A Wreath for Rivera

She saw again the small gleaming tool drop from Miss Henderson’s fingers when the report sounded in the ballroom. She saw Félicité automatically stoop and pick it up and a second later burst into tears and run furiously from the room. She heard her loud voice on the landing: “I’ve got to speak to you,” and Rivera’s: “But certainly, if you wish it.”

“After dinner?” she repeated flatly;

“You were in the drawing-room then. Before the men came in. Perhaps Lady Pastern took up her work. Did you, at any time, see the box open or notice the stiletto?”

How quick was thought? As quick as people said? Was her hesitation fatally long? Here she moved, on the brink of speech. She could hear the irrevocable denial, and yet she had not made it. And suppose he had already spoken to Félicité about the stiletto? “What am I looking like?” she thought in a panic. “I’m looking like a liar already.”

“Can you remember?” he asked. So she had waited too long.

“I — don’t think I can.” Now, she had said it. Somehow it wasn’t quite as shaming to lie about remembering as about the fact itself. If things went wrong she could say afterwards: “Yes, I remember, now, but I had forgotten. It had no significance for me at the time.”

“You don’t think you can.” She had nothing to say but he went on almost at once: “Miss Wayne, will you please try to look squarely at this business. Will you try to pretend that it’s an affair that you have read about and in which you have no personal concern. Not easy. But try. Suppose, then, a group of complete strangers was concerned in Rivera’s death and suppose one of them, not knowing much about it, unable to see the factual wood for the emotional trees, was asked a question to which she knew the answer. Perhaps the answer seems to implicate her. Perhaps it seems to implicate someone she is fond of. She doesn’t in the least know, it may be, what the implications are but she refuses to take the responsibility of telling the truth about one detail that may fit in with the whole truth. She won’t, in fact, speak the truth if by doing so she’s remotely responsible for bringing an extraordinarily callous murderer to book. So she lies. At once she finds that it doesn’t end there. She must get other people to tell corroborative lies. She finds herself, in effect, whizzing down a dangerous slope with her car out of control, steering round some obstacles, crashing into others, doing irreparable damage and landing herself and possibly other innocent people in disaster. You think I’m overstating her case perhaps. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen very often.”

“Why do you say all this to me?”

“I’ll tell you why. You said just now that you didn’t remember noticing the stiletto at any time after dinner. Before you made this statement you hesitated. Your hands closed on your gloves and suddenly twisted them. Your hands behaved with violence and yet they trembled. After you had spoken they continued to have a sort of independent life of their own. Your left hand kneaded the gloves and your right hand moved rather aimlessly across your neck and over your face. You blushed deeply and stared very fixedly at the top of my head. You presented me, in fact, with Example A from any handbook on behaviour of the lying witness. You were a glowing demonstration of the bad liar. And now, if all this is nonsense, you can tell counsel for the defence how I bullied you and he will treat me to as nasty a time as his talents suggest when I’m called to give evidence. Now I come to think of it, he’ll be very unpleasant indeed. So, however, will prosecuting counsel if you stick to your lapse of memory.”

Carlisle said angrily: “My hands feel like feet. I’m going to sit on them. You don’t play fair.”

“My God,” Alleyn said, “this isn’t a game! It’s murder.”

“He was atrocious. He was much nastier than anyone else in the house.”

“He may have been the nastiest job of work in Christendom. He was murdered and you’re dealing with the police. This is not a threat but it’s a warning: We’ve only just started — a great deal more evidence may come our way. You were not alone in the drawing-room after dinner.”

She thought: “But Hendy won’t tell and neither will Aunt Cile.” But William came in sometime, about then. Suppose he saw Fée on the landing? Suppose he noticed the stiletto in her hand? And then she remembered the next time she had seen Félicité. Félicité had been on the top of the world, in ecstasy because of the letter from G.P.F. She had changed into her most gala dress and her eyes were shining. She had already discarded Rivera as easily as she had discarded all her previous young men. It was fantastic to tell lies for Félicité. There was something futile about this scene with Alleyn. She had made a fool of herself for nothing.

He had taken an envelope from a drawer of his desk and now opened it and shook its contents out before her. She saw a small shining object with a sharp end.

“Do you recognize it?” he asked.

“The stiletto.”