The face appeared quite suddenly against the plate glass, obscuring the reflected lamp and distorted by pressure. One door squeaked faintly as it opened.
She stood for a moment, holding her head scarf half across her face. Then she moved forward swiftly and was down on her knees before an armchair. Her finger-nails scrabbled on its tapestry. So intent was she upon her search that she did not hear him cross the thick carpet behind her, but when he drew the envelope from his pocket it made a slight crackle. Still kneeling, she swung round, saw him and cried out sharply.
“Is this what you are hunting for, Miss Wayne?” Alleyn asked.
He crossed over to the wall and switched up the lights. Without moving, Carlisle watched him. When he returned he still held the envelope. She put her hand to her burning face and said unsteadily: “You think I’m up to no good, I suppose. I suppose you want an explanation.”
“I should be glad of an answer to my question. Is this what you want?”
He held the envelope up, but did not give it to her. She looked at it doubtfully. “I don’t know — I don’t think — ”
“The envelope is mine. I’ll tell you what it contains. A letter that had been thrust down between the seat and the arm of the chair you have been exploring.”
“Yes,” Carlisle said. “Yes. That’s it. May I have it, please?”
“Do sit down,” Alleyn rejoined. “We’d better clear this up, don’t you think?”
He waited while she rose. After a moment’s hesitation, she sat in the chair.
“You won’t believe me, of course,” she said, “but that letter — I suppose you have read it, haven’t you — has nothing whatever to do with this awful business to-night. Nothing in the wide world. It’s entirely personal and rather important.”
“Have you even read it?” he asked. “Can you repeat the contents? I should like you to do that, if you will.”
“But — not absolutely correctly — I mean — ”
“Approximately.”
“It — it’s got an important message. It concerns someone — I can’t tell you in so many words — ”
“And yet it’s so important that you return here at three o’clock in the morning to try and find it.” He paused but Carlisle said nothing. “Why,” he said, “didn’t Miss de Suze come and collect her own correspondence?”
“Oh dear!” she said. “This is difficult.”
“Well, for pity’s sake keep up your reputation and be honest about it.”
“I am being honest, damn you!” said Carlisle with spirit. “The letter’s a private affair and — and — extremely confidential. Félicité doesn’t want anyone to see it. I don’t know exactly what’s in it.”
“She funked coming back herself?”
“She’s a bit shattered. Everyone is.”
“I’d like you to see what the letter’s about,” said Alleyn after a pause. She began to protest. Very patiently he repeated his usual argument. When someone had been killed the nicer points of behaviour had to be disregarded. He had to prove to his own satisfaction that the letter was immaterial and then he would forget it. “You remember,” he said, “this letter dropped out of her bag. Did you notice how she snatched it away from me? I see you did. Did you notice what she did after I said you would all be searched? She shoved her hand down between the seat and arm of the chair. Then she went off to be searched and I sat in the chair. When she came back she spent a miserable half-hour fishing for the letter and trying to look as if she wasn’t. All right.”
He drew the letter from the envelope and spread it out before her. “It’s been finger-printed,” he said, “but without any marked success. Too much rubbing against good solid chair-cover. Will you read it or — ”
“Oh, all right,” Carlisle said angrily.
The letter was typed on a sheet of plain notepaper. There was no address and no date.
My Dear [Carlisle read]: Your loveliness is my undoing. Because of it I break my deepest promise to myself and to others. We are closer than you have ever dreamed. I wear a white flower in my coat to-night. It is yours. But as you value our future happiness, make not the slightest sign — even to me. Destroy this note, my love, but keep my love. G.P.F.
Carlisle raised her head, met Alleyn’s gaze and avoided it quickly. “A white flower,” she whispered. “G.P.F.? G.P.F.? I don’t believe it.”
“Mr. Edward Manx had a white carnation in his coat, I think.”
“I won’t discuss this letter with you,” she said strongly. “I should never have read it. I won’t discuss it. Let me take it back to her. It’s nothing to do with this other thing. Nothing. Give it to me.”
Alleyn said, “You must know I can’t do that. Think for a moment. There was some attachment, a strong attachment of one kind or another, between Rivera and your cousin — your step-cousin. After Rivera is murdered, she is at elaborate pains to conceal this letter, loses it, and is so anxious to retrieve it that she persuades you to return here in an attempt to recover it. How can I disregard such a sequence of events?”
“But you don’t know Fée! She’s always in and out of tight corners over her young men. It’s nothing. You don’t understand.”
“Well,” he said, looking good-humouredly at her, “help me to understand. I’ll drive you home. You can tell me on the way. Fox.”
Fox came out of the office. Carlisle listened to Alleyn giving his instructions. The other men appeared from the cloak-room, held a brief indistinguishable conversation with Fox and went out through the main entrance. Alleyn and Fox collected their belongings and put on their coats. Carlisle stood up. Alleyn returned the letter to its envelope and put it in his pocket. She felt tears stinging under her eyelids. She tried to speak and produced only an indeterminate sound.
“What is it?” he said, glancing at her.
“It can’t be true,” she stammered. “I won’t believe it. I won’t.”
“What? That Edward Manx wrote this letter?”
“He couldn’t. He couldn’t write like that to her.”
“No?” Alleyn said casually. “You think not? But she’s quite good-looking, isn’t she? Quite attractive, don’t you think?”
“It’s not that. It’s not that at all. It’s the letter itself. He couldn’t write like that. It’s so bogus.”
“Have you ever noticed love-letters that are read out in court and published in the papers? Don’t they sound pretty bogus? Yet some of them have been written by extremely intelligent people. Shall we go?”
It was cold out in the street. A motionless pallor stood behind the rigid silhouette of roofs. “Dawn’s left hand,” Alleyn said to nobody in particular and shivered. Carlisle’s taxi had gone but a large police car waited. A second man sat beside the driver. Fox opened the door and Carlisle got in. The two men followed. “We’ll call at the Yard,” Alleyn said.
She felt boxed-up in the corner of the seat and was conscious of the impersonal pressure of Alleyn’s arm and shoulder. Mr. Fox, on the farther side, was a bulky man. She turned and saw Alleyn’s head silhouetted against the bluish window. An odd notion came into her head. “If Fée happens to calm down and take a good look at him,” she thought, “it’ll be all up with G.P.F. and the memory of Carlos and everybody.” And with that her heart gave a leaden thump or two. “Oh, Ned,” she thought, “how you could!” She tried to face the full implication of the letter but almost at once shied away from it. “I’m miserable,” she thought, “I’m unhappier than I’ve been for years and years.”