to see you. Come into the library.’
Nigel hesitated, and then followed him.
‘What’s the matter with Miss North?’ asked Alleyn.
‘What’s the matter with all of us?’ rejoined Nigel. ‘It’s enough to drive anyone dippy.’
‘It’s a pity about you!’ commented Alleyn tartly. ‘How would you like to be a detective, the lousiest job in creation?’
‘I wouldn’t mind changing with you,’ said Nigel.
‘Wouldn’t you, then! Well, you can have a stab at it since you’re so eager. Every sleuth ought to have a tame halfwit, to make him feel clever. I offer you the job, Mr Bathgate—no salary, but a percentage of the honour and glory.’
‘You’re very good,’ said Nigel, who never knew quite where he was with Alleyn. ‘Am I to conclude I have been degummed from the list of suspects?’
‘Oh, yes,’ groaned the detective wearily. ‘You’re cleared. Ethel the Intelligent spoke to you half a second before the lights went out.’
‘Who is Ethel the Intelligent?’
‘The second housemaid.’
‘Oh, yes,’ cried Nigel. ‘I remember; she was actually there when the lights went out. I’d quite forgotten her.’
‘Well, you are a bright lad. A pretty girl establishes your alibi for you, and you forget all about her.’
‘I suppose Mr and Mrs Wilde are safe enough, too?’ said Nigel.
‘See Florence the Farsighted. You do, do you? Shall we take a stroll to the gate?’
‘If you like. A gentleman in a mackintosh will be there pretending to botanize in the iron railings.’
‘One of my myrmidons. Never mind, a walk will do you good.’
Nigel consented, and they went out into the thin sunshine.
‘Mr Bathgate,’ said Alleyn quietly, ‘every single member of this household is concealing something from me. You are yourself, you know.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Exactly what I say. Look here, I’m going to be frank with you. This murder was committed from inside the house. Roberts had the front door locked at six-thirty, a regular trick of his apparently, and anyway it had rained before six o’clock, was fine until eight, and after that there was a hard frost. Your crime books will have told you that under those conditions the gardens of the great are as an open book to us sleuths. The murderer was inside the house.’
‘What about Vassily? Why hasn’t he been caught?’
‘He has been caught.’
‘What!’
‘Certainly, and released again. We managed to keep your brothers of the penny press quiet over that.’
‘You say he didn’t do it.’
‘Do I?’
‘Well, don’t you?’
‘I say you are all, each one of you, hiding something from me.’
Nigel was silent.
‘It’s a horrible affair,’ continued Alleyn after a pause, ‘but believe me you can do no good—no manner of good—by keeping me in the dark. Look here, Mr Bathgate, you are a poor actor. I saw you watching Mrs Wilde and Miss Grant. There’s something there that hasn’t come out, and I fancy you know what it is.’
‘I—oh lord, Alleyn, it’s all so beastly. Anyway, if I do know anything, it doesn’t amount to a row of beans.’
‘Forgive me, but you don’t know in the least little bit what it may amount to. Had you met Mrs Wilde before you came here?’
‘No.’
‘Miss Grant?’
‘Once—at my cousin’s house.’
‘Had your cousin ever talked to you about either of them?’
‘Apart from casually mentioning them, never.’
‘How far had this flirtation with Mrs Wilde gone?’
‘I don’t know—I mean—how do you know—?’
‘He held her in his arms on Saturday night.’
Nigel felt and looked extremely uncomfortable.
‘If he had her in his room,’ said Alleyn brutally.
‘It was not in his room,’ said Nigel, and could have bitten his tongue out.
‘Ah! Then where was it? Come now, I’ve got under your guard. Better tell me.’
‘How do you know he held her in his arms?’
‘“You have just told me,” said the great detective quietly,’ quoted Alleyn. ‘I know because his dinner-jacket was significantly stained with her liquid powder. Presumably it was clean when he arrived, and he had not changed on the night he was killed. Therefore, it was on Saturday night. Am I right?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘It must have been before dinner. When did you handle the Männlicher in the gun-room?’
‘Oh, hell!’ said Nigel. ‘I’ll come clean.’
He gave as sparse an account as he could of the duologue between Rankin and Mrs Wilde. By the time he had finished they had crossed the little footbridge in the wood and were in sight of the gates.
‘You tell me,’ said Alleyn, ‘that after you had heard Rankin and Mrs Wilde leave the room and had entered it yourself, someone turned out the lights. Might that not have been Rankin himself returning to do so?’
‘No,’ said Nigel. ‘I heard him shut the door and go away. No, it was someone who had sat at the far end of the drawing-room—beyond the “elbow” of the room, you know—and, like me, had overheard.’
‘Have you any impression of them?’
‘How could I?’
‘It is possible. Their sex, for instance.’
‘I—please don’t attach any significance to this—I rather felt—why, I don’t know—that it was a woman.’
‘And here we are at the gates. Mr Alfred Bliss, he of the mackintosh, is, as you see, greatly interested in a distant view of an AA telephone box. We won’t disturb him. My dear lad, let us embark on a little ramble.’
‘Good lord, what do you mean—a ramble?’
‘Have
