lowest cross-piece and gently transferred the weight of his body from the ground to the trellis. It held, so he slotted his left boot into the space above and began a slow ascent. He would not have been surprised at any stage to hear the rending of wood, but happily for the cause of law and order he reached the top without incident.
The most difficult part was still to come. The window-sill was between three and four feet higher than the last crosspiece of the trellis. He would be obliged to raise himself above the level of the structure without any other support, and since it was set back a yard or so from the house it would be inviting disaster to reach out for the sill.
He considered the possibility of sitting astride the trellis and attempting to stand up, but he foresaw a problem in securing an adequate foothold. It was slightly less hazardous, he decided, to remain facing the house, lodge both feet on the fourth cross-lag piece from the top and, by straightening his body and pressing his knees against the topmost lath, achieve an upright stance. This he tried, gripping the top of the trellis with his hands until he felt sufficiently secure to let go and raise himself for a glimpse through the window.
It was only a glimpse, but there was something to see this time. The moment when he became perpendicular coincided with a rare shaft of November sunlight, and he was given a highlighted view of the back of a man in shirt-sleeves, standing close to the window putting up an artist’s easel. It made him remember the frames in the shed below, and the still-life painting of marrows. In this fleeting first look, he had time for no more than an impression of the rest of the room. The sun caught the curved edge of a white globe at the other end. He concluded that it was the porcelain shade of a table lamp. He lowered himself and gripped the top of the trellis again.
After a suitable pause he rose for a second look. In those few seconds, the sun had gone in, so the surfaces it caught were less sharply defined, but because the light was more diffused and the shadows less pronounced, it was actually possible to see more of the interior. Thackeray therefore looked past the artist to see what his subject was, and his eyes returned to the white globe. He now saw that it was not what he had supposed. Unless his unusual position was producing symptoms of vertigo, there was not one white surface, spherical in shape, but two, adjacent to each other. They were not porcelain globes, nor were they part of a paraffin lamp. They were part of Miss Alice Probert, and she was standing quite still on a kind of pedestal, or podium. She was wearing no clothes at all.
For a moment after this discovery, Thackeray teetered at the top of the trellis, his equilibrium dreadfully imperilled. By shooting out his arms and using them like a tightrope walker, he succeeded in recovering sufficiently to carry out the drill every constable learns at the start of his career: that facts must always be checked. He looked through the window for the third time.
There was no disputing the fact that there was a man at an easel in the room or that a young woman was posing naked in front of him. It is difficult, of course, positively to identify somebody in a state of nature whom you have met clothed for the first time the same morning, but Thackeray was as certain as he could be that he was looking at Alice Probert. True, she was in half-profile, or rather her face was (he was trying to ignore the rest of her, which apart from general indications as to stature was more distracting than helpful to the process of identification), and her black hair had been unpinned and allowed to lie loosely over her shoulders, but her piercing blue eyes (mercifully focused on the wall), the slight pertness of her nose and cheekbones and the way she held her head were conclusive, in his opinion. Having done all that duty required, Thackeray relaxed his knees and resumed his handhold on the trellis. This was fortunate, because he was immediately subjected to a second shock, a voice from below him in the garden.
‘If you have quite finished up there, I’ll trouble you to come down here and explain what you are doing.’ It was a young man’s voice and it carried authority and, unless Thackeray was mistaken, intimations of hostility.
He looked down, but was unable to recognise the speaker through the Virginia creeper, which had been comprehensively disarranged in the last minutes. He decided it was probably safest to give an account of himself on
His discoverer was young, as he had supposed, certainly not more than twenty-five, and tall. He was wearing an ulster and billycock. His face was unusually long in shape, dominated by a large mouth, and teeth which looked as though they would not fit into the space available. Thackeray could not decide which member of the animal kingdom he was reminded of, except that it was not domestic.
‘Before you fabricate a story,’ said the young man, ‘I think I should inform you that I have been observing your movements for some considerable time, and it is useless to deny that you have been following Miss Probert about Richmond for the past three-quarters of an hour. I don’t know who you are, sir, or what your game is, but I’ll have you know that nobody is going to do that sort of thing without answering to me.’
‘Perhaps you’ll tell me who you are, then,’ said Thackeray.
‘Certainly. I am Captain Nye, Miss Probert’s fiance.’
‘I see. My name is Thackeray. It won’t mean much to you, sir.’
‘You’re damned right about that, Thackeray. The only things I know about you, I don’t like, and I demand an account of them. I don’t know what Richmond’s coming to when a young lady can’t move about without being pursued by a shabbily-dressed man old enough to be her father.’
‘I’d be obliged if you would leave my clothes out of this,’ said Thackeray, mustering what dignity he could. He was uncertain what he ought to say to Nye about his purpose in trailing Alice, but he was quite sure it would be a mistake to tell the whole truth, and he needed time to discover what would satisfy the Captain. Best, in the circumstances, to keep him talking. ‘Are you worried that I might have designs on your fiancee, then?’
‘You’re damned impertinent, sir!’ said Nye. ‘I ought to hand you over to the police. It might surprise you to know that the gentleman escorting Miss Probert down Richmond Hill this morning, when you were following them, was a detective-sergeant from Scotland Yard.’
‘My word!’ said Thackeray.
‘I don’t know what you said when you approached them by the Bridge. I suppose it was some form of begging. The sergeant very decently bought you some chestnuts, I noticed, but what sort of gratitude did you show? No sooner had the fellow got on a bus than you were away in pursuit of Miss Probert.’
‘The chestnuts was my reward for carrying her basket down the hill,’ said Thackeray.
‘That was your excuse, was it? A pity she didn’t see through you straight away. Unfortunately, my fiancee is one of the most generous-hearted girls alive. The basket you carried undoubtedly contained comestibles for the poor and needy. She devotes her life to charitable enterprises. I hope that makes you feel ashamed of your behaviour, sir.’
‘I was only looking at her,’ said Thackeray.
‘Oh, yes, I know the sort of thing men like you get up to. It’s quite harmless, you say, simply enjoying the sight of a pretty woman. Soon enough, you’re not just watching them walk by, you’re following them, and the next step is what I’ve caught you in the act of doing-peering through windows.’
‘I wanted to be sure it was Miss Probert,’ said Thackeray truthfully. ‘She went into the hat-shop and I was taken by surprise when she came out with a different set of clothes.’
‘Is it surprising?’ said Nye. ‘She visits some very seedy areas in her work. She can’t go into places like that dressed in plush hats and velvet coats, by Jove. They’d tear ’em off her back in parts of Twickenham.’
‘Why doesn’t she put on her brown clothes from the beginning then?’
‘There’s no mystery in it. She’s the daughter of a doctor. The Proberts are a well-known family on the Hill. People expect them to dress decently. That’s all there is to it. Look here, I’m damned if I’m going to account for everything to you. I want to know what you were doing at the top of that trellis.’
‘I was trying to look into that window,’ admitted Thackeray.
‘You were, eh?’ Nye came a step closer to Thackeray.
‘What did you expect to see?’
‘Not what was there, anyway.’
‘I’m damned sure of that,’ said Nye. ‘You’re a shameless brute, aren’t you? A Peeping Tom. See if this will close your nasty little eye!’ His clenched fist landed squarely in Thackeray’s face, with such speed and force that it toppled him over on to the lawn. ‘It may interest you to know,’ Nye went on, massaging his knuckles, ‘that this house is the meeting place of the Philanthropic Ladies of Richmond, and my fiancee comes here regularly. You’ll see nothing to your obnoxious taste at any of the windows here, by Jove! But if I ever find you within half a mile of that innocent girl, that sweet champion of the unfortunate, I’ll thrash you within an inch of your life!’
When Thackeray got up, Nye had already gone. He patted the skin round his eye with his fingertips. There was no bleeding, but he was going to have a black eye that would want some explaining at Paradise Street, and
