Swing, Brother, Swing

by Ngaio Marsh

  He opened his own file and in a moment the letter Félicité had dropped from her bag at the Metronome had been placed beside the other. Alleyn bent over them. ‘It’s a potshot, of course,’ he said, ‘but I’m ready to bet it’s the same machine. The “s” out of alignment. All the usual indications.’

  ‘Where does this lead us?’ Fox asked. Gibson, looking gratified, cleared his throat. Alleyn said: ‘It leads us into a bit of a tangle. The letter to Miss de Suze was typed on the machine in Lord Pastern’s study on the paper he uses for that purpose. The machine carried his dabs only. I took a chance and asked him, point-blank, how long he’d known that Edward Manx was GPF. He wouldn’t answer but I’ll swear I rocked him. I’ll undertake he typed the letter after he saw Manx put a white carnation in his coat, marked the envelope, “By District Messenger,” and put it on the hall table where it was discovered by the butler. All right. Now, not so long ago, Manx stayed at Duke’s Gate for three weeks and I suppose it’s reasonable to assume that he may have used the typewriter and the blue letter-paper in the study when he was jotting down notes for his nauseating little GPF numbers in Harmony. So this draft may have been typed by Manx. But, as far as we know, Manx met Rivera for the first time last night and incidentally dotted him what William pleasingly called a fourpenny one, because Rivera kissed, not Miss de Suze but Miss Wayne. Now, if we’re right so far, how and when the hell did Rivera get hold of Manx’s rough draft of this sickening GPF stuff? Not last night, because we’ve got it from Rivera’s safe, and he didn’t go back to his rooms. Answer me that, Fox.’

  ‘Gawd knows.’

  ‘We don’t, at all events. And if we find out, is it going to tie up with Rivera’s murder? Well, press on, chaps, press on.’

  He returned to the ledger and Fox to the bundle of papers. Presently Alleyn said: ‘Isn’t it extraordinary how business-like they are?’

  ‘Who’s that, Mr Alleyn?’

  ‘Why, blackmailers to be sure. Mr Rivera was a man of parts, Fox. Piano accordions, drug-running, blackmail. Almost a pity we’ve got to nab his murderer. He was ripe for bumping off, was Mr Rivera. This is a neatly kept record of monies and goods received and disbursed. On the 3rd of February, for instance, we have an entry. “Cash, £150, 3rd instalment, SFF.” A week later, a cryptic note on the debit side: “6 doz. per SS, £360,” followed by a series of credits: “JCM, £10.” “BB £100,” and so on. These entries are in a group by themselves. He’s totted them up and balanced the whole thing, showing a profit of £200 on the original outlay of £360.’

  ‘That’ll be his dope racket, by gum. SS, did you say, Mr Alleyn? By gum, I wonder if he is in with the Snowy Santos bunch.’

  ‘And “BB” on the paying side. “BB” is quite a profitable number on the paying side.’

  ‘Breezy Bellairs?’

  ‘I shouldn’t wonder. It looks to me, Fox, as if Rivera was a medium high-up in the drug racket. He was one of the boys we don’t catch easily. It’s long odds he never passed the stuff out direct to the small consumer. With the exception, no doubt, of the wretched Bellairs. No, I fancy Rivera’s business was confined to his purple satin parlour. At the smallest sign of our getting anywhere near him, he’d have burnt his books and, if necessary, returned to his native hacienda or what have you.’

  ‘Or got in first by laying information against the small man. That’s the line they take as often as not.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. As often as not. What else have you got in your lucky dip, Br’er Fox?’

  ‘Letters,’ said Fox. ‘A sealed package. And the cash.’

  ‘Anything that chimes in with his book-keeping. I wonder.’

  ‘Wait a bit, sir. I wouldn’t be surprised. Wait a bit.’

  They hadn’t long to wait. The too-familiar raw material of the blackmailer’s trade was soon laid out on Alleyn’s desk: the dingy, colourless letters, paid for again and again, yet never redeemed, the discoloured clips from dead newspapers, one or two desperate appeals for mercy, the inexorable entries on the credit side. Alleyn’s fingers seemed to tarnish as he handled them but Fox rubbed his hands.

  ‘This is something like,’ Fox said, and after a minute or two: ‘Look at this, Mr Alleyn.’

  It was a letter signed ‘Félicité’ and was some four months old. Alleyn read it through and handed it back to Fox, who said: ‘It establishes the relationship.’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Funny,’ said Fox. ‘You’d have thought from the look of him, even when he was dead, that any girl in her senses would have picked him for what he was. There are two other letters. Much the same kind of thing.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes. Well now,’ said Fox slowly. ‘Leaving the young lady aside for the moment, where, if anywhere, does this get us with his lordship?’

  ‘Not very far, I fancy. Unless you find something revealing a hitherto unsuspected irregularity in his lordship’s past and he doesn’t strike me as one to hide his riotings.’

  ‘All the same, sir, there may be something. What about his lordship encouraging this affair with his stepdaughter? Doesn’t that look as if Rivera had a hold on him?’

  ‘It might,’ Alleyn agreed, ‘if his lordship was anybody but his lordship. But it might. So last night, having decided to liquidate Rivera, he types this letter purporting to come from GPF with the idea of throwing the all-too-impressionable Miss de Suze into Edward Manx’s arms!’

  ‘There you are!’

  ‘How does Lord Pastern know Manx as GPF? And if Rivera used this GPF copy to blackmail Manx it wasn’t a very hot instrument for his purpose, being typed. Anybody at Duke’s Gate might have typed it. He would have to find it on Manx and try a bluff. And he hadn’t met Manx. All right. For purposes of your argument we needn’t pursue that one at the moment. All right. It fits. In a way. Only only…’ He rubbed his nose. ‘I’m sorry, Fox, but I can’t reconcile the flavour of Pastern and Manx with all this. A most untenable argument, I know. I won’t try to justify it. What’s in that box?’

  Fox had already opened it and shoved it across the desk. ‘It’ll be the stuff itself,’ he said. ‘A nice little haul, Gibson.’

  The box contained neat small packages, securely sealed and, in a separate carton, a number of cigarettes.

  ‘That’ll be it,’ Alleyn agreed. ‘He wasn’t the direct receiver, evidently. This will have come in by the usual damned labyrinth.’ He glanced up at Detective-Sergeant Scott, a young officer. ‘You haven’t worked on any of these cases, I think, Scott. This is probably cocaine or heroin, and has no doubt travelled long distances in bogus false teeth, fat men’s navels, dummy aids to hearing, phoney bayonet fitments for electric light bulbs and God knows what else. As Mr Fox says, Gibson, it’s a nice little haul. We’ll leave Rivera for the moment, I think.’ He turned to Scott and Watson. ‘Let’s hear how you got on with Breezy Bellairs.’

  Breezy, it appeared, lived in a furnished flat in Pikestaff Row, off Ebury Street. To this address Scott and Watson had conveyed him, and with some difficulty put him to bed. Once there, he had slept stertorously through the rest of the night. They had combed out the flat which, unlike Rivera’s, was slovenly and disordered. It looked, they said, as if Breezy had had a frantic search for something. The pockets of his suits had been pulled out, the drawers of his furniture disembowelled and the contents left where they lay. The only thing in the flat that was at all orderly was Breezy’s pile of band-parts. Scott and Wilson had sorted out a bundle of correspondence consisting of bills, dunning reminders, and his fanmail, which turned out to be largish. At the back of a small bedside cupboard they had found a hypodermic syringe which they produced, and a number of torn and empty packages which were of the same sort as those found in Rivera’s safe. ‘Almost too easy,’ said Fox with the liveliest satisfaction. ‘We knew it already, of course, through Skelton, but here’s positive proof Rivera supplied Bellairs with his dope. By gum,’ he added deeply. ‘I’d like to get this line on the dope racket followed in to one of
the high-ups. Now, I wonder. Breezy’ll be looking for this stuff and won’t know where to find it. He’ll be very upset. I ask myself if Breezy won’t be in the mood to talk.’

  ‘You’d better remind yourself of your police code, old boy.’

  ‘It’ll be the same story,’ Fox muttered. ‘Breezy won’t know how Rivera got it. He won’t know.’

  ‘He hasn’t been long on the injection method,’ Alleyn said. ‘Curtis had a look for needle-marks and didn’t find so very many.’

  ‘He’ll be fretting for it, though,’ said Fox, and after a moment’s pondering: ‘Oh, well. It’s a homicide we’re after.’

  Nothing more of interest had been found in Breezy’s flat and Alleyn turned to the last of the men. ‘How did you get on with Skelton, Sallis?’

  ‘Well, sir,’ said Sallis, in a loud public-school voice, ‘he didn’t like me much to begin with. I picked up a search warrant on the way and he took a very poor view of that. However, we talked sociology for the rest of the journey and I offered to lend him The Yogi and the Commissar, which bent the barriers a little. He’s Australian by birth, and I’ve been out there, so that helped to establish a more matey attitude.’

  ‘Get on with your report now,’ Fox said austerely. ‘Don’t meander. Mr Alleyn isn’t concerned to know how much Syd Skelton loves you.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  ‘Use your notes and get on with it,’ Fox counselled.

  Sallis opened his note-book and got on with it. Beyond a quantity of communistic literature there was little out of the ordinary to be found in Skelton’s rooms, which were in the Pimlico Road. Alleyn gathered that Sallis had conducted his search during a lively exchange of ideas and could imagine Skelton’s guarded response to Sallis’s pinkish, facile and consciously ironical observations. Finally, Skelton, in spite of himself, had gone to sleep in his chair and Sallis then turned his attention stealthily to a table which was used as a desk.

  ‘I’d noticed that he seemed rather uneasy about this table, sir. He stood by it when we first came in and shuffled the papers about. I had the feeling there was something there that he wanted to destroy. When he was safely off, I went through the stuff on the table, and I found this. I don’t know if it’s much cop, really, sir, but here it is.’

  He gave a sheet of paper to Alleyn, who opened it up. It was an unfinished letter to Rivera, threatening him with exposure if he continued to supply Breezy Bellairs with drugs.

  The other men had gone and Alleyn invited Fox to embark upon what he was in the habit of calling ‘a hag’. This involved the ruthless taking to pieces of the case and a fresh attempt to put the bits together in their true pattern. They had been engaged upon this business for about half an hour when the telephone rang. Fox answered it and announced with a tolerant smile that Mr Nigel Bathgate would like to speak to Mr Alleyn.

  ‘I was expecting this,’ Alleyn said. ‘Tell him that for once in a blue moon I want to see him. Where is he?’

  ‘Down below.’

  ‘Hail him up.’

  Fox said sedately: ‘The Chief would like to see you, Mr Bathgate,’ and in a few moments Nigel Bathgate of the Evening Chronicle appeared, looking mildly astonished.

  ‘I must say,’ he said, shaking hands, ‘that this is uncommonly civil of you, Alleyn. Have you run out of invectives or do you at last realize where the brains lie?’

  ‘If you think I asked you up with the idea of feeding you with banner headlines you’re woefully mistaken. Sit down.’

  ‘Willingly. How are you, Mr Fox?’

  ‘Nicely, thank you, sir. And you?’

  Alleyn said: ‘Now, you attend to me. Can you tell me anything about a monthly called Harmony?’

  ‘What sort of things? Have you been confiding in GPF, Alleyn?’

  ‘I want to know who he is.’

  ‘Has this got anything to do with the Rivera case?’

  ‘Yes, it has.’

  ‘I’ll make a bargain with you. I want a nice meaty bit of stuff straight from the Yard’s mouth. All about old Pastern and how you happened to be there and the shattered romance…’

  ‘Who’ve you been talking to?’

  ‘Charwomen, night porters, chaps in the band. And I ran into Ned Manx a quarter of an hour ago.’

  ‘What had he got to say for himself?’

  ‘He hung out on me, blast him. Wouldn’t utter. And he’s not on a daily, either. Uncooperative twerp.’

  ‘You might remember he’s the chief suspect’s cousin.’

  ‘Then there’s no doubt about it being old Pastern?’

  ‘I didn’t say so and you won’t suggest it.’

  ‘Well, hell, give me a story.’

  ‘About this paper. Do you know GPF? Come on.’

  Nigel lit a cigarette and settled down. ‘I don’t know him,’ he said. ‘And I don’t know anyone who does. He’s a chap called G.P. Friend, I’m told, and he’s supposed to own the show. If he does, he’s on to a damn’ useful thing. It’s a mystery, that paper. It breaks all the rules and rings the bell. It first came out about two years ago with a great fanfare of trumpets. They bought out the old Triple Mirror, you know, and took over the plant and the paper and in less than no time trebled the sales. God knows why. The thing’s a freak. It mixes sound criticism with girly-girly chat and runs top price serials alongside shorts that would bring a blush to the cheeks of Peg’s Weekly. They tell me it’s GPF’s page that does the trick. And look at it! That particular racket blew out before the war and yet he gets by with it. I’m told the personal letters at five bob a time are a gold mine in themselves. He’s said to have an uncanny knack of hitting on the things all these women want him to say. The types that write in are amazing. All the smarties. Nobody ever sees him. He doesn’t get about with the boys and the chaps who free-lance for the rag never get past a sub who’s always very bland and entirely uncommunicative. There you are. That’s all I can tell you about GPF.’

  ‘Ever heard what he looks like?’

  ‘No. There’s a legend he wears old clothes and dark glasses. They say he’s got a lock on his office door and never sees anybody on account he doesn’t want to be recognized. It’s all part of an act. Publicity. They play it up in the paper itself—“Nobody knows who GPF is.”’

  ‘What would you think if I told you he was Edward Manx?’

  ‘Manx! You’re not serious.’

  ‘Is it so incredible?’

  Nigel raised his eyebrows. ‘On the face of it, yes. Manx is a reputable and very able specialist. He’s done some pretty solid stuff. Leftish and fairly authoritative. He’s a coming man. He’d turn sick in his stomach at the sight of GPF, I’d have thought.’

  ‘He does their dramatic reviews.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but that’s where they’re freakish. Manx has got a sort of damn-your-eyes view about theatre. It’s one of his things. He wants state-ownership and he’ll scoop up any chance to plug it. And I imagine their anti-vice parties wouldn’t be unpleasing to Manx. He wouldn’t go much for the style, which is tough and coloured, but he’d like the policy. They give battle in a big way, you know. Names all over the place and a general invitation to come on and sue us for libel and see how you like it. Quite his cup of tea. Yes, I imagine Harmony runs Manx to give the paper cachet and Manx writes for Harmony to get at their public. They pay. Top prices.’ Nigel paused and then said sharply: ‘But Manx as GPF! That’s different. Have you actually good reason to suspect it? Are you on to something?’

  ‘The case is fluffy with doubts at the moment.’

  ‘The Rivera case? It ties up with that?’

  ‘Off the record, it does.’

  ‘By God,’ said Nigel profoundly, ‘if Ned Manx spews up that page it explains the secrecy! By God, it does.’

  ‘We’ll have to ask him,’ Alleyn said. ‘But I’d have liked to have a little more to go on. Still, we can muscle in. Where’s the Harmony office?’

  ‘Materfamilias Lane. The old Triple Mirror place.’ />
  ‘When does this blasted rag make its appearance? It’s a monthly, isn’t it?’

  ‘Let’s see. It’s the 27th today. It comes out in the first week of the month. They’ll be going to press any time now.’

  ‘So GPF’s likely to be on tap at the office?’

  ‘You’d think so. Are you going to burst in on Manx with a brace of manacles?’

  ‘Never you mind.’

  ‘Come on,’ Nigel said. ‘What do I get for all this?’

  Alleyn gave him a brief account of Rivera’s death and a lively description of Lord Pastern’s performance in the band.

  ‘As far as it goes, it’s good,’ Nigel said, ‘but I could get as much from the waiters.’

  ‘Not if Caesar Bonn knows anything about it.’

  ‘Are you going to pull old Pastern in?’

  ‘Not just yet. You write your stuff and send it along to me.’

  ‘It’s pretty!’ Nigel said. ‘It’s as pretty as paint. Pastern’s good at any time but like this he’s marvellous. May I use your typewriter?’

  ‘For ten minutes.’

  Nigel retired with the machine to a table at the far end of the room. ‘I can say you were there, of course,’ he said hurriedly.

  ‘I’ll be damned if you can.’

  ‘Come, come, Alleyn, be big about this thing.’

  ‘I know you. If we don’t ring the bell you’ll print some revolting photograph of me looking like a half-wit. Caption: “Chief Inspector who watched crime but doesn’t know whodunit!”’

  Nigel grinned. ‘And would that be a story, and won’t that be the day! Still, as it stands, it’s pretty hot. Here we go, chaps.’ He began to rattle the keys.

  Alleyn said: ‘There’s one thing, Fox, that’s sticking out of this mess like a road-sign and I can’t read it. Why did that perishing old mountebank look at the gun and then laugh himself sick? Here! Wait a moment. Who was in the study with him when he concocted his dummies and loaded his gun? It’s a thin chance but it might yield something.’ He pulled the telephone towards him. ‘We’ll talk once more to Miss Carlisle Wayne.’