A Wreath for Rivera ra-15

by Ngaio Marsh

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “When I examined the gun in my study,” Lord Pastern said forcibly, “it was as clean as a whistle. As clean, I repeat, as a whistle. I fired one blank from it in my own house and looked down the barrel afterwards. It was a bit fouled and that was all. All right. There y’are!”

  Carlisle, Félicité, Manx and Lady Pastern stirred uneasily. “Uncle George,” Carlisle said. “Please.”

  Lord Pastern glared at her. “Therefore,” he said, “I repeat, hanky-panky. The barrel was unmarked when I brought the thing here. I ought to know. It was unmarked when I took it into the restaurant.”

  Lady Pastern looked steadily at her husband. “You fool, George,” she said.

  “George.”

  “Cousin George.”

  “Uncle George…”

  The shocked voices overlapped and faded out.

  Alleyn began again. “Obviously you realize the significance of all this. When I tell you that the weapon — it is, in effect, a dart or bolt, isn’t it? — is half an inch shorter than the barrel of the revolver and somewhat less in diameter…”

  “All right, all right,” Lord Pastern interjected.

  “I think,” said Alleyn, “I should point out…”

  “You needn’t point anything out. And you,” Lord Pastern added, turning on his relatives, “can all shut up. I know what you’re gettin’ at. The barrel was unscratched. By God, I ought to know. And what’s more, I noticed when Breezy and I were in the ballroom that this bit of shaft would fit in the barrel. I pointed it out to him.”

  “Here, here, here!” Breezy expostulated. “I don’t like the way this is going. Look here — ”

  “Did anyone else examine the revolver?” Alleyn interposed adroitly.

  Lord Pastern pointed at Skelton. “He did,” he said. “Ask him.”

  Skelton moved forward, wetting his lips.

  “Did you look down the barrel?” Alleyn asked.

  “Glanced,” said Skelton reluctantly.

  “Did you notice anything unusual?”

  “No.”

  “Was the barrel quite unscarred?”

  There was a long silence. “Yes,” said Skelton at last.

  “There y’are,” said Lord Pastern.

  “It would be,” Skelton added brutally, “seeing his lordship hadn’t put his funny weapon in it yet.”

  Lord Pastern uttered a short, rude and incredulous word. “Thanks,” said Skelton and turned to Alleyn.

  Edward Manx said: “May I butt in, Alleyn?”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s obvious that you think this thing was fired from the revolver. It’s obvious, in my opinion, that you are right. How else could he have been killed? But isn’t it equally obvious that the person who used the revolver could have known nothing about it? If he had wanted to shoot Rivera he could have used a bullet. If, for some extraordinary reason, he preferred a sort of rifle grenade or dart or what-not, he would surely have used something less fantastic than the affair you have just shown us. The only object in using the piece of parasol shaft, if it has in fact been so used, would have been this: the spring catch — which is jewelled, by the way — would keep the weapon fixed in the barrel and it wouldn’t fall out if the revolver was pointed downwards, and the person who fired the revolver would therefore be unaware of the weapon in the barrel. You wouldn’t,” Edward said with great energy, “fix up an elaborate sort of thing like this unless there was a reason for it and there would be no reason if you yourself had full control of the revolver and could load it at the last moment. Only an abnormally eccentric…” He stopped short, floundered for a moment and then said: “That’s the point I wanted to make.”

  “It’s well taken,” Alleyn said. “Thank you.”

  “Hi!” said Lord Pastern.

  Alleyn turned to him.

  “Look here,” he said. “You think these scratches were made by the jewels on that spring thing. Skelton says they weren’t there when he looked at the gun. If anyone was fool enough to try and shoot a feller with a thing like this, he’d fire it off first of all to see how it worked. In private. Follow me?”

  “I think so, sir.”

  “All right, then,” said Lord Pastern with a shrill cackle, “why waste time jabberin’ about scratches?”

  He flung himself into his chair.

  “Did any of you who were there,” Alleyn said, “take particular notice when Mr. Skelton examined the revolver?”

  Nobody spoke. Skelton’s face was very white. “Breezy watched,” he said and added quickly: “I was close to Lord Pastern, I couldn’t have… I mean…”

  Alleyn said, “Why did you examine it, Mr. Skelton?”

  Skelton wetted his lips. His eyes shifted their gaze from Lord Pastern to Breezy Bellairs. “I — was sort of interested. Lord Pastern had fixed up the blanks himself and I thought I’d like to take a look. I’d gone in to wish him luck. I mean…”

  “Why don’t you tell him!”

  Breezy was on his feet. He had been yawning and fidgeting in his chair. His face was stained with tears. He had seemed to pay little attention to what was said but rather to be in the grip of some intolerable restlessness. His interruption shocked them all by its unexpectedness. He came forward with a shambling movement and grinned at Alleyn.

  “I’ll tell you,” he said rapidly. “Syd did it because I asked him to. He’s a pal. I told him. I told him I didn’t trust his lordship. I’m a nervous man where firearms are concerned. I’m a nervous man altogether if you can understand.” His fingers plucked at his smiling lips. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said and his voice broke into a shrill falsetto. “Everybody’s staring as if I’d done something. Eyes. Eyes. Eyes. O God, give me a smoke!”

  Alleyn held out his cigarette case. Breezy struck it out of his hand and began to sob. “Bloody sadist,” he said.

  “I know what’s wrong with you, you silly chap,” Lord Pastern said accusingly. Breezy shook a finger at him. “You know!” he said. “You started it. You’re as good as a murderer. You are a murderer, by God!”

  “Say that again, my good Bellairs,” Lord Pastern rejoined with relish, “and I’ll have you in the libel court. Action for slander, b’George.”

  Breezy looked wildly round the assembly. His light eyes with their enormous pupils fixed their gaze on Félicité. He pointed a trembling hand at her. “Look at that girl,” he said, “doing her face and sitting up like Jackie with the man she was supposed to love lying stiff and bloody in the morgue. It’s disgusting.”

  Caesar Bonn came forward, wringing his hands. “I can keep silent no longer,” he said. “If I am ruined, I am ruined. If I do not speak, there are others who will.” He looked at Lord Pastern, at Edward Manx and at Hahn.

  Edward said: “It’s got to come out, certainly. In common fairness.”

  “Certainly. Certainly.”

  “What,” Alleyn asked, “has got to come out?”

  “Please, Mr. Manx. You will speak.”

  “All right, Caesar. I think,” Edward said slowly, turning to Alleyn, “that you should know what happened before any of you arrived. I myself had only just walked into the room. The body was where you saw it.” He paused for a moment. Breezy watched him, but Manx did not look at Breezy. “There was a sort of struggle going on,” he said. “Bellairs was on the floor by Rivera and the others were pulling him off.”

  “Damned indecent thing,” said Lord Pastern virtuously, “trying to go through the poor devil’s pockets.”

  Breezy whimpered.

  “I’d like a closer account of this, if you can give it to me. When exactly did this happen?” Alleyn asked.

  Caesar and Hahn began talking at once. Alleyn stopped them. “Suppose,” he said, “we trace events through the point where Mr. Rivera was carried out of the restaurant!” He began to question the four waiters who had carried Rivera. The waiters hadn’t noticed anything was wrong with him. They were a bit flustered anyway because of th
e confusion about which routine was to be followed. There had been so many contradictory orders that in the end they just watched to see who fell down and then picked up the stretcher and carried him out. The wreath covered his chest. As they lifted him on to the stretcher, Breezy had said quickly: “He’s hurt. Get him out.” They had carried him straight to the office. As they put the stretcher down they heard him make a noise, a harsh rattling noise, it had been. When they looked closer they found he was dead. They fetched Caesar Bonn and Hahn and then carried the body into the inner room. Then Caesar ordered them back to the restaurant and told one of them to fetch Dr. Allington.

  Lord Pastern, taking up the tale, said that while they were still on the dais, after the removal of Rivera, Breezy had gone to him and muttered urgently: “For God’s sake come out. Something’s happened to Carlos.” The pianist, Happy Hart, said that Breezy had stopped at the piano on his way out and had told him in an aside to keep going.

  Caesar took up the story. Breezy and Lord Pastern came to the inner office. Breezy was in a fearful state, saying he’d seen blood on Rivera when he put the wreath on his chest. They were still gathered round Rivera’s body, laying him out tidily on the floor. Breezy kept gibbering about the blood and then he caught sight of the body and turned away to the wall, retching and scrabbling in his overcoat pocket for one of his tablets and complaining because he had none. Nobody did anything for him and he went into the lavatory off the inner office and was heard vomiting in there. When he came back he looked terrible and stood gabbling about how he felt. At this point Breezy interrupted Caesar. “I told them,” he said shrilly. “I told them. It was a terrible shock to me when he fell. It was a shock to all of us, wasn’t it, boys?”

  The Boys stirred themselves and muttered in unison that it had been a great shock.

  “When he fell?” Alleyn said quickly. “Then, definitely, he wasn’t supposed to fall?”

  They all began to explain at once with great eagerness. Two routines had been rehearsed. There had been a lot of argument about which should be followed. Right up to the last neither Lord Pastern nor Rivera could make up his mind which he preferred. In the one routine Lord Pastern was to have fired the revolver four times at Rivera, who should have smiled and gone on playing. At each of the shots a member of the band was to have played a note in a descending scale and aped having been hit. Then Rivera was to have made his exit and the whole turn continued as they had seen it done, except that it would have ended with Lord Pastern doing a comic fall. Breezy would have then placed the wreath on him and he would have been carried out. In the alternative routine, Rivera was to do the fall. Carlos, the Boys explained, hadn’t liked the idea of falling with his instrument so the first of these two plans had been decided on at the last moment.

  “When I saw him drop,” Breezy chattered, “I was rocked all to hell. I thought he’d done it to put one across us. He was like that, poor old Carlos. He was a bit that way. He didn’t fancy the idea of falling, yet he didn’t fancy his lordship getting the big exit. He was funny that way. It was a shock to all of us.”

  “So the end was an improvisation?”

  “Not exactly,” Lord Pastern said. “I kept my head, of course, and followed the correct routine. It was a bit of a facer but there you were, what? The waiters saw Carlos fall and luckily had the sense to bring the stretcher. It would’ve been awkward if they hadn’t as things turned out. Damn’ awkward. I emptied the magazine as we’d arranged and these other fellows did their staggers. Then I handed the gun to Breezy and he snapped it and then broke it open. I always thought my original idea of Carlos getting shot was best. Though of course I did rather see that it ought to be me who was carried out.”

  “And I thought,” Breezy said, “I’d better drop that ruddy wreath on Carlos, like we first said. So I did.” His voice jumped into falsetto. “When I saw the blood I thought at first he’d coughed it up. I thought he’d had one of those things — you know — a hemorrhage. At first. And then the wreath stuck on something. You’d scarcely credit it, would you, but I thought: for crisake I’m hanging it on a peg. And then I saw. I told you that, all of you. You can’t say I didn’t.”

  “Certainly you told us,” Caesar agreed, eyeing him nervously. “In the office.” Breezy made a petulant sound and crouched back in his chair. Caesar went on quickly to relate that just before they heard Dr. Allington’s voice in the main office, Breezy had darted over to the body and had crouched down beside it, throwing back the coat and thrusting his hand into the breast pocket. He had said: “I’ve got to get it. He’s got it on him,” or something like that. They had been greatly shocked by this behaviour. He and Caesar and Hahn had pulled Breezy off and he had collapsed. It was during this scene that Edward Manx had arrived.

  “Do you agree that this is a fair account of what happened, Mr. Bellairs?” Alleyn asked after a pause.

  For a moment or two it seemed as if he would get some kind of answer. Breezy looked at him with extraordinary concentration. Then he turned his head as if his neck were stiff. After moment he nodded.

  “What did you hope to find in the deceased’s pockets?” Alleyn said.

  Breezy’s mouth stretched in his manikin grin. His eyes were blank. He raised his hands and the fingers trembled.

  “Come,” Alleyn said, “what did you hope to find?”

  “Oh God!” said Lord Pastern fretfully. “Now he’s goin’ to blub again.”

  This was an understatement. Hysteria took possession of Breezy. He screamed out some unintelligible protest or appeal, broke into a storm of sobbing laughter and stumbled to the entrance. A uniformed policeman came through the door and held him. “Now, now,” said the policeman. “Easy does it, sir, easy does it.”

  Dr. Curtis came out of the office and stood looking at Breezy thoughtfully. Alleyn nodded to him and he went to Breezy.

  Breezy sobbed: “Doctor! Doctor! Listen!” He put his heavy arm about Dr. Curtis’s shoulders and with an air of mystery whispered in his ear. “I think, Alleyn…?” said Dr. Curtis. “Yes,” Alleyn said, “in the office, will you?”

  When the door had shut behind them, Alleyn looked at Breezy’s Boys.

  “Can any of you tell me,” he said, “how long he’s been taking drugs?”

  Lord Pastern, bunching his cheeks, said to nobody in particular, “Six months.”

  “You knew about it, my lord, did you?” Fox demanded and Lord Pastern grinned savagely at him. “Not bein’ a detective-inspector,” he said, “I don’t have to wait until a dope-fiend throws fits and passes out before I know what’s wrong with him.”

  He balanced complacently, toe and heel, and stroked the back of his head. “I’ve been lookin’ into the dope racket,” he volunteered. “Disgraceful show. Runnin’ sore in the body politic and nobody with the guts to tackle it.” He glared upon Breezy’s Boys. “You chaps!” he said, jabbing a finger at them. “What did you do about it! Damn’ all.”

  Breezy’s Boys were embarrassed and shocked. They fidgeted, cleared their throats and eyed one another.

  “Surely,” Alleyn said, “you must have guessed. He’s in a bad way, you know.”

  They hadn’t been sure, it appeared. Happy Hart said they knew Breezy took some kind of stuff for his nerves. It was some special kind of dope. Breezy used to get people to buy it for him in Paris. He said it was some kind of bromide, Hart added vaguely. The double-bass said Breezy was a very nervous type. The first saxophone muttered something about hitting the high spots and corpse revivers. Lord Pastern loudly pronounced a succinct but unprintable comment and they eyed him resentfully. “I told him what it’d come to,” he announced. “I threatened the chap. Only way. ‘If you don’t take a pull, by God,’ I said, ‘I’ll give the whole story to the papers. Harmony, f’r instance.’ I told him so, to-night.”

  Edward Manx uttered a sharp ejaculation and looked as if he wished he’d held his tongue.

  “Who searched him for his bloody tablet?” Skelton demanded, glaring at Lord P
astern.

  “The show,” Lord Pastern countered virtuously, “had to go on, didn’t it? Don’t split straws, my good ass.”

  Alleyn intervened. The incident of the lost tablet was related. Lord Pastern described how he went through Breezy’s pockets and boasted of his efficiency. “You fellers call it fannin’ a chap,” he explained kindly, to Alleyn.

  “This was immediately after Mr. Skelton had inspected the revolver and handed it back to Lord Pastern?” Alleyn asked.

  “That’s right,” said one or two of the Boys.

  “Lord Pastern, did you at any time after he’d done this lose sight of the revolver or put it down?”

  “Certainly not. I kept it in my hip pocket from the time Skelton gave it to me until I went on the stage.”

  “Did you look down the barrel after Mr. Skelton returned it to you?”

  “No.”

  “I won’t have this,” said Skelton loudly.

  Alleyn glanced thoughtfully at him and returned to Lord Pastern. “Did you, by the way,” he said, “find anything in Mr. Bellairs’s pockets?”

  “A wallet, a cigarette case and his handkerchief,” Lord Pastern rejoined importantly. “The pill was in the handkerchief.”

  Alleyn asked for a closer description of this scene and Lord Pastern related with gusto how Breezy had stood with his hands up, holding his baton as if he were about to give his first down-beat, and how he himself had explored every pocket with the utmost dispatch and thoroughness. “If,” he added, “you’re thinkin’ that he might have had the dart on him, you’re wrong. He hadn’t. And he couldn’t have got at the gun if he had, what’s more. And he didn’t pick anything up afterwards. I’ll swear to that.”

  Ned Manx said with some violence: “For God’s sake, Cousin George, think what you’re saying.”

  “It is useless, Edward,” said Lady Pastern. “He will destroy himself out of sheer complacency.” She addressed herself to Alleyn. “I must inform you that in my opinion and that of many of his acquaintances, my husband’s eccentricity is of a degree that renders his statements completely unreliable.”