“I thought I’d better come back and report,” said Alleyn. “I’ve locked up your darling little imp for what’s left of the night, Mr. Weston.”
“So he did go back to the pub,” grunted Weston disinterestedly. “I told you he would, you know.”
“That’s right, Mr. Weston,” said Wade.
“I suppose the P.C. I met in the lane told you what I was up to,” said Alleyn.
“Yes, sir, he did, and very surprised he was when he heard who you were. I sent him after you, Mr. Alleyn, and he saw you go into the Middleton so we left you to it. I’ve just been asking Mr. Weston if he could give us an idea why Mr. Palmer slipped up on us.” And Wade glanced uncomfortably at Weston, edged round behind him, and made an eloquent grimace at Alleyn.
Alleyn thought he had never seen any face that expressed as little as Geoffrey Weston’s. It was an example of the dead norm in faces. It was neither good-looking nor plain, it had no distinguishing feature and no marked characteristic. It would be impossible to remember it with any degree of sharpness. It was simply a face.
“And why did he bolt, do you suppose?” asked Alleyn.
“Because he’s a fool,” said Mr. Weston.
“Oh, rather,” agreed Alleyn. “No end of a fool; but even fools have motives. Why did he bolt? What was he afraid of?”
“He’s run away from disagreeable duties,” said Weston, with unexpected emphasis, “ever since he could toddle. He ran away from three schools. He’s got no guts.”
“He displayed a good deal of mistaken effrontery in the wardrobe-room, when he as good as accused Courtney Broadhead of theft.”
“Egged on,” said Weston.
“By Liversidge?”
“Of course.”
“Do you believe the story about Broadhead, Mr. Weston?”
“Not interested.”
“Did you speak of it to Mr. Palmer?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“In the wardrobe-room, after you’d gone.”
“You must have been very quiet about it.”
“I was.”
“What did you say?” pursued Alleyn, and to himself he murmured: “Oyster, oyster, oyster! Open you shall.”
“Told him he’d be locked up for defamation of character.”
“Splendid. Did it frighten him?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think he bolted to avoid further questioning?”
“Yes.”
“It’s all so simple,” said Alleyn pleasantly, “when you understand.”
Weston merely stared at his boots.
“I suppose,” continued Alleyn, “that you had heard all about the arrangements for the champagne business?”
“Knew nothing about it.”
“Mr. Palmer?”
“No.”
“Can you help us about the missing tiki?”
“Afraid I can’t.”
“Ah, well,” said Alleyn, “that’s about all, I fancy. Unless you’ve anything further, Inspector?”
“No, sir, I have not,” said Wade, with a certain amount of emphasis. “We’ll see the young gentleman in the morning.”
“That all?” asked Weston, getting to his feet.
“Yes, thank you, Mr. Weston.”
“I’ll push off. Good night.”
He walked out and they heard his footsteps die away before any of them spoke.
“He’s a fair nark, that chap,” said Wade. “Close! Gosh!”
“Not exactly come-toish,” agreed Alleyn.
“Blooming oyster! Well, that’s the whole boiling of ’em now, sir.”
“Yes,” said Alleyn thankfully.
But they stayed on talking. A kind of perverseness kept them wedded to their discomfort. They grew more and more wakeful and their ideas seemed to grow sharper. Their thoughts cleared. Alleyn spoke for a long time and the other two listened to him eagerly. Quite suddenly he stopped and shivered. The virtue went out of them. They felt dirty, and dog-tired. Wade began to gather up his papers.
“I reckon that finishes us for to-night. We’ll lock up this show and turn it up till to-morrow. There’ll be the inquest next. Cripey, what a life!”
Alleyn had strolled over to the door in the back wall and was peering at a very murky framed drawing that hung beside it. He wiped the glass with his handkerchief.
“Plan of the theatre,” he said. “All fine and handy. I think I’ll just make a rough copy. It won’t take a moment.”
He got a writing-pad from the desk and worked rapidly.
“Here we go,” he murmured. “Stage-door. Footlights. Dressing-room passage here. Prompt-side ladder to the grid, about here. Back-stage one here. There’s a back door there, you see. I noticed it when I was in full cry after Master Gordon. We’ll have a look at it by the light of day. Now the front of the house. Stalls. Circle. No pass-doors through the proscenium. Here’s this office. Door into box-office. Door to yard. The bicycle shed isn’t in their plan, but it begins just beyond this office. The shed comes forward like that. The yard widens out after you pass the sheds. Packing-cases. Then there’s this affair — a garage, isn’t it? — and the other shed here. And there’s Master Gordon’s getaway.”
“Need we mark that?” asked Wade, yawning horribly.
“I’m sure Cass thinks it worthy of record,” said Alleyn, smiling. “How wide are you, Cass?”
“Twenty-four inches across the shoulders, sir,” said Cass, and was shaken by a stupendous belch. “Pardon,” he added morosely.
“Then the space between the two buildings is certainly less,” murmured Alleyn. “Of course, Master Gordon is a mere stripling. Tell me, Cass, how did it all happen?”
“He was coming along as quiet as you please, sir,” began Cass angrily, and instantly interrupted himself with a perfectly deafening rumble, “—as quiet as you please, when he suddenly lets out a sort of squeak and bolts down that gap like a bloody rabbit. I never stops to think, you see, sir. I tears into it good-oh, and I come at it that determined-like I swept all before me, as you might say, for the first six inches, and then it kind of shut down on me.”
“It did indeed,” said Alleyn.
“By gum, yes, sir, it did so. And I was doubled up like as I was saying to Mr. Wade, sir, and I hadn’t got no purchase.” He belched violently. “Pardon. It’s gone crook on my digestion. Being doubled up.”
“We can hear that for ourselves,” said Wade unsympathetically. “You looked a big simp, Cass. Get your helmet. Gather up that stuff and bring it along to the station. I’ll shut up here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Finished your plan, Mr. Alleyn?”
“Yes, thank you,” answered Alleyn.
He came out of the office and walked past the bicycle shed to the stage-door. Here he found Sergeant Packer.
“Hullo, Packer, are you here for the rest of the night?”
Packer came smartly to attention.
“Yessir. At least, I’ll be relieved in half an hour, sir.”
“None too soon, I should imagine. It’s cold.”
“It is too, sir,” agreed Packer. “There’s snow on the back-country.”
“Snow in the back-country!” exclaimed Alleyn, and suddenly he was aware of a new world. The experiences of the night slipped away and became insignificant. He was awake in a sleeping town and not far away there were mountains with snow on them and long tracts of hills with strange soft names.
“Are you a country-bred man?” he asked Packer.
“Yessir. I come from Omarama in the Mackenzie Country. That’s in the South Island, sir. Very high sheep country, beyond Lake Pukaki.”