Final Curtain (22 page)

‘I'm afraid so. Poor Sir Henry, I wish it had. Ah, well,' said Troy, dropping the newspaper, ‘that's the end of the Ancreds as far as I'm concerned.'

‘You never know,' Alleyn said, vaguely. Then, suddenly impatient of the Ancreds and of anything that prolonged beyond this moment the first tentative phase of their reunion, he stretched out his hands towards Troy.

This story is concerned with Alleyn and Troy's reunion only in so far as it affected his attitude towards her account of the Ancreds. If he had heard it at any other time it is possible that, however unwillingly, he might have dwelt longer on its peculiarities. As it was, he welcomed it as a kind of interlude between their first meeting and its consummation, and then dismissed it from his conscious thoughts.

They had three days together, broken only by a somewhat prolonged interview between Alleyn and his chief at the Special Branch. He was to resume, for the time being at least, his normal job at the Yard. On the Thursday morning when Troy returned to her job, he walked part of the way with her, watched her turn off, and with an odd feeling of anxiety, himself set out for the familiar room and the old associates.

It was pleasant, after all, to cross that barren back hall, smelling of linoleum and coal, to revisit an undistinguished office where the superintendent of CI, against a background of crossed swords, commemorative photographs and a horseshoe, greeted him with unmistakable satisfaction. It was oddly pleasant to sit again at his old desk in the chief inspectors' room and contemplate the formidable task of taking up the threads of routine.

He had looked forward to a preliminary gossip with Fox, but Fox had gone out on a job somewhere in the country and would not be back before the evening. In the meantime here was an old acquaintance of Alleyn's, one Squinty Donovan, who, having survived two courts-martial, six months' confinement in Broadmoor, and a near-miss from a flying bomb, had left unmistakable signs of his ingenuity upon a lock-up antique shop in Beachamp Place, Chelsea. Alleyn set in motion the elaborate police machinery by which Squinty might be hunted home to a receiver. He then turned again to his file.

There was nothing exciting; a series of routine jobs. This pleased him. There had been enough of excursions and alarums, the Lord knew, in his three years' hunting for the Special Branch. He had wanted his return to CI to be uneventful.

Presently Nigel Bathgate rang up. ‘I say,' he said, ‘has Troy seen about the Will?'

‘Whose Will?'

‘Old Ancred's. She's told you about the Ancreds, of course.'

‘Of course.'

‘It's in this morning's
Times
. Have a look at it. It'll rock them considerably.'

‘What's he done?' Alleyn asked. But for some reason he was unwilling to hear more about the Ancreds.

He heard Nigel chuckling. ‘Well, out with it,' he said. ‘What's he done?'

‘Handed them the works.'

‘In what way?'

‘Left the whole caboosh to the Orrincourt.'

Nigel's statement was an over-simplification of the facts, as Alleyn discovered when, still with that sense of reluctance, he looked up the Will. Sir Henry had cut Cedric down to the bare bones of the entail, and had left a legacy of one thousand pounds to Millamant, to each of his children and to Dr Withers. The residue he had willed to Sonia Orrincourt.

‘But—what about the dinner speech and the other Will!' Troy cried when he showed her the evening paper. ‘Was that just a complete have, do you suppose? If so, Mr Rattisbon must have known. Or—Rory,' she said, ‘I believe it was the flying cow that did it! I believe he was so utterly fed up with his family he marched upstairs, sent for Mr Rattisbon and made a new Will there and then.'

‘But didn't he think the
enfant terrible
had done the flying cow? Why take it out of the whole family?'

‘Thomas or somebody may have gone up and told him about Panty's alibi. He wouldn't know who to suspect, and would end up by damning the whole crew.'

‘Not Miss Orrincourt, however.'

‘She'd see to that,' said Troy with conviction.

She was, he saw, immensely taken up with this news, and at intervals during the evening returned to the Ancreds and their fresh dilemma. ‘What will Cedric do, can you imagine? Probably the entail is hopelessly below the cost of keeping up Katzenjammer Castle. That's what he called it, you know. Perhaps he'll give it to the Nation. Then they could hang my portrait in its alloted place, chequered all over with coloured lights and everybody would be satisfied.
How
the Orrincourt will gloat.'

Troy's voice faded on a note of uncertainty. Alleyn saw her hands move nervously together. She caught his eye and turned away. ‘Let's not talk about the poor Ancreds,' she said.

‘What are you munching over in the back of your mind?' he asked uneasily.

‘It's nothing,' she said quickly. He waited, and after a moment she came to him. ‘It's only that I'd like you to tell me: Suppose you'd heard from somebody else, or read, about the Ancreds and all the unaccountable odds and ends—what would you think? I mean—' Troy frowned and looked at her clasped hands. ‘Doesn't it sound rather horribly like the beginning of a chapter in
Famous Trials
?'

‘Are you really worried about this?' he said after a pause.

‘Oddly enough,' said Troy, ‘I am.'

Alleyn got up and stood with his back turned to her. When he spoke again his voice had changed.

‘Well,' he said, ‘we'd better tackle it, then.'

‘What's the matter?' he heard Troy saying doubtfully. ‘What's happened?'

‘Something quite ridiculous and we'll get rid of it. A fetish I nurse. I've never fancied coming home and having a nice cosy chat about the current homicide with my wife. I've never talked about such cases when they did crop up.'

‘I wouldn't have minded, Rory.'

‘It's a kind of fastidiousness. No, that's praising it. It's illogical and indefensible. If my job's not fit for you, it shouldn't be my job.'

‘You're being too fancy. I've got over my squeamishness.'

‘I didn't want you to get over it,' he said. ‘I tell you I'm a fool about this.'

She said the phrase he had hoped to hear. ‘Then do you think there's something in it—about the Ancreds?'

‘Blast the Ancreds! Here, this won't do. Come on, let's tackle the thing and scotch it. You're thinking like this, aren't you? There's a book about embalming in their ghastly drawing-room. It stresses the use of arsenic. Old Ancred went about bragging that he was going to have himself mummified. Any one might have read the book. Sonia Orrincourt was seen doing so. Arsenic, used for rat poison, disappeared in the house. Old Ancred died immediately after altering his Will in the Orrincourt's favour. There wasn't an autopsy. If one were made now, the presence of arsenic would be accounted for by the embalming. That's the thing, isn't it?'

‘Yes,' said Troy, ‘that's it.'

‘And you've been wondering whether the practical jokes and all the rest of the fun and games can be fitted in?'

‘It sounds less possible as you say it.'

‘Good!' he said quickly turning to her. ‘That's better. Come on, then. You've wondered if the practical jokes were organized by the Orrincourt to put the old man off his favourite grandchild?'

‘Yes. Or by Cedric, with the same motive. You see, Panty was hot favourite before the Raspberry and Flying Cow Period set in.'

‘Yes. So, in short, you're wondering if one of the Ancreds, particularly Cedric, or Miss Orrincourt, murdered old Ancred, having previously, in effect, hamstrung the favourite.'

‘This is like talking about a nightmare. It leaves off being horrid and turns silly.'

‘All the better,' he said vigorously. ‘All right. Now, if the lost arsenic was the lethal weapon, the murder was planned long before the party. You understood Millamant to say it had been missing for some time?'

‘Yes. Unless—'

‘Unless Millamant herself is a murderess and was doing an elaborate cover-up.'

‘Because I said one didn't know what Millamant thought about it, it doesn't follow that she thought about murder.'

‘Of course it doesn't, bless your heart. Now, if any one of the Ancreds murdered Sir Henry, it was on the strength of the announcement made at the dinner-party and without any knowledge of the effective Will he made that night. If he made it that night.'

‘Unless one of the legatees thought they'd been cheated and did it out of pure fury.'

‘Or Fenella and Paul, who got nothing? Yes. There's that.'

‘Fenella and Paul,' said Troy firmly, ‘are not like that.'

‘And if Desdemona or Thomas or Jenetta—'

‘Jenetta and Thomas are out of the question—'

‘—did it, the practical jokes don't fit in, because they weren't there for the earlier ones.'

‘Which leaves the Orrincourt, Cedric, Millamant and Pauline.'

‘I can see it's the Orrincourt and Cedric who are really bothering you.'

‘More particularly,' said Troy unhappily, ‘the Orrincourt.'

‘Well, darling, what's she like? Has she got the brains to think it up? Would she work out the idea from reading the book on embalming that arsenic would be found in the body anyway?'

‘I shouldn't have thought,' said Troy cheerfully, ‘that she'd make head or tail of the book. It was printed in very dim italics with the long “s” like an “f”. She's not at all the type to pore over literary curiosa unless she thought they were curious in the specialized sense.'

‘Feeling better?' he asked.

‘Yes, thank you. I'm thinking of other things for myself. Arsenic takes effect pretty quickly, doesn't it? And tastes beastly? He couldn't have had it at dinner, because, apart from being in a foul rage, he was still all right when he left the little theatre. And—if Sonia Orrincourt had put it in his Ovaltine, or whatever he has in his bedside Thermos, could he have sipped down enough to kill him without noticing the taste?'

‘Unlikely,' Alleyn said. Another silence fell between them. Alleyn thought: ‘I've never been able to make up my mind about telepathy. Think of something else. Is she listening to my thoughts?'

‘Rory,' said Troy. ‘It is all right, isn't it?'

The telephone rang and he was glad to answer it. Inspector Fox was speaking from the Yard.

‘Where have you been, you old devil?' said Alleyn, and his voice held that cordiality with which we greet a rescuer.

‘Good evening, Mr Alleyn,' said Fox. ‘I was wondering if it would inconvenience you and Mrs Alleyn very much if—'

‘Come along!' Alleyn interrupted. ‘Of course it won't. Troy will be delighted; won't you, darling? It's Fox.'

‘Of course I shall,' said Troy loudly. ‘Tell him to come.'

‘Very kind, I'm sure,' Fox was saying in his deliberate way. ‘Perhaps I ought to explain though. It's Yard business. You might say very unusual circumstances, really. Quite a contretemps.'

‘The accent's improving, Fox.'

‘I don't get the practice. About this business, though. In a manner of speaking, sir, I fancy you'll want to consult Mrs Alleyn. She's with you, evidently.'

‘What is it?' Troy asked quickly. ‘I can hear him. What is it?'

‘Well, Fox,' said Alleyn after a pause, ‘what is it?'

‘Concerning the late Sir Henry Ancred, sir. I'll explain when I see you. There's been an Anonymous Letter.'