“And I thought,” Breezy said, “I’d better drop that ruddy wreath on Carlos, like we first said. So I did.” His voice jumped into falsetto. “When I saw the blood I thought at first he’d coughed it up. I thought he’d had one of those things — you know — a hemorrhage. At first. And then the wreath stuck on something. You’d scarcely credit it, would you, but I thought: for crisake I’m hanging it on a peg. And then I saw. I told you that, all of you. You can’t say I didn’t.”

“Certainly you told us,” Caesar agreed, eyeing him nervously. “In the office.” Breezy made a petulant sound and crouched back in his chair. Caesar went on quickly to relate that just before they heard Dr. Allington’s voice in the main office, Breezy had darted over to the body and had crouched down beside it, throwing back the coat and thrusting his hand into the breast pocket. He had said: “I’ve got to get it. He’s got it on him,” or something like that. They had been greatly shocked by this behaviour. He and Caesar and Hahn had pulled Breezy off and he had collapsed. It was during this scene that Edward Manx had arrived.

“Do you agree that this is a fair account of what happened, Mr. Bellairs?” Alleyn asked after a pause.

For a moment or two it seemed as if he would get some kind of answer. Breezy looked at him with extraordinary concentration. Then he turned his head as if his neck were stiff. After moment he nodded.

“What did you hope to find in the deceased’s pockets?” Alleyn said.

Breezy’s mouth stretched in his manikin grin. His eyes were blank. He raised his hands and the fingers trembled.

“Come,” Alleyn said, “what did you hope to find?”

“Oh God!” said Lord Pastern fretfully. “Now he’s goin’ to blub again.”

This was an understatement. Hysteria took possession of Breezy. He screamed out some unintelligible protest or appeal, broke into a storm of sobbing laughter and stumbled to the entrance. A uniformed policeman came through the door and held him. “Now, now,” said the policeman. “Easy does it, sir, easy does it.”

Dr. Curtis came out of the office and stood looking at Breezy thoughtfully. Alleyn nodded to him and he went to Breezy.

Breezy sobbed: “Doctor! Doctor! Listen!” He put his heavy arm about Dr. Curtis’s shoulders and with an air of mystery whispered in his ear. “I think, Alleyn…?” said Dr. Curtis. “Yes,” Alleyn said, “in the office, will you?”

When the door had shut behind them, Alleyn looked at Breezy’s Boys.

“Can any of you tell me,” he said, “how long he’s been taking drugs?”

Lord Pastern, bunching his cheeks, said to nobody in particular, “Six months.”

“You knew about it, my lord, did you?” Fox demanded and Lord Pastern grinned savagely at him. “Not bein’ a detective-inspector,” he said, “I don’t have to wait until a dope-fiend throws fits and passes out before I know what’s wrong with him.”

He balanced complacently, toe and heel, and stroked the back of his head. “I’ve been lookin’ into the dope racket,” he volunteered. “Disgraceful show. Runnin’ sore in the body politic and nobody with the guts to tackle it.” He glared upon Breezy’s Boys. “You chaps!” he said, jabbing a finger at them. “What did you do about it! Damn’ all.”

Breezy’s Boys were embarrassed and shocked. They fidgeted, cleared their throats and eyed one another.

“Surely,” Alleyn said, “you must have guessed. He’s in a bad way, you know.”

They hadn’t been sure, it appeared. Happy Hart said they knew Breezy took some kind of stuff for his nerves. It was some special kind of dope. Breezy used to get people to buy it for him in Paris. He said it was some kind of bromide, Hart added vaguely. The double-bass said Breezy was a very nervous type. The first saxophone muttered something about hitting the high spots and corpse revivers. Lord Pastern loudly pronounced a succinct but unprintable comment and they eyed him resentfully. “I told him what it’d come to,” he announced. “I threatened the chap. Only way. ‘If you don’t take a pull, by God,’ I said, ‘I’ll give the whole story to the papers. Harmony, f’r instance.’ I told him so, to-night.”

Edward Manx uttered a sharp ejaculation and looked as if he wished he’d held his tongue.

“Who searched him for his bloody tablet?” Skelton demanded, glaring at Lord Pastern.

“The show,” Lord Pastern countered virtuously, “had to go on, didn’t it? Don’t split straws, my good ass.”

Alleyn intervened. The incident of the lost tablet was related. Lord Pastern described how he went through Breezy’s pockets and boasted of his efficiency. “You fellers call it fannin’ a chap,” he explained kindly, to Alleyn.

“This was immediately after Mr. Skelton had inspected the revolver and handed it back to Lord Pastern?” Alleyn asked.

“That’s right,” said one or two of the Boys.

“Lord Pastern, did you at any time after he’d done this lose sight of the revolver or put it down?”

“Certainly not. I kept it in my hip pocket from the time Skelton gave it to me until I went on the stage.”

“Did you look down the barrel after Mr. Skelton returned it to you?”

“No.”

“I won’t have this,” said Skelton loudly.

Alleyn glanced thoughtfully at him and returned to Lord Pastern. “Did you, by the way,” he said, “find anything in Mr. Bellairs’s pockets?”

“A wallet, a cigarette case and his handkerchief,” Lord Pastern rejoined importantly. “The pill was in the handkerchief.”

Alleyn asked for a closer description of this scene and Lord Pastern related with gusto how Breezy had stood with his hands up, holding his baton as if he were about to give his first down-beat, and how he himself had explored every pocket with the utmost dispatch and thoroughness. “If,” he added, “you’re thinkin’ that he might have had the dart on him, you’re wrong. He hadn’t. And he couldn’t have got at the gun if he had, what’s more. And he didn’t pick anything up afterwards. I’ll swear to that.”

Ned Manx said with some violence: “For God’s sake, Cousin George, think what you’re saying.”

“It is useless, Edward,” said Lady Pastern. “He will destroy himself out of sheer complacency.” She addressed herself to Alleyn. “I must inform you that in my opinion and that of many of his acquaintances, my husband’s eccentricity is of a degree that renders his statements completely unreliable.”

“That be damned!” shouted Lord Pastern. “I’m the most truthful man I know. You’re an ass.”

“So be it,” said Lady Pastern in her deepest voice, and folded her hands.

“When you came out on the dais,” Alleyn went on, disregarding this interlude, “you brought the revolver with you and put it on the floor under a hat. It was near your right foot, I think, and behind the drums. Quite near the edge of the dais.”

Félicité had opened her bag and for the fourth time had taken out her lipstick and mirror. She made an involuntary movement of her hands, jerking the lipstick away as if she threw it. The mirror fell at her feet. She half rose. Her open bag dropped to the floor, and the glass splintered under her heel. The carpet was littered with the contents of her bag and blotted with powder. Alleyn moved forward quickly. He picked up the lipstick and a folded paper with typewriting on it. Félicite snatched the paper from his hand. “Thank you. Don’t bother. What a fool I am,” she said breathlessly.

She crushed the paper in her hand and held it while, with the other hand, she gathered up the contents of her bag. One of the waiters came forward, like an automaton, to help her.

“Quite near the edge of the dais,” Alleyn repeated. “So that, for the sake of argument, you, Miss de Suze, or Miss Wayne, or Mr. Manx, could have reached out to the sombrero. In fact, while some of your party were dancing, anyone who was left at the table could also have done this. Do you all agree?”

Carlisle was acutely aware of the muscles of her face. She was conscious of Alleyn’s gaze, impersonal and deliberate, resting on her eyes and her mouth and her hands. She remembered noticing him — how many hours ago? — when he sat at the next table. “I mustn’t look at Fée or at Ned,” she thought. She heard Edward move stealthily in his chair. The paper in Félicité’s hand rustled. There was a sharp click and Carlisle jumped galvanically. Lady Pastern had flicked open her lorgnette and was now staring through it at Alleyn.