‘Too darn right I would!’ exclaimed Trubshawe.
‘Ah …’ said Calvert. ‘So you feel she might be on to something, do you?’
‘Pshaw!’
‘What? Would you please speak up, sir? There seems to be some interference on the line.’
‘I said, no. It’s just Evie. She’s got a bee in her tricorne as usual. But I have to tell you, Tom, I have a very pressing reason of my own for wanting to know where her train of thought might be leading her. I’ll be there all right.’
‘I hoped you’d say that. Here’s the plan. We’ll meet at the screening-room at three o’clock. Miss Mount will need a lift down to Elstree, of course, but she told me to inform you that, if by any chance you were thinking of contacting her first by ‘phone, not to bother.’
‘Well, that’s delightful of her, I must say.’
‘Instead, she proposed that you pick her up at her flat at two on the dot. On the dot – those were her words and she insisted I let you know they were in italics. Said you’d understand.’
‘I do,’ said Trubshawe. ‘Oh, I do.’
‘Good. Then we’ll all four meet at three o’clock.’
‘All four? There’s you, me and Evie. Who’s the fourth? Is Levey himself going to be present?’
‘Levey’s still in London, apparently, trying to salvage something from the wreckage of his film. No, at Levey’s suggestion, I invited Lettice Morley. I realise she’s one of the five prime suspects, if we really have the right to call them that, but she’s an old hand at the cinema business and she’ll be able to guide us through the thickets. You don’t have any objection to her being there, I suppose?’
‘Not at all. I can’t see the harm in it.’
‘Till tomorrow then.’
*
It wasn’t until they had left the city behind them, and were already in the green heart of the countryside, that Evadne asked Eustace how his inquiries had progressed. She seemed, despite Cora’s death, in remarkable spirits, even mildly elated. Her only just dormant cloak-and-daggerish instincts had been aroused with a vengeance and you could almost see her nostrils twitch like those of a hound on the scent of a fox.
Trubshawe, too, could almost see them twitch, which is why he had elected, apart from the odd and deliberately banal aside, to remain silent.
It was Evadne who finally spoke.
‘Once again, for some reason, you aren’t your usual prolix self.’
‘Me, prolix? In your company? That’s a laugh.’
‘But you must know,’ she went on, ‘how desperately keen I am to learn how you fared with your enquiries.’
‘Which enquiries?’
‘Please, Eustace, don’t play silly games with me. You told me yourself you were planning to check the whereabouts of all our suspects on the afternoon of the fire in Alastair Farjeon’s villa. And when I spoke to Tom Calvert on the blower yesterday, he confirmed that you and he had spent the day doing just that.’
‘Did he also tell you whether we’d had any luck?’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘Then why are you asking me?’
She gave him an affectionate tap on the knee.
‘Poor Eustace, I know how disappointed you must be. And far be it from me to gloat, far be it from me to say I told you so, but … Well, if you’re honest, you have to agree that …’
‘You told me so.’
‘Precisely.’
‘You know, Evie,’ said Trubshawe, ‘you may be right, and you certainly did tell me so, but I just can’t believe there isn’t something fishy somewhere.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, look, we spent the whole day yesterday asking them, all five of them, where they’d been at the time of the fire and with whom. And every single one of them had an alibi. It’s just not normal.’
‘Why ever not? You call it an alibi, but that’s the policeman in you talking. It’s the paradox of Scotland Yard. The more unbreakable somebody’s alibi, the more suspicious you coppers become. But all it means, when you say that every single one of them had an alibi, is that every single one of them was somewhere else that afternoon, just as you were somewhere else that afternoon – with me, as it happens – and I was somewhere else – with you, natch – and my late aunt Cornelia, God rest her soul, was definitely somewhere else, and millions, no, tens of millions of people up and down the country were somewhere else. Why should an alibi be inherently an object of suspicion?’
‘Evie,’ Trubshawe patiently replied, ‘I was forty years at the Yard and I carried out investigations into I don’t know and you don’t care how many criminal cases, a few of them just like this one, with five or six different suspects, and I can assure you that not once – not once, do you hear – did every single suspect have an alibi. It’s not the way these things happen. People don’t recall any longer where they were on a specific day or night. Or else they went shopping, except that they chose to go by themselves, and why shouldn’t they? Or else they took a stroll to clear their heads before turning in for the night. Or else they were doing a crossword puzzle or I don’t know what. It just isn’t normal for all five stories to click, for all five suspects to be able, more than a month after the event, to account for their movements not only with total exactitude but with witnesses to back them up.
‘I tell you, Evie, if I had your bottom, it would be itching now!’
Silent and thoughtful, Evadne watched the road ahead as it gently swerved through the densely forested hills.
‘What were these alibis that have put you in such a state?’
‘Let me see. Philippe Françaix was in his hotel – in Bloomsbury, it was – writing up notes for the last chapter of his book.’
‘That hardly sounds like an unbreakable alibi to me.’
‘I’m afraid it is, though. He was in the hotel bar, not in his own room. It seems he’s got so accustomed to writing in cafés – these frogs, I’ll never understand them – he prefers to work with lots of hustle and bustle around him. The barman remembers him well. Swears he never left his table all afternoon. Served him three black coffees and a cheese-and-pickle sandwich.’
‘Hanway?’
‘He attended a garden-party at the Palace, no less. And who do you imagine he escorted there?’
‘Leolia Drake?’
‘Right first time,’ said Trubshawe. ‘And they weren’t just seen, they were photographed. They were even presented to Their Majesties. It’s true that the do lasted upward of three hours. Yet I still can’t see how either of them could have sneaked out of Buckingham Palace, motored down to Cookham, set Farjeon’s villa alight and returned in time for dinner at the Caprice, where they were also seen and photographed.’
‘What about Gareth Knight?’
‘At a club in Soho with his so-called secretary. He wore a mask and never once removed his hat – it was some kind of wide-brimmed affair that covered most of his face – but there would appear to be no question he was present.’
‘Wore a mask? Just what sort of a club was it?’
‘A club for single men – really ought to have been closed down years ago. It was hosting an Ivor Novello thé-dansant, if you can believe it. Fancy-dress affair. Guests were asked to come disguised as characters out of The Dancing Years and Glamorous Night. When the owner of the club cottoned on to who it was we were enquiring about, he was so relieved he himself wasn’t the chap Calvert hoped to throw in the jug that he shopped not only our own glamorous Knight but a couple of other picture actors as well.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Evadne, eyes aflame with prurient curiosity. ‘Who?’
‘Never you mind who. Let’s stick to our own business, shall we?’