Chapter XV

Love Interest

i

Alleyn had expected that Decima would hedge, rage, or possibly pretend to misunderstand him. Her sudden capitulation took him by surprise and he was obliged to make an embarrassingly quick decision. He plumped for comparative frankness.

“We expect,” he said, “a report on his fingerprints. When that comes through, we shall have official confirmation of a record that we suspected from the first and of which we are now certain.”

“And you immediately put two and two together and make an absurdity.”

“What sort of absurdity?”

“You will say that because he didn’t come forward and announce ‘I’m a man with a police record,’ he’s a murderer. Can’t you see how he felt? Have you the faintest notion what it’s like for a man who’s been in prison to try to get back, to try to earn a miserable pittance? Have you ever thought about it at all or wondered for two seconds what becomes of the people you send to jail? To their minds? I know you look after their bodies with the most intolerable solicitude. You are there always. Every employer is warned. There is no escape. It would be better, upon my honour, I believe it would be better, to hang them outright than — than to tear their wings off and let them go crawling out into the sun.”

“That’s a horrible analogy,” said Alleyn, “and a false one.”

“It’s a true analogy. Can’t you see why Legge was so frightened? He’s only just stopped having to report. Only now has he got his thin freedom. He thought, poor wretch, that we wouldn’t keep him on if we knew he’d been to jail. Leave him alone! Leave him alone!”

“How long have you known this about him?” asked Alleyn.

She stood up abruptly, her palm against her forehead as though her head ached.

“Oh, for some time.”

“He confided in you? When?”

“When he got the job,” said Decima flatly. Alleyn did not believe her, but he said politely —

“That was very straightforward, wasn’t it?” And as she did not answer he added: “Do you know why he went to prison?”

“No. I don’t want to know. Don’t tell me. He’s wiped it out, God knows, poor thing. Don’t tell me.”

Alleyn reflected, with a certain amount of amusement, that it was as well she didn’t want to know what Legge’s offence had been. Some image of this thought may have appeared in his face. He saw Decima look sharply at him and he said hurriedly: “All this is by the way. What I really want to ask you is whether, on the morning you encountered Mr. Watchman by the furze-bush, you were alone with him all the time.”

He saw that now she was frightened for herself. Her eyes widened, and she turned extremely pale.

“Yes. At least — I—no. Not at the end. I rather think Norman Cubitt and Sebastian Parish came up.”

“You rather think?”

“They did come up. I remember now. They did.”

“And yet,” said Alleyn, “when I asked them if they saw Watchman that morning, they said definitely that they did not.”

“They must have forgotten.”

“Please! You can’t think I’ll believe that. They must have been over every word that was spoken by Watchman during the last hours of his life. They have told me as much. Why, they must have walked back to the inn with him. How could they forget?”

Decima said: “They didn’t forget.”

“No?”

“It was for me. They are being little gents.”

Alleyn waited.

“Well,” she said, “I won’t have it. I won’t have their chivalry. If you must know, they surprised their friend in a spirited attempt upon my modesty. I wasn’t pleased and I was telling him precisely what I thought of him. I suppose they were afraid you would transfer your attentions from Bob Legge to me.”

“Possibly,” agreed Alleyn. “They seem to think I am a sort of investigating chameleon.”

“I imagine,” said Decima in a high voice, “that because I didn’t relish Mr. Watchman’s embraces and told him so it doesn’t follow that I set to work and murdered him.”

“It’s not a strikingly good working hypothesis. I’m sorry to labour this point but we’ve no sense of decency in the force. Had he shown signs of these tricks before?”

The clear pallor of Decima’s face was again flooded with red. Alleyn thought: “Good Lord, she’s an attractive creature, I wonder what the devil she’s like.” He saw, with discomfort, that she could not look at him. Fox made an uneasy noise in his throat and stared over the downs. Alleyn waited. At last Decima raised her eyes.

“He was like that,” she murmured.

Alleyn now saw a sort of furtiveness in Decima. She was no longer tense, her pose had changed and she offered him no challenge,

“I suppose he couldn’t help it,” she said, and then with a strange look from Alleyn to Fox, she added: “It’s nothing. It doesn’t mean anything. You needn’t think ill of him. I was all right.”

In half a minute she had changed. The educational amenities, provided by that superior mother, had fallen away from her. She had turned into a rustic beauty, conscious of her power of provocation. The rumoured engagement to Will Pomeroy no longer seemed ridiculous. And as if she had followed Alleyn’s thought, she said: “I’d be very glad if you wouldn’t say anything of this to Will Pomeroy. He knows nothing about it. He wouldn’t understand.”

“I’ll sheer off it if it can be done. It was not the first time you’d had difficulty with Watchman?”

She paused and then said: “We hadn’t actually— come to blows before.”

“Blows? Literally?”

“I’m afraid so.”

She stood up. Alleyn thought she mustered her self-assurance. When she spoke again it was in a different key, ironically and with composure.

“Luke,” she said, “was amorous by habit. No doubt it was not the first time he’d miscalculated. He wasn’t in the least disconcerted. He — wasn’t in the least in love with me.”

“No?”

“It’s merely a squalid little incident which I had rather hoped to forget. It was, I suppose, very magnificent of Seb and Norman to lie about it, but the gesture was too big for the theme.”

“Now she’s being grand at me,” thought Alleyn. “We are back in St. Margaret’s Hall.”

He said: “And Watchman had never made himself objectionable before that morning?”

“I did not usually find him particularly objectionable.”

“I intended,” said Alleyn, “to ask you if he had ever made love to you before?”

“I have told you he wasn’t in the least in love with me.”

“I’m unlucky in my choice of words, I see. Had he ever kissed you, Miss Moore?”

“This is very tedious,” said Decima. “I have tried to explain that my acquaintance with Luke Watchman was of no interest or significance to either of us, or, if you will believe me, to you.”

“Then why,” asked Alleyn mildly, “don’t you give me an answer and have done with it?”

“Very well,” said Decima breathlessly. “You can have your answer. I meant nothing to him and he meant less to me. Until last Friday he’d never been anything but the vaguest acquaintance.” She turned on Fox. “Write it down. You’ll get no other answer. Write it down.”

“Thank you, Miss,” said Fox civilly, “I don’t think I’ve missed anything. I’ve got it down.”

ii

“Well, have you finished?” demanded Decima, who had succeeded in working herself up into a satisfactory temper. “Is there anything else you want to know? Do you want a list in alphabetical order of my encounters with any other little Luke Watchmans who have come my way?”

“No,” said Alleyn. “No. We limit our impertinences to the police code. Our other questions are, I hope, less offensive. They concern the brandy you gave Mr. Watchman, the glass into which you poured it, and the bottle from which it came.”

“All right. What about them?”

“May we have your account of that particular phase of the business?”

“I told Oates and I told the coroner. Someone suggested brandy. I looked round and saw Luke’s glass on the table, between the settle where he lay and the dart board. There wasn’t any brandy left in it. I saw the bottle on the bar. I was very quick about it. I got it and poured some into the glass. I didn’t put anything but brandy in the glass. I can’t prove I didn’t, but I didn’t.”