Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 10: Last Ditch, Black As He’s Painted, Grave Mistake. Ngaio Marsh
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that.’
‘About the ones that get together to bellyache in exile: you don’t, I suppose, know of a fish medallion lot?’
‘Hah!’ said Gibson disgustedly.
‘And Mr Sheridan doesn’t appear on the guest list. What about a Colonel and Mrs Montfort? They were in Sheridan’s flat that evening.’
‘Here. Let’s see.’
‘No,’ Alleyn said, consulting the list. ‘No Montforts under the M’s.’
‘Wait a sec. I knew there was something. Look here. Under C. “Lt-Col. Cockburn-Montfort, Barset Light Infantry (retd).” What a name. Cockburn.’
‘Isn’t it usually pronounced Coburn?’ Alleyn mildly suggested. ‘Anything about him?’
‘Info. Here we are. “Organized Ng’ombwanan army. Stationed there from 1960 until Independence in 1971 when present government assumed complete control!”’
‘Well,’ Alleyn said after a longish pause, ‘it still doesn’t have to amount to anything. No doubt ex-Ng’ombwanan colonials tend to flock together like ex-Anglo-Indians. There may be a little clutch of them in the Capricorns all belly-aching cosily together. What about the staff? The non-Ng’ombwanans, I mean.’
‘We’re nothing if not thorough. Every last one’s been accounted for. Want to look?’
He produced a second list. ‘It shows the Costard employees together. Regulars first, extras afterwards. Clean as whistles, the lot of them.’
‘This one?’
Gibson followed Alleyn’s long index finger and read under his breath, ‘“Employed by Costards as extra waiter over period of ten years. In regular employment as domestic servant. Recent position: eight years. Excellent references. Present employment –” Hullo, ’ullo.’
‘Yes?’
‘“Present employment at 1 Capricorn Walk, SW3.”’
‘We seem,’ Alleyn said, ‘to be amassing quite a little clutch of coincidences, don’t we?’
II
‘It’s not often,’ Alleyn said to his wife, ‘that we set ourselves up in this rig, is it?’
‘You look as if you did it as a matter of course every night. Like the jokes about Empire builders in the jungle. When there was an Empire. Orders and decorations to boot.’
‘What does one mean exactly, by “to boot”?’
‘You tell me, darling, you’re the purist.’
‘I was when I courted my wife.’
Troy, in her green gown, sat on her bed and pulled on her long gloves. ‘It’s worked out all right,’ she said. ‘Us. Wouldn’t you say?’
‘I would say.’
‘What a bit of luck for us.’
‘All of that.’
He buttoned up her gloves for her. ‘You look lovely,’ he said. ‘Shall we go?’
‘Is our svelte hired limousine at the door?’
‘It is.’
‘Whoops, then, hark chivvy away.’
Palace Park Gardens had been closed to general traffic by the police so the usual crowd of onlookers was not outside the Ng’ombwanan Embassy. The steps were red-carpeted, a flood of light and strains of blameless and dated melodies, streamed through the great open doorway. A galaxy of liveried men, black and white, opened car doors and slammed them again.
‘Oh, Lord. I’ve forgotten the damn card!’ Troy exclaimed.
‘I’ve got it. Here we go.’
The cards, Alleyn saw, were being given a pretty hard look by the men who received them and were handed on to other men seated unobtrusively at tables. He was amused to see, hovering in the background, Superintendent Gibson in tails and a white tie, looking a little as if he might be an Old Dominion Plenipotentiary.
Those guests wishing for the cloakrooms turned off to the right and left and on re-entering the hall were martialled back to the end of the double file of Ng’ombwanan guards where they gave their names to a superb black major-domo who roared them out with all the resonant assurance of a war drum.
Troy and Alleyn had no trappings to shed and passed directly into the channel of approach.
And there, at the far end of the flight of steps leading to the great saloon, was The Boomer himself, in great state, backed by his spear-carrier and wearing a uniform that might have been inspired by the Napoleonic Old Guard upon whom had been lightly laid the restraining hand of Sandhurst.
Troy muttered: ‘He’s wonderful. Gosh, he’s glorious!’
She’d like to paint him, thought Alleyn.
The patiently anxious Ambassador, similarly if less gorgeously uniformed, was stationed on The Boomer’s right. Their personal staff stood about in magnificent attitudes behind them.
‘Mis-tar and Mrs Roderick Alleyn.’
That huge and beguiling smile opened and illuminated The Boomer’s face. He said loudly: ‘No need for an introduction here,’ and took Alleyn’s hands in both his gloved paws.
‘And this is the famous wife!’ he resonantly proclaimed. ‘I am so glad. We meet later. I have a favour to ask. Yes?’
The Alleyns moved on, conscious of being the object of a certain amount of covert attention.
‘Rory?’
‘Yes, I know. Extra special, isn’t he?’
‘Whew!’
‘What?’
‘“Whew.” Incredulous whistle.’
‘Difficult, in competition with Gilbert and Sullivan.’
They had passed into the great saloon. In the minstrels’ gallery instrumentalists, inconspicuously augmented by a clutch of Gibson’s silent henchmen, were discussing The Gondoliers.
‘When everyone is somebodee
Then no one’s anybody,’
they brightly and almost inaudibly chirped.
Trays with champagne were circulated. Jokes about constabular boots and ill-fitting liveries were not appropriate. Among the white servants it was impossible to single out Fred Gibson’s men.
How to diagnose the smell of a grand assembly? Beyond the luxurious complexity of cosmetics, scent, flowers, hairdressers’ lotions, remote foods and alcohol, was there something else, something peculiar to this particular occasion? Somewhere in these rooms were they burning that stuff-what was it? – sandarac? That was it. Alleyn had last smelt it in the Presidential palace in Ng’ombwana. That and the indefinably alien scent of persons of a different colour. The curtains were drawn across the french windows but the great room was not overheated as yet. People moved about it like well-directed extras in the central scene of some feature film.
They encountered acquaintances: the subject of a portrait Troy had painted some years ago for the Royal Commonwealth Society; Alleyn’s great white chief and his wife; someone he knew in the Foreign Office and, unexpectedly, his brother, Sir George Alleyn: tall, handsome, ambassadorial and entirely predictable. Troy didn’t really mind her brother-in-law but Alleyn always found him a bit of an ass.
‘Good Lord!’ said Sir George. ‘Rory!’
‘George.’
‘And Troy, my dear. Looking too lovely. Charming! Charming! And what, may one ask, are you doing, Rory, in this galère?’