Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 7: Off With His Head, Singing in the Shrouds, False Scent. Ngaio Marsh

       CHAPTER 8

       Question of Fact

      When afternoon closing-time came, Trixie pulled down the bar shutters and locked them. Simon Begg went into the Private. There was a telephone in the passage outside the Private and he had put a call through to his bookmaker. He wanted, if he could, to get the results of the 1.30 at Sandown. Teutonic Dancer was a rank outsider. He’d backed it both ways for a great deal more than he could afford to lose and had already begun to feel that if he did lose, it would be in some vague way Mrs Bünz’s fault. This was both ungracious and illogical.

      For many reasons, Mrs Bünz was the last person he wanted to see and for an equal number of contradictory ones she was the first. And there she was, the picture of uncertainty and alarm, huddled, snuffling, over the parlour fire with her dreadful cold and her eternal notebooks.

      She had bought a car from Simon, she might be his inspiration in a smashing win. One way and another, they had done business together. He produced a wan echo of his usual manner.

      ‘Hallo –’llo! And how’s Mrs B today?’ asked Simon.

      ‘Unwell. I have caught a severe cold in the head. Also, I have received a great shawk. Last night in the pawk was a terrible, terrible shawk.’

      ‘You can say that again,’ he agreed glumly, and applied himself to the Sporting News.

      Suddenly they both said together: ‘As a matter of fact –’ and stopped, astonished and disconcerted.

      ‘Ladies first,’ said Simon.

      ‘Thank you. I was about to say that, as a matter of fact, I would suggest that our little transaction – ach! How shall I say it? Should remain, perhaps –‘

      ‘Confidential?’ he ventured eagerly.

      ‘That is the word for which I sought. Confidential.’

      ‘I’m all for it, Mrs B. I was going to make the same suggestion myself. Suits me.’

      ‘I am immensely relieved. Immensely. I thank you, Wing-Commander. I trust, at the same time – you do not think – it would be so shawkink – if –’

      ‘Eh?’ He looked up from his paper to stare at her. ‘What’s that? No, no, no, Mrs B. Not to worry. Not a chance. The idea’s laughable.’

      ‘To me it is not amusink but I am glad you find it so,’ Mrs Bünz said stuffily. ‘You read something of interest, perhaps, in your newspaper?’

      ‘I’m waiting. Teutonic Dancer. Get me? The 1.30?’

      Mrs Bünz shuddered.

      ‘Oh, well!’ he said. ‘There you are. I follow the form as a general thing. Don’t go much for gimmicks. Still! Talk about a coincidence! You couldn’t go past it really, could you?’ He raised an admonitory finger. The telephone had begun to ring in the passage. ‘My call,’ he said. ‘This is it. Keep your fingers crossed, Mrs B.’

      He darted out of the room.

      Mrs Bünz, left alone, breathed uncomfortably through her mouth, blew her nose and clocked her tongue against her palate. ‘Dar,’ she breathed.

      Fox came down the passage past Simon, who was saying: ‘Hold the line, please, miss, for Pete’s sake. Hold the line,’ and entered the parlour.

      ‘Mrs Burns?’ he asked.

      Mrs Bünz, though she eyed him with evident misgivings, rallied sufficiently to correct him: ‘Eü, eü, eü,’ she demonstrated windingly through her cold. ‘Bünz.’

      ‘Now, that’s very interesting,’ Fox said, beaming at her. ‘That’s a noise, if you will excuse me referring to it as such, that we don’t make use of in English, do we? Would it be the same, now, as the sound in the French “eu”?’ He arranged his sedate mouth in an agonized pout. ‘Deux diseuses,’ said Mr Fox by way of illustration. ‘Not that I got beyond a very rough approximation, I’m afraid.’

      ‘It is not the same at all. “Bünz.”’

      ‘Bünz,’ mouthed Mr Fox.

      ‘Your accent is not perfect.’

      ‘I know that,’ he agreed heavily. ‘In the meantime, I’m forgetting my job. Mr Alleyn presents his compliments and wonders if you’d be kind enough to give him a few minutes.’

      ‘Ach! I too am forgetting. You are the police.’

      ‘You wouldn’t think so, the way I’m running on, would you?’

      (Alleyn had said: ‘If she was an anti-Nazi refugee, she’ll think we’re ruthless automatons. Jolly her along a bit.’)

      Mrs Bünz gathered herself together and followed Fox. In the passage, Simon Begg was saying: ‘Look, old boy, all I’m asking for is the gen on the 1.30. Look, old boy –’

      Fox opened the door of the sitting-room and announced her.

      ‘Mrs Bünz,’ he said quite successfully.

      As she advanced into the room Alleyn seemed to see, not so much a middle-aged German, as the generalization of a species. Mrs Bünz was the lady who sits near the front of lectures and always asks questions. She has an enthusiasm for obscure musicians, stands nearest to guides, keeps handicraft shops of the better class and reads Rabindranath Tagore. She weaves, forms circles, gives talks, hand-throws pots and designs book-plates. She is sometimes a vegetarian, though not always a crank. Occasionally she is an expert.

      She walked slowly into the room and kept her gaze fixed on Alleyn. ‘She is afraid of me,’ he thought.

      ‘This is Mr Alleyn, Mrs Bünz,’ Dr Otterly said.

      Alleyn shook hands with her. Her own short stubby hand was tremulous and the palm was damp. At his invitation, she perched warily on a chair. Fox sat down behind her and palmed his notebook out of his pocket.

      ‘Mrs Bünz,’ Alleyn said, ‘in a minute or two I’m going to throw myself on your mercy.’

      She blinked at him.

      ‘Zo?’ said Mrs Bünz.

      ‘I understand you’re an expert on folklore and, if ever anybody needed an expert, we do.’

      ‘I have gone a certain way.’

      ‘Dr Otterly tells me,’ Alleyn said, to that gentleman’s astonishment, ‘that you have probably gone as far as anyone in England.’

      ‘Zo,’ she said, with a magnificent inclination towards Otterly.

      ‘But, before we talk about that, I suppose I’d better ask you the usual routine questions. Let’s get them over as soon as possible. I’m told that you gave Mr William Andersen a lift –‘

      They were off again on the old trail, Alleyn thought dejectedly, and not getting much farther along it. Mrs Bünz’s account of the Guiser’s hitch-hike corresponded with what he had already been told.

      ‘I was so delighted to drive him,’ she began nervously. ‘It was a great pleasure to me. Once or twice I attempted, tactfully, to a little draw him out but he was, I found, angry, and not inclined for cawnversation.’

      ‘Did he say anything at all, do you remember?’