Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 7: Off With His Head, Singing in the Shrouds, False Scent

‘Fat lot of good that is, Dulcie. She means the Rector, Sam Stayne, who’s my great-nephew-in-law. Bit of a milksop.’

‘Right. Thank you so much. We’ll bother you as little as possible. It was kind of you to see me.’

Alleyn got up and made her a little bow. She held out her hand. ‘Hope you find,’ she said as he took it.

Dulcie, astonished, showed him out.

There were three chairs in the hall that looked as if they didn’t belong there. They had rugs safety-pinned over them. Alleyn asked Dulcie if these were the chairs they had sat on and, learning that they were, got her startled permission to take one of them out again.

He put it on the top step, sat in it and surveyed the courtyard. He was conscious that Dame Alice, at the drawing-room window, surveyed him.

From here, he could see over the top of the dolmen to within about two feet of its base and between its standing legs. An upturned box stood on the horizontal stone and three others, which he could just see, on the ground beyond and behind it. The distance from the dolmen to the rear archway in the old semi-circular wall – the archway that had served as an entrance and exit for the performers – was perhaps twenty-five feet. The other openings into the courtyard were provided at the extremities of the old wall by two further archways that joined it to the house. Each of these was about twenty feet distant from the dolmen.

There was, on the air, a tang of dead fire and through the central archway at the back Alleyn could see a patch of seared earth, damp now, but bearing the scar of heat.

Fox, who with Carey, Thompson, Bailey and the policeman, was looking at the dolmen, glanced up at his chief.

‘You have to come early,’ he remarked, ‘to get the good seats.’

Alleyn grinned, replaced his chair in the hall and picked up a crumpled piece of damp paper. It was one of last night’s programmes. He read it through with interest, put it in his pocket and went down into the courtyard.

‘It rained in the night, didn’t it, Carey?’

‘Mortal hard. Started soon after the fatality. I covered up the stone and place where he lay, but that was the best we could do.’

‘And with a team of Morris men, if that’s what you call them, galumphing like baby elephants over the terrain there wouldn’t be much hope anyway. Let’s have a look, shall we, Obby?’

The sergeant removed the inverted box from the top of the dolmen. Alleyn examined the surface of the stone.

‘Visible prints where Ernie stood on it,’ he said. ‘Rubber soles. It had a thin coat of rime, I should think, at the time. Hallo! What’s this, Carey?’

He pointed a long finger at a small darkness in the grain of the stone. ‘Notice it? What is it?’

Before Carey could answer there was a vigorous tapping on the drawing-room window. Alleyn turned in time to see it being opened by Dulcie evidently under orders from her great-aunt, who, from within, leant forward in her chair, shouted: ‘If you want to know what that is, it’s blood,’ and leant back again.

‘How do you know?’ Alleyn shouted in return. He had decided that his only hope with Dame Alice was to meet her on her own ground. ‘What blood?’

‘Goose’s. One of mine. Head cut off yesterday afternoon and left on the stone.’

‘Good lord!’

‘You may well say so. Guess who did it.’

‘Ernie?’ Alleyn asked involuntarily.

‘How d’yer know?’

‘I guessed. Dame Alice, where’s the body?’

‘In the pot.’

‘Damn!’

‘Why?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Shut the window, Dulcie.’

Before Dulcie had succeeded in doing so, they heard Dame Alice say: ‘Ask that man to dinner. He’s got brains.’

‘You’ve made a hit, Mr Alleyn,’ said Fox.

Carey said: ‘My oath!’

‘Did you know about this decapitated bird?’

‘First I heard of it. It’ll be one of that gang up on the hill there.’

‘Near the bulls?’ Fox asked sombrely.

‘That’s right. You want to watch them geese, Mr Fox,’ the sergeant said, ‘they so savage as lions and tricksy as snakes. I’ve been minded myself, off and on this morning, to slaughter one and all.’

‘I wonder,’ Alleyn said, ‘if it was Ernie. Get a shot of the whole dolmen, will you, Thompson, and some details of the top surface.’

Sergeant Thompson moved in with his camera and Alleyn walked round to the far side of the dolmen.

‘What,’ he asked, ‘are these black stains all over the place? Tar?’

‘That’s right, sir,’ Obby said, ‘off of old “Crack’s” skirts.’

Carey explained. ‘Good lord!’ Alleyn said mildly and turned to the area behind the dolmen.

The upturned boxes that they had used to cover the ground here were bigger. Alleyn and Fox lifted them carefully and stood away from the exposed area. It was a shallow depression into which had collected a certain amount of the fine gravel that had originally been spread over the courtyard. The depression lay at right angles to the dolmen. It was six feet long and shelved up to the level of the surrounding area. At the farthest end of the dolmen there was a dark viscous patch, about four inches in diameter, overlying a little drift of gravel. A further patch, larger, lay about a foot from it, nearer the dolmen and still in the hollow.

‘You know, Carey,’ Alleyn said under his breath and out of the sergeant’s hearing, ‘he should never have been moved: never.’

Carey, scarlet-faced, said loudly: ‘I know’s well as the next man, sir, the remains didn’t ought to have been shifted. But shifted they were before us chaps could raise a finger to stop it. Parson comes in and says, “it’s not decent as it is,” and, with ’is own hands, Mr Ralph assisting, takes off mask and lays out the pieces tidy-like while Obby, here, and I were still ordering back the crowd.’

‘You were here too, Sergeant?’

‘Oh, ya-as, Mr Alleyn. All through.’

‘And seeing, in a manner of speaking, the damage was done and rain setting in, we put the remains into his own car, which is an old station wagon. Simmy-Dick and Mr Stayne gave us a hand. We took them back to the forge. They’re in his lean-to coach-house, Mr Alleyn, locked up proper with a police seal on the door and the only other constable in five mile on duty beside it.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Alleyn said. ‘All right. Now, tell me, Carey, you did actually see how it was before the parson tidied things up, didn’t you?’

‘I did, then, and not likely to forget it.’