A Wreath for Rivera

CHAPTER X THE STILETTO, THE REVOLVER AND HIS LORDSHIP

“And what,” Alleyn asked when Carlisle had left them, “is the betting on the favourite now, Br’er Fox?”

“By Gum,” Fox said, “you always tell us that when a homicide case is full of fancy touches it’s not going to give much trouble. Do you stick to that, sir?”

“I’ll be surprised if this turns out to be the exception but I must say it looks like it at the moment. However, the latest development does at least cast another ray of light on your playmate. Do you remember how the old devil turned the gun over when we first let him see it at the Metronome? D’you remember how he took another look at it in the study and then had an attack of the dry grins and when I asked him what he expected to see had the infernal nerve to come back at me with: ‘Hoity-toity’ — yes, ‘Hoity-toity — wouldn’t you like to know?’ ”

“Ugh!”

“He’d realized all along, of course, that this wasn’t the weapon he loaded in the study and took down to the Metronome. Yes,” Alleyn added as Fox opened his mouth, “and don’t forget he showed Skelton the gun a few minutes before it was fired. Miss Wayne says he pointed out the initials to Skelton.”

“That looks suspicious in itself,” Fox said instantly. “Why go to the trouble of pointing out initials to two people? He was getting something fixed up for himself. So’s he could turn round and say: ‘That’s not the gun I fired.’ ”

“Then why didn’t he say so at once?”

“Gawd knows.”

“If you ask me he was sitting pretty, watching us make fools of ourselves.”

Fox jabbed his finger at the revolver. “If this isn’t the original weapon,” he demanded, “what the hell is it? It’s the one this projectile-dart-bolt or what-have-you was fired from because it’s got the scratches in the barrel. That means someone had this second gun all ready loaded with the dart and ammunition and substituted it for the original weapon. Here! What’s the report say, Mr. Alleyn?”

Alleyn was reading the report. “Entwhistle,” he said, “has had a ballistic orgy over the thing. The scratches could have been made by the brilliants in the parasol clip. In his opinion they were so made. He’s sending photomicrographs to prove it. He’s fired the bolt — let’s stick to calling this hybrid a bolt, shall we? — from another gun with an identical bore and it is ‘somewhat similarly scratched,’ which is a vile phrase. He pointed out that wavering, irregular scars were made when the bolt was shoved up the barrel. The spring clip was pressed back with the thumb while it was being inserted and then sprang out once it was inside the barrel, thus preventing the bolt from falling out if the weapon was pointed downwards. The bolt was turned slightly as it was shoved home. The second scar was made by the ejection of the bolt, the clip retaining its pressure while being expelled. He says that the scars in the revolver we submitted don’t extend quite as deep up the barrel as those made by the bolt which he fired from his own gun, but he considers that they were made by the same kind of procedure and the same bolt. At a distance of four feet, the projectile shoots true. Over long distances there are ‘progressive divergences’ caused by the weight of the clip on one side or by air resistance. Entwhistle says he’s very puzzled by the fouling from the bore which is quite unlike anything in his experience. He removed it and sent it along for analysis. The analyst finds that the fouling consists of particles of carbon and of various hydrocarbons including members of the paraffin series, apparently condensed from vapour.”

“Funny.”

“That’s all.”

“All right,” Fox said heavily. “All right. That looks fair enough. The bolt that plugged Rivera was shot out of this weapon. This weapon is not the one his lordship showed Miss Wayne and Syd Skelton. But unless you entertain the idea of somebody shooting off another gun at the same instant, this is the one that killed Rivera. You accept that, sir?”

“I’ll take it as a working premise. With reservations and remembering our conversation in the car.”

“All right. Well, after Skelton examined the gun with the initials, did his lordship get a chance to substitute this one and fire it off? Could he have had this one on him all the time?”

“Hob-nobbing, cheek by jowl, with a dozen or so people at close quarters? I should say definitely not. And, he didn’t know Skelton would ask to see the gun. And what did he do with the first gun afterwards? We searched him, remember.”

“Planted it? Anyway, where is it?”

“Somewhere at the Metronome if we’re on the right track and we’ve searched the Metronome. But go on.”

“Well, sir, if his lordship didn’t change the gun who did?”

“His stepdaughter could have done it. Or any other member of his party. They were close to the sombrero, remember. They got up to dance and moved round between the table and the edge of the dais. Lady Pastern was alone at the table for some time. I didn’t see her move but I wasn’t watching her, of course. All the ladies had largish evening bags. The catch in that theory, Br’er Fox, is that they wouldn’t have known they were going to be within reach of the sombrero and it’s odds on they didn’t know he was going to put his perishing gun under his sombrero, anyway.”

Fox bit at his short grizzled moustache, planted the palms of his hands on his knees and appeared to go into a short trance. He interrupted it to mutter: “Skelton, now. Syd Skelton. Could Syd Skelton have worked the substitution? You’re going to remind me they were all watching him, but were they watching all that closely? Syd Skelton.”

“Go on, Fox.”

“Syd Skelton’s on his own, in a manner of speaking. He left the band platform before his lordship came on for his turn. Syd walked out. Suppose he had substituted this gun for the other with the initials. Suppose he walked right out and dropped the other one down the first grating he came to? Syd knew he was going to get the chance, didn’t he?”

“How, when and where did he convert the bit of parasol shaft and stiletto into the bolt and put it up the barrel of the second revolver? Where did he get his ammunition? And when did he get the gun? He wasn’t at Duke’s Gate.”

“Yes,” Fox said heavily, “that’s awkward. I wonder if you could get round that one. Well, leave it for the time being. Who else have we got? Breezy. From the substitution angle, can we do anything about Breezy?”

“He didn’t get alongside Pastern, on either of their statements, from the time Skelton looked at the gun until after Rivera was killed. They were alone together in the band-room before Breezy made his entrance but Pastern, with his usual passionate industry in clearing other people, says Breezy didn’t go near him. And Pastern had his gun in his hip pocket, remember.”

Fox returned to his trance.

“I think,” Alleyn said, “it’s going to be one of those affairs where the whittling away of impossibilities leaves one face to face with a mere improbability which, as you would say, faute de mieux, one is forced to accept. And I think, so far, Fox, we haven’t found my improbable notion an impossibility. At least it has the virtue of putting the fancy touches in a more credible light.”

“We’ll never make a case of it, I reckon, if it does turn out to be the answer.”

“And we’ll never make a case of it if we pull in his lordship and base the charge on the assumption that he substituted this gun for the one he loaded and says he fired. Skelton’s put up by the defence and swears he examined the thing at his own request and saw the initials and that this is not the same weapon. Counsel points out that three minutes later Lord Pastern goes on for his turn.”

Fox snarled quietly to himself and presently broke out: “We call this blasted thing a bolt. Be damned if I don’t think we’ll get round to calling it a dart. Be damned if I’m not beginning to wonder if it was used like one. Thrown at the chap from close by. After all it’s not impossible.”

“Who by? Breezy?”

“No,” Fox said slowly. “No. Not Breezy. His lordship cleared Breezy in advance by searching him. Would you swear Breezy didn’t pick anything up from anywhere after he came out to conduct?”

“I believe I would. He walked rapidly through the open door and down an alleyway between the musicians. He stood in a spot light a good six feet or more away from anything, conducting like a great jerking jelly-fish. They all say he couldn’t have picked anything up after Pastern searched him, and in any case I would certainly swear he didn’t put his hands near his pockets and that up to the time Rivera fell he was conducting with both hands and that none of his extraordinary antics in the least resembled dart-throwing. I was watching him. They rather fascinated me, those antics. And if you want any more, Br’er Fox, Rivera had his back turned to Breezy when he fell.”

“All right. His lordship then. His lordship was facing Rivera. Close to him. Blast. Unless he’s ambidextrous, how’d he fire off a gun and throw a dart all in a split second? This is getting me nowhere. Who else, then?”

“Do you fancy Lady Pastern as a dart queen?”

Fox chuckled. “That would be the day, sir, wouldn’t it? But how about Mr. Manx? We’ve got a motive for Manx. Rivera had proof that Manx wrote these sissy articles in Harmony. Manx doesn’t want that known. Blackmail,” said Fox without much conviction.

“Foxkin,” Alleyn said, “let there be a truce to these barren speculations. May I remind you that up to the time he fell Rivera was raising hell with a piano-accordion?”

Fox said, after another long pause: “You know I like this case. It’s got something. Yes. And may I remind you, sir, that he wasn’t meant to fall? None of them expected him to fall. Therefore he fell because somebody planted a bloody little steel embroidery gadget on a parasol handle in his heart before he fell. So where, if you don’t object to the inquiry, Mr. Alleyn, do we go from here?”

“I think,” Alleyn said, “that you institute a search for the missing gun and I pay a call on Miss Petronella Xantippe Henderson.” He got up and fetched his hat. “And I think, moreover,” he added, “that we’ve been making a couple of perishing fools of ourselves.”

“About the dart?” Fox demanded. “Or the gun?”

“About Harmony. Think this one over while I call on Miss Henderson and then tell me what you make of it.”

Five minutes later he went out, leaving Fox in a concentrated trance.

Miss Henderson received him in her room. It had the curiously separate, not quite congenial air that seems to be the characteristic of sitting-rooms that are permanently occupied by solitary women in other people’s houses. There were photographs: of Félicité, as a child, as a schoolgirl and in her presentation dress; one intimidating portrait of Lady Pastern and one, enlarged, it would seem, from a snapshot, of Lord Pastern in knickerbockers and shooting boots, with a gun under his arm, a spaniel at his heels, a large house at his back and an expression of impertinence on his face. Above the desk hung a group of women undergraduates clad in the tube-like brevity of the nineteen-twenties. A portion of Lady Margaret Hall loomed in the background.

Miss Henderson was dressed with scrupulous neatness, in a dark suit that faintly resembled a uniform or habit. She received Alleyn with perfect composure. He looked at her hair, greyish, quietly fashionable in its controlled grooming, at her eyes, which were pale, and at her mouth, which was unexpectedly full.

“Well, Miss Henderson,” he said, “I wonder if you will be able to throw any light on this very obscure business.”

“I’m afraid it’s most unlikely,” she said tranquilly.

“You never know. There’s one point, at least, where I hope you will help us. You were present at last night’s party in this house, both before and after dinner, and you were in the drawing-room when Lord Pastern, with the help of all the people concerned, worked out and wrote down the time-table which he afterwards gave to me.”

“Yes,” she agreed after he had waited for a second or two.

“Would you say that as far as your personal observations and recollections cover them, the movements set down in the time-table are accurate?”

“Oh yes,” she said at once, “I think so. But of course they don’t go very far — my recollections. I was the last to arrive in the drawing-room, you know, before dinner and the first to leave after dinner.”

“Not quite the first, according to the time-table, surely?”

She drew her brows together as if perturbed at the suggestion of inaccuracy. “Not?” she said.

“The time-table puts Miss de Suze’s exit from the drawing-room a second or two before yours.”

“How stupid of me. Félicité did go out first but I followed almost at once. I forgot for the moment.”

“You were all agreed on this point last night when Lord Pastern compiled his time-table?”

“Yes. Perfectly.”

“Do you remember that just before this there was a great rumpus in the ballroom? It startled you and you dropped a little stiletto on the carpet. You were tidying Lady Pastern’s work-box at the time. Do you remember?”

He had thought at first that she used no more make-up than a little powder but he saw now that the faint warmth of her cheeks was artificial. The colour became isolated as the skin beneath and about it bleached. Her voice was quite even and clear.

“It was certainly rather an alarming noise,” she said.

“Do you remember, too, that Miss de Suze picked up the stiletto? I expect she meant to return it to you or to the box but she was rather put out just then. She was annoyed, wasn’t she, by the, as she considered, uncordial reception given to her fiancé?”

“He was not her fiancé. They were not engaged.”

“Not officially, I know.”

“Not officially. There was no engagement.”

“I see. In any case, do you remember that instead of replacing the stiletto, she still had it in her hand when, a moment later, she left the room?”

“I’m afraid I didn’t notice.”

“What did you do?”

“Do?”

“At that moment. You had been tidying the box. It was exquisitely neat when we found it this morning. Was it on your knees? The table was a little too far from your chair for you to have used it, I think.”

“Then,” she said, with her first hint of impatience, “the box was on my knees.”

“So that was how the miniature silver pencil you wear on a chain came to be in the box?”

Her hands went to the bosom of her suit, fingering it. “Yes. I suppose so. Yes. I didn’t realize… Was that where it was?”

“Perhaps you dropped the lid and caught the pencil, dragging it off the chain.”

“Yes,” she repeated. “Yes. I suppose so. Yes, I remember I did do that.”

“Then why did you hunt for it this morning on the landing?”

“I had forgotten about catching it in the box,” she said rapidly.

“Not,” Alleyn murmured apologetically, “a frightfully good memory.”

“These are trivial things that you ask me to remember. In this house we are none of us, at the moment, concerned with trivial things.”

“Are you not? Then, I suggest that you searched the landing, not for your trinket, which you say was a trivial thing, but for something that you knew could not be in the work-box because you had seen Miss de Suze take it out with her when she left the drawing-room in a rage. The needlework stiletto.”

“But, Inspector Alleyn, I told you I didn’t notice anything of the sort.”

“Then what were you looking for?”

“You have apparently been told. My pencil.”

“A trivial thing but your own? Here it is.”

He opened his hand, showing her the pencil. She made no movement and he dropped it in her lap. “You don’t seem to me,” he remarked casually, “to be an unobservant woman.”

“If that’s a compliment,” she said, “thank you.”

“Did you see Miss de Suze again, after she left the drawing-room with the stiletto in her hand and after she had quarrelled with Rivera when they were alone together in the study?”

“Why do you say they quarrelled?”

“I have it on pretty good authority.”

“Carlisle?” she said sharply.

“No. But if you cross-examine a policeman about this sort of job, you know, he’s not likely to be very communicative.”

“One of the servants, I suppose,” she said, dismissing it and him without emphasis. He asked her again if she had seen Félicité later that evening and after watching him for a moment she said that she had. Félicité had come to this room and had been in the happiest possible mood. “Excited?” he suggested and she replied that Félicité had been pleasurably excited. She was glad to be going out with her cousin, Edward Manx, to whom she was attached and was looking forward to the performance at the Metronome.

“After this encounter you went to Lady Pastern’s room, didn’t you? Lady Pastern’s maid was with her. She was dismissed, but not before she had heard you say that Miss de Suze was very much excited and that you wanted to have a word with her mother about this.”

“Again, the servants.”

“Anybody,” Alleyn said, “who is prepared to speak the truth. A man has been murdered.”

“I have spoken nothing but the truth.” Her lips trembled and she pressed them together.

“Good. Let’s go on with it then, shall we?”

“There’s nothing at all that I can tell you. Nothing at all.”

“But at least you can tell me about the family. You understand, don’t you, that my job, at the moment, is not so much finding the guilty person as clearing persons who may have been associated with Rivera but are innocent of his murder. That may, indeed it does, take in certain members of the household, the detailed as well as the general set-up. Now, in your position…”

“My position!” she muttered, with a sort of repressed contempt. Almost inaudibly she added: “What do you know of my position!”

Alleyn said pleasantly: “I’ve heard you’re called the Controller of the Household.” She didn’t answer and he went on: “In any case it has been a long association and I suppose, in many ways, an intimate one. With Miss de Suze, for instance. You have brought her up, really, haven’t you?”

“Why do you keep speaking about Félicité? This has nothing to do with Félicité.” She got up, and stood with her back towards him, changing the position of an ornament on the mantelpiece. He could see her carefully kept and very white hand steady itself on the edge of the shelf. “I’m afraid I’m not behaving very well, am I?” she murmured. “But I find your insistence rather trying.”

“Is that because, at the moment, it’s directed at Miss de Suze and the stiletto?”

“Naturally, I’m uneasy. It’s disturbing to feel that she will be in the smallest degree involved.” She leant her head against her hand. From where he stood, behind her, she looked like a woman who had come to rest for a moment and fallen into an idle speculation. Her voice came to him remotely from beyond her stooped shoulders as if her mouth were against her hand. “I suppose she simply left it in the study. She didn’t even realize she had it in her hand. It was not in her hand when she came upstairs. It had no importance for her at all.” She turned and faced him. “I shall tell you something,” she said. “I don’t want to. I’d made up my mind I’d have no hand in this. It’s distasteful to me. But I see now that I must tell you.”

“Right.”

“It’s this. Before dinner last night and during dinner, I had opportunity to watch those — those two men.”

“Rivera and Bellairs?”

“Yes. They were extraordinary creatures and I suppose in a sort of way I was interested.”

“Naturally. In Rivera at all events.”

“I don’t know what servants’ gossip you have been listening to, Inspector Alleyn.”

“Miss Henderson, I’ve heard enough from Miss de Suze herself to tell me that there was an understanding between them.”

“I watched those two men,” she said exactly as if he hadn’t spoken. “And I saw at once there was bad blood between them. They looked at each other — I can’t describe it — with enmity. They were both, of course, incredibly common and blatant. They scarcely spoke to each other but during dinner, over and over again, I saw the other one, the conductor, eyeing him. He talked a great deal to Félicité and to Lord Pastern but he listened to…”

“To Rivera?” Alleyn prompted. She seemed to be incapable of pronouncing his name.

“Yes. He listened to him as if he resented every word he spoke. That would have been natural enough from any of us.” ‘

“Was Rivera so offensive?”

An expression of eagerness appeared on her face. Here was something, at last, about which she was ready to speak.

“Offensive?” she said. “He was beyond everything. He sat next to Carlisle and even she was nonplussed. Evidently she attracted him. It was perfectly revolting.”

Alleyn thought distastefully: “Now what’s behind all this? Resentment? At Carlisle rather than Félicité attracting the atrocious Rivera? Or righteous indignation? Or what?”

She had raised her head. Her arm still rested on the mantelpiece and she had stretched out her hand to a framed photograph of Félicité in presentation dress. He moved slightly and saw that her eyes were fixed on the photograph. Félicité’s eyes, under her triple plumage, stared back with the glazed distaste (so suggestive of the unwitting influence of Mr. John Gielgud) that characterizes the modish photograph. Miss Henderson began to speak again and it was as if she addressed herself to the photograph. “Of course, Félicité didn’t mind in the least. It was nothing to her. A relief, no doubt. Anything rather than suffer his odious attentions. But it was clear to me that the other creature and he had quarrelled. It was quite obvious.”

“But if they hardly spoke to each other how could…?”

“I’ve told you. It was the way the other person, Bellairs, looked at him. He watched him perpetually.”

Alleyn now stood before her. They made a formal conversation piece with the length of the mantelpiece between them. He said: “Miss Henderson, who was beside you at the dinner table?”

“I sat next to Lord Pastern. On his left.”

“And on your left?”

She made a fastidious movement with her shoulders. “Mr. Bellairs.”

“Do you remember what he talked to you about?”

Her mouth twisted. “I don’t remember that he spoke to me at all,” she said. “He had evidently realized that I was a person of no importance. He devoted himself to Félicité, who was on his other side. He gave me his shoulder.”

Her voice faded out almost before she had uttered the last word as if, too late, she had tried to stop herself.

“If he gave you his shoulder,” Alleyn said, “how did it come about that you could see this inimical fixed stare of his?”

The photograph of Félicité crashed on the hearth. Miss Henderson cried out and knelt. “How clumsy of me,” she whispered.

“Let me do it. You may cut your fingers.”

“No,” she said sharply, “don’t touch it.”

She began to pick the slivers of glass from the frame and drop them in the grate. “There’s a looking-glass on the wall of the dining-room,” she said. “I could see him in that.” And in a flat voice that had lost all its urgency she repeated: “He watched him perpetually.”

“Yes,” Alleyn said, “I remember the looking-glass. I accept that.”

“Thank you,” she said ironically.

“One more question. Did you go into the ballroom at any time after dinner?”

She looked up at him warily and after a moment said: “I believe I did. Yes. I did.”

“When?”

“Félicité had lost her cigarette case. It was when they were changing and she called out from her room. She had been in the ballroom during the afternoon and thought she might have left it there.”

“Had she done so?”

“Yes. It was on the piano. Under some music.”

“What else was on the piano?”

“A bundle of parasols.”

“Anything else?”

“No,” she said. “Nothing.”

“Or on the chairs or floor?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Perfectly sure,” she said and dropped a piece of glass with a little tinkle in the grate.

“Well,” Alleyn said, “if I can’t help you, perhaps I’d better take myself off.”

She seemed to examine the photograph. She peered at it as if to make certain there were no flaws or scratches on Félicité’s image. “Very well,” she said and stood up, holding the face of the photograph against her flattish chest. “I’m sorry if I haven’t told you the kind of things you want to be told. The truth is so seldom what one really wants to hear, is it? But perhaps you don’t think I have told you the truth.”

“I think I am nearer to it than I was before I visited you.”

He left her, with the broken photograph still pressed against the bosom of her dark suit. On the landing he encountered Hortense. Her ladyship, Hortense said, smiling knowledgeably at him, would be glad to see him before he left. She was in her boudoir.

It was a small, delicately appointed room on the same floor. Lady Pastern rose from her desk, a pretty Empire affair, as he came in. She was firmly encased in her morning dress. Her hair was rigid, her hands ringed. A thin film of make-up had been carefully spread over the folds and shadows of her face. She looked ghastly but completely in order.

“It is so good of you to spare me a moment,” she said and held out her hand. This was unexepected. Evidently she considered that her change of manner required an explanation and, without wasting time, let him have it.

“I did not realize last night,” she said concisely, “that you must be the younger son of an old friend of my father’s. You are Sir George Alleyn’s son, are you not?”

Alleyn bowed. This, he thought, is going to be tiresome.

“Your father,” she said, “was a frequent visitor at my parents’ house in the Faubourg St.-Germain. He was, in those days, an attaché, I think, at your embassy in Paris.” Her voice faded and an extraordinary look came over her face. He was unable to interpret it.

“What is it, Lady Pastern?” he asked.

“Nothing. I was reminded, for a moment, of a former conversation. We were speaking of your father. I remember that he and your mother called upon one occasion, bringing their two boys with them. Perhaps you do not recollect the visit.”

“It is extremely kind of you to do so.”

“I had understood that you were to be entered in the British Diplomatic Service.”

“I was entirely unsuited for it, I’m afraid.”

“Of course,” she said with a sort of creaking graciousness, “young men after the first war began to find their vocation in unconventional fields. One understands and accepts these changes, doesn’t one?”

“Since I am here as a policeman,” Alleyn said politely, “I hope so.”

Lady Pastern examined him with that complete lack of reticence which is often the characteristic of royal personages. It occurred to him that she herself would also have shaped up well, in an intimidating way, as a policewoman.

“It is a relief to me,” she announced, after a pause, “that we are in your hands. You will appreciate my difficulties. It will make an enormous difference.”

Alleyn was familiar enough with this point of view, and detested it.

He thought it advisable however, to say nothing. Lady Pastern, erecting her bust and settling her shoulders, continued:

“I need not remind you of my husband’s eccentricities. They are public property. You have seen for yourself to what lengths of imbecility he will go. I can only assure you that though he may be, and indeed is, criminally stupid, he is perfectly incapable of crime as the word is understood in the profession you have elected to follow. He is not, in a word, a potential murderer. Or,” she added, apparently as an afterthought, “an actual one. Of that you may be assured.” She looked affably at Alleyn. Evidently, he thought, she had been a dark woman. There was a tinge of sable in her hair. Her skin was sallow and he thought she probably used something to deal with a darkness of the upper lip. It was odd that she should have such pale eyes. “I cannot blame you,” she said, as he was still silent, “if you suspect my husband. He has done everything to invite suspicion. In this instance, however, I am perfectly satisfied that he is guiltless.”

“We shall be glad to find proof of his innocence,” Alleyn said.

Lady Pastern closed one hand over the other. “Usually,” she said, “I comprehend entirely his motives. But entirely. On this occasion, however, I find myself somewhat at a loss. It is obvious to me that he develops some scheme. But what? Yes: I confess myself at a loss. I merely warn you, Mr. Alleyn, that to suspect my husband of this crime is to court acute embarrassment. You will gratify his unquenchable passion for self-dramatization. He prepares a dénouement.”

Alleyn took a quick decision. “It’s possible,” he said, “that we’ve anticipated him there.”

“Indeed?” she said quickly. “I am glad to hear it.”

“It appears that the revolver produced last night was not the one Lord Pastern loaded and took to the platform. I think he knows this. Apparently it amuses him to say nothing.”

“Ah!” She breathed out a sound of immense satisfaction. “As I thought. It amuses him. Perfectly! And his innocence is established, no doubt?”

Alleyn said carefully: “If the revolver produced is the one he fired, and the scars in the barrel suggest that it is, then a very good case could be made out on the lines of substitution.”

“I’m afraid I do not understand. A good case?”

“To the effect that Lord Pastern’s revolver was replaced by this other one which was loaded with the bolt that killed Rivera. That Lord Pastern fired it in ignorance of the substitution.”

She had a habit of immobility but her stillness now declared itself as if until this moment she had been restless. The creased lids came down like hoods over her eyes. She seemed to look at her hands. “Naturally,” she said, “I make no attempt to understand these assuredly very difficult complexities. It is enough, little as he deserves to escape, that my husband clears himself.”

“Nevertheless,” Alleyn said, “it remains necessary to discover the guilty person.” And he thought: “Damn it, I’m beginning to talk like a French phrase book, myself!”

“No doubt,” she said.

“And the guilty person, it seems obvious, was one of the party who dined here last night.”

Lady Pastern now closed her eyes completely. “A most distressing possibility,” she murmured.

“Hands,” Alleyn thought. “Carlisle Wayne’s hand fingering her neck. Miss Henderson’s hand jerking the photograph off the mantelpiece. Lady Pastern’s hands closing upon each other like vices. Hands.”

“Furthermore,” he said, “if the substitution theory is right, the time field is narrowed considerably. Lord Pastern put his revolver under his sombrero on the edge of the band dais, you remember.”

“I made a point of disregarding him,” his wife said instantly. “The whole affair was entirely distasteful to me. I did not notice and therefore I do not remember.”

“That’s what he did, however. The possibilities, as far as substitution goes, are therefore limited to the people who were within easy reach of his sombrero.”

“No doubt you will question the waiters. The man was of the type which makes itself insufferable to servants.”

“By Gum,” Alleyn thought, “you’re almost one up on me there, old girl!” But he said: “We must remember that the substituted weapon was charged with a bolt and blank cartridges. The bolt was made out of a section of your parasol handle and its point of a stiletto from your work-box.” He paused. Her fingers were more closely interlocked but she didn’t move or speak. “And the blanks,” he added, “were, it is almost certain, made by Lord Pastern and left in his study. The waiters are ruled out, I think.”

Her lips parted and closed again. She said: “Am I, perhaps, being stupid? It seems to me that this theory of substitution may embrace a wider field. Why could the change of weapons not have been effected before my husband appeared? He was later than the others in appearing. So, for example, was Mr. Bellairs. I believe that is the conductor’s name.”

“Lord Pastern insists that neither Bellairs nor anyone else had an opportunity to get at his revolver, which he says he carried in his hip pocket until he put it under the sombrero. I am persuaded that the change-over was effected after Lord Pastern made his entrance on the band dais and it’s obvious that the substituted revolver must have been prepared by someone who had access to your parasol…”

“In the restaurant,” she interrupted quickly. “Before the performance. The parasols must have been within reach of all of them.”

“… and also access to the study in this house.”

“Why?”

“To get the stiletto which was carried there.”

She drew in her breath sharply. “It may have been an entirely different stiletto, I imagine.”

“Then why has this particular one disappeared from the study? Your daughter took it away from the drawing-room when she left for her interview in the study with Rivera. Do you remember that?”

He could have sworn that she did if only because she made no sign whatsoever. She couldn’t conceal the start of astonishment or dismay which this statement should have produced if she hadn’t been prepared for it.

“I remember nothing of the sort,” she said.

“That is what happened however,” Alleyn said, “and it appears that the steel was removed in the study, since we found the ivory handle there.”

After a moment she lifted her chin and looked directly at him. “It is with the greatest reluctance that I remind you of the presence of Mr. Bellairs in this house last night. I believe he was in the study with my husband after dinner. He had ample opportunity to return there.”

“According to Lord Pastern’s time-table, to which you have all subscribed, he had from about a quarter to ten until half past when, with the exception of Rivera and Mr. Edward Manx, the rest of the party was upstairs. Mr. Manx, I remember, said he was in the drawing-room during this period. He had, by the way, punched Rivera on the ear shortly beforehand.”

“Ah!” Lady Pastern breathed out her small ejaculation. She took a moment or two over digesting this information and Alleyn thought she was very well pleased with it. She said, “Dear Edward is immensely impulsive.”

“He was annoyed, I gather, because Rivera had taken it upon himself to kiss Miss Wayne.”

Alleyn would have given a lot to have Lady Pastern’s thoughts floating above her head in clear letters, encased by a balloon as in one of Troy’s little drawings, or to have heard them through spectral earphones. Were there four elements? Desire that Manx should be concerned only with Félicité? Gratification that Manx should have gone for Rivera? Resentment that Carlisle and not Félicité had been the cause? And fear — fear that Manx should be more gravely involved? Or some deeper fear?

“Unfortunately,” she said, “he was a totally impossible person. It is, I feel certain, an affair of no significance. Dear Edward.”

Alleyn said abruptly, “Do you ever see a magazine called Harmony?” and was startled by her response. Her eyes widened. She looked at him as if he had uttered some startling impropriety.

“Never!” she said loudly. “Certainly not. Never.”

“There is a copy in the house. I thought perhaps…”

“The servants may take it. I believe it is the kind of thing they read.”

“The copy I saw was in the study. It has a correspondence page, conducted by someone who calls himself G.P.F.”

“I have not seen it. I do not concern myself with this journal.”

“Then,” Alleyn said, “there’s not much point in my asking if you suspected that Edward Manx was G.P.F.”

It was not possible for Lady Pastern to leap to her feet: her corsets alone prevented such an exercise. But, with formidable energy and comparative speed, she achieved a standing position. He saw with astonishment that her bosom heaved and that her neck and face were suffused with a brickish red.

“Impossible!” she panted. “Never! I shall never believe it. An insufferable suggestion.”

“I don’t quite see…” Alleyn began but she shouted him down. “Outrageous! He is utterly incapable.” She shot a fusillade of adjectives at him. “I cannot discuss such a fantasy. Incredible! Monstrous! Libellous. Libel of the grossest kind. Never!”

“But why do you say that? On account of the literary style?” Lady Pastern’s mouth twice opened and shut. She stared at him with an air of furious indecision. “You may say so,” she said at last. “You may put it in that way. Certainly. On account of style.”

“And yet you have never read the magazine?”

“Obviously it is a vulgar publication. I have seen the cover.”

“Let me tell you,” Alleyn suggested, “how the theory has arisen. I really should like you to understand that it’s not based on guesswork. May we sit down?”

She sat down abruptly. He saw, and was bewildered to see, that she was trembling. He told her about the letter Félicité had received and showed her the copy he had made. He reminded her of the white flower in Manx’s coat and of Félicité’s change of manner after she had seen it. He said that Félicité believed Manx to be G.P.F. and had admitted as much. He said they had discovered original drafts of articles that had subsequently appeared on G.P.F.’s page and that these drafts had been typed on the machine in the study. He reminded her that Manx had stayed at Duke’s Gate for three weeks. Throughout this recital she sat bolt upright, pressing her lips together and staring, inexplicably, at the top right-hand drawer of her desk. In some incomprehensible fashion he was dealing her blow after shrewd blow, but he kept on and finished the whole story. “So you see, don’t you,” he ended, “that, at least, it’s a probability?”

“Have you asked him?” she said pallidly. “What does he say?”

“I have not asked him yet. I shall do so. Of course, the whole question of his identity with G.P.F. may be irrelevant as far as this case is concerned.”

“Irrelevant!” she ejaculated as if the suggestion were wildly insane. She was looking again at her desk. Every muscle of her face was controlled but tears now began to form in her eyes and trickle over her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” Alleyn said, “that you find this distressing.”

“It distresses me,” she said, “because I find it is true. I am in some confusion of mind. If there is nothing more…”

He got up at once. “There’s nothing more,” he said. “Good-bye, Lady Pastern.”

She recalled him before he reached the door. “One moment.”

“Yes?”

“Let me assure you, Mr. Alleyn,” she said, pressing her handkerchief against her cheek, “that my foolishness is entirely unimportant. It is a personal matter. What you have told me is quite irrelevant to this affair. It is of no consequence whatever, in fact.” She drew in her breath with a sound that quivered between a sigh and a sob. “As for the identity of the person who has perpetrated this outrage — I mean the murder, not the journalism — I am persuaded it was one of his own kind. Yes, certainly,” she said more vigorously, “one of his own kind. You may rest assured of that.” And finding himself dismissed, he left her.

As Alleyn approached the first landing on his way down he was surprised to hear the ballroom piano. It was being played somewhat unhandily and the strains were those of hotly syncopated music taken at a funeral pace. Detective-Sergeant Jimson was on duty on the landing. Alleyn jerked his head at the ballroom doors, which were ajar. “Who’s that playing?” he asked. “Is it Lord Pastern? Who the devil opened that room?”

Jimson, looking embarrassed and scandalized, replied that he thought it must be Lord Pastern. His manner was so odd that Alleyn walked past him and pushed open the double doors. Inspector Fox was discovered seated at the piano with his spectacles on his nose. He was inclined forward tensely, and followed with concentration a sheet of music in manuscript. Facing him, across the piano, was Lord Pastern, who, as Alleyn entered, beat angrily, but rhythmically, upon the lid and shouted: “No, no, my good ass, not a bit like it. N’yah — yo. Bo bo bo. Again.” He looked up and saw Alleyn. “Here!” he said. “Can you play?”

Fox rose, without embarrassment, and removed his spectacles.

“Where have you come from?” Alleyn demanded.

“I had a little matter to report, sir, and as you were engaged for the moment I’ve been waiting in here. His lordship was looking for someone to try over a piece he’s composing but I’m afraid…”

“I’ll have to get one of these women,” Lord Pastern cut in impatiently. “Where’s Fée? This chap’s no good.”

“I haven’t sat down to the piano since I was a lad,” said Fox mildly.

Lord Pastern made for the door but Alleyn intercepted him. “One moment, sir,” he said.

“It’s no good worryin’ me with any more questions,” Lord Pastern snapped at him. “I’m busy.”

“Unless you’d prefer to come to the Yard, you’ll answer this one, if you please. When did you first realize that the revolver we produced after Rivera was killed was not the one you loaded in the study and carried on to the band platform?”

Lord Pastern smirked at him. “Nosed that out for yourselves, have you?” he remarked. “Fascinatin’, the way our police work.”

“I still want to know when you made this discovery.”

“About eight hours before you did.”

“As soon as you were shown the substitute and noticed there were no initials?”

“Who told you about initials? Here!” Lord Pastern said with some excitement. “Have you found my other gun?”

“Where do you suggest we look for it?”

“If I knew where it was, my good fathead, I’d have got it for meself. I value that gun, by God!”

“You handed over the weapon you fired at Rivera to Breezy Bellairs,” Fox said suddenly. “Was it that one, my lord? The one with the initials? The one you loaded in this house? The one that’s missing?”

Lord Pastern swore loudly. “What d’you think I am?” he shouted. “A bloody juggler? Of course it was.”

“And Bellairs walked straight into the office with you and I took it off him a few minutes later and it wasn’t the same gun. That won’t wash, my lord,” said Fox, “if you’ll excuse my saying so. It won’t wash.”

“In that case,” Lord Pastern said rudely, “you can put up with it dirty.” Alleyn made a slight, irritated sound and Lord Pastern instantly turned on him. “What are you snufflin’ about?” he demanded and before Alleyn could answer he renewed his attack on Fox. “Why don’t you ask Breezy about it?” he said. “I should have thought even you’d have got at Breezy.”

“Are you suggesting, my lord, that Bellairs might have worked the substitution after the murder was committed?”

“I’m not suggestin’ anything.”

“In which case,” Fox continued imperturbably, “perhaps you’ll tell me how Rivera was killed?”

Lord Pastern gave a short bark of laughter. “No, really,” he said, “it’s beyond belief how bone-headed you are.”

Fox said: “May I press this point a little further, Mr. Alleyn?”

From behind Lord Pastern, Alleyn returned Fox’s inquiring glance with a dubious one. “Certainly, Fox,” he said.

“I’d like to ask his lordship if he’d be prepared to swear an oath that the weapon he handed Bellairs after the fatality was the one that is missing.”

“Well, Lord Pastern,” Alleyn said, “will you answer Mr. Fox?”

“How many times am I to tell you I won’t answer any of your tom-fool questions? I gave you a time-table, and that’s all the help you get from me.”

For a moment the three men were silent: Fox by the piano, Alleyn near the door and Lord Pastern midway between them like a truculent Pekinese — an animal, it occurred to Alleyn, he closely resembled.

“Don’t forget, my lord,” Fox said, “that last night you stated yourself that anybody could have got at the revolver while it was under the sombrero. Anybody, you remarked, for all you’d have noticed.”

“What of it?” he said, bunching his cheeks.

“There’s this about it, my lord. It’s a tenable theory that one of the party at your own table could have substituted the second gun, loaded with the bolt, and that you could have fired it at Rivera without knowing anything about the substitution.”

“That cat won’t jump,” Lord Pastern said, “and you know it. I didn’t tell anybody I was going to put the gun under my sombrero. Not a soul.”

“Well, my lord,” Fox said, “we can make inquiries about that.”

“You can inquire till you’re blue in the face and much good may it do you.”

“Look here, my lord,” Fox burst out, “do you want us to arrest you?”

“Not sure I don’t. It’d be enough to make a cat laugh.” He thrust his hands in his trouser pockets, walked round Fox, eyeing him, and fetched up in front of Alleyn. “Skelton,” he said, “saw the gun. He handled it just before he went on, and when he came out while I waited for my entrance he handled it again. While Breezy did the speech about me, it was.”

“Why did he handle it this second time?” Alleyn asked.

“I was a bit excited. Nervy work, hangin’ about for your entrance. I was takin’ a last look at it and I dropped it and he picked it up and squinted down the barrel in a damn-your-eyes supercilious sort of way. Professional jealousy.”

“Why didn’t you mention this before, my lord?” Fox demanded and was ignored. Lord Pastern grinned savagely at Alleyn. “Well,” he said with gloating relish, “what about this arrest? I’ll come quietly.”

Alleyn said: “You know, I do wish that for once in a blue moon you’d behave yourself.”

For the first time, he thought, Lord Pastern was giving him his full attention. He was suddenly quiet and wary. He eyed Alleyn with something of the air of a small boy who is not sure if he can bluff his way out of a misdemeanour.

“You really are making the most infernal nuisance of yourself, sir,” Alleyn went on, “and, if you will allow me, the most appalling ass of yourself into the bargain.”

“See here, Alleyn,” Lord Pastern said with a not entirely convincing return to his former truculence, “I’m damned if I’ll take this. I know what I’m up to.”

“Then have the grace to suppose we know what we’re up to, too. After all, sir, you’re not the only one to remember that Rivera played the piano-accordion.”

For a moment, Lord Pastern stood quite still with his jaw dropped and his eyebrows half-way up his forehead. He then said rapidly: “I’m late. Goin’ to m’club,” and incontinently bolted from the room.