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

CHAPTER VIII MORNING

Lord Pastern blinked owlishly at the paper, swung round in his chair and eyed the desk. The letter and the copy lay conspicuously beside the typewriter.

“Yes,” Alleyn said, “that’s how I know. Will you give me an explanation of all this?”

Lord Pastern leant forward and, resting his forearm on his knees, seemed to stare at his clasped hands. When he spoke his voice was subdued and muffled.

“No,” he said, “I’ll be damned if I do. I’ll answer no questions. Find out for yourself. I’m for bed.”

He pulled himself out of the chair and squared his shoulders. The air of truculence was still there but Alleyn thought it overlaid a kind of indecision. With the nearest approach to civility that he had yet exhibited he added: “I’m within my rights, aren’t I?”

“Certainly,” Alleyn said at once. “Your refusal will be noted. That’s all. If you change your mind about sending for your solicitor, we shall be glad to call him in. In the meantime, I’m afraid, sir, I shall have to place you under very close observation.”

“D’you mean some damn bobby’s goin’ to follow me about like a bulkin’ great poodle?”

“If you care to put it that way. It’s no use, I imagine, for me to repeat any warnings about your own most equivocal position.”

“None whatever.” He went to the door and stood with his back to Alleyn, holding the knob and leaning heavily on it. “Get them to give you breakfast,” he said without looking round and went slowly out and up the stairs. Alleyn called his thanks after him and nodded to Marks, who was on the landing. Marks followed Lord Pastern upstairs.

Alleyn returned to the study, shut the window, had a last look round, packed Fox’s bag, removed it to the landing and finally locked and sealed the door. Marks had been replaced on the landing by another plain-clothes man. “Hullo, Jimson,” Alleyn said. “Just come on?”

“Yes, sir. Relieving.”

“Have you seen any of the staff?”

“A maid came upstairs just now, Mr. Alleyn. Mr. Fox left instructions they were to be kept off this floor so I sent her down again. She seemed very much put about.”

“She would,” Alleyn said. “All right. Tactful as you can, you know, but don’t miss anything.”

“Very good, sir.”

He crossed the landing and entered the ballroom where he found Thompson and Bailey packing up. Alleyn looked at the group of chairs round the grand piano and at a sheet of notepaper Bailey had collected. On it was pencilled the band programme for the previous night. Bailey pointed out the light coating of dust on the piano top and showed Alleyn where they had found clear traces of the revolver and the parasol and umbrellas. It was odd, Bailey and Thompson thought, but it appeared that quantities of dust had fallen after these objects had rested in this place. Not so very odd, Alleyn suggested, as Lord Pastern had, on his own statement, fired off a blank round in the ballroom and that would probably have brought down quite a lot of dust from the charming but ornately moulded ceiling. “Happy hunting ground,” he muttered. “Whose are the prints round these traces of the parasol section and knob? Don’t tell me,” he added wearily. “His lordship’s?”

“That’s right,” Thompson and Bailey said together. “His lordship’s and Breezy’s.” Alleyn saw them go and then came out and sealed the ballroom doors.

He returned to the drawing-room, collected Lady Pastern’s work-box, debated with himself about locking this room up too and decided against it. He then left all his gear under the eye of the officer on the landing and went down to the ground floor. It was now six o’clock.

The dining-room was already prepared for breakfast. The bowl of white carnations, he noticed, had been removed to a side table. As he halted before a portrait of some former Settinger who bore a mild resemblance to Lord Pastern, he heard a distant mingling of voices beyond the service door. The servants, he thought, having their first snack. He pushed open the door, found himself in a servery with a further door which led, it appeared, into the servants’ hall. The best of all early morning smells, that of freshly brewed coffee, was clearly discernible. He was about to go forward when a voice, loud, dogged and perceptibly anxious, said very slowly:

“Parlez, monsieur, je vous en prie, plus lentement, et peut-être je vous er-— er — comprendrerai — No, blast it, as you were, je vous pouverai — ”

Alleyn pushed open the door and discovered Mr. Fox, seated cosily before a steaming cup of coffee, flanked by Spence and a bevy of attentive ladies and vis-à-vis a dark imposing personage in full chefs regalia.

There was only a fractional pause while Alleyn surveyed this tableau. Fox then rose.

“Perhaps you’d like a cup of coffee, Mr. Alleyn,” he suggested and, addressing the chef, added carefully: “C’est, Monsieur — er — le chef-inspecteur Alleyn, Monsieur. Mr. Alleyn, this is Miss Parker, the housekeeper, and Mademoiselle Hortense. And these girls are Mary and Myrtle. This is Mr. Spence and this is Monsieur Dupont and the young chap over there is William. Well!” concluded Fox, beaming upon the company, “this is what I call cosy.”

Alleyn took the chair placed for him by William and stared fixedly at his subordinate. Fox responded with a bland smile. “I was just leaving, sir,” he said, “when I happened to run into Mr. Spence. I knew you’d want to inform these good people of our little contretemps so here, in point of fact, I am.”

“Fancy,” said Alleyn.

Fox’s technique on the working side of the green baize doors was legendary at the Yard. This was the first time Alleyn had witnessed it in action. But even now, he realized, the fine bloom of the exotic was rubbed off and it was his own entrance which had destroyed it. The atmosphere of conviviality had stiffened. Spence had risen, the maids hovered uneasily on the edges of their chairs. He did his best and it was a good best, but evidently Fox, who was an innocent snob, had been bragging about him and they all called him “sir.”

“Well,” he said cheerfully, “if Mr. Fox has been on this job there’ll be no need for me to bother any of you. This is the best coffee I’ve drunk for years.”

“I am gratified,” said Monsieur Dupont in fluent English. “At present, of course, one cannot obtain the fresh bean as readily as one desires.”

Mademoiselle Hortense said, “Naturally,” and the others made small affirmative noises.

“I suppose,” Fox said genially, “his lordship’s very particular about his coffee. Particular about everything, I daresay?” he added, invitingly.

William, the footman, laughed sardonically and was checked by a glance from Spence. Fox prattled on. It would be her ladyship, of course, who was particular about coffee, being of Mademoiselle’s Hortense’s and Monsieur Dupont’s delightful nationality. He attempted this compliment in French, got bogged down and told Alleyn that Monsieur Dupont had been giving him a lesson. Mr. Alleyn, he informed the company, spoke French like a native. Looking up, Alleyn found Spence gazing at him with an expression of anxiety.

“I’m afraid this is a great nuisance for all of you,” Alleyn said.

“It’s not that, sir,” Spence rejoined slowly, “it does put us all about very much, I can’t deny. Not being able to get things done in the usual way — ”

“I’m sure,” Miss Parker intervened, “I don’t know what her ladyship’s going to say about the first floor. Leaving everything. It’s very awkward.”

“Exactly. But the worrying thing,” Spence went on, “is not knowing what it’s all about. Having the police in, sir, and everything. Just because the party from this house happens to be present when this Mr. Rivera passes away in a restaurant.”

“Quite so,” said Miss Parker.

“The circumstances,” Alleyn said carefully, “are extraordinary. I don’t know if Inspector Fox has told you — ”

Fox said that he had been anxious not to distress the ladies. Alleyn, who thought that the ladies looked as if they were half-dead with curiosity, agreed that Fox had shown great delicacy but added that it would have to come out sometime. “Mr. Rivera,” he said, “was killed.”

They stirred attentively. Myrtle, the younger of the maids, ejaculated, “Murdered?” clapped her hands over her mouth and suppressed a nervous giggle. Alleyn said it looked very much like it and added that he hoped they would all co-operate as far as they were able in helping to clear the ground. He had known, before he met it, what their response would be. People were all very much alike when it came to homicide cases. They wanted to be removed to a comfortable distance where curiosity could be assuaged, prestige maintained and personal responsibility dissolved. With working people this wish was deepened by a heritage of insecurity and the necessity to maintain caste. They were filled with a kind of generic anxiety: at once disturbed by an indefinite threat and stimulated by a crude and potent assault on their imagination.

“It’s a matter,” he said, “of clearing innocent people, of tidying them up. I’m sure you will be glad to help us in this, if you can.”

He produced Lord Pastern’s time-table, spread it out before Spence and told them who had compiled it.

“If you can help us check these times, any of you, we shall be very grateful,” he said.

Spence put on his spectacles and with an air of slight embarrassment began to read the time-table. The others, at Alleyn’s suggestion, collected round him, not altogether unwillingly.

“It’s a bit elaborate, isn’t it?” Alleyn said. “Let’s see if it can be simplified at all. You see that between half-past eight and nine the ladies left the dining-room and went to the drawing-room. So we get the two groups in the two rooms. Can any of you add to or confirm that?”

Spence could. It was a quarter to nine when the ladies went to the drawing-room. When he came away from serving their coffee he passed Lord Pastern and Mr. Bellairs on the landing. They went into his lordship’s study. Spence continued on through the dining-room, paused there to see that William had served coffee to the gentlemen and noticed that Mr. Manx and Mr. Rivera were still sitting over their wine. He then went into the servants’ hall where a few minutes later he heard the nine o’clock news on the wireless.

“So now,” Alleyn said, “we have three groups. The ladies in the drawing-room, his lordship and Mr. Bellairs in the study, and Mr. Manx and Mr. Rivera in the dining-room. Can anyone tell us when the next move came and who made it?”

Spence remembered coming back into the dining-room and finding Mr. Manx there alone. His reticence at this point became more marked, but Alleyn got from him the news that Edward Manx had helped himself to a stiff whiskey. He asked casually if there was anything about his manner which was at all remarkable, and got the surprising answer that Mr. Edward seemed to be very pleased and said he’d had a wonderful surprise.

“And now,” Alleyn said, “Mr. Rivera has broken away from the other groups. Where has he gone? Mr. Manx is in the dining-room, his lordship and Mr. Bellairs in the study, the ladies in the drawing-room, and where is Mr. Rivera?”

He looked round the group of faces with their guarded unwilling expressions until he saw William, and in William’s eye he caught a zealous glint. William, he thought, with any luck read detective magazines and spent his day-dreams sleuthing. “Got an idea?” he asked.

“Well, sir,” William said, glancing at Spence, “if you’ll excuse me, I think his lordship and Mr. Bellairs have parted company where you’ve got to. I was tidying the hall, sir, and I heard the other gentleman, Mr. Bellairs, come out of the study. I glanced up at the landing, like. And I heard his lordship call out he’d join him in a minute and I saw the gentleman go into the ballroom. I went and got the coffee tray from the drawing-room, sir. The ladies were all there. I put it down on the landing and was going to set the study to rights, when I heard the typewriter in there. His lordship doesn’t like being disturbed when he’s typing, sir, so I took the tray by the staff stairs to the kitchen and after a few minutes came back. And his lordship must have gone into the ballroom while I was downstairs because I could hear him talking very loud to Mr. Bellairs, sir.”

“What about, do you remember?”

William glanced again at Spence and said: “Well, sir, it was something about his lordship telling somebody something if Mr. Bellairs didn’t want to. And then there was a terrible loud noise. Drums. And a report like a gun. They all heard it down here in the hall, sir.”

Alleyn looked at the listening staff. Miss Parker said coldly that his lordship was no doubt practising, as if Lord Pastern were in the habit of loosing firearms indoors and there were nothing at all remarkable in the circumstances. Alleyn felt that both she and Spence were on the edge of giving William a piece of their minds and he hurried on.

“What did you do next?” he asked William.

He had been, it appeared, somewhat shattered by the report, but had remembered his duties. “I crossed the landing, sir, thinking I’d get on with the study, but Miss de Suze came out of the drawing-room, And then — well, the murdered gentleman, he came from the dining-room and they met and she said she wanted to speak to him alone and they went into the study.”

“Sure of that?”

Yes, it appeared that William was perfectly certain. He had lingered, evidently, at the end of the landing. He even remembered that Miss de Suze had something in her hand. He wasn’t sure what it was. Something bright, it might have been, he said doubtfully. After she and the gentleman had gone into the study and shut the door, Miss Henderson had come out of the drawing-room and gone upstairs.

Alleyn said: “Now, that’s a great help. You see it corresponds exactly so far with his lordship’s time-table. I’ll just check it over, Fox, if you…”

Fox took the tip neatly and while Alleyn affected to study Lord Pastern’s notes continued what he liked to call the painless extraction method with William. It must, he said, have been awkward for William. You couldn’t go barging in on a tête-à-tête, could you, and yet a chap liked to get his job done. Life, said Fox, was funny when you came to think of it. Here was this poor young lady happily engaged in conversation with — well, he supposed he wasn’t giving any secrets away if he said with her fiancé, and little did she think that in a couple of hours or so he would be lying dead. Miss Parker and the maids were visibly moved by this. William turned extremely red in the face and shuffled his feet. “She’ll treasure every word of that last talk, I’ll be bound,” said Fox. “Every word of it.” He looked inquiringly at William, who, after a longish pause, blurted out very loudly: “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, Mr. Fox.”

“That’ll do, Will,” said Spence quietly but Fox’s voice overrode him. “Is that so?” Fox inquired blandly. “You wouldn’t? Why not?”

“Because,” William announced boldly, “they was at it hammer-and-tongs.”

“Will!”

William turned on his superior. “I ought to tell the truth, didn’t I, Mr. Spence? To the police?”

“You ought to mind your own business,” said Miss Parker with some emphasis and Spence murmured his agreement.

“All right then,” William said, huffily. “I’m sure I don’t want to push myself in where I’m not welcome.”

Fox was extremely genial and complimented William on his natural powers of observation and Miss Parker and Spence upon their loyalty and discretion. He suggested, without exactly stating as much and keeping well on the safe side of police procedure, that any statements anybody offered would, by some mysterious alchemy, free all concerned of any breath of suspicion. In a minute or two he had discovered that sharp-eared William, still hovering on the landing, had seen Rivera go into the ballroom and had overheard most of his quarrel with Breezy Bellairs. To this account Spence and Miss Parker raised no objections and it was tolerably obvious that they had already heard it. It became clear that Mademoiselle Hortense was stifling with repressed information. But she had her eye on Alleyn and it was to him that she addressed herself. She had that particular knack, that peculiar talent commanded by so many of her country-women, of making evident, without the slightest emphasis, her awareness of her own attractions and those of the man to whom she was speaking. Alleyn, she seemed to assume, would understand perfectly that she was the confidante of Mademoiselle. Monsieur Dupont, who had remained aloof, now assumed an air of gloomy acquiescence. It was understood, he said, that the relationship between a personal maid and her mistress was one of delicacy and confidence.

“About l’affaire Rivera…” suggested Fox, doggedly Gallic.

Hortense lifted her shoulders and rocked her head slightly. She addressed herself to Alleyn. Undoubtedly this Monsieur Rivera had been passionately attached. That was evident. And Mademoiselle had responded, being extremely impressionable. But an engagement? Not precisely. He had urged it. There had been scenes. Reconciliations. Further scenes. But last night! She suddenly executed a complicated and vivid gesture with her right hand as if she wrote something off on the air. And against the unuttered but almost tangible disapproval of the English servants, Hortense, with a darting incisiveness, said: “Last night everything was ended. But irrevocably ended.”

It appeared that at twenty to ten Hortense was summoned to Lady Pastern’s bedroom, where she prepared her for the road, putting her into a cloak, and adding, Alleyn supposed, some kind of super-gloss to that already immaculate surface. Hortense kept an eye on the time as the car was ordered for ten-thirty and Lady Pastern liked to have leisure. About ten minutes later Miss Henderson had come in with the news that Félicité was extremely excited and wished to make an elaborate change in her toilette. She herself was sent to Félicité’s room.

“And conceive the scene, Monsieur!” said Hortense, breaking into her native tongue. “The room in complete disarray and Mademoiselle in déshabillé. There must be a completely new toilette, you understand. Everything, from the foundation, is it not? And while I dress her she relates the whole story. With Monsieur Rivera it is as if it had never been. There has been a formidable quarrel. She had dismissed him forever and in the meantime a letter has arrived in romantic circumstances. It is a letter from a journalistic gentleman she has never seen but with whom she has corresponded frequently. He is about to reveal himself. He declares his passionate attachment. Yet secrecy must be observed. And for myself,” Hortense added with conscious rectitude “I would never, never have allowed myself to repeat one syllable of this matter if it had not become my duty to assure Monsieur that as far as Mademoiselle is concerned, she had no further interest in Monsieur Rivera and was happily released from him and that this is not therefore a crime passionel.”

“I see,” Alleyn said. “Yes, perfectly. It is understood.”

Hortense gave him a soubrettish glance and a hard smile.

“And do you know,” he said, “who this person was? The letter-writer?”

Félicité, it appeared, had shown her the letter. And as the party was leaving for the Metronome, Hortense had run downstairs with Lady Pastern’s vinaigrette and had seen (with what emotion!) Monsieur Edward Manx wearing a white flower in his coat. All was revealed! And how great, Hortense had reflected as Spence closed the front door on their departure, how overwhelming would be the joy of her ladyship, who had always desired this union! Hortense had been quite unable to conceal her own gratification and had sung for pure joy as she rejoined her colleagues in the servants’ hall. Her colleagues, with the exception of Monsieur Dupont, now cast black glances at her and refrained from comment.

Alleyn checked over the events related by Hortense and found that they corresponded as nearly as necessary with the group movements suggested by Lord Pastern’s notes. From the nucleus of persons, further individuals had broken away. Manx had been alone in the drawing-room. Lady Pastern had been alone in her room until Hortense arrived. Hortense herself, and William, had cruised about the house and so had Spence. Alleyn was about to lay down his pencil when he remembered Miss Henderson. She had gone to her room earlyish in the evening and had presumably stayed there until after being visited by Félicité she herself reported this incident to Lady Pastern. It was odd, he thought, that he should have forgotten Miss Henderson.

But there were still a good many threads to be caught up and introduced into the texture. He referred again to Lord Pastern’s notes. At 9:26, the notes declared specifically, Lord Pastern, then in the ballroom, had suddenly recollected the sombrero which he desired to wear in his own number. He had glanced at his watch, perhaps, and taken alarm. The note merely said: “9:26. Self. Ballroom. Sombrero. Search for. All over house. William. Spence. Etc.”

Questioned on this matter the servants willingly recalled the characteristic hullabaloo that had been raised in this search. It set in immediately after the last event related by William. Félicité and Rivera were in the study, Miss Henderson was on her way upstairs and William himself was hovering on the landing, when Lord Pastern shot out of the ballroom, shouting: “Where’s my sombrero?” In no time the hunt was in full cry. Spence, William and Lord Pastern scattered in various directions. The sombrero was finally discovered by Miss Henderson (she was no doubt the “etc.” of the notes) in a cupboard on the top landing. Lord Pastern appeared with the thing on his head and re-entered the ballroom in triumph. During this uproar, Spence, questing in the hall, had found a letter on the table addressed to Miss de Suze.

Here the narrative was interrupted by a dignified passage-of-arms between Spence, William and the parlour-maid, Mary. Mr. Spence, William said resentfully, had torn a strip off him for not taking the letter in to Miss Félicité as soon as it came. William had denied knowledge of the letter and had not opened the door to any district messenger. Nor had Mary. Nor had anyone else. Spence obviously considered that someone was lying. Alleyn asked if any of them had seen the envelope. Hortense, needlessly dramatic, cried out that she had tidied an envelope up from the floor of Mademoiselle’s bedroom. Fox held a smothered colloquy about rubbish bins with William, who made an excited exit and returned, flushed with modest triumph, to lay a crushed and stained envelope on the table before Alleyn. Alleyn recognized the eccentricities of Lord Pastern’s typewriter and pocketed the envelope.

“It’s my belief, Mr. Spence,” William announced boldly, “that there never was a district messenger.”

Leaving them no time to digest this theory, Alleyn continued with the business of checking Lord Pastern’s time-table. Spence, still very anxious, said that having discovered the letter on the hall table he had come upstairs and taken it into the drawing-room, where he found only his mistress, Miss Wayne, and Mr. Manx, who, he thought, had not long arrived there from the dining-room. On returning to the landing Spence encountered Miss de Suze, coming out of the study, and gave her the letter. Sounds of the sombrero hunt reached him from upstairs. He was about to join it when a cry of triumph from Lord Pastern reassured him, and he returned to the servants’ quarters. He had noticed the time: 9:45.

“And at that time,” Alleyn said, “Lady Pastern and Miss Wayne are about to leave Mr. Manx alone in the drawing-room and go upstairs. Miss de Suze and Miss Henderson are already in their rooms and Lord Pastern is about to descend, wearing his sombrero. Mr. Bellairs and Mr. Rivera are in the ballroom. We have forty-five minutes to go before the party leaves for the Metronome. What happens next?”

But he had struck a blank. Apart from Hortense’s previous account of her visits to the ladies upstairs there was little to be learned from the servants. They had kept to their own quarters until, a few minutes before the departure for the Metronome, Spence and William had gone into the hall, assisted the gentlemen into their overcoats, given them their hats and gloves and seen them into their cars.

“Who,” Alleyn asked, “helped Mr. Rivera into his coat?”

William had done this.

“Did you notice anything about him? Anything at all out of the ordinary, however slight?”

William said sharply: “The gentleman had a — well, a funny ear, sir. Red and bleeding a bit. A cauliflower ear, as you might say.”

“Had you noticed this earlier in the evening? When you leant over his chair, serving him, at dinner, for instance?”

“No, sir. It was all right then, sir.”

“Sure?”

“Swear to it,” said William crisply.

“You think carefully, Will, before you make statements,” Spence said uneasily.

“I know I’m right, Mr. Spence.”

“How do you imagine he came by this injury?” Alleyn asked. William grinned, pure Cockney. “Well, sir, if you’ll excuse the expression, I’d say somebody had handed the gentleman a fourpenny one.”

“Who, at a guess?”

William rejoined promptly: “Seeing he was holding his right hand, tender-like, in his left and seeing the way the murdered gentleman looked at him so fierce, I’d say it was Mr. Edward Manx, sir.”

Hortense broke into a spate of excited and gratified comment. Monsieur Dupont made a wide, conclusive gesture and exclaimed: “Perfectly! It explains itself!” Mary and Myrtle ejaculated incoherently while Spence and Miss Parker, on a single impulse, rose and shouted awfully: “That WILL DO, William.”

Alleyn and Fox left them, still greatly excited, and retraced their steps to the downstairs hall.

“What have we got out of that little party,” Alleyn grunted, “beyond confirmation of old Pastern’s time-table up to half an hour before they all left the house?”

“Damn all, sir. And what does that teach us?” Fox grumbled. “Only that every man Jack of them was alone at some time or other and might have got hold of the parasol handle, taken it to the study, fixed this silly little stiletto affair in the end with plastic wood and then done Gawd-knows-what. Every man Jack of ’em.”

“And every woman Jill?”

“I suppose so. Wait a bit, though.”

Alleyn gave him the time-table and his own notes. They had moved into the entrance lobby, closing the inner glass doors behind them. “Mull it over in the car,” Alleyn said, “I think there’s a bit more to be got out of it, Fox. Come on.”

But as Alleyn was about to open the front door Fox gave a sort of grunt and he turned back to see Félicité de Suze on the stairs. She was dressed for the day and in the dim light of the hall looked pale and exhausted. For a moment they stared at each other through the glass panel and then tentatively, uncertainly, she made an incomplete gesture with one hand. Alleyn swore under his breath and re-entered the hall.

“Do you want to speak to me?” he said. “You’re up very early.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“I’m sorry,” he said formally.

“I think I do want to speak to you.”

Alleyn nodded to Fox, who re-entered the hall.

“Alone,” said Félicité.

“Inspector Fox is acting with me in this case.”

She glanced discontentedly at Fox. “All the same…” she said, and then as Alleyn made no answer: “Oh, well!”

She was on the third step from the foot of the stairs, standing there boldly, aware of the picture she made. “Lisle told me,” she said, “about you and the letter. Getting it from her, I mean. I suppose you take rather a dim view of my sending Lisle to do my dirty work, don’t you?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I was all bouleversée. I know it was rather awful letting her go, but I think in a way she quite enjoyed it.” He noticed that her upper lip was fuller than the under one and that when she smiled it curved richly. “Darling Lisle,” she said, “doesn’t have much fun and she’s so madly interested always in other people’s little flutters.” She watched Alleyn out of the corners of her eyes and added: “We’re all devoted to her.”

“What do you want to ask me, Miss de Suze?”

“Please may I have the letter back? Please!”

“In due course,” he said. “Certainly.”

“Not now?”

“I’m afraid not now.”

“That’s rather a bore,” said Félicité. “I suppose I’d better come clean in a big way.”

“If it’s relevant to the matter in hand,” Alleyn agreed. “I am only concerned with the death of Mr. Carlos Rivera.”

She leant back against the bannister, stretching her arms along it and looking downwards, arranging herself for him to look at. “I’d suggest we went somewhere where we could sit down,” she said, “but here seems to be the only place where there’s no lurking minor detective.”

“Let it be here, then.”

“You are not,” Félicité said, “making this very easy.”

“I’m sorry. I shall be glad to hear what you have to say but to tell the truth, there’s a heavy day’s work in front of us.”

They stood there, disliking each other. Alleyn thought: “She’s going to be one of the tricky ones. She may have nothing to say; I know the signs but I can’t be sure of them.” And Félicité thought: “I didn’t really notice him last night. If he’d known what Carlos was like he’d have despised me. He’s taller than Ned. I’d like him to be on my side thinking how courageous and young and attractive I am. Younger than Lisle, for instance, with two men in love with me. I wonder what sort of women he likes. I suppose I’m frightened.”

She slid down into a sitting position on the stairs and clasped her hands about her knees; young and a bit boyish, a touch of the gamine.

“It’s about this wretched letter. Well, not wretched at all, really, because it’s from a chap I’m very fond of. You’ve read it, of course.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“My dear, I don’t mind. Only, as you’ve seen, it’s by way of being number one secrecy and I’ll feel a bit low if it all comes popping out, particularly as it’s got utterly no connection with your little game. It just couldn’t be less relevant.”

“Good.”

“But I suppose I’ve got to prove that, haven’t I?”

“It would be an excellent move if you can.”

“Here we go, then,” said Félicité.

Alleyn listened wearily, pinning his attention down to the recital, shutting out the thought of time sliding away and of his wife, who would soon wake and look to see if he was there. Félicité told him that she had corresponded with G.P.F. of Harmony and that his advice had been too marvellously understanding and that she had felt an urge like the kick of a mule to meet him, but that although his replies had grown more and more come-to-ish he had insisted that his identity must remain hidden. “All Cupid-and-Psyche-ish only definitely less rewarding,” she said. And then the letter had arrived and Edward Manx had appeared with a white flower in his coat and suddenly, after never having gone much for old Ned, she had felt astronomically uplifted. Because, after all, it was rather bracing, wasn’t it, to think that all the time Ned was G.P.F. and writing these really gorgeous things and falling for one like a dray-load of bricks? Here Félicité paused and then added rather hurriedly and with an air of hauteur: “You’ll understand that by this time poor Carlos had, from my point of view, become comparatively a dim figure. I mean, to be as bald as an egg about it, he just faded out. I mean it couldn’t have mattered less about Carlos because clearly I wasn’t his cup of tea and we’d both gone tepid on it and I knew he wouldn’t mind. You do see what I mean about that, don’t you?”

“Are you trying to tell me that you and Rivera had parted as friends?”

Félicité shook her head vaguely and raised her eyebrows. “Even that makes it sound too important,” she said. “It all just came peacefully unstuck.”

“And there was no quarrel, for instance when you and he were in the study between a quarter and half-past nine? Or later, between Mr. Manx and Mr. Rivera?”

There was a long pause. Félicité bent forward and jerked at the strap of her shoe. “What in the world,” she said indistinctly, “put these quaint little notions into your head?”

“Are they completely false?”

“I know,” she said loudly and cheerfully. She looked up into his face. “You’ve been gossiping with the servants.” She appealed to Fox. “Hasn’t he?” she demanded playfully.

“I’m sure I couldn’t say, Miss de Suze,” said Fox blandly.

“How you could!” she accused Alleyn. “Which of them was it? Was it Hortense? My poor Mr. Alleyn, you don’t know Hortense. She’s the world’s most accomplished liar! She just can’t help herself, poor thing. It’s pathological.”

“So there was no quarrel?” Alleyn said. “Between any of you?”

“My dear, haven’t I told you!”

“Then why,” he asked, “did Mr. Manx punch Mr. Rivera over the ear?”

Félicité’s eyes and mouth opened. Then she hunched her shoulders and caught the tip of her tongue between her teeth. He could have sworn she was astonished and in a moment it was evident that she was gratified.

“No!” she said. “Honestly? Ned did? Well, I must say I call that a handsome tribute. When did it happen? Before we went down to the Met? After dinner? When?”

Alleyn looked steadily at her. “I thought,” he said, “that perhaps you could tell me that.”

“I? But I promise you…”

“Had he got a trickle of blood on his ear when you talked to him in the study? On the occasion, you know, when you say there was no quarrel?”

“Let me think,” said Félicité, and rested her head on her crossed arms. But the movement was not swift enough. He had seen the blank look of panic in her eyes. “No,” her voice, muffled by her arms, said slowly, “no, I’m sure…”

There was some change of light above, where the stairs ran up to the first landing. He looked up. Carlisle Wayne stood there in the shadow. Her figure and posture still retained the effect of movement, as if while she came downstairs she had suddenly been held in suspension as the action of a motion picture may be suspended to give emphasis to a specific moment. Over Félicité’s bent head, Alleyn with a slight movement of his hand arrested Carlisle’s descent. Félicité had begun to speak again.

“After all,” she was saying, “one is a bit uplifted. It’s not every day in the week that people give other people cauliflower ears for love of one’s bright eyes.” She raised her face and looked at him. “How naughty of Ned, but how sweet of him. Darling Ned!”

“No, really!” said Carlisle strongly. “This is too much!”

Félicité, with a stifled cry, was on her feet.

Alleyn said: “Hullo, Miss Wayne. Good morning to you. Have you any theory about why Mr. Manx gave Rivera a clip over the ear? He did give him a clip, you know. Why?”

“If you must know,” Carlisle said in a high voice, “it was because Rivera kissed me when we met on the landing.”

“Good Lord!” Alleyn ejaculated. “Why didn’t you say so before? Kissed you, did he? Did you like it?”

“Don’t be a bloody fool!” Carlisle shouted and bolted upstairs.

“I must say,” Félicité said, “I call that rather poor of darling Lisle.”

“If you’ll excuse us,” Alleyn said. He and Fox left her staring thoughtfully at her finger-nails.

“A shave,” Alleyn said in the car, “a bath and, with luck, two hours’ sleep. I’ll take it out at home. We’ll send the stuff on to the experts. What about you, Fox? Troy will be delighted to fix you up.”

“Thank you very much, sir, but I wouldn’t think of troubling Mrs. Alleyn. There’s a little place — ”

“Be damned to your little place. I’ve had enough insubordination from you, my lad. To hell with you. You’re coming to us.”

Fox accepted this singular invitation in the spirit in which it was made. He took out his spectacles, Alleyn’s notebook and Lord Pastern’s time-table. Alleyn dragged his palm across his jaw, shuddered, yawned and closed his eyes. “A hideous curse on this case,” he murmured and appeared to sleep. Fox began to whisper to himself. The car slipped down Cliveden Place, into Grosvenor Place, into Hyde Park Corner. “ ’T,’t,’t,” Fox whispered over the time-table.

“You sound,” Alleyn said without opening his eyes, “like Dr. Johnson on his way to Streatham. Can you crack your joints, Foxkin?”

“I see what you mean about this ruddy time-table.”

“What did I mean? Split me and sink me if I know what I meant.”

“Well, sir, our customer, whoever he or she may be — and you know my views on the point — had to be in the ballroom to pick up the bit of umbrella shaft, in the drawing-room to collect the stiletto and alone in the study to fix the stiletto in the bit of umbrella shaft with plastic wood.”

“You’ll be coming round the mountain when you come.”

“It is a bit of a mountain and that’s a fact. According to what the young lady, Miss Wayne, I mean, told you, sir, this perishing parasol was all right before dinner when she was in the ballroom and handled it, and according to her, his lordship was in the study drawing the bullets out of the cartridges. If that’s correct he didn’t get a chance to play the fool with the parasol before dinner. What’s more it fits in with his lordship’s own statement, which Bellairs can speak to if he ever wakes up, that he took the parasol to bits on the piano after dinner. For fun.”

“Quite.”

“All right. Now where does this get us? If the time-table’s correct, his lordship was never alone in the study after that.”

“And the only time he was alone at all, moreover, he was up and down the house, bellowing like a bull for his sombrero.”

“Doesn’t that look like establishing an alibi?” Fox demanded.

“It looks a bit like the original alibi itself, Br’er Fox.”

“He might have carried the tube of plastic wood round in his pocket.”

“So he might. Together with the bit of parasol and the stiletto, pausing in mid-bellow to fix the job.”

“Gah! How about him just taking the stuff in his pocket to the Metronome and fixing everything there?”

“Oh Lord! When? How?”

“Lavatory?” Fox suggested hopefully.

“And when did he put the weapon in the gun? Skelton looked down the barrel just before they started playing, don’t forget.”

The car had stopped in a traffic jam in Piccadilly. Fox contemplated the Green Park with disapproval, Alleyn still kept his eyes shut. Big Ben struck seven.

“By Gum!” Fox said, bringing his palm down on his knee. “By Gum, how about this? How about his lordship in his damn-your-eyes fashion fitting the weapon into the gun while he sat there behind his drums? In front of everybody, while one of the other turns was on? It’s amazing what you can do when you brazen it out. What’s that yarn they’re always quoting, sir? I’ve got it. The Purloined Letter. Proving that if you make a thing obvious enough nobody notices it?”

Alleyn opened one eye. “The Purloined Letter,” he said. He opened the other eye. “Fox, my cabbage, my rare edition, my objet d’art, my own especial bit of bijouterie, be damned if I don’t think you’ve caught an idea. Come on. Let’s further think of this.”

They talked intensively until the car pulled up, in a cul-de-sac off Coventry Street, before Alleyn’s flat.

Early sunlight streamed into the little entrance hall. Beneath a Benozzo Gozzoli, a company of dahlias, paper-white in a blue bowl, cast translucent shadows on a white parchment wall. Alleyn looked about him contentedly.

“Troy’s under orders not to get up till eight,” he said. “You take first whack at the bath, Fox, while I have a word with her. Use my razor. Wait a bit.” He disappeared and returned with towels. “There’ll be something to eat at half-past nine,” he said. “The visitors’ room’s all yours, Fox. Sleep well.”

“Very kind, I’m sure,” said Fox. “May I send my compliments to Mrs. Alleyn, sir?”

“She’ll be delighted to receive them. See you later.”

Troy was awake in her white room, sitting up with her head aureoled in short locks of hair. “Like a faun,” Alleyn said, “or a bronze dahlia. Are you well this morning?”

“Bouncing, thanks. And you?”

“As you see. Unhousel’d, unanel’d and un-everything that’s civilized.”

“A poor state of affairs,” said Troy. “You look like the gentleman in that twenty-foot canvas in the Luxembourg. Boiled shirt in dents and gazing out over Paris through lush curtains. I think it’s called ‘The Hopeless Dawn’! His floozy is still asleep on an elephantine bed, you remember.”

“I don’t remember. Talking of floozies, oughtn’t you to be asleep yourself?”

“God bless my soul!” Troy complained. “I haven’t been bitten by the tsetse fly. It’s getting on for nine hours since I went to bed, damn it.”

“O.K. O.K.”

“What’s happened, Rory?”

“One of the kind we don’t fancy.”

“Oh, no.”

“You’ll hear about it anyway, so I may as well tell you. It’s that florid number we saw playing the piano-accordion, the one with the teeth and hair.”

“You don’t mean — ”

“Somebody pinked him with a sort of dagger made out of a bit of a parasol and a needlework stiletto.”

“Catch!”

He explained at some length.

“Well but…” Troy stared at her husband. “When have you got to be at the Yard?”

“Ten.”

“All right. You’ve got two hours and time for breakfast. Good morning, darling.”

“Fox is in the bathroom. I know I’m not fit for a lady’s bed chamber.”

“Who said?”

“If you didn’t, nobody.” He put his arm across her and stooped his head. “Troy,” he said, “may I ask Fox this morning?”

“If you want to, my dearest.”

“I think I might. How much, at a rough guess, would you say I loved you?”

“Words fail me,” said Troy, imitating the late Harry Tate.

“And me.”

“There’s Mr. Fox coming out of the bathroom. Away with you.”

“I suppose so. Good morning, Mrs. Quiverful.”

On his way to the bathroom Alleyn looked in upon Fox. He found him lying on the visitors’ room bed, without his jacket but incredibly neat; his hair damp, his jaw gleaming, his shirt stretched tight over his thick pectoral muscles. His eyes were closed but he opened them as Alleyn looked in.

“I’ll call you at half-past nine,” Alleyn said. “Did you know you were going to be a godfather, Br’er Fox?” And as Fox’s eyes widened he shut the door and went whistling to the bathroom.