Ngaio Marsh - A Wreath for Rivera

“Planted it? Anyway, where is it?”

“Somewhere at the Metronome if we’re on the right track and we’ve searched the Metronome. But go on.”

“Well, sir, if his lordship didn’t change the gun who did?”

“His stepdaughter could have done it. Or any other member of his party. They were close to the sombrero, remember. They got up to dance and moved round between the table and the edge of the dais. Lady Pastern was alone at the table for some time. I didn’t see her move but I wasn’t watching her, of course. All the ladies had largish evening bags. The catch in that theory, Br’er Fox, is that they wouldn’t have known they were going to be within reach of the sombrero and it’s odds on they didn’t know he was going to put his perishing gun under his sombrero, anyway.”

Fox bit at his short grizzled moustache, planted the palms of his hands on his knees and appeared to go into a short trance. He interrupted it to mutter: “Skelton, now. Syd Skelton. Could Syd Skelton have worked the substitution? You’re going to remind me they were all watching him, but were they watching all that closely? Syd Skelton.”

“Go on, Fox.”

“Syd Skelton’s on his own, in a manner of speaking. He left the band platform before his lordship came on for his turn. Syd walked out. Suppose he had substituted this gun for the other with the initials. Suppose he walked right out and dropped the other one down the first grating he came to? Syd knew he was going to get the chance, didn’t he?”

“How, when and where did he convert the bit of parasol shaft and stiletto into the bolt and put it up the barrel of the second revolver? Where did he get his ammunition? And when did he get the gun? He wasn’t at Duke’s Gate.”

“Yes,” Fox said heavily, “that’s awkward. I wonder if you could get round that one. Well, leave it for the time being. Who else have we got? Breezy. From the substitution angle, can we do anything about Breezy?”

“He didn’t get alongside Pastern, on either of their statements, from the time Skelton looked at the gun until after Rivera was killed. They were alone together in the band-room before Breezy made his entrance but Pastern, with his usual passionate industry in clearing other people, says Breezy didn’t go near him. And Pastern had his gun in his hip pocket, remember.”

Fox returned to his trance.

“I think,” Alleyn said, “it’s going to be one of those affairs where the whittling away of impossibilities leaves one face to face with a mere improbability which, as you would say, faute de mieux , one is forced to accept. And I think, so far, Fox, we haven’t found my improbable notion an impossibility. At least it has the virtue of putting the fancy touches in a more credible light.”

“We’ll never make a case of it, I reckon, if it does turn out to be the answer.”

“And we’ll never make a case of it if we pull in his lordship and base the charge on the assumption that he substituted this gun for the one he loaded and says he fired. Skelton’s put up by the defence and swears he examined the thing at his own request and saw the initials and that this is not the same weapon. Counsel points out that three minutes later Lord Pastern goes on for his turn.”

Fox snarled quietly to himself and presently broke out: “We call this blasted thing a bolt. Be damned if I don’t think we’ll get round to calling it a dart. Be damned if I’m not beginning to wonder if it was used like one. Thrown at the chap from close by. After all it’s not impossible.”

“Who by? Breezy?”

“No,” Fox said slowly. “No. Not Breezy. His lordship cleared Breezy in advance by searching him. Would you swear Breezy didn’t pick anything up from anywhere after he came out to conduct?”

“I believe I would. He walked rapidly through the open door and down an alleyway between the musicians. He stood in a spot light a good six feet or more away from anything, conducting like a great jerking jelly-fish. They all say he couldn’t have picked anything up after Pastern searched him, and in any case I would certainly swear he didn’t put his hands near his pockets and that up to the time Rivera fell he was conducting with both hands and that none of his extraordinary antics in the least resembled dart-throwing. I was watching him. They rather fascinated me, those antics. And if you want any more, Br’er Fox, Rivera had his back turned to Breezy when he fell.”

“All right. His lordship then. His lordship was facing Rivera. Close to him. Blast . Unless he’s ambidextrous, how’d he fire off a gun and throw a dart all in a split second? This is getting me nowhere. Who else, then?”

“Do you fancy Lady Pastern as a dart queen?”

Fox chuckled. “That would be the day, sir, wouldn’t it? But how about Mr. Manx? We’ve got a motive for Manx. Rivera had proof that Manx wrote these sissy articles in Harmony . Manx doesn’t want that known. Blackmail,” said Fox without much conviction.

“Foxkin,” Alleyn said, “let there be a truce to these barren speculations. May I remind you that up to the time he fell Rivera was raising hell with a piano-accordion?”

Fox said, after another long pause: “You know I like this case. It’s got something. Yes. And may I remind you , sir, that he wasn’t meant to fall? None of them expected him to fall. Therefore he fell because somebody planted a bloody little steel embroidery gadget on a parasol handle in his heart before he fell. So where, if you don’t object to the inquiry, Mr. Alleyn, do we go from here?”

“I think,” Alleyn said, “that you institute a search for the missing gun and I pay a call on Miss Petronella Xantippe Henderson.” He got up and fetched his hat. “And I think, moreover,” he added, “that we’ve been making a couple of perishing fools of ourselves.”

“About the dart?” Fox demanded. “Or the gun?”

“About Harmony . Think this one over while I call on Miss Henderson and then tell me what you make of it.”

Five minutes later he went out, leaving Fox in a concentrated trance.

Miss Henderson received him in her room. It had the curiously separate, not quite congenial air that seems to be the characteristic of sitting-rooms that are permanently occupied by solitary women in other people’s houses. There were photographs: of Félicité, as a child, as a schoolgirl and in her presentation dress; one intimidating portrait of Lady Pastern and one, enlarged, it would seem, from a snapshot, of Lord Pastern in knickerbockers and shooting boots, with a gun under his arm, a spaniel at his heels, a large house at his back and an expression of impertinence on his face. Above the desk hung a group of women undergraduates clad in the tube-like brevity of the nineteen-twenties. A portion of Lady Margaret Hall loomed in the background.

Miss Henderson was dressed with scrupulous neatness, in a dark suit that faintly resembled a uniform or habit. She received Alleyn with perfect composure. He looked at her hair, greyish, quietly fashionable in its controlled grooming, at her eyes, which were pale, and at her mouth, which was unexpectedly full.

“Well, Miss Henderson,” he said, “I wonder if you will be able to throw any light on this very obscure business.”

“I’m afraid it’s most unlikely,” she said tranquilly.

“You never know. There’s one point, at least, where I hope you will help us. You were present at last night’s party in this house, both before and after dinner, and you were in the drawing-room when Lord Pastern, with the help of all the people concerned, worked out and wrote down the time-table which he afterwards gave to me.”

“Yes,” she agreed after he had waited for a second or two.