“That’s not quite true, is it — the last bit?”
“I’d infinitely rather talk about it. I’d infinitely rather feel honestly shocked and upset with you, than vaguely worried all by myself.”
He held out a hand and she went to him. “That’s why I said I think this case has been sent to larn you.”
“Troy,” Alleyn said, “do you know what they say to their best girls in the antipodes?”
“No.”
“You’ll do me.”
“Oh!”
“You’ll do me, Troy.”
“I thought perhaps you’d prefer me to remain a shrinking violet.”
“The truth is, I’ve been a bloody fool and never did and never will deserve you.”
“Don’t,” said Troy, “let’s talk about deserving.”
“I’ve only one excuse and logically you’ll say it’s no excuse. Books about C.I.D. men will tell you that running a murderer to earth is just a job to us, as copping a pickpocket is to the ordinary P.C. It’s not. Because of its termination it’s unlike any other job in existence. When I was twenty-two I faced its implications and took it on, but I don’t think I fully realized them for another fifteen years and that was when I fell most deeply in love, my love, with you.”
“I’ve faced its implications, too, and once for all, over this Ancred business. Before you came in I even decided that it would be good for both of us if, by some freak, it turned out that I had a piece of information somewhere in the back of my memory that’s of vital importance.”
“You’d got as far as that?”
“Yes. And the queer thing is,” Troy said, driving her fingers through her hair, “I’ve got the most extraordinary conviction that somewhere in the back of my memory it is there, waiting to come out.”
ii
“I want you,” Alleyn said, “to tell me again, as fully as you possibly can, about your conversation with Sir Henry after he’d found the writing on the looking-glass and the grease-paint on the cat’s whiskers. If you’ve forgotten how it went at any particular stage, say so. But, for the love of Mike, darling, don’t elaborate. Can you remember?”
“I think so. Quite a lot, anyway. He was furious with Panty, of course.”
“He hadn’t a suspicion of the egregious Cedric?”
“None. Did Cedric—?”
“He did. He lisped out an admission.”
“Little devil,” said Troy. “So it was grease-paint on his fingernail.”
“And Sir Henry—?”
“He just went on and on about how much he’d doted on Panty and how she’d grieved him. I tried to persuade him she hadn’t done it, but he only made their family noise at me: ‘T’uh!’ you know?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Then he started to talk about marriages between first cousins and how he disapproved of them, and this got mixed up in no time with a most depressing account of how he was”—Troy swallowed and went on quickly“—was going to be embalmed. We actually mentioned the book. Then I think he sniffed a bit at Cedric as his heir, and said he’d never have children and that poor Thomas wouldn’t marry.”
“He was wrong there, I fancy.”
“No! Who?”
“The psychiatrist, or should it be ‘psychiatriste’?”
“Miss Able?”
“She thinks he’s quite satisfactorily sublimated his libido or something.”
“Oh, good! Well, and then as he would keep talking about when he was Gone, I tried to buck him up a bit and had quite a success. He turned mysterious and talked about there being surprises in store for everybody. And upon that Sonia Orrincourt burst in and said they were all plotting against her and she was frightened.”
“And that’s all?” Alleyn said after a pause.
“No — no, it isn’t. There was something else he said. Rory, I can’t remember what it was, but there was something else.”
“That was on Saturday the seventeenth, wasn’t it?”
“Let me see. I got there on the sixteenth. Yes. Yes, it was the next day. But I wish,” Troy said slowly, “I do wish I could remember the other thing he talked about.”
“Don’t try. It may come back suddenly.”
“Perhaps Miss Able could screw it out of me,” said Troy with a grin.
“In any case we’ll call it a day.”
As they moved away she linked her arm through his. “First instalment of the new system,” she said. “It’s gone off tolerably quietly, hasn’t it?”
“It has, my love. Thank you.”
“One of the things I like about you,” Troy said, “is your nice manners.”
iii
The next day was a busy one. The Assistant Commissioner, after a brisk interview with Alleyn, decided to apply for an exhumation order. “Sooner the better, I suppose. I was talking to the Home Secretary yesterday and told him we might be on his tracks. You’d better go right ahead.”
“To-morrow then, sir, if possible,” Alleyn said. “I’ll see Dr. Curtis.”
“Do.” And as Alleyn turned away: “By the way, Rory, if it’s at all difficult for Mrs. Alleyn—”
“Thank you very much, sir, but at the moment she’s taking it in her stride.”
“Splendid. Damn’ rum go — what?”
“Damn’ rum,” Alleyn agreed politely, and went to call on Mr. Rattisbon.
Mr. Rattisbon’s offices in the Strand had survived the pressure of the years, the blitz and the flying bomb. They were, as Alleyn remembered them on the occasion of his first official visit before the war, a discreetly active memorial to the style of Charles Dickens, with the character of Mr. Rattisbon himself written across them like an inscription. Here was the same clerk with his trick of slowly raising his head and looking dimly at the inquirer, the same break-neck stairs, the same dark smell of antiquity. And here, at last, shrined in leather, varnish and age was Mr. Rattisbon, that elderly legal bird, perched at his desk.
“Ah, yes, Chief Inspector,” Mr. Rattisbon gabbled, extending a claw at a modish angle, “come in, come in, sit down, sit down. Glad to see yer. M-m-maah!” And when Alleyn was seated Mr. Rattisbon darted the old glance at him, sharp as the point of a fine nib. “No trouble, I hope?” he said.
“The truth is,” Alleyn rejoined, “my visits only arise, I’m afraid, out of some sort of trouble.”
Mr. Rattisbon instantly hunched himself, placed his elbows on his desk and joined his finger-tips in front of his chin.
“I’ve come to ask about certain circumstances that relate to the late Sir Henry Ancred’s Will. Or Wills.”
Mr. Rattisbon vibrated the tip of his tongue between his lips, rather as if he had scalded it and hoped in this manner to cool it off. He said nothing.
“Without more ado,” Alleyn went on, “I must tell you that we are going to ask for an exhumation.”
After a considerable pause Mr. Rattisbon said: “This is exceedingly perturbing.”
“May I, before we go any further, say I do think that instead of coming to us with the story I’m about to relate, Sir Henry’s successors might have seen fit to consult their solicitor.”
“Thank yer.”
“I don’t know, sir, of course, how you would have advised them, but I believe that this visit must sooner or later have taken place. Here is the story.”
Twenty minutes later Mr. Rattisbon tipped himself back in his chair and gave a preparatory bay at the ceiling.
“Ma-m-ah!” he said. “Extraordinary. Disquieting. Very.”
“You will see that all this rigmarole seems to turn about two factors, (a) It was common knowledge in his household that Sir Henry Ancred was to be embalmed, (b) He repeatedly altered his Will, and on the eve of his death appears to have done so in favour of his intended wife, largely to the exclusion of his family and in direct contradiction to an announcement he made a couple of hours earlier. It’s here, I hope, Mr. Rattisbon, that you can help us.”