Odd, thought Caroline as she went up to her room. Why would Marian go to the trouble of sending a telegram if she did not intend to keep the appointment? Some people thought Marian Trask was rather flighty; apparently they were right.
LADY MUSGROVE'S SECRET was all that Caroline had hoped for and more. The setting was the drawing room of a country estate; it was a most magnificent stage set, lavishly done up in the latest fashion. Almost too lavishly, perhaps, with busy, patterned wallpaper, luxurious draperies, much overstuffed furniture, several potted palms, and a plethora of gewgaws on every horizontal surface. And the play itself was splendid after all, she thought happily; it had a dastardly villain, a beautiful heroine (Serena Vincent, of course, whom Caroline had not seen in years, not since Serena's marriage and subsequent disgrace), a handsome (although a trifle weak-looking) hero, and enough shouted declarations of hate and love and betrayal to keep any audience on, so to speak, its toes.
Caroline herself was comfortably seated in the box Mrs. Vincent had offered to Addington. She stole a look at him. His long, lean face was unreadable in the dim light that came from the stage; she could not tell if he was enjoying the production or if he were merely enduring it because Mrs. Vincent had invited him as her guest.
And why had Mrs. Vincent done that? she wondered. Was she, however improbably, attracted to Addington? Not likely, she thought; he was not her type at all. Mrs. Vincent, since her disgrace, had traveled with the fast set, and whatever else Addington was, he was not that.
Caroline realized that Dr. MacKenzie was looking at her. “Good, isn't it?” she whispered to him.
He nodded. “Very,” he whispered back, and she was aware of his lingering glance before he returned his attention to the stage.
Act One had set out the problem; now, in Act Two, complications, in true melodramatic fashion, were arising. As Serena Vincent's seductive voice gave depth and meaning to her essentially silly lines, the villain threatened her in stentorian tones; the hero, for the moment, was absent. In her torment, Mrs. Vincent dashed back and forth across the stage; she was dressed in a green velvet gown, cut shockingly low, that displayed her stunning figure.
Caroline sighed. Her own figure was not stunning; it never would be. She was a little too plump, a little too short to cut a dashing figure like Serena Vincent's. If she got up on that stage, people would see not a willowy, curvaceous figure of a woman, but, rather, a modestly dressed, slightly overweight female approaching middle age. It didn't matter that she hadn't a lot of money to spend on her wardrobe, Caroline thought, because no matter how much she spent, she would never look like Serena Vincent.
She returned her attention to the play. The villain was saying something about the heroine's dark secret; Mrs. Vincent was defying him and doing it splendidly, all prideful, injured womanhood, her lovely, slender white hands pressed to her lovely, swelling white bosom.
Ah! The hero had returned. He had bounded in wearing jodhpurs and high boots; he brandished a pistol.
Ames, who was sitting on Caroline's left, nearest the stage, felt the tension rise in the audience. It was due entirely, he thought, to the skill of the actors; certainly the play itself was no more than mediocre. Amazing, how a second-rate effort like this could draw audiences week after week; it had opened in early September, if he remembered correctly, and now here it was the middle of November, and the house, on this Thursday night, was nearly full.
He glanced down across the rows of faces in the orchestra below, dimly illuminated by the reflection from the stage lights. Every last person seemed enthralled; the house was deathly still.
It was, of course, primarily Mrs. Vincent's skill that carried the play, enchanting the audience night after night. Amazing, to think that if it had not been for Colonel Mann and his filthy blackmail, she might have continued quietly for the rest of her life as the proper wife of a proper Boston Brahmin, her adulterous affair a well-kept secret, and all her energy and fire, now so splendidly displayed on the stage, would never have been discovered.
“Vile dastard!” she cried, and Ames heard a few gasps from the audience at a female's use of profanity.
The villain and the hero were scuffling now, building up to some kind of climax for the second act curtain. One down and then the other, Mrs. Vincent hovering on the sidelines. Would she interfere? Or let them fight it out themselves?
How beautiful she looked, Ames thought. Of course, they used heavy makeup, those actors and actresses; but still. Amazingly beautiful—and something more. She had a quality to her that was at once mysterious and alluring. Mysterious: yes, she was that. Could all her energy and fire have prompted her to kill Colonel Mann? He could not believe it. He assumed she had a great many opportunities to get herself into trouble, given the life she led, but did that trouble include murder? No. Impossible.
He'd see her after the final curtain to warn her that Crip-pen meant to arrest her. And he'd try to reassure her, tell her he knew that Crippen was way off the mark. Serena Vincent hadn't murdered the Colonel any more than Ames himself had. He'd be willing to bet on it—and he was not a betting man.
He glanced down into the orchestra. The tenth row center was occupied by half a dozen or so St. Botolphers; he'd heard that some of them came back every week. Pining, no doubt, for Mrs. Vincent. Ames's mouth curled down into a grimace of contempt. They might come to admire her—to lust after her, even—but there was not one of them who had the intestinal fortitude to actually marry her. Not with her disgrace hanging over her like a black cloud. No, they would come to see her, and perhaps even offer her supper—or something more—afterward, and they would buy her photograph which was available in all the shops, and perhaps they would even, in their dreams, make love to her. But they wouldn't make an honest woman of her—not after she'd been so damaged by Colonel Mann.
His eye was caught by a movement in one of the boxes opposite. A man alone. Ames stared, wanting to make sure. Yes. It was Richard Longworth. Now what was he doing here? He'd denied knowing Mrs. Vincent. Had he been lying? Probably. And if he'd lied about that, what else had he lied about?
Things seemed to be reaching some kind of climax onstage. The struggle between the hero and the villain was, for the moment, at a standoff; the two men had sprung apart, and now the hero was aiming his pistol.
A shot rang out.
And then, a second later, the hero shot at the villain, who slumped to the floor.
With a loud whoosh, the heavy red plush curtain came swooping down.
But instead of the applause that might have been expected, the theater was dead silent. No one moved; no one made a sound.
Then they heard a woman's scream, and suddenly all was pandemonium, people shouting, leaping out of their seats, a few intrepid souls even running up onto the stage, trying to find the opening in the curtain.
Caroline sat frozen with shock. As the houselights came up, MacKenzie said, “What was that? A shot—from the audience?”
“Apparently,” Ames said. For one terrible moment, his heart had stopped; now he felt it starting up again.
Two shots—but only one of them supposed to happen. Someone had taken a shot at the players onstage—timed precisely, but not precisely enough, to coincide with the shot called for in the script.
And unless either of the actors, the villain or the hero, had some enemy here tonight, the bullet had undoubtedly been intended for Serena Vincent.
He looked across to the box opposite. Richard Long-worth had vanished.
It was meant for me, Mr. Ames!”
Serena Vincent, ignoring the pleas of her maid, paced back and forth in her dressing room. She had changed into her costume for the last act, a pale pink confection that was, Caroline thought wistfully, extraordinary with her auburn hair. Crowded into the room with her and her maid were not only Ames and Caroline and Dr. MacKenzie, but the manager of the theater, a husky, ruddy man with a bristling gray mustache who looked, just now, as though someone had punched him in his ample paunch.
“How do you know that?” Ames replied. He agreed with her, but he wanted to hear her reasons.
“Because—because—”
“Five minutes!” came the cry of the call boy in the corridor.
“Because it was! I know it!”
She has some secret, he thought; many, perhaps. Who knew what entanglements she'd gotten herself into, running as she did with the fast crowd? And did those entanglements involve Richard Longworth, whom he had seen not half an hour ago sitting in a box opposite his own?
“Mrs. Vincent,” the manager said, “I beg you—”
She stopped in front of him as if she had only just noticed that he was in the room.
“Can we delay for five minutes longer?” she asked.
“We can—if you tell me you'll go on.”
“No!” snapped the maid. She glared at the manager.
The manager ignored her; Mrs. Vincent did not.
“I must, Hilda,” she said.
“Not on my life!” the woman exclaimed. She was an odd kind of servant, Caroline thought; but obviously she was much more than a servant. She was some kind of guardian who believed her duty was to shield her mistress from—What? Death?
Caroline shuddered. Mrs. Vincent was right; the shot had been intended for her. Who else? Both the actors had been standing well away from her. There was no one else onstage, and the shot had missed her by inches.
Caroline listened with a little frisson of horror as, now, Mrs. Vincent said, “I moved, you know.” She was talking to Ames, but they all heard. “Usually I stand right where— where the bullet entered the scenery. But tonight, I don't know why, I moved, just at the last instant—”
Her voice cracked a bit and she put her hand on Ames's arm to steady herself—a gesture that was not lost on Caroline.
“One minute!” the call boy shouted.
“Mrs. Vincent, I must insist—” the manager began. He started when Ames rounded on him.
“Be quiet, man! Can't you see she's had a shock? Go out and tell the audience you'll give them their money back— tonight's performance is over!”
“Now, now, just a minute—” the manager said. “I'm running this theater, if you please, Mr.—ah—”
“Never mind, Mr. Ames,” Mrs. Vincent said. She gave him one long, unreadable look, and then she took her hand from his arm and turned toward the door. “Mr. Moore is correct. The show must go on!” She smiled brightly—too brightly—and said to her maid, “Am I all right, Hilda?”
Caroline thought she saw tears in the woman's eyes as she scrutinized her mistress. “Yes,” she said. She reached up to refasten a rhinestone-studded hair clip in Mrs. Vincent's coiffure. “You're just fine.”
As the actress turned to leave, Caroline saw the maid bite her lips as if to keep from crying. She is terribly frightened, she thought; but why? Does she know who did this?
The manager, somewhat reassured that he would not lose the night's box office receipts, followed Mrs. Vincent out. Ames glanced at his companions. “Doctor, would you see Caroline back to our box?”
“Where will you be, Addington?” she asked.
“In the wings.” If the manager allows it, he thought. He wanted to be near Mrs. Vincent, even though, in the wings, he would be little help to her should the assailant attempt another shot.
But as Caroline made to leave, she felt a touch on her arm and turned to see Mrs. Vincent's maid staring at her with a beseeching look.
“Could I have a word, Miss?” she asked.
MacKenzie was waiting for her; Addington had gone on ahead.
“Just a minute of your time, Miss,” the maid added.
MacKenzie would wait for her in the corridor, he said. It was not a place, he felt very strongly, suitable for a lady on her own.
The maid shut the dressing room door; then she hesitated for a moment as if she were considering very carefully what she wanted to say—and how to say it. She was a drab, spare woman of about fifty; her eyes were bright with alarm, her thin lips quivering.
Then: “You don't know me, Miss,” she said abruptly.
“No.”
“My name's Hilda Fay.”
The surname, at least, meant something. The Ameses had once had a live-in cook named Mrs. Fay, back in the days when the house had been more fully staffed. Caroline had been in her late girlhood at the time, seventeen years ago or so.
“We had a cook—” she ventured.
“My sister. She used the Mrs. because it made her sound more experienced, like. Not that she wasn't a good cook— you can testify to that yourself, I guess.”
“Yes—yes, she was a wonderful cook,” Caroline said, her voice warming as she remembered. “She did a lovely blancmange. And her drop biscuits were the lightest I ever had.”
“And when she took ill,” Hilda went on, “your mother paid for her doctor bills and all.” She sniffled. “I never forgot that, Miss. How good your mother was to my Ellen. If she hadn't had that morphine at the end, I don't know what we would have done, she was in that much pain.”
Caroline felt slightly embarrassed. She had been just a giddy girl back then; she'd never thought once to inquire about the cook who had left the family's employment.
“So when Mr. Ames came yesterday afternoon,” Hilda went on, “I knew who he was. And I never would have spoke to you now, except that I'm scairt.”
She looked scared, Caroline thought—really frightened.
“And I've been trying to think, who would have done it?” the maid went on.
“You mean, who would have shot at Mrs. Vincent just now?”
“It was him.” Hilda's lips clamped down on the word like a bite.
“Him? Who is that?”
“That lawyering fella. Richard Longworth.” She'd suddenly acquired a sour look.
Longworth. Who might have worked for the Colonel. “Why do you say that, Hilda?”
“Because he's crazy for her.”
“That isn't a reason to shoot her, is it?”
“It is if she don't feel the same for him.”
“Ah.”
“He was with her on the night—the night it happened.”
“The night what happened?”
“The night someone killed that scum.”
“You mean Colonel Mann?”
“That's the one.”
“Yes? Go on, Hilda.”
“ Well—Mr. Longworth came in early, a little past seven, and he started right in on her. ‘Come away with me,’ he said.
“ ‘Don't be a fool,’ she said. ‘Why would I go away with you?’
“ ‘I can't stand it any longer,’ he said. ‘I will kill him.”’
“Who?”
“He meant the Colonel.”
“I see.”
“And then he said, ‘Or I will kill myself.’ And then he said, ‘Or I will kill you.”’ “Meaning—Mrs. Vincent?”
“Yes. He was raving. I never heard anything like it.”
“But he didn't do any of those things, after all, did he?”
“ I don't know.”
“But if he was with Mrs. Vincent—”
“He left.”
“Ah.”
“But then he came back.”
“Do you know what time?”
“He left around seven-thirty. Came back about an hour later. And so now—the Colonel is dead, and just now someone has taken a shot at her. And if he didn't get her this time, he'll get her soon enough. Don't you see, Miss Ames? I'm telling you, that shot was for her, and it won't be the last!”
THE PLAY WAS OVER. ACT THREE HAD LASTED FOR PERHAPShalf an hour, but for Ames, it had seemed endless. He stood in the wings and watched as Serena Vincent, trouper that she was, played her part. The audience knew what had happened, apparently, for when the curtain opened, a wave of applause greeted her. She held her pose, and when the applause died, she acknowledged it by a single graceful nod.
From time to time, Ames looked into the darkened theater,
but he was on the wrong side to see the box where Longworth had sat, and so he could not tell if he was still there.
At the end, the police—not Crippen, thank God—waited in the corridor. Serena Vincent, amazingly composed, came off the stage after the audience's ovation and greeted them calmly. She could tell them nothing, of course: no, she had no idea who would have done such a thing, no idea that she had any enemies.
Ames waited until they had finished questioning her, and when at last they were done, he was able to have a private word with her.
“Yes, Mr. Ames?” She lifted both her hands and he took them, gripping them hard. They were icy cold.
“I did not have the chance to tell you before—” he began.
In the harsh light of her dressing room, he saw the shadows under her eyes, the lines of tension around her mouth.
“Yes?” She did not pull away from him, and as he held her hands, he felt them grow warmer. “What is it, Mr. Ames?” The words were impatient, but the tone was not; she spoke softly, almost intimately, and her eyes—her lovely eyes—gazed at him with what seemed to him trust and— perhaps—admiration.
He was aware of the maid hovering in the background.
“A private word, if I may,” he said.
“Of course.” She turned to the maid and passed some wordless message; at once the woman left the room, closing the door behind her.
“Now,” Mrs. Vincent said. She still left her hands in his, and it was not a passive thing: he felt her grip, strong and oddly reassuring. “You were about to say—?”
“Inspector Crippen has you in his sights,” he said. He heard the urgency in his voice and wondered if she did.
She accepted it with no more than a lowering of her eyelids—and then a swift raising of them again, to stare at him quite boldly. Then, to his astonishment, a small smile curved her lips.
“Are you trying to tell me that Inspector Crippen believes that I killed Colonel Mann?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps this little episode tonight will change his mind.”
The DEATH OF COLONEL MANN Page 18