Violet was now morose. She said sadly, “Sunday is Daddy’s birthday. I don’t think he’ll be celebrating too many birthdays in the future.”
“Wire him flowers.”
“Go to hell.”
“If you lead the way.”
Basil Cole had returned to the offices of British Intelligence almost an hour before Nigel Pack and in high good spirits. He’d been tracked down at his club, where he was losing heavily in a friendly poker game and was grateful for the rescue. Sir Arthur Willing was unhappily completing a lonesome dinner at his desk. “You’re dining rather late, sir.”
“This is Whitehall, Mr. Cole, not the French Riviera.” Sir Arthur was grumpy, which meant he’d had neither gin nor wine, and there was a strong possibility events were not turning to either his direction or satisfaction. “Where’s Pack?”
“I don’t know, sir,” said Basil Cole as he sat opposite Sir Arthur and read some memos his superior pushed across the desk to him. “Wasn’t he contacted?”
“Over an hour ago, for God’s sake. They found him at some dinner party at the Italian Embassy. He spends an awful lot of time partying with those people, seems to me.”
“I think it’s his wife, sir. Violet is partial to exotics.”
“Violet is a frump.”
Cole finished reading the brief memos and blew a low, mournful whistle. “Bad stuff, this, murdering a detective. They really think Hitchcock did it?”
“His fingerprints are on the knife hilt.”
“Well, if he did, it couldn’t have been deliberate. I mean if his flat was raided, his wife abducted, he must have panicked—”
“Oh, bother your suppositions. Jennings is on to it, and he’s a very capable man. We’ve a long night ahead of us.”
“I gather Hitchcock is still at large.”
“Very much so. But we’ll catch up with him.”
“We usually do.” Basil Cole smiled brightly.
“Here’s Pack at last,” grumbled Sir Arthur. “What kept you?”
“Sorry, sir. The fog. My taxi crawled here.”
“What are those scratches on your face?”
“I cut myself shaving.”
The knowledgeable Basil Cole refrained from commenting, ‘Next time use a razor blade instead of Violet’s finger- nails,’ but instead handed Nigel the memos and watched him sink onto the sofa and read them.
At the same time as Hitchcock was eating his lonely dinner and Sir Arthur’s aides were converging in his office, Alma Hitchcock was sitting on a settee in a beautiful drawing room of a mansion she suspected was located somewhere in Mayfair. She was sipping from a glass of what tasted like a superior Madeira while waiting to be served a promised dinner, and wondered if the man with the tic under his left eye would continue to provide companionship through the meal. He had come into the room only a few minutes earlier, and she hadn’t seen him since being transferred from the hearse into a delivery van somewhere in Regent’s Park, under the cover of fog and darkness and the animal cries from the zoo. She remembered that. It could be a clue of the sort Hitch adored using. Of course his animal cries at the end of the film would turn out to have come from a nearby secreted gramophone and the transfer would not have occurred in Regents Park but at some other venue. The man with the tic was pouring himself a Scotch and soda. He was in his early forties, and his clothing was nondescript, appropriate to anonymity. His hair was very black and parted in the middle, and his face would be an attractive one were it not for the overactive tic. He continued to say nothing, and Alma found him and his attitude annoying.
“I assume you have a name,” she said, surprised at the unnaturally high pitch of her voice.
“Oh, yes. My family could afford one.” He sat on a piano bench and sipped his Scotch and soda.
Suave, thought Alma, he’s been studying Ronald Colman. “You’re not going to tell me your name?”
“What’s in a name?”
“Identification,” riposted Alma. “If you won’t tell me your name, will you kindly tell me what the hell’s been going on? Where is my husband?” The man said nothing. “What do you expect to gain by abducting me?”
“You’ll recognize that in due time.”
“I see. Can you at least explain this business in Regent’s Park? We might have all been killed when that delivery van sideswiped us.”
“I’m a very good driver.”
And indeed he was. Somewhere in Regent’s Park, a delivery van had appeared from out of nowhere, Alma of course not knowing what it was from the interior of the blacked-out hearse, but later recognizing what kind of vehicle it was when she was transferred into it from the hearse. When the hearse skidded to a stop, the delivery van alongside it, the rear hearse doors were suddenly flung open, and the thugs who had helped kidnap Alma drew guns but were quickly overpowered by four men who beat up the thugs mercilessly.
“Your goons were very brutally beaten by those four… men… I suppose, for want of a better description. Why were they tied up and left in the hearse?”
“To be found and put into jail, of course. Why else?” He didn’t have to sound so condescending, thought Alma; he was treating her like an idiot child. “What about the men who brought us here? Shouldn’t they be put into jail?”
“It would hardly be cricket jailing your saviors.”
“Saviors? This is most confusing.” She felt like Alice on the second leg of her journey through Wonderland. “Why weren’t you trussed up and left to be jailed?”
“I was not one of them.”
“Then what were you doing with them? You let them strike my husband!”
“Mrs. Hitchcock, all in good time.”
“All right. All in good time. And how long am I to be held prisoner here?”
“Don’t you like this room? I’m told it was decorated by Syrie Maugham.” He pronounced the name as though he thought it should be written with lightning.
“I see.” Alma managed a small smile. “Then
