Death on the Aisle

by Frances

“Yes,” Weigand said. “But it could be a coincidence.”

  Pam looked at him, hopefully, and then shook her head. She waited for him to go on.

  “All right,” he said. “Here it is, to date. See what you make of it.”

  Rapidly he sketched what they knew. Start, he said, with the idea that it was done this way: Some time, a little after one o’clock, somebody went from back-stage to the rear of the orchestra by using the area under both. Whoever it was could slip through the door opening off the dresing-room corridor, cross in a few seconds to the door leading into the lounge, come upstairs, kill Bolton, and return the same way. With luck, nobody need ever notice that the murderer had left the back-stage area.

  “Why?” Mr. North wanted to know. “Why not somebody already in the orchestra—Kirk, Ahlberg, Smith, Mary Fowler.”

  “Because, Jerry,” Weigand explained, “the murderer pushed Evans. And he pushed Evans because he was using the basement passage. And Evans was in the way, and also about to identify him.”

  Pam looked for a moment as if she were thinking this over. Then she shook her head.

  “Why both ways?” she asked. “Why from back-stage before the murder? Why not just to back-stage after it? That would account for Evans. And then the murderer could come from back-stage openly, as if she’d never been anywhere else.”

  Bill Weigand nodded. Then he stopped a nod in midnight.

  “‘She’ Pam?” he repeated. “Why ‘she’?”

  “What?” said Pam. “Oh—why—well, it’s always ‘he’ when the sex is indefinite. And I just changed it so—well, it just seemed to be ‘she’s’ turn and—”

  She warmed to it.

  “There’s no reason that I can see,” she told them, “why the human race should always be summed up as male. It’s just as much female—more, if anything. I’ve just decided—after this, whenever I don’t know which, I’m going to say ‘she.’ And I think all women ought to for—for self-defense. I think I’ll start a—crusade or something. Will you call it ‘she,’ Dor? From now on, so—”

  “All right, Pam,” Bill said. He smiled at her.

  “That was very nice going, Pam,” he said. “Very nice. I wouldn’t argue with you. We’ll call the murderer ‘she.’ And you’re quite right that she needn’t have come from the stage area. She may quite as well have been out front and gone back after Bolton was killed. Which takes in more territory.”

  Pam looked at Bill and, for him alone, shook her head. She shook it, it seemed to Weigand, sadly.

  “How much territory?” Jerry North said. “Have you boiled it down any? Or skimmed it off?”

  Weigand nodded slowly.

  “Some of them don’t seem to fit in,” he said. “I can’t see Paul Oliver in it, for example.”

  “I can’t see Paul Oliver at all,” Mrs. North said. “Who is he?”

  He was, Weigand told her, the young actor playing the role of Douglas Raimondi.

  “The one Ellen Grady quarreled with,” he amplified. “The one she said was catching flies.”

  “Oh,” Pam said, “that one. Yes, I guess he’s out. If I couldn’t even remember him.”

  Jerry looked at her and shook his head sadly and wanted to know what that had to do with it.

  “Particularly,” he added, “since he is the only one who had a quarrel with Miss Grady, and particularly as Miss Grady got killed.”

  Pam and Dorian and, after a moment, Bill Weigand all shook their heads at him. So, reflectively, did Mullins. Mullins also said, with finality, “Huh-uh.” Mr. North looked faintly rebellious.

  “Because,” Weigand told him, “Ellen Grady was killed because she saw the murderer … through the windows.”

  Everybody stared at him.

  “Do you know that, Bill?” Dorian wanted to know.

  Bill Weigand said he as good as knew it. Because during the time presumably crucial—the time, that was, immediately after John Hubbard had seen what they assumed to be Dr. Bolton’s cigarette as it fell from his dying hand—she was looking out of the windows—and, Weigand thought, saw the murderer come up from the basement. And, later, realized what she had seen and perhaps told the murderer, for reasons of her own.

  They still looked baffled.

  “I tested it,” Weigand said, “with Mullins. Probably you don’t remember, but before Hubbard came on stage and saw the cigarette, and for several minutes afterward—up to the time that Alberta James came on stage—the business called for Miss Grady to stand at the windows and look out. She did and apparently did look out; and looking out at that angle, she could see the door leading from the basement into the passage which goes to the stage door. I know she could see it, and whoever came out of it, because I put Mullins there, and looked through the window and saw him. And so, casually looking out the windows, Ellen Grady saw the murderer, and died of it.”

  He paused a moment.

  “And then Grady and Driscoll were on stage,” he added. “Driscoll is another of the actors, Pam. And Hubbard was on when he saw the cigarette.” He waved away words which seemed to be forming. “Right,” he said. “Maybe he was lying; and until we know better—or worse—we’re using that as our fixed point.”

  “How?” Pam wanted to know.

  “Something to measure from,” Weigand told her. “Take it more or less arbitrarily, because it doesn’t violate anything we know to be true—and because, to me, Hubbard seems to have told the truth.” Pam started to speak again and he said: “Wait a minute.”

  “Somewhere,” he told her, “we have to start acting as if what we believe to be true, on our best judgment of truth, is true. In solving any problem, simple or complex. It is a basic assumption—if it turns out to be wrong, of course we have to make another and start from that. Right? Well, my best judgment is that Hubbard is telling the truth when he says he saw a cigarette fall—that he is approximately right about the time, and that the cigarette fell when Bolton was killed. So far, nothing definitely contradicts that. The fact that Ellen Grady was looking out of a window at that time, and could have seen Bolton’s murderer, and later was killed, presumably by the same person, supports it. Those two facts support each other. This may be coincidence. If we get another fact supporting those two, it probably isn’t coincidence. If we get half a dozen facts supporting one another, then we rule coincidence out. Right?”

  “I guess so,” Pam said. “It sounds right, I guess.”

  Mr. North nodded firmly. He said that it was extremely logical, and he said it with relief.

  “Then,” Weigand said, “we rule out Driscoll and Hubbard, who were on stage at the time and, of course, Miss Grady herself. And—”

  “Everybody who wasn’t in the theatre yet,” Pam said, interestedly. “That would be—”

  “Ahlberg, Arthur Christopher, the designer, Mary Fowler,” Weigand told her. “On the face of it, anyway. Unless there was some dodge.”

  “Was there?” Pam wanted to know.

  “There’s always the chance of a dodge,” Weigand said.

  “Why,” Mr. North said, “don’t we take them up—opportunity, motive and so on. One at a time. Or doesn’t that help?” He looked at Weigand. “Or,” he said, “do you by any chance already know, Bill?”

  Weigand shook his head and caught Dorian’s eyes on him. He looked blank, but Dorian smiled and nodded.

  “I think he does,” she said, “or thinks he does.”

  “Well,” Weigand said, “I have a theory, yes. But it’s vague, and it wouldn’t hold in court. And—” he broke off to look at his watch—“we’ll take a few minutes to check. Nobody’s going to get away. So—”

  “We’ve tentatively cleared Hubbard and Driscoll, and Grady’s death clears her—anyway, we’ll assume it does.”

  “Only,” Pam said, “somebody could have killed her because she killed Bolton.”

  “Please, Pam,” Bill said, running a hand through his hair. Then he looked at Jerry North, who was doing the same thing. They both laughed.
<
br />   “Leaving that out,” Weigand said, “and since we can’t arrest her anyway, we’ll write off the three of them. No opportunity, no motive that I’ve discovered. Now, let’s go on with the cast. Take Alberta James. Opportunity, yes.… No motive we’ve discovered.”

  “Oh—” said Pam, quickly. She stared at Weigand.

  “You really think that, Bill?” she said.

  He answered with a question: “Don’t you, Pam?”

  Slowly she nodded.

  “I’m afraid I do,” she said. “Possible motives, anyway. Based on her loving Humpty Kirk. Maybe—well, maybe Bolton was going to kick Kirk out as director. Maybe—oh, maybe Bolton had some hold over her and wouldn’t let her go and she had to because she was in love with Humpty.” She looked at the others, none of whom seemed impressed. “All right,” she said, quickly and with a peculiar, hurried lightness. “I was just supposing. Probably you’re all right.”

  She felt Bill Weigand watching her, and tried not to show that she felt it. There was a little pause.

  “By the way, Mullins,” Bill Weigand said, “make notes on this, will you? Miss James—opportunity for both murders; motive unknown. Now, take—(he pulled the program proof from his pocket and looked at it)—Ruthmary Jones.”

  Everybody looked blank.

  “Ruthmary Jones, colored,” he said. “Opportunity, yes. Motive, none known.”

  Nobody contradicted.

  “F. Lawrence Tilford,” Weigand said. “Opportunity, yes for the first murder, probably for the second. It’s too late to check much at The Players,” he added, as an aside. “We can tomorrow, if we need to. His alibi may be all right; it may not. Probably it will be hard to prove either way. Motive—I think so.”

  He told the others of Tilford’s previous marriage to Mary Fowler, of the exactitude with which he seemed to remember dates concerning it, which argued, perhaps, that emotions still etched memory deeply; of the end of the marriage when Mary, then beautiful and successful and known as Mary Evans, went to Bolton and of what happened to her afterward.

  “And out of that,” he asked, “do we get a motive for Tilford? After all these years?”

  They thought about it.

  “It might be,” Dorian said. “Things go deep, sometimes. And something—something we don’t know about, some little thing—may have released the bitterness in Tilford, and turned it into hate.”

  Weigand nodded.

  “We leave him in,” he said. “And that’s the cast. Driscoll, Hubbard, Oliver, Ruthmary Jones—probably out; Grady, certainly out. Alberta James and Mr. Tilford still in. Now outside the cast. Mr. Kirk to start with. Opportunity: probably, although there seems to have been no reason for him to use the basement passage. Motive: jealousy of Alberta, who had been playing around with Bolton.”

  “Had she?” said Mrs. North. “Do you know?” She spoke anxiously.

  Weigand said he didn’t know. He thought she had, perhaps innocently; perhaps only flirting with an attractive and influential man who happened to be her doctor, which made it easy.

  “Or perhaps,” Weigand said, “Kirk only thought she had. The motive would be the same. He did think she had, didn’t he, Pam?” This last came quickly; before she could catch herself, Pamela North nodded. Weigand smiled faintly.

  “So we add him to the list,” he said. “Now the author, Penfield Smith. Motive—I’d think so. I’d enjoy killing any man who did to me what Bolton did to Smith. Opportunity: so far as we know. Leave him in. Ahlberg? Since he came in after the time we think Bolton was killed, no opportunity. If he’s telling the truth—on which we’ll check tomorrow—on the insurance policy and what not—no motive. But we’ll leave him in until we check. Christopher? In too late; no evident motive.”

  “Maybe,” Dorian said, “Bolton criticized his set. And Mr. Christopher got in a pet and stuck him.”

  Weigand shook his head at her.

  “Christopher out,” he said. “Mary Fowler. In too late. Motive: obvious—if Bolton had died fourteen years ago. But he died today. And fourteen years is a long time to nurture hate, as we felt in regard to Tilford. Evans …” Weigand broke off.

  “Which reminds me,” he said. “See what Stein found out, Mullins … about Evans and Mary Fowler.”

  “Evans,” Mrs. North pointed out, while Mullins went out the door, “was unconscious, or at least in a hospital bed, when Miss Grady was killed.”

  Weigand was nodding when Mullins came back. Mullins came back hurriedly.

  “He was just coming to tell us,” he said. “At the hospital, they won’t let him talk to Evans. And the Fowler dame—she ain’t here! She’s just—gone! Ain’t that the helluva note?”

  XV

  WEDNESDAY—1:15 A.M. TO 1:35 A.M.

  It seemed to Pamela North, watching them, that the others were disturbed unreasonably by the news that Mullins had brought them. It was natural, of course, that Bill should be disturbed and annoyed that a suspect, because Pam could see that Bill might regard Mary Fowler as a suspect, should have sifted out of a place from which nobody was supposed to sift. It reflected on the efficiency of his men, and hence on his own efficiency. But he could not, Pam thought, really feel as perturbed about it as his voice sounded; as angry with the men of his detail as his words—rather unexpected words from Bill Weigand—sounded. Mrs. North shook her head, wonderingly.

  Dorian might be expected, as things were, to feel what Bill felt. But that hardly explained why she should rise quickly when Mullins indignantly spluttered his message and look at Weigand from widened eyes and say, “No, Bill! Don’t let it be that way—!” with quite that odd note in her voice. Dorian didn’t, Pam realized, understand it even yet, because it was evident that she thought Mary Fowler was in danger—or, at any rate, that somebody was in danger.

  “But now nobody is,” Pam told herself, watching Mullins and Weigand, with Dorian after them, leave the lighted little office and disappear in the shadows of the mezzanine lounge, where chairs and sofas were dim, deeper darknesses in the gray dark. “Because there’s nobody left who could be.”

  Jerry had started after the others, but now he stopped and Pam realized that she had been speaking aloud.

  “Could be what, Pam?” Mr. North said, hurriedly. But he gave her no time to answer. “Come on, Pam,” he said. “Something’s happening.”

  “All right, Jerry,” Pam said. “I’ll come. Only it’s happened, really—all of it. Except the very last of it.”

  Jerry, who should have known better, took promise for performance. He went out and was in the darkness when he called back, still hurriedly. “Come on, Pam!”

  Pam said, “Yes, dear,” and now she did follow him. But she did not hurry, because she did not think that anything important was going to happen.

  “It’s only that she knows,” Pam said. “And doesn’t want—” Pam realized that she was talking aloud to herself again, and broke off, because she believed, without much conviction, that she should not talk aloud to herself. At least, she thought, following this new tack because it somehow made her feel that what must inevitably happen, and what she did not want to have happen, was being delayed if she did not think about it—at least, people don’t like other people to talk to themselves, and it worries Jerry. Although he ought to know I’m not crazy.

  “Or at least,” Pam said to herself, “no more than most people. Anyway, I don’t think so. And just because you talk to yourself doesn’t prove anything, although what you said to yourself might.”

  This sounded perfectly clear in Pam North’s mind, although, with a little smile to herself, she realized that it mightn’t to some people. Except Jerry, of course. To Jerry it would be almost as clear as it was to her, only he would want, probably, to “clean it up.” That was what actors wanted to do to lines which were not flatly coherent, Pam had discovered. “Clean them up” and “put another beat in” or take a beat out. Such suggestions from the actors had been enraging Mr. Smith all day and he kept saying: “But that’s
the way she” (or “he” if it were a he)—“would say it! That’s character!”

  Pamela, slowly following Jerry and the others, who now apparently had gone down the stairs from the mezzanine to the main floor, where she could hear raised voices, willfully let her mind wander.

  It’s all right to talk to yourself if what you say is interesting, Pam thought. And often, although probably I shouldn’t think it, I’d rather talk to myself than to other people. Because other people go all around Robin Hood’s barn, and cross every “i.”

  “Dot,” Pam said to herself correctingly. “And cross every ‘t.’ And the trouble with that is it’s so slow.”

  She was out in the shadows of the mezzanine, now, walking toward the stairs, and moving slowly because she hoped it would be over when she got there—because surely, now, Bill must know!—and because it was too dark to hurry. It seemed darker, indeed, than it had a moment before and, without putting her mind on it, Pam wondered indifferently why it should become darker.

  “Because it’s night already,” Pam thought. “It must be terribly late, really.”

  It was too late, Pam thought, the word leading to the thought, and her mind going back remorselessly, to what she wanted to keep it away from. It is too late for the murderer, she thought.

  “And, to be perfectly honest,” Pam said to herself, “I’m on her side, although it was a dreadful thing to do. Because it wasn’t to make things easier for herself, or not only that. And anyway, if it had to be somebody, it had better have been Dr. Bolton than almost anybody else.”

  Mrs. North was almost at the head of the mezzanine staircase, now. She could see the shadowy shapes of the balustrades going down, and the light below.

  “It was Ellen, really,” Pam said to herself. “That was dreadful, and that was the mistake. Because if it hadn’t been for that I wouldn’t have known. That made it—”

  “Don’t go any further, Mrs. North,” the voice behind her said. “This is as far as you’re going.”

  And at the same moment, Pamela North felt something small and hard against her back—something like—