A Wreath for Rivera

CHAPTER XI EPISODES IN TWO FLATS AND AN OFFICE

“Well, Mr. Alleyn,” said Fox, “that settles it, in my mind. It’s going to turn out the way you said. Cut loose the trimmings and you come to the — well, the corpus delicti as you might say.”

They were sitting in a police car outside the house in Duke’s Gate. Both of them looked past the driver, and through the wind-screen, at a jaunty and briskly moving figure, its hat a little to one side and swinging its walking stick.

“There he goes,” Fox said, “as cock-sure and perky as you please, and there goes our chap after him. Say what you like, Mr. Alleyn, the art of tailing your man isn’t what it was in the service. These young fellows think they signed on for the sole purpose of tearing about the place with the Flying Squad.” And having delivered himself of his customary grumble, Fox, still contemplating the diminishing figure of Lord Pastern, added: “Where do we go from here, sir?”

“Before we go anywhere you’ll be good enough to explain why your duties led you back to Duke’s Gate and, more particularly, to playing that old antic’s boogie-woogie on the piano.”

Fox smiled in a stately manner. “Well, sir,” he said, “as to what brought me, it was a bit of stale information, and another bit that’s not so stale. Skelton rang up after you left, to say he had inspected his lordship’s revolver the second time and was sorry he hadn’t mentioned it last night. He said that he and our Mr. Eton-and-Oxford Detective-Sergeant Sallis got into a discussion about the petite bourgeoisie or something and it went out of his head. I thought it better not to ring you at Duke’s Gate. Extension wires all over the shop in that house. So, as it seemed to settle the question about which gun his lordship took on the platform with him, I thought I’d pop along and tell you.”

“And Pastern saved you the trouble.”

“Quite so. And as to the piano, there was his lordship saying he’d been inspired, so to speak, with a new composition and wanted someone to try it over. He was making a great to-do over the ballroom being sealed. Our chaps have finished in there so there seemed no harm in obliging him. I thought it might establish friendly relations,” Fox added sadly, “but I can’t say it did in the end. Shall we tell this chap where we’re going, sir?”

Alleyn said: “We’ll call at the Metronome, then we’ll have a look at Breezy and see how the poor swine’s shaping up this morning. Then we’ll have a very brief snack, Br’er Fox, and when that’s over it’ll be time to visit G.P.F. in his den. If he’s there, blast him.”

“Ah, by the way,” Fox said, as they moved off, “that’s the other bit of information. Mr. Bathgate rang the Yard and said he’d got hold of someone who writes regularly for this paper Harmony and it seems that Mr. Friend is generally supposed to be in the office on the afternoon and evening of the last Sunday in the month, on account of the paper going to press the following week. This gentleman told Mr. Bathgate that nobody on the regular staff except the editor ever sees Mr. Friend. The story is he deals direct with the proprietors of the paper but popular opinion in Fleet Street reckons he owns the show himself. They reckon the secrecy business is nothing but a build-up.”

“Silly enough to be incredible,” Alleyn muttered. “But we’re knee-deep in imbecility. I suppose we can take it. All the same, I fancy we’ll turn up a better reason for Mr. Friend’s elaborate incognito before this interminable Sunday is out.”

Fox said, with an air of quiet satisfaction: “I fancy we shall, sir. Mr. Bathgate’s done quite a nice little job for us. It seems he pressed this friend of his a bit further and got him on to the subject of Mr. Manx’s special articles for the paper and it came out that Mr. Manx is often in their office.”

“Discussing his special articles. Picking up his galley sheets or whatever they do.”

“Better than that, Mr. Alleyn. This gentleman told Mr. Bathgate that Mr. Manx has been noticed coming out of G.P.F.’s room on several occasions, one of them being a Sunday afternoon.”

“Oh.”

“Fits, doesn’t it?”

“Like a glove. Good for Bathgate. We’ll ask him to meet us at the Harmony offices. This being the last Sunday in the month, Br’er Fox, we’ll see what we can see. But first — the Metronome.”

When Carlisle left the Yard, it was with a feeling of astonishment and aimless boredom. So it wasn’t Uncle George’s revolver after all. So there had been an intricate muddle that someone would have to unravel. Alleyn would unravel it and then someone else would be arrested and she ought to be alarmed and agitated because of this. Perhaps, in the hinterland of her emotions, alarm and agitation were already established and waited to pounce, but in the meantime she was only drearily miserable and tired. She was pestered by all sorts of minor considerations. The thought of returning to Duke’s Gate and trying to cope with the situation there was intolerable. It wasn’t so much the idea that Uncle George or Aunt Cile or Fée might have murdered Carlos Rivera that Carlisle found appalling: it was the prospect of their several personalities forcing themselves upon her own; their demands upon her attention and courtesy. She had a private misery, a galling unhappiness, and she wanted to be alone with it.

While she walked irresolutely towards the nearest bus stop, she remembered that not far from here, in a cul-de-sac called Coster’s Row, was Edward Manx’s flat. If she walked to Duke’s Gate she would pass the entry into this blind street. She was persuaded that she did not want to see Edward, that an encounter would, indeed, be unbearable; yet, aimlessly, she began to walk on. Church-going people returning home with an air of circumspection made a pattering sound in the empty streets. Groups of sparrows flustered and pecked. The day was mildly sunny. The Yard man, detailed to keep observation on Carlisle, threaded his way through a trickle of pedestrians and recalled the Sunday dinners of his boyhood. Beef, he thought, Yorkshire pudding, gravy, and afterwards a heavy hour or so in the front room. Carlisle gave him no trouble at all but he was hungry.

He saw her hesitate at the corner of Coster’s Row and himself halted to light a cigarette. She glanced along the file of house fronts and then, at a more rapid pace, crossed the end of the row and continued on her way. At the same time a dark young man came out of a house six doors down Coster’s Row and descended the steps in time to catch a glimpse of her. He shouted, “Lisle!” and waved his arm. She hurried on, and once past the corner, out of his sight, broke into a run. “Hi, Lisle!” he shouted. “Lisle!” and loped after her. The Yard man watched him go by, turn the corner and overtake her. She spun round at the touch of his hand on her arm and they stood face to face.

A third man who had come out from some doorway further up the cul-de-sac walked briskly down the path on the same side as the Yard man. They greeted each other like old friends and shook hands. The Yard man offered cigarettes and lit a match. “How’s it going, Bob?” he said softly. “That your bird?”

“That’s him. Who’s the lady?”

“Mine,” said the first, whose back was turned to Carlisle.

“Not bad,” his colleague muttered, glancing at her.

“I’d just as soon it was my dinner, though.”

“Argument?”

“Looks like it.”

“Keeping their voices down.”

Their movements were slight and casual: acquaintances pausing for a rather aimless chat.

“What’s the betting?” said the first.

“They’ll separate. I never have the luck.”

“You’re wrong, though.”

“Going back to his place?”

“Looks like it.”

“I’ll toss you for it.”

“O.K.” The other pulled his clenched hand out of his pocket. “Your squeak,” he said.

“Heads.”

“It’s tails.”

“I never get the luck.”

“I’ll ring in then and get something to eat. Relieve you in half an hour, Bob.”

They shook hands again heartily as Carlisle and Edward Manx, walking glumly towards them, turned into Coster’s Row.

Carlisle had seen Edward Manx out of the corner of her eye as she crossed the end of the cul-de-sac. Unreasoned panic took hold of her. She lengthened her stride, made a show of looking at her watch and, when he called her name, broke into a run. Her heart pounded and her mouth was dry. She had the sensation of a fugitive in a dream. She was the pursued and, since even in her sudden alarm she was confusedly aware of something in herself that frightened her, she was also the pursuer. This nightmarish conviction was intensified by the sound of his feet clattering after her and of his voice, completely familiar but angry, calling her to stop.

Her feet were leaden, he was overtaking her quite easily. Her anticipation of his seizing her from behind was so vivid that when his hand actually closed on her arm it was something of a relief. He jerked her round to face him and she was glad to feel angry.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he said breathlessly.

“That’s my business,” she panted, and added defiantly, “I’m late. I’ll be late for lunch. Aunt Cile will be furious.”

“Don’t be an ass, Lisle. You ran when you saw me. You heard me call out and you kept on running. What the devil d’you mean by it?”

His heavy eyebrows were drawn together and his lower lip jutted out.

“Please let me go, Ned,” she said. “I really am late.”

“That’s utterly childish and you know it. I’m getting to the bottom of this. Come back to the flat. I want to talk to you.”

“Aunt Cile…”

“Oh for God’s sake! I’ll ring Duke’s Gate and say you’re lunching here.”

“No.”

For a moment he looked furious. He still held her arm and his fingers bit into it, hurting her. Then he said more gently: “You can’t expect me to let a thing like this pass — it’s a monstrous state of affairs. I must know what’s gone wrong. Last night, after we got back from the Metronome, I could tell there was something. Please, Lisle. Don’t let’s stand here snarling at each other. Come back to the flat.”

“I’d rather not. Honestly. I know I’m behaving queerly.”

He had slipped the palm of his hand inside her arm, pressing it against him. His hand was gentler now but she couldn’t escape it. He began to speak persuasively and she remembered how, even when they were children, she had never been able to resist his persuasiveness. “You will, Lisle, won’t you? Don’t be queer, I can’t bear all this peculiarity. Come along.”

She looked helplessly at the two men on the opposite corner, thinking vaguely that she had seen one of them before. “I wish I knew him,” she thought. “I wish I could stop and speak to him.”

They turned into Coster’s Row. “There’s some food, in the flat. It’s quite a nice flat. I want you to see it. We’ll have lunch together, shan’t we? I’m sorry I was churlish, Lisle.”

His key clicked in the lock of the blue door. They were in a small lobby. “It’s a basement flat,” he said, “but not at all bad. There’s even a garden. Down those stairs.”

“You go first,” she said. She actually wondered if that would give her a chance to bolt and if she would have the nerve to do it. He looked fixedly at her.

“I don’t believe I trust you,” he said lightly. “On you go.”

He followed close on her heels down the steep stairs and took her arm again as he reached past her and unlocked the second door. “Here we are,” he said, pushing it open. He gave her a little shove forward.

It was a large, low-ceilinged room, whitewashed and oak-beamed. French windows opened on a little yard with potted flowers and plane-trees in tubs. The furniture was modern: steel chairs with rubber-foam upholstery, a carefully planned desk, a divan bed with a scarlet cover. A rigorous still-life hung above the fireplace, the only picture in the room. The bookshelves looked as if they had been stocked completely from a Left Book Shop. It was a scrupulously tidy room.

“The oaken beams are strict stockbroker’s Tudor,” he was saying. “Completely functionless, of course, and pretty revolting. Otherwise not so bad, do you think? Sit down while I find a drink.”

She sat on the divan and only half listened to him. His belated pretence that, after all, this was a pleasant and casual encounter did nothing to reassure her. He was still angry. She took the drink he brought and found her hand was shaking so much she couldn’t carry the glass to her lips. The drink spilled. She bent her head down and took a quick gulp at it, hoping this would steady her. She rubbed furtively with her handkerchief at the splashes on the cover and knew, without looking, that he watched her.

“Shall we go in, boots and all, or wait till after lunch?” he said.

“There’s nothing to talk about. I’m sorry to be such an ass but after all it was a bit of a night. I suppose murder doesn’t suit me.”

“Oh, no,” he said, “that won’t do. You don’t bolt like a rabbit at the sight of me because somebody killed a piano-accordionist.” And after a long pause, he added smoothly, “Unless, by any chance, you think I killed him. Do you?”

“Don’t be a dolt,” she said, and by some fortuitous mischance, an accident quite beyond her control and unrelated to any recognizable impulse, her answer sounded unconvincing and too violent. It was the last question she had expected from him.

“Well, at least I’m glad of that,” he said. He sat on the table near to her. She did not look up at him but straight before her at his left hand, lying easily across his knee. “Come on,” he said, “what have I done? There is something I’ve done. What is it?”

She thought: “I’ll have to tell him something — part of it. Not the real thing itself but the other bit that doesn’t matter so much.” She began to search for an approach, a line to take, some kind of credible presentation, but she was deadly tired and she astonished herself by saying abruptly and loud: “I’ve found out about G.P.F.”

His hand moved swiftly, out of her range of sight. She looked up expecting to be confronted by his anger or astonishment but he had turned aside, skewing round to put his glass down on the table behind him.

“Have you?” he said. “That’s awkward, isn’t it?” He moved quickly away from her and across the room to a wall cupboard which he opened. With his back turned to her he said: “Who told you? Did Cousin George?”

“No,” she said, wearily surprised. “No. I saw the letter.”

“Which letter?” he asked, groping in the cupboard.

“The one to Félicité.”

“Oh,” said Manx slowly. “That one.” He turned round. He had a packet of cigarettes in his hand and came towards her holding it out. She shook her head and he lit one himself with steady hands. “How did you come to see it?” he said.

“It was lost. It — I — oh, what does it matter! The whole thing was perfectly clear. Need we go on?”

“I still don’t see why this discovery should inspire you to sprint like an athlete at the sight of me.”

“I don’t think I know myself.”

“What were you doing last night?” he demanded suddenly. “Where did you go after we got back to Duke’s Gate? Why did you turn up again with Alleyn? What were you up to?”

It was impossible to tell him that Félicité had lost the letter. That would lead at once to his discovering that Alleyn had read it: worse than that, it would lead inevitably to the admittance, perhaps the discussion, of his new attitude towards Félicité. “He might,” she thought, “tell me, point-blank, that he is in love with Fée and I’m in no shape to jump that hurdle.”

So she said: “It doesn’t matter what I was up to. I can’t tell you. In a way it would be a breach of confidence.”

“Was it something to do with this G.P.F. business?” Manx said sharply, and after a pause. “You haven’t told anybody about this discovery, have you?”

She hadn’t told Alleyn. He had found out for himself. Miserably she shook her head. He stooped over her. “You mustn’t tell anybody, Lisle. That’s important. You realize how important, don’t you?”

Isolated sentences of an indescribable archness flashed up in her memory of that abominable page. “You don’t need to tell me that,” she said, looking away from his intent and frowning eyes, and suddenly burst out: “It’s such ghastly stuff, Ned. That magazine. It’s like one of our novelettes gone hay-wire. How you could!”

“My articles are all right,” he said, and. after a pause: “So that’s it, is it. You are a purist, aren’t you?”

She clasped her hands together and fixed her gaze on them. “I must tell you,” she said, “that if, in some hellish, muddled way, entirely beyond my comprehension, this G.P.F. business has anything to do with Rivera’s death…”

“Well?”

“I mean, if it’s going to — I mean — ”

“You mean that if Alleyn asks you point-blank about it, you’ll tell him?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I see.”

Carlisle’s head ached. She had been unable to face her breakfast and the drink he had given her had taken effect. Their confused antagonism, the sense of being trapped in this alien room, her personal misery: all these circumstances were joined in a haze of uncertainty. The whole scene had become unreal and unendurable. When he put his hands on her shoulders and said loudly: “There’s more to it than this. Come on. What is it?” she seemed to hear him from a great distance. His hands were bearing down hard. “I will know,” he was saying.

At the far end of the room a telephone bell began to ring. She watched him go to it and take the receiver off. His voice changed its quality and became the easy friendly voice she had known for so long.

“Hullo? Hullo, Fée darling. I’m terribly sorry, I should have rung up. They kept Lisle for hours grilling her at the Yard. Yes; I ran into her and she asked me to telephone and say she was so late she’d try for a meal somewhere at hand, so I asked her to have one with me. Please tell Cousin Cécile it’s entirely my fault and not hers. I promised to ring for her.” He looked at Carlisle over the telephone. “She’s perfectly all right,” he said. “I’m looking after her.”

If any painter, a surrealist for choice, attempted to set the figure of a working detective officer against an appropriate and composite background, he would turn his attention to rooms overlaid with films of dust, to objects suspended in unaccustomed dinginess, to ash-trays and table-cloths, unemptied waste bins, table littered with powder, dirty glasses, disordered chairs, stale food, and garments that retained an unfresh smell of disuse.

When Alleyn and Fox entered the Metronome at twelve-thirty on this Sunday morning, it smelt of Saturday night. The restaurant, serveries and kitchens had been cleaned but the vestibule and offices were untouched and upon them the aftermath of festivity lay like a thin pall of dust. Three men in shirt-sleeves greeted Alleyn with that tinge of gloomy satisfaction which marks an unsuccessful search.

“No luck?” Alleyn said.

“No luck yet, sir.”

“There’s the passage that runs through from the foyer and behind the offices to the back premises,” said Fox. “That’s the way the deceased must have gone to make his entrance from the far end of the restaurant.”

“We’ve been along there, Mr. Fox.”

“Plumbing?”

“Not yet, Mr. Alleyn.”

“I’d try that next.” Alleyn pointed through the two open doors of Caesar Bonn’s office into the inner room. “Begin there,” he said.

He went alone into the restaurant. The table he and Troy had sat at was the second on the right. The chairs were turned up on its surface. He replaced one of them and seated himself. “For twenty years,” he thought, “I have trained my memory and trained it rigorously. This is the first time I have been my own witness in a case of this sort. Am I any good or am I rotten?”

Sitting alone there, he re-created his scene, beginning with small things: the white cloth, the objects on the table, Troy’s long hand close to his own and just within his orbit of vision. He waited until these details were firm in his memory and then reached out a little further. At the next table, her back towards him, sat Félicité de Suze in a red dress. She turned a white carnation in her fingers and looked sidelong at the man beside her. He was between Alleyn and the lamp on their table. His profile was rimmed with light. His head was turned towards the band dais. On his right, more clearly visible, more brilliantly lit, was Carlisle Wayne. In order to watch the performance she had swung round with her back half-turned to the table. Her hair curved back from her temples. There was a look of compassion and bewilderment in her face. Beyond Carlisle, with her back to the wall, a heavy shape almost obscured by the others, sat Lady Pastern. As they moved he could see in turn her stony coiffure, her important shoulders, the rigid silhouette of her bust; but never her face.

Raised above them, close to them, a figure gestured wildly among the tympani. This was a vivid picture because it was contained by a pool of light. Lord Pastern’s baldish head darted and bobbed. Metallic high lights flashed among his instruments. The spot light shifted and there in the centre of the stage was Rivera, bent backwards, hugging his piano-accordion to his chest. Eyes, teeth, and steel and mother-of-pearl ornament glittered. The arm of the metronome pointed fixedly at his chest. Behind, half-shadowed, a plump hand jerked up and down, beating the air with its miniature baton. A wide smile glistened in a moon face. Now Lord Pastern faced Rivera on the perimeter of the light pool. His revolver pointed at the contorted figure, flashed, and Rivera fell. Then the further shots and comic falls and then… In the deserted restaurant Alleyn brought his hands down sharply on the table. It had been then, and not until then, that the lights began their infernal blinking. They popped in and out down the length of the metronome and about its frame, in and out, red green, blue, green red. Then, and not until then, had the arm swung away from the prostrate figure and, with the rest of that winking stuttering bedazzlement, gone into action.

Alleyn got up and mounted the bandstand. He stood on the spot where Rivera had fallen. The skeleton tower of the metronome framed him. The reverse side of this structure revealed its electrical equipment. He looked up at the pointer of the giant arm which was suspended directly above his head. It was a hollow steel or plastic casting studded with miniature lights and for a moment reminded him fantastically of the jewelled dart. To the right of the band-room door and hidden from the audience by the piano, a small switchboard was sunk in the wall. Happy Hart, they had told Alleyn, was in charge of the lights. From where he sat at the piano and from where he fell to the floor he could reach out to the switches. Alleyn did so, now, pulling down the one marked “Motor.” A hidden whirring sound prefaced the first loud clack. The giant downward-pointing arm swept semi-circularly across, back, across and back to its own ratchet-like accompaniment. He switched on the lights and stood for a moment, an incongruous figure, motionless at the core of his kaleidoscopic setting. The point of the arm, flashing its lights, swept within four inches of his head and away and back and away again. “If you watched the damn’ thing for long enough I believe it’d mesmerize you,” he thought and turned off the switches.

Back in the offices he found Mr. Fox in severe control of two plumbers who were removing their jackets in the lavatory.

“If we can’t find anything fishing with wires, Mr. Alleyn,” Fox said, “it’ll be a case of taking down the whole job.”

“I don’t hold out ecstatic hopes,” Alleyn said, “but get on with it.”

One of the plumbers pulled the chain and contemplated the ensuing phenomena.

“Well?” said Fox.

“I wouldn’t say she was a sweetly running job,” the plumber diagnosed, “and yet again she works if you can understand me.” He raised a finger, and glanced at his mate.

“Trap trouble?” ventured his mate.

“Ar.”

“We’ll leave you to it,” Alleyn said and withdrew Fox into the office. “Fox,” he said, “let’s remind ourselves of the key pieces in this jig-saw atrocity. What are they?”

Fox said promptly: “The set-up at Duke’s Gate. The drug racket. Harmony. The substitution. The piano-accordion. The nature of the the weapon.”

“Add one more. The metronome was motionless when Rivera played. It started its blasted tick-tack stuff after he fell and after the other rounds had been fired.”

“I get you, sir. Yes,” said Fox, placidly, “there’s that too. Add the metronome.”

“Now, let’s mug over the rest of the material and see where we are.”

Sitting in Caesar Bonn’s stale office, they sorted, discarded, correlated and dissociated the fragments of the case. Their voices droned on to the intermittent accompaniment of plumbers’ aquatics. After twenty minutes Fox shut his notebook, removed his spectacles and looked steadily at his superior officer.

“It amounts to this,” he said. “Setting aside a handful of insignificant details, we’re short of only one piece.” He poised his hand, palm down, over the table. “If we can lay hold of that and if, when we’ve got it, it fits — well, our little picture’s complete.”

“If,” Alleyn said, “and when.”

The door of the inner office opened and the senior plumber entered. With an air of false modesty he extended a naked arm and bleached hand. On the palm of the hand dripped a revolver. “Would this,” he asked glumly, “be what you was wanting?”

Dr. Curtis waited for them outside the main entrance to Breezy’s flat.

“Sorry to drag you out, Curtis,” Alleyn said, “but we may need your opinion about his fitness to make a statement. This is Fox’s party. He’s the drug baron.”

“How do you expect he’ll be, Doctor?” Fox asked.

Dr. Curtis stared at his shoes and said guardedly: “Heavy hangover. Shaky. Depressed. May be resentful. May be placatory. Can’t tell.”

“Suppose he decides to talk, is it likely to be truthful?”

“Not very. They usually lie.”

Fox said: “What’s the line to take? Tough or coaxing?”

“Use your own judgement.”

“You might tip us the wink, though, Doctor.”

“Well,” said Curtis, “let’s take a look at him.”

The flats were of the more dubious modern kind, and brandished chromium steel almost in the Breezy Bellairs Manner — showily and without significance. Alleyn, Fox and Curtis approached the flat by way of a rococo lift and a tunnel-like passage. Fox pressed a bell and a plain-clothes officer answered the door. When he saw them he snibbed back the lock and closed the door behind him.

“How is he?” Alleyn asked.

“Awake, sir. Quiet enough, but restless.”

“Said anything?” Fox asked. “To make sense, I mean.”

“Nothing much, Mr. Fox. Very worried about the deceased, he seems to be. Says he doesn’t know what he’s going to do without him.”

“That makes sense at all events,” Fox grunted. “Shall we go in, sir?”

It was an expensive and rather characterless flat, only remarkable for its high content of framed and signed photographs and its considerable disorder. Breezy, wearing a dressing gown of unbelievable sumptuousness, sat in a deep chair into which he seemed to shrink a little further, as they came in. His face was the colour of an uncooked fowl and as flabby. As soon as he saw Dr. Curtis he raised a lamentable wail.

“Doc,” he whined, “I’m all shot to heaps. Doc, for petesake take a look at me and tell them.”

Curtis picked up his wrist.

“Listen,” Breezy implored him, “you know a sick man when you see one — listen — ”

“Don’t talk.”

Breezy pulled at his lower lip, blinked at Alleyn and with the inconsequence of a ventriloquist’s doll flashed his celebrated smile.

“Excuse us,” he said.

Curtis tested his reflexes, turned up his eyelid and looked at his tongue.

“You’re a bit of a mess,” he said, “but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t answer any questions these gentlemen like to put to you.” He glanced at Fox. “He’s quite able to take in the usual warning,” he said.

Fox administered it and drew up a chair, facing Breezy, who shot out a quavering finger at Alleyn.

“What’s the idea,” he said, “shooing this chap on to me? What’s wrong with talking to me yourself?”

“Inspector Fox,” Alleyn said, “is concerned with investigations about the illicit drug trade. He wants some information from you.”

He turned away and Fox went into action.

“Well, now, Mr. Bellairs,” Fox said, “I think it’s only fair to tell you what we’ve ascertained so far. Save quite a bit of time, won’t it?”

“I can’t tell you a thing. I don’t know a thing.”

“We’re aware that you’re in the unfortunate position,” Fox said, “of having formed the taste for one of these drugs. Gets a real hold on you, doesn’t it, that sort of thing?”

Breezy said: “It’s only because I’m overworked. Give me a break and I’ll cut it out. I swear I will. But gradually. You have to make it gradual. That’s right, isn’t it, Doc?”

“I believe,” Fox said comfortably, “that’s the case. That’s what I understand. Now, about the supply. We’ve learnt on good authority that the deceased, in this instance, was the source of supply. Would you care to add anything to that statement, Mr. Bellairs?”

“Was it the old bee told you?” Breezy demanded. “I bet it was the old bee. Or Syd. Syd knew. Syd’s had it in for me. Dirty bolshevikl Was it Syd Skelton?”

Fox said that the information had come from more than one source and asked how Lord Pastern knew Rivera had provided the drugs.

Breezy replied that Lord Pastern nosed out all sorts of things. He refused to be drawn further.

“I understand,” Fox went on, “that his lordship tackled you in the matter last evening.”

Breezy at once became hysterical. “He’d ruin me! That’s what he’d do. Look! Whatever happens don’t let him do it. He’s crazy enough to do it. Honest. Honest he is.”

“Do what?”

“Like what he said. Write to that bloody paper about me.”

“Harmony?” Fox asked, at a venture. “Would that be the paper?”

“That’s right. He said he knew someone — God, he’s got a thing about it. You know — the stuff. Damn and blast him,” Breezy screamed out, “he’ll kill me. He killed Carlos and now what’ll I do, where’ll I get it? Everybody watching and spying and I don’t know. Carlos never told me. I don’t know.”

“Never told you?” Fox said peacefully. “Fancy that now! Never let on how he got it! And I bet he made it pretty hot when it came to paying up. Um?”

“God, you’re telling me!”

“And no reduction made, for instance, if you helped him out?”

Breezy shrank back in his chair. “I don’t know anything about that. I don’t get you at all.”

“Well, I mean to say,” Fox explained, “there’d be opportunities, wouldn’t there? Ladies, or it might be their partners, asking the band leader for a special number. A note changes hands and it might be a tip or it might be payment in advance, and the goods delivered next time. We’ve come across instances. I wondered if he got you to oblige him. You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to, mind. We’ve the names and addresses of all the guests last night and we’ve got our records. People that are known to like it, you know. So I won’t press it. Don’t let it worry you. But I thought that he might have had some arrangement with you. Out of gratitude as you might put it — ”

“Gratitude!” Breezy laughed shrilly. “You think you know too much,” he said profoundly, and drew in his breath. He was short of breath and had broken into a sallow profuse sweat. “I don’t know what I’ll do without Carlos,” he whispered. “Someone’ll have to help me. It’s all the old bee’s fault. Him and the girl. If I could just have a smoke — ” He appealed to Dr. Curtis. “Not a prick. I know you won’t give me a prick. Just one little smoke. I don’t usually in the mornings but this is exceptional, Doc. Doc, couldn’t you — ”

“You’ll have to hang on a bit longer,” Dr. Curtis said, not unkindly. “Wait a bit. We won’t let it go longer than you can manage. Hang on.”

Suddenly and inanely Breezy yawned, a face-splitting yawn that bared his gums and showed his coated tongue. He rubbed his arms and neck. “I keep feeling as if there’s something under my skin. Worms or something,” he said fretfully.

“About the weapon,” Fox began. Breezy leant forward, his hands on his knees, aping Fox. “About the weapon?” he mimicked savagely. “You mind your business about the weapon. Coming here tormenting a chap. Whose gun was it? Whose bloody sunshade was it? Whose bloody stepdaughter was it? Whose bloody business is it? Get out!” He threw himself back in the chair, panting. “Get out. I’m within my rights. Get out.”

“Why not?” Fox agreed. “We’ll leave you to yourself. Unless Mr. Alleyn…?”

“No,” Alleyn said.

Dr. Curtis turned at the door. “Who’s your doctor, Breezy?” he asked.

“I haven’t got a doctor,” Breezy whispered. “Nothing ever used to be wrong with me. Not a thing.”

“We’ll find someone to look after you.”

“Can’t you? Can’t you look after me, Doc?”

“Well,” Dr. Curtis said. “I might.”

“Come on,” said Alleyn and they went out.

One end of Materfamilias Lane had suffered a bomb and virtually disappeared but the other stood intact, a narrow City street with ancient buildings, a watery smell, dark entries and impenitent charm.

The Harmony offices were in a tall building at a corner where Materfamilias Lane dived downhill and a cul-de-sac called Journeyman’s Steps led off to the right. Both were deserted on this Sunday afternoon. Alleyn’s and Fox’s feet rang loudly on the pavement as they walked down Materfamilias Lane. Before they reached the corner they came upon Nigel Bathgate standing in the arched entry to a brewer’s yard.

“In me,” Nigel said, “you see the detective’s ready-reckoner and pocket guide to the City.”

“I hope you’re right. What have you got for us?”

“His room’s on the ground floor with the window on this street. The nearest entrance is round the corner. If he’s there the door to his office’ll be latched on the inside with an ‘Engaged’ notice displayed. He locks himself in.”

“He’s there,” Alleyn said.

“How d’you know?”

“He’s been tailed. Our man rang through from a call box and he should be back on the job by now.”

“Up the side street if he’s got the gumption,” Fox muttered. “Look out, sir!”

“Softly does it,” Alleyn murmured.

Nigel found himself neatly removed to the far end of the archway, engulfed in Fox’s embrace and withdrawn into a recess. Alleyn seemed to arrive there at the same time.

“ ‘You cry mum and I’ll cry budget’!” Alleyn whispered. Someone was walking briskly down Materfamilias Lane. The approaching footsteps echoed in the archway as Edward Manx went by in the sunlight.

They leant motionless against the dark stone and clearly heard the bang of a door.

“Your sleuth-hound,” Nigel pointed out with some relish, “would appear to be at fault. Whom, do you suppose, he’s been shadowing? Obviously, not Manx.”

“Obviously,” Alleyn said, and Fox mumbled obscurely.

“Why are we waiting?” Nigel asked fretfully.

“Give him five minutes,” Alleyn said. “Let him settle down.”

“Am I coming in with you?”

“Do you want to?”

“Certainly. One merely,” Nigel said, “rather wishes that one hadn’t met him before.”

“May be a bit of trouble, you know,” Fox speculated.

“Extremely probable,” Alleyn agreed.

A bevy of sparrows flustered and squabbled out in the sunny street, an eddy of dust rose inconsequently and somewhere, out of sight, halliards rattled against an untenanted flagpole.

“Dull,” Fox said, “doing your beat in the City of a Sunday afternoon. I had six months of it as a young chap. Catch yourself wondering why the blazes you were there and so on.”

“Hideous,” Alleyn said.

“I used to carry my Police Code and Procedure on me and try to memorize six pages a day. I was,” Fox said simply, “an ambitious young chap in those days.”

Nigel glanced at his watch and lit a cigarette.

The minutes dragged by. A clock struck three and was followed by an untidy conclave of other clocks, overlapping each other. Alleyn walked to the end of the archway and looked up and down Materfamilias Lane.

“We may as well get under way,” he said. He glanced again up the street and made a sign with his hand. Fox and Nigel followed him. A man in a dark suit came down the foot-path. Alleyn spoke to him briefly and then led the way to the corner. The man remained in the archway.

They walked quickly by the window, which was uncurtained and had the legend Harmony painted across it, and turned into the cul-de-sac. There was a side door with a brass plate beside it. Alleyn turned the handle and the door opened. Fox and Nigel followed him into a dingy passage which evidently led back into a main corridor. On their right, scarcely discernible in the sudden twilight, was a door. The word Engaged, painted in white, showed clearly. From beyond it they heard the rattle of a typewriter.

Alleyn knocked. The rattle stopped short and a chair scraped on boards. Someone walked towards the door and a voice, Edward Manx’s, said: “Hullo? Who is it?”

“Police,” Alleyn said.

In the stillness they looked speculatively at each other. Alleyn poised his knuckles at the door, waited, and said: “May we have a word with you, Mr. Manx?”

After a second’s silence the voice said: “One moment. I’ll come out.”

Alleyn glanced at Fox who moved in beside him. The word Engaged shot out of sight noisily and was replaced by Private G.P.F. A latch clicked and the door opened inwards. Manx stood there with one hand on the jamb and the other on the door. There was a wooden screen behind him.

Fox’s boot moved over the threshold.

“I’ll come out,” Manx repeated.

“On the contrary, we’ll come in, if you please,” Alleyn said.

Without any particular display of force or even brusqueness, but with great efficiency, they went past him and round the screen. He looked for a second at Nigel and seemed not to recognize him. Then he followed them and Nigel unobtrusively followed him.

There was a green-shaded lamp on a desk at which a figure was seated with its back towards them. As Nigel entered, the swivel-chair creaked and spun around. Dingily dressed and wearing a green eye-shade, Lord Pastern faced them with bunched cheeks.