“Did they speak of the performance to-night?”
“Oh, yes,” Edward said. “And I must say I’m not surprised that the waiters were muddled about who they were to carry out. It struck me that both Uncle George and Rivera wanted all the fat and that neither of them could make up his mind to letting the other have the stretcher. Bellairs was clearly at the end of his professional tether about it.”
Alleyn asked how long the men had stayed behind in the dining-room. Reluctantly — too reluctantly Carlisle thought, with a rising sense of danger — Ned told them that Lord Pastern had taken Breezy away to show him the blank cartridges. “So you and Rivera were left with the port?” Alleyn said.
“Yes. Not for long.”
“Can you recall the conversation?”
“There was nothing that would be any help to you.”
“You never know.”
“I didn’t encourage conversation. He asked all sorts of questions about our various relationships to each other and I snubbed him.”
“How did he take that?”
“Nobody enjoys being snubbed, I suppose, but I fancy he had a tolerably thick hide on him.”
“Was there actually a quarrel?”
Edward stood up. “Look here, Alleyn,” he said, “if I was in the slightest degree implicated in this business I should have followed my own advice and refused to answer any of your questions. I am not implicated. I did not monkey with the revolver. I did not bring about Rivera’s death.”
“And now,” Carlisle thought in despair, “Ned’s going to give him a sample of the family temper. O God,” she thought, “please don’t let him.”
“Good,” Alleyn said and waited.
“Very well then,” Edward said grandly and sat down.
“So there was a quarrel.”
“I merely,” Edward shouted, “showed the man I thought he was impertinent and he walked out of the room.”
“Did you speak to him again after this incident?”
Carlisle remembered a scene in the hall, the two men facing each other, Rivera with his hand clapped to his ear. What was it Ned had said to him? Something ridiculous, like a perky schoolboy. “Put that in your hurdy-gurdy and squeeze it,” he had shouted with evident relish.
“I merely ask these questions,” Alleyn said, “because the bloke had a thick ear, and I wondered who gave it to him. The skin’s broken and I notice you wear a signet ring.”
In the main office, Dr. Curtis contemplated Breezy Bellairs with the air of wary satisfaction. “He’ll do,” he said, and stepping neatly behind Breezy’s chair, he winked at Alleyn. “He must have got hold of something over and above the shot I gave him. But he’ll do.”
Breezy looked up at Alleyn and gave him the celebrated smile. He was pallid and sweating lightly. His expression was one of relief, of well-being. Dr. Curtis washed his syringe in a tumbler of water on the desk and then returned it to his case.
Alleyn opened the door into the foyer and nodded to Fox, who rose and joined him. Together they returned to the contemplation of Breezy.
Fox cleared his throat. “Alors,” he said cautiously and stopped.
“Évidemment,” he said, “il y a un avancement, n’est-ce pas?”
He paused, slightly flushed, and looked out of the corners of his eyes at Alleyn.
“Pas grand’chose,” Alleyn muttered. “But as Curtis says, he’ll do for our purpose. You go, by the way, Br’er Fox, from strength to strength. The accent improves.”
“I still don’t get the practice though,” Fox complained. Breezy, who was looking with complete tranquillity at the opposite wall, laughed comfortably. “I feel lovely, now,” he volunteered.
“He’s had a pretty solid shot,” Dr. Curtis said. “I don’t know what he’d been up to before but it seems to have packed him up a bit. But he’s all right. He can answer questions, can’t you, Bellairs?”
“I’m fine,” Breezy rejoined dreamily. “Box of birds.”
“Well…” Alleyn said dubiously. Fox added in a sepulchral undertone: “Faute de mieux.” “Exactly,” Alleyn said and, drawing up a chair, placed himself in front of Breezy.
“I’d like you to tell me something,” he said. Breezy lazily withdrew his gaze from the opposite wall and Alleyn found himself staring into eyes that, because of the enormous size of their pupils, seemed mere structures and devoid of intelligence.
“Do you remember,” he said, “what you did at Lord Pastern’s house?”
He had to wait a long time for an answer. At last Breezy’s voice, detached and remote, said: “Don’t let’s talk. It’s nicer not talking.”
“Talking’s nice too, though.”
Dr. Curtis walked away from Breezy and murmured to no one in particular, “Get him started and he may go on.”
“It must have been fun at the dinner party,” Alleyn suggested. “Did Carlos enjoy himself?”
Breezy’s arm lay curved along the desk. With a luxurious sigh, he slumped further into the chair and rested his cheek on his sleeve. In a moment or two his voice began again, independently, it seemed, with no conscious volition on his part. It trailed through his scarcely moving lips in a monotone.
“I told him it was silly but that made no difference at all. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘you’re crazy!’ Well, of course I was sore on account of he held back on me, not bringing me my cigarettes.”
“What cigarettes?”
“He never did anything I asked him. I was so good to him. I was as good as gold. I told him. I said, ‘Look,’ I said, ‘she won’t take it from you, boy. She’s as sore as hell,’ I said, ‘and so’s he, and the other girl isn’t falling so what’s the point?’ I knew there’d be trouble. ‘And the old bastard doesn’t like it,’ I said. ‘He pretends it doesn’t mean a thing to him but that’s all hooey because he just naturally wouldn’t like it.’ No good. No notice taken.”
“When was this?” Alleyn asked.
“Off and on. Most of the time you might say. And when we were in the taxi and he said how the guy had hit him, I said: ‘There you are, what was I telling you?’ ”
“Who hit him?”
There was a longer pause. Breezy turned his head languidly.
“Who hit Carlos, Breezy?”
“I heard you the first time. What a gang, though! The Honourable Edward Manx in serious mood while lunching at the Tarmac with Miss Félicité de Suze who is of course connected with him on the distaff side. Her stepfather is Lord Pastern and Bagott, but if you ask me it’s a punctured romance. Cherchez la femme.”
Fox glanced up from his notes with an air of bland interest.
“The woman in this case,” Alleyn said, “being…”
“Funny name for a girl.”
“Carlisle?”
“Sounds dopey to me, but what of that? But that’s the sort of thing they do. Imagine having two names. Pastern and Bagott. And I can look after both of them, don’t you worry. Trying to swing one across me. What a chance! Bawling me out. Saying he’ll write to this bloody paper. Him and his hot-gunning and where is he now?”
“Swing one across you?” Alleyn repeated quietly. He had pitched his voice on Breezy’s level. Their voices ran into and away from each other. They seemed to the two onlookers to speak as persons in a dream, with tranquillity and secret understanding.
“He might have known,” Breezy was saying, “that I wouldn’t come at it but you’ve got to admit it was awkward. A permanent engagement. Thanks a lot. How does the chorus go?”
He laughed faintly, yawned, whispered, “Pardon me,” and closed his eyes.
“He’s going,” Dr. Curtis said.
“Breezy,” Alleyn said loudly. “Breezy.”
“What?”
“Did Lord Pastern want you to keep him on permanently?”
“I told you. Him and his blankety-blankety blank cartridges.”
“Did he want you to sack Skelton?”
“It was all Carlos’s fault,” Breezy said quite loudly and on a plaintive note. “He thought it up. God, was he angry!”
“Was who angry?”
With a suggestion of cunning the voice murmured: “That’s telling.”