Ngaio Marsh - A Wreath for Rivera

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

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

“Bailey had a go at it?”

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

“How about the typewriter?”

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

“No cap on the plastic wood tube.”

“It was on the floor.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s what I reckoned.”

“I think you’re right.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Bailey and Thompson are in there.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’d as soon stay, Mr. Alleyn.”

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

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

“I might have another dig at the witnesses.”

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

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