“So you say,” said Lord Pastern insultingly. Alleyn made a note.
“Can you tell me if this stiletto was in your drawer here, sir? Before last night?”
Lord Pastern was eyeing the revolver. He thrust out his underlip, shot a glance at Alleyn, and darted his hand towards it.
“All right,” Alleyn said, “you may touch it, but please answer my question about the stiletto.”
“How should I know?” he said indifferently. “I don’t know.” Without removing it from the case, he tipped the revolver over and, snatching up his lens, peered at the underside of the butt. He gave a shrill cackle of laughter.
“What did you expect to see?” Alleyn asked casually.
“Hoity-toity,” Lord Pastern rejoined. “Wouldn’t you like to know!”
He stared at Alleyn. His bloodshot eyes twinkled insolently. “It’s devilish amusin’,” he said. “Look at it whatever way you like, it’s damn funny.”
He dropped into an armchair, and with an air of gloating relish rubbed his hands together.
Alleyn shut down the lid of Fox’s case and succeeded in snatching back his temper. He stood in front of Lord Pastern and deliberately looked into his eyes. Lord Pastern immediately shut them very tight and bunched up his cheeks.
“I’m sleepy,” he said.
“Listen to me,” Alleyn said. “Have you any idea at all of the personal danger you are in? Do you know the consequences of withholding or refusing crucial information when a capital crime has been committed? It’s my duty to tell you that you are under grave suspicion. You’ve had the formal warning. Confronted with the body of a man whom, one assumes, you were supposed to hold in some sort of regard, you’ve conducted yourself appallingly. I must tell you, sir, that if you continue in this silly affectation of frivolity, I shall ask you to come to Scotland Yard where you will be questioned and, if necessary, detained.”
He waited. Lord Pastern’s face had gradually relaxed during this speech. His mouth now pouted and expelled a puff of air that blew his moustache out. He was, apparently, asleep again.
Alleyn contemplated him for some moments. He then seated himself at the desk in a position that enabled him to keep Lord Pastern in sight. After a moment’s cogitation, he pulled the typewriter towards him, took Félicité’s letter from his pocket, found a sheet of paper and began to make a copy.
At the first rattle of the keys Lord Pastern’s eyes opened, met Alleyn’s gaze and shut again. He mumbled something indistinguishable and snored with greater emphasis. Alleyn completed his copy and laid it beside the original. They had been typed on the same machine.
On the floor, beside the chair Carlisle had used on the previous night, lay the magazine Harmony. He took it up and ruffled the pages. A dozen or more flopped over and then the binding opened a little. He was confronted with G.P.F.’s page and noticed, as Carlisle had noticed, the cigarette ash in the groove. He read the letter signed “Toots,” turned a few more pages and came upon the anti-drug-racket article and a dramatic review signed by Edward Manx. He once more confronted that preposterous figure in the armchair.
“Lord Pastern,” he said loudly, “wake up. Wake up.”
Lord Pastern jerked galvanically, made a tasting noise with his tongue and lips and uttered a nightmarish sound.
“A-a-ah?”
“Come now, you’re awake. Answer me this,” said Alleyn and thrust the copy of Harmony under his nose. “How long have you known that Edward Manx was G.P.F.?”
CHAPTER VIII
MORNING
Lord Pastern blinked owlishly at the paper, swung round in his chair and eyed the desk. The letter and the copy lay conspicuously beside the typewriter.
“Yes,” Alleyn said, “that’s how I know. Will you give me an explanation of all this?”
Lord Pastern leant forward and, resting his forearm on his knees, seemed to stare at his clasped hands. When he spoke his voice was subdued and muffled.
“No,” he said, “I’ll be damned if I do. I’ll answer no questions. Find out for yourself. I’m for bed.”
He pulled himself out of the chair and squared his shoulders. The air of truculence was still there but Alleyn thought it overlaid a kind of indecision. With the nearest approach to civility that he had yet exhibited he added: “I’m within my rights, aren’t I?”
“Certainly,” Alleyn said at once. “Your refusal will be noted. That’s all. If you change your mind about sending for your solicitor, we shall be glad to call him in. In the meantime, I’m afraid, sir, I shall have to place you under very close observation.”
“D’you mean some damn bobby’s goin’ to follow me about like a bulkin’ great poodle?”
“If you care to put it that way. It’s no use, I imagine, for me to repeat any warnings about your own most equivocal position.”
“None whatever.” He went to the door and stood with his back to Alleyn, holding the knob and leaning heavily on it. “Get them to give you breakfast,” he said without looking round and went slowly out and up the stairs. Alleyn called his thanks after him and nodded to Marks, who was on the landing. Marks followed Lord Pastern upstairs.
Alleyn returned to the study, shut the window, had a last look round, packed Fox’s bag, removed it to the landing and finally locked and sealed the door. Marks had been replaced on the landing by another plain-clothes man. “Hullo, Jimson,” Alleyn said. “Just come on?”
“Yes, sir. Relieving.”
“Have you seen any of the staff?”
“A maid came upstairs just now, Mr. Alleyn. Mr. Fox left instructions they were to be kept off this floor so I sent her down again. She seemed very much put about.”
“She would,” Alleyn said. “All right. Tactful as you can, you know, but don’t miss anything.”
“Very good, sir.”
He crossed the landing and entered the ballroom where he found Thompson and Bailey packing up. Alleyn looked at the group of chairs round the grand piano and at a sheet of notepaper Bailey had collected. On it was pencilled the band programme for the previous night. Bailey pointed out the light coating of dust on the piano top and showed Alleyn where they had found clear traces of the revolver and the parasol and umbrellas. It was odd, Bailey and Thompson thought, but it appeared that quantities of dust had fallen after these objects had rested in this place. Not so very odd, Alleyn suggested, as Lord Pastern had, on his own statement, fired off a blank round in the ballroom and that would probably have brought down quite a lot of dust from the charming but ornately moulded ceiling. “Happy hunting ground,” he muttered. “Whose are the prints round these traces of the parasol section and knob? Don’t tell me,” he added wearily. “His lordship’s?”
“That’s right,” Thompson and Bailey said together. “His lordship’s and Breezy’s.” Alleyn saw them go and then came out and sealed the ballroom doors.
He returned to the drawing-room, collected Lady Pastern’s work-box, debated with himself about locking this room up too and decided against it. He then left all his gear under the eye of the officer on the landing and went down to the ground floor. It was now six o’clock.
The dining-room was already prepared for breakfast. The bowl of white carnations, he noticed, had been removed to a side table. As he halted before a portrait of some former Settinger who bore a mild resemblance to Lord Pastern, he heard a distant mingling of voices beyond the service door. The servants, he thought, having their first snack. He pushed open the door, found himself in a servery with a further door which led, it appeared, into the servants’ hall. The best of all early morning smells, that of freshly brewed coffee, was clearly discernible. He was about to go forward when a voice, loud, dogged and perceptibly anxious, said very slowly: