by Ngaio Marsh
“It will help, you know, when we get a clear picture of what you were all doing and where you were between the time he left the stage and the time he was found. Inspector Fox is checking now with the stage-staff. I propose to do so with the players.”
“I see,” she said. She leant forward and her air of reasonableness and attention was beautifully executed. “You want to find out which of us had the opportunity to murder Ben.”
Gay Gainsford and Parry began an outcry, but Helena raised her hand and they were quiet. “That’s it, isn’t it?” she said.
“Yes,” Alleyn said, “that really is it. I fancy you would rather be spared the stock evasions about routine enquiries and all the rest of it.”
“Much rather.”
“I was sure of it,” Alleyn said. “Then shall we start with you, if you please?”
“I was on the stage for the whole of that time, Mr. Alleyn. There’s a scene, before Ben’s exit, between J.G. — that’s Mr. Darcey over there — Parry, Adam, Ben and myself. First Parry and then J.G. goes off and Ben follows a moment later. Adam and I finish the play.”
“So you, too,” Alleyn said to Poole, “were here, on the stage, for the whole of this period?”
“I go off for a moment after his exit. It’s a strange, rather horridly strange, coincidence that in the play he — the character he played, I mean — does commit suicide off-stage. He shoots himself. When I hear the shot I go off. The two other men have already made their exits. They remain off but I come on again almost immediately. I wait outside the door on the left from a position where I can watch Miss Hamilton, and I re-enter on a ‘business’ cue from her.”
“How long would this take?”
“Shall we show you?” Helena suggested. She got up and moved to the centre of the stage. She raised her clasped hands to her mouth and stood motionless. She was another woman.
As if Clem had called “Clear stage”—and indeed he looked about him with an air of authority — Martyn, Jacko and Gay moved into the wings. Parry and J.G. went to the foot of the stairs and Poole crossed to above Helena. They placed themselves thus in the businesslike manner of a rehearsal. The Doctor, however, remained prone on his sofa, breathing deeply and completely disregarded by everybody. Helena glanced at Clem Smith, who went to the book.
“From Ben’s exit, Clem,” Poole said, and after a moment Helena turned and addressed herself to the empty stage on her left.
“I’ve only one thing to say, but it’s between the three of us.” She turned to Parry and Darcey. “Do you mind?” she asked them.
Parry said: “I don’t understand and I’m past minding.”
Darcey said: “My head is buzzing with a sense of my own inadequacy. I shall be glad to be alone.”
They went out, each on his own line, leaving Helena, Adam, and the ghost of Bennington on the stage.
Helena spoke again to vacancy. “It must be clear to you, now. It’s the end, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Clem’s voice said. “I understand you perfectly. Good-bye, my dear.”
They watched the door on the left. Alleyn took out his watch. Helena made a quick movement as if to prevent the departure of an unseen person and Poole laid his hand on her arm. They brought dead Ben back to the stage by their mime and dismissed him as vividly. It seemed that the door must open and shut for him as he went out.
Poole said: “And now I must speak to you alone.” There followed a short passage of dialogue which he and Helena played a tempo but with muted voices. Jacko, in the wings, clapped his hands and the report was as startling as a gun-shot. Poole ran out through the left-hand door.
Helena traced a series of movements about the stage. Her gestures were made in the manner of an exercise but the shadow of their significance was reflected in her face. Finally she moved into the window and seemed to compel herself to look out. Poole re-entered.
“Thank you,” Alleyn said, shutting his watch. “Fifty seconds. Will you all come on again, if you please?”
When they had assembled in their old positions, he said: “Did anyone notice Mr. Poole as he waited by the door for his re-entry?”
“The door’s recessed,” Poole said. “I was more or less screened.”
“Someone off-stage may have noticed, however.” He looked from Darcey to Percival.
“We went straight to our rooms,” said Parry.
“Together?”
“I was first. Miss Tarne was in the entrance to the passage and I spoke to her for a moment. J.G. followed me, I think.”
“Do you remember this, Miss Tarne?”
It had been at the time when Martyn had begun to come back to earth. It was like a recollection from a dream. “Yes,” she said. “I remember. They both spoke to me.”
“And went on down the passage?”
“Yes.”
“To be followed in a short time by yourself and Mr. Bennington?”
“Yes.”
“And then Mr. Doré joined you and you went to your rooms?”
“Yes.”
“So that after Mr. Bennington had gone to his room, you, Mr. Percival, were in your dressing-room, which is next door to his, Mr. Darcey was in his room which is on the far side of Mr. Percival’s, and Miss Tarne was in her room — or more correctly, perhaps, Miss Gainsford’s — with Mr. Doré, who joined her there after looking in on Mr. Bennington. Right?”
They murmured an uneasy assent.
“How long were you all in these rooms?”
Jacko said: “I believe I have said I adjusted this Infant’s make-up and returned with her to the stage.”
“I think,” said Martyn, “that the other two went out to the stage before we did. I remember hearing them go up the passage together. That was before the call for the final curtain. We went out after the call, didn’t we, Jacko?”
“Certainly, my Infant. And by that time you were a little more awake, isn’t it? The pink clouds had receded a certain distance?”
Martyn nodded, feeling foolish. Poole came behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders. “So there would appear at least to be an alibi for the Infant Phenomenon,” he said. It was the most natural and inevitable thing in the world for her to lean back. His hands moved to her arms and he held her to him for an uncharted second while a spring of well-being broke over her astounded heart.
Alleyn looked from her face to Poole’s and she guessed that he wondered about their likeness to each other. Poole, answering her thoughts and Alleyn’s unspoken question, said: “We are remotely related, but I am not allowed to mention it. She’s ashamed of the connection.”
“That’s unlucky,” Alleyn said with a smile, “since it declares itself so unequivocally.”
Gay Gainsford said loudly to Darcey: “Do you suppose, darling, they’d let me get my cigarettes?”
Helena said: “Here you are, Gay.” Darcey had already opened his case and held it out to her in his right hand. His left hand was in his trousers pocket. His posture was elegant and modish, out of keeping with his look of anxiety and watchfulness.
“Where are your cigarettes?” Alleyn asked and Gay said quickly: “It doesn’t matter, thank you. I’ve got one. I won’t bother. I’m sorry I interrupted.”
“But where are they?”
“I don’t really know what I’ve done with them.”
“Where were you during the performance?”
She said impatiently: “It really doesn’t matter. I’ll look for them later or something.”
“Gay,” said Jacko, “was in the Greenroom throughout the show.”
“Lamprey will see if he can find them.”
The young constable said: “Yes, of course, sir,” and went out.
“In the Greenroom?” Alleyn said. “Were you there all the time, Miss Gainsford?”
Standing in front of her with his back to Alleyn, Darcey held a light to her cigarette. She inhaled and coughed violently. He said: “Gay didn’t feel fit enough to move. She curled up in a chair in the Greenroo
m. I was to take her home after the show.”
“When did you leave the Greenroom, Miss Gainsford?”
But it seemed that Gay had half-asphyxiated herself with her cigarette. She handed it wildly to Darcey, buried her face in her handkerchief and was madly convulsed. P. C. Lamprey returned with a packet of cigarettes, was waved away with vehemence, gave them to Darcey and on his own initiative fetched a cup of water.
“If the face is congested,” Dr. Rutherford advised from the sofa, “hold her up by the heels.” His eyes remained closed.
Whether it was the possibility of being subjected to this treatment or the sip of water that Darcey persuaded her to take or the generous thumps on her back, administered by Jacko, that effected a cure, the paroxysm abated. Alleyn, who had watched this scene thoughtfully, said: “If you are quite yourself again, Miss Gainsford, will you try to remember when you left the Greenroom?”
She shook her head weakly and said in an invalid’s voice: “Please, I honestly don’t remember. Is it very important?”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, Gay!” cried Helena, with every sign of the liveliest irritation. “Do stop being such an unmitigated ass. You’re not choking: if you were your eyes would water and you’d probably dribble. Of course it’s important. You were in the Greenroom and next door to Ben. Think!”
“But you can’t imagine—” Gay said wildly. “Oh, Aunty — I’m sorry, I mean Helena — I do think that’s a frightful thing to suggest.”
“My dear Gay,” Poole said, “I don’t suppose Helena or Mr. Alleyn or any of us imagines you went into Ben’s room, knocked him senseless with a straight left to the jaw and then turned the gas on. We merely want to know what you did do.”
J.G., who had given a sharp ejaculation and half risen from his chair, now sank back.
Alleyn said: “It would also be interesting, Mr. Poole, to hear how you knew about the straight left to the jaw.”
Poole was behind Martyn and a little removed from her. She felt his stillness in her own bones. When he spoke it was a shock rather than a relief to hear how easy and relaxed his voice sounded.
“Do you realize, Alleyn,” he said, “you’ve given me an opportunity to use, in reverse, a really smashing detective’s cliché: ‘I didn’t know. You have just told me!’ ”
“And that,” Alleyn said with some relish, “as I believe you would say in the profession, takes me off with a hollow laugh and a faint hiss. So you merely guessed at the straight left?”
“If Ben was killed, and I don’t believe he was, it seemed to me to be the only way this murder could be brought about.”
“Surely not,” Alleyn said without emphasis. “There is the method that was used before in this theatre with complete success.”
“I don’t know that I would describe as completely successful a method that ended with the arrest of its employer.”
“Oh,” Alleyn said lightly, “that’s another story. He underestimated our methods.”
“A good enough warning to anyone else not to follow his plan of action.”
“Or perhaps merely a hint that it could be improved upon,” Alleyn said. “What do you think, Mr. Darcey?”
“I?” J.G. sounded bewildered. “I don’t know. I’m afraid I haven’t followed the argument.”
“You were still thinking about the straight-left theory, perhaps?”
“I believe with the others that it was suicide,” said J.G. He had sat down again beside Gay. His legs were stretched out before him and crossed at the ankles, his hands were in his trousers pockets and his chin on his chest. It was the attitude of a distinguished M.P. during a damaging speech from the opposite side of the House.
Alleyn said: “And we still don’t know when Miss Gainsford left the Greenroom.”
“Oh, lawks!” Parry ejaculated. “This is too tiresome. J.G., you looked in at the Greenroom door when we came back for the curtain-call, don’t you remember? Was she there then? Were you there then, Gay darling?”
Gay opened her mouth to speak but J.G. said quickly: “Yes, of course I did. Stupid of me to forget Gay was sound asleep in the armchair, Mr. Alleyn. I didn’t disturb her.” He passed his right hand over his beautifully groomed head. “It’s a most extraordinary thing,” he said vexedly, “that I should have forgotten this. Of course she was asleep. Because later, when — well, when, in point of fact, the discovery had been made — I asked where Gay was and someone said she was still in the Greenroom, and I was naturally worried and went to fetch her. She was still asleep and the Greenroom, by that time, reeking with gas. I brought her back here.”
“Have you any idea, Miss Gainsford,” Alleyn asked, “about when you dropped off?”
“I was exhausted, Mr. Alleyn. Physically and emotionally exhausted. I still am.”
“Was it, for instance, before the beginning of the last act?”
“N — n—no. No. Because J.G. came in to see how I was in the second interval. Didn’t you, darling? And I was exhausted, wasn’t I?”
“Yes, dear.”
“And he gave me some aspirins and I took two. And I suppose, in that state of utter exhaustion, they worked. So I fell into a sleep — an exhausted sleep, it was.”
“Naturally,” Helena murmured with a glance at Alleyn, “it would be exhausted.”
“Undoubtedly,” said Jacko, “it was exhausted.”
“Well, it was,” said Gay crossly. “Because I was. Utterly.”
“Did anyone else beside Mr. Darcey go into the Greenroom during the second interval?”
Gay looked quickly at J.G. “Honestly,” she said, “I’m so muddled about times it really isn’t safe to ask me. I’m sure to be wrong.”
“Mr. Darcey?”
“No,” J.G. said.
“Well, my dearest J.G.,” Parry said, “I couldn’t be more reluctant to keep popping in like one of the Eumenides in that utterly incomprehensible play, but I do assure you that you’re at fault here. Ben went into the Greenroom in the second interval.”
“Dear Heaven!” Helena said, on a note of desperation. “What has happened to us all!”
“I’m terribly sorry, Helena darling,” Parry said, and sounded it.
“But why should you be sorry? Why shouldn’t Ben go and see his niece in the interval? He played the whole of the third act afterwards. Of course you should say so, Parry, if you know what you’re talking about. Shouldn’t he, Adam? Shouldn’t he, Mr. Alleyn?”
Poole was looking with a sort of incredulous astonishment at Darcey. “I think he should,” he said slowly.
“And you, Mr. Darcey?” asked Alleyn.
“All right, Parry,” said J.G., “go on.”
“There’s not much more to be said, and anyway I don’t suppose it matters. It was before they’d called the third act. Helena and Adam and Martyn had gone out. They begin the act. I come on a bit later and Ben after me and J.G. later still. I wanted to see how the show was going and I was on my way in the passage when Ben came out of his room and went into the Greenroom next door. The act was called soon after that.”
“Did you speak to him?” Alleyn asked.
“I did not,” said Parry with some emphasis. “I merely went out to the stage and joined Jacko and the two dressers and the call-boy, who were watching from the Prompt side, and Clem.”
“That’s right,” Clem Smith said. “I remember telling you all to keep away from the bunches. The boy called J.G. and Ben about five minutes later.”
“Were you still in the Greenroom when you were called, Mr. Darcey?”
“Yes.”
“With Mr. Bennington?”
“He’d gone to his room.”
“Not for the life of me,” Helena said wearily, “can I see why you had to be so mysterious, J.G.”
“Perhaps,” Alleyn said, “the reason is in your left trousers pocket, Mr. Darcey.”
J.G. didn’t take his hand out of his pocket. He stood up and addressed himself directly to Alleyn.
“May I speak to you p
rivately?” he asked.
“Of course,” Alleyn said. “Shall we go to the Greenroom?”
In the Greenroom and in the presence of Alleyn and of Fox, who had joined them there, J. G. Darcey took his left hand out of his trousers pocket and extended it palm downwards for their inspection. It was a well-shaped and well-kept hand but the knuckles were grazed. A trace of blood had seeped out round the greasepaint and powder which had been daubed over the raw skin.
“I suppose I’ve behaved very stupidly,” he said. “But I hoped there would be no need for this to come out. It has no bearing whatever on his death.”
“In that case,” Alleyn said, “it will not be brought out. But you’ll do well to be frank.”
“I dare say,” said J.G. wryly.
“There’s a bruise on the deceased’s jaw on the right side that could well have been caused by that straight left Mr. Poole talked about. Now, we can of course determine whether make-up from your left fist is mixed with Bennington’s own make-up over this bruise. If you tell me you didn’t let drive at him we’ll make this experiment.”
“I assure you that you don’t need to do any such thing. I’ll willingly admit that I hit him,” J.G. said with a shudder.
“And also why you hit him?”
“Oh, yes, if I can. If I can,” he repeated and pressed his hand to his eyes. “D’you mind if we sit down, Alleyn? I’m a bit tired.”
“Do.”
J.G. sat in the leather armchair where Martyn, and, in her turn, Gay Gainsford had slept. In the dim light of the Greenroom his face looked wan and shadowed. “Not the chicken I was,” he said, and it was an admission actors do not love to make.
Alleyn faced him. Fox sat down behind him, flattened his notebook on the table and placed his spectacles across his nose. There was something cosy about Fox when he took notes. Alleyn remembered absently that his wife had once observed that Mr. Fox was a cross between a bear and a baby and exhibited the most pleasing traits of both creatures.
The masked light above Jacko’s sketch of Adam Poole shone down upon it, and it thus was given considerable emphasis in an otherwise shadowed room.
“If you want a short statement,” J.G. said, “I can give it to you in a sentence. I hit Ben on the jaw in this room during the second act wait. I didn’t knock him out but he was so astonished he took himself off. I was a handy amateur welter-weight in my young days but it must be twenty years or more since I put up my hands. I must say I rather enjoyed it.”