Black As He Is Painted ra-28

by Ngaio Marsh

  “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, Glynis, aged sixteen, by a black person believed but never proved to be a native of Ng’ombwana.

  VII

  Mr. Sheridan’s Past

  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 began 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.”

  “Yon 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, and if it does call me at home. I’m off.”

  When he arrived at the pleasant cul-de-sac where he and Troy had their house, he found the Ng’ombwanan ceremonial car, its flag flying, drawn up at the kerb. A poker-faced black chauffeur sat at the wheel. Alleyn was not surprised to see, a little way along the street on the opposite side, a “nondescript,” which is the police term for a disguised vehicle, this time a delivery van. Two men with short haircuts sat in the driver’s compartment. He recognized another of Mr. Gibson’s stalwarts sitting at a table outside the pub. A uniformed constable was on duty outside the house. When Alleyn got out of the police car this officer, looking self-conscious, saluted him.

  “How long have you lot been keeping obbo on my pad?” Alleyn asked.

  “Half an hour, sir. Mr. Gibson’s inside, sir. He’s only just arrived and asked me to inform you.”

  “I’ll bet he did,” Alleyn said, and let himself in.

  Gibson was in the hall. He showed something like animation on greeting Alleyn and appeared to be embarrassed. The first thing he had heard of the President’s latest caper, he said, was a radio message that the ambassadorial Rolls, with the Ng’ombwanan flag mounted, had drawn up to the front entrance of the Embassy. His sergeant had spoken to the driver, who said the President had ordered it and was going out. The sergeant reached Mr. Gibson on radio, but before he got to the spot the President, followed by his bodyguard, came out, swept aside the wretched sergeant’s attempts to detain him, and shouting out the address to his driver had been driven away. Gibson and elements of the security forces outside the Embassy had then given chase and taken up the appropriate stations where Alleyn had seen them. When they arrived the President and his mlinzi were already in the house.

  “Where is he now?”

  “Mrs. Alleyn,” said Gibson, coughing slightly, “took him to the studio. She said I was to tell you. ‘The studio,’ she said. He was very sarcastic about me being here. Seemed to think it funny,” said Gibson resentfully.

  “What about the prime suspect?”

  “Outside the studio door. I’m very, very sorry, but without I took positive action I couldn’t remove him. Mrs. Alleyn didn’t make a complaint. I’d’ve loved to’ve borrowed that chap then and there,” said Gibson.

  “All right, Fred. I’ll see what I can do. Give yourself a drink. In the dining-room, there. Take it into the study and settle down.”

  “Ta,” said Gibson wearily. “I could do with it.”

  The studio was a separate room at the back of the house and had been built for a Victorian Academician of preposterous fame. It had an absurd entrance approached by a flight of steps with a canopy supported by a brace of self-conscious plaster caryatids that Troy had thought too funny to remove. Between these, in stunning incongruity, stood the enormous mlinzi, only slightly less impressive in a dark suit than he had been in his lion-skin and bracelets. He had his right forearm inside his jacket. He completely filled the entrance.

  Alleyn said: “Good evening.”

  “Good day. Sir,” said the mlinzi.

  “I-am-going-in,” said Alleyn very distinctly. When no move was made, he repeated this announcement, tapping his chest and pointing to the door.

  The mlinzi rolled his eyes, turned smartly, knocked on the door and entered. His huge voice was answered by another, even more resonant, and by a matter-of-fact comment from Troy: “Oh, here’s Rory,” Troy said.

  The mlinzi stood aside and Alleyn, uncertain about the degree of his own exasperation, walked in.

  The model’s throne was at the far end of the studio. Hung over a screen Troy used for backgrounds was a lion’s skin. In front of it, in full ceremonials, ablaze with decorations, gold lace and accoutrements, legs apart and arms akimbo, stood the Boomer.

  Troy, behind a four-foot canvas, was setting her palette. On the floor lay two of her rapid exploratory charcoal drawings. A brush was clenched between her teeth. She turned her head and nodded vigorously at her husband, several times.

  “Ho-ho!” shouted the Boomer. “Excuse me, my dear Rory, that I don’t descend. As you see, we are busy. Go away!” he shouted at the mlinzi and added something curt in their native tongue. The man went away.

  “I apologize for him!” the Boomer said magnificently. “Since last night he is nervous of my well-being. I allowed him to come.”

  “He seems to be favouring his left arm.”

  “Yes. It turns out that his collar-bone was fractured.”

  “Last night?”

  “By an assailant, whoever he was.”

  “Has he seen a doctor
?”

  “Oh, yes. The man who looks after the Embassy. A Dr. Gomba. He’s quite a good man. Trained at St. Luke’s.”

  “Did he elaborate at all on the injury?”

  “A blow, probably with the edge of the hand, since there is no indication of a weapon. It’s not a break — only a crack.”

  “What does the mlinzi himself say about it?”

  “He has elaborated little on his rather sparse account of last night: that someone struck him on the base of the neck and seized his spear. He has no idea of his assailant’s identity. I must apologize,” said the Boomer affably, “for my unheralded appearance, my dear old man. My stay in London has been curtailed. I am determined that no painter but your wife shall do the portrait and I am impatient to have it. Therefore I cut through the codswallop, as we used to say at Davidson’s, and here, as you see, I am.”

  Troy removed the brush from between her teeth. “Stay if you like, darling,” she said, and gave her husband one of the infrequent smiles that still afforded him such deep pleasure.

  “If I’m not in the way,” he said, and contrived not to sound sardonic. Troy shook her head.

  “No, no, no,” said the Boomer graciously. “We are pleased to have your company. It is permitted to converse. Provided,” he added with a bawling laugh, “that one expects no reply. That is the situation. Am I right, maestro?” he asked Troy, who did not reply. “I do not know the feminine of maestro,” he confessed. “One must not say maestress. That would be in bad taste.”

  Troy made a snuffling noise.

  Alleyn sat down in a veteran armchair. “Since I am here, and as long as it doesn’t disrupt the proceedings—” he began.

  “Nothing,” the Boomer interposed, “disrupts me.”

  “Good. I wonder then if Your Excellency can tell me anything about two of your last night’s guests.”

  “My Excellency can try. He is so ridiculous,” the Boomer parenthesized to Troy, “with his ‘Excellencies.’ ” And to Alleyn: “I have been telling your wife about our times at Davidson’s.”

  “The couple I mean are a brother and sister called Sanskrit.”

  The Boomer had been smiling, but his lips now closed over his dazzling teeth. “I think perhaps I have moved a little.” he said.

  “No,” Troy said. “You are splendidly still.” She began to make dark, sweeping gestures on her canvas.

  “Sanskrit,” Alleyn repeated. “They are enormously fat.”

  “Ah! Yes. I know the couple you mean.”

  “Is there a link with Ng’ombwana?”

  “A commercial one. Yes. They were importers of fancy goods.”

  “Were?”

  “Were,” said the Boomer without batting an eyelid. “They sold out.”

  “Do you know them personally?”

  “They have been presented,” he said.

  “Did they want to leave?”

  “Presumably not, since they are coming back.”

  “What?”

  “I believe they are coming back. Some alteration in plans. I understand they intend to return immediately. They are persons of little importance.”

  “Boomer,” said Alleyn, “have they any cause to bear you a grudge?”

  “None whatever. Why?”

  “It’s simply a check-up. After all, it seems somebody tried to murder you at your party.”

  “Well, you won’t have any luck with them. If anything they ought to feel grateful.”

  “Why?”

  “It is under my regime that they return. They had been rather abruptly treated by the previous government.”

  “When was the decision taken? To reinstate them?”

  “Let me see — a month ago, I should say. More perhaps.”

  “But when I visited you three weeks ago I actually happened to see Sanskrit on the steps outside his erstwhile premises. The name had just been painted out.”

  “You’re wrong there, my dear Rory. It was, I expect, in process of being painted in again.”

  “I see,” said Alleyn, and was silent for some seconds. “Do you like them?” he said. “The Sanskrits?”

  “No,” said the Boomer. “I find them disgusting.”

  “Well, then—?”

  “The man had been mistakenly expelled. He made out his case,” the Boomer said with a curious air of restraint. “He has every reason to feel an obligation and none to feel animosity. You may dismiss him from your mind.”

  “Before I do, had he any reason to entertain personal animosity against the Ambassador?”

  An even longer pause. “Reason? He? None,” said the Boomer. “None whatever.” And then: “I don’t know what is in your mind, Rory, but I’m sure that if you think this person could have committed the murder you are — you are — what is the phrase — you will get no joy from such a theory. But,” he added with a return to his jovial manner, “we should not discuss these beastly affairs before Mrs. Alleyn.”

  “She hasn’t heard us,” said Alleyn simply. From where he sat he could see Troy at work. It was as if her response to her subject was distilled into some sort of essence that flowed down arm, hand and brush to take possession of the canvas. He had never seen her work so urgently. She was making that slight breathy noise that he used to say was her inspiration asking to be let out. And what she did was splendid: a mystery was in the making. “She hasn’t heard us,” he repeated.

  “Has she not?” said the Boomer, and added: “That, I understand. I understand it perfectly.”

  And Alleyn experienced a swift upsurge of an emotion that he would have been hard put to it to define. “Do you, Boomer?” he said. “I believe you do.”

  “A fraction more to your left,” said Troy. “Rory — if you could move your chair. That’s done it. Thank you.”

  The Boomer patiently maintained his pose, and as the minutes went by he and Alleyn had little more to say to each other. There was a kind of precarious restfulness between them.

  Soon after half-past six Troy said she needed her sitter no more for the present. The Boomer behaved nicely. He suggested that perhaps she would prefer that he didn’t see what was happening. She came out of a long stare at her canvas, put her hand in his arm and led him round to look at it, which he did in absolute silence.

  “I am greatly obliged to you,” said the Boomer at last.

  “And I to you,” said Troy. “Tomorrow morning, perhaps? While the paint is still wet?”

  “Tomorrow morning,” promised the Boomer. “Everything else is cancelled and nothing is regretted,” and he took his leave.

  Alleyn escorted him to the studio door. The mlinzi stood at the foot of the steps. In descending, Alleyn stumbled and lurched against him. The man gave an indrawn gasp, instantly repressed. Alleyn made remorseful noises and the Boomer, who had gone ahead, turned round.

  Alleyn said: “I’ve been clumsy. I’ve hurt him. Do tell him I’m sorry.”

  “He’ll survive!” said the Boomer cheerfully. He said something to the man, who walked ahead into the house. The Boomer chuckled and laid his massive arm across Alleyn’s shoulders.

  He said: “He really has a fractured collar-bone, you know. Ask Dr. Gomba or, if you like, have a look for yourself. But don’t go on concerning yourself over my mlinzi. Truly, it’s a waste of your valuable time.”

  It struck Alleyn that if it came to being concerned, Mr. Whipplestone and the Boomer in their several ways were equally worried about the well-being of their dependents. He said: “All right, all right. But it’s you who are my real headache. Look, for the last time, I most earnestly beg you to stop taking risks. I promise you, I honestly believe that there was a plot to kill you last night and that there’s every possibility that another attempt will be made.”

  “What form will it take, do you suppose? A bomb?”

  “And you might be right at that. Are you sure, are you absolutely sure there’s nobody at all dubious in the Embassy staff? The servants—”

  “I am sure. Not only did your t
edious but worthy Gibson’s people search the Embassy but my own people did, too. Very, very thoroughly. There are no bombs. And there is not a servant there who is not above suspicion.”

  “How can you be so sure! If, for instance, a big enough bribe was offered—”

  “I shall never make you understand, my dear man. You don’t know what I am to my people. It would frighten them less to kill themselves than to touch me. I swear to you that if there was a plot to kill me, it was not organized or inspired by any of these people. No!” he said, and his extraordinary voice sounded like a gong. “Never! It is impossible. No!”

  “All right. I’ll accept that so long as you don’t admit unknown elements, you’re safe inside the Embassy. But for God’s sake don’t go taking that bloody hound for walks in the park.”

  He burst out laughing. “I am sorry,” he said, actually holding his sides like a clown, “but I couldn’t resist. It was so funny. There they were, so frightened and fussed. Dodging about, those big silly men. No! Admit! It was too funny for words.”

  “I hope you find this evening’s security measures equally droll.”

  “Don’t be stuffy,” said the Boomer.

  “Would you like a drink before you go?”

  “Very much but I think I should return.”

  “I’ll just tell Gibson.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In the study. Damping down his frustration. Will you excuse me?”

  Alleyn looked round the study door. Mr. Gibson was at ease with a glass of beer at his elbow.

  “Going,” Alleyn said.

  He rose and followed Alleyn into the hall.

  “Ah!” said the Boomer graciously. “Mr. Gibson. Here we go again, don’t we, Mr. Gibson?”

  “That’s right, Your Excellency,” said Gibson tonelessly. “Here we go again. Excuse me.”

  He went out into the street, leaving the door open.

  “I look forward to the next sitting,” said the Boomer, rubbing his hands. “Immeasurably. I shall see you then, old boy. In the morning? Shan’t I?”