A Wreath for Rivera

Fox said, after another long pause: “You know I like this case. It’s got something. Yes. And may I remind you, sir, that he wasn’t meant to fall? None of them expected him to fall. Therefore he fell because somebody planted a bloody little steel embroidery gadget on a parasol handle in his heart before he fell. So where, if you don’t object to the inquiry, Mr. Alleyn, do we go from here?”

“I think,” Alleyn said, “that you institute a search for the missing gun and I pay a call on Miss Petronella Xantippe Henderson.” He got up and fetched his hat. “And I think, moreover,” he added, “that we’ve been making a couple of perishing fools of ourselves.”

“About the dart?” Fox demanded. “Or the gun?”

“About Harmony. Think this one over while I call on Miss Henderson and then tell me what you make of it.”

Five minutes later he went out, leaving Fox in a concentrated trance.

Miss Henderson received him in her room. It had the curiously separate, not quite congenial air that seems to be the characteristic of sitting-rooms that are permanently occupied by solitary women in other people’s houses. There were photographs: of Félicité, as a child, as a schoolgirl and in her presentation dress; one intimidating portrait of Lady Pastern and one, enlarged, it would seem, from a snapshot, of Lord Pastern in knickerbockers and shooting boots, with a gun under his arm, a spaniel at his heels, a large house at his back and an expression of impertinence on his face. Above the desk hung a group of women undergraduates clad in the tube-like brevity of the nineteen-twenties. A portion of Lady Margaret Hall loomed in the background.

Miss Henderson was dressed with scrupulous neatness, in a dark suit that faintly resembled a uniform or habit. She received Alleyn with perfect composure. He looked at her hair, greyish, quietly fashionable in its controlled grooming, at her eyes, which were pale, and at her mouth, which was unexpectedly full.

“Well, Miss Henderson,” he said, “I wonder if you will be able to throw any light on this very obscure business.”

“I’m afraid it’s most unlikely,” she said tranquilly.

“You never know. There’s one point, at least, where I hope you will help us. You were present at last night’s party in this house, both before and after dinner, and you were in the drawing-room when Lord Pastern, with the help of all the people concerned, worked out and wrote down the time-table which he afterwards gave to me.”

“Yes,” she agreed after he had waited for a second or two.

“Would you say that as far as your personal observations and recollections cover them, the movements set down in the time-table are accurate?”

“Oh yes,” she said at once, “I think so. But of course they don’t go very far — my recollections. I was the last to arrive in the drawing-room, you know, before dinner and the first to leave after dinner.”

“Not quite the first, according to the time-table, surely?”

She drew her brows together as if perturbed at the suggestion of inaccuracy. “Not?” she said.

“The time-table puts Miss de Suze’s exit from the drawing-room a second or two before yours.”

“How stupid of me. Félicité did go out first but I followed almost at once. I forgot for the moment.”

“You were all agreed on this point last night when Lord Pastern compiled his time-table?”

“Yes. Perfectly.”

“Do you remember that just before this there was a great rumpus in the ballroom? It startled you and you dropped a little stiletto on the carpet. You were tidying Lady Pastern’s work-box at the time. Do you remember?”

He had thought at first that she used no more make-up than a little powder but he saw now that the faint warmth of her cheeks was artificial. The colour became isolated as the skin beneath and about it bleached. Her voice was quite even and clear.

“It was certainly rather an alarming noise,” she said.

“Do you remember, too, that Miss de Suze picked up the stiletto? I expect she meant to return it to you or to the box but she was rather put out just then. She was annoyed, wasn’t she, by the, as she considered, uncordial reception given to her fiancé?”

“He was not her fiancé. They were not engaged.”

“Not officially, I know.”

“Not officially. There was no engagement.”

“I see. In any case, do you remember that instead of replacing the stiletto, she still had it in her hand when, a moment later, she left the room?”

“I’m afraid I didn’t notice.”

“What did you do?”

“Do?”

“At that moment. You had been tidying the box. It was exquisitely neat when we found it this morning. Was it on your knees? The table was a little too far from your chair for you to have used it, I think.”

“Then,” she said, with her first hint of impatience, “the box was on my knees.”

“So that was how the miniature silver pencil you wear on a chain came to be in the box?”

Her hands went to the bosom of her suit, fingering it. “Yes. I suppose so. Yes. I didn’t realize… Was that where it was?”

“Perhaps you dropped the lid and caught the pencil, dragging it off the chain.”