“Not pretty,” Alleyn said.
Bailey, shocked into a unique flight of fancy, said: “It’s kind of not real. Like those blown-up affairs they run in fun shows. Giants. Gone into the horrors.”
“It’s very much like that,” Alleyn said. “Did you hear if they’d got through to Sir James?”
“Yes, Mr. Alleyn. On his way.”
“Good. All right. Push on with it, you two.” He turned to Gibson and Fox. “I suggest,” he said, “that we let that lot upstairs have a look at this scene.”
“Shock tactics?” Gibson asked.
“Something like that. Agreed?”
“This is your ground, not mine,” said Gibson, still dully resentful. “I’m only meant to be bloody security.”
Alleyn knew it was advisable to disregard these plaints. He said: “Fox, would you go upstairs? Take the copper in the hall with you. Leave him in the room and have a quiet word on the landing with the man who’s been with them. If he’s got anything I ought to hear, hand it on to me. Otherwise, just stick with them for a bit, would you? Don’t give a clue as to what’s happened. All right?”
“I think so,” said Fox placidly and went upstairs.
Bailey’s camera clicked and flashed. Miss Sanskrit’s awful face started up and out in a travesty of life. Thompson collected pottery shards and laid them out on the far end of the work table. More exploratory flies darted down the room. Alleyn continued to watch through the curtains.
A Ng’ombwanan in civilian dress drove up to the door, had a word with the constable on guard, and pushed something through the letter-box. Alleyn heard the flap of the clapper. The car drove away and he went into the hall and collected the package.
“What’s that, then?” Gibson asked.
Alleyn opened it: two passports elaborately stamped and endorsed and a letter on Embassy paper in Ng’ombwanan.
“Giving them the V.I.P. treatment, I wouldn’t be surprised,” Alleyn said and pocketed the lot.
Action known as “routine” was now steadily under way. Sir James Curtis and his secretary arrived, Sir James remarking a little acidly that he would like to know this time whether he would be allowed to follow the usual procedure and hold his damned post mortems if, when and where he wanted them. On being shown the subjects he came as near to exhibiting physical repulsion as Alleyn had ever seen him and asked appallingly if they would provide him with bulldozers.
He said that death had probably occurred within the hour, agreed with Alleyn’s reading of the evidence, listened to what action he proposed to take, and was about to leave when Alleyn said: “There’s a former record of drug-pushing against the man. No sign of them taking anything themselves, I suppose?”
“I’ll look out for it but they don’t often, do they?”
“Do we expect to find blood on the assailant?”
Sir James considered this. “Not necessarily, I think,” he said. “The size of the weapon might form a kind of shield in the case of the woman and the position of the head in the man.”
“Might the weapon have been dropped or hurled down on the man? They’re extremely heavy, those things.”
“Very possible.”
“I see.”
“You’ll send these monstrosities along then, Rory? Good day to you.”
When he’d gone, Fox and the constable who had been on duty upstairs came down.
“Thought we’d better wait till Sir James had finished,” ’ Fox said. “I’ve been up there in the room with them. Chubb’s very quiet but you can see he’s put out.’ ”
This, in Fox’s language, could mean anything from being; irritated to going berserk or suicidal. “He breaks out every now and then,” he went on, “asking where the Sanskrits are and why this lot’s being kept. I asked him what he’d wanted to see them for and he comes out with that he didn’t want to see them. He reckons he was on his way back from the chemist’s by way of Capricorn Passage and just ran into the Colonel and Mr. Sheridan. The Colonel was in such a bad way, Chubb makes out, he was trying to get him to let himself be taken home, but all the Colonel would do was lean on the bell.”
“What about the Colonel?”
“It doesn’t really make sense. He’s beyond it. He said something or another about Sanskrit being a poisonous specimen who ought to be court-martialled.”
“And Gomez-Sheridan?”
“He’s taking the line of righteous indignation. Demands an explanation. Will see there’s information laid in the right quarters and we haven’t heard the last of it. You’d think it was all quite ordinary except for a kind of twitch under his left eye. They all keep asking where the Sanskrits are.”
“It’s time they found out,” Alleyn said, and to Bailey and Thompson: “There’s a smell of burnt leather. We’ll have to rake out the furnace.”
“Looking for anything in particular, Mr. Alleyn?”
“No. Well — no. Just looking. For traces of anything anyone wanted to destroy. Come on.”
He and Fox went upstairs.
As he opened the door and went in he got the impression that Gomez had leapt to his feet. He stood facing Alleyn with his bald head sunk between his shoulders and his eyes like black boot-buttons in his white kid face. He might have been an actor in a bad Latin-American film.
At the far end of the room Chubb stood facing the window with the dogged, conditioned look of a soldier in detention, as if whatever he thought or felt or had done must be thrust back behind a mask of conformity.
Colonel Cockburn-Montfort lay in an armchair with his mouth open, snoring profoundly and hideously. He would have presented a less distasteful picture, Alleyn thought, if he had discarded the outward showing of an officer and — ambiguous addition — gentleman: the conservative suit, the signet ring on the correct finger, the handmade brogues, the regimental tie, the quietly elegant socks and, lying on the floor by his chair, the hat from Jermyn Street — all so very much in order. And Colonel Cockburn-Montfort so very far astray.
Gomez began at once: “You are the officer in charge of these extraordinary proceedings, I believe. I must ask you to inform me, at once, why I am detained here without reason, without explanation or apology.”
“Certainly,” Alleyn said. “It is because I hope you may be able to help us in our present job.”
“Police parrot talk!” he spat out, making a great thing of the plosives. The muscle under his eye flickered.
“I hope not,” Alleyn said.
“What is this ‘present job’?”
“We are making enquiries about the couple living in these premises. Brother and sister. Their name is Sanskrit.”
“Where are they!”
“They haven’t gone far.”
“Are they in trouble?” he asked, showing his teeth.
“Yes.”
“I am not surprised. They are criminals. Monsters.”
The Colonel snorted and opened his eyes. “What!” he said. “Who are you talking ’bout? Monsters?”
Gomez made a contemptuous noise. “Go to sleep,” he said. “You are disgusting.”
“I take ’ception that remark, sir,” said the Colonel, and sounded exactly like Major Bloodknock, long ago. He shut his eyes.
“How do you know they are criminals?” Alleyn asked.
“I have reliable information,” said Gomez.
“From where?”
“From friends in Africa.”
“In Ng’ombwana?”
“One of the so-called emergent nations. I believe that is the name.”
“You ought to know,” Alleyn remarked, “seeing that you spent so long there.” And he thought: “He really is rather like an adder.”
“You speak nonsense,” Gomez lisped.