“So you see,” said Fenella.

ii

When Alleyn left, Paul showed him into the hall, and, after some hesitation, asked if he might walk with him a little way. They went together, head-down against a blustering wind, along Cheyne Walk. Ragged clouds scurried across the sky, and the sounds of river traffic were blown intermittently against their chilled ears. Paul, using his stick, limped along at a round pace, and for some minutes in silence.

At last he said: “I suppose it’s true that you can’t escape your heredity.” And as Alleyn turned his head to look at him, he went on slowly: “I meant to tell you that story quite differently. Without any build-up. Fen did, too. But somehow when we got going something happened to us. Perhaps it was Aunt Jen’s opposition. Or perhaps when there’s anything like a crisis we can’t escape a sense of audience. I heard myself doing the same sort of thing over there.” He jerked his head vaguely towards the east. “The gay young officer rallying his men. It went down quite well with them, too, but it makes me feel pretty hot under the collar when I think about it now. And about the way we strutted our stuff back there at Aunt Jen’s.”

“You made your points very neatly,” said Alleyn.

“A damn’ sight too neatly.” Paul rejoined, grimly. “That’s why I did think I’d like to try and say without any flourishes that we do honestly believe that all this stuff about poison has simply been concocted by Cedric to try and upset the Will. And we think it would be a pretty poor show to let him get away with it. On all counts.”

Alleyn didn’t reply immediately, and Paul said, nervously: “I suppose it’d be quite out of order for me to ask whether you think we’re right.”

“Ethically,” said Alleyn, “yes. But I don’t think you realised the implications. Your aunt did.”

“I know, Aunt Jen’s very fastidious. It’s the dirty linen in public that she hates.”

“And with reason,” said Alleyn.

“Well, we’ll all have to lump it. But what I meant really was, were we right in our deductions?”

“I ought to return an official and ambiguous answer to that,” Alleyn said. “But I won’t. I may be wrong, but on the evidence that we’ve got up to date I should say your deductions were ingenious and almost entirely wrong.”

A sharp gust carried away the sound of his voice.

“What?” said Paul, distantly and without emphasis. “I didn’t quite hear—”

“Wrong,” Alleyn repeated, strongly. “As far as I can judge, you know, quite wrong.”

Paul stopped short, and, dipping his head to meet the wind, stared at Alleyn with an expression not of dismay, but of doubt, as if he still thought he must have misunderstood.

“But I don’t see… we thought… it all hangs together—”

“As an isolated group of facts, perhaps it does.”

They resumed their walk, and Alleyn heard him say fretfully: “I wish you’d explain.” And after another pause he peered rather anxiously at Alleyn. “Perhaps it wouldn’t do, though,” he added.

Alleyn thought for a moment, and then, taking Paul by the elbow, steered him into the shelter of a side street. “We can’t go on bawling at each other in a gale,” he said, “but I don’t see that it can do any harm to explain this much. It’s quite possible that if all this dust had not been raised after your grandfather’s death, Miss Orrincourt might still have become Lady Ancred.”

Paul’s jaw dropped. “I don’t get that.”

“You don’t?”

“Good God,” Paul roared out suddenly, “you can’t mean Cedric?”

“Sir Cedric,” said Alleyn, dryly, “is my authority. He tells me he has seriously considered marrying her.”

After a long silence Paul said slowly: “They’re as thick as thieves, of course. But I never guessed… No, it’d be too much… I’m sorry, sir, but you’re sure—?”

“Unless he invented the story.”

“To cover up his tracks,” said Paul instantly.

“Extremely elaborate and she could deny it. As a matter of fact her manner suggested some sort of understanding between them.”

Paul raised his clasped hands to his mouth and thoughtfully blew into them. “Suppose,” he said, “he suspected her, and wanted to make sure?”

“That would be an entirely different story.”

“Is that your theory, sir?”

“Theory?” Alleyn repeated vaguely. “I haven’t got a theory. I haven’t sorted things out. Mustn’t keep you standing here in the cold.” He held out his hand. Paul’s was like ice. “Good-bye,” said Alleyn.

“One minute, sir. Will you tell me this? I give you my word it’ll go no further. Was my grandfather murdered?”

“Oh, yes,” said Alleyn. “Yes. I’m afraid we may be sure of that. He was murdered.” He walked down the street, leaving Paul, still blowing on his frozen knuckles, to stare after him.

iii

The canvas walls were faintly luminous, They were laced to their poles with ropes and glowed in the darkness. Blobs of light from hurricane lanterns suspended within formed a globular pattern across the surface. One of these lanterns must have been touching the wall, for the village constable on duty outside could clearly make out shadows of wire and the precise source of light.

He glanced uneasily at the motionless figure of his companion, a police officer from London, wearing a short cape. “Bitter cold,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“Be long, d’yew reckon?”

“Can’t say.”

The constable would have enjoyed a walk. He was a moralist and a philosopher, well known in Ancreton for his pronouncements upon the conduct of politicians and for his independent views in the matter of religion. But his companion’s taciturnity, and the uncomfortable knowledge that anything he said would be audible on the other side of the canvas, put a damper on conversation. He stamped once or twice, finding reassurance in the crunch of gravel under his feet. There were noises within the enclosure: voices, soft thumps. At the far end and high above them, as if suspended in the night, and lit theatrically from below, knelt three angels. “Through the long night watches,” the constable said to himself, “may Thine angels spread their white wings above me, watching round my head.”

Within the enclosure, but, close beside him, the voice of the Chief Inspector from the Yard said: “Are we ready, Curtis?” His shadowy figure suddenly loomed up inside the canvas wall. “Quite ready,” somebody else said. “Then if I may have the key, Mr. Ancred?”

“Oh — oh — er — yes.” That was poor Mr. Thomas Ancred.

The constable listened, yet desired not to listen, to the next too-lucid train of sounds. He had heard them before, on the day of the funeral, when he came down early to have a look while his cousin, the sexton, got things fixed up. Very heavy lock. They’d had to give it a drop of oil. Seldom used. His flesh leapt on his bones as a screech rent the cold air. “Them ruddy hinges,” he thought. The blobs of light were withdrawn and the voices with them. He could still hear them, however, though now they sounded hollow. Beyond the hedge a match flared up in the dark. That would be the driver of the long black car, of course, waiting in the lane. The constable wouldn’t have minded a pipe himself.

The Chief Inspector’s voice, reflected from stone walls, said distinctly: “Get those acetylene lamps going, Bailey.”

“Yes, sir,” someone answered, so close to the constable that he jumped again. With a hissing noise, a new brilliance sprang up behind the canvas. Strange distorted shadows leapt among the trees about the cemetery.

Now came sounds to which he had looked forward with squeamish relish. A drag of wood on stone followed by the uneven scuffles of boots and heavy breathing. He cleared his throat and glanced stealthily at his companion.

The enclosure was again full of invisible men. “Straight down on the trestles. Right.” The squeak of wood and then silence.