by Ngaio Marsh
Jacko’s cigarette had burnt his lip. He spat it out and got slowly to his feet.
“You have been very clever,” he said. He spoke as if his lips were stiff with cold.
“Did Bennington tell you how he would, if necessary, play his trump card?”
“Not until after he had decided to play it.”
“But you had recognized the possibility?”
“Yes.”
Alleyn nodded to Fox, who shut his note-book, removed his spectacles and went out.
“What now?” Jacko asked,
“All on,” Alleyn said. “A company call. This is the curtain speech, Mr. Doré.”
Lamprey had called them and then retired. They found an empty stage awaiting them. It was from force of habit, Martyn supposed, that they took up, for the last time, their after-rehearsal positions on the stage. Helena lay back in her deep chair with Jacko on the floor at her feet. When he settled himself there, she touched his cheek and he turned his lips to her hand.
Martyn wondered if he was ill. He saw that she looked at him and made his clown’s grimace. She supposed that, like everybody else, he was merely exhausted. Darcey and Gay Gainsford sat together on the small settee and Parry Percival on his upright chair behind them. At the back, Dr. Rutherford lay on the sofa with a newspaper spread over his face. Martyn had returned to her old seat near the Prompt corner and Poole to his central chair facing the group. “We have come out of our rooms,” Martyn thought, “like rabbits from their burrows.” Through the Prompt entrance she could see Fred Badger, lurking anxiously in the shadows.
Alleyn and his subordinates stood in a group near the dock doors. On the wall close by them was the baize rack with criss-crossed tapes in which two receipts and a number of commercial cards were exhibited. Fox had read them all. He now replaced the last and looked through the Prompt corner to the stage.
“Are they all on?” Alleyn asked.
“All present and correct, sir.”
“Do you think I’m taking a very risky line, Br’er Fox?”
“Well, sir,” said Fox uneasily, “it’s a very unusual sort of procedure, isn’t it?”
“It’s a very unusual case,” Alleyn rejoined, and after a moment’s reflection he took Fox by the arm. “Come on, old trooper,” he said. “Let’s get it over.”
He walked onto the stage almost as if, like Poole, he were going to sum up a rehearsal. Fox went to his old chair near the back entrance. Martyn heard the other men move round behind the set. They took up positions, she thought, outside the entrances and it was unpleasant to think of them waiting there, unseen.
Alleyn stood with his back to the curtain and Poole at once slewed his chair round to face him. With the exception of Jacko, who was rolling a cigarette, they all watched Alleyn. Even the Doctor removed his newspaper, sat up, stared, groaned and returned ostentatiously to his former position.
For a moment Alleyn looked round the group, and to Martyn he seemed to have an air of compassion. When he began to speak his manner was informal but extremely deliberate.
“In asking you to come here together,” he said, “I’ve taken an unorthodox line. I don’t myself know whether I am justified in taking it, and I shan’t know until those of you who are free to do so have gone home. That will be in a few minutes, I think.
“I have to tell you that your fellow-player has been murdered. All of you must know that we’ve formed this opinion, and I think most of you know that I was first inclined to it by the circumstance of his behaviour on returning to his dressing-room. His last conscious act was to repair his stage make-up. While that seemed to me to be inconsistent with suicide, it was, on the other hand, much too slender a thread to tie up a case for homicide. But there is more conclusive evidence and I’m going to put it before you. He powdered his face. His dresser had already removed the pieces of cottonwool that had been used earlier in the evening and put out a fresh pad. Yet after his death there was no used pad of cotton-wool anywhere in the room. There is, on the other hand, a fresh stain near the gas fire which may, on analysis, turn out to have been caused by such a pad having been burnt on the hearth. The box of powder has been overturned on the shelf and there is a deposit of powder all over that corner of the room. As you know, his head and shoulders were covered, tent-wise, with his overcoat. There was powder on this coat and over his finger-prints on the top of the gas fire. The coat had hung near the door and would, while it was there, have been out of range of any powder flying about. The powder, it is clear, had been scattered after and not before he was gassed. If he was, in fact, gassed.”
Poole and Darcey made, simultaneous ejaculations. Helena and Gay looked bewildered, and Percival incredulous. Jacko stared at the floor and the Doctor groaned under his newspaper.
“The post mortem,” Alleyn said, “will of course settle this one way or the other. It will be exhaustive. No, it’s quite certain that the dresser didn’t go into the room after Mr. Bennington entered it this last time, and it is equally certain that the dresser left it in good order — the powder-pad prepared, the clothes hung up, the fire burning and the door unlocked. It is also certain that the powder was not overturned by the men who carried Mr. Bennington out. It was spilt by someone who was in the room after he was on the floor with the coat over his head. This person, the police will maintain, was his murderer. Now the question arises, doesn’t it, how it came about that he was in such a condition — comatose or unconscious — that it was possible to get him down on the floor, put out the gas fire, and then disengage the connecting tube, put the rubber end in his mouth and turn the gas on again, get his finger-prints on the wing-tap and cover him with his own overcoat There is still about one-sixth of brandy left in his flask. He was not too drunk to make up his own face and he was more or less his own man, though not completely so, when he spoke to Miss Tarne just before he went into his room. During the second interval Mr. Darcey hit him on the jaw and raised a bruise. I suppose it is possible that his murderer hit him again on the same spot — there is no other bruise — and knocked him out. A closer examination of the bruise may show if this was so. In that case the murderer would need to pay only one visit to the room: he would simply walk in a few minutes before the final curtain, knock his victim out and set the stage for apparent suicide.
“On the other hand, it’s possible that he was drugged.”
He waited for a moment. Helena Hamilton said: “I don’t believe in all this. I don’t mean, Mr. Alleyn, that I think you’re wrong: I mean it just sounds unreal and rather commonplace like a case reported in a newspaper. One knows that probably it’s all happened but one doesn’t actively believe it. I’m sorry. I interrupted.”
“I hope,” Alleyn said, “you will all feel perfectly free to interrupt at any point. About this possibility of drugging. If the brandy was drugged, then of course we shall find out. Moreover, it must have been tinkered with after he went on for his final scene. Indeed, any use of a drug, and one cannot disregard the possibility of even the most fantastic methods, must surely have been prepared while he was on the stage during the last act. We shall, of course, have a chemical analysis made of everything he used — the brandy, his tumbler, his cigarettes, his make-ups and even the greasepaint on his face. I tell you, quite frankly, that I’ve no idea at all whether this will get us any further.”
Fox cleared his throat. This modest sound drew the attention of the company upon him but he merely looked gravely preoccupied and they turned back to Alleyn.
“Following out this line of thought, it seems clear,” he said, “that two visits would have to be made to the dressing-room. The first, during his scene in the last act, and the second, after he had come off and before the smell of gas was first noticed — by Mr. Parry Percival.”
Percival said in a high voice: “I knew this was coming.” Gay Gainsford turned and looked at him with an expression of the liveliest horror. He caught her eye and said: “Oh, don’t be fantastic, Gay darling. Honestly!
“Mr.
Percival,” Alleyn said, “whose room is next to Mr. Bennington’s and whose fire backs on his, noticed a smell of gas when he was about to go out for the curtain-call. He tells us he is particularly sensitive to the smell because of its associations in this theatre and that he turned his own fire off and went out. Thus his fingerprints were found on the tap.”
“Well, naturally they were,” Parry said angrily. “Really, Gay!”
“This, of course,” Alleyn went on, “was reminiscent of the Jupiter case, but in that case the tube was not disconnected because the murderer never entered the room. He blew down the next-door tube and the fire went out. In that instance the victim was comatose from alcohol. Now, it seems quite clear to us that while this thing was planned with one eye on the Jupiter case, there was no intention to throw the blame upon anyone else and that Mr. Percival’s reaction to the smell was not foreseen by the planner. What the planner hoped to emphasize was Mr, Bennington’s absorption in the former case. We were to suppose that when he decided to take his own life he used the method by which he was obsessed. Suppose this to have been so. Wouldn’t we, remembering the former case, suspect that it was not suicide at all and look for what my colleague likes to call funny business? On the other hand…” Alleyn paused. Percival, who was obviously lost in his sense of release, and Gay Gainsford, who equally obviously was in a high state of confusion, both seemed to pull themselves together.
“On the other hand,” Alleyn repeated, “suppose this hypothetical planner was none other than Bennington himself?”
Their response to this statement had a delayed action. They behaved as actors do when they make what is technically known as a “double take.” There were a few seconds of blank witlessness followed by a sudden and violent reaction, Darcey and Percival shouted together that it would be exactly like Ben, Helena cried out inarticulately and Poole gave a violent ejaculation. The Doctor crackled his newspaper and Martyn’s thoughts tumbled about in her head like dice. Jacko alone stared incredulously at Alleyn.
“Do you mean,” Jacko asked, “that we are to understand that Ben killed himself in such a way as to throw suspicion of murder upon one of us? Is that your meaning?”
“No. For a time we wondered if this might be so, but the state of the dressing-room, as I’d hoped I’d made clear, flatly contradicts any such theory. No. I believe the planner based the method on Bennington’s preoccupation with the other case and hoped we would be led to some such conclusion. If powder had not been spilt on the overcoat we might well have done so.”
“So we are still — in the dark,” Helena said, and gave the commonplace phrase a most sombre colour.
“Not altogether. I needn’t go over the collection of near-motives that have cropped up in the course of our interviews. Some of them sound far-fetched, others at least possible. It’s not generally recognized that, given a certain temperament, the motive for homicide can be astonishingly unconvincing. Men have been killed from petty covetousness, out of fright, vanity, jealousy, boredom or sheer hatred. One or other of these motives lies at the back of this case. You all, I think, had cause to dislike this man. In one of you the cause was wedded to that particular kink which distinguishes murderers from the rest of mankind. With such beings there is usually some, shall I say, explosive agency — a sort of fuse — which, if it is touched off, sets them going as murder-machines. In this case I believe the fuse to have been a letter written by Otto Brod to Clark Bennington. This letter has disappeared and was probably burnt in his dressing-room. As the powder-pad may have been burnt By his murderer.”
Poole said: “I can’t begin to see the sense of all this,” and Helena said drearily: “Dark. In the dark.”
Alleyn seemed to be lost in thought. Martyn, alone of all the company, looked at him. She thought she had never seen a face as withdrawn and — incongruously the word flashed up again — compassionate. She wondered if he had come to some crucial point and she watched anxiously for the sign of a decision. But at this moment she felt Poole’s eyes upon her, and when she looked at him they exchanged the delighted smiles of lovers. “How can we,” she thought, and tried to feel guilty. But she hadn’t heard Alleyn speak and he was half-way through his first sentence before she gave him her attention.
“—so far about opportunity,” he was saying. “If there were two visits to the dressing-room during the last act I think probably all of you except Miss Hamilton could have made the earlier one. But for the second visit there is a more restricted field. Shall I take you in the order in which you are sitting? Miss Tarne, in that case, comes first.”
Martyn thought: “I ought to feel frightened again.”
“Miss Tarne has told us that after she left the stage, and she was the first to leave it, she stood at the entry to the dressing-room passage. She was in a rather bemused state of mind and doesn’t remember much about it until Mr. Percival, Mr. Darcey and Mr. Bennington himself came past. All three spoke to her in turn and went on down the passage. It is now that the crucial period begins. Mr. Doré was near by, and after directing the gun-shot took her to her dressing-room. On the way he looked in for a few seconds on Mr. Bennington, who had just gone to his own room. After Miss Tarne and Mr. Doré had both heard Mr. Darcey and Mr. Perdval return to the stage, they followed them out. They give each other near-alibis up to this point and the stagehands extend Miss Tarne’s alibi to beyond the crucial time. She is, I think, out of the picture.”
Gay Gainsford stared at Martyn. “That,” she said, “must be quite a change for you.”
“Miss Gainsford comes next,” Alleyn said as if he had not heard her. “She was in the Greenroom throughout the crucial period and tells us she was asleep. There is no witness to this.”
“George!” said Gay Gainsford wildly and turned to Darcey, thus revealing for the first time his Christian name. “It’s all right, dear,” he said. “Don’t be frightened. It’s all right.”
“Mr. Darcey and Mr. Percival are also in the list of persons without alibis. They left the stage and returned to it, together, or nearly so. But they went of course to separate rooms. Mr. Percival is the only one who noticed the smell of gas. Dr. Rutherford,” Alleyn went on, moving slightly in order to see the Doctor, “could certainly have visited the room during this period, as at any other stage of the performance. He could have come down from his box, passed unobserved round the back of the scenery, taken cover and gone in after these four persons were in their own rooms.”
He waited politely, but the Doctor’s newspaper rose and fell rhythmically. Alleyn raised his voice slightly. “He could have returned to his O.P. stairs when the rest of you were collected on the Prompt side and he could have made an official entry in the character of Author.” He waited for a moment. The others looked in a scandalized manner at the recumbent Doctor but said nothing.
“Mr. Poole has himself pointed out that he could have darted to the room during his brief period offstage. He could not, in my opinion, have effected all that had to be done, and if he had missed his re-entry he would have drawn immediate attention to himself.
“Mr. Doré is in a somewhat different category from the rest,” Alleyn continued. “We know he came away from her dressing-room with Miss Tarne, but although he was seen with the others on the Prompt side, he was at the back of the group and in the shadows. Everyone’s attention at this period was riveted on the stage. The call-boy checked over the players for the curtain-call and noticed Mr. Bennington had not yet appeared. Neither he nor anyone else had reason to check Mr. Doré‘s movements.”
Jacko said: “I remind you that Parry said he smelt gas while I was still with Miss Tarne in her room.”
“I have remembered,” Alleyn answered, “what Mr. Percival said.” He looked at Helena Hamilton. “And while all this was happening,” he concluded, “Miss Hamilton was on the stage holding the attention of a great cloud of witnesses in what I think must have been a most remarkable play.” There was a long silence.
“That’s all I have to say
.” Alleyn’s voice changed its colour a little. “I’m going to ask you to return to your rooms. You’ll want to do so in any case to collect your coats and so on. If you would like to talk things over among yourselves you are quite free to do so. We shall be in the Greenroom. If each of you will come in and leave us an address and telephone number I’ll be grateful.” He looked round them for a moment. Perhaps deliberately he repeated the stage-manager’s customary dismissal: “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That will be all.”
Chapter XI
LAST ACT
Alleyn stood in front of Adam Poole’s portrait and looked at his little group of fellow-policemen.
“Well,” he said, “I’ve done it.”
“Very unusual,” said Fox.
Bailey and Thompson stared at the floor.
Gibson blew out a long breath and wiped his forehead.
P. C. Lamprey looked as if he would like to speak but knew his place too well. Alleyn caught his eye. “That, Mike,” he said, “was an almost flawless example of how an investigating officer is not meant to behave. You will be good enough to forget it.”
“Certainly, sir.”
“What do you reckon, Mr. Alleyn?” Fox asked. “A confession? Brazen it out? Attempt to escape? Or what?”
“There’ll be no escape, Mr. Fox,” Gibson said. “We’ve got the place plastered outside. No cars without supervision within a quarter of a mile and a full description.”
“I said ‘attempt,’ Fred,” Mr. Fox pointed out majestically.
“If I’ve bungled,” Alleyn muttered, “I’ve at least bungled in a big way. A monumental mess.”
They looked uneasily at him. Bailey astonished everybody by saying to his boots, with all his customary moroseness: “That’ll be the day.”