by Ngaio Marsh
CHAPTER TWELVE
GPF
HE MADE A HIGH-PITCHED snarling noise as they closed round him and reached out his hand towards an ink-pot on the desk.
Fox said: ‘Now, my lord, don’t you do anything you’ll be sorry for,’ and moved the ink-pot.
Lord Pastern sank his head with a rapid movement between his shoulders. From behind them Edward Manx said: ‘I don’t know why you’ve done this, Alleyn. It’ll get you no further.’
Lord Pastern said: ‘Shut up, Ned,’ and glared at Alleyn. ‘I’ll have you kicked out of the force,’ he said. ‘Kicked out, by God!’ And after a silence: ‘You don’t get a word from me. Not a syllable.’
Alleyn pulled up a chair and sat down facing him. ‘That will suit us very well,’ he said. ‘You are going to listen, and I advise you to do so with as good a grace as you can muster. When you’ve heard what I’ve got to say you may read the statement I’ve brought with me. You can sign it, alter it, dictate another or refuse to do any of these things. But in the meantime, Lord Pastern, you are going to listen.’
Lord Pastern folded his arms tightly across his chest, rested his chin on his tie and screwed up his eyes. Alleyn took a folded typescript from his breast pocket, opened it and crossed his knees.
‘This statement was prepared,’ he said, ‘on the assumption that you are the man who calls himself G.P. Friend and writes the articles signed GPF in Harmony. It is a statement of what we believe to be fact and doesn’t concern itself over-much with motive. I, however, will deal rather more fully with motive. In launching this paper and in writing these articles, you found it necessary to observe complete anonymity. Your reputation as probably the most quarrelsome man in England, your loudly publicized domestic rows, and your notorious eccentricities would make an appearance in the role of Guide Philosopher and Friend a fantastically bad joke. We presume, therefore, that through a reliable agent you deposited adequate security in a convenient bank with the specimen signature of G.P. Friend as the negotiating instrument. You then set up the legend of your own anonymity and launched yourself in the role of oracle. With huge success.’
Lord Pastern did not stir but a film of complacency over-spread his face.
‘This success,’ Alleyn went on, ‘it must always be remembered, depends entirely upon the preservation of your anonymity. Once let Harmony’s devotees learn that GPF is none other than the notoriously unharmonious peer whose public quarrels have been the punctual refuge of the penny-press during the silly season—once let that be known and GPF is sunk, and Lord Pastern loses a fortune. All right. Everything goes along swimmingly. You do a lot of your journalism at Duke’s Gate, no doubt, but you also make regular visits to this office wearing dark glasses, the rather shabby hat and scarf which are hanging on the wall there, and the old jacket you have on at this moment. You work behind locked doors and Mr Edward Manx is possibly your only confidant. You enjoy yourself enormously and make a great deal of money. So, perhaps, in his degree, does Mr Manx.’
Manx said: ‘I’ve no shares in the paper if that’s what you mean. My articles are paid for at the usual rate.’
‘Shut up, Ned,’ said his cousin automatically.
‘The paper,’ Allen continued, ‘is run on eccentric but profitable lines. It explodes bombs. It exposes rackets. It mingles soft-soap and cyanide. In particular it features an extremely efficient and daringly personal attack on the drug racket. It employs experts, it makes accusations, it defies and invites prosecution. Its information is accurate and if it occasionally frustrates its own professed aims by warning criminals before the police are in a position to arrest them, it is far too much inflated with crusaders’ zeal and rising sales to worry its head about that.’
‘Look here, Alleyn…’ Manx began angrily, and simultaneously Lord Pastern shouted: ‘What the hell do you think you’re getting at?’
‘One moment,’ Alleyn said. Manx thrust his hands in his pocket and began to move about the room. ‘Better to hear this out, after all,’ he muttered.
‘Much better,’ Alleyn agreed. ‘I’ll go on. Everything prospered in the Harmony set-up until you, Lord Pastern, discovered an urge to exploit your talents as a tympanist and allied yourself with Breezy Bellairs and His Boys. Almost immediately there were difficulties. First: your stepdaughter, for whom I think you have a great affection, became attracted by Carlos Rivera, the piano accordionist in the band. You are an observant man: for a supreme egoist, surprisingly so. At some time of your association with the Boys, I don’t know precisely when, you became aware that Breezy Bellairs was taking drugs and, more important, that Carlos Rivera was supplying them. Through your association with Harmony, you are well up in the methods of drug-distribution and you are far too sharp not to realize that the usual pattern was being followed. Bellairs was in a position to act as a minor distributing agent. He was introduced to the drug, acquired a habit for it, was forced to hand it out to clients at the Metronome, and as a reward was given as much as Rivera thought was good for him at the usual exorbitant rate.’
Alleyn looked curiously at Lord Pastern, who, at that moment, met his eye and blinked twice.
‘It’s an odd situation,’ Alleyn said, ‘isn’t it? Here we have a man of eclectic, violent and short-lived enthusiasms suddenly confronted with a situation where his two reigning passions and his one enduring attachment are brought into violent opposition.’
He turned to Manx, who had stopped still and was looking fixedly at him.
‘A situation of great possibilities from your professional point of view, I should imagine,’ Alleyn said. ‘The step-daughter whom Lord Pastern loves falls for Rivera, who is engaged in an infamous trade which Lord Pastern is zealous in fighting. At the same time Rivera’s dupe is the conductor of the band in which Lord Pastern burns to perform. As a final twist in an already tricky situation, Rivera has discovered, perhaps amongst Lord Pastern’s music during a band rehearsal, some rough drafts for GPF’s page, typed on Duke’s Gate letter-paper. He is using them, no doubt, to force on his engagement to Miss de Suze. “Either support my suit or…” For Rivera, in addition to running a drug racket, is an accomplished blackmailer. How is Lord Pastern to play the drums, break the engagement, preserve his anonymity as GPF and explode the drug racket?’
‘You can’t possibly,’ Manx said, ‘have proof of a quarter of all this. It’s the most brazen guesswork.’
‘A certain amount of guesswork. But we have enough information and hard fact to carry us some way. I think that between you, you are going to fill out the rest.’
Manx laughed shortly. ‘What a hope!’ he said.
‘Well,’ Alleyn murmured, ‘let us go on and see. Lord Pastern’s inspiration comes out of a clear sky while he is working on his copy for GPF’s page in Harmony. Among the letters in his basket, seeking guidance, philosophy and friendship is one from his stepdaughter.’ He stopped short. ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘if at some time or another there is also one from his wife? Asking perhaps for advice in her marital problems.’
Manx looked quickly at Lord Pastern and away again.
‘It might explain,’ Alleyn said thoughtfully, ‘why Lady Pastern is so vehement in her disapproval of Harmony. If she did write to GPF, I imagine the answer was one of the five shilling Private Chat Letters and extremely displeasing to her.’
Lord Pastern gave a short bark of laughter and shot a glance at his cousin.
‘However,’ Alleyn went on, ‘we are concerned, at this point, with the fact that Miss de Suze does write for guidance. Out of this coincidence, an idea is born. He answers the letter. She replies. The correspondence goes on, becoming, as Miss de Suze put it to me, more and more come-to-ish. Lord Pastern is an adept. He stages (again I quote Miss de Suze) a sort of Cupid-and-Psyche act at one remove. She asks if they may meet. He replies ardently but refuses. He has all the fun of watching her throughout in his own character. Meanwhile he appears to Rivera to be supporting his suit. But the ice gets thinner and thinner and his f
igure-skating increasingly hazardous. Moreover, here he is with a golden opportunity for a major journalistic scoop. He could expose Bellairs, represent himself as a brilliant investigator who has worked on his own in the band and now hands the whole story over to Harmony. And yet—and yet—there are those captivating drums, those entrancing cymbals, those stimulating wire whisks. There is his own composition. There is his debut. He skates on precariously but with exhilaration. He fiddles with the idea of weaning Bellairs from his vice and frightens him into fits by threatening to supplant Syd Skelton. He—’
‘Did you,’ Lord Pastern interrupted, ‘go to that police school or whatever it is? Hendon?’
‘No,’ Alleyn said. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Well, get on, get on,’ he snapped.
‘We come to the night of the debut and of the great inspiration. Lady Pastern quite obviously desires a marriage between her daughter and Mr Edward Manx.’
Manx made an expostulatory sound. Alleyn waited for a moment. ‘Look here, Alleyn,’ Manx said, ‘you can at least observe some kind of decency. I object most strongly—’ He glared at Nigel Bathgate.
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to lump it,’ Alleyn said mildly. Nigel said: ‘I’m sorry, Manx. I’ll clear out if you like, but I’ll hear it all, in any case.’
Manx turned on his heel, walked over to the window and stood there with his back to them.
‘Lord Pastern,’ Alleyn continued, ‘seems to have shared this hope. And now, having built up a spurious but ardent mystery round GPF, he gets his big idea. Perhaps he notices Mr Manx’s instant dislike of Rivera and perhaps he supposes this dislike to arise from an attachment to his stepdaughter. At all events he sees Mr Manx put a white carnation in his coat, he goes off to his study and he types a romantic note to Miss de Suze in which GPF reveals himself as the wearer of a white carnation. The note swears her to secrecy. Miss de Suze, coming straight from a violent quarrel with Rivera, sees the white flower in Mr Manx’s jacket and reacts according to plan.’
Manx said: ‘Oh, my God!’ and drummed his fingers on the window-pane.
‘The one thing that seems to have escaped Lord Pastern’s notice,’ Alleyn said, ‘is the fact that Mr Manx is enormously attracted, not by Miss de Suze, but by Miss Carlisle Wayne.’
‘Hell!’ said Lord Pastern sharply, and stewed round in his swivel chair. ‘Hi!’ he shouted. ‘Ned!’
‘For pity’s sake,’ Manx said impatiently, ‘let’s forget it. It couldn’t matter less.’ He caught his breath. ‘In the context,’ he added.
Lord Pastern contemplated his cousin’s back with extreme severity and then directed his attention once more upon Alleyn. ‘Well?’ he said.
‘Well,’ Alleyn repeated, ‘so much for the great inspiration. But your activity hasn’t exhausted itself. There is a scene with Bellairs in the ballroom, overheard by your footman and in part related to me by the wretched Breezy himself. During this scene you suggest yourself as a successor to Syd Skelton, and tick Bellairs off about his drug habit. You go so far, I think, as to talk about writing to Harmony. The idea, at this stage, would appear to be a comprehensive one. You will frighten Breezy into giving up cocaine, expose Rivera, and keep on with the band. It was during this interview that you behaved in a rather strange manner. You unscrewed the end section of Lady Pastern’s parasol, removed the knob and absentmindedly pushed the bit of shaft a little way up the muzzle of your revolver, holding down the spring clip as you did so. You found that it fitted like a miniature ramrod or bolt. Or, if you like, a rifle grenade.’
‘I told you that meself.’
‘Exactly. Your policy throughout has been to pile up evidence against yourself. A sane man, and we are presuming you sane, doesn’t do that sort of thing unless he believes he has an extra trick or two in hand, some conclusive bits of evidence that must clear him. It was obvious that you thought you could produce some such evidence and you took great glee in exhibiting the devastating frankness of complete innocence. Another form of figure-skating on thin ice. You would let us blunder about making clowns of ourselves, and, when the sport palled or the ice began to crack, you would, if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor, plank down the extra tricks.’
A web of thread-like veins started out on Lord Pastern’s blanched cheek-bones. He brushed up his moustache and, finding his hand shook, looked quickly at it, and thrust it inside the breast of his coat.
‘It seemed best,’ Alleyn said, ‘to let you go your own gait and see how far it would take you. You wanted us to believe that Mr Manx was GPF: there was nothing to be gained, we thought, and there might be something lost in letting you see we recognized the equal possibility of your being GPF yourself. This became a probability when the drafts of copy turned up amongst Rivera’s blackmailing material. Because Rivera had never met Manx but was closely associated with you.’
Alleyn glanced up at his colleague. ‘It was Inspector Fox,’ he said, ‘who first pointed out that you had every chance, during the performance, while the spotlight was on somebody else, to load the revolver with that fantastic bolt. All right. But there remained your first trump card—the substituted weapon. The apparently irrefutable evidence that the gun we recovered from Breezy was not the one you brought down to the Metronome. But when we found the original weapon in the lavatory beyond the inner office that difficulty, too, fell into place in the general design. We had got as far as abundant motive and damning circumstances. Opportunity began to appear.’
Alleyn stood up, and with him Lord Pastern, who pointed a quivering finger at him.
‘You bloody fool!’ he said drawing his lips back from his teeth. ‘You can’t arrest me—you—’
‘I believe I could arrest you,’ Alleyn rejoined, ‘but not for murder. Your second trump card is unfortunately valid. You didn’t kill Rivera because Rivera was not killed by the revolver.’
He looked at Manx. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘we come to you.’
Edward Manx turned from the window and walked towards Alleyn with his hands in his pockets. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘you come to me. What have you nosed out about me?’
‘This and that,’ Alleyn rejoined. ‘On the face of it there’s one evidence that you quarrelled with Rivera and clipped him over the ear. Nosing, as you would put it, beneath the surface, there’s your association with Harmony. You, and perhaps you alone, knew that Lord Pastern was GPF. He told you Rivera was blackmailing him—’
‘He didn’t tell me.’
‘—and if, in addition, you knew Rivera was a drug merchant—’ Alleyn waited for a moment but Manx said nothing. ‘—why then, remembering your expressed loathing for this abominable trade, something very like a motive began to appear.’
‘Oh, nonsense,’ Manx said lightly. ‘I don’t go about devising quaint deaths for everyone I happen to think a good or a bad lot.’
‘One never knows. There have been cases. And you could have changed the revolvers.’
‘You’ve just told us that he wasn’t killed by the revolver.’
‘Nevertheless the substitution was made by his murderer.’
Manx laughed acidly. ‘I give up,’ he said, and threw out his hands. ‘Get on with it.’
‘The weapon that killed Rivera couldn’t have been fired from the revolver because at the time Lord Pastern pulled the trigger, Rivera had his piano accordion across his chest and the piano accordion is uninjured.’
‘I could have told you that,’ said Lord Pastern, rallying.
‘It was a patently bogus affair, in any case. How, for instance, could Lord Pastern be sure of shooting Rivera with such a footling tool? A stiletto in the end of a bit of stick? If he missed by a fraction of an inch Rivera might not die instantly and might not die at all. No. You have to be sure of getting the right spot and getting it good and proper, with a bare bodkin.’
Manx lit a cigarette with unsteady hands. ‘Then in that case I can’t for the life of me see’—he stopped—‘whodunit,’ he said, ‘and how.’
‘Since it’s obvious Rivera wasn’t hurt when he fell,’ Alleyn said, ‘he was stabbed after he fell.’
‘But he wasn’t meant to fall. They’d altered the routine. We’ve had that till we’re sick of the sound of it.’
‘It will be our contention that Rivera did not know that the routine had been altered.’
‘Bosh!’ Lord Pastern shouted so unexpectedly that they all jumped. ‘He wanted it changed. I didn’t. It was Carlos wanted it.’
‘We’ll take that point a bit later,’ Alleyn said. ‘We’re considering how, and when, he was killed. Do you remember the timing of the giant metronome? It was motionless, wasn’t it, right up to the moment when Rivera fell; motionless and pointing straight down at him. As he leant backwards its steel tip was poised rather menacingly, straight at his heart.’
‘Oh, for pity’s sake!’ Manx said disgustedly. ‘Are you going to tell us somebody dropped the bolt out of the metronome?’
‘No. I’m trying to dismiss the fancy touches, not add to them. Immediately after Rivera fell, the arm of the metronome went into action. Coloured lights winked and popped in and out along its entire surface and that of the surrounding tower frame. It swung to and fro with a rhythmic clack. The whole effect of course, carefully planned, was dazzling and unexpected. One’s attention was drawn away from the prostrate figure and what actually happened during the next ten seconds or so was quite lost on the audience. To distract attention still further from the central figure, a spotlight played on the tympani where Lord Pastern could be seen in terrific action. But what seemed to happen during those ten confusing seconds?’
He waited again and then said: ‘Of course you remember, both of you. A waiter threw Breezy a comic wreath of flowers. He knelt down and, pretending to weep, using his handkerchief, opened Rivera’s coat and felt for his heart. He felt for his heart.’