A Wreath for Rivera

A web of thread-like veins started out on Lord Pastern’s blanched cheek-bones. He brushed up his moustache and, finding his hand shook, looked quickly at it and thrust it inside the breast of his coat.

“It seemed best,” Alleyn said, “to let you go your own gait and see how far it would take you. You wanted us to believe that Mr. Manx was G.P.F.; there was nothing to be gained, we thought, and there might be something lost in letting you see we recognized the equal possibility of your being G.P.F. yourself. This became a probability when the drafts of copy turned up amongst Rivera’s blackmailing material. Because Rivera had never met Manx but was closely associated with you.”

Alleyn glanced up at his colleague. “It was Inspector Fox,” he said, “who first pointed out that you had every chance, during the performance, while the spot light was on somebody else, to load the revolver with the fantastic bolt. All right. But there remained your first trump card — the substituted weapon; the apparently irrefutable evidence that the gun we recovered from Breezy was not the one you brought down to the Metronome. But when we found the original weapon in the lavatory beyond the inner office that difficulty, too, fell into place in the general design. We had got as far as abundant motive and damning circumstance. Opportunity began to appear.”

Alleyn stood up and with him Lord Pastern, who pointed a quivering finger at him.

“You bloody fool!” he said, drawing his lips back from his teeth. “You can’t arrest me — you — ”

“I believe I could arrest you,” Alleyn rejoined, “but not for murder. Your second trump card is unfortunately valid. You didn’t kill Rivera because Rivera was not killed by the revolver.”

He looked at Manx. “And now,” he said, “we come to you.”

Edward Manx turned from the window and walked towards Alleyn with his hands in his pockets. “All right,” he said. “You come to me. What have you nosed out about me?”

“This and that,” Alleyn rejoined. “On the face of it there’s the evidence that you quarrelled with Rivera and clipped him over the ear. Nosing, as you would put it, beneath the surface, there’s your association with Harmony. You, and perhaps you alone, knew that Lord Pastern was G.P.F. If he told you Rivera was blackmailing him — ”

“He didn’t tell me.”

“ — and if, in addition, you knew Rivera was a drug merchant — ” Alleyn waited for a moment but Manx said nothing— “why then, remembering your expressed loathing of this abominable trade, something very like a motive began to appear.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Manx said lightly. “I don’t go about devising quaint deaths for everyone I happen to think a cad or a bad lot.”

“One never knows. There have been cases. And you could have changed the revolvers.”

“You’ve just told us that he wasn’t killed by the revolver.”

“Nevertheless the substitution was made by his murderer.”

Manx laughed acidly. “I give up,” he said and threw out his hands. “Get on with it.”

“The weapon that killed Rivera couldn’t have been fired from the revolver because at the time Lord Pastern pulled the trigger, Rivera had his piano-accordion across his chest and the piano-accordion is uninjured.”

“I could have told you that,” said Lord Pastern, rallying.

“It was a patently bogus affair, in any case. How, for instance, could Lord Pastern be sure of shooting Rivera with such a footling tool? A stiletto in the end of a bit of stick? If he missed by a fraction of an inch Rivera might not die instantly and might not die at all. No. You have to be sure of getting the right spot and getting it good and proper, with a bare bodkin.”

Manx lit a cigarette with unsteady hands. “Then in that case I can’t for the life of me see — ” he stopped — “whodunit,” he said, “and how.”

“Since it’s obvious Rivera wasn’t hurt when he fell,” Alleyn said, “he was stabbed after he fell.”

“But he wasn’t meant to fall. They’d altered the routine. We’ve had that till we’re sick of the sound of it.”

“It will be our contention that Rivera did not know that the routine had been altered.”

“Bosh!” Lord Pastern shouted so unexpectedly that they all jumped. “He wanted it changed. I didn’t. It was Carlos wanted it.”

“We’ll take that point a bit later,” Alleyn said. “We’re considering how, and when, he was killed. Do you remember the timing of the giant metronome? It was motionless, wasn’t it, right up to the moment when Rivera fell; motionless and pointing straight down at him. As he leant backwards its steel tip was poised rather menacingly, straight at his heart.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake!” Manx said disgustedly. “Are you going to tell us somebody dropped the bolt out of the metronome?”