A Wreath for Rivera by Ngaio Marsh

Author:Ngaio Marsh
Language: pt
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781405507479
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group Limited
Published: 2009-12-03T11:15:15+00:00

"I remember you told me that Lady Pastern showed you and Manx her petit point. That was when you were all in the drawing-room before dinner, wasn't it? We found the petit point, by the way, beside the work-box."

"Therefore," she thought, "Aunt Cile or Ned or I might have taken the stiletto." She repeated: "I'm sure the box wasn't open."

She had tried not to think beyond that one time, that one safe time about which she could quickly speak the truth.

"And after dinner?" Alleyn said casually.

She saw again the small gleaming tool drop from Miss Henderson's fingers when the report sounded in the ballroom. She saw F�cit�utomatically stoop and pick it up and a second later burst into tears and run furiously from the room. She heard her loud voice on the landing: "I've got to speak to you," and Rivera's: "But certainly, if you wish it."

"After dinner?" she repeated flatly;

"You were in the drawing-room then. Before the men came in. Perhaps Lady Pastern took up her work. Did you, at any time, see the box open or notice the stiletto?"

How quick was thought? As quick as people said? Was her hesitation fatally long? Here she moved, on the brink of speech. She could hear the irrevocable denial, and yet she had not made it. And suppose he had already spoken to F�cit�bout the stiletto? "What am I looking like?" she thought in a panic. "I'm looking like a liar already."

"Can you remember?" he asked. So she had waited too long.

"I -- don't think I can." Now, she had said it. Somehow it wasn't quite as shaming to lie about remembering as about the fact itself. If things went wrong she could say afterwards: "Yes, I remember, now, but I had forgotten. It had no significance for me at the time."

"You don't think you can." She had nothing to say but he went on almost at once: "Miss Wayne, will you please try to look squarely at this business. Will you try to pretend that it's an affair that you have read about and in which you have no personal concern. Not easy. But try. Suppose, then, a group of complete strangers was concerned in Rivera's death and suppose one of them, not knowing much about it, unable to see the factual wood for the emotional trees, was asked a question to which she knew the answer. Perhaps the answer seems to implicate her. Perhaps it seems to implicate someone she is fond of. She doesn't in the least know, it may be, what the implications are but she refuses to take the responsibility of telling the truth about one detail that may fit in with the whole truth. She won't, in fact, speak the truth if by doing so she's remotely responsible for bringing an extraordinarily callous murderer to book. So she lies. At once she finds that it doesn't end there. She must get other people to tell corroborative lies. She finds herself, in effect, whizzing down a

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