Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 10: Last Ditch, Black As He’s Painted, Grave Mistake

‘Slapped your face, perhaps, to stop you screaming?’

‘How she dared! After all that. And shouting questions at me. And then she had the impertinence to say she couldn’t hang round there and left me to the other two. I must say, they had the decency to give me aspirins.’

‘I’m so glad,’ said Alleyn politely. ‘Now, will you please answer the next one very carefully. Did you get an impression at all of what this man was like? There was a certain amount of reflected light from the louvres. Did you get anything like a look at him, however momentary?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said quite calmly. ‘Yes, indeed I did. He was black.’

An appreciable silence followed this statement. Gibson cleared his throat.

‘Are you sure of that? Really sure?’ Alleyn asked.

‘Oh perfectly. I saw his head against the window.’

‘It couldn’t, for instance, have been a white person with a black stocking over his head?’

‘Oh, no. I think he had a stocking over his head but I could tell.’ She glanced at her husband and lowered her voice. ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘I smelt him. If you’ve lived out there as we did, you can’t mistake it.’

Her husband made a sort of corroborative noise.

‘Yes?’ Alleyn said, ‘I understand they notice the same phenomenon in us. An African friend of mine told me that it took him almost a year before he left off feeling faint in lifts during the London rush hours.’

And before anyone could remark upon this, he said: ‘Well, and then one of our people took over and I think from this point we can depend upon his report.’ He looked at Gibson. ‘Unless you –?’

‘No,’ Gibson said, ‘Thanks. Nothing. We’ll have a typewritten transcript of this little chat, madam, and we’ll ask you to look over it and sign it if it seems OK. Sorry to have troubled you.’ And he added the predictable coda. ‘You’ve been very helpful,’ he said. Alleyn wondered how much these routine civilities cost him.

The Colonel, ignoring Mr Gibson, barked at Alleyn. ‘I take it I may remove my wife? She ought to see her doctor.’

‘Of course. Do. Who is your doctor, Mrs Cockburn-Montfort? Can we ring him up and ask him to meet you at your house?’

She opened her mouth and shut it again when the Colonel said: ‘We won’t trouble you, thank you. Good evening to you.’

They had got as far as the door before Alleyn said: ‘Oh, by the way! Did you by any chance get the impression that the man was in some kind of uniform? Or livery?’

There was a long pause before Mrs Cockburn-Montfort said: ‘I’m afraid not. No. I’ve no idea.’

‘No? By the way, Colonel, are those your smelling-salts?’

The Colonel stared at him as if he was mad and then, vacantly, at the bottle in his hand.

‘Mine!’ he said. ‘Why the devil should they be mine?’

‘They are mine,’ said his wife grandly. ‘Anyone would suppose we’d been shop-lifting. Honestly!’

She put her arm in her husband’s and, clinging to him, gazed resentfully at Alleyn.

‘When that peculiar little Whipples-whatever-it-is introduced you, he might have told us you were a policeman. Come on, Hughie darling,’ said Mrs Cockburn-Montfort and achieved quite a magnificent exit.

II

It had taken all of Alleyn’s tact, patience and sheer authority to get The Boomer stowed away in the library, a smallish room on the first floor. When he had recovered from the effects of shock which must surely, Alleyn thought, have been more severe than he permitted himself to show, he developed a strong inclination to conduct inquiries on his own account.

This was extremely tricky. At the Embassy they were, technically, on Ng’ombwanan soil. Gibson and his Special Branch were there specifically at the invitation of the Ng’ombwanan Ambassador, and how far their authority extended in the somewhat rococo circumstances of that Ambassador having been murdered on the premises was a bit of a poser.

So, in a different key, Alleyn felt, was his own presence on the scene. The Special Branch very much likes to keep itself to itself. Fred Gibson’s frame of mind, at the moment, was one of rigidly suppressed professional chagrin and personal mortification. His initial approach would never have been made under ordinary circumstances and now, Alleyn’s presence on, as it were, the SB’s pitch, gave an almost grotesque twist to an already extremely delicate situation. Particularly since, with the occurrence of a homicide, the focus of responsibility might now be said to have shifted to Alleyn in whose division the crime had taken place.

Gibson had cut through this dilemma by ringing up his principals and getting authority for himself and Alleyn with the consent of the Embassy to handle the case together. But Alleyn knew the situation could well become a very tricky one.

‘Apparently,’ Gibson said, ‘we carry on until somebody stops us. Those are my instructions, anyway. Yours too, on three counts: your AC, your division, and the personal request of the President.’

‘Who at the moment wants to summon the entire household including the spear-carrier and harangue them in their own language.’

‘Bloody farce,’ Gibson mumbled.

‘Yes, but if he insists – Look,’ Alleyn said, ‘it mightn’t be such a bad idea for them to go ahead if we could understand what they were talking about.’

‘Well –’

‘Fred, suppose we put out a personal call for Mr Samuel Whipplestone to come at once – you know: “be kind enough” and all that. Not sound as if we’re breathing down his neck.’

‘What about it –?’ asked Gibson unenthusiastically.

‘He speaks Ng’ombwanan. He lives five minutes away and will be at home by now. No. 1, Capricorn Walk. We can ring up. Not in the book yet, I dare say, but get through,’ said Alleyn to an attendant sergeant, and as he went to the telephone, ‘Samuel Whipplestone. Send a car round. I’ll speak to him.’

‘The idea being?’ Mr Gibson asked woodenly.

‘We let the President address the troops – indeed, come to that, we can’t stop him, but at least we’ll know what’s being said.’

‘Where is he, for God’s sake? You put him somewhere,’ Mr Gibson said as if the President was a mislaid household utensil.

‘In the library. He’s undertaken to stay there until I go back. We’ve got coppers keeping obbo in the passage.’

‘I should hope so. If this was a case of the wrong victim, chummy may well be gunning for the right one.’

The sergeant was speaking on the telephone.

‘Superintendent Alleyn would like a word with you, sir.’

Alleyn detected in Mr Whipplestone’s voice an overtone of occupational cool. ‘My dear Alleyn,’ he said, ‘this is a most disturbing occurrence. I understand the Ambassador has been – assassinated.’

‘Yes.’

‘How very dreadful. Nothing could have been worse.’

‘Except the intended target taking the knock.’

‘Oh … I see. The President.’

‘Listen,’ Alleyn said and made his request.