A Wreath for Rivera

“His stepdaughter could have done it. Or any other member of his party. They were close to the sombrero, remember. They got up to dance and moved round between the table and the edge of the dais. Lady Pastern was alone at the table for some time. I didn’t see her move but I wasn’t watching her, of course. All the ladies had largish evening bags. The catch in that theory, Br’er Fox, is that they wouldn’t have known they were going to be within reach of the sombrero and it’s odds on they didn’t know he was going to put his perishing gun under his sombrero, anyway.”

Fox bit at his short grizzled moustache, planted the palms of his hands on his knees and appeared to go into a short trance. He interrupted it to mutter: “Skelton, now. Syd Skelton. Could Syd Skelton have worked the substitution? You’re going to remind me they were all watching him, but were they watching all that closely? Syd Skelton.”

“Go on, Fox.”

“Syd Skelton’s on his own, in a manner of speaking. He left the band platform before his lordship came on for his turn. Syd walked out. Suppose he had substituted this gun for the other with the initials. Suppose he walked right out and dropped the other one down the first grating he came to? Syd knew he was going to get the chance, didn’t he?”

“How, when and where did he convert the bit of parasol shaft and stiletto into the bolt and put it up the barrel of the second revolver? Where did he get his ammunition? And when did he get the gun? He wasn’t at Duke’s Gate.”

“Yes,” Fox said heavily, “that’s awkward. I wonder if you could get round that one. Well, leave it for the time being. Who else have we got? Breezy. From the substitution angle, can we do anything about Breezy?”

“He didn’t get alongside Pastern, on either of their statements, from the time Skelton looked at the gun until after Rivera was killed. They were alone together in the band-room before Breezy made his entrance but Pastern, with his usual passionate industry in clearing other people, says Breezy didn’t go near him. And Pastern had his gun in his hip pocket, remember.”

Fox returned to his trance.

“I think,” Alleyn said, “it’s going to be one of those affairs where the whittling away of impossibilities leaves one face to face with a mere improbability which, as you would say, faute de mieux, one is forced to accept. And I think, so far, Fox, we haven’t found my improbable notion an impossibility. At least it has the virtue of putting the fancy touches in a more credible light.”

“We’ll never make a case of it, I reckon, if it does turn out to be the answer.”

“And we’ll never make a case of it if we pull in his lordship and base the charge on the assumption that he substituted this gun for the one he loaded and says he fired. Skelton’s put up by the defence and swears he examined the thing at his own request and saw the initials and that this is not the same weapon. Counsel points out that three minutes later Lord Pastern goes on for his turn.”

Fox snarled quietly to himself and presently broke out: “We call this blasted thing a bolt. Be damned if I don’t think we’ll get round to calling it a dart. Be damned if I’m not beginning to wonder if it was used like one. Thrown at the chap from close by. After all it’s not impossible.”

“Who by? Breezy?”

“No,” Fox said slowly. “No. Not Breezy. His lordship cleared Breezy in advance by searching him. Would you swear Breezy didn’t pick anything up from anywhere after he came out to conduct?”

“I believe I would. He walked rapidly through the open door and down an alleyway between the musicians. He stood in a spot light a good six feet or more away from anything, conducting like a great jerking jelly-fish. They all say he couldn’t have picked anything up after Pastern searched him, and in any case I would certainly swear he didn’t put his hands near his pockets and that up to the time Rivera fell he was conducting with both hands and that none of his extraordinary antics in the least resembled dart-throwing. I was watching him. They rather fascinated me, those antics. And if you want any more, Br’er Fox, Rivera had his back turned to Breezy when he fell.”

“All right. His lordship then. His lordship was facing Rivera. Close to him. Blast. Unless he’s ambidextrous, how’d he fire off a gun and throw a dart all in a split second? This is getting me nowhere. Who else, then?”

“Do you fancy Lady Pastern as a dart queen?”

Fox chuckled. “That would be the day, sir, wouldn’t it? But how about Mr. Manx? We’ve got a motive for Manx. Rivera had proof that Manx wrote these sissy articles in Harmony. Manx doesn’t want that known. Blackmail,” said Fox without much conviction.

“Foxkin,” Alleyn said, “let there be a truce to these barren speculations. May I remind you that up to the time he fell Rivera was raising hell with a piano-accordion?”