There it was. He reached up with his right hand, touched it, made a final effort and secured it. His fingers were so cold that he could scarcely feel sure of his capture. He put it in his mouth, and slithering, swaying and scrambling, came down to earth.
He moved round until the tree was between him and the library window and warmed his hands at the lamp. Wrayburn, standing close by, said something Alleyn could not catch and jerked his thumb in the direction of the library. Alleyn nodded, groped in his mouth and extracted a slender strip of metallic gold. He opened his mackintosh and tucked it away in the breast pocket of his jacket.
“Come indoors,” he signalled.
They had moved away and were heading back to the front of the house when they were caught in the beams of two lights. Above the general racket and clamour they heard themselves hailed.
The lights jerked, swayed and intensified as they approached. The men behind them suddenly plunged into the group. Alleyn shone his torch into their excited faces.
“What’s up?” Wrayburn shouted. “Here? What’s all the excitement?”
“We’ve found ’im, Mr. Wrayburn, we’ve seen ’im! We’ve got ’im.”
“Where?”
“Laying on the hillside, up yonder. I left my mate to see to ’im.”
“Which hillside?” Alleyn bawled.
“Acrost there, sir. On the way to the Vale road.”
“Come on, then,” said Wrayburn excitedly.
The whole party set off along the cinder path that Troy so often had taken on her afternoon walks.
They had not gone far before they saw a stationary light and a recumbent figure clearly visible spread-eagled and face down in the snow. Someone was stooping over it. As they drew near the stooping figure rose and began to kick the recumbent one.
“My God!” Wrayburn roared out, “what’s he doing! My God! Is he mad! Stop him.”
He turned to Alleyn and found him doubled up.
The man on the hillside, caught in his own torchlight, gave two or three more tentative kicks to the prostrate form and then, with an obvious effort, administered a brief and mighty punt that sent it careering into the gale. It gesticulated wildly and disintegrated. Wisps of rank, wet straw were blown into their faces.
Hilary would have to find another scarecrow.
A further ill-tempered, protracted and exhaustive search turned out to be useless, and at five minutes past twelve they returned to the house.
The rest of the search party had come in with nothing to report. They all piled up a shining heap of wet gear and lamps in the porch, left the two dogs in the unfurnished east-wing cloakroom, and in their stockinged feet entered the hall. The overefficient central heating of Halberds received them like a Turkish bath.
Hilary, under a hard drive of hospitality, came fussing out from the direction of the library. He was full of commiseration and gazed anxiously into one frozen face after another, constantly turning to Alleyn as if to call witness to his own distress.
“Into the dining-room! Everybody. Do do do do,” cried Hilary, dodging about like a sheepdog. And, rather sheepishly, the search party allowed itself to be mustered.
The dining-room table displayed a cold collation that would have done honour to Dingley Dell. On a side table was ranked an assembly of bottles: whisky, rum, brandy, Alleyn saw, and a steaming kettle. If Hilary had known how, Alleyn felt, he would have set about brewing a punch bowl. As it was, he implored Wrayburn to superintend the drinks and set himself to piling up a wild selection of cold meats on plates.
None of the servants appeared at this feast.
Mr. Smith came in, however, and looked on with his customary air of sardonic amusement and sharp appraisal. Particularly, Alleyn thought, did Mr. Smith observe his adopted nephew. What did he make of Hilary and his antics? Was there a kind of ironic affection, an exasperation at Hilary’s mannerisms and — surely? — an underlying anxiety? Hilary made a particularly effusive foray upon Wrayburn and a group of disconcerted subordinates, who stopped chewing and stared at their socks. Mr. Smith caught Alleyn’s eye and winked.
The dining-room became redolent of exotic smells.
Presently Wrayburn made his way to Alleyn.
“Will it be all right, now,” he asked, “if I get these chaps moving? The stream’s coming down very fresh and we don’t want to be marooned, do we?”
“Of course you don’t. I hope my lot get through all right.”
“When do you expect them?”
“I should think by daylight. They’re driving through the night. They’ll look in at the station.”
“If they’re short on waders,” said Wrayburn, “we can fix them up. They may need them.” He cleared his throat and addressed his troops: “Well, now. Chaps.”
Hilary was effusive in farewells, and at one moment seemed to totter on the brink of a speech but caught sight of Mr. Smith and refrained.
Alleyn saw the men off. He thanked them for their work and told them he’d have been very happy to have carried on with their help and might even be obliged to call on them again though he was sure they hoped not. They made embarrassed but gratified noises, and he watched them climb into their shining gear and file off in the direction of the vans that had brought them.
Wrayburn lingered. “Well,” he said. “So long, then. Been quite a pleasure.”
“Of a sort?”
“Well—”
“I’ll keep in touch.”
“Hope things work out,” Wrayburn said. “I used to think at one time of getting out of the uniformed branch but — I dunno — it didn’t pan out that way. But I’ve enjoyed this opportunity. Know what I mean?”
“I think so.”
“Look. Before I go. Do you mind telling me what it was you fished out of that tree?”
“Of course I don’t mind, Jack. There just hasn’t been the opportunity.”
Alleyn reached into his breast pocket and produced, between finger and thumb, the golden strand. Wrayburn peered at it. “We saw it from the dressing room window,” Alleyn said.
“Metallic,” Wrayburn said. “But not tinsel. Now what would that be? A bit of some ornamental stuff blown off the Christmas tree into the fir?”
“It was on the wrong side of the fir for that. It looks more like a shred of dress material to me.”
“It may have been there for some time.”
“Yes, of course. What does it remind you of?”
“By gum!” Wrayburn said. “Yes — by gum. Here! Are you going to look?”
“Care to keep your troops waiting?”
“What do you think!”
“Come on, then.”
They unlocked the cloakroom door and went in. Again the smell of makeup, the wig on its improvised stand, the fur-topped boot, the marks on the carpet, the cardboard carton with the poker inside and, on its coat hanger against the wall, the golden lamé robe of the Druid.
Alleyn turned it on its coat hanger and once again displayed the wet and frayed back of the collar. He held his shred of material against it.
“Might be,” he said. “It’s so small one can’t say. It’s a laboratory job. But could be.”
He began to explore the robe, inch by inch. He hunted back and front and then turned it inside out.
“It’s damp, of course, and wet at the bottom edge. As one would expect, from galloping about in the open courtyard. The hem’s come unstitched here and ravelled out. Zips right down the back. Hullo! The collar’s come slightly adrift. Frayed. Might be. Could be.”
“Yes, but — look, it’d be ridiculous. It doesn’t add up. Not by any reckoning. The thing’s here. In the cloakroom. When he was knocked off, if he was knocked off, he wasn’t wearing it. He couldn’t have been. Unless,” said Wrayburn, “it was taken off his body and returned to this room, but that’s absurd. What a muck it’d be in!”