A Wreath for Rivera

She followed a constable, who looked oddly domesticated without his helmet, down a linoleumed corridor to the Chief Inspector’s room. She thought: “They invite people to come and make statements. It means something. Suppose they suspect me. Suppose they’ve found out some little thing that makes them think I’ve done it.” Her imagination galloped wildly. Suppose, when she went into the room, Alleyn said: “I’m afraid this is serious. Carlisle Loveday Wayne, I arrest you for the murder of Carlos Rivera and I warn you…” They would telephone for any clothes she wanted. Hendy, perhaps, would pack a suitcase. Perhaps, secretly, they would all be a little lightened, almost pleasurably worried, because they would no longer be in fear for themselves. Perhaps Ned would come to see her.

“In here, if you please, miss,” the constable was saying with his hand on the door-knob.

Alleyn rose quickly from his desk and came towards her. “Punctilious,” she thought. “He’s got nice manners. Are his manners like this when he’s going to arrest people?”

“I’m so sorry,” he was saying. “This must be a nuisance for you.”

The solid grizzled detective was behind him. Fox. That was Inspector Fox. He had pulled up a chair for her and she sat in it, facing Alleyn. “With the light on my face,” she thought, “that’s what they do.”

Fox moved away and sat behind a second desk. She could see his head and shoulders but his hands were hidden from her.

“You’ll think my object in asking you to come very aimless, I expect,” Alleyn said, “and my first question will no doubt strike you as being completely potty. However, here it is. You told us last night that you were with Lord Pastern when he made the dummies and loaded the revolver.”

“Yes.”

“Well, now, did anything happen, particularly in respect of the revolver, that struck you both as being at all comic?”

Carlisle gaped at him. “Comic!”

“I told you it was a potty question,” he said.

“If you mean did we take one look at the revolver and then shake with uncontrollable laughter, we didn’t.”

“No,” he said. “I was afraid not.”

“The mood was sentimental if anything. The revolver was one of a pair given to Uncle George by my father and he told me so.”

“You were familiar with it then?”

“Not in the least. My father died ten years ago and when he lived was not in the habit of showing me his armoury. He and Uncle George were both crack shots, I believe. Uncle George told me my father had the revolvers made for target shooting.”

“You looked at the gun last night? Closely?”

“Yes — because — ” Beset by nervous and unreasoned caution, she hesitated.

“Because?”

“My father’s initials are scratched on it. Uncle George told me to look for them.”

There was a long pause. “Yes, I see,” Alleyn said.

She found she had twisted her gloves tightly together and doubled them over. She felt a kind of impatience with herself and abruptly smoothed them out.

“It was one of a pair,” Alleyn said, “Did you look at both of them?”

“No. The other was in a case in the drawer on his desk. I just saw it there. I noticed the drawer was under my nose, almost, and Uncle George kept putting the extra dummies, if that’s what you call them, into it.”

“Ah, yes. I saw them there.”

“He made a lot more than he wanted in case,” her voice faltered, “in case he was asked to do his turn again sometime.”

“I see.”

“Is that all?” she said.

“As you’ve been kind enough to come,” Alleyn said with a smile, “perhaps we should think up something more.”

“You needn’t bother, thank you.”

He smiled more broadly. “Fée was doing her stuff for him on the stairs this morning,” Carlisle thought. “Was she actually showing the go-ahead signal or was she merely trying to stall him off?”

“It’s about the steel end in this eccentric weapon. The bolt or dart,” Alleyn said, and her attention snapped taut again. “We are almost certain that it’s the business end of an embroidery stiletto from the work-box in the drawing-room. We found the discarded handle. I wonder if by any chance you remember when you last noticed the stiletto. If, of course, you happen to have noticed it.”

“So this is it,” she thought. “The revolver was nothing, it was a red herring. He’s really got me here to talk about the stiletto.”

She said: “I don’t think the work-box was open when I was in the drawing-room before dinner. At any rate I didn’t notice it.”

“I remember you told me that Lady Pastern showed you and Manx her petit point. That was when you were all in the drawing-room before dinner, wasn’t it? We found the petit point, by the way, beside the work-box.”

“Therefore,” she thought, “Aunt Cile or Ned or I might have taken the stiletto.” She repeated: “I’m sure the box wasn’t open.”

She had tried not to think beyond that one time, that one safe time about which she could quickly speak the truth.

“And after dinner?” Alleyn said casually.