by Ngaio Marsh
“Don’t talk Australian,” Mr. Fox chided immediately, but he looked upon Bailey with approval.
A door in the passage opened and shut.
“Here we go,” said Alleyn.
A moment later there was a tap at the Greenroom door and Parry Percival came in. He wore a dark overcoat, a brilliant scarf, yellow gloves and a green hat.
“If I’m still under suspicion,” he said, “I’d like to know but I suppose no one will tell me.”
Fox said heartily: “I shouldn’t worry about that if I were you, sir. If you’d just give me your address and ’phone number. Purely as a reference.”
Parry gave them and Lamprey wrote them down.
“Thank you, Mr. Percival,” Alleyn said. “Good night.” Parry walked to the door. “They all seem to be going home in twos except me,” he said. “Which is rather dreary, I hope no one gets coshed for his pains. Considering one of them seems to be a murderer it’s not too fantastic a notion, though I suppose you know your own business. Oh well. Good night.”
Evidently he collided with Gay Gainsford in the passage. They heard her ejaculation and his fretful apology. She came in followed by Darcey.
“I couldn’t face this alone,” she said and looked genuinely frightened. “So George brought me.”
“Perfectly in order, Miss Gainsford,” Fox assured her.
Darcey, whose face was drawn and white, stood near the door. She looked appealingly at him and he came forward and gave their addresses and telephone numbers. His voice sounded old. “I should like to see this lady home,” he said and was at once given leave to do so. Alleyn opened the door for them and they went out, arm in arm.
Poole came next. He gave a quick look round the room and addressed, himself to Alleyn. “I don’t understand all this,” he said, “but if any member of my company is to be arrested, I’d rather stay here. I’d like to see Martyn Tarne home — she lives only a few minutes away — but if it’s all right with you, I’ll come back.” He hesitated and then said quickly: ”I’ve spoken to Jacques Doré.”
Alleyn waited for a moment “Yes,” he said at last, “I’d be glad if you’d come back.”
“Will you see Helena now? She’s had about all she can take.”
“Yes, of course.”
“I’ll get her,” Poole said and crossed the passage. They heard him call: “Helena?” and in a moment he reopened the door for her.
She had put a velvet beret on her head and had pulled the fullness forward so that her eyes were shadowed. Her mouth drooped with fatigue but it had been carefully painted. Fox took her address and number.
“Is the car here?” she asked, and Fox said: “Yes, madam, in the yard. The constable will show you out.”
“I’ll take you, Helena,” Poole said. “Or would you rather be alone?”
She turned to Alleyn. “I thought,” she said, “that if I’m allowed, I’d rather like to take Jacko. If he’s still about. Would you mind telling him? I’ll wait in the car.”
“There’s no one,” Alleyn asked, “that you’d like us to send for? Or ring up?”
“No, thank you,” she said. “I’d just rather like to have old Jacko.”
She gave him her hand. “I believe,” she said, “that when I can think at all sensibly about all this, I’ll know you’ve been kind and considerate.”
Poole went out with her and Lamprey followed them.
A moment later, Martyn came in.
As she stood at the table and watched Fox write out her address she felt how little she believed in herself here, in this quietly fantastic setting. Fox and his two silent and soberly dressed associates were so incredibly what she had always pictured plain-clothes detectives to be, and Alleyn, on the contrary, so completely unlike. She was much occupied with this notion and almost forgot to give him her message.
“Jacko,” she said, “asked me to say his address is the same as mine. I have a room in the house where he lodges.” She felt there might be some ambiguity in this statement and was about to amend it when Alleyn asked: “Has Mr. Doré gone?”
“I think he’s waiting for Miss Hamilton in her car.”
“I see,” Alleyn said. “And I believe Mr. Poole is waiting for you. Good-bye, Miss Tarne, and good luck.”
Her face broke into a smile. “Thank you very much,” said Martyn.
Poole’s voice called in the passage: “Where are you, Kate?”
She said good night and went out.
Their steps died away down the passage and across the stage. A door slammed and the theatre was silent.
“Come on,” said Alleyn.
He led the way round the back of Jacko’s set to the Prompt corner.
Only the off-stage working-lights were alive. The stage itself was almost as shadowy as it was when Martyn first set foot on it. A dust-begrimed lamp above the letter-rack cast a yellow light over its surface.
In the centre, conspicuous in its fresh whiteness, was an envelope that had not been there before.
It was addressed in a spidery hand to Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn.
He took it from the rack. “So he did it this way,” he said, and without another word led them onto the stage.
Jacko’s twisted stairway rose out of the shadows like a crazy ejaculation. At its base, untenanted chairs faced each other in silent communion. The sofa was in the darkest place of all.
Young Lamprey began to climb the iron steps to the switch-board. The rest used their flash-lamps. Five pencils of light interlaced, hovered and met at their tips on a crumpled newspaper. They advanced upon the sofa as if it housed an enemy, but when Alleyn lifted the newspaper and the five lights enlarged themselves on Dr. Rutherford’s face, it was clearly to be seen that he was dead.
The little group of men stood together in the now fully lit stage while Alleyn read the letter. It was written on official theatre paper and headed: “The Office. 1:45 A.M.”
DEAR ALLEYN,
I cry you patience if this letter is but disjointedly patched together. Time presses and I seem to hear the clink of constabular bracelets.
Otto Brod wrote a play which he asked Clark Bennington to read and help him improve. Ben showed it to the two persons of his acquaintance who could read German and had some judgement. I refer to Doré and myself. The play we presented last night was my own free adaptation of Brod’s piece made without his consent or knowledge. Base is the slave that pays. In every way mine is an improvement. Was it George Moore who said that the difference between his quotations and those of the next man was that he left out the inverted commas? I am in full agreement with this attitude and so, by the way, was Will Shakespeare. Doré, however, is a bourgeois where the arts are in question. He recognized the source, disapproved, but had the grace to remain mum. The British critics, like Doré, would take the uncivilized view and Ben knew it. He suspected the original authorship, wrote to Brod and three days ago got an answer confirming his suspicions. This letter he proposed to use as an instrument of blackmail. I told Ben, which was no more than the truth, that I intended to make things right with Brod, who, if he’s not a popinjay, would be well content with the honour done him and the arrangement proposed.
Ben would have none of this. He threatened to publish Brod’s letter if a certain change was made in the casting. The day before yesterday, under duress, I submitted and no longer pressed for this change. However, owing to Miss G.’s highstrikes, it was, after all, effected. Five minutes before the curtain went up on the first act, Ben informed me, with, ho! such bugs and goblins in my life, that at the final curtain he intended to advance to the footlights and tell the audience I’d pinched the play. Knowing Ben meant business, I acted: in a manner which, it appears, you have rumbled and which will be fully revealed by your analysis of the greasepaint on his unlovely mug.
He powdered his face with pethidine-hydrochloride, an effective analgesic drug now in fashion, of which the maximum therapeutic dose is 100 milligrams. Ben got about 2 grams on his sweaty upper l
ip. I loaded his prepared powder-pad with pethidine (forgive the nauseating alliteration) while he was on in the last act and burnt the pad when I returned, immediately before the curtain-call. He was then comatose and I doubt if the gassing was necessary. However, I wished to suggest suicide. I overturned his powder-box in opening out his overcoat. My own vestment being habitually besprinkled with snuff was none the worse, but the powder must have settled on his coat after I had covered his head. Unfortunate. I fancy that with unexpected penetration you have in all respects hit on the modus operandi. Pity we couldn’t share the curtain-call.
It may interest you to know that I have formed the habit of pepping up my snuff with this admirable drug and had provided myself with a princely quantity in the powder form used for dispensing purposes. One never knew which way the cat would jump with Ben. I have been equipped for action since he threatened to use his precious letter. By the way, it would amuse me to know if you first dropped to it when I trampled on my pethidine box in the Greenroom. Dogberry, I perceived, collected the pieces.
My other spare part is secreted in the groove of the sofa. I shall now return to the sofa, listen to your oration and if, as I suspect, it comes close to the facts, will take the necessary and final step. I shall instruct the moronic and repellent Badger to place this letter in the rack if I am still asleep when the party breaks up. Pray do not attempt artificial respiration. I assure you I shall be as dead as a doornail. While I could triumphantly justify my use of Brod’s play, I decline the mortification of the inevitable publicity, more particularly as it would reflect upon persons other than myself. If you wish to hang a motive on my closed file you may make it vanity.
Let me conclude with a final quotation from my fellow-plagiarist.
And sometimes we are devils to ourselves,
When we will tempt the frailty of our powers,
Presuming on their changeful potency.
I hear the summons to return. Moriturus—to coin, as Miss G. would say, a phrase—te saluto, Caesar.
Yours, etc., on the edge of the viewless winds.
JOHN JAMES RUTHERFORD
Alleyn folded the letter and gave it to Fox. He walked back to the sofa and stood looking down at its burden for some time.
“Well, Fox,” he said at last, “he diddled us in the end, didn’t he?”
“Did he, Mr. Alleyn?” asked Fox woodenly.
Bailey and Thompson moved tactfully off-stage. Young Lamprey came on with a sheet from one of the dressing-rooms. Fox took it and dismissed him with a jerk of his head. When the sheet was decently bestowed, Alleyn and Fox looked at each other.
“Oh, let us yet be merciful!” Alleyn said, and it is uncertain whether this quotation from the Doctor’s favourite source was intended as an epitaph or an observation upon police procedure.
Poole switched off his engine outside Jacko’s house. Martyn stirred and he said: “Do you want to go in at once? We haven’t said a word to each other. Are you deadly tired?”
“No more than everybody else but — yes. Aren’t you? You must,” she said drowsily, “be so dreadfully puzzled and worried.”
“I suppose so. No. Not really. Not now. But you must sleep, Martyn. Martyn. There, now I’ve used your Christian name again. Do you know that I called you Kate because I felt it wasn’t time yet, for the other? That astonished me. In the theatre we be-darling and be-Christian-name each other at the drop of a hat. But it wouldn’t do with you.”
He looked down at her. She thought: “I really must rouse myself,” but bodily inertia, linked with a sort of purification of the spirit, flooded through her and she was still.
“It isn’t fair,” Poole said, “when your eyelids are so heavy, to ask you if I’ve made a mistake. Perhaps tomorrow you will think you dreamed this, but Martyn, before many more days are out, I shall ask you to marry me. I do love you so very much.”
To Martyn his voice seemed to come from an immensely long way away but it brought her a feeling of great content and refreshment. It was as if her spirit burgeoned and flowered into complete happiness. She tried to express something of this but her voice stumbled over a few disjointed words and she gave it up. She heard him laugh and felt him move away. In a moment he was standing with the door open. He took her keys from her hand.
“Shall I carry you in? I must go back to the theatre.”
The cold night air joined with this reminder of their ordeal to awaken her completely. She got out and waited anxiously beside him while he opened the house door.
“Is it awful to feel so happy?” she asked. “With such a terror waiting? Why must you go to the theatre?” And after a moment “Do you know?”
“It’s not awful. The terrors are over. Alleyn said I might return. And I think I do know. There. Good night. Quickly, quickly, my darling heart, good night and good morning.”
He waited until the door shut behind her and then drove back to the theatre.
The pass-door into the foyer was open and the young policeman stood beside it.
“Mr. Alleyn is in here, sir,” he said.
Poole went in and found Alleyn with his hands in his pockets in front of the great frame of photographs on their easel.
“I’m afraid I’ve got news,” he said, “that may be a shock to you.”
“I don’t think so,” Poole said. “Jacko spoke to me before I left. He knew about the play: I didn’t. And we both thought John’s sleep was much too sound.”
They stood side by side and looked at the legend over the photographs.
Opening at this theatre
on
THURSDAY, MAY 11TH
THUS TO REVISIT
— A New Play—
by
JOHN JAMES RUTHERFORD
The End
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