“What,” Alleyn’s voice said close beside her, “I wonder, is the precise interpretation of the initials ‘G.P.F.’? They seem to ring some bell in my atrocious memory but I haven’t got there yet. Why, do you imagine, G.P.F?” She didn’t answer and after a moment he went on. “Wait a bit, though. Didn’t you say something about a magazine you were reading before you visited Lord Pastern in his study? Harmony? Was that it?” He turned his head to look at her and she nodded. “And the editor of the tell-it-all-to-auntie page calls himself Guide, Philosopher and Friend? How does he sign his recipes for radiant living?”
Carlisle mumbled: “Like that.”
“And you wondered if Miss de Suze had written to him,” Alleyn said tranquilly. “Yes. Now, does this get us anywhere, do you imagine?”
She made a non-committal sound. Unhappy recollections forced themselves upon her. Recollections of Félicité’s story about a correspondence with someone she had never met who had written her a “marvellous” letter. Of Rivera reading her answer to this letter and making a scene about it. Of Ned Manx’s article in Harmony. Of Félicité’s behaviour after they all met to go to the Metronome. Of her taking the flower from Ned’s coat. And of his stooping his head to listen to her as they danced together.
“Was Mr. Manx,” Alleyn’s voice asked, close beside her, “wearing his white carnation when he arrived for dinner?”
“No,” she said, too loudly. “No. Not till afterwards. There were white carnations on the table at dinner.”
“Perhaps it was one of them.”
“Then,” she said quickly, “it doesn’t fit. The letter must have been written before he ever saw the carnation. It doesn’t fit. She said the letter came by district messenger. Ned wouldn’t have known.”
“By district messenger, did she? We’ll have to check that. Perhaps we’ll find the envelope. Would you say,” Alleyn continued, “that he seemed to be very much attached to her?”
(Edward had said: “About Fée. Something very odd has occurred. I can’t explain but I’d like to think you understand.”)
“Strongly attracted, would you think?” Alleyn said.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to think.”
“Do they see much of each other?”
“I don’t know. He — he stayed at Duke’s Gate while he was flat hunting.”
“Perhaps an attachment developed then. What do you think?”
She shook her head. Alleyn waited. Carlisle now found his unstressed persistence intolerable. She felt her moorings go and was adrift in the darkness. A wretchedness of spirit that she was unable to control or understand took possession of her. “I won’t talk about it,” she stammered, “it’s none of my business. I can’t go on like this. Let me go, please. Please let me go.”
“Of course,” Alleyn said. “I’ll take you home.”
When they arrived at Duke’s Gate, dawn was so far established that the houses with their blind windows and locked doors were clearly distinguishable in a wan half-light.
The familiar street, emerging from night, had an air of emaciation and secrecy, Carlisle thought, and she was vaguely relieved when milk bottles jingled up a side alley breaking across the blank emptiness. “Have you got a key?” Alleyn said. He and Fox and the man from the front seat waited while she groped in her bag. As she opened the door a second car drew up and four men got out. The men from the front seat joined them. She thought: “This makes us all seem very important. This is an important case. A case of murder.”
In the old days she had come back from parties once or twice with Ned Manx at this hour. The indefinable house-smell made itself felt as they entered. She turned on a lamp and it was light in the silent hall. She saw herself reflected in the inner glass doors, her face stained with tears. Alleyn came in first. Standing there, in evening dress, with his hat in his hand, he might have been seeing her home, about to wish her good-bye. The other men followed quickly. “What happens now?” she wondered. “Will he let me go now? What are they going to do?”
Alleyn had drawn a paper from his pocket. “This is a search-warrant,” he said. “I don’t want to hunt Lord Pastern out of his bed. It will do I think, if — ”
He broke off, moved quickly to the shadowed staircase and up half-a-dozen steps. Fox and the other men stood quiet inside the doors. A little French clock in the stair well ticked flurriedly. Upstairs on the first floor a door was flung open. A faint reflected light shone on Alleyn’s face. A voice, unmistakably Lord Pastern’s, said loudly: “I don’t give a damn how upset you are. You can have kittens if you like but you don’t go to bed till I’ve got my time-table worked out. Sit down.”
With a faint grin Alleyn moved upstairs and Carlisle, after a moment’s hesitation, followed him.
They were all in the drawing-room. Lady Pastern, still in evening dress and now very grey about the eyes and mouth, sat in a chair near the door. Félicité, who had changed into a housecoat and reduced her make-up, looked frail and lovely. Edward had evidently been sitting near her and had risen on Alleyn’s entrance. Lord Pastern, with his coat off and his sleeves turned up, sat at a table in the middle of the room. Sheets of paper lay before him and he had a pencil between his teeth. A little removed from this group, her hands folded in the lap of her woollen dressing gown and her grey hair neatly braided down her back, sat Miss Henderson. A plain-clothes officer stood inside the door. Carlisle knew all about him. He was the man who had escorted them home: hours ago, it seemed, in another age. She had given him the slip when she returned to the Metronome and now wondered, for the first time, how dim a view the police would take of this manoeuvre. The man looked awkwardly at Alleyn, who seemed about to speak to him as Carlisle entered, but stood aside to let her pass. Edward came quickly towards her. “Where have you been?” he said angrily. “What’s the matter? I — ” He looked into her face. “Lisle,” he said. “What is it?”
Lord Pastern glanced up. “Hello,” he said. “Where the devil did you get to, Lisle? I want you. Sit down.”
“It’s like a scene from a play,” she thought. “All of them sitting about exhausted, in a grand drawing-room. The third act of a thriller.” She caught the eye of the plain-clothes officer, who was looking at her with distaste.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m afraid I just walked out by the back door.”
“I realize that, miss,” he said.
“We can’t be in two places at once, can we?” Carlisle added brightly. She was trying to avoid Félicité. Félicité was looking at her anxiously, obviously, with inquiring eyebrows.
Lord Pastern said briskly: “Glad you’ve come, Alleyn, though I must say you’ve taken your time about it. I’ve been doin’ your job for you. Sit down.”
Lady Pastern’s voice, sepulchral with fatigue, said: “May I suggest, George, that as in all probability this gentleman is about to arrest you, your choice of phrase is inappropriate.”
“That’s a damn tiresome sort of thing to say, C,” her husband rejoined. “Gets you nowhere. What you want,” he continued, darting his pencil at Alleyn, “is a time-table. You want to know what we were all doin’ with ourselves before we went to the Metronome. System. All right. I’ve worked it out for you.” He slapped the paper before him. “It’s incomplete without Breezy’s evidence, of course, but we can get that to-morrow. Lisle, there are one or two things I want from you. Come here.”