Voices sounded, the doors rattled open. Outside in the pouring rain was a police car and a mortuary van. Fox and Bailey stood in the doorway with McCully. Alleyn walked quickly towards them.
“Hullo, Fox.”
“Hullo, sir. What’s up?”
“Come in. Is Curtis there?”
“Yes. Ready, doctor?”
Dr. Curtis, Alleyn’s divisional surgeon, dived out of the car into shelter.
“What the devil have you found, Alleyn?”
“Garcia,” said Alleyn.
“Here!” ejaculated Fox.
“Dead?” asked Curtis.
“Very.” Alleyn laid his hand on Fox’s arm. “Wait a moment. McCully, you can sit in the police car if you like. We shan’t be long.”
McCully, who still looked very shaken, got into the car. A constable and the man off the local beat joined the group in the doorway.
“I think,” said Alleyn, “that before you see the body I had better warn you that it is not a pleasant sight.”
“Us?” asked Fox, surprised. “Warn us?”
“Yes, I know. We’re pretty well seasoned, aren’t we? I’ve never seen anything quite so beastly as this — not even in Flanders. I think he’s taken nitric acid.”
“Good God!” said Curtis.
“Come along,” said Alleyn.
He led them to the far end of the room, where the man at the table still sat with a coloured handkerchief over his face. Fox, Bailey and Curtis stood and looked at the body.
“What’s the stench?” asked Fox. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”
“Nitric acid?” suggested Bailey.
“And other vomited matter,” said Curtis.
“You may smoke, all of you,” said Alleyn, and they lit cigarettes.
“Well,” said Curtis, “I’d better look at him.”
He put out his well-kept doctor’s hand and drew away the handkerchief from the face.
“Christ!” said Bailey.
“Get on with it,” said Alleyn harshly. “Bailey, I want you to take his prints first. It’s Garcia all right. Then compare them with anything you can get from the bottle and cup. Before you touch the bottle we’ll take a photograph. Where’s Thompson?”
Thompson came in from the car with his camera and flashlight. The usual routine began. Alleyn, looking on, was filled with a violent loathing of the whole scene. Thompson took six photographs of the body and then they covered it. Alleyn began to talk.
“You’d better hear what I make of all this on the face of the information we’ve already got. Bailey, you carry on while I’m talking. Go over every inch of the table and surrounding area. You’ve got my case? Good. We’ll want specimens of this unspeakable muck on the floor. I’ll do that.”
“Let me fix it, sir,” said Fox. “I’m out of a job, and we’d like to hear your reconstruction of this business.”
“You’d better rig something over your nose and mouth. Nitric acid fumes are no more wholesome than they are pleasant, are they, Curtis?”
“Not too good,” grunted Curtis. “May as well be careful.”
The doors at the end opened to admit the P.C. whom Alleyn had left on guard.
“What is it?” asked Alleyn.
“Gentleman to see you, sir.”
“Is his name Bathgate?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Miserable young perisher,” muttered Alleyn. “Tell him to wait. No. Half a minute. Send him in.”
When Nigel appeared Alleyn asked fiercely: “How did you get wind of this?”
“I was down at the Yard. They’d told me you were out. I saw Fox and the old gang tootle away in a car, then the mortuary van popped out. I followed in a taxi. What’s up? There’s a hell of a stink in here.”
“The only reason I’ve let you in is to stop you pitching some cock-and-bull story to your filthy paper. Sit down in a far corner and be silent.”
“All right, all right.”
Alleyn turned to the others.
“We’ll get on. Don’t move the body just yet, Curtis.”
“Very good,” said Dr. Curtis, who was cleaning his hands with ether. “Speak up, Alleyn. Are you going to tell us this fellow’s swallowed nitric acid?”
“I think so.”
“Bloody loathsome way of committing suicide.”
“He didn’t know it was nitric acid.”
“Accident?”
“No. Murder.”
CHAPTER XVIII
One of Five
I think,” said Alleyn, “that we’ll start off with the packing-case.”
He walked over to it and flashed his torch on the swathed shape inside.
“That, I believe, is Garcia’s clay model of the Comedy and Tragedy for the cinema at Westminster. We’ll have a look at it when Bailey has dealt with the case and the wet cloths. The point with which I think we should concern ourselves now is this. How did it get here?”
He lit a cigarette from the stump of his old one.
“In the caravan we looked at this morning?” suggested Fox from behind a white handkerchief he had tied across the lower half of his face. He was doing hideous things on the floor with a small trowel and a glass bottle.
“It would seem so, Brer Fox. We found pretty sound evidence that the caravan had been backed up to the window. Twig on the roof, tyre-tracks under the sill, traces of the little wheeled platform on the ledge and the step and floor of the caravan. The discrepancy in the petrol fits in with this place quite comfortably, I think. Very well. That was all fine and dandy as long as Garcia was supposed to have driven himself and his gear up to London, and himself back to Tatler’s End House. Now we’ve got a different story. Someone returned the caravan to Tatler’s End House, and that person has kept quiet about it.”
“Is it possible,” asked Fox, “that Garcia drove the car back and returned here by some other means?”
“Hardly, Fox, I think. On Friday night Garcia was recovering from a pipe or more of opium, and possibly a jorum of whisky. He was in no condition to get his stuff aboard a caravan, drive it thirty miles, open this place up, manoeuvre the caravan inside, unload it, drive it back, and then start off again to tramp back to London or catch a train or bus. But suppose somebody arrived at the studio on Friday night and found Garcia in a state of semi-recovery. Suppose this person offered to drive Garcia up to London and return the caravan. Does that quarrel with anything we have found? I don’t think it does. Can we find anything here to support such a theory? I think we can. The front part of the floor has been swept. Why the devil should Garcia sweep the floor of this place at midnight while he was in the condition we suppose him to have been in? Bailey, have you dealt with the bottle on the table?”
“Yes, sir. We’ve got a fairly good impression of the deceased’s left thumb, forefinger and second finger.”