Fox sat uneasily on the second step.
Panty was a slow dealer, principally because she examined the face of each card before she put it down.
“Do you know the rules?” Alleyn asked Fox.
“I can’t say I do,” he replied, putting on his spectacles. “Would it be anything like euchre?”
“Not much, but you’ll pick it up. The object is to collect a family. Would you be good enough,” he said, turning to Panty, “to oblige me with Mrs. Snips the Tailor’s Wife?”
“You didn’t say ‘Please,’ so it’s my turn,” said Panty. “Give me Mr. Snips, the Tailor, and Master Snips and Miss Snips, please.”
“Damn,” said Alleyn. “Here you are,” and handed over the cards, each with its cut of an antic who might have walked out of a Victorian volume of Punch.
Panty pushed these cards underneath her and sat on them. Her bloomers, true to her legend, were conspicuous; “Now,” she said, turning a bleary glance on Fox, “you give me—”
“Don’t I get a turn?” asked Fox.
“Not unless she goes wrong,” said Alleyn. “You’ll learn.”
“Give me,” said Panty, “Master Grit, the Grocer’s Son.”
“Doesn’t she have to say ‘please’?”
“Please,” yelled Panty. “I said ‘please’. Please.”
Fox handed over the card.
“And Mrs. Grit,” Panty went on.
“It beats me,” said Fox, “how she knows.”
“She knows,” said Alleyn, “because she looked.”
Panty laughed raucously. “And you give me Mr. Bull, the Butcher,” she demanded, turning on Alleyn. “Please.”
“Not at home,” said Alleyn triumphantly. “And now, you see, Fox, it’s my turn.”
“The game seems crook to me,” said Fox, gloomily.
“Master Bun,” Panty remarked presently, “is azzakerly like my Uncle Thomas.” Alleyn, in imagination, changed the grotesque faces on all the cards to those of the Ancreds as Troy had drawn them in her notebook. “So he is,” he said. “And now I know you’ve got him. Please give me Master Ancred, the Actor’s Son.” This sally afforded Panty exquisite amusement. With primitive guffaws she began to demand cards under the names of her immediate relations and to the utter confusion of the game.
“There now,” said Alleyn at last, in a voice that struck him as being odiously complacent. “That was a lovely game. Suppose you take us up to see the — ah—”
“The Happy Family,” Fox prompted in a wooden voice.
“Certainly,” said Alleyn.
“Why?” Panty demanded.
“That’s what we’ve come for.”
Panty stood squarely facing him. Upon her stained face there grew, almost furtively, a strange expression. It was compounded, he thought, of the look of a normal child about to impart a secret and of something less familiar, more disquieting.
“Here!” she said. “I want to tell you something. Not him. You.”
She drew Alleyn away, and with a sidelong glance pulled him down until she could hook her arm about his neck. He waited, feeling her breath uncomfortably in his ear.
“What is it?”
The whispering was disembodied but unexpectedly clear. “We’ve got,” it said, “a murderer in our family.”
When he drew back and looked at her she was smiling nervously.
CHAPTER XII
The Bell and the Book
i
So accurate and lively were Troy’s drawings that Alleyn recognized Desdemona Ancred as soon as she appeared on the top step of the third terrace and looked down upon the group, doubtless a curious one, made by himself, Panty and Fox. Indeed, as she paused, she struck precisely the attitude, histrionic and grandiose, with which Troy had invested her caricature.
“Ah!” said Dessy richly. “Panty! At last!”
She held out her hand towards Panty and at the same time looked frankly at Alleyn. “How do you do?” she said. “Are you on your way up? Has this terrible young person waylaid you? Shall I introduce myself?”
“Miss Ancred?” Alleyn said.
“He’s Mrs. Alleyn’s husband,” Panty said. “We don’t much want you, thank you, Aunt Dessy.”
Dessy was in the act of advancing with poise down the steps. Her smile remained fixed on her face. Perhaps she halted for a fraction of time in her stride. The next second her hand was in his, and she was gazing with embarrassing intensity into his eyes.
“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said in her deepest voice. “So glad! We are terribly, terribly distressed. My brother has told you, I know.” She pressed his hand, released it, and looked at Fox.
“Inspector Fox,” said Alleyn. Desdemona was tragically gracious.
They turned to climb the steps. Panty gave a threatening wail.
“You,” said her aunt, “had better run home as fast as you can. Miss Able’s been looking everywhere for you. What have you been doing, Panty? You’re covered in earth.”
Immediately they were confronted with another scene. Panty repeated her former performance, roaring out strange threats against her family, lamenting the cat Carabbas, and protesting that she had not infected him.
“Really, it’s too ridiculous,” Dessy said in a loud aside to Alleyn. “Not that we didn’t all feel it. Poor Carabbas! And my father so attached always. But honestly, it was a menace to all our healths. Ringworm, beyond a shadow of doubt. Fur coming out in handfuls. Obviously it had given them the disease in the first instance. We did perfectly right to have it destroyed. Come on, Panty.”
By this time they had reached the top terrace, with Panty waddling lamentably behind them. Here they were met by Miss Caroline Able, who brightly ejaculated: “Goodness, what a noise!” cast a clear sensible glance at Alleyn and Fox, and removed her still bellowing charge.
“I’m so distressed,” Desdemona cried, “that you should have had this reception. Honestly, poor Panty is simply beyond everything. Nobody loves children more than I do, but she’s got such a difficult nature. And in a house of tragedy, when one’s nerves and emotions are lacerated—”
She gazed into his eyes, made a small helpless gesture, and finally ushered them into the hall. Alleyn glanced quickly at the space under the gallery, but it was still untenanted.
“I’ll tell my sister and my sister-in-law,” Dessy began, but Alleyn interrupted her. “If we might just have a word with you first,” he said. And by Dessy’s manner, at once portentous and dignified, he knew that this suggestion was not unpleasing to her. She led them to the small sitting-room where Troy had found Sonia Orrincourt and Cedric giggling together on the sofa. Desdemona placed herself on this sofa. She sat down, Alleyn noticed, quite beautifully; not glancing at her objective, but sinking on it in one movement and then elegantly disposing her arms.
“I expect,” he began, “that your brother has explained the official attitude to this kind of situation. We’re obliged to make all sorts of inquiries before we can take any further action.”
“I see,” said Desdemona, nodding owlishly. “Yes, I see. Go on.”
“To put it baldly, do you yourself think there is any truth in the suggestion made by the anonymous letter-writer?”
Desdemona pressed the palms of her hands carefully against her eyes. “If I could dismiss it,” she cried. “If I could!”
“You have no idea, I suppose, who could have written the letters?” She shook her head. Alleyn wondered if she had glanced at him through her fingers.
“Have any of you been up to London since your father’s funeral?”
“How frightful!” she said, dropping her hands and gazing at him. “I was afraid of this. How frightful!”