A Wreath for Rivera

“Gah! How about him just taking the stuff in his pocket to the Metronome and fixing everything there?”

“Oh Lord! When? How?”

“Lavatory?” Fox suggested hopefully.

“And when did he put the weapon in the gun? Skelton looked down the barrel just before they started playing, don’t forget.”

The car had stopped in a traffic jam in Piccadilly. Fox contemplated the Green Park with disapproval, Alleyn still kept his eyes shut. Big Ben struck seven.

“By Gum!” Fox said, bringing his palm down on his knee. “By Gum, how about this? How about his lordship in his damn-your-eyes fashion fitting the weapon into the gun while he sat there behind his drums? In front of everybody, while one of the other turns was on? It’s amazing what you can do when you brazen it out. What’s that yarn they’re always quoting, sir? I’ve got it. The Purloined Letter. Proving that if you make a thing obvious enough nobody notices it?”

Alleyn opened one eye. “The Purloined Letter,” he said. He opened the other eye. “Fox, my cabbage, my rare edition, my objet d’art, my own especial bit of bijouterie, be damned if I don’t think you’ve caught an idea. Come on. Let’s further think of this.”

They talked intensively until the car pulled up, in a cul-de-sac off Coventry Street, before Alleyn’s flat.

Early sunlight streamed into the little entrance hall. Beneath a Benozzo Gozzoli, a company of dahlias, paper-white in a blue bowl, cast translucent shadows on a white parchment wall. Alleyn looked about him contentedly.

“Troy’s under orders not to get up till eight,” he said. “You take first whack at the bath, Fox, while I have a word with her. Use my razor. Wait a bit.” He disappeared and returned with towels. “There’ll be something to eat at half-past nine,” he said. “The visitors’ room’s all yours, Fox. Sleep well.”

“Very kind, I’m sure,” said Fox. “May I send my compliments to Mrs. Alleyn, sir?”

“She’ll be delighted to receive them. See you later.”

Troy was awake in her white room, sitting up with her head aureoled in short locks of hair. “Like a faun,” Alleyn said, “or a bronze dahlia. Are you well this morning?”

“Bouncing, thanks. And you?”

“As you see. Unhousel’d, unanel’d and un-everything that’s civilized.”

“A poor state of affairs,” said Troy. “You look like the gentleman in that twenty-foot canvas in the Luxembourg. Boiled shirt in dents and gazing out over Paris through lush curtains. I think it’s called ‘The Hopeless Dawn’! His floozy is still asleep on an elephantine bed, you remember.”

“I don’t remember. Talking of floozies, oughtn’t you to be asleep yourself?”

“God bless my soul!” Troy complained. “I haven’t been bitten by the tsetse fly. It’s getting on for nine hours since I went to bed, damn it.”

“O.K. O.K.”

“What’s happened, Rory?”

“One of the kind we don’t fancy.”

“Oh, no.”

“You’ll hear about it anyway, so I may as well tell you. It’s that florid number we saw playing the piano-accordion, the one with the teeth and hair.”

“You don’t mean — ”

“Somebody pinked him with a sort of dagger made out of a bit of a parasol and a needlework stiletto.”

“Catch!”

He explained at some length.

“Well but…” Troy stared at her husband. “When have you got to be at the Yard?”

“Ten.”

“All right. You’ve got two hours and time for breakfast. Good morning, darling.”

“Fox is in the bathroom. I know I’m not fit for a lady’s bed chamber.”

“Who said?”

“If you didn’t, nobody.” He put his arm across her and stooped his head. “Troy,” he said, “may I ask Fox this morning?”

“If you want to, my dearest.”

“I think I might. How much, at a rough guess, would you say I loved you?”

“Words fail me,” said Troy, imitating the late Harry Tate.

“And me.”

“There’s Mr. Fox coming out of the bathroom. Away with you.”

“I suppose so. Good morning, Mrs. Quiverful.”

On his way to the bathroom Alleyn looked in upon Fox. He found him lying on the visitors’ room bed, without his jacket but incredibly neat; his hair damp, his jaw gleaming, his shirt stretched tight over his thick pectoral muscles. His eyes were closed but he opened them as Alleyn looked in.

“I’ll call you at half-past nine,” Alleyn said. “Did you know you were going to be a godfather, Br’er Fox?” And as Fox’s eyes widened he shut the door and went whistling to the bathroom.

CHAPTER IX THE YARD