Black As He's Painted by Ngaio Marsh

Author:Ngaio Marsh
Language: pt
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery, Police Procedural, Crime & mystery, Mystery & Detective, Alleyn, General, Suspense, Roderick (Fictitious character), Crime & Thriller, Fiction
ISBN: 9780006512288
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada, Limited
Published: 2000-05-04T11:17:48+00:00

"Of course."

"After all--"

"You need have no qualms. I shall sleep very soundly with my mlinzi outside my door."

"You don't mean--?"

"Certainly. It is his treasured privilege."

"For God's sake!"

"I shall also lock my door."

Alleyn left on a gale of laughter.

They went in silence to their extemporized office. When they got there Mr. Whipplestone passed his thin.hand over his thinner hair, dropped into a chair and said, "He was lying."

"The President, sir?" asked Fox in his best scandalized voice. "About the spearman?"

"No, no, no, no! It was when he said he didn't suspect anybody --specifically-- of the crime."

"Come on," Alleyn said. "Tell us. Why?"

"For a reason that you will find perfectly inadmissible. His manner. I did, at one time, know these people as well, perhaps, as a white person can. I like them. They are not ready liars. But my dear Alleyn, you yourself know the President very well indeed. Did you have the same reaction?"

Alleyn said: "He is an honourable person and a very loyal friend. I believe it'd go deeply against the grain for him to lie to me. Yes, I did think he was uncomfortable. I think he may suspect somebody. I think he is withholding something."

"Have you any idea what?"

Alleyn shoved his hands down in his trouser pockets and walked about the room. In his white tie and tails, with miniatures on his coat and with his general air of uncontrived elegance, he presented an odd contrast to Mr. Fox in his work-a-day suit, to the sergeant in uniform, and even to Mr. Whipplestone in his elderly smoking-jacket and scarf.

"I've nothing," he said at last, "that will bear the light of day. Let's leave it for the moment and stick to facts, shall we? Sam, could you, before we go, give us a r�m�f what was said at that showdown in the ballroom? I know you've written a report and I'm damn' grateful and will go over every word of it very carefully indeed. But just to go on with. And also exactly what the waiter said, which sounds like a sequel to What the Butler Saw, doesn't it? When he came into the library?"

"I'll try," said Mr. Whipplestone. "Very well. The waiter. At the outset the President told him to give an account of himself during the crucial minutes before and after the murder took place. His reply as far as I can translate it literally was, 'I will say what I must say.' "

"Meaning, in effect, 'I must speak the truth'?"

"Precisely. But he could equally have meant: 'I will say what I am forced to say.' "

"Suggesting that he had been intimidated?"

"Perhaps. I don't know. He then said that he'd collided with the other waiter in the dark."

"Chubb?"

"Quite so," said Mr. Whipplestone uneasily.

"And Chubb says the man attacked him."

"Exactly. So you have told me."

"Do you think the man was lying?"

"I think he might have merely left out mention of the attack."

"Yes, I see. And the man himself: the spearman--mlinzi or whatever? Was he at all equivocal?"

Mr. .Whipplestone hesitated.

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