A Wreath for Rivera

CHAPTER VI DOPE

Above the door leading from the foyer of the Metronome to the office was a clock with chromium hands and figures. As the night wore on, the attention of those persons who were congregated there became increasingly drawn to this clock, so that when at one in the morning the long hand jumped to the hour, everyone observed it. A faint sigh, and a dreary restlessness, stirred them momentarily.

The members of the band who were assembled at the end of the foyer sat in dejected attitudes on gilded chairs that had been brought in from the restaurant. Syd Skelton’s hands dangled between his knees, tapping each other flaccidly. Happy Hart was stretched back with his legs extended. The light found out patches on his trousers worn shiny by the pressure of his thighs against the under-surface of his piano. The four saxophonists sat with their heads together, but they had not spoken for some time and inertia, not interest, held them in these postures of intimacy. The double-bass, a thin man, rested his elbows on his knees and his head on his hands. Breezy Bellairs, in the centre of his Boys, fidgeted, yawned, wiped his hands over his face and bit feverishly at his nails. Near the band stood four waiters and the spot-light operator, whose interrogation had just ended, quite fruitlessly.

At the opposite end of the foyer, in a muster of easier chairs, sat Lady Pastern and her guests. Alone of the whole assembly, she held an upright posture. The muscles of her face sagged a little; its lines were clogged with powder and there were greyish marks under her eyes, but her wrists and ankles were crossed composedly, her hair was rigidly in order. On her right and left the two girls drooped in their chairs. Félicité, chain-smoking, gave her attention fitfully to the matter in hand and often took a glass from her bag and looked resentfully at herself, repainting her lips with irritable gestures.

Carlisle, absorbed as usual with detail, watched the mannerisms of her companions through an increasing haze of sleepiness and was only half aware of what they said. Ned Manx listened sharply as if he tried to memorize all that he heard. Lord Pastern was never still. He would throw himself into a chair with an air of abandon and in a moment spring from it and walk aimlessly about the room. He looked with distaste at the speaker of the moment. He grimaced and interjected. At one side, removed from the two main groups, stood Caesar Bonn and the secretary, David Hahn. These two were watchful and pallid. Out of sight, in the main office, Dr. Curtis, having seen to the removal of Rivera’s body, jotted down notes for his report.

In the centre of the foyer, Inspector Fox sat at a small table with his notebook open before him and his spectacles on his nose. His feet rested side by side on the carpet and his large knees were pressed together. He contemplated his notes with raised eyebrows.

Behind Fox stood Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn, and to him the attention of the company, in some cases fitfully, in others constantly, was drawn. He had been speaking for about a minute. Carlisle, though she tried to listen to the sense of his words, caught herself thinking how deep his voice was and how free from mannerisms his habit of speech. “A pleasant chap,” she thought, and knew by the small affirmative noise Ned Manx made when Alleyn paused that he agreed with her.

“… so you see,” Alleyn was saying now, “that a certain amount of ground must be covered here and that we must ask you to stay until it has been covered. That can’t be helped.”

“Damned if I see…” Lord Pastern began and fetched up short “What’s your name?” he said. Alleyn told him. “I thought so,” said Lord Pastern with an air of having found him out in something. “Point is: are you suggestin’ I dug a dart in the chap or aren’t you? Come on.”

“It doesn’t, at the moment, seem to be a question, as far as you are concerned, sir, of digging.”

“Well, shootin’ then. Don’t split straws.”

“One may as well,” Alleyn said mildly, “be accurate.”

He turned aside to Fox’s case, which lay on a table. From it he took an open box containing the weapon that had killed Rivera. He held the box up, tilting it towards them.

“Will you look at this?” They looked at it “Do any of you recognize it? Lady Pastern?”

She had made an inarticulate sound, but now she said indifferently: “It looks like part of a parasol handle.”

“A black and white parasol?” Alleyn suggested and one of the saxophonists looked up quickly.

“Possibly,” said Lady Pastern. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t be an ass, C,” said her husband. “Obviously it’s off that French thing of yours. We borrowed it.”

“You had no right whatever, George…”

Alleyn interrupted. “We’ve found that one of the parasols used in the Umbrella Man number is minus a few inches of its shaft.” He glanced at the second saxophonist. “I think you had some difficulty in managing it?”

“That’s right,” the second saxophonist said. “You couldn’t shut it properly, I noticed. There wasn’t a clip or anything.”

“This is it: five inches of the shaft containing the clip. Notice that spring catch. It is jewelled. Originally, of course, it kept the parasol closed. The actual handle or knob on its own piece of shaft has been engaged with the main shaft of the parasol. Can you describe it?” He looked at Lady Pastern, who said nothing. Lord Pastern said: “Of course you can, G. A damn-fool thing like a bird with emeralds for eyes. French.”

“You’re sure of that, sir?”

“Of course I’m sure. Damn it, I took the thing to bits when I was in the ballroom.”

Fox raised his head and stared at Lord Pastern with a sort of incredulous satisfaction. Edward Manx swore under his breath, the women were rigidly horrified.

“I see,” Alleyn said. “When was this?”

“After dinner. Breezy was with me. Weren’t you, Breezy?” Breezy shied violently and then nodded.

“Where did you leave the bits, sir?”

“On the piano. Last I saw of ’em.”

“Why,” Alleyn asked, “did you dismember the parasol?”

“For fun.”

“Mon dieu, mon dieu,” Lady Pastern moaned.

“I knew it’d unscrew and I unscrewed it.”

“Thank you,” Alleyn said. “For the benefit of those of you who haven’t examined the parasol closely, I’d better describe it a little more fully. Both ends of this piece of shaft are threaded, one on the outer surface to engage with the top section, the other on the inner surface to receive the main shaft of the parasol. It has been removed and the outer sections screwed together. Now look again at this weapon made from the section that has been removed. You will see that a steel tool has been introduced into this end and sunk in plastic wood. Do any of you recognize this tool? I’ll hold it a little closer. It’s encrusted with blood and a little difficult to see.”

He saw Carlisle’s fingers move on the arms of her chair. He saw Breezy rub the back of his hand across his mouth and Lord Pastern blow out his cheeks. “Rather unusual,” he said, “isn’t it? Wide at the base and tapering. Keen pointed. It might be an embroidery stiletto. I don’t know. Do you recognize it, Lady Pastern?”

“No.”

“Anybody?” Lord Pastern opened his mouth and shut it again. “Well,” Alleyn murmured after a pause. He replaced the box containing the weapon and took up Lord Pastern’s revolver. He turned it over in his hands.

“If that’s the way you chaps go to work,” said Lord Pastern, “I don’t think much of it. That thing may be smothered with finger-prints, for all you know, and you go pawin’ it about.”

“It’s been printed,” Alleyn said without emphasis. He produced a pocket lens and squinted through it down the barrel. “You seem to have given it some rough usage,” he said.

“No, I haven’t,” Lord Pastern countered instantly. “Perfect condition. Always has been.”

“When did you last look down the barrel, sir?”

“Before we came here. In my study, and again in the ballroom. Why?”

“George,” said Lady Pastern. “I suggest for the last time that you send for your solicitor and refuse to answer any questions until he is here.”

“Yes, Cousin George,” Edward murmured. “I honestly think…”

“My solicitor,” Lord Pastern rejoined, “is a snufflin’ old ass. I’m perfectly well able to look after myself, C. What’s all this about my gun?”

“The barrel,” Alleyn said, “is, of course, fouled. That’s from the blank rounds. But under the stain left by the discharges there are some curious marks. Irregular scratches, they seem to be. We’ll have it photographed but I wonder if in the meantime you can offer an explanation?”

“Here,” Lord Pattern ejaculated. “Let me see.”

Alleyn gave him the revolver and lens. Grimacing hideously he pointed the barrel to the light and squinted down it. He made angry noises and little puffing sounds through his lips. He examined the butt through the lens and muttered indistinguishable anathemas. Most unexpectedly, he giggled. Finally he dumped it on the table and blew loudly. “Hanky-panky,” he said briefly and returned to his chair.

“I beg your pardon?”

“When I examined the gun in my study,” Lord Pastern said forcibly, “it was as clean as a whistle. As clean, I repeat, as a whistle. I fired one blank from it in my own house and looked down the barrel afterwards. It was a bit fouled and that was all. All right. There y’are!”

Carlisle, Félicité, Manx and Lady Pastern stirred uneasily. “Uncle George,” Carlisle said. “Please.”

Lord Pastern glared at her. “Therefore,” he said, “I repeat, hanky-panky. The barrel was unmarked when I brought the thing here. I ought to know. It was unmarked when I took it into the restaurant.”

Lady Pastern looked steadily at her husband. “You fool, George,” she said.

“George.”

“Cousin George.”

“Uncle George…”

The shocked voices overlapped and faded out.

Alleyn began again. “Obviously you realize the significance of all this. When I tell you that the weapon — it is, in effect, a dart or bolt, isn’t it? — is half an inch shorter than the barrel of the revolver and somewhat less in diameter…”

“All right, all right,” Lord Pastern interjected.

“I think,” said Alleyn, “I should point out…”

“You needn’t point anything out. And you,” Lord Pastern added, turning on his relatives, “can all shut up. I know what you’re gettin’ at. The barrel was unscratched. By God, I ought to know. And what’s more, I noticed when Breezy and I were in the ballroom that this bit of shaft would fit in the barrel. I pointed it out to him.”

“Here, here, here!” Breezy expostulated. “I don’t like the way this is going. Look here — ”

“Did anyone else examine the revolver?” Alleyn interposed adroitly.

Lord Pastern pointed at Skelton. “He did,” he said. “Ask him.”

Skelton moved forward, wetting his lips.

“Did you look down the barrel?” Alleyn asked.

“Glanced,” said Skelton reluctantly.

“Did you notice anything unusual?”

“No.”

“Was the barrel quite unscarred?”

There was a long silence. “Yes,” said Skelton at last.

“There y’are,” said Lord Pastern.

“It would be,” Skelton added brutally, “seeing his lordship hadn’t put his funny weapon in it yet.”

Lord Pastern uttered a short, rude and incredulous word. “Thanks,” said Skelton and turned to Alleyn.

Edward Manx said: “May I butt in, Alleyn?”

“Of course.”

“It’s obvious that you think this thing was fired from the revolver. It’s obvious, in my opinion, that you are right. How else could he have been killed? But isn’t it equally obvious that the person who used the revolver could have known nothing about it? If he had wanted to shoot Rivera he could have used a bullet. If, for some extraordinary reason, he preferred a sort of rifle grenade or dart or what-not, he would surely have used something less fantastic than the affair you have just shown us. The only object in using the piece of parasol shaft, if it has in fact been so used, would have been this: the spring catch — which is jewelled, by the way — would keep the weapon fixed in the barrel and it wouldn’t fall out if the revolver was pointed downwards, and the person who fired the revolver would therefore be unaware of the weapon in the barrel. You wouldn’t,” Edward said with great energy, “fix up an elaborate sort of thing like this unless there was a reason for it and there would be no reason if you yourself had full control of the revolver and could load it at the last moment. Only an abnormally eccentric…” He stopped short, floundered for a moment and then said: “That’s the point I wanted to make.”

“It’s well taken,” Alleyn said. “Thank you.”

“Hi!” said Lord Pastern.

Alleyn turned to him.

“Look here,” he said. “You think these scratches were made by the jewels on that spring thing. Skelton says they weren’t there when he looked at the gun. If anyone was fool enough to try and shoot a feller with a thing like this, he’d fire it off first of all to see how it worked. In private. Follow me?”

“I think so, sir.”

“All right, then,” said Lord Pastern with a shrill cackle, “why waste time jabberin’ about scratches?”

He flung himself into his chair.

“Did any of you who were there,” Alleyn said, “take particular notice when Mr. Skelton examined the revolver?”

Nobody spoke. Skelton’s face was very white. “Breezy watched,” he said and added quickly: “I was close to Lord Pastern, I couldn’t have… I mean…”

Alleyn said, “Why did you examine it, Mr. Skelton?”

Skelton wetted his lips. His eyes shifted their gaze from Lord Pastern to Breezy Bellairs. “I — was sort of interested. Lord Pastern had fixed up the blanks himself and I thought I’d like to take a look. I’d gone in to wish him luck. I mean…”

“Why don’t you tell him!”

Breezy was on his feet. He had been yawning and fidgeting in his chair. His face was stained with tears. He had seemed to pay little attention to what was said but rather to be in the grip of some intolerable restlessness. His interruption shocked them all by its unexpectedness. He came forward with a shambling movement and grinned at Alleyn.

“I’ll tell you,” he said rapidly. “Syd did it because I asked him to. He’s a pal. I told him. I told him I didn’t trust his lordship. I’m a nervous man where firearms are concerned. I’m a nervous man altogether if you can understand.” His fingers plucked at his smiling lips. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said and his voice broke into a shrill falsetto. “Everybody’s staring as if I’d done something. Eyes. Eyes. Eyes. O God, give me a smoke!”

Alleyn held out his cigarette case. Breezy struck it out of his hand and began to sob. “Bloody sadist,” he said.

“I know what’s wrong with you, you silly chap,” Lord Pastern said accusingly. Breezy shook a finger at him. “You know!” he said. “You started it. You’re as good as a murderer. You are a murderer, by God!”

“Say that again, my good Bellairs,” Lord Pastern rejoined with relish, “and I’ll have you in the libel court. Action for slander, b’George.”

Breezy looked wildly round the assembly. His light eyes with their enormous pupils fixed their gaze on Félicité. He pointed a trembling hand at her. “Look at that girl,” he said, “doing her face and sitting up like Jackie with the man she was supposed to love lying stiff and bloody in the morgue. It’s disgusting.”

Caesar Bonn came forward, wringing his hands. “I can keep silent no longer,” he said. “If I am ruined, I am ruined. If I do not speak, there are others who will.” He looked at Lord Pastern, at Edward Manx and at Hahn.

Edward said: “It’s got to come out, certainly. In common fairness.”

“Certainly. Certainly.”

“What,” Alleyn asked, “has got to come out?”

“Please, Mr. Manx. You will speak.”

“All right, Caesar. I think,” Edward said slowly, turning to Alleyn, “that you should know what happened before any of you arrived. I myself had only just walked into the room. The body was where you saw it.” He paused for a moment. Breezy watched him, but Manx did not look at Breezy. “There was a sort of struggle going on,” he said. “Bellairs was on the floor by Rivera and the others were pulling him off.”

“Damned indecent thing,” said Lord Pastern virtuously, “trying to go through the poor devil’s pockets.”

Breezy whimpered.

“I’d like a closer account of this, if you can give it to me. When exactly did this happen?” Alleyn asked.

Caesar and Hahn began talking at once. Alleyn stopped them. “Suppose,” he said, “we trace events through the point where Mr. Rivera was carried out of the restaurant!” He began to question the four waiters who had carried Rivera. The waiters hadn’t noticed anything was wrong with him. They were a bit flustered anyway because of the confusion about which routine was to be followed. There had been so many contradictory orders that in the end they just watched to see who fell down and then picked up the stretcher and carried him out. The wreath covered his chest. As they lifted him on to the stretcher, Breezy had said quickly: “He’s hurt. Get him out.” They had carried him straight to the office. As they put the stretcher down they heard him make a noise, a harsh rattling noise, it had been. When they looked closer they found he was dead. They fetched Caesar Bonn and Hahn and then carried the body into the inner room. Then Caesar ordered them back to the restaurant and told one of them to fetch Dr. Allington.

Lord Pastern, taking up the tale, said that while they were still on the dais, after the removal of Rivera, Breezy had gone to him and muttered urgently: “For God’s sake come out. Something’s happened to Carlos.” The pianist, Happy Hart, said that Breezy had stopped at the piano on his way out and had told him in an aside to keep going.

Caesar took up the story. Breezy and Lord Pastern came to the inner office. Breezy was in a fearful state, saying he’d seen blood on Rivera when he put the wreath on his chest. They were still gathered round Rivera’s body, laying him out tidily on the floor. Breezy kept gibbering about the blood and then he caught sight of the body and turned away to the wall, retching and scrabbling in his overcoat pocket for one of his tablets and complaining because he had none. Nobody did anything for him and he went into the lavatory off the inner office and was heard vomiting in there. When he came back he looked terrible and stood gabbling about how he felt. At this point Breezy interrupted Caesar. “I told them,” he said shrilly. “I told them. It was a terrible shock to me when he fell. It was a shock to all of us, wasn’t it, boys?”

The Boys stirred themselves and muttered in unison that it had been a great shock.

“When he fell?” Alleyn said quickly. “Then, definitely, he wasn’t supposed to fall?”

They all began to explain at once with great eagerness. Two routines had been rehearsed. There had been a lot of argument about which should be followed. Right up to the last neither Lord Pastern nor Rivera could make up his mind which he preferred. In the one routine Lord Pastern was to have fired the revolver four times at Rivera, who should have smiled and gone on playing. At each of the shots a member of the band was to have played a note in a descending scale and aped having been hit. Then Rivera was to have made his exit and the whole turn continued as they had seen it done, except that it would have ended with Lord Pastern doing a comic fall. Breezy would have then placed the wreath on him and he would have been carried out. In the alternative routine, Rivera was to do the fall. Carlos, the Boys explained, hadn’t liked the idea of falling with his instrument so the first of these two plans had been decided on at the last moment.

“When I saw him drop,” Breezy chattered, “I was rocked all to hell. I thought he’d done it to put one across us. He was like that, poor old Carlos. He was a bit that way. He didn’t fancy the idea of falling, yet he didn’t fancy his lordship getting the big exit. He was funny that way. It was a shock to all of us.”

“So the end was an improvisation?”

“Not exactly,” Lord Pastern said. “I kept my head, of course, and followed the correct routine. It was a bit of a facer but there you were, what? The waiters saw Carlos fall and luckily had the sense to bring the stretcher. It would’ve been awkward if they hadn’t as things turned out. Damn’ awkward. I emptied the magazine as we’d arranged and these other fellows did their staggers. Then I handed the gun to Breezy and he snapped it and then broke it open. I always thought my original idea of Carlos getting shot was best. Though of course I did rather see that it ought to be me who was carried out.”

“And I thought,” Breezy said, “I’d better drop that ruddy wreath on Carlos, like we first said. So I did.” His voice jumped into falsetto. “When I saw the blood I thought at first he’d coughed it up. I thought he’d had one of those things — you know — a hemorrhage. At first. And then the wreath stuck on something. You’d scarcely credit it, would you, but I thought: for crisake I’m hanging it on a peg. And then I saw. I told you that, all of you. You can’t say I didn’t.”

“Certainly you told us,” Caesar agreed, eyeing him nervously. “In the office.” Breezy made a petulant sound and crouched back in his chair. Caesar went on quickly to relate that just before they heard Dr. Allington’s voice in the main office, Breezy had darted over to the body and had crouched down beside it, throwing back the coat and thrusting his hand into the breast pocket. He had said: “I’ve got to get it. He’s got it on him,” or something like that. They had been greatly shocked by this behaviour. He and Caesar and Hahn had pulled Breezy off and he had collapsed. It was during this scene that Edward Manx had arrived.

“Do you agree that this is a fair account of what happened, Mr. Bellairs?” Alleyn asked after a pause.

For a moment or two it seemed as if he would get some kind of answer. Breezy looked at him with extraordinary concentration. Then he turned his head as if his neck were stiff. After moment he nodded.

“What did you hope to find in the deceased’s pockets?” Alleyn said.

Breezy’s mouth stretched in his manikin grin. His eyes were blank. He raised his hands and the fingers trembled.

“Come,” Alleyn said, “what did you hope to find?”

“Oh God!” said Lord Pastern fretfully. “Now he’s goin’ to blub again.”

This was an understatement. Hysteria took possession of Breezy. He screamed out some unintelligible protest or appeal, broke into a storm of sobbing laughter and stumbled to the entrance. A uniformed policeman came through the door and held him. “Now, now,” said the policeman. “Easy does it, sir, easy does it.”

Dr. Curtis came out of the office and stood looking at Breezy thoughtfully. Alleyn nodded to him and he went to Breezy.

Breezy sobbed: “Doctor! Doctor! Listen!” He put his heavy arm about Dr. Curtis’s shoulders and with an air of mystery whispered in his ear. “I think, Alleyn…?” said Dr. Curtis. “Yes,” Alleyn said, “in the office, will you?”

When the door had shut behind them, Alleyn looked at Breezy’s Boys.

“Can any of you tell me,” he said, “how long he’s been taking drugs?”

Lord Pastern, bunching his cheeks, said to nobody in particular, “Six months.”

“You knew about it, my lord, did you?” Fox demanded and Lord Pastern grinned savagely at him. “Not bein’ a detective-inspector,” he said, “I don’t have to wait until a dope-fiend throws fits and passes out before I know what’s wrong with him.”

He balanced complacently, toe and heel, and stroked the back of his head. “I’ve been lookin’ into the dope racket,” he volunteered. “Disgraceful show. Runnin’ sore in the body politic and nobody with the guts to tackle it.” He glared upon Breezy’s Boys. “You chaps!” he said, jabbing a finger at them. “What did you do about it! Damn’ all.”

Breezy’s Boys were embarrassed and shocked. They fidgeted, cleared their throats and eyed one another.

“Surely,” Alleyn said, “you must have guessed. He’s in a bad way, you know.”

They hadn’t been sure, it appeared. Happy Hart said they knew Breezy took some kind of stuff for his nerves. It was some special kind of dope. Breezy used to get people to buy it for him in Paris. He said it was some kind of bromide, Hart added vaguely. The double-bass said Breezy was a very nervous type. The first saxophone muttered something about hitting the high spots and corpse revivers. Lord Pastern loudly pronounced a succinct but unprintable comment and they eyed him resentfully. “I told him what it’d come to,” he announced. “I threatened the chap. Only way. ‘If you don’t take a pull, by God,’ I said, ‘I’ll give the whole story to the papers. Harmony, f’r instance.’ I told him so, to-night.”

Edward Manx uttered a sharp ejaculation and looked as if he wished he’d held his tongue.

“Who searched him for his bloody tablet?” Skelton demanded, glaring at Lord Pastern.

“The show,” Lord Pastern countered virtuously, “had to go on, didn’t it? Don’t split straws, my good ass.”

Alleyn intervened. The incident of the lost tablet was related. Lord Pastern described how he went through Breezy’s pockets and boasted of his efficiency. “You fellers call it fannin’ a chap,” he explained kindly, to Alleyn.

“This was immediately after Mr. Skelton had inspected the revolver and handed it back to Lord Pastern?” Alleyn asked.

“That’s right,” said one or two of the Boys.

“Lord Pastern, did you at any time after he’d done this lose sight of the revolver or put it down?”

“Certainly not. I kept it in my hip pocket from the time Skelton gave it to me until I went on the stage.”

“Did you look down the barrel after Mr. Skelton returned it to you?”

“No.”

“I won’t have this,” said Skelton loudly.

Alleyn glanced thoughtfully at him and returned to Lord Pastern. “Did you, by the way,” he said, “find anything in Mr. Bellairs’s pockets?”

“A wallet, a cigarette case and his handkerchief,” Lord Pastern rejoined importantly. “The pill was in the handkerchief.”

Alleyn asked for a closer description of this scene and Lord Pastern related with gusto how Breezy had stood with his hands up, holding his baton as if he were about to give his first down-beat, and how he himself had explored every pocket with the utmost dispatch and thoroughness. “If,” he added, “you’re thinkin’ that he might have had the dart on him, you’re wrong. He hadn’t. And he couldn’t have got at the gun if he had, what’s more. And he didn’t pick anything up afterwards. I’ll swear to that.”

Ned Manx said with some violence: “For God’s sake, Cousin George, think what you’re saying.”

“It is useless, Edward,” said Lady Pastern. “He will destroy himself out of sheer complacency.” She addressed herself to Alleyn. “I must inform you that in my opinion and that of many of his acquaintances, my husband’s eccentricity is of a degree that renders his statements completely unreliable.”

“That be damned!” shouted Lord Pastern. “I’m the most truthful man I know. You’re an ass.”

“So be it,” said Lady Pastern in her deepest voice, and folded her hands.

“When you came out on the dais,” Alleyn went on, disregarding this interlude, “you brought the revolver with you and put it on the floor under a hat. It was near your right foot, I think, and behind the drums. Quite near the edge of the dais.”

Félicité had opened her bag and for the fourth time had taken out her lipstick and mirror. She made an involuntary movement of her hands, jerking the lipstick away as if she threw it. The mirror fell at her feet. She half rose. Her open bag dropped to the floor, and the glass splintered under her heel. The carpet was littered with the contents of her bag and blotted with powder. Alleyn moved forward quickly. He picked up the lipstick and a folded paper with typewriting on it. Félicite snatched the paper from his hand. “Thank you. Don’t bother. What a fool I am,” she said breathlessly.

She crushed the paper in her hand and held it while, with the other hand, she gathered up the contents of her bag. One of the waiters came forward, like an automaton, to help her.

“Quite near the edge of the dais,” Alleyn repeated. “So that, for the sake of argument, you, Miss de Suze, or Miss Wayne, or Mr. Manx, could have reached out to the sombrero. In fact, while some of your party were dancing, anyone who was left at the table could also have done this. Do you all agree?”

Carlisle was acutely aware of the muscles of her face. She was conscious of Alleyn’s gaze, impersonal and deliberate, resting on her eyes and her mouth and her hands. She remembered noticing him — how many hours ago? — when he sat at the next table. “I mustn’t look at Fée or at Ned,” she thought. She heard Edward move stealthily in his chair. The paper in Félicité’s hand rustled. There was a sharp click and Carlisle jumped galvanically. Lady Pastern had flicked open her lorgnette and was now staring through it at Alleyn.

Manx said: “You were next to our table, I think, weren’t you, Alleyn?”

“By an odd coincidence,” Alleyn rejoined pleasantly.

“I think it better for us to postpone our answers.”

“Do you?” Alleyn said lightly. “Why?”

“Obviously, the question about whether we could have touched this hat, or whatever it was…”

“You know perfectly well what it was, Ned,” Lord Pastern interjected. “It was my sombrero, and the gun was under it. We’ve had all that.”

“… this sombrero,” Edward amended, “is a question that has dangerous implications for all of us. I’d like to say that quite apart from the possibility, which we have not admitted, of any of us touching it, there is surely no possibility at all that any of us could have taken a revolver from underneath it, shoved a bit of a parasol up the barrel and replaced the gun, without anything being noticed. If you don’t mind my saying so, the suggestion of any such manoeuvre is obviously ridiculous.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lord Pastern with an air of judicial impartiality. “All that switchin’ about of the light and the metronome waggin’ and everybody naturally watchin’ me, you know. I should say, in point of fact, it was quite possible. I wouldn’t have noticed, I promise you.”

“George,” Félicité whispered fiercely, “do you want to do us in?”

“I want the truth,” her stepfather shouted crossly. “I was a Theosophist, once,” he added.

“You are and have been and always will be an imbecile,” said his wife, shutting her lorgnette.

“Well,” Alleyn said and, the attention of the band, the employees of the restaurant and its guests having been diverted to this domestic interchange, swung back to him, “ridiculous or not, I shall put the question. You are, of course, under no compulsion to answer it. Did any of you handle Lord Pastern’s sombrero?”

They were silent. The waiter, who had gathered up the pieces of broken mirror, faced Alleyn with an anxious smile. “Excuse me, sir,” he said.

“Yes?”

“The young lady,” said the waiter, bowing towards Félicité, “did put her hand under the hat. I was the waiter for that table, sir, and I happened to notice. I hope you will excuse me, miss, but I did happen to notice.”

Fox’s pencil whispered over the paper.

“Thank you,” said Alleyn.

Félicité cried out: “This is the absolute end. Suppose I said it’s not true.”

“I shouldn’t,” Alleyn said. “As Mr. Manx has pointed out, I was sitting next to your table.”

“Then why ask?”

“To see if you would frankly admit that you did, in fact, put your hand under the sombrero.”

“People,” said Carlisle suddenly, “think twice about making frank statements all over the place when a capital crime is involved.”

She looked up at Alleyn and found him smiling at her. “How right you are,” he said. “That’s what makes homicide cases so tiresome.”

“Are we to hang about all night,” Lord Pastern demanded, “while you sit gossipin’? Never saw such a damned amateur set-up in all m’ life. Makes you sick.”

“Let us get on by all means, sir. We haven’t very much more ground to cover here. It will be necessary, I’m afraid, for us to search you before we can let you off.”

“All of us?” Félicité said quickly.

They looked, with something like awe, at Lady Pastern.

“There is a wardress in the ladies’ cloak-room,” Alleyn said, “and a detective-sergeant in the men’s. We shall also need your finger-prints, if you please. Sergeant Bailey will attend to that. Shall we set about it? Perhaps you, Lady Pastern, will go in first?”

Lady Pastern rose. Her figure, tightly encased, seemed to enlarge itself. Everybody stole uneasy glances at it. She faced her husband. “Of the many indignities you have forced upon me,” she said, “this is the most intolerable. For this I shall never forgive you.”

“Good Lord, C,” he rejoined, “what’s the matter with bein’ searched? Trouble with you is you’ve got a dirty mind. If you’d listened to my talks on the Body Beautiful that time in Kent…”

“Silence!” she said (in French) and swept into the ladies’ cloakroom. Félicité giggled nervously.

“Anybody may search me,” Lord Pastern said generously. “Come on.”

He led the way to the men’s cloak-room.

Alleyn said: “Perhaps, Miss de Suze, you would like to go with your mother. It’s perfectly in order, if you think she’d prefer it.”

Félicité was sitting in her chair with her left hand clutching her bag and her right hand out of sight. “I expect she’d rather have a private martyrdom, Mr. Alleyn,” she said.

“Suppose you go and ask her? You can get your part of the programme over when she is free.”

He stood close to Félicité, smiling down at her. She said, “Oh, all right. If you like.” Without enthusiasm, and with a backward glance at Manx, she followed her mother. Alleyn immediately took her chair and addressed himself to Manx and Carlisle.

“I wonder,” he said, “if you can help me with one or two routine jobs that will have to be tidied up. I believe you were both at the dinner party at Lord Pastern’s house — it’s in Duke’s Gate, isn’t it? — before this show to-night.”

“Yes,” Edward said. “We were there.”

“And the rest of the party? Bellairs and Rivera and of course Lord and Lady Pastern. Anyone else?”

“No,” Carlisle said and immediately corrected herself. “I’d forgotten. Miss Henderson.”

“Miss Henderson?”

“She used to be Félicité’s governess and stayed on as a sort of general prop and stay to everybody.”

“What is her full name?”

“I–I really don’t know. Ned, have you ever heard Hendy’s Christian name?”

“No,” Edward said. “Never. She’s simply Hendy. I should think it might be Edith. Wait a moment though,” he added, “I do know. Fée told me years ago. She saw it on an electoral roll or something. It’s Petronella Xantippe.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“People so seldom have the names you expect,” Alleyn murmured vaguely. “Can you give me a detailed description of your evening at Duke’s Gate? You see, as Rivera was there, the dinner party assumes a kind of importance.”

Carlisle thought: “We’re waiting too long. One of us ought to have replied at once.”

“I want,” Alleyn said at last, “if you can give it to me, an account of the whole thing. When everybody arrived. What you talked about. Whether you were all together most of the time or whether you split up, for instance, after dinner, and were in different rooms. That kind of thing.”

They began to speak together and stopped short. They laughed uncomfortably, apologized and invited each other to proceed. At last Carlisle embarked alone on a colourless narrative. She had arrived at Duke’s Gate at about five and had seen her aunt and uncle and Félicité. Naturally there had been a good deal of talk about the evening performance. Her uncle had been in very good spirits.

“And Lady Pastern and Miss de Suze?” Alleyn said. Carlisle replied carefully that they were in much their usual form. “And how is that?” he asked. “Cheerful? Happy family atmosphere, would you say?”

Manx said lightly: “My dear Alleyn, like most families they rub along together without — without — ”

“Were you going to say ‘without actually busting up’?”

“Well — well — ”

“Ned,” Carlisle interjected, “it’s no good pretending Uncle George and Aunt Cécile represent the dead norm of British family life. Presumably, Mr. Alleyn reads the papers. If I say they were much as usual it means they were much as usual on their own lines.” She turned to Alleyn. “On their own lines, Mr. Alleyn, they were perfectly normal.”

“If you’ll allow me to say so, Miss Wayne,” Alleyn rejoined warmly, “you are evidently an extremely sensible person. May I implore you to keep it up.”

“Not to the extent of letting you think a routine argument to them is matter for suspicion to you.”

“They argue,” Manx added, “perpetually and vehemently. It means nothing. Well, you’ve heard them.”

“And did they, for example, argue about Lord Pastern’s performance in the band?”

“Oh, yes,” they said together.

“And about Bellairs or Rivera?”

“A bit,” said Carlisle after a pause.

“Boogie-woogie merchants,” Manx said, “are not, in the nature of things, my cousin Cécilc’s cups of tea. She is, as you may have noticed, a little in the grande dame line of business.”

Alleyn leant forward in his chair and rubbed his nose. He looked, Carlisle thought, like a bookish man considering some point that had been raised in an interminable argument.

“Yes,” he said at last. “That’s all right, of course. One can see the obvious and rather eccentric mise en scène. Everything you’ve told me is no doubt quite true. But the devil of it is, you know, that you’re going to use the palpable eccentricities as a sort of smoke screen for the more profound disturbances.”

They were astonished and disconcerted. Carlisle said tentatively that she didn’t understand. “Don’t you?” Alleyn murmured. “Oh, well! Shall we get on with it? Bellairs has suggested an engagement between Rivera and Miss de Suze. Was there an engagement, if you please?”

“No, I don’t think so. Was there, Lisle?”

Carlisle said that she didn’t think so either. Nothing had been announced.

“An understanding?”

“He wanted her to marry him, I think. I mean,” Carlisle amended with heightened colour, “I know he did. I don’t think she was going to. I’m sure she wasn’t.”

“How did Lord Pastern feel about it?”

“Who can tell?” Edward muttered.

“I don’t think it bothered him much one way or the other,” Carlisle said. “He was too busy planning his début.”

But into her memory came the figure of Lord Pastern, bent over his task of drawing bullets from cartridges, and she heard again his grunted: “much better leave things to me.”

Alleyn began to lead them step by step through the evening at Duke’s Gate. What had they talked about before dinner? How had the party been divided, and into which rooms? What had they themselves done and said? Carlisle found herself charged with an account of her arrival. It was easy to say that her aunt and uncle had argued about whether there should be extra guests for dinner. It was not so easy when he led her back to the likelihood of an engagement between Rivera and Félicité, asking if it had been discussed and by whom, and whether Félicité had confided in her.

“These seem impertinent questions,” Alleyn said, and anticipated her attempt to suggest as much. “But, believe me, they are entirely impersonal. Irrelevant matters will be most thankfully rejected and forgotten. We want to tidy up the field of inquiry, that’s all.” And then it seemed to Carlisle that evasions would be silly and wrong and she said that Félicité had been worried and unhappy about Rivera. She sensed Edward’s uneasiness and added that there had been nothing in the Félicité-Rivera situation, nothing at all. “Félicité makes emotional mountains out of sentimental mole-hills,” she said. “I think she enjoys it.” But she knew while she said this that Félicité’s outburst had been more serious than she suggested and she heard her voice lose its integrity and guessed that Alleyn heard this too. She began to be oppressed by his quiet insistence and yet her taste for detail made her a little pleased with her own accuracy, and she felt something like an artist’s reluctance to slur or distort. It was easy again to recall her solitary time before dinner in the ballroom. As soon as she began to speak of it the sensation of nostalgia flashed up in her memory and she found herself telling Alleyn that her coming-out ball had been there, that the room had a host of associations for her and that she had stood there, recollecting them.

“Did you notice if the umbrellas and parasols were there?”

“Yes,” she said quickly. “I did. They were there on the piano. I remembered the French parasol. It was Aunt Cile’s. I remembered Félicité playing with it as a child. It takes to pieces.” She caught her breath. “But you know it does that,” she said.

“And it was intact then, when you saw it? No bits gone out of the shaft?”

“No, no.”

“Sure?”

“Yes. I picked it up and opened it. That’s supposed to be unlucky, isn’t it? It was all right then.”

“Good. And after this you went into the drawing-room. I know this sounds aimlessly exacting but what happened next, do you remember?”

Before she knew where she was she had told him about the magazine, Harmony, and there seemed no harm in repeating her notion that Félicité had written one of the letters on G.P.F.’s page. Alleyn gave no sign that this was of interest. It was Edward who, unaccountably, made a stifled ejaculation. Carlisle thought, “Have I blundered?” and hurried on to an account of her visit to her uncle’s study when he drew the bullets from the cartridges. Alleyn asked casually how he had set about this and seemed to be diverted from the matter in hand, amused at Lord Pastern’s neatness and dexterity.

Carlisle was accustomed to being questioned about Lord Pastern’s eccentricities. She considered him fair game and normally enjoyed trying to make sharp, not unkindly little word-sketches of him for her friends. His notoriety was so gross that she had always felt it would be ridiculous to hesitate. She slipped into this habit now.

Then, the picture of the drawer, pulled out and laid on the desk at his elbow, suddenly presented itself. She felt a kind of shrinking in her midriff and stopped short.

But Alleyn had turned to Ned Manx and Ned, dryly and slowly, answered questions about his own arrival in the drawing-room. What impression did he get of Bellairs and Rivera? He hadn’t spoken to them very much. Lady Pastern had taken him apart to show him her embroidery.

“Gros point?” Alleyn asked.

“And petit point. Like most Frenchwomen of her period, she’s pretty good. I really didn’t notice the others much.”

The dinner party itself came next. The conversation, Ned was saying, had been fragmentary, about all sorts of things. He couldn’t remember in detail.

“Miss Wayne has an observer’s eye and ear,” Alleyn said, turning to her. “Perhaps you can remember, can you? What did you talk about? You sat, where?”

“On Uncle George’s right.”

“And on your other hand?”

“Mr. Rivera.”

“Can you remember what he spoke about, Miss Wayne?” Alleyn offered his cigarette case to her. As he lit her cigarette Carlisle looked past him at Ned, who shook his head very slightly.

“I thought him rather awful, I’m afraid,” she said. “He really was a bit too thick. All flowery compliments and too Spanish-grandee for anyone to swallow.”

“Do you agree, Mr. Manx?”

“Oh, yes. He was quite unreal and rather ridiculous I thought.”

“Offensively so, would you say?”

They did not look at each other. Edward said: “He just bounded sky-high, if you call that offensive.”

“Did they speak of the performance to-night?”

“Oh, yes,” Edward said. “And I must say I’m not surprised that the waiters were muddled about who they were to carry out. It struck me that both Uncle George and Rivera wanted all the fat and that neither of them could make up his mind to letting the other have the stretcher. Bellairs was clearly at the end of his professional tether about it.”

Alleyn asked how long the men had stayed behind in the dining-room. Reluctantly — too reluctantly Carlisle thought, with a rising sense of danger — Ned told them that Lord Pastern had taken Breezy away to show him the blank cartridges. “So you and Rivera were left with the port?” Alleyn said.

“Yes. Not for long.”

“Can you recall the conversation?”

“There was nothing that would be any help to you.”

“You never know.”

“I didn’t encourage conversation. He asked all sorts of questions about our various relationships to each other and I snubbed him.”

“How did he take that?”

“Nobody enjoys being snubbed, I suppose, but I fancy he had a tolerably thick hide on him.”

“Was there actually a quarrel?”

Edward stood up. “Look here, Alleyn,” he said, “if I was in the slightest degree implicated in this business I should have followed my own advice and refused to answer any of your questions. I am not implicated. I did not monkey with the revolver. I did not bring about Rivera’s death.”

“And now,” Carlisle thought in despair, “Ned’s going to give him a sample of the family temper. O God,” she thought, “please don’t let him.”

“Good,” Alleyn said and waited.

“Very well then,” Edward said grandly and sat down.

“So there was a quarrel.”

“I merely,” Edward shouted, “showed the man I thought he was impertinent and he walked out of the room.”

“Did you speak to him again after this incident?”

Carlisle remembered a scene in the hall, the two men facing each other, Rivera with his hand clapped to his ear. What was it Ned had said to him? Something ridiculous, like a perky schoolboy. “Put that in your hurdy-gurdy and squeeze it,” he had shouted with evident relish.

“I merely ask these questions,” Alleyn said, “because the bloke had a thick ear, and I wondered who gave it to him. The skin’s broken and I notice you wear a signet ring.”

In the main office, Dr. Curtis contemplated Breezy Bellairs with the air of wary satisfaction. “He’ll do,” he said, and stepping neatly behind Breezy’s chair, he winked at Alleyn. “He must have got hold of something over and above the shot I gave him. But he’ll do.”

Breezy looked up at Alleyn and gave him the celebrated smile. He was pallid and sweating lightly. His expression was one of relief, of well-being. Dr. Curtis washed his syringe in a tumbler of water on the desk and then returned it to his case.

Alleyn opened the door into the foyer and nodded to Fox, who rose and joined him. Together they returned to the contemplation of Breezy.

Fox cleared his throat. “Alors,” he said cautiously and stopped.

“Évidemment,” he said, “il y a un avancement, n’est-ce pas?”

He paused, slightly flushed, and looked out of the corners of his eyes at Alleyn.

“Pas grand’chose,” Alleyn muttered. “But as Curtis says, he’ll do for our purpose. You go, by the way, Br’er Fox, from strength to strength. The accent improves.”

“I still don’t get the practice though,” Fox complained. Breezy, who was looking with complete tranquillity at the opposite wall, laughed comfortably. “I feel lovely, now,” he volunteered.

“He’s had a pretty solid shot,” Dr. Curtis said. “I don’t know what he’d been up to before but it seems to have packed him up a bit. But he’s all right. He can answer questions, can’t you, Bellairs?”

“I’m fine,” Breezy rejoined dreamily. “Box of birds.”

“Well…” Alleyn said dubiously. Fox added in a sepulchral undertone: “Faute de mieux.” “Exactly,” Alleyn said and, drawing up a chair, placed himself in front of Breezy.

“I’d like you to tell me something,” he said. Breezy lazily withdrew his gaze from the opposite wall and Alleyn found himself staring into eyes that, because of the enormous size of their pupils, seemed mere structures and devoid of intelligence.

“Do you remember,” he said, “what you did at Lord Pastern’s house?”

He had to wait a long time for an answer. At last Breezy’s voice, detached and remote, said: “Don’t let’s talk. It’s nicer not talking.”

“Talking’s nice too, though.”

Dr. Curtis walked away from Breezy and murmured to no one in particular, “Get him started and he may go on.”

“It must have been fun at the dinner party,” Alleyn suggested. “Did Carlos enjoy himself?”

Breezy’s arm lay curved along the desk. With a luxurious sigh, he slumped further into the chair and rested his cheek on his sleeve. In a moment or two his voice began again, independently, it seemed, with no conscious volition on his part. It trailed through his scarcely moving lips in a monotone.

“I told him it was silly but that made no difference at all. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘you’re crazy!’ Well, of course I was sore on account of he held back on me, not bringing me my cigarettes.”

“What cigarettes?”

“He never did anything I asked him. I was so good to him. I was as good as gold. I told him. I said, ‘Look,’ I said, ‘she won’t take it from you, boy. She’s as sore as hell,’ I said, ‘and so’s he, and the other girl isn’t falling so what’s the point?’ I knew there’d be trouble. ‘And the old bastard doesn’t like it,’ I said. ‘He pretends it doesn’t mean a thing to him but that’s all hooey because he just naturally wouldn’t like it.’ No good. No notice taken.”

“When was this?” Alleyn asked.

“Off and on. Most of the time you might say. And when we were in the taxi and he said how the guy had hit him, I said: ‘There you are, what was I telling you?’ ”

“Who hit him?”

There was a longer pause. Breezy turned his head languidly.

“Who hit Carlos, Breezy?”

“I heard you the first time. What a gang, though! The Honourable Edward Manx in serious mood while lunching at the Tarmac with Miss Félicité de Suze who is of course connected with him on the distaff side. Her stepfather is Lord Pastern and Bagott, but if you ask me it’s a punctured romance. Cherchez la femme.”

Fox glanced up from his notes with an air of bland interest.

“The woman in this case,” Alleyn said, “being…”

“Funny name for a girl.”

“Carlisle?”

“Sounds dopey to me, but what of that? But that’s the sort of thing they do. Imagine having two names. Pastern and Bagott. And I can look after both of them, don’t you worry. Trying to swing one across me. What a chance! Bawling me out. Saying he’ll write to this bloody paper. Him and his hot-gunning and where is he now?”

“Swing one across you?” Alleyn repeated quietly. He had pitched his voice on Breezy’s level. Their voices ran into and away from each other. They seemed to the two onlookers to speak as persons in a dream, with tranquillity and secret understanding.

“He might have known,” Breezy was saying, “that I wouldn’t come at it but you’ve got to admit it was awkward. A permanent engagement. Thanks a lot. How does the chorus go?”

He laughed faintly, yawned, whispered, “Pardon me,” and closed his eyes.

“He’s going,” Dr. Curtis said.

“Breezy,” Alleyn said loudly. “Breezy.”

“What?”

“Did Lord Pastern want you to keep him on permanently?”

“I told you. Him and his blankety-blankety blank cartridges.”

“Did he want you to sack Skelton?”

“It was all Carlos’s fault,” Breezy said quite loudly and on a plaintive note. “He thought it up. God, was he angry!”

“Was who angry?”

With a suggestion of cunning the voice murmured: “That’s telling.”

“Was it Lord Pastern?”

“Him? Don’t make me laugh!”

“Syd Skelton?”

“When I told him,” Breezy whispered faintly, “he looked like murder. Honest, I was nervy.”

He rolled his face over on his arm and fell into a profound sleep. “He won’t come out of that for eight hours,” said Dr. Curtis.

At two o’clock the cleaners came in, five middle-aged women who were admitted by the police and who walked through the foyer into the restaurant with the tools of their trade. Caesar Bonn was greatly distressed by their arrival and complained that the pressmen, who had been sent away with a meager statement that Rivera had collapsed and died, would lie in wait for these women and question them. He sent the secretary, David Hahn, after the cleaners. “They are to be silenced at all costs. At all costs, you understand.” Presently the drone of vacuum-cleaners arose in the restaurant. Two of Alleyn’s men had been there for some time. They now returned to the foyer and, joining the policemen on duty there, glanced impassively at its inhabitants.

Most of the Boys were asleep. They were sprawled in ungainly postures on their small chairs. Trails of ash lay on their clothes. They had crushed out their cigarette butts on empty packets, on the soles of their shoes, on match boxes, or had pitched them at the floor containers. The smell of dead butts seemed to hang over the entire room.

Lady Pastern appeared to sleep. She was inclined backwards in her armchair and her eyes were closed. Purplish shadows had appeared on her face and deep grooves ran from her nostrils to the corners of her mouth. Her cheeks sagged. She scarcely stirred when her husband, who had been silent for a considerable time, said: “Hi, Ned!”

“Yes, Cousin George?” Manx responded guardedly.

“I’ve got to the bottom of this.”

“Indeed?”

“I know who did it.”

“Really? Who?”

“I disagree entirely and emphatically with capital punishment,” Lord Pastern said, puffing out his cheeks at the group of police officials. “I shall therefore keep my knowledge to myself. Let ’em muddle on. Murder’s a matter for the psychiatrist, not the hangman. As for judges, they’re a pack of conceited old sadists. Let ’em get on with it. They’ll have no help from me. For God’s sake, Fée, stop fidgetin’.”

Félicité was curled up in the chair she had used earlier in the evening. From time to time she thrust her hands out of sight, exploring, it seemed, the space between the upholstered arms and seat. She did this furtively with sidelong glances at the others. Carlisle said: “What is it, Fée? What have you lost?”

“My hanky.”

“Here, take mine, for pity’s sake,” said Lord Pastern and threw it at her.

The searching had gone forward steadily. Carlisle, who liked her privacy, had found the experience galling and unpleasant. The wardress was a straw-coloured woman with large artificial teeth and firm pale hands. She had been extremely polite and uncompromising.

Now the last man to be searched, Syd Skelton, returned from the men’s cloak-room and at the same time Alleyn and Fox came out of the office. The Boys woke up. Lady Pastern opened her eyes.

Alleyn said: “As the result of these preliminary inquiries…” (“Preliminary!” Lord Pastern snorted.)… “I think we have got together enough information and may allow you to go home. I’m extremely sorry to have kept you here so long.”

They were all on their feet. Alleyn raised a hand. “There’s one restriction, I’m afraid. I think you’ll all understand and, I hope, respect it. Those of you who were in immediate communication with Rivera or who had access to the revolver used by Lord Pastern, or who seem to us, for sufficient reasons, to be in any way concerned in the circumstances leading to Rivera’s death, will be seen home by police officers. We shall provide ourselves with search-warrants. If such action seems necessary, we shall use them.”

“Of all the footlin’, pettifoggin’…” Lord Pastern began, and was interrupted.

“Those of you who come under this heading,” Alleyn said, “are Lord Pastern and the members of his party, Mr. Bellairs and Mr. Skelton. That’s all, I think. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.”

“I’m damned if I’ll put up with this. Look here, Alleyn…”

“I’m sorry, sir. I must insist, I’m afraid.”

“George,” said Lady Pastern. “You have tried conclusions with the law on more than one occasion and as often as you have done so you have made a fool of yourself. Come home.”

Lord Pastern studied his wife with an air of detachment. “Your hair-net’s loose,” he pointed out, “and you’re bulgin’ above your waist. Comes of wearin’ stays. I’ve always said…”

“I, at least,” Lady Pastern said directly to Alleyn, “am prepared to accept your conditions. So, I am sure, are my daughter and my niece. Félicité! Carlisle!”

“Fox,” said Alleyn.

She walked with perfect composure to the door and waited there. Fox spoke to one of the plain-clothes men, who detached himself from the group near the entrance. Félicité held out a hand towards Edward Manx. “Ned, you’ll come, won’t you? You’ll stay with us?”

After a moment’s hesitation he took her hand.

“Dearest Edward,” said Lady Pastern from the door. “We should be so grateful.”

“Certainly, Cousin Cécile. Of course.”

Félicité still held his hand. He looked at Carlisle. “Coming?” he asked.

“Yes, of course. Good night, Mr. Alleyn,” said Carlisle.

“Good night, Miss Wayne.”

They went out, followed by the plain-clothes man.

“I should like to have a word with you, Mr. Skelton,” Alleyn said. “The rest of you” — he turned to the Boys, the waiters and the spotlight man — “may go. You will be given notice of the inquest. Sorry to have kept you up so late. Good night.”

The waiters and the electrician went at once. The band moved forward in a group. Happy Hart said: “What about Breezy?”

“He’s sound asleep and will need a bit of rousing. I shall see he’s taken home.”

Hart shuffled his feet and looked at his hands. “I don’t know what you’re thinking,” he said, “but he’s all right. Breezy’s O.K. really. I mean he’s just been making the pace a bit too hot for himself as you might say. He’s a very nervy type, Breezy. He suffers from insomnia. He took the stuff for his nerves. But he’s all right.”

“He and Rivera got on well, did they?”

Several of the Boys said quickly: “That’s right. Sure. They were all right.” Hart added that Breezy was very good to Carlos and gave him his big chance in London.

All the Boys agreed fervently with this statement except Skelton. He stood apart from his associates. They avoided looking at him. He was a tall darkish fellow with narrow eyes and a sharp nose. His mouth was small and thin-lipped. He stooped slightly.

“Well, if that’s all,” Happy Hart said uneasily, “we’ll say good night.”

“We’ve got their addresses, haven’t we, Fox? Good. Thank you. Good night.”

They filed out, carrying their instruments. In the old days when places like the Metronome and Quags and the Hungaria kept going up to two in the morning the Boys had worked through, sometimes going on to parties in private houses. They were Londoners who turned homewards with pale faces and blue jaws at the time when fans of water from giant hose pipes strike across Piccadilly and Whitehall. They had been among the tag-ends of the night in those times, going soberly to their beds as the first milk carts jangled. In summer-time they had undressed in the dawn to the thin stir of sparrows. They shared with taxi drivers, cloak-room attendants, waiters and commissionaires a specialized disillusionment.

Alleyn watched them go and then nodded to Fox. Fox approached Caesar Bonn and David Hahn, who lounged gloomily near the office door. “Perhaps you gentlemen wouldn’t mind coming into the office,” he suggested. They followed him in. Alleyn turned to Skelton. “Now, Mr. Skelton.”

“What’s the idea,” Skelton said, “keeping me back? I’ve got a home, same as everybody else. Though how the hell I’m going to get there’s nobody’s business.”

“I’m sorry. It’s a nuisance for you, I know, but it can’t be helped.”

“I don’t see why.”

The office door was opened from inside. Two constables came out with Breezy Bellairs hanging between them like a cumbersome puppet. His face was lividly pale, his eyes half open. He breathed stertorously and made a complaining noise like a wretched child. Dr. Curtis followed. Bonn and Hahn watched from inside the office.

“All right?” Alleyn said.

“He’ll do. We’ll just get him into his coat.”

They held Breezy up while Curtis, with difficulty, crammed him into his tight-fitting overcoat. During this struggle Breezy’s baton fell to the floor. Hahn came forward and picked it up. “You wouldn’t think,” Hahn said, contemplating it sadly, “how good he was. Not to look at him now.”

Dr. Curtis yawned. “These chaps’ll see him into his bed,” he said. “I’ll be off, if you don’t want me, Rory.”

“Right.” The dragging procession disappeared. Fox returned to the office and shut the door.

“That’s a nice way,” Skelton said angrily, “for a first-class band leader to be seen going home. Between a couple of flatties.”

“They’ll be very tactful,” Alleyn rejoined. “Shall we sit down?”

Skelton said he’d sat down for so long that his bottom was numb. “Let’s get cracking for God’s sake. I’ve had it. What’s the idea?”

Alleyn took out his notebook.

“The idea,” he said, “is further information. I think you can give it to us. By all means let’s get cracking.”

“Why pick on me? I know no more than the others.”

“Don’t you?” Alleyn said vaguely. He glanced up. “What’s your opinion of Lord Pastern as a tympanist?”

“Dire. What of it?”

“Did the others hold this opinion?”

“They knew. Naturally. It was a cheap stunt. Playing up the snob value.” He thrust his hands down in his pockets and began to walk to and fro, impelled, it seemed, by resentment. Alleyn waited.

“It’s when something like this turns up,” Skelton announced loudly, “that you see how rotten the whole set-up really is. I’m not ashamed of my work. Why the hell should I be? It interests me. It’s not easy. It takes doing and anybody that tells you there’s nothing to the best type of our kind of music talks through his hat. It’s got something. It’s clever and there’s a lot of hard thinking behind it.”

“I don’t know about music,” Alleyn said, “but I can imagine that from the technical point of view your sort can be almost purely intellectual. Or is that nonsense?”

Skelton glowered at him. “You’re not far out. A lot of the stuff we have to play is wet and corny, of course. They,” he jerked his head at the empty restaurant, “like it that way. But there’s other stuff that’s different. If I could pick my work I’d be in an oufit that went for the real McCoy. In a country where things were run decently I’d be able to do that. I’d be able to say: ‘This is what I can do and it’s the best I can do,’ and I’d be directed into the right channels. I’m a communist,” he said loudly.

Alleyn was suddenly and vividly reminded of Lord Pastern. He said nothing and after a pause Skelton went on.

“I realize I’m working for the rottenest section of a crazy society but what can I do? It’s my job and I have to take it. But this affair! Walking out and letting a dopey old dead beat of a lord make a fool of himself with my instruments, and a lot of dead beat effects added to them! Looking as if I like it! Where’s my self-respect?”

“How,” Alleyn asked, “did it come about?”

“Breezy worked it because…”

He stopped short and advanced on Alleyn. “Here!” he demanded. “What’s all this in aid of? What do you want?”

“Like Lord Pastern,” Alleyn said lightly, “I want the truth. Bellairs, you were saying, worked it because — of what?”

“I’ve told you. Snob value.”

“And the others agreed?”

“They haven’t any principles. Oh, yes. They took it.”

“Rivera, for instance, didn’t oppose the idea?”

Skelton flushed deeply. “No,” he said. Alleyn saw his pockets bulge as the hidden hands clenched. “Why not?” he asked.

“Rivera was hanging his hat up to the girl. Pastern’s stepdaughter. He was all out to make himself a hero with the old man.”

“That made you very angry, didn’t it?”

“Who says it made me angry?”

“Bellairs said so.”

“Him! Another product of our so-called civilization. Look at him.”

Alleyn asked him if he knew anything of Breezy’s use of drugs. Skelton, caught, as it seemed, between the desire of a zealot to speak his mind and an undefined wariness, said that Breezy was the child of his age and circumstances. He was a by-product, Skelton said, of a cynical and disillusioned social set-up. The phrases fell from his lips with the precision of slogans. Alleyn listened and watched and felt his interest stirring. “We all knew,” Skelton said, “that he was taking some kind of dope to keep him going. Even he knew — old Pastern. He’d nosed it out all right and I reckon he knew where it came from. You could tell. Breezy’s changed a hell of a lot. He used to be a nice sort of joker in a way. Bit of a wag. Always having us on. He got off-side with the Dago for that.”

“Rivera?”

“That’s right. Breezy used to be crazy on practical jokes. He’d fix a silly squeaker in one of the saxes or sneak a wee bell inside the piano. Childish. He got hold of Rivera’s p-a and fixed it with little bits of paper between the keys so’s it wouldn’t go. Only for rehearsal, of course. Rivera came out all glamour and hair oil and swung his p-a. Nothing happened. There was Breezy grinning like he’d split his face and the Boys all sniggering. You had to laugh. Rivera tore the place up: he went mad and howled out he’d quit. Breezy had a hell of a job fixing him. It was quite a party.

“Practical jokes,” Alleyn said. “A curious obsession, I always think.”

Skelton looked sharply at him. “Here!” he said. “You don’t want to get ideas. Breezy’s all right. Breezy wouldn’t come at anything like this.” He laughed shortly, and added with an air of disgust: “Breezy fix Rivera! Not likely.”

“About this drug habit — ” Alleyn began. Skelton said impatiently: “Well there you are! It’s just one of those things. I told you — we all knew. He used to go to parties on Sundays with some gang.”

“Any idea who they were?”

“No, I never asked. I’m not interested. I tried to tell him he was heading for a crash. Once. He didn’t like it. He’s my boss and I shut up. I’d have turned it up and gone over to another band but I’m used to working with these boys and they do better stuff than most.”

“You never heard where he got his drug, whatever it is?”

Skelton muttered, “I never heard. Naturally.”

“But you formed an opinion, perhaps?”

“Perhaps.”

“Going to tell me about it?”

“I want to know what you’re getting at. I’ve got to protect myself, haven’t I? I like to get things straight. You’ve got some notion that because I looked at Pastern’s gun I might have shoved this silly umbrella what-have-you up the nuzzle. Why don’t you come to the point?”

“I shall do so,” Alleyn said. “I’ve kept you behind because of this circumstance and because you were alone with Lord Pastern for a short time after you left the platform and before he made his entrance. So far as I can see at the moment there is no connection between your possible complicity and the fact that Bellairs takes drugs. As a police officer I’m concerned with drug addicts and their source of supply. If you can help me with any information I’ll be grateful. Do you know, then, where Bellairs got whatever he took?”

Skelton deliberated, his brows drawn together, his lower lip thrust out. Alleyn found himself speculating about his background. What accumulation of circumstances, ill-adjustments or misfortunes had resulted in this particular case? What would Skelton have been if his history had been otherwise? Were his views, his truculence, his suspicions, rooted in honesty or in some indefinable sense of victimization? To what lengths would they impel him? And finally Alleyn asked himself the inevitable question: could this be a killer?

Skelton wetted his lips. “The drug racket,” he said, “is like any other racket in a capitalistic government. The real criminals are the bosses, the barons, the high-ups. They don’t get pulled in. It’s the little blokes that get caught. You have to think it out. Silly sentiment and big talk won’t work. I’ve got no tickets on the police department in this country. A fairly efficient machine working for the wrong ideas. But drug-taking’s no good from any point of view. All right. I’ll co-operate this far. I’ll tell you where Breezy got his dope.”

“And where,” said Alleyn patiently, “did Breezy get his dope?”

“From Rivera,” said Skelton. “Now! From Rivera.”