“Less she do drive over in old car,” said Abel, coming to the door. “But most times her walks.”
He looked apprehensively at Will and turned back into the bar.
“We’ll risk it,” said Alleyn. “Back to lunch, Mr. Pomeroy.”
“Thank’ee, sir.”
Alleyn and Fox walked up to the tunnel mouth. When they reached it Alleyn glanced back at the Plume of Feathers. Will stood in the doorway looking after them. As Alleyn turned, Will moved back into the pub.
“He will now telephone Cary Edge in case Miss Moore has not left yet,” observed Alleyn. “No matter. She’ll have been expecting us to arrive sooner or later. Come on.” They entered the tunnel.
“Curious, Fox, isn’t it” said Alleyn, and his voice rang hollow against the rock walls. “Ottercombe must have been able to shut itself up completely on the landward side. I bet some brisk smuggling went forward in the old days. Look out, it’s slippery. Miss Moore must be an intrepid driver if she motors through here in all weathers.”
They came out into the sunshine. The highway, a dusty streak, ran from the tunnel. On each side the downs rolled along the coast in a haze of warmth, dappled by racing cloud shadows. Farther inland were the hills and sunken lanes, the prettiness of Devon; here was a sweep of country where Englishmen for centuries had looked coastwards, while ships sailed across their dreams, and their thoughts were enlarged beyond the seaward horizon.
“Turn to the right,” said Alleyn.
They climbed the bank and rounded a furze-bush, in a sunken hollow.
“Good spot for a bit of courting,” said Fox, looking at the flattened grass.
“Yes, you old devil. You may invite that remarkably buxom lady who brought our breakfast, to stroll up here after hours.”
“Mrs. Ives?”
“Yes. You’ll have to get in early, it’s a popular spot. Look at those cigarette butts, squalid little beasts. Hullo!”
He stooped and picked up two of them.
“The cigarette butt,” he said, “has been derided by our detective novelists. It has lost caste and now ranks with the Chinese and datura. No self-respecting demi-highbrow will use it. That’s because old Conan Doyle knew his job and got in first. But you and I, Br’er Fox, sweating hacks that we are, are not so superior. This cigarette was a Dahabieh, an expensive Egyptian. Harper said they found some Egyptian cigarettes in Watchman’s pockets. Not many Dahabieh-smokers in Ottercombe, I imagine. Parish and Cubitt smoke Virginians. This one has lip stick on it. Orange-brown.”
“Not Miss Darragh,” said Fox.
“No, Fox. Nor yet Mrs. Ives. Let’s have a peer. There’s been rain since the Dahabiehs were smoked. Look at those heel marks. Woman’s heels. Driven into the bank.”
“She must have been sitting down,” said Fox. “Or lying. Bit of a struggle seemingly. What had the gentleman been up to?”
“What indeed. What did Miss Darragh mean by her ‘Look further and look nearer home’? We’ve no case for a jury yet, Fox. We mustn’t close down on a theory. Can you find any masculine prints? Yes. Here’s one. Not a very good one.”
“Watchman’s?”
“We may have to find out. May be nothing in it. Wait a bit though. I’m going back to the pub.”
Alleyn disappeared over the ridge and was away for some minutes. He returned with two stones, a bit of an old box, and a case.
“Better,” he said, “in your favourite phrase, Br’er Fox, to be sure than sorry.”
He opened the case. It contained a rubber cup, a large flask of water, some plaster-of-Paris, and a spray-pump. Alleyn sprayed the footprints with shellac, and collected twigs from under the furze-bushes, while Fox mixed plaster. They took casts of the four clearest prints, reinforcing the plaster with the twigs and adding salt to the mixture. Alleyn removed the casts when they had set, covered the footprints with the box, weighted it with stones, and dragged branches of the furze-bush down over the whole. The casts, he wrapped up and hid.
“You never know,” he said, “let’s move on.”
They mounted the rise and, away on the headland, saw Cubitt, a manikin, moving to and fro before his easel.
“We’ll have to join the infamous company of gapers,” said Alleyn. “Look, he’s seen us. How eloquent of distaste that movement was! There’s Parish beyond. He’s doing a big thing. I believe I’ve heard Troy [Mrs. Roderick Alleyn, R.A.] speak of Norman Cubitt’s work. Let’s walk along the cliffs, shall we?”
They struck out to the right and hadn’t gone many yards before they came to a downward slope where the turf was trampled. Alleyn stooped and examined it.
“Camp-stool,” he muttered. “And here’s an empty tube. Water-colour. The Darragh spoor, I imagine. An eventful stretch of country, this. I wonder if she was here on that Friday. You can’t see the other place from here, Fox. You might hear voices though.”
“If they were raised a bit.”
“Yes. Angry voices. Well, on we go.”
As they drew nearer Cubitt continued to paint, but Parish kept turning his head to look at them. When they came within earshot, Cubitt shouted at them over his shoulder.
“I hope to God you haven’t come here to ask questions. I’m busy.”
“All right,” said Alleyn. “We’ll wait.”
He walked beyond them, out of sight of the picture. Fox followed him. Alleyn lay on the lip of the headland. Beneath them, the sea boomed and thudded against a rosy cliff. Wreaths of seaweed endlessly wove suave patterns about Coombe Rock. A flight of gulls mewed and circled, in and out of the sunlight.
“What a hullabaloo and a pother,” said Alleyn. “How many thousands of times, before they come adrift, do these strands of seaweed slither out and swirl and loop and return? Their gestures are so beautiful that it is difficult to realize they are meaningless. They only show us the significance of the water’s movements but for themselves they are helpless. And the sea is helpless too, and the winds which it obeys, and the wider laws that rule the winds, themselves are ruled by passive rulers. Dear me, Fox, what a collection of ordered inanities! Rather like police investigations. I can’t look over any more, I’ve no head for heights.”
“Here comes Mr. Cubitt, sir,” said Fox. Alleyn rolled over and saw Cubitt, a vast figure against the sky.
“We’re resting now,” said Cubitt. “Sorry to choke you off but I was on a tricky bit.”
“We are extremely sorry to bother you,” said Alleyn. “I know it is beyond a painter’s endurance to be interrupted at a critical moment.”
Cubitt dropped down on the grass beside him. “I’m trying to keep a wet skin of paint all over the canvas,” he said. “You have to work at concert pitch for that.”
“Good Lord!” Alleyn exclaimed. “You don’t mean you paint right through that surface in three hours?”
“It keeps wet for two days. I’ve got a new brand of slow-drying colours. Even so, it’s a bit of an effort.”
“I should think so, on a thing that size.” Parish appeared on the brow of the hill.
“Aren’t you coming to see my portrait?” he cried.
Cubitt glanced at Alleyn and said: “Do, if you’d like to.”
“I should, enormously.” They walked back to the easel. The figure had come up darkly against the formalized sky. Though the treatment was one of extreme simplification, there was no feeling of emptiness. The portrait was at once rich and austere. There was no bravura in Cubitt’s painting. It seemed that he had pondered each brushmark, gravely and deeply, and had then laid it down on a single impulse and left it so.
“Lord, it’s good,” said Alleyn. “It’s grand, isn’t it?”
Parish stood with his head on one side and said, “Do you like it?” but Cubitt said: “Do you paint, Alleyn?”
“No, not I. My wife does.”