Everyone else had gone except Jenny and Patrick, who sat at the family table, nursing balloon glasses. They had an air of subdued celebration and as often as they looked at each other, broke into smiles. When Jenny saw Alleyn, she waggled her fingers at him.
Alleyn said: “Afraid it’s a case of pressing on, chaps. We’ll meet in the hall, afterwards, and go down to the shop. Have you ordered drinks?”
“Not so far, Mr. Alleyn.”
“Well, have them with me. What shall it be? Waiter!”
They settled for beer, Alleyn went to his own table and was fawned upon by Miss Emily’s waiter. Jenny and Patrick passed by, and Jenny paused to say: “We’re going to try and whip up a bit of joie de vivre in the lounge — as they do in ships. Patrick’s thought up a guessing game. Come and help.”
“I’d love to,” Alleyn said, “but I’m on a guessing game of my own, bad luck to it.” He looked at Patrick. “I hear you’ve offered to do the driving tomorrow. Very civil of you. Miss Emily’s looking forward to it.”
“It’s going to be a rough crossing if this keeps up.”
“I know.”
“Will she mind?”
“Not she. At the age of sixty, she was a queen pin in the Résistance and hasn’t noticed the passage of time. Get her to tell you how she dressed up a couple of kiwis as nuns.”
“Honestly!” Jenny exclaimed.
“It’s quite a story.”
The waiter came up to say that Dr. Mayne had arrived and was asking for Alleyn.
“Right,” Alleyn said. “I’ll come.”
“In the writing-room, sir.”
It was a small deserted place off the entrance hall. Dr. Mayne had removed his mackintosh and hung it over the back of a chair. He was shaking the rain off his hat when Alleyn came in. “What a night!” he said. “I thought I wouldn’t make it.”
“How did you cross?”
“In my launch. Damned if I know how she’ll take it going back. The causeway’s impossible. Sir James thought you’d like to see me, and I had to come over, anyway, to a patient.”
Alleyn said: “I’m glad to see you. Not so much about the p.m.: Curtis made that clear enough. I wanted to check up one or two points. Have a drink, won’t you?”
“I certainly will. Thank you.”
Alleyn found a bell-push. “I hope you won’t mind if I don’t join you,” he said. “I’ve had my allowance and I’ve got a night’s work ahead of me.”
“I suppose you get used to it — like a G.P.”
“Very much so, I imagine. What’ll you have?”
Dr. Mayne had a whisky-and-soda. “I thought I’d take a look at Miss Pride while I’m here,” he said. “She’s recovered, of course, but she had quite a nasty cut in her neck. I suppose I mustn’t ask about the police view of that episode. Or doesn’t it arise?”
“I don’t see why you shouldn’t. It arises in a sort of secondary way, if only to be dismissed. What do you think?”
“On the face of it, Wally Trehern. Inspired by his father, I daresay. It’s Miss Pride’s contention and I think she may well be right.”
“I think so, too. Does it tie up with the general pattern of behaviour — from your point-of-view?”
“Oh, yes. Very characteristic. He gets overexcited and wildish. Sometimes this sort of behaviour is followed up by an attack of petit mal. Not always, but it’s quite often the pattern.”
“Can’t anything be done for the boy?”
“Not much, I’m afraid. When they start these attacks in early childhood it’s a poorish prospect. He should lead a quiet, regular life. It may well be that his home background and all the nonsense of producing him as a showpiece is bad for him. I’m not at all sure,” Dr. Mayne said, “that I shouldn’t have taken his case up with the child welfare people, but there’s been no marked deterioration and I’ve hesitated. Now — Well, now, one wonders.”
“One wonders… what exactly?”
“(A) if he shouldn’t, in any case, be removed to a suitable institution; and (B) whether he’s responsible for heaving that rock at Miss Cost.”
“If he did heave it, it must have been about half an hour after you saw him doing his stuff on Wally’s Way.”
“I know. Sir James puts the death at about eight o’clock, give-and-take twenty minutes. I wish I’d watched the boy more closely but of course there was no reason to do so. I was swinging the launch round.”
“And it was about 7:40, wasn’t it?”
“About that, yes. Within a couple of minutes, I should say.”
“You didn’t happen to notice Miss Pride? She was in the offing too, and saw Wally.”
“Was she, by George! No, I didn’t see her. The top of the wheelhouse would cut off my view, I fancy.”
“What exactly was Wally doing? Sorry to nag on about it, but Miss Pride may have missed some little pointer. We need one badly enough, Lord knows.”
“He was jumping about with his back towards me. He waved his arms and did a sort of throwing gesture. Now that you tell me Miss Pride was up by the gates, I should think his antics were directed at her. I seem to remember that the last thing I saw him do was take a run uphill. But it was all quite momentary, you know.”
“His father says Wally was in the house at five past eight.”
Dr. Mayne considered this. “It would still be possible,” he said. “There’s time, isn’t there?”
“On the face of it — yes. Trehern also says that at five past eight, or soon afterwards, he saw you leave in your launch.”
“Does he, indeed! He lies like a flatfish,” said Dr. Mayne. He looked thoughtfully at Alleyn. “Now, I wonder just why,” he said thoughtfully. “I wonder.”
“So do I, I assure you.” They stared meditatively at each other. Alleyn said: “Who do you think was the original Green Lady?”
Dr. Mayne was normally of a sallow complexion, but now a painful red blotted his lean face and transfigured it. “I have never considered the matter,” he said. “I have no idea. It’s always been supposed that he imagined the whole thing.”
“It was Mrs. Barrimore.”
“You can have no imaginable reason for thinking so!” he said angrily.
“I’ve the best possible reason,” said Alleyn. “Believe me. Every possible reason.”
“Do you mean that Mrs. Barrimore, herself, told you this?”
“Virtually, yes. I am not,” Alleyn said, “trying to equivocate. I asked her, and she said she supposed she must congratulate me.”
Dr. Mayne put his glass down and walked about the room with his hands in his pockets. Alleyn thought he was giving himself time. Presently he said: “I can’t, for the life of me, make out why you concern yourself with this. Surely it’s quite beside the point.”
“I do so because I don’t understand it. Or am not sure that I understand it. If it turns out to be irrelevant, I shall make no more of it. What I don’t understand, to be precise, is why Mrs. Barrimore should be so distressed at the discovery.”
“But, good God, man, of course she’s distressed! Look here. Suppose — I admit nothing — but suppose she came across that wretched kid, blubbing his eyes out because he’d been baited about his warts. Suppose she saw him trying to wash them off and, on the spur of the moment, remembering the history of wart cures, she made him believe they would clear up if he thought they would. Very well. The boy goes home, and they do. Before we know — she knows — where she is, the whole thing blows up unto a highly publicized nine days’ wonder. She can’t make up her mind to disabuse the boy or disillusion the people that follow him. It gets out of hand. The longer she hesitates, the harder it gets.”
“Yes,” Alleyn said. “I know. That all makes sense and is perfectly understandable.”
“Very well, then!” he said impatiently.
“She was overwhelmingly anxious that I shouldn’t tell her husband.”
“I daresay,” Dr. Mayne said shortly. “He’s not a suitable subject for confidences.”
“Did she tell you?…All right,” Alleyn said answering the extremely dark look Dr. Mayne gave him. “I know I’m being impertinent. I’ve got to be.”