Читать книгу Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 7: Off With His Head, Singing in the Shrouds, False Scent - Ngaio Marsh, Stella Duffy - Страница 36

In spite of the thaw, the afternoon had grown deadly cold. Yowford lane dripped greyly between its hedgerows and was choked with mud and slush. About a mile along it they came upon Simmy-Dick’s Service Station in a disheartened-looking shack with Begg’s car standing outside it. Alleyn pulled up at the first pump and sounded his horn.

Simon came out, buttoning up a suit of white overalls with a large monogram on the pocket: sad witness, Alleyn suspected, to a grandiloquent beginning. When he saw Alleyn he grinned sourly and raised his eyebrows.

‘Hallo,’ Alleyn said. ‘Four, please.’

‘Four what? Coals of fire?’ Simon said, and moved round to the petrol tank.

It was an unexpected opening and made things a good deal easier for Alleyn. He got out of the car and joined Simon.

‘Why coals of fire?’ he asked.

‘After me being a rude boy this morning.’

‘That’s all right.’

‘It’s just that I know what a clot Ernie can make of himself,’ Simon said, and thrust the nose of the hosepipe into the tank. ‘Four, you said?’

‘Four. And this is a professional call, by the way.’

‘I’m not all that dumb,’ Simon grunted.

Alleyn waited until the petrol had gone in and then paid for it. Simon tossed the change up and caught it neatly before handing it over. ‘Why not come inside?’ he suggested. ‘It’s bloody cold out here, isn’t it?’

He led the way into a choked-up cubby-hole that served as his office. Fox and Dr Otterly followed Alleyn and edged in sideways.

‘How’s the Doc!’ Simon said. ‘Doing a Watson?’

‘I’m beginning to think so,’ said Dr Otterly. Simon laughed shortly.

‘Well,’ Alleyn began cheerfully, ‘how’s the racing news?’

‘Box of birds,’ Simon said.

‘Teutonic Dancer do any good for herself?’

Simon looked sharply at Fox. ‘Who’s the genned-up type?’ he said. ‘You?’

“That’s right, Mr Begg. I heard you on the telephone.’

‘I see.’ He took out his cigarettes, frowned over lighting one and then looked up with a grin. ‘I can’t keep it to myself,’ he said. ‘It’s the craziest thing. Came in at 27 to 1. Everything else must have fallen down.’

‘I hope you had something on.’

‘A wee flutter,’ Simon said and again the corners of his mouth twitched. ‘It was a dicey do but was it worth it! How’s the Doc?’ he repeated, again aware of Dr Otterly.

‘Quite well, thank you. How’s the garage proprietor?’ Dr Otterly countered chillily.

‘Box of birds.’

As this didn’t seem to be getting them anywhere, Alleyn invited Simon to give them his account of the Five Sons.

He started off in a very business-like way, much, Alleyn thought as he must have given his reports in his bomber pilot days. The delayed entrance, the arrival of the Guiser, ‘steamed-up’ and roaring at them all. The rapid change of clothes and the entrance. He described how he began the show with his pursuit of the girls.

‘Funny! Some of them just about give you the go-ahead signal. I could see them through the hole in the neck. All giggles and girlishness. Half windy, too. They reckon it’s lucky or something.’

‘Did Miss Campion react like that?’

‘The fair Camilla? I wouldn’t have minded if she had. I made a very determined attempt, but not a chance. She crash-landed in the arms of another bod. Ralphy Stayne. Lucky type!’

He grinned cheerfully round. ‘But, still!’ he said. It was a sort of summing up. One could imagine him saying it under almost any circumstances.

Alleyn asked him what he did after he’d finished his act and before the first Morris began. He said he went up to the back archway and had a bit of a breather.

‘And during the Morris?’

‘I just sort of bummed around on my own.’

‘With the Betty?’

‘I think so. I don’t remember exactly. I’m not sort of officially “on” in that scene.’

‘But you didn’t go right off?’

‘No, I’m meant to hang around. I’m the animal-man. God knows what it’s all in aid of but I just sort of trot around on the outskirts.’

‘And you did that last night?’

‘That’s the story.’

‘You didn’t go near the dancers?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Nor the dolmen?’

‘No,’ he said sharply.

‘You couldn’t tell me, for instance, exactly what the Guiser did when he slipped down to hide?’

‘Disappeared as usual behind the stone, I suppose, and lay doggo.’

‘Where were you at that precise moment?’

‘I don’t remember exactly.’

‘Nowhere near the dolmen?’

‘Absolutely. Nowhere near.’

‘I see,’ Alleyn said, and was careful not to look at Dr Otterly. ‘And then? After that? What did you do?’

‘I just hung around for a bit and then wandered up to the back.’

‘What was happening in the arena?’

‘The Betty did an act and after that Dan did his solo.’

‘What was the Betty’s act?’

‘Kind of ad lib. In the old days, they tell me, “she” used to hunt down some bod in the crowd and tuck them under her petticoats. Or she’d come on screeching and, presently, there’d be a great commotion under the crinoline and out would pop some poor type. You can imagine. A high old time was had by all.’

‘Mr Stayne didn’t go in for that particular kind of clowning?’

‘Who – Ralph? Only very mildly. He’s much too much the gentleman, if you know what I mean.’

‘What did he do?’ Alleyn persisted.

‘Honest, I’ve forgotten. I didn’t really watch. Matter of fact, I oozed off to the back and had a smoke.’

‘When did you begin to watch again?’

‘After Dan’s solo. When the last dance began. I came back for that.’

‘And then?’

After that, Simon’s account followed the rest. Alleyn let him finish without interruption and was then silent for so long that the others began to fidget and Simon Begg stood up.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘if that’s all –

’I’m afraid it’s nothing like all.’

‘Hell!’

‘Let us consider,’ Alleyn said, ‘your story of your own movements during and immediately after the first dance – this dance that was twice repeated and ended with the mock decapitation. Why do you suppose that your account of it differs radically from all the other accounts we have had?’

Simon glanced at Dr Otterly and assumed a tough and mulish expression.

‘Your guess,’ he said, ‘is as good as mine.’

‘We don’t want to guess. We like to know. We’d like to know, for instance, why you say you trotted round on the outskirts of the dance and that you didn’t go near the dancers or the dolmen. Dr Otterly here, and all the other observers we have consulted, say that, as a matter of fact, you went up to the dolmen at the moment of climax and stood motionless behind it.’

‘Do they?’ he said. ‘I don’t remember everything I did. Perhaps they don’t either. P’r’aps you’ve been handed a lot of duff gen.’

‘If that means,’ Dr Otterly said, ‘that I may have laid false information, I won’t let you get away with it. I am absolutely certain that you stood close behind the dolmen and therefore so close to where the Guiser lay that you couldn’t fail to notice him. Sorry, Alleyn. I’ve butted in.’