“I am indeed. Tell me.”
She told him and when she had done so he was unusually quiet for several seconds.
“But how immensely rewarding it would be—” he began at last and then pulled himself up. “Let us put the plans away,” he said. “They arouse insatiable desires. I’m sure you understand, don’t you Miss Preston? I’ve allowed myself to build — not castles in Spain but gardens in Kent, which is much more reprehensible. Haven’t I?”
How very intelligent, Verity thought, finding his black eyes focused on hers, this Mr. Markos is. He seems to be making all sorts of assumptions and I seem to be liking it.
“I don’t remember that I saw the garden plan before,” she said. “It would have been a perfect marriage, wouldn’t it?”
“Ah. And you have used the perfect phrase for it.”
“Would you like to keep the plans here,” asked Prunella, “to have another gloat?”
He thanked her exuberantly and luncheon having been announced, they went indoors.
Since that first dinner-party, which now seemed quite a long time ago, and the visit to Greengages on the day of Sybil’s death, Verity had not seen much of the Markoses. She had been twice asked to Mardling for cocktail parties and on each occasion had been unable to go and one evening Markos Senior had paid an unheralded visit to Keys House, having spotted her, as he explained, in her garden and acted on that spur of the moment. They had got on well, having tastes in common and he showing a pretty acute appreciation of the contemporary theatre. Verity had been quite surprised to see the time when he finally took his stylish leave of her. The next thing that she had heard of him was that he had “gone abroad,” a piece of information conveyed by village telegraph through Mrs. Jim. And “abroad,” as far as Verity knew, he had remained until this present reappearance.
They had their coffee in the library, now completely finished. Verity wondered what would happen to all the books if, as Mrs. Jim had reported, Mr. Markos really intended to sell Mardling. This was by no means the sterile, unhandled assembly made by a monied person more interested in interior decoration than the written word.
As soon as she came in she saw above the fireplace the painting called Several Pleasures by Troy.
“So you did hang it there,” she said. “How well it looks.”
“Doesn’t it?” Mr. Markos agreed. “I dote on it. Who would think it was painted by a policeman’s Missus.”
Verity said: “Well, I can’t see why not. Although I suppose you’d say a rather exceptional policeman.”
“So you know him?”
“I’ve met him, yes.”
“I see. So have I. I met him when I bought the picture. I should have thought him an exotic in the Force but perhaps the higher you go at the Yard the rarer the atmosphere.”
“He visited me this morning.”
Prunella said: “You don’t tell me!”
“But I do,” said Verity.
“And me. According to Mrs. Jim,” said Prue.
Gideon said: “Would it be about the egregious Claude?”
“No,” said Verity. “It wouldn’t. Not so far as I was concerned. Not specifically, anyway. It seemed to be—” she hesitated, “—as much about this new Will as anything.”
And in the silence that followed the little party in the library quietly collapsed. Prunella began to look scared and Gideon put his arm around her.
Mr. Markos had moved in front of his fireplace. Verity thought she saw a change in him: the subtle change that comes over men when something has led a conversation into their professional field: a guarded attentiveness.
Prunella said: “I’ve been pushing things off. I’ve been pretending to myself nothing is really very much the matter. It’s not true. Is it?” she insisted, appealing to Verity.
“Perhaps not quite, darling.” Verity said and for a moment it seemed to her that she and Prunella were, in some inexplicable way, united against the two men.
iii
It was half past two when Alleyn and Fox arrived at Greengages. The afternoon being clement some of the guests were taking their postprandial ease in the garden. Others, presumably, had retired to their rooms. Alleyn gave his professional card in at the desk and asked if they might have a word with Dr. Schramm.
The receptionist stared briefly at Alleyn and hard at Mr. Fox. She tightened her mouth, said she would see, appeared to relax slightly and left them.
“Know us when she sees us again,” said Fox placidly. He put on his spectacles and, tilting back his head, contemplated an emaciated water-colour of Canterbury Cathedral. “Airy-fairy,” he said. “Not my notion of the place at all,” and moved to a view of the Grand Canal.
The receptionist returned with an impeccably dressed man who had Alleyn’s card in his hand and said he was the manager of the hotel. “I hope,” he added, “that we’re not in for any further disruption.” Alleyn cheerfully assured him that he hoped so too and repeated that he would like to have a word or two with Dr. Schramm. The manager retired to an inner office.
Alleyn said to the receptionist: “May I bother you for a moment? Of course you’re fussed we’re here to ask tedious questions and generally make nuisances of ourselves about the death of Mrs. Foster.”
“You said it,” she returned, “not me.” But she touched her hair and she didn’t sound altogether antagonistic.
“It’s only a sort of tidying-up job. But I wonder if you remember anything about flowers that her gardener left at the desk for her.”
“I wasn’t at the desk at the time.”
“Alas!”
“Pardon? Oh, yes. Well, as a matter of fact I do happen to remember. The girl on duty mentioned that the electrical repairs man had taken them up when I was off for a minute or two.”
“When would that be?”
“I really couldn’t say.”
“Is the repairs man a regular visitor?”
“Not that I know. He wasn’t called in from the desk, that I can tell you.”
“Could you by any merciful chance find out when, where and why he was here?”
“Well, I must say!”
“It would be very kind indeed. Really.”
She said she would see what she could do and retired into her office. Alleyn heard the whirr of a telephone dial. After a considerable interlude a highly starched nurse of opulent proportions appeared.
Dr. Schramm will see you now,” she said in a clinical voice. Only the copies of Punch, Alleyn felt, were missing.
The nurse rustled them down a passage to a door bearing the legend: “Dr. Basil Schramm, M.B. Hours 3–5 p.m. and by appointment.”
She ushered them into a little waiting-room and there, sure enough, were the copies of Punch and The Tatler. She knocked at an inner door, opened it and motioned them to go in.
Dr. Schramm swivelled round in his desk chair and rose to greet them.
A police officer of experience and sensibility may come to recognize mannerisms common to certain persons with whom he has to deal. If he is wise he will never place too much reliance on this simplification. When, for instance, he is asked by the curious layman if the police can identify certain criminal types by looking at them, he will probably say no. Perhaps he will qualify this denial by adding that he does find that certain characteristics tend to crop up — shabby stigmata — in sexual offenders. He is not referring to raincoats or to sidelong lurking but to a look in the eyes and about the mouth, a look he is unable to define.
To Alleyn it seemed that there were traits held in common by men who, in Victorian times, were called lady-killers: a display, covert or open, of sexual vainglory that sometimes, not always, made less heavily endowed acquaintances want, they scarcely knew why, to kick the possessors.