Night at the Vulcan

by Ngaio Marsh

  Cringle had left Poole’s room in exquisite order. Telegrams were pinned in rows on the wall. A towel was spread over the make-up. A cigarette had been half-extracted from a packet and a match left ready on the top of its box. A framed photograph of Helena Hamilton stood near the glass. Beside it a tiny clock with a gay face ticked feverishly. It stood on a card. Alleyn moved it delicately and read the inscription. ‘From Helena. Tonight and tomorrow and always: bless you.’

  ‘The standard for first night keepsakes seems to be set at a high level,’ Alleyn muttered. ‘This is a French clock, Fox, with a Sevres face encircled with garnets. What do you suppose the gentleman gave the lady?’

  ‘Would a tiara be common?’ asked Fox.

  ‘Let’s go next door and see.’

  Helena’s room smelt and looked like a conservatory. A table had been brought in to carry the flowers. Jacko had set out the inevitable telegrams and had hung up the dresses under their dust sheets. ‘Here we are,’ Alleyn said. ‘A sort of jeroboam of the most expensive scent on the market. Price, I should say, round about thirty pounds. “From Adam.” Why don’t you give me presents when we solve a petty larceny, Foxkin? Now, I may be fanciful but this looks to me like the gift of a man who’s at his wits’ end and plumps for the expensive, the easy and the obvious. Here’s something entirely different. Look at this, Fox.’

  It was a necklace of six wooden medallions strung between jade rings. Each plaque was most delicately carved in the likeness of a head in profile and each head was a portrait of one of the company of players. The card bore the date and the inscription: ‘From J.’

  ‘Must have taken a long time to do,’ observed Fox. ‘That’ll be the foreign gentleman’s work, no doubt, Mr Doré.’

  ‘No doubt. I wonder if love’s labour has been altogether lost,’ said Alleyn. ‘I hope she appreciates it.’

  He took up the leather-case with its two photographs of Poole. ‘He’s a remarkable looking chap,’ he said. ‘If there’s anything to be made of faces in terms of character, and I still like to pretend there is, what’s to be made of this one? It’s what they call a heart-shaped face, broad across the eyes with a firmly moulded chin and a generous but delicate mouth. Reminds one of a Holbein drawing. Doré’s sketch in the greenroom is damn good. Doré crops up all over the place, doesn’t he? Designs their fancy dresses. Paints their faces, in a double sense. Does their décor and with complete self-effacement, loves their leading lady.’

  ‘Do you reckon?’

  ‘I do indeed, Br’er Fox,’ Alleyn said and rubbed his nose vexedly. ‘However. Gibson’s done all the usual things in these rooms, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Alleyn. Pockets, suitcases and boxes. Nothing to show for it.’

  ‘We may as well let them come home to roost, then. We’ll see them separately. They can change into their day clothes. The Gainsford has already, of course, done so. Blast! I suppose I’ll have to check Darcey’s statement with the Gainsford. She gives me the horrors, that young woman.’

  ‘Shall I see her, Mr Alleyn?’

  ‘You can stay and take your notes. I’ll see her in the greenroom. No, wait a bit. You stay with the others, Fox, and send young Lamprey along with her. Tell them they can change in their rooms, fan them before they go, and make sure they go singly. I don’t want them talking together. And you might try again if you can dig up anything that sounds at all off-key with Bennington over the last few days. Anything that distressed or excited him.’

  ‘He seems to have been rather easily excited.’

  ‘He does, doesn’t he, but you never know. I don’t believe it was suicide, Fox, and I’m not yet satisfied that we’ve unearthed anything that’s good enough for a motive for murder. Trip away, Foxkin. Ply your craft.’

  Fox went out sedately. Alleyn crossed the passage and opened the door of Bennington’s room. Sergeant Gibson was discovered, squatting on his haunches before the dead gas-fire.

  ‘Anything?’ Alleyn asked.

  ‘There’s this bit of a stain that looks like a scorch on the hearth, sir.’

  ‘Yes, I saw that. Any deposit?’

  ‘We may have to try.’

  ‘The powder-pads the deceased’s dresser cleared away were in the rubbish bin on the stage where he said he put them. Nothing else in the bin. There’s this burnt paper on the floor but it’s in small flakes—powder almost.’

  ‘All right. Seal the room when you’ve finished. And Gibson, don’t let the mortuary van go without telling me.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  Alleyn returned to the greenroom. He heard Miss Gainsford approaching under the wing of PC Lamprey. She spoke in a high grand voice that seemed to come out of a drawing-room comedy of the twenties.

  ‘I think you’re too intrepid,’ she was saying, ‘to start from rock bottom like this. It must be so devastatingly boring for you, though I will say it’s rather a comfort to think one is in the hands of, to coin a phrase, a gent. Two gents in fact.’

  ‘Chief Inspector Alleyn,’ said PC Lamprey, ‘is in the greenroom I think, Miss.’

  ‘My dear, you do it quite marvellously. You ought, again to coin a phrase, to go on the stage.’

  Evidently Miss Gainsford lingered in the passage. Alleyn heard his subordinate murmur: ‘Shall I go first?’ His regulation boots clumped firmly to the door which he now opened.

  ‘Will you see Miss Gainsford, sir?’ asked PC Lamprey, who was pink in the face.

  ‘All right, Mike,’ Alleyn said. ‘Show her in and take notes.’

  ‘Will you come this way, Miss?’

  Miss Gainsford made her entrance with a Mayfairish gallantry that was singularly dated. Alleyn wondered if she had decided that her first reading of her new role was mistaken. ‘She’s abandoned the brave little woman for the suffering mondaine who goes down with an epigram,’ he thought and sure enough Miss Gainsford addressed herself to him with staccato utterance and brittle highhandedness.

  ‘Ought one to be terribly flattered because one is the first to be grilled?’ she asked. ‘Or is it a sinister little hint that one is top of the suspect list?’

  ‘As you don’t have to change,’ Alleyn said, ‘I thought it would be convenient to see you first. Will you sit down, Miss Gainsford?’

  She did so elaborately, gave herself a cigarette, and turned to PC Lamprey: ‘May one ask The Force for a light?’ she asked. ‘Or would that be against the rules?’

  Alleyn lit her cigarette while his unhappy subordinate retired to the table. She turned in her chair to watch him. ‘Is he going to take me down and use it all in evidence against me?’ she asked. Her nostrils dilated, she raised her chin and added jerkily: ‘That’s what’s called the Usual Warning, isn’t it?’

  ‘A warning is given in police practice,’ Alleyn said as woodenly as possible, ‘if there is any chance that the person under interrogation will make a statement that is damaging to himself. Lamprey will note down this interview and if it seems advisable you will be asked, later on, to give a signed statement.’

  ‘If that was meant to be reassuring,’ said Miss Gainsford, ‘I can’t have heard it properly. Could we get cracking?’

  ‘Certainly. Miss Gainsford, you were in the greenroom throughout the performance. During the last interval you were visited by Mr J. G. Darcey and by your uncle. Do you agree that as the result of something the deceased said, Mr Darcey hit him on the jaw?’

  She said: ‘Wasn’t it too embarrassing! I mean the Gorgeous Primitive Beast is one thing but one old gentleman banging another about is so utterly another. I’m afraid I didn’t put that very clearly.’

  ‘You agree that Mr Darcey hit Mr Bennington?’

  ‘But madly. Like a sledge-hammer. I found it so difficult to know what to say. There just seemed to be no clue to further conversation.’

  ‘It is the conversation before rather than after the blow that I should like to hear about, if you please.’

  Alleyn had turned away from her and was looking at Jacko�
�s portrait of Poole. He waited for some moments before she said sharply, ‘I suppose you think because I talk like this about it I’ve got no feeling. You couldn’t be more at fault.’ It was as if she called his attention to her performance.

  He said, without turning: ‘I assure you I hadn’t given it a thought. What did your uncle say that angered Mr Darcey?’

  ‘He was upset,’ she said sulkily, ‘because I was ill and couldn’t play.’

  ‘Hardly an occasion for hitting him.’

  ‘J.G. is very sensitive about me. He treats me like a piece of china.’

  ‘Which is more than he did for your uncle, it seems.’

  ‘Uncle Ben talked rather wildly.’ Miss Gainsford seemed to grope for her poise and made a half-hearted return to her brittle manner. ‘Let’s face it,’ she said, ‘he was stinking, poor pet.’

  ‘You mean he was drunk?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘And abusive?’

  ‘I didn’t care. I understood him.’

  ‘Did he talk about Miss Hamilton?’

  ‘Obviously J.G.’s already told you he did, so why ask me?’

  ‘We like to get confirmation of statements.’

  ‘Well, you tell me what he said and I’ll see about confirming it.’

  For the first time Alleyn looked at her. She wore an expression of rather frightened impertinence. ‘I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘that won’t quite do. I’m sure you’re very anxious to get away from the theatre, Miss Gainsford, and we’ve still a lot of work before us. If you will give me your account of this conversation I shall be glad to hear it; if you prefer so to do I’ll take note of your refusal and keep you no longer.’

  She gaped slightly, attempted a laugh and seemed to gather up the rags of her impersonation.

  ‘Oh, but I’ll tell you,’ she said. ‘Why not? It’s only that there’s so pathetically little to tell. I can’t help feeling darling auntie—she likes me to call her Ella—was too Pinero and Galsworthy about it. It appears that poorest Uncle Ben came in from his club and found her in a suitable setting and—well, there you are, and—well, really even after all these years of segregation you couldn’t call it a seduction. Or could you? Anyway she chose to treat it as such and raised the most piercing hue and cry and he went all primitive and when he came in here he was evidently in the throes of a sort of hangover and seeing J.G. was being rather sweet to me put a sinister interpretation on it and described the whole incident and was rather rude about women generally and me and auntie in particular. And J.G. took a gloomy view of his attitude and hit him. And, I mean, taking it by and large, one couldn’t help feeling: what a song and dance about nothing in particular. Is that all you wanted to know?’

  ‘Do you think any other members of the company know of all this?’

  She looked genuinely surprised. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Adam and Jacko, anyway. I mean Uncle Ben appeared to have a sort of nationwide hook-up idea about it but even if he didn’t mention it, she’d naturally tell Adam, wouldn’t you think? And Jacko, because everybody tells Jacko everything. And he was doing dresser for her. Yes, I’d certainly think she’d tell Jacko.’

  ‘I see. Thank you, Miss Gainsford. That’s all.’

  ‘Really?’ She was on her feet. ‘I can go home?’

  Alleyn answered her as he had answered J.G. ‘I’m sorry: not yet. Not just yet.’

  PC Lamprey opened the door. Inevitably, she paused on the threshold. ‘Never tell me there’s nothing in atmosphere,’ she said. ‘I knew when I came into this theatre. As if the very walls screamed it at me. I knew.’

  She went out.

  ‘Tell me, Mike,’ Alleyn said, ‘are many young women of your generation like that?’

  ‘Well, no sir. She’s what one might call a composite picture, don’t you think?’

  ‘I do, indeed. And I fancy she’s got her genres a bit confused.’

  ‘She tells me she’s been playing in Private Lives, The Second Mrs Tanqueray and Sleeping Partners in the provinces.’

  ‘That may account for it,’ said Alleyn.

  An agitated voice—Parry Percival’s—was raised in the passage to be answered in a more subdued manner by Sergeant Gibson’s. ‘Go and see what it is, Mike,’ Alleyn said.

  But before Lamprey could reach the door it was flung open and Parry burst in, slamming it in Gibson’s affronted face. He addressed himself instantly and breathlessly to Alleyn.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I’ve just remembered something. I’ve been so hideously upset, I just simply never gave it a thought. It was when I smelt gas. When I went back to my room I smelt gas and I turned off my fire. I ought to have told you. I’ve just realized.’

  ‘I think perhaps what you have just realized,’ Alleyn said, ‘is the probability of our testing your gas-fire for fingerprints and finding your own.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Shadow of Otto Brod

  PARRY STOOD inside the door and pinched his lips as if he realized they were white and hoped to restore their colour.

  ‘I don’t know anything about fingerprints,’ he said. ‘I never read about crime. I don’t know anything about it. When I came off after my final exit I went to my room. I was just going back for the call when I smelt gas. We’re all nervous about gas in this theatre and anyway the room was frightfully hot. I turned the thing off. That’s all.’

  ‘This was after Bennington tripped you up?’

  ‘I’ve told you. It was after my last exit and before the call. It wasn’t—’

  He walked forward very slowly and sat down in front of Alleyn. ‘You can’t think that sort of thing about me,’ he said and sounded as if he was moved more by astonishment than by any other emotion. ‘My God, look at me. I’m so hopelessly harmless. I’m not vicious. I’m not even odd. I’m just harmless.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me at once that you noticed the smell of gas?’

  ‘Because, as I’ve tried to suggest, I’m no good at this sort of thing. The doctor got me all upset and in any case the whole show was so unspeakable.’ He stared at Alleyn and, as if that explained everything, said: ‘I saw him. I saw him when they carried him out. I’ve never been much good about dead people. In the blitz I sort of managed but I never got used to it.’

  ‘Was the smell of gas very strong in your room?’

  ‘No. Not strong at all. But in this theatre—we were all thinking about that other time and I just thought it was too bad of the management to have anything faulty in the system considering the history of the place. I don’t know that I thought anything more than that: I smelt it and remembered, and got a spasm of the horrors. Then I felt angry at being given a shock and then I turned my fire off and went out. It was rather like not looking at the new moon through glass. You don’t really believe it can do anything but you avoid it. I forgot all about the gas as soon as I got on-stage. I didn’t give it another thought until I smelt it again during the doctor’s speech.’

  ‘Yes, I see.’

  ‘You do, really, don’t you? After all, suppose I—suppose I had thought I’d copy that other awful thing: well, I’d scarcely be fool enough to leave my fingerprints on the tap, would I?’

  ‘But you tell me,’ Alleyn said, not making too much of it, ‘that you don’t know anything about fingerprints.’

  ‘God!’ Parry whispered, staring at him, ‘you do frighten me. It’s not fair. You frighten me.’

  ‘Believe me, there’s no need for an innocent man to be frightened.’

  ‘How can you be so sure of yourselves? Do you never make mistakes?’

  ‘We do indeed. But not,’ Alleyn said, ‘in the end. Not nowadays on these sorts of cases.’

  ‘What do you mean these sort of cases!’

  ‘Why, I mean on what may turn out to be a capital charge.’

  ‘I can’t believe it!’ Parry cried out. ‘I shall never believe it. We’re not like that. We’re kind, rather simple people. We wear our hearts on our sleeves. We’re not compl
icated enough to kill each other.’

  Alleyn said with a smile: ‘You’re quite complicated enough for us at the moment. Is there anything else you’ve remembered that you think perhaps you ought to tell me about?’

  Parry shook his head and dragged himself to his feet. Alleyn saw, as Martyn had seen before him, that he was not an exceedingly young man. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing I can think of.’

  ‘You may go to your dressing-room now, if you’d like to change into—what should I say?—into plain clothes?’

  ‘Thank you. I simply loathe the thought of my room after all this but I shall be glad to change.’

  ‘Do you mind if Lamprey does a routine search before you go? We’ll ask this of all of you.’

  Parry showed the whites of his eyes but said at once: ‘Why should I mind?’

  Alleyn nodded to young Lamprey who advanced upon Parry with an apologetic smile.

  ‘It’s a painless extraction, sir,’ he said.

  Parry raised his arms in a curve with his white hands held like a dancer’s above his head. There was a silence and a swift efficient exploration. ‘Thank you so much, sir,’ said Mike Lamprey. ‘Cigarette-case, lighter, and handkerchief, Mr Alleyn.’

  ‘Right. Take Mr Percival along to his room, will you?’

  Parry said: ‘There couldn’t be a more fruitless question but it would be nice to know, one way or the other, if you have believed me.’

  ‘There couldn’t be a more unorthodox answer,’ Alleyn rejoined, ‘but at the moment I see no reason to disbelieve you, Mr Percival.’

  When Lamprey came back he found his senior officer looking wistfully at his pipe and whistling under his breath.

  ‘Mike,’ Alleyn said. ‘The nastiest cases in our game are very often the simplest. There’s something sticking out under my nose in this theatre and I can’t see it. I know it’s there because of another thing that, Lord pity us all, Fox and I can see.’