A Wreath for Rivera

My Dear [Carlisle read]: Your loveliness is my undoing. Because of it I break my deepest promise to myself and to others. We are closer than you have ever dreamed. I wear a white flower in my coat to-night. It is yours. But as you value our future happiness, make not the slightest sign — even to me. Destroy this note, my love, but keep my love. G.P.F.

Carlisle raised her head, met Alleyn’s gaze and avoided it quickly. “A white flower,” she whispered. “G.P.F.? G.P.F.? I don’t believe it.”

“Mr. Edward Manx had a white carnation in his coat, I think.”

“I won’t discuss this letter with you,” she said strongly. “I should never have read it. I won’t discuss it. Let me take it back to her. It’s nothing to do with this other thing. Nothing. Give it to me.”

Alleyn said, “You must know I can’t do that. Think for a moment. There was some attachment, a strong attachment of one kind or another, between Rivera and your cousin — your step-cousin. After Rivera is murdered, she is at elaborate pains to conceal this letter, loses it, and is so anxious to retrieve it that she persuades you to return here in an attempt to recover it. How can I disregard such a sequence of events?”

“But you don’t know Fée! She’s always in and out of tight corners over her young men. It’s nothing. You don’t understand.”

“Well,” he said, looking good-humouredly at her, “help me to understand. I’ll drive you home. You can tell me on the way. Fox.”

Fox came out of the office. Carlisle listened to Alleyn giving his instructions. The other men appeared from the cloak-room, held a brief indistinguishable conversation with Fox and went out through the main entrance. Alleyn and Fox collected their belongings and put on their coats. Carlisle stood up. Alleyn returned the letter to its envelope and put it in his pocket. She felt tears stinging under her eyelids. She tried to speak and produced only an indeterminate sound.

“What is it?” he said, glancing at her.

“It can’t be true,” she stammered. “I won’t believe it. I won’t.”

“What? That Edward Manx wrote this letter?”

“He couldn’t. He couldn’t write like that to her.”

“No?” Alleyn said casually. “You think not? But she’s quite good-looking, isn’t she? Quite attractive, don’t you think?”

“It’s not that. It’s not that at all. It’s the letter itself. He couldn’t write like that. It’s so bogus.”

“Have you ever noticed love-letters that are read out in court and published in the papers? Don’t they sound pretty bogus? Yet some of them have been written by extremely intelligent people. Shall we go?”

It was cold out in the street. A motionless pallor stood behind the rigid silhouette of roofs. “Dawn’s left hand,” Alleyn said to nobody in particular and shivered. Carlisle’s taxi had gone but a large police car waited. A second man sat beside the driver. Fox opened the door and Carlisle got in. The two men followed. “We’ll call at the Yard,” Alleyn said.

She felt boxed-up in the corner of the seat and was conscious of the impersonal pressure of Alleyn’s arm and shoulder. Mr. Fox, on the farther side, was a bulky man. She turned and saw Alleyn’s head silhouetted against the bluish window. An odd notion came into her head. “If Fée happens to calm down and take a good look at him,” she thought, “it’ll be all up with G.P.F. and the memory of Carlos and everybody.” And with that her heart gave a leaden thump or two. “Oh, Ned,” she thought, “how you could!” She tried to face the full implication of the letter but almost at once shied away from it. “I’m miserable,” she thought, “I’m unhappier than I’ve been for years and years.”

“What,” Alleyn’s voice said close beside her, “I wonder, is the precise interpretation of the initials ‘G.P.F.’? They seem to ring some bell in my atrocious memory but I haven’t got there yet. Why, do you imagine, G.P.F?” She didn’t answer and after a moment he went on. “Wait a bit, though. Didn’t you say something about a magazine you were reading before you visited Lord Pastern in his study? Harmony? Was that it?” He turned his head to look at her and she nodded. “And the editor of the tell-it-all-to-auntie page calls himself Guide, Philosopher and Friend? How does he sign his recipes for radiant living?”

Carlisle mumbled: “Like that.”

“And you wondered if Miss de Suze had written to him,” Alleyn said tranquilly. “Yes. Now, does this get us anywhere, do you imagine?”