“Really? What makes you think that?”
“Well, sir, I asked the gentleman on Saturday morning was she all right for petrol — I’m butler-chauffeur, sir — and he said yes, she was filled up as full as she’d go in Bossicote. Well, sir, I looked at the gauge and she’d eaten up two gallons coming over here. Twelve miles, sir, no more. I looked to see if she was leaking but she wasn’t. Something wrong there, sir, isn’t there?”
“I agree with you,” said Alleyn. “Thank you very much, I think that’s all.”
“Thank you very much indeed, sir,” said the butler-chauffeur, closing his hand gratefully.
Alleyn, Fox and Nigel returned to their car and drove away.
“Get that tumbler, Fox?” asked Alleyn.
“Yes, sir. And the liquid. Had to go down to the car for a bottle.”
“Good enough. What a bit of luck, Fox! You remember the Seacliff told us Mrs. Pascoe was leaving on Saturday and giving the maids a holiday? My golly, what a bit of luck.”
“Do you think that stuff was the melted aspirin Pilgrim doled out for her on Friday night?” asked Nigel.
“That’s my clever little man,” said Alleyn. “I do think so. And if the tumbler has Pilgrim’s prints, and only his, we’ll know.”
“Are you going to have the stuff analysed?”
“Yes. Damn’ quick about it, too, if possible.”
“And what then?”
“Why then,” said Alleyn, “we’ll be within sight of an arrest.”
CHAPTER XX
Arrest
The analysts’ report on the contents of the tumbler came through at nine-thirty that evening. The fluid contained a solution of Bayer’s Aspirin — approximately three tablets. The glass bore a clear imprint of Basil Pilgrim’s fingers and thumb. When Alleyn had read the analysts’ report he rang up his Assistant Commissioner, had a long talk with him, and then sent for Fox.
“There’s one thing we must make sure of,” he said wearily, “and that’s the position of the light on the figure outside the studio window. Our game with the string wasn’t good enough. We’ll have to get something a bit more positive, Brer Fox.”
“Meaning, sir?”
“Meaning, alas, a trip to Tatler’s End.”
“Now?”
“I’m afraid so. We’ll have a Yard car. It’ll be needed in the morning. Come on.”
So for the last time Alleyn and Fox drove through the night to Tatler’s End House. The Bossicote church clock struck midnight as Fox took up his old position outside the studio window. A fine drizzle was falling, and the lane smelt of leaf-mould and wet grass. The studio lights were on and the blind was drawn down.
“I shall now retire to the shady spot where Ethel and her boy lost themselves in an interlude of modified rapture,” said Alleyn.
He walked down the lane and returned in a few minutes.
“Fox,” he said, “the ray of light that comes through the hole in the blind alights upon your bosom. I think we are on the right track.”
“Looks like it,” Fox agreed. “What do we do now?”
“We spend the rest of the night with my mamma. I’ll ring up the Yard and get the official party to pick us up at Danes Lodge in the morning. Come on.”
“Very good, Mr. Alleyn. Er— ”
“What’s the matter?”
“Well, sir, I was thinking of Miss Troy. It’s going to be a bit unpleasant for her, isn’t it? I was wondering if we couldn’t do something to make it a bit easier.”
“Yes, Fox. That’s rather my idea, too. I think — damn it all, it’s too late to bother her now. Or is it? I’ll ring up from Danes Lodge. Come on.”
They got to Danes Lodge at twelve-thirty, and found Lady Alleyn reading D. H. Lawrence before a roaring fire in her little sitting-room.
“Good evening,” said Lady Alleyn. “I got your message, Roderick. How nice to see you again, Mr. Fox. Come and sit down.”
“I’m just going to the telephone,” said Alleyn. “Won’t be long.”
“All right, darling. Mr. Fox, help yourself to a drink and come and tell me if you have read any of this unhappy fellow’s books.”
Fox put on his spectacles and gravely inspected the outside of The Letters of D. H. Lawrence.
“I can’t say I have, my lady,” he said, “but I seem to remember we cleaned up an exhibition of this Mr. Lawrence’s pictures a year or two ago. Very fashionable show it was.”
“Ah yes. Those pictures. What did you think of them?”
“I don’t exactly know,” said Fox. “They seemed well within the meaning of the act, I must say, but the colours were pretty. You wouldn’t have cared for the subjects, my lady.”
“Shouldn’t I? He seems never to have found his own centre of gravity, poor fellow. Some of these letters are wise and some are charming, and some are really rather tedious. All these negroid deities growling in his interior! One feels sorry for his wife, but she seems to have had the right touch with him. Have you got your drink? That’s right. Are you pleased with your progress in this case?”
“Yes, thank you. It’s coming on nicely.”
“And so you are going to arrest somebody tomorrow morning? I thought as much. One can always tell by my son’s manner when he is going to make an arrest. He gets a pinched look.”
“So does his prisoner, my lady,” said Fox, and was so enraptured with his own pun that he shook from head to foot with amazed chuckles.
“Roderick!” cried Lady Alleyn as her son came in, “Mr. Fox is making nonsense of your mother.”
“He’s a wise old bird if he can do that,” said Alleyn. “Mamma, I’ve asked Miss Agatha Troy if she will lunch here with you to-morrow. She says she will. Do you mind? I shan’t be here.”
“But I’m delighted, darling. She will be charming company for me and for Mr. Bathgate.”
“What the devil—!”
“Mr. Bathgate is motoring down to-morrow to their cottage to see his wife. He asked if he might call in.”
“It’s forty miles off his course, the little tripe-hound.”
“Is it, darling? When I told him you would be here he said he’d arrive soon after breakfast.”
“Really, mum! Oh well, I suppose it’s all right. He’s well trained. But I’m afraid he’s diddled you.”
“He thinks he has, at all events,” said Lady Alleyn. “And now, darling, as you are going to make an arrest in the morning, don’t you think you ought to get a good night’s sleep?”
“Fox!”
“Mr. Fox has been fabulously discreet, Roderick.”
“Then how did you know we were going to arrest anybody?”
“You have just told me, my poor baby. Now run along to bed.”
At ten o’clock the next morning two police cars drove up to Tatler’s End House. They were followed by Nigel in a baby Austin. He noted, with unworthy satisfaction, that one or two young men in flannel trousers and tweed coats hung about the gate and had evidently been refused admittance by the constable on duty. Nigel himself had been given a card by Alleyn on the strict understanding that he behaved himself and brought no camera with him. He was not allowed to enter the house. He had, he considered, only a minor advantage over his brother journalists.
The three cars drew up in the drive. Alleyn, Fox, and two plain-clothes men went up the steps to the front door. Nigel manoeuvred his baby Austin into a position of vantage. Alleyn glanced down at him and then turned away as Troy’s butler opened the front door.
“Will you come in, please?” said the butler nervously. He showed them into Troy’s library. A fire had been lit and the room would now have seemed pleasantly familiar to Alleyn if he had been there on any other errand.
“Will you tell Miss Troy of our arrival, please?”
The butler went out.