“Yes — he did,” Nigel agreed, “but he may have been all carried away. He’s not a bad little tick really, I should say, once you’ve got past his frightful refinement.”
“He spoke quite decently about Miss O’Callaghan,” added Angela.
“So it appears. Did he and my girl-friend Banks have anything to say to each other?”
“Not a word.”
“Well, Fox?”
“Well, sir?”
“I suppose I visit Mr. Sage at his shop to-morrow— oh, Lard, it’s to-day, isn’t it? What’s the time?”
Inspector Fox drew his watch from the inside pocket of the threadbare coat he was wearing. He held it up in a large and filthy paw. “Just on two, I make it,” he said. “Listen.”
He lowered the window of the taxi. The lost, woebegone voice of a siren sounded out on the river. Then Big Ben, up in the cold night air, tolled two.
Inspector Fox regarded his watch with grave approval, put it away, and laid his hands on his knees.
“Longing for your bed, Fox?” asked Alleyn.
“I am for mine,” said Angela.
“Suppose we let Bathgate take the taxi on, and turn into the office for half an hour?”
“Right ho, sir.”
“Here we are.”
He tapped on the window and the taxi stopped. The two detectives got out. Their breath hung mistily on the frosty air. Alleyn spoke for a moment to the driver and then looked inside.
“Thank you so much for your help, both of you,” he said.
“I say, Alleyn, I hope you don’t think we’ve made awful mugs of ourselves?” said Nigel lugubriously.
Alleyn thought for a moment.
“It was a very spirited effort, I consider,” he said at last.
“We shall have to get you both in the Force, sir,” added Fox. His matter-of-fact voice sounded oddly remote out there in the cold.
“Ah, Inspector Fox,” said Nigel suspiciously, “I’ve heard you say that before.”
“Good night, Comrade Angela,” said Alleyn, “sleep well.”
“Good night, inspector; I don’t grudge you your joke.”
“Bless you,” answered Alleyn gently and slammed the door.
The taxi drove off. Farther along the Embankment men were hosing down the street surface. A great fan of water curved out and made all the sound there was except for the siren and the distant toot of the taxi. The two men stared at one another.
“I wonder just how much harm they’ve done,” said Alleyn.
“None at all, sir, I should say.”
“I hope you’re right. My fault if they have. Come on, let’s have a smoke.”
In Alleyn’s room they lit their pipes. Alleyn wrote at his desk for some time. Fox stared gravely at the opposite wall. They looked a queer couple with their dreadful clothes, grimy faces and blackened hands.
“She seems a very nice young lady,” Fox said presently. “Is she Mr. Bathgate’s fiancée, sir, if I may ask?”
“She is.”
“A very pleasant young couple.”
Alleyn looked at him affectionately.
“You’re a quaint old bag of nonsense.” He laid down his pen. “I don’t think, really, I took too big a risk with them. The little man was nowhere near them. You recognised him, of course?”
“Oh, yes — from the inquest. I didn’t see who it was till he passed us in the doorway, but I’d noticed him earlier in the evening. He had his back towards us.”
“Yes. I saw him, too. His clothes were good enough to shine out in that assembly. No attempt made to dress down to comrade level.”
“No,” said Fox. “Funny — that.”
“It’s altogether very rum. Passing strange. He walked straight past Sage and Nurse Banks. None of them batted an eyelash.”
“That’s so. If they are in collusion, it might be deliberate.”
“You know, Fox, I can’t think this Communist stuff is at the root of it. They’re a bogus lot, holding their little meetings, printing little pamphlets, making their spot of trouble. A nuisance from our point of view, but not the stuff that assassins are made of. Of course, given one fanatic— ” He stopped and shook his head.
“Well,” said Fox, “that’s so. They don’t amount to much. Perhaps he’s different, though. Perhaps he’s the fanatic.”
“Not that sort, I’d have thought. I’ll go and see him again. To-morrow. To-day. I rather like the bloke. We’ll have to get hold of the expert who’s doing the Kakaroff bunch and find out if he’s deep in. It’s been a field day, this. It seems an age since we sat here and waited for the report on the post-mortem. Damn. I feel we are as one about to be had. I feel we are about to give tongue and run off on a false scent. I feel we are about to put two and two together and make a mess.”
“That’s a pity,” said Fox.
“What’s the time? Half-past two. Perhaps Bathgate will be back in his own flat by now, having dropped Miss Angela, who looked tired, at her uncle’s house. I think I shall send him to bed happy.”
He dialled a number on his telephone and waited.
“Hullo, Bathgate. How much are you betting on your funny little man?”
“Roberts?” quacked Nigel’s voice clearly. “Yes, Roberts.”
“Two to one, wasn’t it? Why? What’s up?”
“Did you notice he was at the meeting to-night?”
“Roberts!”
“Yes, Roberts. Good night.” He hung up the receiver.
“Come on,” he said wearily. “Let’s put two and two together and make a mess.”
CHAPTER XIV
“Fulvitavolts”
Wednesday, the seventeenth. Morning and afternoon.
The following morning Chief Inspector Alleyn and Inspector Fox reviewed their discussion.
“The Lenin Hall theory looks even shoddier by the light of day,” said Alleyn.
“Well, sir,” said Fox, “I won’t say it isn’t weak in places, but we can’t ignore the thing, can we?”
“No. I suppose not. No.”
“If there’s nothing in it, it’s a peculiar coincidence. Here’s this lady, deceased’s sister— ”
“Oh yes, Fox, and by the way, I’m expecting the family solicitor. Mr. Rattisbon, of Knightley, Knightley and Rattisbon, an uncle of Lady O’Callaghan’s, I believe. Unusually come-toish advance — rang up and suggested the visit himself. He mentioned Miss O’Callaghan so guardedly that I can’t help feeling she plays a star part in the will. You were saying?”
“I was going to say here’s this lady, deceased’s sister, giving him patent medicines. Here’s the Sage affair, the chemist, a member of the advanced party that threatened deceased, supplying them. Here’s the doctor that gave the anæsthetic turning up at the same meeting as the chemist and the nurse that gave the injection. The nurse knows the chemist; the chemist, so Mr. Bathgate says, isn’t so keen to know the nurse. The doctor, seemingly, knows neither of them. Well now, that may be bluff on the doctor’s part. Suppose they were all working in collusion? Sage wouldn’t be very keen on associating himself with Nurse Banks. Dr. Roberts might think it better to know neither of them. Suppose Sage had supplied Miss O’Callaghan with a drug containing a certain amount of hyoscine, Nurse Banks had injected a bit more, and Dr. Roberts had made a job of it by injecting the rest?”
“All of them instructed by Comrade Kakaroff?”
“Well — yes.”
“But why? Why involve three people when one might do the trick? And anyway, none of them knew O’Callaghan was going to throw a fit and lie-for-dead in the House of Commons and then be taken to Sir John Phillips’s nursing-home.”
“That’s so, certainly, but Sage would know, through Miss O’Callaghan, that her brother intended having Sir John to look at him as soon as the Bill was read. It seems they knew it was appendix. Mightn’t they even have said he’d better go to the hospital and have it out? The lady tells Mr. Sage about this. He reports. He and Nurse Banks and Dr. Roberts think they’ll form a plan of action.”