It was not pleasant to watch the blood sink from Cedric’s face. The process left his eyelids and the pouches under his eyes mauvish. Small grooves appeared beside his nostrils. His colourless lips pouted and then widened into an unlovely smile.
“Well, really!” he tittered. “That just shows you, doesn’t it? So darling Sonia has confided in you.” And after a moment’s hesitation he added: “As far as I’m concerned, dear Mr. Alleyn, that’s the end of darling Sonia.”
ii
“Perhaps I should explain,” Alleyn said after a pause, “that Miss Orrincourt has not made any statement about the practical jokes.”
“She hasn’t?” The ejaculation was so incisive that it was difficult to believe Cedric had uttered it. He now lowered his head and appeared to look at the carpet between his feet. Alleyn saw his hands slide over each other. “How perfectly futile,” Cedric’s voice said. “Such a very old gag. Such an ancient wheeze! I didn’t know but you’ve just told me! And in I go, as they say, boots and all.” He raised his face. Its pinkness had returned and its expression suggested a kind of boyish ruefulness. “Now do promise you won’t be lividly angry. It sounds too childish, I know. But I implore you, dear Mr. Alleyn, to look about you. Observe the peculiar flavour of Katzenjammer Castle. The façade now. The utterly unnerving inequalities of the façade. The terrifying Victoriana within. The gloom. Note particularly the gloom.”
“I’m afraid,” Alleyn said, “that I don’t follow this. Unless you’re going to tell me you hoped to enliven the architecture and decor of Ancreton by painting spectacles and flying cows on your grandfather’s portrait.”
“But I didn’t!” Cedric protested shrilly. “That miraculous portrait! No, believe me, I didn’t.”
“And the paint on the banister?”
“I didn’t do that either. Darling Mrs. Alleyn! I wouldn’t have dreamed of it.”
“But at least you seem to have known about it.”
“I didn’t do it,” he repeated.
“The message written in grease-paint on the mirror? And the grease-paint on the cat?”
Cedric gave a nervous giggle. “Well—”
“Come,” said Alleyn. “You had dark red grease-paint under your finger-nail, you know.”
“What sharp eyes!” cried Cedric. “Dearest Mrs. Alleyn! Such a help she must be to you.”
“You did, in fact—”
“The Old Person,” Cedric interrupted, “had been particularly rococo. I couldn’t resist. The cat, too. It was a kind of practical pun. The cat’s whiskers!”
“And had you anything to do with the squeaking cushion in his chair?”
“Wasn’t it too robust and Rabelaisian? Sonia bought it and I–I can’t deny it — I placed it there. But why not? If I might make a tiny squeak of protest, dear Mr. Alleyn, has all this got anything to do with the business in hand?”
“I think it might well have been designed to influence Sir Henry’s Will, and with both his Wills we are, as I think you’ll agree, very definitely concerned.”
“This is too subtle for my poor wits, I’m afraid.”
“It was common knowledge, wasn’t it, that his youngest granddaughter was, at this time, his principal heir?”
“But one never knew. We bounced in and out of favour from day to day.”
“If this is true, wouldn’t these tricks, if attributed to her, very much affect her position?” Alleyn waited but was given no answer. “Why, in fact, did you allow him to believe she was the culprit?”
“That devilish child,” Cedric said, “gets away with innumerable hideous offences. A sense of injured innocence must have been quite a change for her.”
“You see,” Alleyn went on steadily, “the flying cow was the last trick of five, and, as far as we know, was the final reason for Sir Henry’s changing his Will that night. It was fairly conclusively proved to him that Panty did not do it, and it’s possible that Sir Henry, not knowing which of his family to suspect, took his revenge on all.”
“Yes, but—”
“Now whoever was a party to these tricks—”
“At least you’ll admit that I wouldn’t be very likely to try and cut myself out of the Will—”
“I think that result was unforeseen. You hoped, perhaps, to return to your former position with Panty out of the picture. To something, in fact, on the lines of the Will read at the dinnerparty, but rather better. You have told me that you and Miss Orrincourt were partners in one of these practical jokes. Indeed you’ve suggested to me that you at least had knowledge of them all.”
Cedric began to speak very rapidly. “I resent all this talk of partnership. I resent the implication and deny it. You force me into an intolerable position with your hints and mysteries. I suppose there’s nothing left but for me to admit I knew what she was doing and why she did it. It amused me and it enlivened the ghastly boredom of these wretched festivities. Panty I consider an abomination, and I don’t in the least regret that she was suspected or that she was cut out of the Will. She probably wallowed in her borrowed glory. There!”
“Thank you,” said Alleyn. “That clears up quite a lot of the fog. And now, Sir Cedric, are you quite sure you don’t know who wrote the letters?”
“Absolutely.”
“And are you equally sure you didn’t put the book on embalming in the cheese-dish?”
Cedric gaped at him. “I?” he said. “Why should I? Oh, no! I don’t want Sonia to turn out to be a murderess. Or I didn’t, then. I’d rather thought… I… we’d… it doesn’t matter. But I must say I’d like to know.”
Looking at him, Alleyn was visited by a notion so extravagant that he found himself incapable of pressing Cedric any further on the subject of his relationship with Miss Orrincourt.
He was, in any case, prevented from doing so by the entrance of Pauline Kentish.
Pauline entered weeping: not loudly, but with the suggestion of welling tears held bravely back. She seemed to Alleyn to be an older and woollier version of her sister, Desdemona. She took the uncomfortable line of expressing thankfulness that Alleyn was his wife’s husband. “Like having a friend to help us.” Italicised words and even phrases surged about in her conversation. There was much talk of Panty. Alleyn had been so kind, the child had taken a tremendous fancy to him. “And I always think,” Pauline said, gazing at him, “that they KNOW.” From here they were soon involved in Panty’s misdoings. Pauline, if he had now wanted them, supplied good enough alibis for the practical jokes. “How could she when the poor child was being watched; closely, anxiously watched? Dr. Withers had given explicit orders.”
“And much good they’ve done, by the way!” Cedric interrupted. “Look at Panty!”
“Dr. Withers is extremely clever, Cedric. It’s not his fault if Juniper’s drugs have deteriorated. Your grandfather’s medicines were always a great help to him.”
“Including rat-bane?”
“That,” said Pauline in her deepest voice, “was not prescribed, Cedric, by Dr. Withers.”
Cedric giggled.
Pauline ignored him and turned appealingly to Alleyn. “Mr. Alleyn, what are we to think? Isn’t it all too tragically dreadful? The suspense! The haunting suspicion! The feeling that here in our midst…! What are we to do?”
Alleyn asked her about the events following Sir Henry’s exit from the little theatre on the night of his death. It appeared that Pauline herself had led the way to the drawing-room, leaving Troy, Paul and Fenella behind. Miss Orrincourt had only remained a very short time in the drawing-room where, Alleyn gathered, a lively discussion had taken place as to the authorship of the flying cow. To this family wrangle the three guests had listened uncomfortably until Barker arrived, with Sir Henry’s summons for Mr. Rattisbon. The squire and the rector seized upon this opportunity to make their escape. Paul and Fenella came in on their way to bed. Troy had already gone upstairs. After a little more desultory haggling the Birthday party broke up.