A Wreath for Rivera

Skelton deliberated, his brows drawn together, his lower lip thrust out. Alleyn found himself speculating about his background. What accumulation of circumstances, ill-adjustments or misfortunes had resulted in this particular case? What would Skelton have been if his history had been otherwise? Were his views, his truculence, his suspicions, rooted in honesty or in some indefinable sense of victimization? To what lengths would they impel him? And finally Alleyn asked himself the inevitable question: could this be a killer?

Skelton wetted his lips. “The drug racket,” he said, “is like any other racket in a capitalistic government. The real criminals are the bosses, the barons, the high-ups. They don’t get pulled in. It’s the little blokes that get caught. You have to think it out. Silly sentiment and big talk won’t work. I’ve got no tickets on the police department in this country. A fairly efficient machine working for the wrong ideas. But drug-taking’s no good from any point of view. All right. I’ll co-operate this far. I’ll tell you where Breezy got his dope.”

“And where,” said Alleyn patiently, “did Breezy get his dope?”

“From Rivera,” said Skelton. “Now! From Rivera.”

CHAPTER VII DAWN

Skelton had gone home, and Caesar Bonn and David Hahn. The cleaners had retired into some remote part of the building. Only the police remained: Alleyn and Fox, Bailey, Thompson, the three men who had searched the restaurant and band-room and the uniformed constable who would remain on duty until he was relieved after daybreak. The time was now twenty minutes to three.

“Well, Foxkin,” said Alleyn, “where are we? You’ve been very mousy and discreet. Let’s have your theory. Come on.”

Fox cleared his throat and placed the palms of his hands on his knees. “A very peculiar case,” he said disapprovingly. “Freakish, you might say. Silly. Except for the corpse. Corpses,” Mr. Fox observed with severity, “are never silly.”

Detective-Sergeants Bailey and Thompson exchanged winks.

“In the first place, Mr. Alleyn,” Fox continued, “I ask myself: Why do it that way? Why fire a bit of an umbrella handle from a revolver when you might fire a bullet? This applies in particular to his lordship. And yet it seems it must have been done. You can’t get away from it. Nobody had a chance of stabbing the chap while he was performing, did they now?”

“Nobody.”

“All right then. Now, if anybody pushed this silly weapon up the gun after Skelton examined it, they had the thing concealed about their person. Not much bigger than a fountain pen but sharp as hell. Which brings us to Bellairs, for one. If you consider Bellairs, you have to remember that his lordship seems to have searched him very thoroughly before he went out to perform.”

“Moreover his lordship in the full tide of his own alleged innocence declares that the wretched Breezy didn’t get a chance to pocket anything after he had been searched, or to get at the gun.”

“Does he really?” said Fox. “Fancy!”

“In fact his lordship, who, I submit, is no fool, has been at peculiar pains to clear everybody but himself.”

“No fool, perhaps,” Fox grunted, “but would you say a bit off the plumb mentally?”

“Everybody else says so, at all events. In any case, Fox, I’ll give sworn evidence that nobody stabbed Rivera before or at the time he was shot at. He was a good six feet away from everybody except Lord Pastern, who was busy with his blasted gun.”

“There you are! And it wasn’t planted among the music stands because they were used by the other band. And anyway none of the musicians went near his lordship’s funny hat where the gun was. And being like that, I asked myself, isn’t his lordship the most likely to use a silly fanciful method if he’d made up his mind to do a man in? It all points to his lordship. You can’t get away from it. And yet he seems so pleased with himself and kind of unruffled. Of course you do find that attitude in homicidal mania.”

“You do. What about motive?”

“Do we know what he thought of his stepdaughter keeping company with the deceased? The other young lady suggested that he didn’t seem to care one way or the other but you never know. Something else may turn up. Personally, as things stand at the moment, I favor his lordship. What about you, Mr. Alleyn?”