion. Nigel withdrew into a sort of omniscient gloom, the others into a mulish determination to dissociate themselves from any opinion upon any matter that Alleyn might raise. Blore, emerging as a reluctant spokesman, said there was proof — and he emphasized the word — that Moult had set the booby-trap, and upon Nigel uttering in a loud voice the word “spite,” merely repeated his former pantomime to indicate Nigel’s total irresponsibility. Alleyn asked if Moult was, in fact, a spiteful or vindictive character and they all behaved as if they didn’t know what he was talking about. He decided to take a risk. He said that no doubt they all knew about the anonymous and insulting messages that had been left in the Forresters’ and Cressida Tottenham’s rooms and the lacing of Mr. Smith’s barley water with soap.
They would have liked, he thought, to deny all knowledge of these matters, but he pressed them and gradually collected that Cressida had talked within hearing of Blore, that Mr. Smith had roundly tackled Nigel, and that Moult himself had “mentioned” the incidents.
“When?” Alleyn asked.
Nobody seemed exactly to remember when.
“Where?”
They were uncertain where.
“Was it here, in the staff common-room, yesterday morning?”
This, he saw, had alarmed and bewildered them. Nigel said “How —?” and stopped short. They glared at him.
“How did I know, were you going to say?” said Alleyn. “It seems the conversation was rather noisy. It was overheard. And Moult was seen leaving by that door over there. You’d accused him, hadn’t you, of playing these tricks with the deliberate intention of getting you into trouble?”
“We’ve no call to answer that,” Vincent said. “That’s what you say. It’s not what we say. We don’t say nothing.”
“Come,” Alleyn said, “you all disliked him, didn’t you? It was perfectly apparent. You disliked him, and his general attitude gave you some cause to do so.”
“Be that as it may, sir,” said Blore, “it is no reason for supposing the staff had anything to do with—” His enormous voice trembled. He made a violent dismissive gesture. “— with whatever he’s done or wherever he’s gone.”
“I agree. It doesn’t follow.”
“We went our way, sir, and Mr. Moult went his.”
“Quite. Where to? What was Mr. Moult’s way and where did it take him? That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“If you’ll excuse the liberty,” Kittiwee said, “that’s your business, sir. Not ours.”
“Of course it’s my business,” Alleyn cheerfully rejoined. “Otherwise, you know, I shouldn’t waste half an hour butting my head against a concrete wall. To sum up. None of you knows anything about or is prepared to discuss, the matter of the insulting messages, booby-trap, soapy barley water or wedged window. Nor is anyone prepared to enlarge upon the row that took place in this room yesterday morning. Apart from Nigel’s view that Moult was steeped in sin and, more specifically, alcohol (which you support), you’ve nothing to offer. You’ve no theories about his disappearance and you don’t appear to care whether he’s alive or dead. Correct?”
Silence.
“Right. Not only is this all my eye and Betty Martin but it’s extremely damaging to what I’d hoped would be a sensible relationship between us. And on top of all that, it’s so bloody silly that I wonder you’ve got the faces to go on with it. Good-night to you.”
Mr. Wrayburn was in the hall, pregnant with intelligence of police dogs and fur-lined boots. The dog Buck, who sat grinning competently beside his handler, had picked up two separate tracks from the cloakroom and across the sheltered porch, agreeing in direction with the druidical progress. “There and back,” said Wrayburn, “I suppose.” But there had been no other rewarding scents. An attempt within doors had been unproductive owing, Alleyn supposed, to a sort of canine embarras de richesses. All that could be taken from this, Mr. Wrayburn complained, was the fact, known already, that Moult left the cloakroom and returned to it and that unless he was carried out or changed his boots, he didn’t leave by the porch door a second time.
Alleyn said, “Try one of the slippers from Moult’s room: see what comes of that.”
“I don’t get you.”
Alleyn explained. Wrayburn stared at him. “I see,” he said. “Yes, I see.”
The slipper was fetched and introduced to the dog Buck, who made a dutiful response. He was then taken to the porch and courtyard where he nosed to and fro, swinging his tail but obviously at a loss. The second dog, Mack, was equally disinterested. When taken to the cloakroom, however, they both produced positive and energetic reactions over the main area, but ignored the fellow of the fur-lined boot and the floor under the makeup bench.
“Well,” Wrayburn said, “we know he was in here, don’t we? Not only when he was being got up for the party but earlier when he was fixing the room for the Colonel. Still — it looks as if you’re right, by gum it does. What next?”
“I’m afraid we’ll have to tackle that mess that was once a conservatory, Jack. How’s the search over the grounds going?”
“As badly as could be expected under these conditions. The chaps are doing their best but — if he’s lying out in that lot they could miss him over and over again. Didn’t this bunch of homicides have a go at the conservatory wreckage?”