Night at the Vulcan

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘Yes, do,’ Alleyn said.

  On their way to Bennington’s room they passed Jacko and a stage-hand bearing a fragrant steaming can and a number of cups to the stage. In his cubby-hole, Fred Badger was entertaining a group of stage-hands and dressers. They had steaming pannikins in their hands and they eyed the police party in silence.

  ‘Smells very tasty, doesn’t it?’ Detective-Inspector Fox observed rather wistfully.

  The young constable, who was stationed by the door through which Martyn had made her entrance, opened it for the soup-party and shut it after them.

  Fox growled: ‘Keep your wits about you.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the young constable and exhibited his note-book.

  Clem Smith was waiting for them in Bennington’s room. The lights were full on and a white glare beat on the dressing-shelf and walls. Bennington’s street clothes and his suit for the first act hung on coat-hangers along the walls. His make-up was laid out on a towel and the shelf was littered with small objects that in their casual air of usage suggested that he had merely left the room for a moment and would return to take them up again. On the floor, hard by the dead gas-fire, lay an overcoat from which the reek of gas, which still hung about the room, seemed to arise. The worn rug was drawn up into wrinkles.

  Clem Smith’s face was white and anxious under his shock of dark hair. He shook hands jerkily with Alleyn and then looked as if he wondered if he ought to have done so. ‘This is a pretty ghastly sort of party,’ he muttered, ‘isn’t it?’

  Alleyn said: ‘It seems that you came in for the worst part of it. Do you mind telling us what happened?’

  Fox moved behind Clem and produced his note-book. Sergeant Gibson began to make a list of the objects in the room. Clem watched him with an air of distaste.

  ‘Easy enough to tell you,’ he said. ‘He came off about eight minutes before the final curtain and I suppose went straight to this room. When the boy came round for the curtain-call, Ben didn’t appear with the others. I didn’t notice. There’s an important light-cue at the end and I was watching for it. Then, when they all went on, he just wasn’t there. We couldn’t hold the curtain for long. I sent it up for the first call and the boy went back and hammered on this door. It was locked. He smelt gas and began to yell for Ben and then ran back to tell me what was wrong. I’d got the doctor on for his speech by that time. I left my ASM in charge, took the bunch of extra keys from the prompt corner and tore round here.’

  He wetted his lips and fumbled in his pocket. ‘Is it safe to smoke,’ he asked.

  ‘I’m afraid we’d better wait a little longer,’ Alleyn said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘OK. Well, I unlocked the door. As soon as it opened the stink hit me in the face. I don’t know why but I expected him to be sitting at the shelf. I don’t suppose, really, it was long before I saw him but it seemed fantastically long. He was lying there, by the heater. I could only see his legs and the lower half of his body. The rest was hidden by that coat. It was tucked in behind the heater, and over his head and shoulders. It looked like a tent. I heard the hiss going on underneath it.’ Clem rubbed his mouth. ‘I don’t think,’ he said, ‘I was as idiotically slow as all this makes me out to be. I don’t think honestly, it was more than seconds before I went in. Honestly, I don’t think so.’

  ‘I expect you’re right about that. Time goes all relative in a crisis.’

  ‘Does it? Good. Well, then: I ran in and hauled the coat away. He was on his left side—his mouth—it was—The lead-in had been disconnected and it was by his mouth, hissing. I turned it off and dragged him by the heels. He sort of stuck on the carpet. Jacko—Jacques Doré bolted in and helped.’

  ‘One moment,’ Alleyn said. ‘Did you knock over that box of powder on the dressing-table? Either of you?’

  Clem Smith stared at it. ‘That? No, I didn’t go near it and I’d got him half-way to the door when Jacko came in. He must have done it himself.’

  ‘Right. Sorry. Go on.’

  ‘We lifted Ben into the passage and shut his door. At the far end of the passage there’s a window, the only one near. We got it open and carried him to it. I think he was dead even then. I’m sure he was. I’ve seen gassed cases before; in the blitz.’

  Alleyn said: ‘You seem to have tackled this one like an old hand, at all events.’

  ‘I’m damn glad you think so,’ said Clem, and sounded it.

  Alleyn looked at the Yale lock on the door. ‘This seems in good enough shape,’ he said absently.

  ‘It’s new,’ Clem said. ‘There were pretty extensive renovations and a sort of general clean up when Mr Poole took the theatre over. It’s useful for the artistes to be able to lock up valuables in their rooms and the old locks were clumsy and rusted up. In any case—’ He stopped and then said uncomfortably: ‘The whole place has been repainted and modernized.’

  ‘Including the gas installations?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Clem, not looking at Alleyn. ‘That’s all new too.’

  ‘Two of the old dressing-rooms have been knocked together to form the greenroom?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And there are new dividing walls? And ventilators, now, in the dressing-rooms?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Clem unhappily and added: ‘I suppose that’s why he used his coat.’

  ‘It does look,’ Alleyn said without stressing it, ‘as if the general idea was to speed things up, doesn’t it? All right, Mr Smith, thank you. Would you explain to the people on the stage that I’ll come as soon as we’ve finished our job here? It won’t be very long. We’ll probably ask you to sign a statement of the actual discovery as you’ve described it to us. You’ll be glad to get away from this room, I expect.’

  Inspector Fox had secreted his note-book and now ushered Clem Smith out. Clem appeared to go thankfully.

  ‘Plain sailing, wouldn’t you say, Mr Alleyn?’ said Fox, looking along the passage. ‘Nobody about,’ he added. ‘I’ll leave the door open.’

  Alleyn rubbed his nose. ‘It looks like plain sailing, Fox, certainly. But in view of the other blasted affair we can’t take a damn thing for granted. You weren’t on the Jupiter case, were you, Gibson?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Gibson looking up from his note-book. ‘Homicide dressed up to look like suicide, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was, indeed. The place has been pretty extensively chopped up and rehashed but the victim was on this side of the passage and in what must have been the room now taken in to make the greenroom. Next door there was a gas-fire backing on to his own. The job was done by blowing down the tube next door. This put out the fire in this room and left the gas on, of course. The one next door was then relit. The victim was pretty well dead-drunk and the trick worked. We got the bloke on the traces of crepe-hair and greasepaint he left on the tube.’

  ‘Very careless,’ Fox said. ‘Silly chap, really.’

  ‘The theatre,’ Alleyn said, ‘was shut up for a long time. Three or four years at least. Then Adam Poole took it, renamed it the Vulcan and got a permit for renovation. I fancy this is only his second production here.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Fox speculated, ‘the past history of the place played on the deceased’s mind and led him to do away with himself after the same fashion.’

  ‘Sort of superstitious?’ Gibson ventured.

  ‘Not precisely,’ said Fox majestically. ‘And yet something after that style of thing. They’re a very superstitious mob, actors, Fred. Very. And if he had reason, in any case, to entertain the notion of suicide—’

  ‘He must,’ Alleyn interjected, ‘have also entertained the very nasty notion of throwing suspicion of foul play on his fellow-actors. If there’s a gas-fire back to back with this—’

  ‘And there is,’ Fox said.

  ‘The devil there is! So what does Bennington do? He recreates as far as possible the whole set-up, leaves no note, no indication, as far as we can see, of his intention to gas himself, and—who’s next door, Fox?’

  ‘A Mr Par
ry Percival.’

  ‘All right. Bennington pushes off, leaving Mr Parry Percival ostensibly in the position of the Jupiter murderer. Rotten sort of suicide that’d be, Br’er Fox.’

  ‘We don’t know anything yet, of course,’ said Fox.

  ‘We don’t and the crashing hellish bore about the whole business lies in the all too obvious fact that we’ll have to find out. What’s on your inventory, Gibson?’

  Sergeant Gibson opened his note-book and adopted his official manner.

  ‘Dressing-table or shelf,’ he said. ‘One standing mirror. One cardboard box containing false hair, rouge, substance labelled “nose-paste”, seven fragments of greasepaint and one unopened box of powder. Shelf. Towel spread out to serve as table-cloth. On towel—one tray containing six sticks of greasepaint. To right of tray, bottle of spirit-adhesive. Bottle containing what appears to be substance known as liquid powder. Open box of powder overturned. Behind box of powder, pile of six pieces of cotton-wool and a roll from which these pieces have been removed.’ He looked up at Alleyn. ‘Intended to be used for powdering purposes, Mr Alleyn.’

  ‘That’s it,’ Alleyn said. He was doubled up, peering at the floor under the dressing-shelf. ‘Nothing there,’ he grunted. ‘Go on.’

  ‘To left of tray: cigarette-case with three cigarettes and open box of fifty. Box of matches. Ash-tray. Towel, stained with greasepaint. Behind mirror: Flask: one-sixth full; and used tumbler smelling of spirits.’

  Alleyn looked behind the standing glass. ‘Furtive sort of cache,’ he said. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Considerable quantity of powder spilt on shelf and on adjacent floor area. Considerable quantity of ash. Left wall. Clothes. I haven’t been through the pockets yet, Mr Alleyn. There’s nothing on the floor but powder and some paper ash, original form indistinguishable. Stain as of something burnt on hearth.’

  ‘Go ahead with it then. I wanted,’ Alleyn said with a discontented air, ‘to hear whether I was wrong.’

  Fox and Gibson looked placidly at him. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘don’t mind me. I’m broody.’

  He squatted down by the overcoat. ‘It really is the most obscene smell, gas,’ he muttered. ‘How anybody can always passes my comprehension.’ He poked in a gingerly manner at the coat. ‘Powder over everything,’ he grumbled. ‘Where had this coat been? On the empty hanger near the door presumably. That’s damned rum. Check it with his dresser. We’ll have to get Bailey along, Fox. And Thompson. Blast!’

  ‘I’ll ring the Yard,’ said Fox and went out.

  Alleyn squinted through a lens at the wing-taps of the gas-fire. ‘I can see prints clearly enough,’ he said, ‘on both. We can check with Bennington’s. There’s even a speck or two of powder settled on the taps.’

  ‘In the air, I dare say,’ said Gibson.

  ‘I dare say it was. Like the gas. We can’t go any further here until the dabs and flash party has done its stuff. Finished, Gibson?’

  ‘Finished, Mr Alleyn. Nothing much in the pockets. Bills. Old racing card. Cheque-book and so on. Nothing on the body, by the way, but a handkerchief.’

  ‘Come on, then. I’ve had my bellyful of gas.’

  But he stood in the doorway eyeing the room and whistling softly.

  ‘I wish I could believe in you,’ he apostrophized it, ‘but split me and sink me if I can. No, by all that’s phoney, not for one credulous second. Come on, Gibson. Let’s talk to these experts.’

  They all felt a little better for Jacko’s soup which had been laced with something that as J. G. Darcey said (and looked uncomfortable as soon as he had said it) went straight to the spot marked X.

  Whether it was this potent soup or whether extreme emotional and physical fatigue had induced in Martyn its familiar compliment, an uncanny sharpening of the mind, she began to consider for the first time the general reaction of the company to Bennington’s death. She thought: ‘I don’t believe there’s one of us who really minds very much. How lonely for him! Perhaps he felt the awful isolation of a child that knows itself unwanted and thought he’d put himself out of the way of caring.’

  It was a shock to Martyn when Helena Hamilton suddenly gave voice to her own thoughts. Helena had sat with her chin in her hand, looking at the floor. There was an unerring grace about her and this fireside posture had the beauty of complete relaxation. Without raising her eyes she said: ‘My dears, my dears, for pity’s sake don’t let’s pretend. Don’t let me pretend. I didn’t love him. Isn’t that sad? We all know and we try to patch up a decorous scene but it won’t do. We’re shocked and uneasy and dreadfully tired. Don’t let’s put ourselves to the trouble of pretending. It’s so useless.’

  Gay said: ‘But I did love him!’ and J.G. put his arm about her.

  ‘Did you?’ Helena murmured. ‘Perhaps you did, darling. Then you must hug your sorrow to yourself. Because I’m afraid nobody really shares it.’

  Poole said: ‘We understand, Ella.’

  With that familiar gesture, not looking at him, she reached out her hand. When he had taken it in his, she said: ‘When one is dreadfully tired, one talks. I do, at all events. I talk much too easily. Perhaps that’s a sign of a shallow woman. You know, my dears, I begin to think I’m only capable of affection. I have a great capacity for affection but as for my loves, they have no real permanency. None.’

  Jacko said gently: ‘Perhaps your talent for affection is equal to other women’s knack of loving.’

  Gay and Parry Percival looked at him in astonishment but Poole said: ‘That may well be.’

  ‘What I meant to say,’ Helena went on, ‘only I do sidetrack myself so awfully, is this. Hadn’t we better stop being muted and mournful and talk about what may happen and what we ought to do? Adam, darling, I thought perhaps they might all be respecting my sorrow or something. What should we be talking about? What’s the situation?’

  Poole moved one of the chairs with its back to the curtain and sat on it. Dr Rutherford returned and lumped himself down in the corner. ‘They’re talking,’ he said, ‘to Clem Smith in the—they’re talking to Clem. I’ve seen the police-surgeon, a subfusc exhibit but one that can tell a hawk from a hern-shaw if they’re held under his nose. He agrees that there was nothing else I could have done which is no doubt immensely gratifying to me. What are you all talking about? You look like a dress-rehearsal.’

  ‘We were about to discuss the whole situation,’ said Poole. ‘Helena feels it should be discussed and I think we all agree with her.’

  ‘What situation pray? Ben’s? Or ours? There is no more to be said about Ben’s situation. As far as we know, my dear Ella, he has administered to himself a not too uncomfortable and effective anaesthetic which, after he had become entirely unconscious, brought about the end he had in mind. For a man who had decided to shuffle off this mortal coil he behaved very sensibly.’

  ‘Oh, please,’ Gay whispered. ‘Please!’

  Dr Rutherford contemplated her in silence for a moment and then said: ‘What’s up, Misery?’ Helena, Darcey and Parry Percival made expostulatory noises. Poole said: ‘See here, John, you’ll either pipe down or preserve the decencies.’

  Gay, fortified perhaps by this common reaction, said loudly: ‘You might at least have the grace to remember he was my uncle.’

  ‘Grace me no grace,’ Dr Rutherford quoted inevitably. ‘And uncle me no uncles.’ After a moment’s reflection, he added: ‘All right, Thalia, have a good cry. But you must know, if the rudiments of seasoned thinking are within your command, that your Uncle Ben did you a damn shabby turn. A scurvy trick, by God. However, I digress. Get on with the post-mortem, Chorus. I am dumb.’

  ‘You’ll be good enough to remain so,’ said Poole warmly. ‘Very well, then. It seems to me, Ella, that Ben took this—this way out—for a number of reasons. I know you want me to speak plainly and I’m going to speak very plainly indeed, my dear.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Please, but—’ For a moment they looked at each other. Martyn wondered if she ima
gined that Poole’s head moved in the faintest possible negative. ‘Yes,’ Helena said, ‘very plainly, please.’

  ‘Well, then,’ Poole said, ‘we know that for the last year Ben, never a very temperate man, has been a desperately intemperate one. We know his habits undermined his health, his character and his integrity as an actor. I think he realized this very thoroughly. He was an unhappy man who looked back at what he had once been and was appalled. We all know he did things in performance tonight that, from an actor of his standing, were quite beyond the pale.’

  Parry Percival ejaculated: ‘Well, I mean to say—oh, well. Never mind.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Poole said. ‘He had reached a sort of chronic state of instability. We all know he was subject to fits of depression. I believe he did what he did when he was at a low ebb. I believe he would have done it sooner or later by one means or another. And, in my view for what it’s worth, that’s the whole story. Tragic enough, God knows, but, in its tragedy, simple. I don’t know if you agree.’

  Darcey said: ‘If there’s nothing else, I mean,’ he said diffidently, glancing at Helena, ‘if nothing has happened that would seem like a further motive.’

  Helena’s gaze rested for a moment on Poole and then on Darcey. ‘I think Adam’s right,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid he was appalled by a sudden realization of himself. I’m afraid he was insufferably lonely.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Gay ejaculated and having by this means collected their unwilling attention, she added: ‘I shall never forgive myself: never.’

  Dr Rutherford groaned loudly.

  ‘I failed him,’ Gay announced. ‘I was a bitter, bitter disappointment to him. I dare say I turned the scale.’

  ‘Now in the name of all the gods at once,’ Dr Rutherford began and was brought to a stop by the entry of Clem Smith.

  Clem looked uneasily at Helena Hamilton and said: ‘They’re in the dressing-room. He says they won’t keep you waiting much longer.’

  ‘It’s all right, then?’ Parry Percival blurted out and added in a flurry: ‘I mean there won’t be a whole lot of formalities. I mean we’ll be able to get away. I mean—’