“I don’t think so, Mr. Gomez.”
Chubb, by the window, turned and gaped at him.
“My name is Sheridan,” Gomez said loudly.
“If you prefer it.”
“ ’Ere!” Chubb said with some violence. “What is all this? Names!”
Alleyn said: “Come over here, Chubb, and sit down. I’ve got something to say to all of you and for your own sakes you’d better listen to it. Sit down. That’s right. Colonel Cockburn-Montfort—”
“Cert’nly,” said the Colonel, opening his eyes.
“Can you follow me or shall I send for a corpse-reviver?”
“ ’Course I can follow you. F’what it’s worth.”
“Very well. I’m going to put something to the three of you and it’s this. You are members of a coterie which is motivated by racial hatred, more specifically, hatred of the Ng’ombwanan people in particular. On the night before last you conspired to murder the President.”
Gomez said, “What is this idiot talk!”
“You had an informant in the Embassy: the Ambassador himself, who believed that on the death of the President and with your backing he would achieve a coup d’état and assume power. In return, you, Mr. Gomez, and you, Colonel Montfort, were to be reinstated in Ng’ombwana.”
The Colonel waved his hand as if these statements were too trivial to merit consideration. Gomez, his left ankle elegantly poised on his right thigh, watched Alleyn over his locked fingers. Chubb, wooden, sat bolt upright on the edge of his chair.
“The Sanskrits, brother and sister,” Alleyn went on, “were also members of the clique. Miss Sanskrit produced your medallion in her pottery downstairs. They, however, were double agents. From the time the plan was first conceived to the moment of its execution and without the knowledge of the Ambassador, every move was being conveyed by the Sanskrits back to the Ng’ombwanan authorities. I think you must have suspected something of the sort when your plan miscarried. I think that last night after your meeting here broke up, one of the group followed Sanskrit to the Embassy and from a distance saw him deliver an envelope. He had passed by your house, Colonel Montfort.”
“I don’t go out at night much nowadays,” the Colonel said, rather sadly.
“Your wife perhaps? It wouldn’t be the first time you’d delegated one of the fancy touches to her. Well, it’s of no great matter. I think the full realization of what the Sanskrits had done really dawned this morning when you learned that they were shutting up shop and leaving.”
“Have they made it!” Chubb suddenly demanded. “Have they cleared out? Where are they?”
“To return to the actual event. Everything seemed to go according to plan up to the moment when, after the shot was fired and the guests’ attention had been deflected, you, Chubb, made your assault on the spear-carrier. You delivered the chop from behind, probably standing on a subsequently overturned chair to do so. At the crucial moment you were yourself attacked from the rear by the Ng’ombwanan servant. He was a little slow off the mark. Your blow fell, not as intended on the spearman’s arm but on his collar-bone. He was still able to use his spear and he did use it, with both hands and full knowledge of what he was doing, on the Ambassador.”
Alleyn looked at the three men. There was no change in their posture or their expressions, but a dull red had crept into Chubb’s face, and the Colonel’s (which habitually looked as if it had reached saturation point in respect of purple) seemed to darken. They said nothing.
“I see I’ve come near enough the mark for none of you to contradict me,” Alleyn remarked.
“On the contrary,” Gomez countered. “Your entire story is a fantasy and a libel. It is too farcical to merit a reply.”
“Well, Chubb?”
“I’m not answering the charge, sir. Except what I said before. I was clobbered.”
“Colonel?”
“What? No comment. No bloody comment.”
“Why were you all trying to get in here half an hour ago?”
“No comment,” they said together, and Chubb added his former statement that he’d had no intention of calling on the Sanskrits but had merely stopped off to offer his support to the Colonel and take him home.
The Colonel said something that sounded like: “Most irregular and unnecessary.”
“Are you sticking to that?” Alleyn said. “Are you sure you weren’t, all three of you, going to throw a farewell party for the Sanskrits and give them, or at any rate, him, something handsome to remember you by?”
They were very still. They didn’t look at Alleyn or at each other, but for a moment the shadow of a fugitive smile moved across their faces.
The front doorbell was pealing again, continuously. Alleyn went out to the landing.
Mrs. Chubb was at the street door demanding to be let in. The constable on duty turned, looked up the stairs, and saw Alleyn.
“All right,” Alleyn said. “Ask her to come up.”
It was a very different Mrs. Chubb who came quickly up the stairs, thrusting her shoulders forward and jerking up her head to confront Alleyn on the landing.
“Where is he?” she demanded, breathing hard. “Where’s Chubb? You said keep him home and now you’ve got him in here. And with them others. Haven’t you? I know he’s here. I was in the Mews and I seen. Why? What are you doing to him? Where,” Mrs. Chubb reiterated, “is my Chubb?”
“Come in,” Alleyn said. “He’s here.”
She looked past him into the room. Her husband stood up and she went to him. “What are you doing?” she said. “You come back with me. You’ve got no call to be here.”
Chubb said: “You don’t want to be like this. You keep out of it. You’re out of place here, Min.”
“I’m out of place! Standing by my own husband!”
“Look — dear—”
“Don’t talk to me!” She turned on the other two men. “You two gentlemen,” she said, “you got no call because he works for you to get him involved stirring it all up again. Putting ideas in his head. It won’t bring her back. Leave us alone. Syd — you come home with me. Come home.”
“I can’t,” he said. “Min. I can’t.”
“Why can’t you?” She clapped her hand to her mouth. “They’ve arrested you! They’ve found out—”
“Shut up,” he shouted. “You silly cow. You don’t know what you’re saying. Shut up.” They stared aghast at each other. “I’m sorry, Min,” he said. “I never meant to speak rough. I’m not arrested. It’s not like that.”
“Where are they, then? Those two?”
Gomez said: “You! Chubb! Have you no control over your woman. Get rid of her.”
“And that’ll do from you,” Chubb said, turning savagely on him.
From the depths of his armchair, Colonel Cockburn-Montfort, in an astonishingly clear and incisive tone, said: “Chubb!
“Sir!”
“You’re forgetting yourself.”
“Sir.”
Alleyn said: “Mrs. Chubb, everything I said to you this morning was said in good faith. Circumstances have changed profoundly since then in a way that you know nothing about. You will know before long. In the meantime, if you please, you will either stay here, quietly, in this room—”
“You better, Min,” Chubb said.
“—or,” Alleyn said, “just go home and wait there. It won’t be for long.”
“Go on, then, Min. You better.”
“I’ll stay,” she said. She walked to the far end of the room and sat down.
Gomez, trembling with what seemed to be rage, shouted: “For the last time — where are they? Where have they gone? Have they escaped? I demand an answer. Where are the Sanskrits?”
“They are downstairs,” Alleyn said.
Gomez leapt to his feet, let out an exclamation — in Portuguese, Alleyn supposed — seemed to be in two minds what to say, and at last with a sort of doubtful relish said: “Have you arrested them?”