by Ngaio Marsh
This at least was plain sailing. ‘Yes. She tidies it very often for Aunt Cile.’ And immediately Carlisle thought: ‘I’m no good at this. Here it comes again.’
‘Was she tidying the box last night? After dinner?’
‘Yes,’ Carlisle said flatly. ‘Oh, yes. Yes.’
‘Did you notice, particularly? When exactly was it?’
‘Before the men came in. Well, only Ned came in actually, Uncle George and the other two were in the ballroom.’
‘Lord Pastern and Bellairs were at this time in the ballroom and Rivera and Manx in the dining-room. According to the time-table.’ He opened a file on his desk.
‘I only know that Fée had gone when Ned came in.’
‘She had joined Rivera in the study by then. But to return to this incident in the drawing-room. Can you describe the scene with the work-box? What were you talking about?’
Félicité had been defending Rivera. She had been on edge in one of her moods. Carlisle had thought: ‘She’s had Rivera but she won’t own up.’ And Hendy, listening, had moved her fingers about inside the work-box. There was the stiletto in Hendy’s fingers and, dangling from her neck, the pencil on its chain.
‘They were talking about Rivera. Félicité considered he’d been snubbed a bit and was cross about it.’
‘At about this time Lord Pastern must have fired off his gun in the ballroom,’ Alleyn muttered. He had spread the time-table out on his desk. He glanced up at her. His glance, she noticed, was never vague or indirect, as other people’s might be. It had the effect of immediately collecting your attention. ‘Do you remember that?’ he asked.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘It must have startled you, surely?’
What were her hands doing now? She was holding the side of her neck again.
‘How did you all react to what must have been an infernal racket? What for instance did Miss Henderson do? Do you remember?’
Her lips parted drily. She closed them again, pressing them together.
‘I think you do remember,’ he said. ‘What did she do?’
Carlisle said loudly: ‘She let the lid of the box drop. Perhaps the pencil was caught and pulled off the chain.’
‘Was anything in her hands?’
‘The stiletto,’ she said, feeling the words grind out.
‘Good. And then?’
‘She dropped it.’
Perhaps that would satisfy him. It fell to the carpet. Anyone might have picked it up. Anyone, she thought desperately. Perhaps he will think a servant might have picked it up. Or even Breezy Bellairs, much later.
‘Did Miss Henderson pick it up?’
‘No.’
‘Did anyone?’
She said nothing.
‘You? Lady Pastern? No. Miss de Suze?’
She said nothing.
‘And a little while afterwards, a very little while, she went out of the room. Because it was immediately after the report that William saw her go into the study with Rivera. He noticed that she had something shiny in her hand.’
‘She didn’t even know she had it. She picked it up automatically. I expect she just put it down in the study and forgot all about it.’
‘We found the ivory handle there,’ Alleyn said, and Fox made a slight gratified sound in his throat.
‘But you mustn’t think there was any significance in all this.’
‘We’re glad to know how and when the stiletto got into the study, at least.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose so. Yes.’
Someone tapped on the door. The bareheaded constable came in with a package and an envelope. He laid them on the desk. ‘From Captain Entwhistle, sir. You asked to have them as soon as they came in.’
He went out without looking at Carlisle.
‘Oh, yes,’ Alleyn said. ‘The report on the revolver, Fox. Good. Miss Wayne, before you go, I’ll ask you to have a look at the revolver. It’ll be one more identification check.’
She waited while Inspector Fox came out from behind his desk and unwrapped the parcel. It contained two separate packages. She knew the smaller one must be the dart and wondered if Rivera’s blood was still encrusted on the stiletto. Fox opened the larger package and came to her with the revolver.
‘Will you look at it?’ Alleyn said. ‘You may handle it. I would like your formal identification.’
Carlisle turned the heavy revolver in her hands. There was a strong light in the room. She bent her head and they waited. She looked up, bewildered. Alleyn gave her his pocket lens. There was a long silence.
‘Well, Miss Wayne?’
‘But…But it’s extraordinary. I can’t identify it. There are no initials. This isn’t the same revolver.’
CHAPTER TEN
The Revolver, the Stiletto
and His Lordship
‘AND WHAT,’ ALLEYN ASKED when Carlisle had left them, ‘is the betting on the favourite now, Br’er Fox?’
‘By gum,’ Fox said, ‘you always tell us that when a homicide case is full of fancy touches, it’s not going to give much trouble. Do you stick to that, sir?’
‘I’ll be surprised if this turns out to be the exception, but I must say it looks like it at the moment. However, the latest development does at least cast another ray of light on your playmate. Do you remember how the old devil turned the gun over when we first let him see it at the Metronome? D’you remember how he squinted through the lens at the butt? And I told you how he took another look at it in the study and then had an attack of the dry grins and when I asked him what he expected to see, had the infernal nerve to come back at me with: “Hoity-toity”—yes “hoity-toity”—“wouldn’t you like to know!”’
‘Ugh!’
‘He’d realized all along, of course, that this wasn’t the weapon he loaded in the study and took down to the Metronome. Yes,’ Alleyn added as Fox opened his mouth, ‘and don’t forget he showed Skelton the gun a few minutes before it was fired. Miss Wayne says he pointed out the initials to Skelton.’
‘That looks suspicious in itself,’ Fox said instantly. ‘Why go to the trouble of pointing out initials to two people? He was getting something fixed up for himself. So he could turn round and say: “That’s not the gun I fired.”’
‘Then why didn’t he say so at once?’
‘Gawd knows.’
‘If you ask me he was sitting pretty, watching us make fools of ourselves.’
Fox jabbed his finger at the revolver. ‘If this isn’t the original weapon,’ he demanded, ‘what the hell is it? It’s the one this projectile-dart-bolt or what-have-you was fired from because it’s got the scratches in the barrel. That means someone had this second gun all ready loaded with the dart and ammunition and substituted it for the original weapon. Here! What’s the report say, Mr Alleyn?’
Alleyn was reading the report. ‘Entwhistle,’ he said, ‘has had a ballistic orgy over the thing. The scratches could have been made by the brilliants in the parasol clip. In his opinion they were so made. He’s sending photo-micrographs to prove it. He’s fired the bolt—let’s stick to calling this hybrid a bolt, shall we?—from another gun with an identical bore and it is “somewhat similarly scratched,” which is a vile phrase. He pointed out that wavering, irregular scars were made when the bolt was shoved up the barrel. The spring-clip was pressed back with the thumb, while it was being inserted and then sprang out once it was inside the barrel, thus preventing the bolt from falling out if the weapon was pointed downwards. The bolt was turned slightly as it was shoved home. The second scar was made by the ejection of the bolt, the clip retaining its pressure while being expelled. He says that the scars in the revolver we submitted don’t extend quite as deep up the barrel as those made by the bolt which he fired from his own gun, but he considers that they were made by the same kind of procedure and the same bolt. At a distance of four feet, the projectile shoots true. Over long distances there are “progressive divergences”, caused by the weight of the clip on one side or by air-r
esistance. Entwhistle says he’s very puzzled by the fouling from the bore, which is quite unlike anything in his experience. He removed it and sent it along for analysis. The analyst finds that the fouling consists of particles of carbon and of various hydro-carbons including members of the paraffin series, apparently condensed from vapour.’
‘Funny.’
‘That’s all.’
‘All right,’ Fox said heavily. ‘All right. That looks fair enough. The bolt that plugged Rivera was shot out of this weapon. This weapon is not the one his lordship showed Miss Wayne and Syd Skelton. But unless you entertain the idea of somebody shooting off another gun at the same instant, this is the one that killed Rivera. You accept that, sir?’
‘I’ll take it as a working premise. With reservations and remembering our conversation in the car.’
‘All right. Well, after Skelton examined the gun with the initials, did his lordship get a chance to substitute this one and fire it off? Could he have had this one on him all the time?’
‘Hobnobbing, cheek by jowl with a dozen or so people at close quarters? I should say definitely not. And, he didn’t know Skelton would ask to see the gun. And what did he do with the gun afterwards? We searched him, remember.’
‘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 sort of 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 the 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 bandroom 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 alley-way between the musicians. He stood in a spotlight a good six feet or more away from anything, conducting like a great jerking jellyfish. 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 tight. 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 fashio
nable 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.
‘Would you say that as far as your personal observations and recollections cover them, the movements set down in the time-table are accurate?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said at once, ‘I think so. But of course, they don’t go very far—my recollections. I was the last to arrive in the drawing-room, you know, before dinner, and the first to leave after dinner.’
‘Not quite the first, according to the time-table, surely?’
She drew her brows together as if perturbed at the suggestion of inaccuracy. ‘Not?’ she said.
‘The time-table puts Miss de Suze’s exit from the drawing-room a second or two before yours.’
‘How stupid of me. Félicité did go out first but I followed almost at once. I forgot for the moment.’
‘You were all agreed on this point, last night, when Lord Pastern compiled his time-table?’
‘Yes. Perfectly.’
‘Do you remember that just before this there was a great rumpus in the ballroom? It startled you and you dropped a little stiletto on the carpet. You were tidying Lady Pastern’s work-box at the time. Do you remember?’
He had thought at first that she used no more make-up than a little powder but he saw now that the faint warmth of her cheeks was artificial. The colour became isolated as the skin beneath and about it bleached. Her voice was quite even and clear.
‘It was certainly rather an alarming noise,’ she said.
