“Certainly. I want to know if, when I arrived, you were discussing Sir Harold Lacklander’s memoirs.”
He knew by their very stillness that he had scored. It struck him, not for the first time, that people who have been given a sudden fright tend to look alike: a sort of homogeneous glassiness overtakes them.
Lady Lacklander first recovered from whatever shock they had all received.
“In point of fact we were,” she said. “You must have extremely sharp ears.”
“I caught the name of my own publishers,” Alleyn said at once. “Brierley and Bentwood. An admirable firm. I wondered if they are to do the memoirs.”
“I’m glad you approve of them,” she said dryly. “I believe they are.”
“Colonel Cartarette was entrusted with the publication, wasn’t he?”
There was a fractional pause before Mark and Rose together said, “Yes.”
“I should think,” Alleyn said pleasantly, “that that would have been a delightful job.”
George, in a strangulated voice, said something about “responsibility” and suddenly offered Alleyn a drink.
“My good George,” his mother said impatiently, “Roderick is on duty and will have none of your sherry. Don’t be an ass.”
George blushed angrily and glanced, possibly for encouragement, at Kitty.
“Nevertheless,” Lady Lacklander said with a sort of grudging bonhomie, “you may as well sit down, Rory. One feels uncomfortable when you loom. There is, after all, a chair.”
“Thank you,” Alleyn said, taking it. “I don’t want to loom any more than I can help, you know, but you can’t expect me to be all smiles and prattle when you, as a group, close your ranks with such a deafening clank whenever I approach you.”
“Nonsense,” she rejoined briskly, but a dull colour actually appeared under her weathered skin, and for a moment there was a fleeting likeness to her son. Alleyn saw that Rose Cartarette was looking at him with a sort of anguished appeal and that Mark had taken her hand.
“Well,” Alleyn said cheerfully, “if it’s all nonsense, I can forget all about it and press on with the no doubt irrelevant details. About the autobiography, for instance. I’m glad Mr. Phinn is not with us at the moment because I want to ask you if Sir Harold gives a full account of young Phinn’s tragedy. He could scarcely, one imagines, avoid doing so, could he?”
Alleyn looked from one blankly staring face to another. “Or could he?” he added.
Lady Lacklander said, “I haven’t read my husband’s memoirs. Nor, I think, has anyone else, except Maurice.”
“Do you mean, Lady Lacklander, that you haven’t read them in their entirety, or that you haven’t read or heard a single word of them?”
“We would discuss them. Sometimes I could refresh his memory.”
“Did you discuss the affair of young Ludovic Phinn?”
“Never!” she said very loudly and firmly, and George made a certain noise in his throat.
Alleyn turned to Kitty and Rose.
“Perhaps,” he suggested, “Colonel Cartarette may have said something about the memoirs?”
“Not to me,” Kitty said and added, “Too pukka sahib.”
There was an embarrassed stirring among the others.
“Well,” Alleyn said, “I’m sorry to labour the point, but I should like to know, if you please, whether either Sir Harold Lacklander or Colonel Cartarette ever said anything to any of you about the Ludovic Phinn affair in connection with the memoirs.”
“Damned if I see what you’re getting at!” George began, to the dismay, Alleyn felt sure, of everybody who heard him. “Damned if I see how you make out my father’s memoirs can have anything to do with Maurice Cartarette’s murder. Sorry, Kitty. I beg pardon, Rose. But I mean to say!”
Alleyn said, “It’s eighteen years since young Ludovic Danberry-Phinn committted suicide, and a war has intervened. Many people will have forgotten his story. One among those who have remembered it… his father… must dread above all things any revival.” He leant forward in his chair, and as if he had given some kind of order or exercised some mesmeric influence on his audience, each member of it imitated this movement. George Lacklander was still empurpled, the others had turned very pale, but one expression was common to them all: they looked, all of them, extremely surprised. In Kitty and George and perhaps in Lady Lacklander, Alleyn thought he sensed a kind of relief. He raised his hand. “Unless, of course,” he said, “it has come about that in reviving the tragedy through the memoirs, young Phinn’s name will be cleared.”
It was as if out of a cloth that had apparently been wrung dry an unexpected trickle was induced. George, who seemed to be the most vulnerable of the group, shouted, “You’ve no right to assume…” and got no further. Almost simultaneously Mark and Rose, with the occasional unanimity of lovers, said, “This won’t do…” and were checked by an imperative gesture from Lady Lacklander.
“Roderick,” Lady Lacklander demanded, “have you been talking to Octavious Phinn?”
“Yes,” Alleyn said. “I have come straight here from Jacob’s Cottage.”
“Wait a bit, Mama,” George blurted out. “Wait a bit! Octavius can’t have said anything. Otherwise, don’t you see, Alleyn wouldn’t try to find out from us.”
In the now really deathly silence that followed this speech, Lady Lacklander turned and blinked at her son.
“You ninny, George,” she said, “you unfathomable fool.”
And Alleyn thought he now knew the truth about Mr. Phinn, Colonel Cartarette and Sir Harold Lacklander’s memoirs.
CHAPTER IX
Chyning
The next observation was made by Mark Lacklander.
“I hope you’ll let me speak, Grandmama,” he said. “And Father,” he added, obviously as a polite afterthought. “Although, I must confess, most of the virtue has already gone from what I have to say.”
“Then why, my dear boy, say it?”
“Well, Gar, it’s really, you know, a matter of principle. Rose and I are agreed on it. We’ve kept quiet under your orders, but we both have felt, haven’t we, Rose, that by far the best thing is to be completely frank with Mr. Alleyn. Any other course, as you’ve seen for yourself, just won’t do.”
“I have not changed my mind, Mark. Wait, a little.”
“0, yes,” Kitty said eagerly. “I do think so, honestly. Wait. I’m sure,” she added, “it’s what he would have said. Maurie, I mean.” Her face quivered unexpectedly and she fumbled for her handkerchief.
Rose made one of those involuntary movements that are so much more graphic than words, and Alleyn, whom for the moment they all completely disregarded, wondered how the Colonel had enjoyed being called Maurie.
George, with a rebellious glance at his mother, said, “Exactly what I mean. Wait.”
“By all means, wait,” Alleyn interjected, and stood up. They all jumped slightly. “I expect,” he suggested to Lady Lacklander, “you would like, before taking any further steps, to consult with Mr. Phinn. As a matter of fact, I think it highly probable that he will suggest it himself.” Alleyn looked very straight at Lady Lacklander. “I suggest,” he said, “that you consider just exactly what is at stake in this matter. When a capital crime is committed, you know, all sorts of long-buried secrets are apt to be discovered. It’s one of those things about homicide.” She made no kind of response to this, and, after a moment, he went on, “Perhaps when you have all come to a decision, you will be kind enough to let me know. They’ll always take a message at the Boy and Donkey. And now, if I may, I’ll get on with my job.”
He bowed to Lady Lacklander and was about to move off when Mark said, “I’ll see you to your car, sir. Coming, Rose?”
Rose seemed to hesitate, but she went off with him, entirely, Alleyn sensed, against the wishes of the remaining three.
Mark and Rose conducted him round the east wing of the great house to the open platform in front of it. Here Fox waited in the police car. A sports model with a doctor’s sticker and a more domestic car, which Alleyn took to be the Cartarettes’, waited side by side. The young footman, William, emerged with a suitcase. Alleyn watched him deliver this to Fox and return to the house.