“There you are,” interrupted Harper, “he could— sorry! Go on.”

“I know he could, Nick, but wait a bit. According to your report they all, with the exception of Miss Darragh, who had gone to bed, stayed in the private taproom until closing time. Our forty-five minutes have gone.”

“I suppose,” said Harper, “one of them might have gone out for a few minutes without being noticed.”

“Yes, and that is a point that will be urged by counsel. All we can prove here is opportunity — possibility. We can’t bring anything home. May we have the stuff you took from the rat-hole, Nick? Fox, would you get my bag? Mr. Noggins was generous with his prussic acid and there are at least three ounces of the water, if it is water. The analyst can lend us half. Let’s poach on his preserves and find out for ourselves.”

Fox opened Alleyn’s bag. From it he took two open-mouthed vessels about two inches high, two watch glasses, and a small bottle. Alleyn squinted at the bottle.

“Silver nitrate. That’s the stuff. Can you produce some warm water, Nick? Well, well I am exceeding my duty to be sure.”

Harper went out and returned with a jug of water and a photographic dish. Alleyn poured a little water into the dish, half-filled one of his tiny vessels with the fluid found in the rat-hole, and the other with acid from Abel’s bottle. He wetted the underside of the watch-glasses with nitrate solution and placed them over the vessels. He then stood the vessels, closed by the watch-glasses, in the warm water.

“Fox now says the Lord’s Prayer backwards,” he explained. “I emit a few oddments of ectoplasm and Hi Cockalorum the spell is wound up! Take a look at that, Nick.”

They stared at the dish. On the surface of the prussic acid a little spiral had risen. It became denser, it flocculated, and the watch-glass was no longer transparent but covered with an opaque whiteness.

“That’s cyanide, that was,” said Alleyn. “Now, look at the other. A blank, my lord. It’s water, Br’er Fox, it’s water. Now let’s pour them back into their respective bottles and don’t give me away to the analyst.”

“I suppose,” said Harper, as Alleyn tidied up, “I suppose this means we needn’t worry ourselves about the cupboard. The cupboard doesn’t come into the blasted affair.”

Alleyn held on the palm of his hand the three pieces of glass he had separated from the fragments of the broken brandy tumbler, and the small misshapen lumps he had found in the ashes of the fire.

“Oh yes,” he said. “Yes. We’re not home yet, not by a long march, but the cupboard still comes into the picture. Think.”

Harper looked from the pieces of glass to Alleyn’s face and back again.

“Yes,” he said slowly, “yes. But you’ll have the devil of a job to prove it.”

“I agree,” said Alleyn. “Nevertheless, Nick, I hope to prove it.”

Chapter XVII

Mr. Fox Takes Sherry

i

Parish came downstairs singing “La Donna é Mobile.” He had a pleasant baritone voice which had been half-trained in the days when he had contemplated musical comedy. He sang stylishly and one could not believe that he sang unconsciously. He swung open the door of the private tap and entered on the last flourish of that impertinent, that complacently debonair refrain.

“Good evening sir,” said Abel from behind the bar. “ ’Tis pleasant to hear you’m back to your churruping ways again.”

Parish smiled wistfully.

“Ah, Abel,” he said with a slight sigh, “it’s not as easy as it sounds; but my cousin would have been the last man to want long faces, poor dear old fellow.”

“So he would, then,” rejoined Abel heartily, “the very last.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Nark, shaking his head. Norman Cubitt looked over the top of his tankard and raised his eyebrows. Legge moved into the inglenook where Miss Darragh sat knitting.

“What’ll you take, Mr. Parish?” asked Abel.

“A Treble Extra. I need it. Hullo, Norman old man,” said Parish with a sort of brave gaiety. “How’s the work going?”

“Nicely, thank you, Seb.” Cubitt glanced at the clock. It was a quarter past seven. “I’m thinking of starting a big canvas,” he said.

“Are you? What subject?”

“Decima,” said Cubitt. He put his tankard down on the bar. “She has very kindly said she’ll sit to me.”

“How’ll you paint her?” asked Parish.

“I thought on the downs by Cary Edge. She’s got a red sweater thing. It’ll be life-size. Full length.”

“Ah, now,” exclaimed Miss Darragh from the ingle-nook, “you’ve taken my advice in the latter end. Haven’t I been at you, now, ever since I got here, to take Miss Moore for your subject? I’ve never seen a better. Sure, the picture’ll be your masterpiece, for she’s a lovely young creature.”

“But my dear chap,” objected Parish, “we’re off in a day or two. You’ll never finish it.”

“I was going to break it gently to you, Seb. If you don’t object I think I’ll stay on for a bit.”

Parish looked slightly hurt.

“That’s just as you like, of course,” he said. “Don’t ask me to stay. The place is too full of memories.”

“Besides,” said Cubitt drily, “you start rehearsals to-day week, don’t you?”

“As a matter of fact I do.” Parish raised his arms and then let them fall limply to his sides. “Work!” he said. “Back to the old grind. Ah well!” And he added with an air of martyrdom, “I can go back by train.”

“I’ll drive you into Illington, of course.”

“Thank you, old boy. Yes, I’d better get back to the treadmill.”

“Keep a stiff upper lip, Seb,” said Cubitt with a grin.

The door opened and Alleyn came in. He wore a dinner jacket and stiff shirt. Someone once said of him that he looked like a cross between a grandee and a monk. In evening clothes the grandee predominated. Parish gave him a quick appraising glance, Mr. Nark goggled, and Miss Darragh looked up with a smile. Cubitt rumpled his hair and said: “Hullo! Here comes the county!”

Mr. Legge shrank back into the inglenook. Upon all of them a kind of wariness descended. They seemed to melt away from him and towards each other. Alleyn asked for two glasses of the special sherry and told Abel that he and Fox would be out till latish.

“May we have a key, Mr. Pomeroy?”

“Us’ll leave side-door open,” said Abel. “No need fur key, sir. Be no criminals in this neighbourhood. Leastways—” He stopped short and looked pointedly at Legge.

“That’s splendid,” said Alleyn. “How far is it to Colonel Brammington’s?”

“ ’Bout eight mile, sir. Shankley Court. A great masterpiece of a place, sir, with iron gates and a deer park. Carry on for mile beyond Illington and turn left at The Man of Devon.”

“Right,” said Alleyn. “We needn’t leave for half an hour.”

Cubitt went out.

Alleyn fidgeted with a piece of rag round his left hand. It was clumsily tied and fell away, disclosing a trail of red.

He twitched the handkerchief out of his breast pocket, glanced at it and swore. There was a bright red spot on the handkerchief.

“Blast that cut,” said Alleyn. “Now I’ll have to get a clean one.”

“Hurt hurrself, sir?” asked Abel.

“Tore my hand on a rusty nail in the garage.”

“In the garage!” ejaculated Mr. Nark. “That’s a powerful dangerous place to get a cut finger. Germs galore, I dessay, and as like as not some of the poison fumes still floating about”

“Aye,” said Abel angrily, “that’s right, George Nark. All my premises is still with poison. Wonder ’tis you come anigh ’em. Here, Mr. Alleyn, sir, I’ll get ’ee a dressing fur that-thurr cut.”

“If I could have a bit of rag and a dab of peroxide or something.”

“Doan’t you have anything out of that fatal cupboard,” said Mr. Nark. “Not if you value the purity of your blood stream.”

“You know as well as I do,” said Abel, “that thurr cupboard’s been scrubbed and fumigated. Not that thurr’s anything in it. Thurr b’ain’t. Nicholas Harper made off with my first-aid set, innocent though it wurr.”