A Wreath for Rivera (28 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do what?”

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

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

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

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

“God, you’re telling
me
!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No,” Alleyn said.

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

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

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

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

“Well,” Dr. Curtis said. “I might.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He’s there,” Alleyn said.

“How d’you know?”

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

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

“Softly does it,” Alleyn murmured.

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

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

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

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

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

“Why are we waiting?” Nigel asked fretfully.

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

“Am I coming in with you?”

“Do you want to?”

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

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

“Extremely probable,” Alleyn agreed.

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

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

“Hideous,” Alleyn said.

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

Nigel glanced at his watch and lit a cigarette.

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

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

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

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

“Police,” Alleyn said.

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

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

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

Fox’s boot moved over the threshold.

“I’ll come out,” Manx repeated.

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

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

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

He made a high-pitched snarling noise as they closed round him and reached out his hand towards an inkpot on the desk.

Fox said: “Now, my lord, don’t you do anything you’ll be sorry for,” and moved the inkpot.

Lord Pastern sunk his head with a rapid movement between his shoulders. From behind them, Edward Manx said: “I don’t know why you’ve done this, Alleyn. It’ll get you no further.”

Lord Pastern said: “Shut up, Ned,” and glared at Alleyn. “I’ll have you kicked out of the force,” he said. “Kicked out, by God!” And after a silence: “You don’t get a word from me. Not a syllable.”

Alleyn pulled up a chair and sat down, facing him. “That will suit us very well,” he said. “You are going to listen, and I advise you to do so with as good a grace as you can muster. When you’ve heard what I’ve got to say you may read the statement I’ve brought with me. You can sign it, alter it, dictate another or refuse to do any of these things. But in the meantime, Lord Pastern, you are going to listen.”

Lord Pastern folded his arms tightly across his chest, rested his chin on his tie and screwed up his eyes. Alleyn took a folded typescript from his breast pocket, opened it and crossed his knees.

“This statement was prepared,” he said, “on the assumption that you are the man who calls himself G. P. Friend and writes the articles signed G.P.F. in
Harmony
. It is a statement of what we believe to be fact and doesn’t concern itself overmuch with motive. I, however, will deal rather more fully with motive. In launching this paper and in writing these articles, you found it necessary to observe complete anonymity. Your reputation as probably the most quarrelsome man in England, your loudly publicized domestic rows, and your notorious eccentricities would make an appearance in the role of Guide, Philosopher and Friend a fantastically bad joke. We presume, therefore, that through a reliable agent, you deposited adequate security in a convenient bank with the specimen signature of G. P. Friend as the negotiating instrument. You then set up the legend of your own anonymity and launched yourself in the rôle of oracle. With huge success.”

Lord Pastern did not stir but a film of complacency overspread his face.

“This success,” Alleyn went on, “it must always be remembered, depends entirely upon the preservation of your anonymity. Once let
Harmony’s
devotees learn that G.P.F. is none other than the notoriously unharmonious peer whose public quarrels have been the punctual refuge of the penny-press during the silly season — once let that be known and G.P.F. is sunk, and Lord Pastern loses a fortune. All right. Everything goes along swimmingly. You do a lot of your journalism at Duke’s Gate, no doubt, but you also make regular visits to this office wearing dark glasses, the rather shabby hat and scarf which are hanging on the wall there, and the old jacket you have on at this moment. You work behind locked doors and Mr. Edward Manx is possibly your only confidant. You enjoy yourself enormously and make a great deal of money. So, perhaps, in his degree, does Mr. Manx.”

Manx said: “I’ve no shares in the paper if that’s what you mean. My articles are paid for at the usual rate.”

“Shut up, Ned,” said his cousin automatically.

“The paper,” Alleyn continued, “is run on eccentric but profitable lines. It explodes bombs. It exposes rackets. It mingles soft-soap and cyanide. In particular it features an extremely efficient and daringly personal attack on the drug racket. It employs experts, it makes accusations, it defies and invites prosecution. Its information is accurate and if it occasionally frustrates its own professed aims by warning criminals before the police are in a position to arrest them, it is far too much inflated with crusader’s zeal and rising sales to worry its head about
that
.”

“Look here, Alleyn…” Manx began angrily, and simultaneously Lord Pastern shouted: “What the hell do you think you’re getting at!”

“One moment,” Alleyn said. Manx thrust his hands in his pockets and began to move about the room. “Better to hear this out, after all,” he muttered.

“Much better,” Alleyn agreed. “I’ll go on. Everything prospered in the
Harmony
set-up until you, Lord Pastern, discovered an urge to exploit your talents as a tympanist and allied yourself with Breezy Bellairs and His Boys. Almost immediately there were difficulties. First: your stepdaughter, for whom I think you have a great affection, became attracted by Carlos Rivera, the piano-accordionist in the band. You are an observant man; for a supreme egoist, surprisingly so. At some time of your association with the Boys, I don’t know precisely when, you became aware that Breezy Bellairs was taking drugs and, more important, that Carlos Rivera was supplying them. Through your association with
Harmony
, you are well up in the methods of drug distribution and you are far too sharp not to realize that the usual pattern was being followed. Bellairs was in a position to act as a minor distributing agent. He was introduced to the drug, acquired a habit for it, was forced to hand it out to clients at the Metronome and as a reward was given as much as Rivera thought was good for him at the usual exorbitant rate.”

Alleyn looked curiously at Lord Pastern, who, at that moment, met his eye and blinked twice.

“It’s an odd situation,” Alleyn said, “isn’t it? Here we have a man of eclectic, violent and short-lived enthusiasms suddenly confronted with a situation where his two reigning passions and his one enduring attachment are brought into violent opposition.”

He turned to Manx, who had stopped still and was looking fixedly at him.

“A situation of great possibilities from your professional point of view, I should imagine,” Alleyn said. “The stepdaughter whom Lord Pastern loves falls for Rivera who is engaged in an infamous trade which Lord Pastern is zealous in fighting. At the same time Rivera’s dupe is the conductor of the band in which Lord Pastern burns to perform. As a final twist in an already tricky situation, Rivera has discovered, perhaps amongst Lord Pastern’s music during a band rehearsal, some rough drafts for G.P.F.’s page, typed on Duke’s Gate letter-paper. He is using them, no doubt, to force on his engagement to Miss de Suze. ‘Either support my suit or — ’ For Rivera, in addition to running a drug racket, is an accomplished blackmailer. How is Lord Pastern to play the drums, break the engagement, preserve his anonymity as G.P.F. and explode the drug racket?”

“You can’t possibly,” Manx said, “have proof of a quarter of this. It’s the most brazen guesswork.”

“A certain amount is guesswork. But we have enough information and hard fact to carry us some way. I think that between you, you are going to fill out the rest.”

Manx laughed shortly. “What a hope!” he said.

“Well,” Alleyn murmured, “let us go on and see. Lord Pastern’s inspiration comes out of a clear sky while he is working on his copy for G.P.F.’s page in
Harmony
. Among the letters in his basket seeking guidance, philosophy and friendship is one from his stepdaughter.” He stopped short. “I wonder,” he said, “if at some time or other there is also one from his wife? Asking perhaps for advice in her marital problems.”

Manx looked quickly at Lord Pastern and away again.

“It might explain,” Alleyn said thoughtfully, “why Lady Pastern is so vehement in her disapproval of
Harmony
. If she
did
write to G.P.F., I imagine the answer was one of the five-shilling Private Chat letters and extremely displeasing to her.”

Lord Pastern gave a short bark of laughter and shot a glance at his cousin.

“However,” Alleyn went on, “we are concerned, at this point, with the fact that Miss de Suze does write for guidance. Out of this coincidence, an idea is born. He answers the letter. She replies. The correspondence goes on, becoming, as Miss de Suze put it to me, more and more come-to-ish. Lord Pastern is an adept. He stages (again I quote Miss de Suze) a sort of Cupid-and-Psyche act at one remove. She asks if they may meet. He replies ardently but refuses. He has all the fun of watching her throughout in his own character. Meanwhile he appears to Rivera to be supporting his suit. But the ice gets thinner and thinner and his figure-skating increasingly hazardous. Moreover, here he is with a golden opportunity for a major journalistic scoop. He could expose Bellairs, represent himself as a brilliant investigator who has worked on his own in the band and now hands the whole story over to
Harmony
. And yet — and yet — there are those captivating drums, those entrancing cymbals, those stimulating wire whisks. There is his own composition. There is his début. He skates on precariously but with exhilaration. He fiddles with the idea of weaning Bellairs from his vice and frightens him into fits by threatening to supplant Syd Skelton. He — ”

“Did you,” Lord Pastern interrupted, “go to that police school or whatever it is? Hendon?”

“No,” Alleyn said. “I didn’t.”

“Well, get on, get on,” he snapped.

“We come to the night of the début and of the great inspiration. Lady Pastern quite obviously desires a marriage between her daughter and Mr. Edward Manx.”

Manx made an expostulatory sound. Alleyn waited for a moment. “Look here, Alleyn,” Manx said, “you can at least observe some kind of decency. I object most strongly — ” He glared at Nigel Bathgate.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to lump it,” Alleyn said mildly. Nigel said:

“I’m sorry, Manx. I’ll clear out if you like, but I’ll hear it all, in any case.”

Manx turned on his heel, walked over to the window and stood there with his back to them.

“Lord Pastern,” Alleyn continued, “seems to have shared this hope. And now, having built up a spurious but ardent mystery round G.P.F., he gets his big idea. Perhaps he notices Mr. Manx’s instant dislike of Rivera and perhaps he supposes this dislike to arise from an attachment to his stepdaughter. At all events he sees Mr. Manx put a white carnation in his coat, he goes off to his study and he types a romantic note to Miss de Suze in which G.P.F. reveals himself as the wearer of a white carnation. The note swears her to secrecy. Miss de Suze, coming straight from a violent quarrel with Rivera, sees the white flower in Mr. Manx’s jacket and reacts according to plan.”

Manx said, “Oh, my
God
!” and drummed with his fingers on the window-pane.

“The one thing that seems to have escaped Lord Pastern’s notice,” Alleyn said, “is the fact that Mr. Manx is enormously attracted, not by Miss de Suze, but by Miss Carlisle Wayne.”

“Hell!” said Lord Pastern sharply and slewed round in his swivel-chair. “Hi!” he shouted. “Ned.”

“For pity’s sake,” Manx said impatiently, “let’s forget it. It couldn’t matter less.” He caught his breath. “In the context,” he added.

Lord Pastern contemplated his cousin’s back with extreme severity and then directed his attention once more upon Alleyn. “Well?” he said.

“Well,” Alleyn repeated, “so much for the great inspiration. But your activity hasn’t exhausted itself. There is a scene with Bellairs in the ballroom, overheard by your footman and in part related to me by the wretched Breezy himself. During this scene you suggest yourself as a successor to Syd Skelton, and tick Bellairs off about his drug habit. You go so far, I think, as to talk about writing to
Harmony
. The idea, at this stage, would appear to be a comprehensive one. You will frighten Breezy into giving up cocaine, expose Rivera and keep on with the band. It was during this interview that you behaved in a rather strange manner. You unscrewed the end section of Lady Pastern’s parasol, removed the knob and absent-mindedly pushed the bit of shaft a little way up the muzzle of your revolver, holding down the spring clip as you did so. You found that it fitted like a miniature ram-rod or bolt. Or, if you like, a rifle grenade.”

“
I
told you that meself.”

“Exactly. Your policy throughout has been to pile up evidence against yourself. A sane man, and we are presuming you sane, doesn’t do that sort of thing unless he believes he has an extra trick or two in hand, some conclusive bits of evidence that must clear him. It was obvious that you thought you could produce some such evidence and you took great glee in exhibiting the devastating frankness of complete innocence. Another form of figure-skating on thin ice. You would let us blunder about making clowns of ourselves, and, when the sport palled or the ice began to crack, you would, if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor, plank down the extra tricks.”

A web of thread-like veins started out on Lord Pastern’s blanched cheek-bones. He brushed up his moustache and, finding his hand shook, looked quickly at it and thrust it inside the breast of his coat.

“It seemed best,” Alleyn said, “to let you go your own gait and see how far it would take you. You wanted us to believe that Mr. Manx was G.P.F.; there was nothing to be gained, we thought, and there might be something lost in letting you see we recognized the equal possibility of your being G.P.F. yourself. This became a probability when the drafts of copy turned up amongst Rivera’s blackmailing material. Because Rivera had never met Manx but was closely associated with you.”

Alleyn glanced up at his colleague. “It was Inspector Fox,” he said, “who first pointed out that you had every chance, during the performance, while the spot light was on somebody else, to load the revolver with the fantastic bolt. All right. But there remained your first trump card — the substituted weapon; the apparently irrefutable evidence that the gun we recovered from Breezy was not the one you brought down to the Metronome. But when we found the original weapon in the lavatory beyond the inner office that difficulty, too, fell into place in the general design. We had got as far as abundant motive and damning circumstance. Opportunity began to appear.”

Alleyn stood up and with him Lord Pastern, who pointed a quivering finger at him.

“You bloody fool!” he said, drawing his lips back from his teeth. “You can’t arrest me — you — ”

“I believe I could arrest you,” Alleyn rejoined, “but not for murder. Your second trump card is unfortunately valid. You didn’t kill Rivera because Rivera was not killed by the revolver.”