Alleyn had just had time enough to discover that it contained about thirty pages of typescript marked on the outside: “7,” when he heard Fox’s voice on the stairs. He turned away and placed himself in front of the portrait.
Mr. Phinn and Fox reappeared with the fishing gear.
“I have,” Alleyn said, “been enjoying this very charming portrait.”
“My wife.”
“Am I imagining — perhaps I am — a likeness to Dr. Mark Lacklander?”
“There was,” Mr. Phinn said shortly, “a distant connection. Here are my toys,”
He was evidently one of those anglers who cannot resist the call of the illustrated catalogue and the lure of the gadget. His creel, his gaff, his net, his case of flies and his superb rod were supplemented by every conceivable toy, all of them, Alleyn expected, extremely expensive. His canvas bag was slotted and pocketted to receive these mysteries, and Alleyn drew them out one after another to discover that they were all freshly cleaned and in wonderful order.
“With what fly,” he asked Mr. Phinn, “did you hook the Old ’Un? It must have been a Homeric struggle, surely?”
“Grant me the bridge,” Mr. Phinn shouted excitedly, “grant me that, and I’ll tell you.”
“Very well,” Alleyn conceded with a grin, “we’ll take the bridge in our stride. I concede it. Let’s have the story.”
Mr. Phinn went strongly into action. It appeared that, at the mention of his prowess, the emotions that had so lately seemed to grip him were completely forgotten. Fear, if he had known fear, paternal anguish, if he had in fact experienced it, and anger, if it was indeed anger that had occasionally moved him, were all abandoned for the absolute passion of the angler. He led them out of doors, exhibited his retrospective prowess in casting, led them in again and re-enacted in the strangest pantomime his battle with the Old ’Un: how he was played, with breath-taking reverses, up through the waters under the bridge and into Mr. Phinn’s indisputable preserves; how he was nearly lost, and what cunning he displayed, and how Mr. Phinn countered with even greater cunning of his own. Finally there was the great capitulation, the landing and the coup de grâce, this last being administered, as Mr. Phinn made clear in spirited pantomime, with a sort of angler’s cosh: a short, heavily leaded rod.
Alleyn took this instrument in his hand and balanced it. “What do you call the thing?” he asked.
“A priest,” Mr. Phinn said. “It is called a priest. I don’t know why.”
“Perhaps because of its valedictory function.” He laid it on the desk and placed Commander Syce’s arrow beside it. Mr. Phinn stared but said nothing.
“I really must return his arrow to Commander Syce,” Alleyn said absently. “I found it in the spinney, embedded in a tree trunk.”
He might have touched off a high-explosive. The colour flooded angrily into Mr. Phinn’s face and he began to shout of the infamies of Commander Syce and his archery. The death of Thomasina Twitchett’s mother at the hands of Commander Syce was furiously recalled. Syce, Mr. Phinn said, was a monster, an alcoholic sadist, possessed of a blood-lust. It was with malice aforethought that he had transfixed the dowager Twitchett. The plea of accident was ridiculous: the thing was an obsession. Syce would drink himself into a sagittal fury and fire arrows off madly into the landscape. Only last night, Mr. Phinn continued, when he himself was returning from the Chyne after what he now called his little mésentente with Colonel Cartarette, the Commander’s bow was twanging away on the archery lawn and Mr. Phinn had actually heard the “tuck” of an arrow in a tree trunk dangerously near to himself. The time was a quarter past eight. He remembered hearing his clock chime at the same time.
“I think you must be mistaken,” Alleyn put in mildly. “Nurse Kettle tells us that last evening Commander Syce was completely incapacitated by an acute attack of lumbago.”
Mr. Phinn shouted out a rude and derisive word. “A farrago of nonsense!” he continued. “Either she is his accomplice or his paramour or possibly,” he amended more charitably, “his dupe. I swear he was devilishly active last night. I swear it. I trembled lest my Thomasina, who had accompanied me to the Chyne, should share the fate of her mama. She did not join me on my return but had preferred to linger in the evening air. Indeed, the reason for my perhaps slightly dramatic entry into Hammer in the early hours of this morning was my hope of retrieving my errant Fur. The dreadful news with which you met me quite put her out of my head,” Mr. Phinn concluded and did not look as if he expected to be believed.
“I see,” Alleyn said and did not look as if he believed him. “Quite a chapter of accidents. Do you mind if we take possession of your fishing gear for a short time? Part of a routine check, you know.”
Mr. Phinn was at a loss for words. “But how quite extraordinary!” he at last exclaimed. “My fishing gear? Well, I suppose one must not refuse.”
“We shan’t keep it any longer than is necessary,” Alleyn assured him.
Fox put the kit in order and slung it over his massive shoulder.
“And also, I’m afraid,” Alleyn said apologetically, “the shoes and suit that you wore on your fishing expedition.”
“My shoes? My suit! But why, why! I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all.”
“It may be some comfort to you to know that I shall make the same awkward demands of at least four other persons.”
Mr. Phinn seemed to brighten a little. “Blood?” he asked.
“Not necessarily,” Alleyn said coolly. “This and that, you know, and the other thing. May we have them?”
“A fat lot of use,” Mr. Phinn muttered, “if I said no. And in any case you are perfectly welcome to every garment I possess. Homicidally speaking, they are as pure as the driven snow.”
When he saw them, Alleyn reflected that although, homicidally speaking, this might be true, from any other point of view it was grossly inaccurate: Mr. Phinn’s angling garments were exceedingly grubby and smelt quite strongly of fish. Alleyn saw with satisfaction a slimy deposit on the right leg of a pair of old-fashioned knickerbockers. The shoes were filthy and the stockings in holes. With a gesture of defiance, their owner flung on top of them a dilapidated tweed hat with the usual collection of flies in the band.
“Make what you like of them,” he said grandly, “and see that you let me have them back in the order in which you receive them.”
Alleyn gave him grave assurance to this effect and wrapped up the garments. Fox wrote out a receipt for the unlovely bundle.
“We won’t keep you any longer,” Alleyn said, “unless by any chance you would care to give us a true account of your ramblings in the watches of the night.”
Mr. Phinn gaped at him and in doing so resembled for the moment the Old ’Un himself.
“Because,” Alleyn went on, “you haven’t done so yet, you know. I mean, your story of seeing lighted windows and calling to tell the Colonel of your catch was completely blown-up by Lady Lacklander. And your latest version… that you were on the hunt for your mother-cat… really won’t do at all. Feline nursing mothers, and you tell us this is a particularly devoted one, do not desert their kittens for six hours on end. Moreover, we came upon Mrs. Twitchett last night on her way home about half past twelve. And why, if the Twitchett story was the true one, did you not produce it in the first instance?” Alleyn waited for some seconds. “You see,” he said, “you have no answer to any of these questions.”
“I shall not make any further statements. I prefer to remain silent.”
“Shall I tell you what I think may have happened last night? I think that when you made your first remark as you stood in the French window at Hammer, you said something that was near the truth. I think that either then, or perhaps earlier in the evening, you had sallied out in search of your great trout. I think you regretted having flung it down on the bridge during your quarrel with Colonel Cartarette. You knew he wouldn’t touch it, because he had told you so and had gone off, leaving it there. Did you not go down into the valley of the Chyne to retrieve the trout, and did you not find it gone from the bridge when you got there?”