A Wreath for Rivera

CHAPTER VII DAWN

Skelton had gone home, and Caesar Bonn and David Hahn. The cleaners had retired into some remote part of the building. Only the police remained: Alleyn and Fox, Bailey, Thompson, the three men who had searched the restaurant and band-room and the uniformed constable who would remain on duty until he was relieved after daybreak. The time was now twenty minutes to three.

“Well, Foxkin,” said Alleyn, “where are we? You’ve been very mousy and discreet. Let’s have your theory. Come on.”

Fox cleared his throat and placed the palms of his hands on his knees. “A very peculiar case,” he said disapprovingly. “Freakish, you might say. Silly. Except for the corpse. Corpses,” Mr. Fox observed with severity, “are never silly.”

Detective-Sergeants Bailey and Thompson exchanged winks.

“In the first place, Mr. Alleyn,” Fox continued, “I ask myself: Why do it that way? Why fire a bit of an umbrella handle from a revolver when you might fire a bullet? This applies in particular to his lordship. And yet it seems it must have been done. You can’t get away from it. Nobody had a chance of stabbing the chap while he was performing, did they now?”

“Nobody.”

“All right then. Now, if anybody pushed this silly weapon up the gun after Skelton examined it, they had the thing concealed about their person. Not much bigger than a fountain pen but sharp as hell. Which brings us to Bellairs, for one. If you consider Bellairs, you have to remember that his lordship seems to have searched him very thoroughly before he went out to perform.”

“Moreover his lordship in the full tide of his own alleged innocence declares that the wretched Breezy didn’t get a chance to pocket anything after he had been searched, or to get at the gun.”

“Does he really?” said Fox. “Fancy!”

“In fact his lordship, who, I submit, is no fool, has been at peculiar pains to clear everybody but himself.”

“No fool, perhaps,” Fox grunted, “but would you say a bit off the plumb mentally?”

“Everybody else says so, at all events. In any case, Fox, I’ll give sworn evidence that nobody stabbed Rivera before or at the time he was shot at. He was a good six feet away from everybody except Lord Pastern, who was busy with his blasted gun.”

“There you are! And it wasn’t planted among the music stands because they were used by the other band. And anyway none of the musicians went near his lordship’s funny hat where the gun was. And being like that, I asked myself, isn’t his lordship the most likely to use a silly fanciful method if he’d made up his mind to do a man in? It all points to his lordship. You can’t get away from it. And yet he seems so pleased with himself and kind of unruffled. Of course you do find that attitude in homicidal mania.”

“You do. What about motive?”

“Do we know what he thought of his stepdaughter keeping company with the deceased? The other young lady suggested that he didn’t seem to care one way or the other but you never know. Something else may turn up. Personally, as things stand at the moment, I favor his lordship. What about you, Mr. Alleyn?”

Alleyn shook his head. “I’m stumped,” he said. “Perhaps Skelton could have got the thing into the revolver when he examined it but Lord Pastern, who undoubtedly is as sharp as a needle, swears he didn’t. They were alone together for a minute while Breezy made his announcement but Skelton says he didn’t go near Lord Pastern, who had the gun in his hip pocket. It’s not likely to be a lie because Pastern could deny it. You didn’t hear Skelton. He’s an odd chap — a truculent communist. Australian, I should say. A hard, determined thinker. Nobody’s fool and completely sincere. One-track minded. There’s no doubt he detested Rivera, both on general principles and because Rivera backed up Lord Pastern’s appearance to-night. Skelton bitterly resented this and says so. He felt he was prostituting what he is pleased to regard as his art and conniving at something entirely against his social principles. I believe him to be fanatically sincere in this. He looked on Rivera and Lord Pastern as parasites. Rivera, by the way, supplied Breezy Bellairs with his dope, whatever it is. Curtis says cocaine, and it looks as if he found himself something to go on when he searched the body. We’ll have to follow that one up, Fox.”

“Dope,” said Fox profoundly. “There you are! When we do get a windfall it’s a dead man. Still, there may be something in his rooms to give us a lead. South America, now. That may link up with the Snowy Santos gang. They operate through South America. It’d be nice,” said Mr. Fox, whose talents for some time had been concerned with the sale of illicit drugs, “if d be lovely, in fact, to get the tabs on Snowy Santos.”

“Lovely, wouldn’t it?” Alleyn agreed absently, “Get on with your argument, Fox.”

“Well, now, sir. Seeing Rivera wasn’t meant to fall down and did, you can say he was struck at that moment. I know that sounds like a glimpse of the obvious, but it cuts out any idea that there was some kind of jiggery-pokery after he fell because nobody knew he was going to fall. And unless you feel like saying somebody threw the weapon like a dart at the same time as his lordship fired the first shot — Well,” said Fox disgustedly, “that would be a fat-headed sort of notion wouldn’t it? So we come back to the idea it was fired from the revolver. Which is supported by the scratches in the barrel. Mind, we’ll have to get the experts going there.”

“We shall, indeed.”

“But saying, for the moment, that the little jewelled clip, acting as a sort of stop, did mark the barrel, we come to Skelton’s statement that the scratches were not there when he examined it. And that looks like his lordship again. Look at it how you will, you get back to his lordship, you know.”

“Miss de Suze,” Alleyn said, rubbing his nose in vexation, “did grope under the damned sombrero. I saw her and so did Manx and so did the waiter. Manx seemed to remonstrate and she laughed and withdrew her hand. She couldn’t have got the weapon in then but it shows that it was possible for anyone sitting on her chair to get at the gun. Lady Pastern was left alone at their table while the others danced.”

Fox raised his eyebrows and looked puffy. “Very icy,” he said. “A haughty sort of lady and with a will and temper of her own. Look how she’s stood up to his lordship in the past. Very masterful.”

Alleyn glanced at his old colleague and smiled. He turned to the group of waiting men. “Well, Bailey,” he said, “we’ve about got to you. Have you found anything new?”

Bailey said morosely: “Nothing to write home about, Mr. Alleyn. No prints on this dart affair. I’ve packed it up with protection and can have another go at it.”

“The revolver?”

“Very plain sailing, there, Mr. Alleyn. Not a chance for latents.”

“That’s why I risked letting him handle it.”

“Yes, sir. Well now,” said Bailey with a certain professional relish, “the revolver. Lord Pastern’s prints on the revolver. And this band leader’s. Breezy Bellairs or whatever he calls himself.”

“Yes. Lord Pastern handed the gun to Breezy.”

“That’s right, sir. So I understand.”

“Thompson,” said Alleyn suddenly, “did you get a good look at Mr. Manx’s left hand when you dabbed him?”

“Yes, sir. Knuckles a bit grazed. Very slight. Wears a signet ring.”

“How about the band platform, Bailey?”

Bailey looked at his boots and said he’d been over the floor space round the tympani and percussion stand. There were traces of four finger tips identifiable as Miss de Suze’s. No others.

“And Rivera? On the body?”

“Not much there,” Bailey said, but they would probably bring up latent prints where Bellairs and the doctor had handled him. That was all, so far.

“Thank you. What about you other chaps in the restaurant and band-room? Find anything? Gibson?”

One of the plain-clothes men came forward. “Not much, sir. Nothing out of the ordinary. Cigarette butts and so on. We picked up the wads and shells and Bellairs’s handkerchief, marked, on the platform.”

“He mopped his unpleasant eyes with it when he did his stuff with the wreath,” Alleyn muttered. “Anything else?”

“There was a cork,” said Detective-Sergeant Gibson apologetically, “on the band platform. Might have been dropped by a waiter, sir.”

“Not up there. Let’s see it.”

Gibson produced an envelope from which he shook out a smallish cork on to the table. Alleyn looked at it without touching it. “When was the band platform cleaned?”

“Polished in the early morning, Mr. Alleyn, and mopped over before the evening clients came in.”

“Where exactly did you find this thing?”

“Half-way back and six feet to left of center. I’ve marked the place.”

“Good. Not that it’ll help much.” Alleyn used his lens. “It’s got a black mark on it.” He stopped and sniffed. “Boot polish, I think. It was probably kicked about the place by bandsmen. But there’s another smell. Not wine or spirit and anyway it’s not that sort of cork. It’s smaller and made with a narrow end and a wide top. No trade-mark. What’s this smell? Try, Fox.”

Fox’s sniff was stentorian. He rose, meditated and said: “Now, what am I reminded of?” They waited. “Citronella,” Fox pronounced gravely. “Or something like it.”

“How about gun oil?” said Alleyn.

Fox turned and contemplated his superior with something like indignation. “Gun oil? You’re not going to tell me, Mr. Alleyn, that in addition to stuffing jewelled parasol handles up a revolver somebody stopped it with a cork like a ruddy popgun?”

Alleyn grinned. “The case is taking liberties with your credulity, Br’er Fox.” He used his lens again. “The bottom surface has been broken, I fancy. It’s a forlorn hope, Bailey, but we might try for dabs.”

Bailey put the cork away. Alleyn turned to the others. “I think you can pack up,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ll have to keep you, Thompson, and you, Bailey, with us. It’s a non-stop show. Gibson, you’ll pick up a search-warrant and go on to Rivera’s rooms. Take someone with you. I want a complete search there. Scott and Watson are attending to Bellairs’s rooms and Sallis has gone with Skelton. You’ll all report back to me at the Yard at ten. Get people to relieve you when you’ve finished. Bellairs and Skelton will both have to be kept under observation, damn it, though I fancy that for the next eight hours Breezy won’t give anybody a headache except himself. Inspector Fox and I will get extra men and attend to Duke’s Gate. All right. We’ll move.”

In the office a telephone bell rang. Fox went in to answer it and was heard uttering words of reproach. He came out looking scandalized.

“It’s that new chap we sent back with his lordship’s party. Marks. And what do you suppose he’s done?” Fox glared round upon his audience and slapped the palm of his hand on the table. “Silly young chump! When they get in they say they’re all going to the drawing-room. ‘Oh,’ says Marks, ‘then it’s my duty, if you please, to accompany you.’ The gentlemen say they want to retire first, and they go off to the downstairs cloak-room. The ladies have the same idea and they go upstairs and Sergeant Expeditious Marks tries to tear himself in halves which is nothing to what I’ll do for him. And while he’s exhausting himself running up and down keeping observation, what happens? One of the young ladies slips down the servants’ stairs and lets herself out by the back door.”

“Which one?” Alleyn asked quickly.

“Don’t,” said Mr. Fox with bitter scorn, “ask too much of Detective-Sergeant Marks, sir. Don’t make it too tough. He wouldn’t know which one. Oh, no. He comes bleating to the phone while I daresay the rest of ’em are lighting off wherever the fancy takes ’em. Sergeant ruddy Police-College Marks! What is it?”

A uniformed constable had come in from the front entrance. “I thought I’d better report, sir,” he said. “I’m on duty outside. There’s an incident.”

“All right,” said Alleyn. “What incident?”

“A taxi’s pulled up some distance away, sir, and a lady got out.”

“A lady?” Fox demanded so peremptorily that the constable glanced nervously at him.

“Yes, Mr. Fox. A young lady. She spoke to the driver. He’s waiting. She looked round and hesitated. I was in the entrance, sir, well in the shadow, and I don’t think she saw me.”

“Recognize her?” Alleyn asked.

“I wouldn’t be sure, sir. The clothes are different but I reckon it’s one of the ladies in Lord Pastern’s party.”

“Have you locked the doors behind you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Unlock them and make yourself scarce. Clear out, all of you. Scatter. Step lively.”

The foyer was emptied in five seconds. The doors into the office and band-room closed noiselessly. Alleyn darted to the light switches. A single lamp was left to glow pinkly against the wall. The foyer was filled with shadow. He slipped to his knees behind a chair in the corner farthest from the light.

The clock ticked discreetly. Somewhere in a distant basement a pail clanked and a door slammed. Innumerable tiny sounds closer at hand became evident: the tap of a blind cord somewhere in the restaurant, a stealthy movement and scuffle behind the walls, an indefinable humming from the main switchboard. Alleyn smelt carpet, upholstery, disinfectant, and stale tobacco. Entrance into the foyer from outside must be effected through two sets of doors — those giving on the street and those inside made of plate glass and normally open but now swung-to. Through these he could see only a vague greyness crossed by reflections in the glass itself. The image of the one pink lamp floated midway up the right-hand pane. He fixed his gaze on this. Now, beyond the glass doors, there came a paleness. The street door had been opened.

The face appeared quite suddenly against the plate glass, obscuring the reflected lamp and distorted by pressure. One door squeaked faintly as it opened.

She stood for a moment, holding her head scarf half across her face. Then she moved forward swiftly and was down on her knees before an armchair. Her finger-nails scrabbled on its tapestry. So intent was she upon her search that she did not hear him cross the thick carpet behind her, but when he drew the envelope from his pocket it made a slight crackle. Still kneeling, she swung round, saw him and cried out sharply.

“Is this what you are hunting for, Miss Wayne?” Alleyn asked.

He crossed over to the wall and switched up the lights. Without moving, Carlisle watched him. When he returned he still held the envelope. She put her hand to her burning face and said unsteadily: “You think I’m up to no good, I suppose. I suppose you want an explanation.”

“I should be glad of an answer to my question. Is this what you want?”

He held the envelope up, but did not give it to her. She looked at it doubtfully. “I don’t know — I don’t think — ”

“The envelope is mine. I’ll tell you what it contains. A letter that had been thrust down between the seat and the arm of the chair you have been exploring.”

“Yes,” Carlisle said. “Yes. That’s it. May I have it, please?”

“Do sit down,” Alleyn rejoined. “We’d better clear this up, don’t you think?”

He waited while she rose. After a moment’s hesitation, she sat in the chair.

“You won’t believe me, of course,” she said, “but that letter — I suppose you have read it, haven’t you — has nothing whatever to do with this awful business to-night. Nothing in the wide world. It’s entirely personal and rather important.”

“Have you even read it?” he asked. “Can you repeat the contents? I should like you to do that, if you will.”

“But — not absolutely correctly — I mean — ”

“Approximately.”

“It — it’s got an important message. It concerns someone — I can’t tell you in so many words — ”

“And yet it’s so important that you return here at three o’clock in the morning to try and find it.” He paused but Carlisle said nothing. “Why,” he said, “didn’t Miss de Suze come and collect her own correspondence?”

“Oh dear!” she said. “This is difficult.”

“Well, for pity’s sake keep up your reputation and be honest about it.”

“I am being honest, damn you!” said Carlisle with spirit. “The letter’s a private affair and — and — extremely confidential. Félicité doesn’t want anyone to see it. I don’t know exactly what’s in it.”

“She funked coming back herself?”

“She’s a bit shattered. Everyone is.”

“I’d like you to see what the letter’s about,” said Alleyn after a pause. She began to protest. Very patiently he repeated his usual argument. When someone had been killed the nicer points of behaviour had to be disregarded. He had to prove to his own satisfaction that the letter was immaterial and then he would forget it. “You remember,” he said, “this letter dropped out of her bag. Did you notice how she snatched it away from me? I see you did. Did you notice what she did after I said you would all be searched? She shoved her hand down between the seat and arm of the chair. Then she went off to be searched and I sat in the chair. When she came back she spent a miserable half-hour fishing for the letter and trying to look as if she wasn’t. All right.”

He drew the letter from the envelope and spread it out before her. “It’s been finger-printed,” he said, “but without any marked success. Too much rubbing against good solid chair-cover. Will you read it or — ”

“Oh, all right,” Carlisle said angrily.

The letter was typed on a sheet of plain notepaper. There was no address and no date.

Carlisle raised her head, met Alleyn’s gaze and avoided it quickly. “A white flower,” she whispered. “G.P.F.? G.P.F.? I don’t believe it.”

“Mr. Edward Manx had a white carnation in his coat, I think.”

“I won’t discuss this letter with you,” she said strongly. “I should never have read it. I won’t discuss it. Let me take it back to her. It’s nothing to do with this other thing. Nothing. Give it to me.”

Alleyn said, “You must know I can’t do that. Think for a moment. There was some attachment, a strong attachment of one kind or another, between Rivera and your cousin — your step-cousin. After Rivera is murdered, she is at elaborate pains to conceal this letter, loses it, and is so anxious to retrieve it that she persuades you to return here in an attempt to recover it. How can I disregard such a sequence of events?”

“But you don’t know Fée! She’s always in and out of tight corners over her young men. It’s nothing. You don’t understand.”

“Well,” he said, looking good-humouredly at her, “help me to understand. I’ll drive you home. You can tell me on the way. Fox.”

Fox came out of the office. Carlisle listened to Alleyn giving his instructions. The other men appeared from the cloak-room, held a brief indistinguishable conversation with Fox and went out through the main entrance. Alleyn and Fox collected their belongings and put on their coats. Carlisle stood up. Alleyn returned the letter to its envelope and put it in his pocket. She felt tears stinging under her eyelids. She tried to speak and produced only an indeterminate sound.

“What is it?” he said, glancing at her.

“It can’t be true,” she stammered. “I won’t believe it. I won’t.”

“What? That Edward Manx wrote this letter?”

“He couldn’t. He couldn’t write like that to her.”

“No?” Alleyn said casually. “You think not? But she’s quite good-looking, isn’t she? Quite attractive, don’t you think?”

“It’s not that. It’s not that at all. It’s the letter itself. He couldn’t write like that. It’s so bogus.”

“Have you ever noticed love-letters that are read out in court and published in the papers? Don’t they sound pretty bogus? Yet some of them have been written by extremely intelligent people. Shall we go?”

It was cold out in the street. A motionless pallor stood behind the rigid silhouette of roofs. “Dawn’s left hand,” Alleyn said to nobody in particular and shivered. Carlisle’s taxi had gone but a large police car waited. A second man sat beside the driver. Fox opened the door and Carlisle got in. The two men followed. “We’ll call at the Yard,” Alleyn said.

She felt boxed-up in the corner of the seat and was conscious of the impersonal pressure of Alleyn’s arm and shoulder. Mr. Fox, on the farther side, was a bulky man. She turned and saw Alleyn’s head silhouetted against the bluish window. An odd notion came into her head. “If Fée happens to calm down and take a good look at him,” she thought, “it’ll be all up with G.P.F. and the memory of Carlos and everybody.” And with that her heart gave a leaden thump or two. “Oh, Ned,” she thought, “how you could!” She tried to face the full implication of the letter but almost at once shied away from it. “I’m miserable,” she thought, “I’m unhappier than I’ve been for years and years.”

“What,” Alleyn’s voice said close beside her, “I wonder, is the precise interpretation of the initials ‘G.P.F.’? They seem to ring some bell in my atrocious memory but I haven’t got there yet. Why, do you imagine, G.P.F?” She didn’t answer and after a moment he went on. “Wait a bit, though. Didn’t you say something about a magazine you were reading before you visited Lord Pastern in his study? Harmony? Was that it?” He turned his head to look at her and she nodded. “And the editor of the tell-it-all-to-auntie page calls himself Guide, Philosopher and Friend? How does he sign his recipes for radiant living?”

Carlisle mumbled: “Like that.”

“And you wondered if Miss de Suze had written to him,” Alleyn said tranquilly. “Yes. Now, does this get us anywhere, do you imagine?”

She made a non-committal sound. Unhappy recollections forced themselves upon her. Recollections of Félicité’s story about a correspondence with someone she had never met who had written her a “marvellous” letter. Of Rivera reading her answer to this letter and making a scene about it. Of Ned Manx’s article in Harmony. Of Félicité’s behaviour after they all met to go to the Metronome. Of her taking the flower from Ned’s coat. And of his stooping his head to listen to her as they danced together.

“Was Mr. Manx,” Alleyn’s voice asked, close beside her, “wearing his white carnation when he arrived for dinner?”

“No,” she said, too loudly. “No. Not till afterwards. There were white carnations on the table at dinner.”

“Perhaps it was one of them.”

“Then,” she said quickly, “it doesn’t fit. The letter must have been written before he ever saw the carnation. It doesn’t fit. She said the letter came by district messenger. Ned wouldn’t have known.”

“By district messenger, did she? We’ll have to check that. Perhaps we’ll find the envelope. Would you say,” Alleyn continued, “that he seemed to be very much attached to her?”

(Edward had said: “About Fée. Something very odd has occurred. I can’t explain but I’d like to think you understand.”)

“Strongly attracted, would you think?” Alleyn said.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to think.”

“Do they see much of each other?”

“I don’t know. He — he stayed at Duke’s Gate while he was flat hunting.”

“Perhaps an attachment developed then. What do you think?”

She shook her head. Alleyn waited. Carlisle now found his unstressed persistence intolerable. She felt her moorings go and was adrift in the darkness. A wretchedness of spirit that she was unable to control or understand took possession of her. “I won’t talk about it,” she stammered, “it’s none of my business. I can’t go on like this. Let me go, please. Please let me go.”

“Of course,” Alleyn said. “I’ll take you home.”

When they arrived at Duke’s Gate, dawn was so far established that the houses with their blind windows and locked doors were clearly distinguishable in a wan half-light.

The familiar street, emerging from night, had an air of emaciation and secrecy, Carlisle thought, and she was vaguely relieved when milk bottles jingled up a side alley breaking across the blank emptiness. “Have you got a key?” Alleyn said. He and Fox and the man from the front seat waited while she groped in her bag. As she opened the door a second car drew up and four men got out. The men from the front seat joined them. She thought: “This makes us all seem very important. This is an important case. A case of murder.”

In the old days she had come back from parties once or twice with Ned Manx at this hour. The indefinable house-smell made itself felt as they entered. She turned on a lamp and it was light in the silent hall. She saw herself reflected in the inner glass doors, her face stained with tears. Alleyn came in first. Standing there, in evening dress, with his hat in his hand, he might have been seeing her home, about to wish her good-bye. The other men followed quickly. “What happens now?” she wondered. “Will he let me go now? What are they going to do?”

Alleyn had drawn a paper from his pocket. “This is a search-warrant,” he said. “I don’t want to hunt Lord Pastern out of his bed. It will do I think, if — ”

He broke off, moved quickly to the shadowed staircase and up half-a-dozen steps. Fox and the other men stood quiet inside the doors. A little French clock in the stair well ticked flurriedly. Upstairs on the first floor a door was flung open. A faint reflected light shone on Alleyn’s face. A voice, unmistakably Lord Pastern’s, said loudly: “I don’t give a damn how upset you are. You can have kittens if you like but you don’t go to bed till I’ve got my time-table worked out. Sit down.”

With a faint grin Alleyn moved upstairs and Carlisle, after a moment’s hesitation, followed him.

They were all in the drawing-room. Lady Pastern, still in evening dress and now very grey about the eyes and mouth, sat in a chair near the door. Félicité, who had changed into a housecoat and reduced her make-up, looked frail and lovely. Edward had evidently been sitting near her and had risen on Alleyn’s entrance. Lord Pastern, with his coat off and his sleeves turned up, sat at a table in the middle of the room. Sheets of paper lay before him and he had a pencil between his teeth. A little removed from this group, her hands folded in the lap of her woollen dressing gown and her grey hair neatly braided down her back, sat Miss Henderson. A plain-clothes officer stood inside the door. Carlisle knew all about him. He was the man who had escorted them home: hours ago, it seemed, in another age. She had given him the slip when she returned to the Metronome and now wondered, for the first time, how dim a view the police would take of this manoeuvre. The man looked awkwardly at Alleyn, who seemed about to speak to him as Carlisle entered, but stood aside to let her pass. Edward came quickly towards her. “Where have you been?” he said angrily. “What’s the matter? I — ” He looked into her face. “Lisle,” he said. “What is it?”

Lord Pastern glanced up. “Hello,” he said. “Where the devil did you get to, Lisle? I want you. Sit down.”

“It’s like a scene from a play,” she thought. “All of them sitting about exhausted, in a grand drawing-room. The third act of a thriller.” She caught the eye of the plain-clothes officer, who was looking at her with distaste.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m afraid I just walked out by the back door.”

“I realize that, miss,” he said.

“We can’t be in two places at once, can we?” Carlisle added brightly. She was trying to avoid Félicité. Félicité was looking at her anxiously, obviously, with inquiring eyebrows.

Lord Pastern said briskly: “Glad you’ve come, Alleyn, though I must say you’ve taken your time about it. I’ve been doin’ your job for you. Sit down.”

Lady Pastern’s voice, sepulchral with fatigue, said: “May I suggest, George, that as in all probability this gentleman is about to arrest you, your choice of phrase is inappropriate.”

“That’s a damn tiresome sort of thing to say, C,” her husband rejoined. “Gets you nowhere. What you want,” he continued, darting his pencil at Alleyn, “is a time-table. You want to know what we were all doin’ with ourselves before we went to the Metronome. System. All right. I’ve worked it out for you.” He slapped the paper before him. “It’s incomplete without Breezy’s evidence, of course, but we can get that to-morrow. Lisle, there are one or two things I want from you. Come here.”

Carlisle stood behind him and looked at Alleyn. His face was politely attentive, his eyes were on Lord Pastern’s notes. In her turn and in response to an impatient tattoo of the pencil, she too looked at them.

She saw a sort of table, drawn up with ruled lines. Across the top, one each at the head of nine columns, she read their names: her own, Lady Pastern’s, Félicité’s, Edward’s, Lord Pastern’s, Bellairs’s, Rivera’s, Miss Henderson’s, and Spence’s. Down the left-hand side, Lord Pastern had written a series of times, beginning at 8:45 and ending at 10:30. These were ruled off horizontally and in the spaces thus formed, under each name, were notes as to the owner’s whereabouts. Thus, at “9:15 approx” it appeared that she and Lady Pastern had been in the drawing-room, Miss Henderson on her way upstairs, Félicité in the study, Rivera in the hall, Lord Pastern and Breezy Bellairs in the ballroom, and Spence in the servants’ quarters.

“The times,” Lord Pastern explained importantly, “are mostly only approximate. We know some of them for certain but not all. Thing is, it shows you the groupin’. Who was with who and who was alone. Method. Here y’are, Lisle. Go over it carefully and check up your entries.”

He flung himself back in his chair and ruffled his hair. He reeked of complacency. Carlisle took up the pencil and found that her hand trembled. Exhaustion had suddenly overwhelmed her. She was nauseated and fuddled with fatigue. Lord Pastern’s time-table swam before her. She heard her voice saying, “I think you’ve got it right,” and felt a hand under her arm. It was Alleyn’s. “Sit down,” he said from an enormous distance. She was sitting down and Ned, close beside her, was making some sort of angry protest. She leant forward, propping her head on her hands. Presently it cleared and she listened, with an extraordinary sense of detachment, to what Alleyn was now saying.

“… very helpful, thank you. And now, I’m sure, you’ll all be glad to get to bed. We shall be here during what’s left of the night — hardly anything, I’m afraid, but we shan’t disturb you.”

They were on their feet. Carlisle, feeling very sick, wondered what would happen if she got to hers. She looked at the others through her fingers and thought that there was something a little wrong, a little misshapen, about all of them. Her aunt, for instance. Why had she not seen before that Lady Pastern’s body was too long and her head too big? It was so. And surely Félicité was fantastically narrow. Her skeleton must be all wrong: a tiny pelvis with the hip-bones jutting out from it like rocks. Carlisle’s eyes, behind their sheltering fingers, turned to Lord Pastern and she thought how monstrous it was that his forehead should overhang the rest of his face — a blind over a shop window; that his monkey’s cheeks should bunch themselves up when he was angry. Even Hendy: Hendy’s throat was like some bird’s and now that her hair was braided one saw that it was thin on top. Her scalp showed. They were caricatures, really, all of them. Subtly off-pitch: instruments very slightly out of tune. And Ned? He was behind her, but if she turned to look at him, what, in the perceptiveness born of nervous exhaustion, would she see? Were not his eyes black and small? Didn’t his mouth, when it smiled, twist and show canine teeth a little too long? But she would not look at Ned.

And now, thought the bemused Carlisle, here was Uncle George at it again. “I’ve no intention of goin’ to bed. People sleep too much. No need for it: look at the mystics. Workin’ from this time-table I can show you…”

“That’s extremely kind of you, sir.” Alleyn’s voice was clear and pleasant. “But I think not. We have to get through our routine jobs. They’re dreary beyond words and we’re best left to ourselves while we do them.”

“Routine,” shouted Lord Pastern. “Official synonym for inefficiency. Things are straightened out for you by someone who takes the trouble to use his head and what do you do? Tell him to go to bed while you gallop about his house makin’ lists like a bumbailiff. Be damned if I’ll go to bed. Now!”

“Oh, God!” Carlisle thought desperately. “How’s he going to cope with this?” She felt the pressure of a hand on her shoulder and heard Ned’s voice.

“May I suggest that whatever Cousin George decides to do there’s no reason why the rest of us should keep a watch of supererogation.”

“None at all,” Alleyn said.

“Carlisle, my dear,” Lady Pastern murmured as if she were giving the signal to rise from a dinner party. “Shall we?”

Carlisle stood up. Edward was close by and it seemed to her that he still looked angry. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“Perfectly,” she said. “I don’t know what possessed me. I got a bit run-down in Greece and I suppose — ” Her voice died. She was thinking of the long flight of stairs up to her room.

“My dearest child,” her aunt said, “I shall never forgive myself that you have been subjected to this ordeal.”

“But she’s wondering,” Carlisle thought, “what I’ve been up to. They’re all wondering.”

“Perhaps some wine,” her aunt continued, “or whiskey. It is useless to suggest, George, that you…”

“I’ll get it,” Edward said quickly.

But Miss Henderson had already gone and now returned with a glass in her hand. As she took it from her, Carlisle smelt Hendy’s particular smell of soap and talcum powder. “Like a baby,” she thought and drank. The almost neat whiskey made her shudder convulsively. “Hendy!” she gasped. “You do pack a punch. I’m all right. Really. It’s you, Aunt Cécile, who should be given corpse revivers.”

Lady Pastern closed her eyes momentarily upon this vulgarism. Félicité, who had been perfectly silent ever since Alleyn and Carlisle came in, said: “I’d like a drink, Ned. Let’s have a pub crawl in the dining-room, shall we?”

“The decanter’s here if you want it, dear.” Miss Henderson also spoke for the first time.

“In that case,” Edward said, “if it’s all right by you, Alleyn, I’ll take myself off.”

“We’ve got your address, haven’t we? Right.”

“Good-bye, Cousin Cile. If there’s anything I can do…” Ned stood in the doorway. Carlisle did not look at him. “Good-bye, Lisle,” he said. “Good-bye, Fée.”

Félicité moved swiftly to him and with an abrupt compulsive movement put her arm round his neck and kissed him. He stood for a moment with his head stooped and his hand on her arm. Then he was gone.

Beneath the heavy mask of exhaustion that her aunt wore, Carlisle saw a faint glimmer of gratification. “Come, my children,” Lady Pastern said, almost briskly. “Bed.” She swept them past Alleyn, who opened the door for them. As Carlisle turned, with the others, to mount the stairs, she heard Lord Pastern.

“Here I am,” he shouted, “and here I stick. You don’t turf me off to bed or anywhere else, short of arresting me.”

“I’m not, at the moment, proposing to do that,” Alleyn said distinctly, “though I think, sir, I should warn you…”

The door shut off the remainder of his sentence.

Alleyn shut the door on the retiring ladies and looked thoughtfully at Lord Pastern. “I think,” he repeated, “I should warn you that if you do decide, against my advice, to stay with us, what you do and say will be noted and the notes may be used…”

“Oh, fiddle-faddle!” Lord Pastern interrupted shrilly. “All this rigamarole. I didn’t do it and you can’t prove I did. Get on with your precious routine and don’t twaddle so.”

Alleyn looked at him with a sort of astonishment. “You bloody little old fellow,” he thought. Lord Pastern blinked and smirked and bunched up his cheeks.

“All right, sir,” Alleyn said. “But you’re going to be given the customary warning, twaddle or not, and what’s more I’ll have a witness to it.”

He crossed the landing, opened the ballroom door, said: “Fox, can you give me a moment?” and returned to the drawing-room, where he waited in silence until Inspector Fox came in. He then said: “Fox, I’ve asked Lord Pastern to go to bed and he refuses. I want you to witness this. I warn him that from now onwards his words and behaviour will be noted and that the notes may later on be used in evidence. It’s a nuisance, of course, but short of taking a much more drastic step, I don’t see what else can be done about it. Have the extra men turned up?”

Fox, looking with marked disapproval at Lord Pastern, said that they had.

“Tell them to keep observation, will you? Thank you, Fox, I’ll carry on here.”

“Thank you, Mr. Alleyn,” said Fox, “I’ll get on with it in the study then.”

He turned to the door. Lord Pastern said: “Hi! Where’re you goin’? What’re you up to?”

“If you’ll excuse me for passing the remark, my lord,” said Fox severely, “you’re acting very foolishly. Very ill-advised and foolish, what you’re doing, if I may say so.” He went out.

“Great ham-fisted ass of a chap,” Lord Pastern remarked.

“On the contrary, sir,” Alleyn rejoined with perfect politeness, “an extremely efficient officer and should have had his promotion long ago.”

He left Lord Pastern, walked to the center of the long drawing-room and surveyed it for some minutes with his hands in his pockets. A clock on the landing struck five. Alleyn began a closer inspection of the room. He traversed it slowly, moving across and across it and examining any object that lay in his path. Lord Pastern watched him and sighed and groaned audibly. Presently Alleyn came to a chair beside which stood an occasional table. On the table was an embroidery frame, and a workbox of elaborate and elegant design. He opened the lid delicately and stooped to examine the contents. Here, neatly disposed, were innumerable skeins of embroidery silks. The box was fitted with every kind of tool, each in its appointed slot: needle-cases, scissors, bodkins, a thimble, an ivory measure, a tape in a cloisonné case, stilettoes held in their places by silken sheaths. One slot was untenanted. Alleyn sat down and began, with scrupulous care, to explore the box.

“Pity you didn’t bring your sewin’,” said Lord Pastern, “isn’t it?”

Alleyn took out-his notebook, glanced at his watch and wrote briefly.

“I’d thank you,” Lord Pastern added, “to keep your hands out of m’ wife’s property.” He attempted to repress a yawn, shed a tear over the effort and barked suddenly: “Where’s your search-warrant, b’ God?”

Alleyn completed another note, rose and exhibited his warrant. “Tscha!” said Lord Pastern.

Alleyn had turned to examine Lady Pastern’s embroidery. It was stretched over a frame and was almost completed. A riot of cupids in postures of extreme insouciance circled about a fabulous nosegay. The work was exquisite. He gave a slight appreciative chuckle which Lord Pastern instantly parodied. Alleyn resumed his search. He moved steadily on at a snail’s pace. Half an hour crawled by. Presently an odd little noise disturbed him. He glanced up. Lord Pastern, still on his feet, was swaying dangerously. His eyes were glazed and horrible and his mouth was open. He had snored.

Alleyn tiptoed to the door at the far end of the room, opened it and slipped into the study. He heard a sort of roaring noise behind him, shut the door and, finding a key in the lock, turned it.

Inspector Fox, in his shirt-sleeves, was examining the contents of an open drawer on the top of the desk. Laid out in front of him were a tube of plastic wood, an empty bottle marked “gun oil,” with no cork in it, and a white ivory handle into which some tool had once fitted.

Fox laid a broad finger on the desk beside these exhibits, not so much for an index as to establish their presence and significance. Alleyn nodded and crossed quickly to the door that gave on the landing. He locked it and waited near it with his head cocked. “Here he comes,” he said.

There was a patter of feet outside. The handle of the door was turned and then rattled angrily. A distant voice said: “I’m sorry, my lord, but I’m afraid that room’s under inspection just now.”

“Who the hell d’you think you are?”

“Sergeant Marks, my lord.”

“Then let me tell you…”

The voices faded out.

“He won’t get into the ballroom either,” said Fox, “unless he tries a knock-up with Sergeant Whitelaw.”

“How about the dining-room?”

“They’ve finished there, Mr. Alleyn.”

“Anything?”

“Wine had been spilt on the carpet. Port, I’d say. And there’s a bit of a mark on the table near the centre flower bowl as if a drop or two of water had laid there. White carnations in the bowl. Nothing else. The tables had been cleared, of course.”

Alleyn looked at the collection on the desk. “Where did you beat this lot up, Foxkin?”

“In this drawer which was pulled out and left on top of the desk like it is now. Half a junk shop in it, isn’t there, sir? These articles were lying on the surface of the other mess.”

“Bailey had a go at it?”

“Yes. No prints on any of ’em,” said Fox. “Which is funny.”

“How about the typewriter?”

“We’ve printed it. Only his lordship’s dabs and they’re very fresh.”

“No cap on the plastic wood tube.”

“It was on the floor.”

Alleyn examined the tube. “It’s set hard, of course, at the open end but not very deep. Tube’s three-quarters full.”

“There are crumbs of plastic wood in the drawer and on the desk and the carpet.”

Alleyn said absently, “Are there, by Gum!” and turned his attention to the small white handle. “Exhibit B,” he said. “Know what it is, Fox?”

“I can make a healthy guess, I fancy, Mr. Alleyn.”

“It’s the fellow of a number of gadgets in a very elegant French work-box in the drawing-room. Crochet hooks, scissors and so on. They’re fixed inside the lid, in slots. One slot’s empty.”

“This is just a handle, you’ll notice, sir.”

“Yes. Do you think it ought to have an embroidery stiletto fitted in the hollow end?”

“It’s what I reckoned.”

“I think you’re right.”

Fox opened his bag and took out a narrow cardboard box. In this, secured and protected by strings, was the dart. The jewels in the spring clip, tiny emeralds and brilliants, glittered cheerfully. Only a narrow platinum band near the top and the stiletto itself were dulled with Rivera’s blood.

“Bailey’ll have a go for latent prints,” Fox said.

“Yes, of course. We can’t disturb it. Later on it can be dismembered, but on looks, Fox, we’ve got something.”

Alleyn held the ivory handle beside the stiletto. “I’ll swear they belong,” he said, and put it down. “Here’s exhibit C. An empty gun-oil bottle. Where’s that cork?”

Fox produced it. “It fits,” he said. “I’ve tried. It fits and it has the same stink. Though why the hell it should turn up on the bandstand…”

“Ah me,” Alleyn said. “Why the hell indeed. Well, look what turns up in your particular fancy’s very own drawer in his very own study! Could anything be more helpful?”

Fox shifted bulkily in his chair and contemplated his superior officer for some moments. “I know it seems funny,” he said at last. “Leaving evidence all over the place: making no attempt to clear himself, piling up a case against himself, you might say. But then he is funny.

“Would you say he was not responsible within the meaning of the act?”

“I’m never sure what is the precise meaning of the infernal act. Responsible. Not responsible. Who’s to mark a crucial division in the stream of human behaviour running down from something we are pleased to call sanity into raving lunacy? Where’s the point at which a human being ceases to be a responsible being? Oh, I know the definitions, and I know we do our best with them, but it seems to me it’s here, over this business of the pathology of behaviour, that any system of corrective and coercive law shows at its dimmest. Is this decidedly rum peer so far south in the latitude of behaviour that he would publicly murder a man by a ridiculously elaborate method that points directly to himself, and then, in effect, do everything in his power to get himself arrested? There have been cases of the sort, but is this going to be one of them?”

“Well, sir,” said Fox stolidly, “I must say I think it is. It’s early days yet, but as far as we’ve got I think it looks like it. This gentleman’s previous record and his general run of behaviour point to a mental set-up that, without going beyond the ordinary view, is eccentric. Everyone knows he’s funny.”

“Yes. Everyone. Everyone knows,” Alleyn agreed. “Everyone would say: ‘It’s in character. It’s just like him!’ ”

With as near an approach to exasperation as Alleyn had ever heard from him, Fox said: “All right, Mr. Alleyn, then. I know what you’re getting at. But who could have planted it on him? Tell me that. Do you believe any of the party at the table could have got at the revolver when it was under the sombrero and shoved this silly dart or bolt or what-have-you up it? Do you think Bellairs could have planted the bolt and picked it up after his lordship searched him? Where could he have planted it? In a bare band-room with nothing in it but musical instruments and other men? And how could he have got it into the revolver when his lordship had the revolver on his person and swears to it that it never left him? Skelton. Skelton handled the gun while a roomful of people watched him do it. Could Skelton have palmed this thing up the barrel? The idea’s laughable. Well, then.”

“All right, old thing,” Alleyn said. “Let’s get on with it. The servants will be about soon. How far have you got in here?”

“Not much further than what you’ve seen, sir. The drawer was a daisy. The bullets he extracted when he made his dummies are in the waste-paper basket there.”

“Carlisle Wayne watched him at that. How about the ballroom?”

“Bailey and Thompson are in there.”

“Oh, well. Let’s have another look at Lord Pastern’s revolver, Fox.”

Fox lifted it from his bag and laid it on the desk. Alleyn sat down and produced his lens.

“There’s a very nice lens here, in his lordship’s drawer,” Fox remarked. Alleyn grunted. He was looking into the mouth of the barrel.

“We’ll get a photomicrograph of this,” he muttered. “Two longish scratches and some scrabbles.” He gave the revolver to Fox, who was sitting in the chair which, nine hours earlier, Carlisle had occupied. Like Carlisle, Fox used Lord Pastern’s lens.

“Did you notice,” Alleyn said, “that when I gave the thing to that old freak to look at, it was the underside of the butt near the trigger guard that seemed to interest him. I can’t find anything there. The maker’s plate’s on the heel. What was he up to, do you suppose?”

“God knows,” Fox grunted crossly. He was sniffing at the muzzle.

“You look like an old maid with smelling salts,” Alleyn observed.

“So I may, sir, but I don’t smell anything except gun oil.”

“I know. That’s another thing. Listen.”

In some distant part of the house there was movement. A door slammed, shutters were thrown back and a window opened.

“The servants are stirring,” Alleyn said. “We’ll seal this room, leave a man to watch it and come back to it later on. Let’s collect everything we’ve picked up, find out what the others have got and catch three hours’ sleep. Yard at ten o’clock, don’t forget. Come on.”

But he himself did not move. Fox looked dubiously at him and began to pack away the revolver, the plastic wood, the empty bottle and the ivory handle.

“No, blast it,” Alleyn said. “I’ll work through. Take those things, Fox, and dispatch them off to the experts. Fix up adequate relief for surveillance here, and away you go. I’ll see you at ten. What’s the matter?”

“I’d as soon stay, Mr. Alleyn.”

“I know all about that. Zealous young officer. Away you go.”

Fox passed his hand over his short grizzled hair and said: “I keep very fit, really. Make a point of never thinking about the retiring age. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Alleyn.”

“I might have another dig at the witnesses.”

“The party upstairs won’t wake before ten.”

“I’ll stir ’em up if I need ’em. Why should they have all the fun? I want to ring up my wife. Good morning to you, Mr. Fox.”

Fox unlocked the door on to the landing and turned the handle.

The door flew inwards, striking his shoulder. He stepped back with an oath and Lord Pastern’s body fell across his feet.

It remained there for perhaps three seconds. Its eyes were open and glared furiously. Fox bent over it and the mouth also opened.

“What the hell d’you think you’re doin’?” Lord Pastern demanded.

He rolled over neatly and got to his feet. His jaw and cheeks glistened with a sort of hoar-frost, his eyes were bloodshot and his evening dress disordered. A window on the landing shed the cruel light of early morning upon him and he looked ghastly in it. His manner, however, had lost little of its native aggressiveness. “What are you starin’ at?” he added.

“We might fairly ask you,” Alleyn rejoined, “what you were up to, sitting, it appears, on the landing with your back to the door.”

“I dozed off. Pretty state of affairs when a man’s kept out of his own rooms at five o’clock in the morning.”

“All right, Fox,” Alleyn said wearily, “you get along.”

“Very well, sir,” said Fox. “Good morning, my lord.” He sidestepped Lord Pastern and went out, leaving the door ajar. Alleyn heard him admonishing Sergeant Marks on the landing: “What sort of surveillance do you call this?”

“I was only told to keep observation, Mr. Fox. His lordship fell asleep as soon as he touched the floor. I thought he might as well be there as anywhere.” Fox growled majestically and passed out of hearing.

Alleyn shut the study door and went to the window. “We haven’t finished in this room,” he said, “but I think I may disturb it so far.”

He drew back the curtains and opened the window. It was now quite light outside. A fresh breeze came in through the window, emphasizing, before it dismissed them, the dense enclosed odors of carpet, leather and stale smoke. The study looked inhospitable and unkempt. The desk lamp still shed a raffish yellowness on the litter that surrounded it. Alleyn turned from the window to face Lord Pastern and found him rummaging with quick inquisitive fingers in the open drawer on the desk.

“I wonder if I can show you what you’re hunting for,” Alleyn said. He opened Fox’s bag and then took out his notebook. “Don’t touch anything please, but will you look in that case?”

He did look, but impatiently, and, as far as Alleyn could see, without any particular surprise.

“Where’d you find that?” Lord Pastern demanded, pointing a not very steady finger at the ivory handle.

“In the drawer. Can you identify it?”

“I might be able to,” he muttered.

Alleyn pointed to the weapon. “The stiletto that’s been sunk in the end with plastic wood might have belonged to this ivory handle. We shall try it. If it fits, it came originally from Lady Pastern’s work-box in the drawing-room.”

“So you say,” said Lord Pastern insultingly. Alleyn made a note.

“Can you tell me if this stiletto was in your drawer here, sir? Before last night?”

Lord Pastern was eyeing the revolver. He thrust out his underlip, shot a glance at Alleyn, and darted his hand towards it.

“All right,” Alleyn said, “you may touch it, but please answer my question about the stiletto.”

“How should I know?” he said indifferently. “I don’t know.” Without removing it from the case, he tipped the revolver over and, snatching up his lens, peered at the underside of the butt. He gave a shrill cackle of laughter.

“What did you expect to see?” Alleyn asked casually.

“Hoity-toity,” Lord Pastern rejoined. “Wouldn’t you like to know!”

He stared at Alleyn. His bloodshot eyes twinkled insolently. “It’s devilish amusin’,” he said. “Look at it whatever way you like, it’s damn funny.”

He dropped into an armchair, and with an air of gloating relish rubbed his hands together.

Alleyn shut down the lid of Fox’s case and succeeded in snatching back his temper. He stood in front of Lord Pastern and deliberately looked into his eyes. Lord Pastern immediately shut them very tight and bunched up his cheeks.

“I’m sleepy,” he said.

“Listen to me,” Alleyn said. “Have you any idea at all of the personal danger you are in? Do you know the consequences of withholding or refusing crucial information when a capital crime has been committed? It’s my duty to tell you that you are under grave suspicion. You’ve had the formal warning. Confronted with the body of a man whom, one assumes, you were supposed to hold in some sort of regard, you’ve conducted yourself appallingly. I must tell you, sir, that if you continue in this silly affectation of frivolity, I shall ask you to come to Scotland Yard where you will be questioned and, if necessary, detained.”

He waited. Lord Pastern’s face had gradually relaxed during this speech. His mouth now pouted and expelled a puff of air that blew his moustache out. He was, apparently, asleep again.

Alleyn contemplated him for some moments. He then seated himself at the desk in a position that enabled him to keep Lord Pastern in sight. After a moment’s cogitation, he pulled the typewriter towards him, took Félicité’s letter from his pocket, found a sheet of paper and began to make a copy.

At the first rattle of the keys Lord Pastern’s eyes opened, met Alleyn’s gaze and shut again. He mumbled something indistinguishable and snored with greater emphasis. Alleyn completed his copy and laid it beside the original. They had been typed on the same machine.

On the floor, beside the chair Carlisle had used on the previous night, lay the magazine Harmony. He took it up and ruffled the pages. A dozen or more flopped over and then the binding opened a little. He was confronted with G.P.F.’s page and noticed, as Carlisle had noticed, the cigarette ash in the groove. He read the letter signed “Toots,” turned a few more pages and came upon the anti-drug-racket article and a dramatic review signed by Edward Manx. He once more confronted that preposterous figure in the armchair.

“Lord Pastern,” he said loudly, “wake up. Wake up.”

Lord Pastern jerked galvanically, made a tasting noise with his tongue and lips and uttered a nightmarish sound.

“A-a-ah?”

“Come now, you’re awake. Answer me this,” said Alleyn and thrust the copy of Harmony under his nose. “How long have you known that Edward Manx was G.P.F.?”