A Wreath for Rivera

Alleyn got up and mounted the bandstand. He stood on the spot where Rivera had fallen. The skeleton tower of the metronome framed him. The reverse side of this structure revealed its electrical equipment. He looked up at the pointer of the giant arm which was suspended directly above his head. It was a hollow steel or plastic casting studded with miniature lights and for a moment reminded him fantastically of the jewelled dart. To the right of the band-room door and hidden from the audience by the piano, a small switchboard was sunk in the wall. Happy Hart, they had told Alleyn, was in charge of the lights. From where he sat at the piano and from where he fell to the floor he could reach out to the switches. Alleyn did so, now, pulling down the one marked “Motor.” A hidden whirring sound prefaced the first loud clack. The giant downward-pointing arm swept semi-circularly across, back, across and back to its own ratchet-like accompaniment. He switched on the lights and stood for a moment, an incongruous figure, motionless at the core of his kaleidoscopic setting. The point of the arm, flashing its lights, swept within four inches of his head and away and back and away again. “If you watched the damn’ thing for long enough I believe it’d mesmerize you,” he thought and turned off the switches.

Back in the offices he found Mr. Fox in severe control of two plumbers who were removing their jackets in the lavatory.

“If we can’t find anything fishing with wires, Mr. Alleyn,” Fox said, “it’ll be a case of taking down the whole job.”

“I don’t hold out ecstatic hopes,” Alleyn said, “but get on with it.”

One of the plumbers pulled the chain and contemplated the ensuing phenomena.

“Well?” said Fox.

“I wouldn’t say she was a sweetly running job,” the plumber diagnosed, “and yet again she works if you can understand me.” He raised a finger, and glanced at his mate.

“Trap trouble?” ventured his mate.

“Ar.”

“We’ll leave you to it,” Alleyn said and withdrew Fox into the office. “Fox,” he said, “let’s remind ourselves of the key pieces in this jig-saw atrocity. What are they?”

Fox said promptly: “The set-up at Duke’s Gate. The drug racket. Harmony. The substitution. The piano-accordion. The nature of the the weapon.”

“Add one more. The metronome was motionless when Rivera played. It started its blasted tick-tack stuff after he fell and after the other rounds had been fired.”

“I get you, sir. Yes,” said Fox, placidly, “there’s that too. Add the metronome.”

“Now, let’s mug over the rest of the material and see where we are.”

Sitting in Caesar Bonn’s stale office, they sorted, discarded, correlated and dissociated the fragments of the case. Their voices droned on to the intermittent accompaniment of plumbers’ aquatics. After twenty minutes Fox shut his notebook, removed his spectacles and looked steadily at his superior officer.

“It amounts to this,” he said. “Setting aside a handful of insignificant details, we’re short of only one piece.” He poised his hand, palm down, over the table. “If we can lay hold of that and if, when we’ve got it, it fits — well, our little picture’s complete.”

“If,” Alleyn said, “and when.”

The door of the inner office opened and the senior plumber entered. With an air of false modesty he extended a naked arm and bleached hand. On the palm of the hand dripped a revolver. “Would this,” he asked glumly, “be what you was wanting?”

Dr. Curtis waited for them outside the main entrance to Breezy’s flat.

“Sorry to drag you out, Curtis,” Alleyn said, “but we may need your opinion about his fitness to make a statement. This is Fox’s party. He’s the drug baron.”

“How do you expect he’ll be, Doctor?” Fox asked.

Dr. Curtis stared at his shoes and said guardedly: “Heavy hangover. Shaky. Depressed. May be resentful. May be placatory. Can’t tell.”

“Suppose he decides to talk, is it likely to be truthful?”

“Not very. They usually lie.”

Fox said: “What’s the line to take? Tough or coaxing?”

“Use your own judgement.”

“You might tip us the wink, though, Doctor.”

“Well,” said Curtis, “let’s take a look at him.”

The flats were of the more dubious modern kind, and brandished chromium steel almost in the Breezy Bellairs Manner — showily and without significance. Alleyn, Fox and Curtis approached the flat by way of a rococo lift and a tunnel-like passage. Fox pressed a bell and a plain-clothes officer answered the door. When he saw them he snibbed back the lock and closed the door behind him.

“How is he?” Alleyn asked.

“Awake, sir. Quiet enough, but restless.”

“Said anything?” Fox asked. “To make sense, I mean.”

“Nothing much, Mr. Fox. Very worried about the deceased, he seems to be. Says he doesn’t know what he’s going to do without him.”

“That makes sense at all events,” Fox grunted. “Shall we go in, sir?”