"A Wreath for Rivera" - читать интересную книгу автора (Marsh Ngaio)

CHAPTER IX THE YARD

At ten-thirty in the Chief-Inspector’s room at New Scotland Yard, routine procedure following a case of homicide was efficiently established. Alleyn sat at his desk taking reports from Detective-Sergeants Gibson, Watson, Scott and Sallis. Mr. Fox, with that air of good-humour crossed with severity which was his habitual reaction to reports following observation, listened critically to his juniors, each of whom held his official notebook. Six men going soberly about their day’s work. Earlier that morning, in other parts of London, Captain Entwhistle, an expert on ballistics, had fitted a dart made from a piece of a parasol into a revolver and had fired it into a bag of sand; Mr. Carrick, a government analyst, had submitted a small cork to various tests for certain oils; and Sir Grantly Morton, the famous pathologist, assisted by Curtis, had opened Carlos Rivera’s thorax, and, with the greatest delicacy, removed his heart.

“All right,” Alleyn said. “Get yourselves chairs and smoke if you want to. This is liable to be a session.”

When they were settled, he pointed the stem of his pipe at a heavy-jawed, straw-coloured detective-sergeant with a habitually startled expression. “You searched the deceased’s rooms, didn’t you Gibson? Let’s take you first.”

Gibson thumbed his notebook open, contemplating it in apparent astonishment, and embarked on a high-pitched recital.

“The deceased man, Carlos Rivera,” he said, “lived at 102 Bedford Mansions, Austerly Square S.W.I. Service flats. Rental £500 a year.”

“Why don’t we all play piano-accordions?” Fox asked of nobody in particular.

“At 3 a.m. on the morning of June 1st,” Gibson continued in a shrill — ish voice, “having obtained a search-warrant, I effected entrance to above premises by means of a key on a ring removed from the body of the deceased. The flat consists of an entrance lobby, six-by-eight feet, a sitting-room, twelve-by-fourteen feet, and a bedroom nine-by-eleven feet. Furnishings. Sitting-room: Carpet, purple, thick. Curtains, full length, purple satin.”

“Stay me with flagons!” Alleyn muttered. “Purple.”

“You might call it morve, Mr. Alleyn.”

“Well, go on.”

“Couch, upholstered green velvet, three armchairs ditto, dining table, six dining chairs, open fireplace. Walls painted fawn. Cushions: Seven. Green and purple satin.” He glanced at Alleyn. “I beg pardon, Mr. Alleyn? Anything wrong?”

“Nothing. Nothing. Go on.”

“Bookcase. Fourteen books. Foreign. Recognized four as on police lists. Pictures: four.”

“What were they like?” Fox asked.

“Never you mind, you dirty old man,” said Alleyn.

“Two were nude studies, Mr. Fox, what you might call heavy pinups. The others were a bit more so. Cigarette boxes: four. Cigarettes, commercial product. Have taken one from each box. Wall safe. Combination lock but found note of number in deceased’s pocket-book. Contents — ”

“Half a minute,” Alleyn said. “Have all the flats got these safes?”

“I ascertained from inquiries, sir, that deceased had his installed.”

“Right. Go on.”

“Contents. I removed a number of papers, two ledgers or account-books and a locked cash-box containing three hundred pounds in notes of low denomination, and thirteen shillings in silver.” Here Gibson paused of his own accord.

“There now!” said Fox. “Now we may be on to something.”

“I left a note of the contents of the safe in the safe and I locked the safe,” said Gibson, on a note of uncertainty, induced perhaps by misgivings about his prose style. “Shall I produce the contents now, sir, or go on to the bedroom?”

“I doubt if I can take the bedroom,” Alleyn said. “But go on.”

“It was done up in black, sir. Black satin.”

“Do you put all this in your notes?” Fox demanded suddenly. “All this about colours and satin?”

“They tell us to be thorough, Mr. Fox.”

“There’s a medium to all things,” Fox pronounced somberly. “I beg pardon, Mr. Alleyn.”

“Not at all, Br’er Fox. The bedroom, Gibson.”

But there wasn’t anything much to the purpose in Gibson’s meticulous account of Rivera’s bedroom unless the revelation that he wore black satin pyjamas with embroidered initials could be called, as Alleyn suggested, damning and conclusive evidence as to character. Gibson produced the spoil of the wall safe and they examined it. Alleyn took the ledgers and Fox the bundle of correspondence. For some time there was silence, broken only by the whisper of papers.

Presently, however, Fox brought his palm down on his knee and Alleyn, without looking up, said: “Hullo?”

“Peculiar,” Fox grunted. “Listen to this, sir.”

“Go ahead.”

“Cor’!” whispered Detective-Sergeant Scott.

Fox removed his spectacles and contemplated his superior.

“What do you mean by your ‘etc.,’ Fox? Why don’t you go on?”

“That’s what it says. Etc. Then it stops. Look.”

He flattened a piece of creased blue letter paper out on the desk before Alleyn. It was covered with typing, closely spaced. The Duke’s Gate address was stamped on the top.

Alleyn said, “What’s that you’re holding back?”

Fox laid his second exhibit before him. It was a press-cutting and printed on paper of the kind used in the more exotic magazines. Alleyn read aloud:

“I should advise a damn’ good hiding,” Alleyn said. “Poor old Spark-plug.”

“Go on, sir. Read the answer.” Alleyn continued:

“Yes, here we go again. Yes. All right, Fox. You’ve found, apparently, a bit of the rough draft and the finished article. The draft, typed on Duke’s Gate letter-paper, looks as if it had been crumpled up in somebody’s pocket, doesn’t it? Half a minute.”

He opened his own file and in a moment the letter Félicité had dropped from her bag at the Metronome had been placed beside the other. Alleyn bent over them. “It’s a pot-shot, of course,” he said, “but I’m ready to bet it’s the same machine. The s out of alignment. All the usual indications.”

“Where does this lead us?” Fox asked. Gibson, looking gratified, cleared his throat. Alleyn said: “It leads us into a bit of a tangle. The letter to Miss de Suze was typed on the machine in Lord Pastern’s study on the paper he uses for that purpose. The machine carried his dabs only. I took a chance and asked him, point-blank, how long he’d known that Edward Manx was G.P.F. He wouldn’t answer but I’ll swear I rocked him. I’ll undertake he typed the letter after he saw Manx put a white carnation in his coat, marked the envelope, ‘By District Messenger’ and put it on the hall table where it was discovered by the butler. All right. Now, not so long ago, Manx stayed at Duke’s Gate for three weeks and I suppose it’s reasonable to assume that he may have used the typewriter and the blue letter-paper in the study when he was jotting down notes for his nauseating little G.P.F. numbers in Harmony. So this draft may have been typed by Manx. But, as far as we know, Manx met Rivera for the first time last night and incidentally dotted him what William pleasingly called a fourpenny one, because Rivera kissed, not Miss de Suze but Miss Wayne. Now, if we’re right so far, how and when the hell did Rivera get hold of Manx’s rough draft of this sickening G.P.F. stuff? Not last night because we’ve got it from Rivera’s safe, and he didn’t go back to his rooms. Answer me that, Fox.”

“Gawd knows.”

“We don’t, at all events. And if we find out, is it going to tie up with Rivera’s murder? Well, press on, chaps, press on.”

He returned to the ledger and Fox to the bundle of papers. Presently Alleyn said: “Isn’t it extraordinary how business-like they are?”

“Who’s that, Mr. Alleyn?”

“Why, blackmailers to be sure. Mr. Rivera was a man of parts, Fox. Piano-accordions, drug-running, blackmail. Almost a pity we’ve got to nab his murderer. He was ripe for bumping off, was Mr. Rivera. This is a neatly kept record of moneys and goods received and disbursed. On the third of February, for instance, we have an entry. ‘Cash. £150, 3rd installment. S.F.F.’ A week later, a cryptic note on the debit side: ‘6 doz. per S.S., £360,’ followed by a series of credits: ‘J.C.M. £10,’ ‘B.B. £100,’ and so on. These entries are in a group by themselves. He’s totted them up and balanced the whole thing, showing a profit of £200 on the original outlay of £360.”

“That’ll be his dope racket, by Gum. ‘S.S.’ did you say, Mr. Alleyn? By Gum, I wonder if he is in with the Snowy Santos bunch.”

“And B.B. on the paying side. B.B. is quite a profitable number on the paying side.”

“Breezy Bellairs?”

“I shouldn’t wonder. It looks to me, Fox, as if Rivera was a medium high-up in the drug racket. He was one of the boys we don’t catch easily. It’s long odds he never passed the stuff out direct to the small consumer. With the exception, no doubt, of the wretched Bellairs. No, I fancy Rivera’s business was confined to his purple satin parlor. At the smallest sign of our getting anywhere near him, he’d have burnt his books and, if necessary, returned to his native hacienda or what-have-you.”

“Or go in first by laying information against the small man. That’s the line they take as often as not.”

“Yes, indeed. As often as not. What else have you got in your lucky dip, Br’er Fox?”

“Letters,” said Fox. “A sealed package. And the cash.”

“Anything that chimes in with his bookkeeping, I wonder?”

“Wait a bit, sir. I wouldn’t be surprised. Wait a bit.”

They hadn’t long to wait. The too familiar raw material of the blackmailer’s trade was soon laid out on Alleyn’s desk: the dingy, colourless letters, paid for again and again yet never redeemed, the discoloured clippings from dead newspapers, one or two desperate appeals for mercy, the inexorable entries on the credit side. Alleyn’s fingers seemed to tarnish as he handled them but Fox rubbed his hands.

“This is something like,” Fox said, and after a minute or two: “Look at this, Mr. Alleyn.”

It was a letter signed “Félicité” and was some four months old. Alleyn read it through and handed it back to Fox, who said: “It establishes the relationship.”

“Apparently.”

“Funny,” said Fox. “You’d have thought from the look of him, even when he was dead, that any girl in her senses would have picked him for what he was. There are two other letters. Much the same kind of thing.”

“Yes.”

“Yes. Well now,” said Fox slowly. “Leaving the young lady aside for the moment, where, if anywhere, does this get us with his lordship?”

“Not very far, I fancy. Unless you find something revealing a hitherto unsuspected irregularity in his lordship’s past, and he doesn’t strike me as one to hide his riotings.”

“All the same, sir, there may be something. What about his lordship encouraging this affair with his stepdaughter? Doesn’t that look as if Rivera had a hold on him?”

“It might,” Alleyn agreed, “if his lordship was anybody but his lordship. But it might. So last night, having decided to liquidate Rivera, he types this letter purporting to come from G.P.F. with the idea of throwing the all-too-impressionable Miss de Suze in Edward Manx’s arms!”

“There you are!”

“How does Lord Pastern know Manx is G.P.F.? And if Rivera used this G.P.F. copy to blackmail Manx it wasn’t a very hot instrument for his purpose, being typed. Anybody at Duke’s Gate might have typed it. He would have to find it on Manx and try a bluff. And he hadn’t met Manx. All right. For purposes of your argument we needn’t pursue that one at the moment. All right. It fits. In a way. Only… only…” He rubbed his nose. “I’m sorry, Fox, but I can’t reconcile the flavor of Pastern and Manx with all this. A most untenable argument, I know. I won’t try to justify it. What’s in that box?”

Fox had already opened it and shoved it across the desk. “It’ll be the stuff itself,” he said. “A nice little haul, Gibson.”

The box contained neat small packages, securely sealed, and, in a separate carton, a number of cigarettes.

“That’ll be it,” Alleyn agreed. “He wasn’t the direct receiver, evidently. This will have come in by the usual damned labyrinth.” He glanced up at Detective-Sergeant Scott, a young officer. “You haven’t worked on any of these cases, I think, Scott. This is probably cocaine or heroin, and has no doubt travelled long distances in bogus false teeth, fat men’s navels, dummy hearing aids, phony bayonet fitments for electric light bulbs and God knows what else. As Mr. Fox says, Gibson, it’s a nice little haul. We’ll leave Rivera for the moment, I think.” He turned to Scott and Watson. “Let’s hear how you got on with Breezy Bellairs.”

Breezy, it appeared, lived in a furnished flat in Pikestaff Row, off Ebury Street. To this address Scott and Watson had conveyed him, and with some difficulty put him to bed. Once there, he had slept stertorously through the rest of the night. They had combed out the flat, which, unlike Rivera’s, was slovenly and disordered. It looked, they said, as if Breezy had had a frantic search for something. The pockets of his suits had been pulled out, the drawers of his furniture disembowelled and the contents left where they lay. The only thing in the flat that was at all orderly was Breezy’s pile of band parts. Scott and Watson had sorted out a bundle of correspondence consisting of bills, dunning reminders, and his fan mail, which turned out to be largish. At the back of a small bedside cupboard they had found a hypodermic syringe which they produced and a number of torn and empty packages which were of the same sort as those found in Rivera’s safe. “Almost too easy,” said Mr. Fox with the liveliest satisfaction. “We knew it already, of course, through Skelton, but here’s positive proof Rivera supplied Bellairs with his dope. By Gum,” he added deeply, “I’d like to get this line on the dope-racket followed in to one of the high-ups. Now, I wonder. Breezy’ll be looking for his stuff and won’t know where to find it. He’ll be very upset. I ask myself if Breezy won’t be in the mood to talk.”

“You’d better remind yourself of your police code, old boy.”

“It’ll be the same story,” Fox muttered. “Breezy won’t know how Rivera got it. He won’t know.”

“He hasn’t been long on the injection method,” Alleyn said. “Curtis had a look for needle marks and didn’t find so very many.”

“He’ll be fretting for it, though,” said Fox, and after a moment’s pondering, “Oh, well. It’s a homicide we’re after.”

Nothing more of interest had been found in Breezy’s flat and Alleyn turned to the last of the men. “How did you get on with Skelton, Sallis?”

“Well, sir,” said Sallis, in a loud public-school voice, “he didn’t like me much to begin with. I picked up a search-warrant on the way and he took a very poor view of that. However, we talked sociology for the rest of the journey and I offered to lend him The Yogi and the Commissar, which bent the barriers a little. He’s Australian by birth, and I’ve been out there so that helped to establish a more matey attitude.”

“Get on with your report now,” Fox said austerely. “Don’t meander. Mr. Alleyn isn’t concerned to know how much Syd Skelton loves you.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Use your notes and get on with it,” Fox counselled.

Sallis opened his notebook and got on with it. Beyond a quantity of communistic literature there was little out of the ordinary to be found in Skelton’s rooms, which were in the Pimlico Road. Alleyn gathered that Sallis had conducted his search during a lively exchange of ideas and could imagine Skelton’s guarded response to Sallis’s pinkish, facile and consciously ironical observations. Finally, Skelton, in spite of himself, had gone to sleep in his chair and Sallis then turned his attention stealthily to a table which was used as a desk.

“I’d noticed that he seemed rather uneasy about this table, sir. He stood by it when we first came in and shuffled the papers about. I had the feeling there was something there that he wanted to destroy. When he was safely off, I went through the stuff on the table and I found this. I don’t know if it’s much cop, really, sir, but here it is.”

He gave a sheet of paper to Alleyn, who opened it up. It was an unfinished letter to Rivera, threatening him with exposure if he continued to supply Breezy Bellairs with drugs.

The other men had gone and Alleyn invited Fox to embark upon what he was in the habit of calling “a hag.” This involved the ruthless taking-to-pieces of the case and a fresh attempt to put the bits together in their true pattern. They had been engaged upon this business for about half an hour when the telephone rang. Fox answered it and announced with a tolerant smile that Mr. Nigel Bathgate would like to speak to Mr. Alleyn.

“I was expecting this,” Alleyn said. “Tell him that for once in a blue moon I want to see him. Where is he?”

“Down below.”

“Hail him up.”

Fox said sedately: “The Chief would like to see you, Mr. Bathgate,” and in a few moments Nigel Bathgate of the Evening Chronicle appeared, looking mildly astonished.

“I must say,” he said, shaking hands, “that this is uncommonly civil óf you, Alleyn. Have you run out of invectives or do you at last realize where the brains lie?”

“If you think I asked you up with the idea of feeding you with banner headlines you’re woefully mistaken. Sit down.”

“Willingly. How are you, Mr. Fox?”

“Nicely, thank you, sir. And you?”

Alleyn said: “Now, you attend to me. Can you tell me anything about a monthly called Harmony?”

“What sort of things? Have you been confiding in G.P.F., Alleyn?”

“I want to know who he is.”

“Has this got anything to do with the Rivera case?”

“Yes, it has.”

“I’ll make a bargain with you. I want a nice meaty bit of stuff straight from the Yard’s mouth. All about old Pastern and how you happened to be there and the shattered romance…”

“Who’ve you been talking to?”

“Charwomen, night porters, chaps in the band. And I ran into Ned Manx, a quarter of an hour ago.”

“What had he got to say for himself?”

“He hung out on me, blast him. Wouldn’t utter. And he’s not on a daily, either. Unco-operative twerp.”

“You might remember he’s the chief suspect’s cousin.”

“Then there’s no doubt about it being old Pastern?”

“I didn’t say so and you won’t suggest it.”

“Well, hell, give me a story.”

“About this paper. Do you know G.P.F.? Come on?”

Nigel lit a cigarette and settled down. “I don’t know him,” he said. “And I don’t know anyone who does. He’s a chap called G. P. Friend, I’m told, and he’s supposed to own the show. If he does, he’s on to a damn useful thing. It’s a mystery, that paper. It breaks all the rules and rings the bell. It first came out about two years ago with a great fanfare of trumpets. They bought out the old Triple Mirror, you know, and took over the plant and the paper and in less than no time trebled the sales. God knows why. The thing’s a freak. It mixes sound criticism with girly-girly chat and runs top-price serials alongside shorts that would bring a blush to the cheeks of Pegs Weekly. They tell me it’s G.P.F.’s page that does the trick. And look at it! That particular racket blew out before the war and yet he gets by with it. I’m told the personal letters at five bob a time are a gold mine in themselves. He’s said to have an uncanny knack of hitting on the things all these women want him to say. The types that write in are amazing. All the smarties. Nobody ever sees him. He doesn’t get about with the boys and the chaps who free-lance for the rag never get past a sub who’s always very bland and entirely uncommunicative. There you are. That’s all I can tell you about G.P.F.”

“Ever heard what he looks like?”

“No. There’s a legend he wears old clothes and dark glasses. They say he’s got a lock on his office door and never sees anybody on account he doesn’t want to be recognized. It’s all part of an act. Publicity. They play it up in the paper itself — ‘Nobody knows who G.P.F. is.’ ”

“What would you think if I told you he was Edward Manx?”

“Manx! You’re not serious.”

“Is it so incredible?”

Nigel raised his eyebrows. “On the face of it, yes. Manx is a reputable and very able specialist. He’s done some pretty solid stuff. Leftish and fairly authoritative. He’s a coming man. He’d turn sick in his stomach at the sight of G.P.F., I’d have thought.”

“He does their dramatic reviews.”

“Yes, I know, but that’s where they’re freakish. Manx has got a sort of damn-your-eyes view about theatre. It’s one of his things. He wants state ownership and he’ll scoop up any chance to plug it. And I imagine their anti-vice parties wouldn’t be unpleasing to Manx. He wouldn’t go much for the style, which is tough and coloured, but he’d like the policy. They gave battle in a big way, you know. Names all over the place and a general invitation to come on and sue us for libel and see how you like it. Quite his cup of tea. Yes, I imagine Harmony runs Manx to give the paper cachet and Manx writes for Harmony to get at their public. They pay. Top prices.” Nigel paused and then said sharply: “But Manx as G.P.F.! That’s different. Have you actually good reason to suspect it? Are you on to something?”

“The case is fluffy with doubts at the moment.”

“The Rivera case? It ties up with that?”

“Off the record, it does.”

“By God,” said Nigel profoundly, “if Ned Manx spews up that page it explains the secrecy! By God, it does.”

“We’ll have to ask him,” Alleyn said. “But I’d have liked to have a little more to go on. Still, we can muscle in. Where’s the Harmony office?”

“Five Materfamilias Lane. The old Triple Mirror place.”

“When does this blasted rag make its appearance? It’s a monthly, isn’t it?”

“Let’s see. It’s the twenty-seventh today. It comes out in the first week of the month. They’ll be going to press any time now.”

“So G.P.F.’s likely to be on tap at the office?”

“You’d think so. Are you going to burst in on Manx with a brace of manacles?”

“Never you mind.”

“Come on,” Nigel said. “What do I get for all this?”

Alleyn gave him a brief account of Rivera’s death and a lively description of Lord Pastern’s performance in the band.

“As far as it goes, it’s good,” Nigel said, “but I could get as much from the waiters.”

“Not if Caesar Bonn knows anything about it.”

“Are you going to pull old Pastern in?”

“Not just yet. You write your stuff and send it along to me.”

“It’s pretty!” Nigel said. “It’s as pretty as paint. Pastern’s good at any time but like this he’s marvellous. May I use your typewriter?”

“For ten minutes.”

Nigel retired with the machine to a table at the far end of the room. “I can say you were there, of course,” he said hurriedly.

“I’ll be damned if you can.”

“Come, come, Alleyn, be big about this thing.”

“I know you. If we don’t ring the bell you’ll print some revolting photograph of me looking like a half-wit. Caption: ‘Chief Inspector who watched crime but doesn’t know whodunit.’ ”

Nigel grinned. “And would that be a story, and won’t that be the day! Still, as it stands, it’s pretty hot. Here we go, chaps.” He began to rattle the keys.

Alleyn said: “There’s one thing, Fox, that’s sticking out of this mess like a road sign and I can’t read it. Why did that perishing old mountebank look at the gun and then laugh himself sick? Here! Wait a moment. Who was in the study with him when he concocted his dummies and loaded his gun? It’s a thin chance but it might yield something.” He pulled the telephone towards him. “We’ll talk once more to Miss Carlisle Wayne.”

Carlisle was in her room when the call came through and she took it there, sitting on her bed and staring aimlessly at a flower print on the wall. A hammer knocked at her ribs and her throat constricted. In some remote part of her mind she thought: “As if I was in love, instead of frightened sick.”

The unusually deep and clear voice said: “Is that you, Miss Wayne? I’m sorry to bother you again so soon but I’d like to have another word with you.”

“Yes,” said Carlisle. “Would you? Yes.”

“I can come to Duke’s Gate or, if you would rather, can see you here at the Yard.” Carlisle didn’t answer at once and he said: “Which would suit you best?”

“I–I think — I’ll come to your office.”

“It might be easier. Thank you so much. Can you come at once?”

“Yes. Yes, I can, of course.”

“Splendid.” He gave her explicit instructions about which entrance to use and where to ask for him. “Is that clear? I shall see you in about twenty minutes then.”

“In about twenty minutes,” she repeated and her voice cracked into an absurd cheerful note as if she were gaily making a date with him. “Right-ho,” she said and thought with horror: “But I never say ‘right-ho.’ He’ll think I’m demented.”

“Mr. Alleyn,” she said loudly.

“Yes? Hullo?”

“I’m sorry I made such an ass of myself this morning. I don’t know what happened. I seem to have gone extremely peculiar.”

“Never mind,” said the deep voice easily.

“Well — all right. Thank you. I’ll come straight away.”

He gave a small, polite, not unfriendly sound and she hung up the receiver.

“Booking a date with the attractive Inspector, darling?” said Félicité from the door.

At the first sound of her voice Carlisle’s body had jerked and she had cried out sharply.

“You are jumpy,” Félicité said, coming nearer.

“I didn’t know you were there.”

“Obviously.”

Carlisle opened her wardrobe. “He wants to see me. Lord knows why.”

“So you’re popping off to the Yard. Exciting for you.”

“Marvellous, isn’t it,” Carlisle said, trying to make her voice ironical. Félicité watched her change into a suit. “Your face wants a little attention,” she said.

“I know.” She went to the dressing-table. “Not that it matters.”

When she looked in the glass she saw Félicité’s face behind her shoulder. “Stupidly unfriendly,” she thought, dabbing at her nose.

“You know, darling,” Félicité said, “I’m drawn to the conclusion you’re a dark horse.”

“Oh Fée!” she said impatiently.

“Well, you appear to have done quite a little act with my late best young man, last night, and here you are having a sly assignation with the dynamic Inspector.”

“He probably wants to know what kind of toothpaste we all use.”

“Personally,” said Félicité, “I always considered you were potty about Ned.”

Carlisle’s hand shook as she pressed powder into the tear stains under her eyes.

“You are in a state, aren’t you,” said Félicité.

Carlisle turned on her. “Fée, for pity’s sake come off it. As if things weren’t bad enough without your starting these monstrous hares. You must have seen that I couldn’t endure your poor wretched incredibly phony young man. You must see that Mr. Alleyn’s summons to Scotland Yard has merely frightened seven bells out of me. How you can!”

“What about Ned?”

Carlisle picked up her bag and gloves. “If Ned writes the monstrous bilge you’ve fallen for in Harmony I never want to speak to him again,” she said violently. “For the love of Mike pipe down and let me go and be grilled.”

But she was not to leave without further incident. On the first floor landing she encountered Miss Henderson. After her early morning scene with Alleyn on the stairs, Carlisle had returned to her room and remained there, fighting down the storm of illogical weeping that had so suddenly overtaken her. So she had not met Miss Henderson until now.

“Hendy!” she cried out. “What’s the matter?”

“Good morning, Carlisle. The matter, dear?”

“I thought you looked — I’m sorry. I expect we all look a bit odd. Are you hunting for something?”

“I’ve dropped my little silver pencil somewhere. It can’t be here,” she said as Carlisle began vaguely to look. “Are you going out?”

“Mr. Alleyn wants me to call and see him.”

“Why?” Miss Henderson asked sharply.

“I don’t know. Hendy, isn’t this awful, this business? And to make matters worse I’ve had a sort of row with Fée.”

The light on the first landing was always rather strange, Carlisle told herself, a cold reflected light coming from a distant window making people look greenish. It must be that because Miss Henderson answered her quite tranquilly and with her usual lack of emphasis. “Why, of all mornings, did you two want to have a row?”

“I suppose we’re both scratchy. I told her I thought the unfortunate Rivera was ghastly and she thinks I’m shaking my curls at Mr. Alleyn. It was too stupid for words.”

“I should think so, indeed.”

“I’d better go!”

Carlisle touched her lightly on the arm and crossed to the stairs. She hesitated there, without turning to face Miss Henderson, who had not moved. “What is it?” Miss Henderson said. “Have you forgotten something?”

“No. Hendy, you know, don’t you, about the fantastic thing they say killed him? The piece of parasol with an embroidery stiletto in the end?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember — I know this is ridiculous — but do you remember, last night, when there was that devastating bang from the ballroom? Do you remember you and Aunt Cile and Fée and I were in the drawing-room and you were sorting Aunt Cue’s work-box?”

“Was I?”

“Yes. And you jumped at the bang and dropped something?”

“Did I?”

“And Fée picked it up.”

“Did she?”

“Hendy, was it an embroidery stiletto?”

“I remember nothing about it. Nothing at all.”

“I didn’t notice where she put it. I wondered if you had noticed.”

“If it was something from the work-box, I expect she put it back. Won’t you be late, Carlisle?”

“Yes,” Carlisle said without turning. “Yes, I’ll go.”

She heard Miss Henderson walk away into the drawing-room. The door closed gently and Carlisle went downstairs. There was a man in a dark suit in the hall. He got up when he saw her and said: “Excuse me, miss, but are you Miss Wayne?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Thank you, Miss Wayne.”

He opened the glass doors for her and then the front door. Carlisle went quickly past him and out into the sunshine. She was quite unaware of the man who stepped out from the corner a little way down Duke’s Gate and who, glancing impatiently at his watch, waited at the bus stop and journeyed with her to Scotland Yard. “Keep observation on the whole damn boiling,” Alleyn had said irritably at six o’clock that morning. “We don’t know what we want.”

She followed a constable, who looked oddly domesticated without his helmet, down a linoleumed corridor to the Chief Inspector’s room. She thought: “They invite people to come and make statements. It means something. Suppose they suspect me. Suppose they’ve found out some little thing that makes them think I’ve done it.” Her imagination galloped wildly. Suppose, when she went into the room, Alleyn said: “I’m afraid this is serious. Carlisle Loveday Wayne, I arrest you for the murder of Carlos Rivera and I warn you…” They would telephone for any clothes she wanted. Hendy, perhaps, would pack a suitcase. Perhaps, secretly, they would all be a little lightened, almost pleasurably worried, because they would no longer be in fear for themselves. Perhaps Ned would come to see her.

“In here, if you please, miss,” the constable was saying with his hand on the door-knob.

Alleyn rose quickly from his desk and came towards her. “Punctilious,” she thought. “He’s got nice manners. Are his manners like this when he’s going to arrest people?”

“I’m so sorry,” he was saying. “This must be a nuisance for you.”

The solid grizzled detective was behind him. Fox. That was Inspector Fox. He had pulled up a chair for her and she sat in it, facing Alleyn. “With the light on my face,” she thought, “that’s what they do.”

Fox moved away and sat behind a second desk. She could see his head and shoulders but his hands were hidden from her.

“You’ll think my object in asking you to come very aimless, I expect,” Alleyn said, “and my first question will no doubt strike you as being completely potty. However, here it is. You told us last night that you were with Lord Pastern when he made the dummies and loaded the revolver.”

“Yes.”

“Well, now, did anything happen, particularly in respect of the revolver, that struck you both as being at all comic?”

Carlisle gaped at him. “Comic!”

“I told you it was a potty question,” he said.

“If you mean did we take one look at the revolver and then shake with uncontrollable laughter, we didn’t.”

“No,” he said. “I was afraid not.”

“The mood was sentimental if anything. The revolver was one of a pair given to Uncle George by my father and he told me so.”

“You were familiar with it then?”

“Not in the least. My father died ten years ago and when he lived was not in the habit of showing me his armoury. He and Uncle George were both crack shots, I believe. Uncle George told me my father had the revolvers made for target shooting.”

“You looked at the gun last night? Closely?”

“Yes — because — ” Beset by nervous and unreasoned caution, she hesitated.

“Because?”

“My father’s initials are scratched on it. Uncle George told me to look for them.”

There was a long pause. “Yes, I see,” Alleyn said.

She found she had twisted her gloves tightly together and doubled them over. She felt a kind of impatience with herself and abruptly smoothed them out.

“It was one of a pair,” Alleyn said, “Did you look at both of them?”

“No. The other was in a case in the drawer on his desk. I just saw it there. I noticed the drawer was under my nose, almost, and Uncle George kept putting the extra dummies, if that’s what you call them, into it.”

“Ah, yes. I saw them there.”

“He made a lot more than he wanted in case,” her voice faltered, “in case he was asked to do his turn again sometime.”

“I see.”

“Is that all?” she said.

“As you’ve been kind enough to come,” Alleyn said with a smile, “perhaps we should think up something more.”

“You needn’t bother, thank you.”

He smiled more broadly. “Fée was doing her stuff for him on the stairs this morning,” Carlisle thought. “Was she actually showing the go-ahead signal or was she merely trying to stall him off?”

“It’s about the steel end in this eccentric weapon. The bolt or dart,” Alleyn said, and her attention snapped taut again. “We are almost certain that it’s the business end of an embroidery stiletto from the work-box in the drawing-room. We found the discarded handle. I wonder if by any chance you remember when you last noticed the stiletto. If, of course, you happen to have noticed it.”

“So this is it,” she thought. “The revolver was nothing, it was a red herring. He’s really got me here to talk about the stiletto.”

She said: “I don’t think the work-box was open when I was in the drawing-room before dinner. At any rate I didn’t notice it.”

“I remember you told me that Lady Pastern showed you and Manx her petit point. That was when you were all in the drawing-room before dinner, wasn’t it? We found the petit point, by the way, beside the work-box.”

“Therefore,” she thought, “Aunt Cile or Ned or I might have taken the stiletto.” She repeated: “I’m sure the box wasn’t open.”

She had tried not to think beyond that one time, that one safe time about which she could quickly speak the truth.

“And after dinner?” Alleyn said casually.

She saw again the small gleaming tool drop from Miss Henderson’s fingers when the report sounded in the ballroom. She saw Félicité automatically stoop and pick it up and a second later burst into tears and run furiously from the room. She heard her loud voice on the landing: “I’ve got to speak to you,” and Rivera’s: “But certainly, if you wish it.”

“After dinner?” she repeated flatly;

“You were in the drawing-room then. Before the men came in. Perhaps Lady Pastern took up her work. Did you, at any time, see the box open or notice the stiletto?”

How quick was thought? As quick as people said? Was her hesitation fatally long? Here she moved, on the brink of speech. She could hear the irrevocable denial, and yet she had not made it. And suppose he had already spoken to Félicité about the stiletto? “What am I looking like?” she thought in a panic. “I’m looking like a liar already.”

“Can you remember?” he asked. So she had waited too long.

“I — don’t think I can.” Now, she had said it. Somehow it wasn’t quite as shaming to lie about remembering as about the fact itself. If things went wrong she could say afterwards: “Yes, I remember, now, but I had forgotten. It had no significance for me at the time.”

“You don’t think you can.” She had nothing to say but he went on almost at once: “Miss Wayne, will you please try to look squarely at this business. Will you try to pretend that it’s an affair that you have read about and in which you have no personal concern. Not easy. But try. Suppose, then, a group of complete strangers was concerned in Rivera’s death and suppose one of them, not knowing much about it, unable to see the factual wood for the emotional trees, was asked a question to which she knew the answer. Perhaps the answer seems to implicate her. Perhaps it seems to implicate someone she is fond of. She doesn’t in the least know, it may be, what the implications are but she refuses to take the responsibility of telling the truth about one detail that may fit in with the whole truth. She won’t, in fact, speak the truth if by doing so she’s remotely responsible for bringing an extraordinarily callous murderer to book. So she lies. At once she finds that it doesn’t end there. She must get other people to tell corroborative lies. She finds herself, in effect, whizzing down a dangerous slope with her car out of control, steering round some obstacles, crashing into others, doing irreparable damage and landing herself and possibly other innocent people in disaster. You think I’m overstating her case perhaps. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen very often.”

“Why do you say all this to me?”

“I’ll tell you why. You said just now that you didn’t remember noticing the stiletto at any time after dinner. Before you made this statement you hesitated. Your hands closed on your gloves and suddenly twisted them. Your hands behaved with violence and yet they trembled. After you had spoken they continued to have a sort of independent life of their own. Your left hand kneaded the gloves and your right hand moved rather aimlessly across your neck and over your face. You blushed deeply and stared very fixedly at the top of my head. You presented me, in fact, with Example A from any handbook on behaviour of the lying witness. You were a glowing demonstration of the bad liar. And now, if all this is nonsense, you can tell counsel for the defence how I bullied you and he will treat me to as nasty a time as his talents suggest when I’m called to give evidence. Now I come to think of it, he’ll be very unpleasant indeed. So, however, will prosecuting counsel if you stick to your lapse of memory.”

Carlisle said angrily: “My hands feel like feet. I’m going to sit on them. You don’t play fair.”

“My God,” Alleyn said, “this isn’t a game! It’s murder.”

“He was atrocious. He was much nastier than anyone else in the house.”

“He may have been the nastiest job of work in Christendom. He was murdered and you’re dealing with the police. This is not a threat but it’s a warning: We’ve only just started — a great deal more evidence may come our way. You were not alone in the drawing-room after dinner.”

She thought: “But Hendy won’t tell and neither will Aunt Cile.” But William came in sometime, about then. Suppose he saw Fée on the landing? Suppose he noticed the stiletto in her hand? And then she remembered the next time she had seen Félicité. Félicité had been on the top of the world, in ecstasy because of the letter from G.P.F. She had changed into her most gala dress and her eyes were shining. She had already discarded Rivera as easily as she had discarded all her previous young men. It was fantastic to tell lies for Félicité. There was something futile about this scene with Alleyn. She had made a fool of herself for nothing.

He had taken an envelope from a drawer of his desk and now opened it and shook its contents out before her. She saw a small shining object with a sharp end.

“Do you recognize it?” he asked.

“The stiletto.”

“You say that because we’ve been talking about the stiletto. It’s not a bit like it really. Look again.”

She leant over it. “Why,” she said, “it’s a — a pencil.”

“Do you know whose pencil?”

She hesitated. “I think it’s Hendy’s. She wears it on a chain like an old-fashioned charm. She always wears it. She was hunting for it on the landing this morning.”

“This is it. Here are her initials. P.X.H. Very tiny. You almost need a magnifying glass. Like the initials you saw on the revolver. The ring at the end was probably softish silver and the gap in it may have opened with the weight of the pencil. I found the pencil in the work-box. Does Miss Henderson ever use Lady Pastern’s work-box?”

This at least was plain sailing. “Yes. She tidies it very often for Aunt Cile.” And immediately Carlisle thought: “I’m no good at this. Here it comes again.”

“Was she tidying the box last night? After dinner?”

“Yes,” Carlisle said flatly. “Oh, yes. Yes.”

“Did you notice, particularly? When exactly was it?”

“Before the men came in. Well, only Ned came in actually. Uncle George and the other two were in the ballroom.”

“Lord Pastern and Bellairs were at this time in the ballroom, and Rivera and Manx in the dining-room. According to the time-table.” He opened a file on his desk.

“I only know that Fée had gone when Ned came in.”

“She had joined Rivera in the study by then. But to return to this incident in the drawing-room. Can you describe the scene with the work-box? What were you talking about?”

Félicité had been defending Rivera. She had been on edge, in one of her moods. Carlisle had thought: “She’s had Rivera but she won’t own up.” And Hendy, listening, had moved her fingers about inside the work-box. There was the stiletto in Hendy’s fingers and, dangling from her neck, the pencil on its chain.

“They were talking about Rivera. Félicité considered he’d been snubbed a bit and was cross about it.”

“At about this time Lord Pastern must have fired off his gun in the ballroom,” Alleyn muttered. He had spread the time-table out on his desk. He glanced up at her. His glance, she noticed, was never vague or indirect, as other people’s might be. It had the effect of immediately collecting your attention. “Do you remember that?” he said.

“Oh, yes.”

“It must have startled you, surely?”

What were her hands doing now? She was holding the side of her neck again.

“How did you all react to what must have been an infernal racket? What for instance did Miss Henderson do? Do you remember?”

Her lips parted dryly. She closed them again, pressing them together.

“I think you do remember,” he said. “What did she do?”

Carlisle said loudly, “She let the lid of the box drop. Perhaps the pencil was caught and pulled off the chain.”

“Was anything in her hands?”

“The stiletto,” she said, feeling the words grind out.

“Good. And then?”

“She dropped it.”

Perhaps that would satisfy him. It fell to the carpet. Anyone might have picked it up. Anyone, she thought desperately. Perhaps he will think a servant might have picked it up. Or even Breezy Bellairs, much later.

“Did Miss Henderson pick it up?”

“No.”

“Did anyone?”

She said nothing.

“You? Lady Pastern? No. Miss de Suze?”

She said nothing.

“And a little while afterwards, a very little while, she went out of the room. Because it was immediately after the report that William saw her go into the study with Rivera. He noticed that she had something shiny in her hand.”

“She didn’t even know she had it. She picked it up automatically. I expect she just put it down in the study and forgot all about it.”

“We found the ivory handle there,” Alleyn said, and Fox made a slight gratified sound in his throat.

“But you mustn’t think there was any significance in all this.”

“We’re glad to know how and when the stiletto got into the study, at least.”

“Yes,” she said, “I suppose so. Yes.”

Someone tapped on the door. The bare-headed constable came in with a package and an envelope. He laid them on the desk. “From Captain Entwhistle, sir. You asked to have them as soon as they came in.”

He went out without looking at Carlisle.

“Oh, yes,” Alleyn said. “The report on the revolver, Fox. Good. Miss Wayne, before you go, I’ll ask you to have a look at the revolver. It’ll be one more identification check.”

She waited while Inspector Fox came out from behind his desk and unwrapped the parcel. It contained two separate packages. She knew the smaller one must be the dart and wondered if Rivera’s blood was still encrusted on the stiletto. Fox opened the larger package and came to her with the revolver.

“Will you look at it?” Alleyn said. “You may handle it. I would like your formal identification.”

Carlisle turned the heavy revolver in her hands. There was a strong light in the room. She bent her head and they waited. She looked up, bewildered. Alleyn gave her his pocket lens. There was a long silence.

“Well, Miss Wayne?”

“But… But it’s extraordinary. I can’t identify it. There are no initials. This isn’t the same revolver.”