“Don’t ruin everything!” said Mr. Whipplestone with tremendous dash. “I’d hoped it was about me.”
“By all the rules, if there were any valid ones,” Troy said at half-past eleven the following morning, “it’s an unfinished portrait. But even if you could give me another sitting I don’t think I’d take it.”
The Boomer stood beside her looking at her work. At no stage of the sittings had he exhibited any of the usual shyness of the sitter who doesn’t want to utter banalities and at no stage had he uttered any.
“There is something African in the way you have gone about this picture,” he said. “We have not portraitists of distinction at present, but if we had they would try to do very much as you have done, I think. I find it hard to remember that the painter is not one of my people.”
“You couldn’t have said anything to please me more,” said Troy.
“No? I am glad. And so I must go. Rory and I have one or two things to settle and I have to change. So it is goodbye, my dear Mrs. Rory, and thank you.”
“Goodbye,” Troy said, “my dear President Boomer, and thank you.”
She gave him her painty hand and saw him into the house, where Alleyn waited for him. This time he had come without his mlinzi, who, he said, was involved with final arrangements at the Embassy.
He and Alleyn had a drink together.
“This has been in some ways an unusual visit,” the Boomer remarked.
“A little unusual,” Alleyn agreed.
“On your part, my dear Rory, it has been characterized by the tactful avoidance of difficult corners.”
“I’ve done my best. With the assistance, if that’s the right word, of diplomatic immunity.”
The Boomer gave him a tentative smile. Alleyn reflected that this was a rare occurrence. The Boomer’s habit was to bellow with laughter, beam like a lighthouse, or remain entirely solemn.
“So those unpleasant persons,” he said, “have been murdered by Colonel Cockburn-Montfort.”
“It lookes like it.”
“They were unpleasant,” the Boomer said thoughtfully. “We were sorry to employ them but needs must. You find the same sort of situation in your own service of course.”
This being perfectly true, there was little to be said in reply.
“We regretted the necessity,” the Boomer said, “to reinstate them in Ng’ombwana.”
“In the event,” Alleyn said drily, “you don’t have to.”
“No!” he cried gaily. “So it’s an ill wind as the saying goes. We are spared the Sanskrits. What a good thing.”
Alleyn gazed at him, speechless.
“Is anything the matter, old boy?” the Boomer asked.
Alleyn shook his head.
“Ah!” said the Boomer. “I think I know. We have come within sight of that ravine, again.”
“And again we can arrange to meet elsewhere.”
“That is why you have not asked me certain questions. Such as how far was I aware of the successful counterplot against my traitor-Ambassador. Or whether I myself dealt personally with the odious Sanskrits who served us so usefully. Or whether it was I, of my own design, who led our poor Gibson so far down the Embassy garden path.”
“Not only Gibson.”
And expression of extreme distress came over the large black face. His hands gripped Alleyn’s shoulders and his enormous, slightly bloodshot eyes filled with tears.
“Try to understand,” he said. “Justice has been done in accordance with our need, our grass-roots, our absolute selves. With time we shall evolve a change and adapt and gradually such elements may die out in us. At the present, my very dear friend, you must think of us — of me if you like — as—”
He hesitated for a moment, and then with a smile and a change in his huge voice: “—as an unfinished portrait,” said the Boomer.
Coda
On a very warm morning in mid-summer, Lucy Lockett, wearing the ornamental collar in which she seemed to fancy herself, sat on the front steps of No. 1, Capricorn Walk, contemplating the scene and keeping an ear open on proceedings in the basement flat.
Mr. Whipplestone had found a suitable tenant and the Chubbs were turning out the premises. A vacuum cleaner whined, there were sundry bumps. The windows were open and voices were heard.
Mr. Whipplestone had gone to the Napoli to buy his Camembert, and Lucy, who never accompanied him into the Mews, awaited his return.
The cleaner was switched off. The Chubbs interchanged peaceful remarks and Lucy, suddenly moved by the legendary curiosity of her species and sex, leapt neatly into the garden and thence through the basement window.
The chattels of the late tenant had been removed but a certain amount of litter still obtained. Lucy pretended to kill a crumpled sheet of newspaper and then fossicked about in odd corners. The Chubbs paid little attention to her.
When Mr. Whipplestone returned he found his cat on the top step, couchant, with something between her forepaws. She gazed up at him and made one of her fetching little remarks.
“What have you got there?” he asked. He inserted his eyeglass and bent down to see.
It was a white pottery fish.
The End