A Wreath for Rivera

“It’s a bit elaborate, isn’t it?” Alleyn said. “Let’s see if it can be simplified at all. You see that between half-past eight and nine the ladies left the dining-room and went to the drawing-room. So we get the two groups in the two rooms. Can any of you add to or confirm that?”

Spence could. It was a quarter to nine when the ladies went to the drawing-room. When he came away from serving their coffee he passed Lord Pastern and Mr. Bellairs on the landing. They went into his lordship’s study. Spence continued on through the dining-room, paused there to see that William had served coffee to the gentlemen and noticed that Mr. Manx and Mr. Rivera were still sitting over their wine. He then went into the servants’ hall where a few minutes later he heard the nine o’clock news on the wireless.

“So now,” Alleyn said, “we have three groups. The ladies in the drawing-room, his lordship and Mr. Bellairs in the study, and Mr. Manx and Mr. Rivera in the dining-room. Can anyone tell us when the next move came and who made it?”

Spence remembered coming back into the dining-room and finding Mr. Manx there alone. His reticence at this point became more marked, but Alleyn got from him the news that Edward Manx had helped himself to a stiff whiskey. He asked casually if there was anything about his manner which was at all remarkable, and got the surprising answer that Mr. Edward seemed to be very pleased and said he’d had a wonderful surprise.

“And now,” Alleyn said, “Mr. Rivera has broken away from the other groups. Where has he gone? Mr. Manx is in the dining-room, his lordship and Mr. Bellairs in the study, the ladies in the drawing-room, and where is Mr. Rivera?”

He looked round the group of faces with their guarded unwilling expressions until he saw William, and in William’s eye he caught a zealous glint. William, he thought, with any luck read detective magazines and spent his day-dreams sleuthing. “Got an idea?” he asked.

“Well, sir,” William said, glancing at Spence, “if you’ll excuse me, I think his lordship and Mr. Bellairs have parted company where you’ve got to. I was tidying the hall, sir, and I heard the other gentleman, Mr. Bellairs, come out of the study. I glanced up at the landing, like. And I heard his lordship call out he’d join him in a minute and I saw the gentleman go into the ballroom. I went and got the coffee tray from the drawing-room, sir. The ladies were all there. I put it down on the landing and was going to set the study to rights, when I heard the typewriter in there. His lordship doesn’t like being disturbed when he’s typing, sir, so I took the tray by the staff stairs to the kitchen and after a few minutes came back. And his lordship must have gone into the ballroom while I was downstairs because I could hear him talking very loud to Mr. Bellairs, sir.”

“What about, do you remember?”

William glanced again at Spence and said: “Well, sir, it was something about his lordship telling somebody something if Mr. Bellairs didn’t want to. And then there was a terrible loud noise. Drums. And a report like a gun. They all heard it down here in the hall, sir.”

Alleyn looked at the listening staff. Miss Parker said coldly that his lordship was no doubt practising, as if Lord Pastern were in the habit of loosing firearms indoors and there were nothing at all remarkable in the circumstances. Alleyn felt that both she and Spence were on the edge of giving William a piece of their minds and he hurried on.

“What did you do next?” he asked William.

He had been, it appeared, somewhat shattered by the report, but had remembered his duties. “I crossed the landing, sir, thinking I’d get on with the study, but Miss de Suze came out of the drawing-room, And then — well, the murdered gentleman, he came from the dining-room and they met and she said she wanted to speak to him alone and they went into the study.”

“Sure of that?”

Yes, it appeared that William was perfectly certain. He had lingered, evidently, at the end of the landing. He even remembered that Miss de Suze had something in her hand. He wasn’t sure what it was. Something bright, it might have been, he said doubtfully. After she and the gentleman had gone into the study and shut the door, Miss Henderson had come out of the drawing-room and gone upstairs.

Alleyn said: “Now, that’s a great help. You see it corresponds exactly so far with his lordship’s time-table. I’ll just check it over, Fox, if you…”