Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 10: Last Ditch, Black As He’s Painted, Grave Mistake. Ngaio Marsh
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an introductory phrase.
A single deep sustained note of extraordinary strength and beauty floated from the singer.
While it still hung on the air a sound like that of a whiplash cracked out and somewhere in the house a woman screamed and screamed and screamed.
The light in the pavilion went out.
What followed was like the outbreak of a violent storm: a confusion of voices, of isolated screams, less insistent than the continuous one, of shouted orders, of chairs overturned, of something or someone falling into water. Of Alleyn’s hand on Troy’s shoulder. Then of his voice: ‘Don’t move, Troy. Stay there.’ And then, unmistakably, The Boomer’s great voice roaring out something in his own tongue and Alleyn saying: ‘No, you don’t. No!’ Of a short guttural cry near at hand and a thud. And then from many voices like the king and courtiers in the play: ‘Lights! Lights! Lights!’
They came up, first in the ballroom and then overhead in the garden. They revealed some of the guests still seated on either side of the lake but many on their feet talking confusedly. They revealed also the great singer, motionless, still in his spotlight and a number of men who emerged purposefully from several directions, some striding up to the pavilion and some into the house.
And in the pavilion itself men with their backs to Troy shutting her in, crowding together and hiding her husband from her. Women making intermittent exclamations in the background.
She heard her brother-in-law’s voice raised in conventional admonition: ‘Don’t panic, anybody. Keep calm. No need to panic,’ and even in her confusion thought that however admirable the advice, he did unfortunately sound ridiculous.
His instructions were in effect repeated, not at all ridiculously, by a large powerful man who appeared beside the singer.
‘Keep quiet, and stay where you are, ladies and gentlemen, if you please,’ said this person, and Troy at once recognized The Yard manner.
The screaming woman had moved away somewhere inside the house. Her cries had broken down into hysterical and incomprehensible speech. They became more distant and were finally subdued.
And now, the large purposeful man came into the pavilion. The men who had blocked Troy’s view backed away and she saw that they had all been looking at it.
A prone figure, face down, arms spread, dressed in a flamboyant uniform, split down the back by a plumed spear. The sky blue tunic had a glistening patch round the place of entry. The plume, where it touched the split, was red.
Alleyn was kneeling by the figure.
The large purposeful man moved in front of her and shut off this picture. She heard Alleyn’s voice: ‘Better clear the place.’ After a moment he was beside her, holding her arm and turning her away. ‘All right?’ he said. ‘Yes,’ she nodded and found herself being shepherded out of the pavilion with the other guests.
When they had gone Alleyn returned to the spiked figure and again knelt beside it.
He looked up at his colleague and slightly shook his head.
Superintendent Gibson muttered, ‘They’ve done it!’
‘Not precisely,’ Alleyn said. He stood up and at once the group of men moved further back. And there was The Boomer, bolt upright in the chair that was not quite a throne, breathing deeply and looking straight before him.
‘It’s the Ambassador,’ Alleyn said.
The handling of the affair at the Ng’ombwanan Embassy was to become a classic in the annals of police procedure. Gibson, under the hard drive of a muffled fury, and with Alleyn’s co-operation, had, within minutes, transformed the scene into one that resembled a sort of high-toned drafting-yard. The speed with which this was accomplished was remarkable.
The guests, marshalled into the ballroom, were, as Gibson afterwards put it, ‘processed’ through the dining-room. There they were shepherded up to a trestle table upon which the elaborate confections of Costard et Cie had been shoved aside to make room for six officers, summoned from Scotland Yard. These men sat with copies of the guest-list before them and with regulation tact checked off names and addresses.
Most of the guests were then encouraged to leave by a side door, a general signal having been sent out for their transport. A small group were asked, very civilly, to remain.
As Troy approached the table she saw that among the Yard officers Inspector Fox, Alleyn’s constant associate, sat at the end of the row, his left ear intermittently tickled by the tail of an elaborately presented cold pheasant. When he looked over the top of his elderly spectacles and saw her, he was momentarily transfixed. She leant down. ‘Yes, Br’er Fox, me,’ she murmured, ‘Mrs R. Alleyn, 48 Regency Close, SW3.’
‘Fancy!’ said Mr Fox to his list. ‘What about getting home?’ he mumbled. ‘All right?’
‘Perfectly. Hired car. Someone’s ringing them. Rory’s fixed it.’
Mr Fox ticked off the name, ‘Thank you, madam,’ he said aloud. ‘We won’t keep you,’ and so Troy went home, and not until she got there was she to realize how very churned up she had become.
The curtained pavilion had been closed and police constables posted outside. It was lit inside and glowed like some scarlet and white striped bauble in the dark garden. Distorted shadows moved, swelled and vanished across its walls. Specialists were busy within.
In a small room normally used by the controller of the household as an office, Alleyn and Gibson attempted to get some sort of sense out of Mrs Cockburn-Montfort.
She had left off screaming but had the air of being liable to start up again at the least provocation. Her face was streaked with mascara, her mouth hung open and she pulled incessantly at her lower lip. Beside her stood her husband, the Colonel, holding, incongruously, a bottle of smelling salts.
Three women in lavender dresses with caps and stylish aprons sat in a row against the wall as if waiting to make an entrance in unison for some soubrettish turn. The largest of them was a police sergeant.
Behind the desk a male uniformed sergeant took notes and upon it sat Alleyn, facing Mrs Cockburn-Montfort. Gibson stood to one side, holding on to the lower half of his face as if it was his temper and had to be stifled.
Alleyn said: ‘Mrs Cockburn-Montfort, we are all very sorry indeed to badger you like this but it really is a most urgent matter. Now. I’m going to repeat, as well as I can, what I think you have been telling us and if I go wrong please, please stop me and say so. Will you?’
‘Come on, Chrissy old girl,’ urged her husband. ‘Stiff upper lip. It’s all over now. Here!’ He offered the smelling salts but was flapped away.
‘You,’ Alleyn said, ‘were in the ladies’ cloakroom. You had gone there during the general exodus of the guests from the ballroom and were to rejoin your husband for the concert in the garden. There were no other guests in the cloakroom but these ladies, the cloakroom attendants, were there? Right? Good. Now. You had had occasion to use one of the four lavatories, the second from the left. You were still there when the lights went out. So far, then, have we got it right?’
She nodded rolling her gaze from Alleyn to her husband.
‘Now the next bit. As clearly as you can, won’t you? What happened immediately after the lights went out?’
‘I couldn’t think what had happened. I mean why? I’ve told you. I really do think,’ said Mrs Cockburn-Montfort squeezing out her voice like toothpaste, ‘that I might be let off. I’ve been hideously shocked, I thought I was going to be killed. Truly. Hughie –?’
‘Pull