Night at the Vulcan

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘Oddly enough, Ben said a few days ago that he’d heard from Otto. I think he’d written from time to time for news of his play but I don’t suppose Ben answered.’ She pressed her thumb and fingers on her eyes. ‘If you want to see the letter,’ she said, ‘it’s in his coat.’

  Alleyn said carefully: ‘You mean the jacket he wore to the theatre? Or his overcoat?’

  ‘The jacket. He was always taking my cigarette-case in mistake for his own. He took it out of his breast-pocket when he was leaving for the theatre and the letter was with it.’ She waited for a moment and then said: ‘He was rather odd about it.’

  ‘In what way?’ Alleyn asked. She had used Martyn’s very phrase and now when she spoke again it was with the uncanny precision of a delayed echo: ‘He was rather strange in his manner. He held the letter out with the cigarette-case and drew my attention to it. He said, I think, “That’s my trump card.” He seemed to be pleased in a not very attractive way. I took my case. He put the letter back in his pocket and went straight out.’

  ‘Did you get the impression he meant it was a trump card he could use against somebody?’

  ‘Yes. I think I did.’

  ‘And did you form any idea who that person could be?’

  She leant forward and cupped her face in her hands. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘It seemed to me that it was I myself he meant. Or Adam. Or both of us. It sounded like a threat.’ She looked up at Alleyn. ‘We’ve both got alibis, haven’t we? If it was murder.’

  ‘You have, undoubtedly,’ Alleyn said and she looked frightened.

  He asked her why she thought her husband had meant that the letter was a threat to herself or to Poole but she evaded this question, saying vaguely that she had felt it to be so.

  ‘You didn’t come down to the theatre with your husband?’ Alleyn said.

  ‘No. He was ready before I was. And in any case—’ She made a slight expressive gesture and didn’t complete her sentence.

  Alleyn said: ‘I think I must tell you that I know something of what happened this afternoon.’

  The colour that flooded her face ebbed painfully and left it very white. She said: ‘How do you know that? You can’t know.’ She stopped and seemed to listen. They could just hear Poole in the next room. He sounded as if he was moving about irresolutely. She caught her breath and after a moment she said loudly: ‘Was it Jacko? No, no, it was never Jacko.’

  ‘Your husband himself—’ Alleyn began and she caught him up quickly. ‘Ben? Ah, I can believe that. I can believe he would boast of it. To one of the men. To J.G.? Was it J.G.? Or perhaps even to Gay?’

  Alleyn said gently: ‘You must know I can’t answer questions like these.’

  ‘It was never Jacko,’ she repeated positively and he said: ‘I haven’t interviewed Mr Doré yet.’

  ‘Haven’t you? Good.’

  ‘Did you like Otto Brod?’

  She smiled slightly and lifted herself in her chair. Her face became secret and brilliant. ‘For a little while,’ she said, ‘he was a fortunate man.’

  ‘Fortunate?’

  ‘For a little while I loved him.’

  ‘Fortunate indeed,’ said Alleyn.

  ‘You put that very civilly, Mr Alleyn.’

  ‘Do you think there was some connection here? I mean between your relationship with Brod and the apparent threat when your husband showed you the letter?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think Ben realized. It was as brief as summer lightning, our affair.’

  ‘On both parts?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said as if he had asked a foolish question. ‘Otto was very young, rather violent and dreadfully faithful, poor sweet. You are looking at me in an equivocal manner, Mr Alleyn. Do you disapprove?’

  Alleyn said formally: ‘Let us say that I am quite out of my depth with—’

  ‘Why do you hesitate? With what?’

  ‘I was going to say with a femme fatale.’ said Alleyn.

  ‘Have I been complimented again?’

  He didn’t answer and after a moment she turned away as if she suddenly lost heart in some unguessed-at object she had had in mind.

  ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘I may not ask you why you believe Ben was murdered?’

  ‘I think you may. For one reason: his last act in the dressing-room was not consistent with suicide. He refurbished his make-up.’

  ‘That’s penetrating of you,’ she said. ‘It was an unsympathetic makeup. But I still believe he killed himself. He had much to regret and nothing in the wide world to look forward to. Except discomfiture.’

  ‘The performance tonight, among other things, to regret?’

  ‘Among all the other things. The change in casting, for one. It may have upset him very much. Because yesterday he thought he’d stopped what he called John’s nonsense about Gay. And there was his own behaviour, his hopeless, hopeless degradation. He had given up, Mr Alleyn. Believe me he had quite given up. You will find I’m right, I promise you.’

  ‘I wish I may,’ Alleyn said. ‘And I think that’s all at the moment. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get on with my job.’

  ‘Get on with it, then,’ she said and looked amused. She watched him go and he wondered after he had shut the door if her expression had changed.

  Adam Poole greeted Alleyn with a sort of controlled impatience. He had changed and was on his feet. Apparently Alleyn had interrupted an aimless promenade about the room.

  ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Are you any further on? Or am I not supposed to ask?’

  ‘A good deal further, I think,’ Alleyn said. ‘I want a word with you, if I may have it, and then with Mr Doré. I shall then have something to say to all of you. After that I think we shall know where we are.’

  ‘And you’re convinced, are you, that Bennington was murdered?’

  ‘Yes, I’m quite convinced of that.’

  ‘I wish to God I knew why.’

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ Alleyn said, ‘before the night is out.’

  Poole faced him. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said, ‘of any of us. It’s quite incredulous.’ He looked at the wall between his own room and Helena’s. ‘I could hear your voices in there,’ he said. ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘She’s perfectly composed.’

  ‘I don’t know why you wanted to talk to her at all.’

  ‘I had three things to say to Miss Hamilton. I asked her if she wanted to see her husband before he was taken away. She didn’t want to do so. Then I told her that I knew about an event of yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘What event!’ Poole demanded sharply.

  ‘I mean an encounter between her husband and herself.’

  ‘How the hell did you hear about that?’

  ‘You knew of it yourself, evidently.’

  Poole said: ‘Yes, all right. I knew,’ and then, as if the notion had just come to him and filled him with astonishment, he exclaimed: ‘Good God, I believe you think it’s a motive for me.’ He thrust his hand through his hair. ‘That’s about as ironical an idea as one could possibly imagine.’ He stared at Alleyn. An onlooker coming into the room at that moment would have thought that the two men had something in common and a liking for each other. ‘You can’t imagine,’ Poole said, ‘how inappropriate that idea is.’

  ‘I haven’t yet said I entertain it, you know.’

  ‘It’s not surprising if you do. After all, I suppose I could, fantastically, have galloped from the stage to Ben’s room, laid him out, turned the gas on and doubled back in time to re-enter! Do you know what my line of re-entry is in the play?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I come in, shut the door, go up to Helena, and say: “You’ve guessed, haven’t you? He’s taken the only way out. I suppose we must be said to be free.” It all seems to fit so very neatly, doesn’t it? Except that for us it’s a year or more out of date.’ He looked at Alleyn. ‘I really don’t know,’ he added, ‘why I’m talking like this. It’s probably most injudicious. But I’v
e had a good deal to think about the last two days and Ben’s death has more or less put the crown on it. What am I to do about this theatre? What are we to do about the show? What’s going to happen about—’ He broke off and looked at the wall that separated his room from Martyn’s. ‘Look here, Alleyn,’ he said. ‘You’ve no doubt heard all there is to hear and more about my private life. And Helena’s. It’s the curse of this job that one is perpetually in the spotlight.’

  He seemed to expect some comment on this. Alleyn said lightly: ‘The curse of greatness?’

  ‘Nothing like it, I’m afraid. See here, Alleyn. There are some women who just can’t be fitted into any kind of ethical or sociological pigeon-hole. Ellen Terry was one of them. It’s not that they are above reproach in the sense most people mean by the phrase, but that they are outside it. They behave naturally in an artificial set-up. When an attachment comes to an end, it does so without any regrets or recrimination. Often, with an abiding affection on both sides. Do you agree?’

  ‘That there are such women? Yes?’

  ‘Helena is one. I’m not doing this very well but I do want you to believe that she’s right outside this beastly thing. It won’t get you any further and it may hurt her profoundly if you try to establish some link between her relationship with her husband or anyone else and the circumstances of his death. I don’t know what you said to each other but I do know it would never occur to her to be on guard for her own sake.’

  ‘I asked her to tell me about Otto Brod.’

  Poole’s reaction to this was surprising. He looked exasperated. ‘There you are!’ he said. ‘That’s exactly what I mean. Otto Brod! A fantastic irresponsible affair that floated out of some midsummer notion of Vienna and Strauss waltzes. How the devil you heard of it I don’t know, though I’ve no doubt that at the time she fluttered him like a plume in her bonnet for all to see. I never met him but I understand he was some young intellectual with a pale face, no money and an over-developed faculty for symbolic tragedy. Why bring him in?’

  Alleyn told him that Bennington, when he came down to the theatre, had had a letter from Brod in his pocket and Poole said angrily: ‘Why the hell shouldn’t he? What of it?’

  ‘The letter is not to be found.’

  ‘My dear chap, I suppose he chucked it out or burnt it or something.’

  ‘I hardly think so,’ said Alleyn. ‘He told Miss Hamilton it was his trump card.’

  Poole was completely still for some moments. Then he turned away to the dressing-shelf and looked for his cigarettes.

  ‘Now what in the wide world,’ he said with his back to Alleyn, ‘could he have meant by a trump card?’

  ‘That,’ said Alleyn, ‘is what, above everything else, I should very much like to know.’

  ‘I don’t suppose it means a damn thing, after all. It certainly doesn’t to me.’

  He turned to offer his cigarettes but found that Alleyn had his own case open in his hands. ‘I’d ask you to have a drink,’ Poole said, ‘but I don’t keep it in the dressing-room during the show. If you’d come to the office—’

  ‘Nothing I’d like more but we don’t have it in the working hours either.’

  ‘Of course not. Stupid of me.’ Poole glanced at his dress for the ball and then at his watch. ‘I hope,’ he said, ‘that my business-manager is enjoying himself with my guests at my party.’

  ‘He rang up some time ago to inquire. There was no message for you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Poole leant against the dressing-shelf and lit his cigarette.

  ‘It seems to me,’ Alleyn said, ‘that there is something you want to say to me. I’ve not brought a witness in here. If what you say is likely to be wanted as evidence I’ll ask you to repeat it formally. If not, it will have no official significance.’

  ‘You’re very perceptive. I’m damned if I know why I should want to tell you this but I do. Just out of earshot behind these two walls are two women. Of my relation with the one, you seem to have heard. I imagine it’s pretty generally known. I’ve tried to suggest that it has come to its end as simply, if that’s not too fancy a way of putting it, as a flower relinquishes its petals. For a time I’ve pretended their colour had not faded and I’ve watched them fall with regret. But from the beginning we both knew it was that sort of affair. She didn’t pretend at all. She’s quite above any of the usual subterfuges and it’s some weeks ago that she let me know it was almost over for her. I think we both kept it up out of politeness more than anything else. When she told me of Ben’s unspeakable behaviour yesterday, I felt as one must feel about an outrage to a woman whom one knows very well and likes very much. I was appalled to discover in myself no stronger emotion than this. It was precisely this discovery that told me the last petal had indeed fallen and now—’ He lifted his hands. ‘Now, Ben gets himself murdered, you say, and I’ve run out of the appropriate emotions.’

  Alleyn said: ‘We are creatures of convention and like our tragedies to take a recognizable form.’

  ‘I’m afraid this is not even a tragedy. Unless—’ He turned his head and looked at the other wall. ‘I haven’t seen Martyn,’ he said, ‘since you spoke to her. She’s all right, isn’t she?’ Before Alleyn could answer he went on: ‘I suppose she’s told you about herself—her arrival out of a clear sky and all the rest of it?’

  ‘Everything, I think.’

  ‘I hope to God—I want to see her, Alleyn. She’s alone in there. She may be frightened. I don’t suppose you understand.’

  ‘She’s told me of the relationship between you.’

  ‘The relationship—’ he said quickly. ‘You mean—’

  ‘She’s told me you are related. It’s natural that you should be concerned about her.’

  Poole stared at him. ‘My good ass,’ he said, ‘I’m eighteen years her senior and I love her like a boy of her own age.’

  ‘In that case,’ Alleyn remarked. ‘You can not be said to have run out of the appropriate emotions.’

  He grinned at Poole in a friendly manner, and accompanied by Fox, went to his final interview—with Jacques Doré.

  It took place on the stage. Dr Rutherford elected to retire into the office to effect, he had told Fox, a few paltry adjustments of his costume. The players, too, were all in their several rooms and Clem Smith had been wakened, re-examined by Fox, and allowed to go home.

  So Jacko was alone in the tortured scene he had himself designed.

  ‘What do we talk about?’ he asked and began to roll himself a cigarette.

  ‘First of all,’ Alleyn said, ‘I must tell you that I am asking for a general search through the clothes that have been worn in the theatre. We have no warrant at this stage but so far no one has objected.’

  ‘Then who am I to do so?’

  Fox went through his pockets and found a number of curious objects—chalk, pencils, a rubber, a surgeon’s scalpel which Jacko said he used for wood carving, and which was protected by a sheath, a pocket-book with money, a photograph of Helena Hamilton, various scraps of paper with drawings on them, pieces of cotton-wool and an empty bottle smelling strongly of ether. This, he told Alleyn, had contained a fluid used for cleaning purposes. ‘Always they are messing themselves and always I am removing the mess. My overcoat is in the junk room. It contains merely a filthy handkerchief, I believe.’

  Alleyn thanked him and returned the scalpel, the pocket-book and drawing-materials. Fox laid the other things aside, sat down and opened his note-book.

  ‘Next,’ Alleyn said, ‘I think I’d better ask you what your official job is in this theatre. I see by the programme—’

  ‘The programme,’ Jacko said, ‘is euphemistic. “Assistant to Adam Poole” is it not? Let us rather say: Dogsbody in Ordinary to the Vulcan Theatre. Henchman Extraordinary to Mr Adam Poole. At the moment, dresser to Miss Helena Hamilton. Confidant to all and sundry. Johannes Factotum and not without bells on. Le Vulcan, c’est moi, in a shabby manner of speaking. Also: j’y suis, j’y reste. I hope.’
/>
  ‘Judging by this scenery,’ Alleyn rejoined, ‘and by an enchanting necklace which I think is your work, there shouldn’t be much doubt about that. But your association with the management goes further back than the Vulcan, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Twenty years,’ Jacko said, licking his cigarette paper, ‘for twenty years I improvise my role of Pantaloon for them. Foolishness, but such is my deplorable type. The eternal doormat. What can I do for you?’

  Alleyn said: ‘You can tell me if you still think Bennington committed suicide?’

  Jacko lit his cigarette. ‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘You are wasting your time.’

  ‘Was he a vain man?’

  ‘Immensely. And he knew he was artistically sunk.’

  ‘Vain of his looks?’

  ‘But yes, yes!’ Jacko said with great emphasis, and then looked very sharply at Alleyn. ‘Why, of his looks?’

  ‘Did he object to his make-up in this play? It seemed to me a particularly repulsive one.’

  ‘He disliked it, yes. He exhibited the vanity of the failing actor in this. Always, always he must be sympathetic. Fortunately Adam insisted on the make-up.’

  ‘I think you told me that you noticed his face was shiny with sweat before he went for the last time to his room?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And you advised him to remedy this? You even looked into his room to make sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jacko agreed after a pause, ‘I did.’

  ‘So when you had gone he sat at his dressing-table and carefully furbished up his repellent make-up as if for the curtain call. And then gassed himself?’

  ‘The impulse perhaps came very suddenly.’ Jacko half-closed his eyes and looked through their sandy lashes at his cigarette smoke. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said softly. ‘Listen. He repairs his face. He has a last look at himself. He is about to get up when his attention sharpens. He continues to stare. He sees the ruin of his face. He was once a coarsely handsome fellow, was Ben, with a bold rake-helly air. The coarseness has increased but where, he asks himself, are the looks? Pouches, grooves, veins, yellow eyeballs and all emphasized most hideously by the make-up. This is what he has become, he thinks, he has become the man he has been playing. And his heart descends into his belly. He knows despair and he makes up his mind. There is hardly time to do it. In a minute or two he will be called. So quickly, quickly he lies on the floor, with trembling hands he pulls his coat over his head and puts the end of the gas-tube in his mouth.’