Ngaio Marsh - A Wreath for Rivera

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

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

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

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

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

“Fox,” said Alleyn.

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

After a moment’s hesitation he took her hand.

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

“Certainly, Cousin Cécile. Of course.”

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

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

“Good night, Miss Wayne.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t see why.”

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

“All right?” Alleyn said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alleyn took out his notebook.

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

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

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

“Dire. What of it?”

“Did the others hold this opinion?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Breezy worked it because…”

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