He led the way upstairs. On the landing he called out again.
Silence.
There were four doors, all shut.
Two bedrooms, small, exotically furnished, crowded and in disarray. Discarded garments flung on unmade beds. Cupboards and drawers open and half-emptied. Two small, half-packed suitcases. An all-pervading and most unlovely smell.
A bathroom, stale and grubby, smelling of hot wet fat. The wall-cupboard was locked.
Finally, a large, heavily furnished room with divans, deep rugs, horrid silk-shaded and beaded lamps, incense burners, and a number of ostensibly African artifacts. But no Sanskrits.
They returned downstairs. Alleyn opened the door at the end of the lobby and walked through.
He was in the piggery.
It was very dark. Only a thin sliver of light penetrated the slit between the heavy window curtains.
He stood inside the door with the two uniform men behind him. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom the interior began to emerge: a desk, a litter of paper and packing material, open cases, and on the shelves, dimly flowering, one pottery pig. The end of the old stable formed, as he remembered, a sort of alcove or cavern in which were the kiln and a long work table. He saw a faint red glow there now.
He was taken with a sensation of inertia that he had long ago learnt to recognize as the kind of nightmare which drains one of the power to move.
As now, when his hand was unable to grope about the dirty wall for a light switch.
The experience never lasted for more than a few seconds, and now it had passed and left him with the knowledge that he was watched.
Someone at the far end of the shop, in the alcove room, sitting on the other side of the work table, was watching him: a looming mass that he had mistaken for shadow.
It began to define itself. An enormous person whose chin rested with a suggestion of doggy roguishness on her arm, and whose eyes were very wide open indeed.
Alleyn’s hand found the switch and the room was flooded with light.
It was Miss Sanskrit who ogled him so coyly with her chin on her arm and her head all askew and her eyes wide open.
Behind the table with his back towards her, with his vast rump upheaved and with his head and arms and barrel submerged in a packing case like a monstrous puppet doubled over its box, dangled her brother. They were both dead.
And between them, on the floor and the bench, were blooded shards of pottery.
And in the packing case lay the headless carcass of an enormous pottery pig.
A whispered stream of obscenities had been surprised out of one of the constables, but he had stopped when Alleyn walked into the alcove and had followed a short way behind.
“Stay where you are,” Alleyn said, and then: “No! One of you get that lot in off the street and lock the door. Take them to the room upstairs, keep them there and stay with them. Note anything that’s said.
“The other call Homicide and give the necessary information. Ask Mr. Fox and Mr. Gibson to come here.”
They went out, shutting the door behind them. In a minute Alleyn heard sounds of a general entry and of people walking upstairs.
When Fox and Gibson arrived they found Alleyn standing between the Sanskrits. They moved towards him but checked when he raised his hand.
“This is nasty,” Fox said. “What was it?”
“Come and see but walk warily.”
They moved round the table and saw the back of Miss Sanskrit’s head. It was smashed in like an egg. Beetroot-dyed hair, dark and wet, stuck in the wound. The back of her dress was saturated — there was a dark puddle on the table under her arm. She was dressed for the street. Her bloodied hat lay on the floor and her handbag was on the work table.
Alleyn turned to face the vast rump of her brother, clothed in a camel overcoat, which was all that could be seen of him.
“Is it the same?” Gibson asked.
“Yes. A pottery pig. The head broke off on the first attack and the rest fell in the box after the second.”
“But — how exactly—?” Fox said.
“Look what’s on the table. Under her hand.”
It was a sheet of headed letter paper. “The Piggie Potterie. 12, Capricorn Mews, S.W.3.” Written beneath this legend was: “To Messrs. Able and Virtue. Kindly…” and no more.
“A green ball-point,” Alleyn said. “It’s still in her right hand.”
Fox touched the hand. “Still warm,” he said.
“Yes.”
There was a checkered cloth of sorts near the kiln. Alleyn masked the terrible head with it. “One of the really bad ones,” he said.
“What was he doing?” Fox asked.
“Stowing away the remaining pigs. Doubled up, and reaching down into the packing case.”
“So you read the situation — how?”
“Like this, unless something else turns up to contradict it. She’s writing. He’s putting pigs from the bench into the packing case. Someone comes between them. Someone who perhaps has offered to help. Someone, at any rate, whose presence doesn’t disturb them. And this person picks up a pig, deals two mighty downward blows, left and right, quick as you please, and walks out.”
Gibson said angrily: “Walks out! When? And when did he walk in? I’ve had these premises under close observation for twelve hours.”
“Until the bomb scare, Fred.”
“Sergeant Jacks stayed put.”
“With a traffic jam building up between him and the pottery.”
“By God, this is a gutty job,” said Gibson.
“And the gallant Colonel was on the doorstep,” Alleyn added.
“I reckon he wouldn’t have been any the wiser,” Fox offered, “if the Brigade of Guards had walked in and out.”
“We’ll see about that,” Alleyn said.
A silence fell between them. The room was oppressively warm and airless. Flies buzzed between the window curtains and the glass. One of them darted out and made like a bullet for the far end.
With startling unexpectedness the telephone on the desk rang. Alleyn wrapped his handkerchief round his hand and lifted the receiver.
He gave the number, speaking well above his natural level. An unmistakably Ng’ombwanan voice said: “It is the Embassy. You have not kept your appointment.”
Alleyn made an ambiguous falsetto noise.
“I said,” the voice insisted, “you have not kept your appointment. To collect the passports. Your plane leaves at five-thirty.”
Alleyn whispered: “I was prevented. Please send them. Please.”
A long pause.
“Very well. It is not convenient but very well. They will be put into your letter-box. In a few minutes. Yes?”
He said nothing and heard a deep sound of impatience and the click of the receiver being replaced.
He hung up. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “we now know that the envelope we saw Sanskrit deliver at the Embassy contained their passports. I’d got as much already from the President. In a few minutes they’ll be dropping them in. He failed to keep his appointment to collect.”
Fox looked at the upturned remains of Sanskrit. “He could hardly help himself,” he said. “Could he?”
The front doorbell rang. Alleyn looked through the slit in the curtains. A car had arrived with Bailey and Thompson, their driver and their gear. A smallish crowd had been moved down the Mews into the Passage.
The constable in the hallway admitted Bailey and Thompson. Alleyn said: “The lot. Complete coverage. Particularly the broken pottery.”
Thompson walked carefully past the partition into the alcove and stopped short.
“Two, eh?” he said and unshipped his camera.
“Go ahead,” Alleyn said.
Bailey went to the table and looked incredulously from the enormous bodies to Alleyn, who nodded and turned his back. Bailey delicately lifted the checked cloth and said: “Cor!”