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

When, in response to a telephone call taken by Troy, Alleyn called on the following afternoon at No. 1, Capricorn Walk, he was received on the front steps by Lucy Lockett, the cat.

She sat, with a proprietory air on the top step and had a good look at him.

‘I know who you are,’ said Alleyn. ‘Good afternoon, my dear.’ He extended his forefinger. Lucy rose, stretched elaborately, yawned and advanced her whiskers to within an inch of the fingertip. Mr Whipplestone looked out of his open bow window.

‘There you are,’ he said. ‘I won’t be a second.’

Lucy sprang adroitly from the steps to the window-sill and thence into the bosom of her master, who presently opened the front door, still carrying her.

‘Come in, do, do,’ he said. ‘We’ve been expecting you.’

‘What a nice house you’ve got.’

‘Do you think so? I must say I like it.’

‘You hadn’t far to walk last night – or this morning.’

‘No. Do you know, Alleyn, when I was coming home at whatever eldritch hour, I caught myself wondering – well, almost wondering – if the whole affair could have been some sort of hallucination. Rather like that dodging-about-in-time nonsense they do in science fiction plays: as if it had happened off the normal temporal plane. The whole thing – so very – ah – off beat. Wasn’t it?’

‘Was and is,’ Alleyn agreed.

He found Mr Whipplestone himself rather off-beat as he sat primly on his desk chair in his perfectly tailored suit, with his Trumper-style hair-cut, his discreet necktie, his elegant cuff-links, his eyeglass and, pounding away at his impeccable waistcoat, his little black cat.

‘About Chubb,’ he said anxiously, ‘I’m awfully bothered about Chubb. You see, I don’t know – and he hasn’t said anything – and I must say Mrs Chubb looks too ghastly for words.’

‘He hasn’t told you the black waiter attacked him?’

‘He hasn’t told me anything. I felt it was not advisable for me to make any approach.’

‘What’s your opinion of Chubb? What sort of impression have you formed, by and large, since the Chubbs have been looking after you?’

Mr Whipplestone had some difficulty in expressing himself but it emerged that from his point of view the Chubbs were as near perfection as made no difference. In fact, Mr Whipplestone said wistfully, one had thought they no longer existed except perhaps in the employment of millionaires.

‘I’ve sometime wondered if they were too good to be true. Ominous foreboding!’ he said.

‘Didn’t you say Chubb seemed to have taken a scunner on blacks.’

‘Well, yes. I rather fancied so. It was when I looked over this house. We were in the room upstairs and – Oh, Lord, it was the poor old boy himself – the Ambassador – walked down the street. The Chubbs were near the window and saw him. It was nothing, really. They stared. My dear Alleyn, you won’t take from this any grotesque suggestion that Chubb – well, no, of course you won’t.’

‘I only thought a prejudice of that sort might colour any statement he offered. He certainly made no bones about his dislike when we talked to him.’

‘Not surprising when you tell me one of them had half-strangled him!’

‘He told me that.’

‘Don’t you believe him?’

‘I don’t know,’ Alleyn said with an odd twist in his voice. ‘Perhaps. But with misgivings.’

‘Surely,’ Mr Whipplestone said, ‘it can be a very straight-forward affair, after all. For whatever motive, the Ng’ombwanan guard and the waiter conspire to murder either the Ambassador or the President. At the crucial moment, the servant finds Chubb in the way and doubles him up, leaving the guard free to commit the crime. The guard kills the Ambassador. To the President he confesses himself to be what my poor Chubb calls clobbered.’

‘Yes,’ Alleyn said. ‘As neat as a new pin – almost.’

‘So you see – you see!’ cried Mr Whipplestone, stroking the cat.

‘And the pistol shot?’

‘Part of the conspiracy – I don’t know – yes. That awful lady says it was a black person, doesn’t she? Well, then!’

‘Whoever it was probably fired a blank.’

‘Indeed? There you are, then. A diversion. A red-herring calculated to attract the attention of all of you away from the pavilion and to bring the President to his feet.’

‘As I said,’ Alleyn conceded. ‘New pins aren’t in it.’

‘Then – why –?’

‘My dear man, I don’t know. I promise you, I don’t know. It’s by the pricking of my thumbs or some other intimation not admissible in the police manuals. It just all seems to me to be a bit too much of a good thing. Like those fish in aspic that ocean-going cruisers display in the tropics and never serve.’

‘Oh, come!’

‘Still, there are more tenable queries to be raised. Item. Mrs C-M’s black thug with a stocking over his head. Seen dimly against the loo window, unseen during the assault in the dressing-room. Rushed out of the “Ladies” into the entrance hall – there’s no other exit – where there were four of Gibson’s men, one of them hard by the door. They all had torches. None of them got any impression of anybody emerging precipitately into the hall. Incidentally there was another SB man near the master-switch in the rear passage, who killed the blackout about ten seconds after he heard the pistol shot. In those ten seconds the murder was done.’

‘Well?’

‘Well, our girl-friend has it that after the shot her assailant, having chucked her out of the loo, emerged still in the blackout, kicked her about a bit and then bolted, leaving her prone and still in the dark. And then, she says, the loo-ladies, including our blushing sergeant, emerged and fell about all over her. Still in the dark. The loo-ladies, on the other hand, maintain they erupted into the anteroom immediately after the shot.’

‘They were confused, no doubt.’

‘The sergeant wasn’t.’

‘Drat!’ said Mr Whipplestone. ‘What’s all this got to do with my wretched Chubb?’

‘I’ve not the remotest idea. But it tempts me to suspect that when it comes to equivocation your black candidates have nothing on Mrs Cockburn-Montfort.’

Mr Whipplestone thought this over. Lucy tapped his chin with her paw and then fell asleep.

‘Do I take it,’ he asked at last, ‘that you think Mrs C-M lied extensively about the black man with the stocking over his head?’

‘I think she invented him.’

‘Then who the devil fired the shot?’

‘Oh,’ Alleyn said. ‘No difficulty with that one, I fancy. She did.’

II

Mr Whipplestone was much taken aback by this pronouncement. He gave himself time to digest its implications. He detached his cat and placed her on the floor where, with an affronted and ostentatious air, she set about cleaning herself. He brushed his waistcoat, crossed his legs, joined his finger-tips and finally said: ‘How very intriguing.’ After a further pause he asked Alleyn if he had any more specific material to support his startling view of Mrs Cockburn-Montfort’s activities.