‘How did you handle it, Fred?’
‘I’m stuck with it, aren’t I? So I say we’ll keep with it and he says if it’s a bodyguard I’m worried about he’s got the dog and his own personal protection and with that the door opens and guess who appears?’ invited Mr Gibson without animation.
‘The spearsman of last night?’
‘That’s correct. The number one suspect in my book who we’d’ve borrowed last night, there and then, if we’d had a fair go. There he was, large as life.’
‘You don’t surprise me. What was the upshot?’
‘Ask yourself. In flocks the media, telly, press, the lot. He says “no comment” and off he goes to his constitutional with the dog and the prime sus and five of my chaps in a panda doing their best in the way of protection. So they go and look at Peter Pan,’ said Mr Gibson bitterly, ‘and nobody shoots anybody or lobs in a bomb and they come home again. Tonight it’s the Palace caper.’
‘That’s been scaled down considerably, hasn’t it?’
‘Yes. Nondescript transport. Changed route. Small party.’
‘At least he’s not taking the spearsman with him.’
‘Not according to my info. It wouldn’t surprise me.’
‘Poor Fred!’
‘Well, it’s not what you’d pick in the way of a job,’ said Gibson. ‘Oh yes, and there’s another thing. He wants to see you. Or talk to you.’
‘Why? Did you gather?’
‘No. He just chucks it over his shoulder when he walks away. He’s awkward.’
‘The visit may be cut short.’
‘Can’t be too short for me,’ said Gibson and they took leave of each other.
‘It’s a case,’ Alleyn said when he’d replaced the receiver, ‘of “where do we go for honey?” I dunno, Br’er Fox. Press on, press on but in what direction?’
‘This Mr Sheridan,’ Fox ruminated. ‘He seems to have been kind of side-tracked, doesn’t he? I mean from the secret society or what-have-you angle.’
‘I know he does. He wasn’t at the party. That’s why.’
‘But he is a member of whatever they are.’
‘Yes. Look here, Fox. The only reason – the only tenable reason – we’ve got for thinking there was some hanky-panky based on this idiot-group is the evidence, if you can call it that, of Mrs C-M having loosed off a Luger with a blank charge in the ladies’ loo. I’m quite convinced, if only because of their reaction – hers and the gallant Colonel’s – that she’s the girl who did it, though proving it will be something else again. All right. The highly suspect, the generally inadmissible word “coincidental” keeps on rearing its vacant head in these proceedings but I’ll be damned if I accept any argument based on the notion that two entirely unrelated attempts at homicide occurred within the same five minutes at an Ambassadorial party.’
‘You mean,’ said Fox, ‘the idea that Mrs C-M and this little gang had something laid on and never got beyond the first move because the spearsman hopped in and beat them to it?’
‘Is that what I mean? Yes, of course it is, but blow me down flat if it sounds as silly as I expected it to.’
‘It sounds pretty silly to me.’
‘You can’t entertain the notion?’
‘It’d take a big effort.’
‘Well, God knows. You may have to make it. I tell you what, Foxkin. We’ll try and get a bit more on Sheridan if only for tidiness’s sake. And we’ll take a long shot and give ourselves the dreary task of finding out how a girl of sixteen was killed in London on the first of May, 1969. Name Glenys Chubb.’
‘Car accident?’
‘We don’t know. I get the impression that although the word accident was used, it was not used correctly. Lurking round the fringe of my rotten memory there’s something or another, and it may be so much nonsense, about the name Chubb in connection with an unsolved homicide. We weren’t involved. Not on our ground.’
‘Chubb,’ mused Fox. ‘Chubb, now. Yes. Yes, there was something. Now, what was it? Wait a bit, Mr Alleyn. Hold on.’
Mr Fox went into a glazed stare at nothing in particular from which he was roused by Alleyn bringing his palm down smartly on his desk.
‘Notting Hill Gate,’ Alleyn said. ‘May 1969. Raped and strangled. Man seen leaving the area but never knocked off. That’s it. We’ll have to dig it out, of course, but I bet you that’s it. Still open. He left a red scarf behind and it was identified.’
‘You’re dead right. The case blew out. They knew their man but they never got it tied up.”
‘No. Never.’
‘He was coloured,’ Fox said. ‘A coloured chap, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ Alleyn said. ‘He was. He was black. And what’s more – Here! We’ll get on to the Unsolved File for this one and we’ll do it now, by gum.’
It didn’t take long. The Unsolved Homicide file for May 1969 had a succinct account of the murder of Chubb, Glenys, aged sixteen, by a black person believed but never proved to be a native of Ng’ombwana.
When they had closed the file for unsolved homicide, subsection rape and asphyxiation, 1969, Fox remarked that if Chubb hadn’t seemed to have a motive before he certainly had one now. Of a far-fetched sort, Fox allowed, but a motive nevertheless. And in a sort of fashion he argued, this went some way to showing that the society – he was pleased to call it the ‘fishy society’ – had as its objective the confusion, subjection and downfall of The Black.
‘I begin to fancy Chubb,’ said Fox.
At this point Alleyn’s telephone rang. To his great surprise it was Troy who was never known to call him at the Yard. He said: ‘Troy! Anything wrong?’
‘Not really and I’m sorry about this,’ she said rapidly, ‘but I thought you’d better know at once. It’s your Boomer on the blower.’
‘Wanting me?’
‘Strangely enough, no. Wanting me.’
‘Oh?’ said Alleyn with an edge in his voice. ‘Well, he’ll have to wait. What for? No, don’t tell me. It’s about his portrait.’
‘He’s coming. Now. Here. In full fig to be painted. He says he can give me an hour and a half. I tried to demur but he just roared roughshod over my bleating. He said time was of the essence because his visit is to be cut short. He said the conversation can be continued in a few minutes when he arrives and with that he hung up and I think I hear him arriving.’
‘By God, he’s a daisy. I’ll be with you in half an hour or earlier.’
‘You needn’t. It’s not that I’m in the least flustered. It’s only I thought you should know.’
‘You couldn’t be more right. Stick him up in the studio and get cracking. I’ll be there in a jiffy.’
Alleyn clapped down his receiver and said to Fox: ‘Did you get the gist of that? Whistle me up a car, Fox, and see if you can get the word through to Fred Gibson. I suppose he’s on to this caper, but find out. And you stay here in case anything comes through