Windows began to close. The light behind the church went out.

“Are you sure? Was it those lads from Great Quintern? I didn’t hear motor bikes.”

“They hadn’t got bikes. Go back to bed, Vicar,” Alleyn urged him. “You’ll catch your death.”

“No mattah. Goodnight then.”

The window was closed. Alleyn watched Fox’s torchlight come bobbing round the church and down the steps. Voices sounded in the field beyond the hedge. Bruce and the sergeant. They came through the hurdle and down the bank.

“I’m here,” Alleyn said. “Don’t walk into me.” The sergeant’s torchlight found him.

“Are you all right, sir? ’E’s got clean away, I’m afraid. It was that bloody dark and there’s all them trees.”

Bruce said: “I’ll have the hide off my fine laddie for this. What’s possessed the fule? He’s never showed violent before. By God, I’ll teach him a lesson he won’t forget.”

“I suppose it was Artie?”

“Nae doubt about it, sir.”

“Where did you come from, Bruce?”

It was as they had thought. Bruce had been keeping company with his shaken sister. She had gone to bed and he was about to return to Quintern Place. He looked out of the window and saw the glare of the lamp in the churchyard.

“It gied me a shock,” he said, and with one of his occasional vivid remarks: “It was oncanny: as if I mysel’ was in two places at once. And then I thought it might be they vandals and up to no good. And I saw the shadow on the trees like mine had been. Digging. Like me. It fair turned my stomach, that.”

“I can imagine.”

“So I came the short cut down the brae to the lane as fast as I could in the dark. I arrived at the hedge and his figure rose up clear against the glow behind the kirk. It was him all right. He stood there for a second and then he hurrled something and let out a bit screech as he did so. I shouted and he bolted along the hedge. The sergeant was in the lane, sir, with you in the light of his torch and flat on your back and him saying by God, the bugger’s got him and yelling for Mr. Fox. So I went roaring after the lad and not a hope in hell of catching him. He’s a wild crittur. You’d say he could see in the dark. Who’s to tell where he’s hiding?”

“In his bed, most likely,” said the sergeant. “By this time.”

“Aye, you may say so. His mother’s cottage is a wee piece further down the lane. Are you greatly injured, Superintendent? What was it he hurrled at you?”

“Half a brick. No, I’m all right.”

Bruce clicked his tongue busily. “He might have kilt you,” he said.

“Leave it alone, Bruce. Don’t pitch into him when you see him. It wouldn’t do any good. I mean that.”

“Well,” said Bruce dourly, “if you say so.”

“I do say so.”

Fox joined them, carrying his doused lamp and the shovel.

Bruce, who wasted no ceremony with Fox, whom he seemed to regard as a sort of warrant-officer, asked him in scandalized tones what he thought he’d been doing up yon. “If you’ve been tampering with the grave,” he said furiously, “it’s tantamount to sacrilege and there’s no doubt in my mind there’s a law to deal with it. Now then, what was it? What where you doing with yon shovel?”

“It was dumb show, Bruce,” Alleyn said wearily. “We were testing the boy’s story. Nothing’s been disturbed.”

“I’ve a mind to look for mysel’.”

“Go ahead, by all means if you want to. Have you got a torch?”

“I’ll leave it,” Bruce said morosely. “I dinna like it but I’ll leave it.”

“Goodnight to you, then. I think, Br’er Fox,” said Alleyn, “I’ll get in the car.”

His face throbbed enormously and the ground seemed to shift under his feet. Fox piloted him to the car. The sergeant hovered.

When they were under way Fox said he proposed to drive to the outpatients’ department at the nearest hospital. Alleyn said he would see Dr. Field-Innis in the morning, that he’d had routine tetanus injections and that if he couldn’t cope with a chuck under the chin the sooner he put in for retirement the better. He then fainted.

He was out only for a short time, he thought, as they seemed not to have noticed. He said in as natural a manner as he could contrive that he felt sleepy, managed to fold his arms and lower his head, and did, in fact, drift into a sort of doze. He was vaguely aware of Fox giving what is known as “a shout” over the blower.

Now they were at the station and so, surprisingly, was the district police surgeon.

“There’s no concussion,” said the police surgeon, “and no breakage and your teeth are O.K. We’ll just clean you up and make you comfortable and send you home to bed, um?”

“Too kind,” said Alleyn.

“You’ll be reasonably comfortable tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t push it too far, though. Go easy.”

“That,” said Mr. Fox in the background, “will be the day.”

Alleyn grinned, which hurt. So did the cleaning up and dressing.

“There we are!” said the police surgeon, jollily. “It’ll be a bit colourful for a day or two and there’s some swelling. You won’t have a permanent scar.”

“Most reassuring. I’m sorry they knocked you up.”

“What I’m there for, isn’t it? Quite an honour in this case. Good morning.”

When he had gone Alleyn said: “Fox, you’re to get on to the Home Secretary.”

“Me!” exclaimed the startled Fox. “Him? Not me!”

“Not directly you, but get the Yard and the A.C. and ask for it to be laid on.”

“What for, though, Mr. Alleyn? Lay on what?”

“What do you think? The usual permit.”

“You’re not,” said Fox, “—you can’t be — you’re not thinking of digging her up?”

“Aren’t I? Can’t I? I am, do you know. Not,” said Alleyn, holding his pulsing jaw, “in quite the sense you mean but — digging her up, Br’er Fox. Yes.”

Chapter 9: Graveyard (III)

i

When alleyn looked in the glass the following morning his face did not appear as awful as it felt. No doubt the full panoply of bruises was yet to develop. He shaved painfully round the dressing, took a bath and decided he was in more or less reasonable form to face the day.

Fox came in to say their Assistant Commissioner was on the telephone. “If you can speak, that is.”

Alleyn said: “Of course I can speak,” and found that it was best to do so with the minimum demand upon his lower jaw. He stifled the explosive grunt of pain that the effort cost him.

The telephone was in the passage outside his room.

“Rory?” said their A.C. “Yes. I want a word with you. What’s all this about an exhumation?”

“It’s not precisely that, sir.”

“What? I can’t catch what you say. You sound as if you were talking to your dentist.”

Alleyn thought: “I daresay I shall be when there’s time for it,” but he merely replied that he was sorry and would try to do better.

“I suppose it’s the clip on the jaw Fox talked about. Does it hurt?”

“Not much,” Alleyn lied angrily.

“Good. Who did it?”

“The general idea is a naughty boy with a brick.”

“About this exhumation that is not an exhumation. What am I to say to the H.S.? Confide in me, for Heaven’s sake.”

Alleyn confided.

“Sounds devilish far-fetched to me,” grumbled the A.C. “I hope you know what you’re about.”

“So do I.”

“You know what I think about hunches.”

“If I may say so, you don’t mistrust them any more than I do, sir.”

“All right, all right. We’ll go ahead, then. Tomorrow night, you suggest? Sorry you’ve had a knock. Take care of yourself.”

“There is none that can compare,” Alleyn hummed in great discomfort. “With a tow, row bloody row to / Our A. Commissionaire. It’s on, Br’er Fox.”

“This’ll set the village by the ears. What time?”

“Late tomorrow night; We’ll be turning into tombstones ourselves if we keep up these capers.”

“What’s our line with the populace?”