'Where were you on Wednesday night from nine o'clock onwards? Grant said, deciding that an indirect approach was just a waste of time.
'I was dancing, Serge said.
'Oh. At the village hall?
Serge looked as if he were going to faint.
'You suggest that I, that I, Serge Ratoff, was taking part in a op?
'Then where were you dancing?
'By the river.
'What?
'I work out the choreography for a new ballet. I burst with ideas there by the river on a spring night. They rise up in me like fountains. There is so much atmosphere there that I get drunk on it. I can do anything. I work out a very charming idea to go with the river music of Mashako. It begins with a —
'What part of the river?
'What?
'What part of the river?
'How should I know? The atmosphere is the same over all.
'Well, did you go up river or down, from Salcott?
'Oh, up, most certainly.
'Why "most certainly"?
'I need the wide flat spaces to dance. Up river they are there. Down river from the village it is all steep banks and tiresome root crops. Roots. Clumsy, obscene things. They —
'Could you identify the place where you were dancing on Wednesday night?
'Identify?
'Point it out to me.
'How can I? I don't even remember where it was.
'Can you remember if you saw anyone while you were there?
'No one who was memorable?
'Memorable?
'I trip over lovers in the grass now and then, but they-how you say, go with the house. They are part of the-the set-up. Not memorable.
'Do you remember, then, what time you left the river bank on Wednesday night?
'Ah, yes, that I remember perfectly.
'When was it that you left?
'When the shooting star fell.
'What time was that?
'How should I know? I dislike shooting stars. They make butterflies in my stomach. Though I did think that it would be a very fine ending to my ballet to have a shooting star. A Spectre de la Rose leap, you know, that would set the town talking, and show them that I can still —
'Mr Ratoff, can you suggest how Leslie Searle came to be in the river?
'Came to be? He fell in, I suppose. Such a pity. Pollution. The river is so beautiful it should be kept for beautiful things. Ophelia. Shallott. Do you think Shallott would make a ballet? All the things she sees in the mirror? It is an idea, that, isn't it?
Grant gave up.
He left his car where it was and walked up the street to where the flat stone front of Hoo House broke the pinks and chromes and limes of the village's plastered gables. The house stood on the pavement like the other cottages, but three steps to the front door raised the ground floor of the house above street level. It withdrew itself a little, in a dignity entirely natural, from everyday affairs. As Grant pulled the Victorian bell in its bright brass circle he spared a thought to bless the man, whoever he was, who had been responsible for restoring the place. He had preserved the structure but had made no attempt to turn it back into its original form and so make a museum piece of it; the tale of the centuries was there, from the worn mounting-block to the brass bell. A great amount of money had obviously been spent to bring it to its present condition of worthiness, and Grant wondered if perhaps the saving of Hoo House was sufficient to justify Toby Tullis's existence.
The door was opened by a manservant who might have walked out of one of Toby's plays. He stood in the doorway, polite but impenetrable; a one-man road-block.
'Mr Tullis does not see anyone before lunch, he said in answer to Grant's inquiry. 'He works in the morning. The appointment with the Press is for two o'clock. He began to move his hand towards the door.
'Do I look like Press? Grant said tartly.
'Well-no, I can't say that you do-sir.
'Shouldn't you have a little tray? Grant said, suddenly silky.
The man turned submissively and took a silver card tray from the Jacobean chest in the hall.
Grant dropped a piece of pasteboard on to the tray and said: 'Present my compliments to Mr Tullis and say that I would be grateful for three minutes of his time.
'Certainly, sir, said the man, not allowing his eyes to stray even to the vicinity of the card. 'Will you be kind enough to step into the hall and wait.
He disappeared into a room at the rear of the house, and closed the door behind him on some very unworkmanlike sounds of chatter. But he was back in a moment. Would Inspector Grant come this way, please. Mr Tullis would be very pleased to see him.
The room at the back, Grant found, looked into a large garden sloping down to the river-bank; it was another world altogether from the village street that he had just left. It was a sitting-room, furnished with the most perfect 'pieces' that Grant had ever seen out of a museum. Toby, in a remarkable dressing-gown, was sitting behind an array of silver coffee things; and behind him, in still more remarkable day clothes, hovered a callow and eager young man clutching a notebook. The notebook, from its virgin condition, appeared to be more a badge of office than the implement of a craft.
'You are modest, Inspector! Toby said, greeting him.
'Modest?
'Three minutes! Even the Press expect ten.
It had been meant as a compliment to Grant, but the effect was merely a reminder that Toby was the most-interviewed individual in the English-speaking world and that his time was priceless. As always, what Toby did was a little 'off-key'.
He presented the young man as Giles Verlaine, his secretary, and offered Grant coffee. Grant said that it was at once too late and too early for him, but would Mr Tullis go on with his breakfast; and Toby did.
'I am investigating the disappearance of Leslie Searle, Grant said. 'And that involves, I'm afraid, some disturbance of people who are only remotely connected with Searle. We have to ask everyone at Salcott who knew Searle to account for their time, as far as they can, on Wednesday night.
'Inspector, you offer me a felicity I had never hoped to enjoy. I have always been madly desirous of being asked what I was doing at nine-thirty p.m. on the night of Friday the 13th, but I never really dared to hope that it would happen to me.
'Now that it has happened, I hope your alibi is worthy of the occasion.
'It has the virtue of simplicity, at least. Giles and I spent the hours of that lovely midnight discussing Act II, Scene 1. Pedestrian, Inspector, but necessary. I am a business man.
Grant glanced from the business man to Giles, and decided that in his present stage of discipleship the young man would probably confess to the murder if it would pleasure Toby. A little thing like providing an alibi would be merely routine.
'And Mr Verlaine corroborates that, of course, Grant said.
'Yes, oh yes, of course; of course I do; yes, said Giles, squandering affirmatives in the service of his patron.
'It is a tragic thing indeed, this drowning, Toby said, sipping coffee. 'The sum total of the world's beauty is not so great that we can afford to waste any. A Shelleyan end, of course, and to that extent fitting. Do you know the Shelley Memorial at Oxford, Inspector?
Grant knew the Memorial and it reminded him of an overboiled chicken, but he refrained from saying so. Nor did Toby expect an answer.
'A lovely thing. Drowning is surely the ideal way of going out of this life.
'After a close acquaintance with a great variety of corpses taken from the water, I can't say that I agree with you.
Toby cocked a fish-scale eye at him, and said: 'Don't shatter my illusions, Inspector. You are worse than Silas Weekley. Silas is always pointing out the nastiness of life. Have you got Silas's alibi, by the way?