Puzzle for Players

by Patrick Quentin

  “Yeah. He is.”

  Clarke’s eyes widened very slightly. “Sort of useful person to have around in an emergency.” He moved into the alley, whistling under his breath. Then he turned. His smile wasn’t at all encouraging.

  He said: “I’d kind of like to drop in on a couple of your rehearsals. No objections, I suppose?”

  “Of course not,” I said uneasily. “Be delighted to see you any time.”

  “Thanks.” Clarke was still whistling. “It’d be interesting to see how well you folks can act on stage—particularly after tonight. So long.”

  “So long,” I said.

  All of a sudden I had stopped believing in Santa Claus.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  IT’S amazing how you can take almost anything, when your fiber’s toughened to it. In spite of the horrible circumstances of his death, I didn’t feel the least twinge of pity for George Kramer. I didn’t give a damn, either, who had killed him or why. Nothing mattered except my passionate determination that, in spite of murder and a suspicious police force, Troubled Waters was going to open on the scheduled date.

  As soon as Inspector Clarke and his men had gone, I started systematically and shamelessly to block all channels through which Clarke might learn the truth. I began with the doorman. I retrieved from him and destroyed the note I had written telling Kramer his services were no longer required. I warned him against mentioning the trouble with the rat traps, hinting that if Clarke found out about it, he would most certainly suspect Mac of having a hand in Kramer’s death. That worked like magic

  Upstairs on the landing I had a short conference with Lenz. I said: “That was just a stall of yours about the accident, wasn’t it? You do think he was murdered?”

  “I’m afraid one must admit the possibility.” Lenz smiled ruefully. “In view of all the evidence, it seems unlikely that we should have a second mere accident on our hands. It would have been simple, disarmingly simple, for someone to have slipped some form of cyanide into the coffin and to have made use of the fumigators to cover his tracks.” He paused. “If it did happen that way, I regret to say I feel partly responsible. It was I who introduced Mr. Kramer into your play. My ‘provocative dose’ seems to have succeeded only in eliminating itself.”

  “Kramer had it coming to him,” I said. “But so long as you suspect murder, too, I know where we stand. Clarke’s not satisfied with the accident. We’ve got to keep him from getting any wiser.”

  I went into Wessler’s dressing-room where the company still sat around in bleak silence. I gave them a very tough spiel, saying in so many words that we were all in it up to the neck and that our only chance was to present a united front. They got on to it all right. I was confident there’d be no trouble from them.

  My next assignment was Henry Prince. Promising Lenz and Iris to join them later at the apartment, I took a taxi to my author’s place. I found him at home and gave him the bare facts of his uncle’s death. I had not intended to let him guess we even suspected murder. But he was smarter than I thought

  As he listened, his lips went very pale. At last he faltered: “The police, do they think…?”

  “No,” I cut in. “It was an accident.”

  “You’re just saying that. You don’t believe it.” Henry gripped my arm urgently. “After—after all that’s happened, with Uncle George making everyone hate him , it can’t be an accident. Somebody must…”

  “Okay, I’ll admit it,” I said. “We do think he might have been murdered, but we’re trying to hold it back from the police. If you want your show to open, I advise you to keep your mouth shut.”

  “Keep my mouth shut!” Henry gave a rather hysterical laugh. “Can you imagine my going to the police? I told you this afternoon Uncle George had been getting money out of me, pestering me. What would the police think if they knew that? They’d—they’d think I murdered him.”

  “Guess they would,” I said.

  Henry was scared stiff. I thought it best to leave him that way. So long as he was worried about his own skin, he could be relied upon to keep quiet about ours.

  I went back to the apartment and reported my activities to Lenz and Iris. I said wearily: “This is a swell situation. I started off trying to produce a play and now I’m trying to protect an unknown murderer from the police. Soon we’ll all be cutting each other’s throats for the sheer fun of the thing.”

  “I agree that we have been forced to adopt a very antisocial attitude,” said Lenz placidly. “But I think we may justify ourselves a little if we remember that Mr. Kramer, from all we know of him, was no great loss to the world.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” I said. I added bleakly, “A couple of hours ago I had everything figured out. Now my theory’s blown higher than a kite.”

  I told them everything I’d thought out in Kramer’s studio. I showed them the photograph of Wessler.

  “Kramer was a blackmailer,” I said. “And Gates is a blackmailer plus. I thought it was just that the Dagonet had become a blackmailer’s convention. But now …”

  The buzzer shrilled. I went to the door. Gerald Gwynne came in, his young face drawn, his eyes dark and smouldering.

  “I’ve got to talk to you, Peter,” he said.

  He went into the living-room and sat down on the couch next to Iris.

  I followed and said: “What is it?”

  “It’s about Kramer. Mirabelle says I’ve got to tell you something.” He looked up. “He was a filthy blackmailer.”

  “We know that,” I said. “We know all about his racket —selling embarrassing photographs to actors and actresses. He was trying something like that on Mirabelle, wasn’t he?”

  Gerald’s lips tightened. “He was, the swine. Mirabelle thought you’d better know otherwise you’d be wondering just why we’d been trying to get him out of the cast. That’s what was back of it. He’d taken some beastly photos of Mirabelle when she was in the Thespian Hospital—when, she was sick and didn’t know anything about it. Ever since she came out, he’s been threatening her, trying to get money out of her.” He gave a savage laugh. “Seeing him dead in that coffin tonight was one of the pleasantest experiences of my life.”

  I asked: “And Mirabelle paid up?”

  “She paid up, of course. She couldn’t have pictures like that going the rounds. But, later, when he came to the Dagonet, Kramer changed his tack. He started trying to force her into making you ditch Wessler and take on Roland Gates.”

  That came as a shock. “My God, what an unspeakable thing to do!”

  “Unspeakable’s putting it mildly. Kramer let her have three days to make up her mind. Those three days

  stopped this morning.” He added suddenly: “You and Henry were at Kramer’s studio before rehearsal tonight, weren’t you?”

  “How do you know?” I asked, surprised.

  “I know because I was there too, I heard you coming; heard your voices outside and managed to scam down the fire-escape.” Gerald stuck out his jaw. “I’d gone there to give Kramer Mirabelle’s reply. I’d gone there to tell him very sweetly that she’d see Gates in hell before she played with him and that if Kramer didn’t give us back those photographs I would murder him. That’s what I’d gone there to say.”

  He threw out his hand. “It so happened I didn’t have to murder him. I guess he was already sewed up in that coffin. Seems like he was a damn sloppy person though. The door was open. I just went in, and rummaged around in his photographs. I found the ones I wanted. Thank God, I destroyed them. If the police had gotten on to them, they’d be asking some pretty damn awkward questions by now.” He paused. “That’s all Mirabelle or I had to do with Kramer. Mirabelle said I was to tell you.”

  For a while, after he’d stopped speaking, we sat around in silence. Then Iris turned to Gerald and said quietly:

  “There’s one thing more we’ve got to ask. And don’t mind about telling us. You know we’d be on your side. Did you or Mirabelle actually kill Kramer?”
>
  That question seemed to floor him for a second. Then he looked at her steadily and said: “No, we didn’t kill Kramer.”

  He got up as if he were going to leave. Just as he reached the door, he paused, swinging back to us, a queer expression on his face.

  “You really meant what you said just now?” he asked. “You wouldn’t blame anyone for killing Kramer?”

  I looked at Lenz. He was sitting on the couch, calmly inspecting his fingernails. “Can you imagine us blaming anyone?”

  Gerald said: “In that case, I’m going to tell you something else. I haven’t even mentioned it to Mirabelle. But I guess, as you said, we’re all in it together; we all ought to know—everything. This afternoon when I went to Kramer’s place, someone else was just coming out. She knows I saw her. She didn’t even try and hide.”

  “Who was it?” I asked.

  He looked down at the carpet. ‘Theo Ffoulkes,” he said. “I don’t know what she was doing there. If you’re interested, you’d better ask her. But I do know something. As she went by me, she was shutting her handbag. I caught a glimpse inside.”

  Very slowly, he added: “Inside that bag she was carrying a revolver.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  WHEN I heard that I almost wished Gerald hadn’t told me. There were more than enough potential suspects for Kramer’s murder already in my cast. I hated the idea of having Theo involved too. But I had to follow it through. After Gerald had left, I called Theo’s place and asked if I could go round.

  Her voice, vague and very tired, said: “Of course you can come, darling. I’m in bed but that doesn’t matter, does it?”

  “No,” I said.

  I got into a taxi right away and drove over. She lived downtown in a sort of actor’s club. I went up to her floor and knocked on her door.

  From inside she called: “It’s open darling.”

  I went in. She was sitting up in bed, wearing very severe white pajamas. She looked rather wonderful, like Lady Gwendoline Marchbanks, the haughty British heroine of a pre-war romance.

  She said: “I’m not trying to be glamorous, Peter. It’s just that I’m worried about my bloody cough. I’m keeping it warm.” She leaned over to the bedtable and took a pill out of a small bottle. “I’m living on Lenz’s codeine pills. They’ll either kill or cure me by the time we open.”

  I sat down on the edge of the bed watching her. She gave a queer, crooked smile.

  “I’m talking about opening just as if there hadn’t been a couple of dozen major catastrophes. Are we going to open Peter?”

  “We are,” I said.

  She took one of my hands in both of her own, squeezing it. “I know just how much hell all this is for you. I think it’s pretty grand the way you’re bearing up.”

  “I’m just trying to get along,” I said.

  “On a not very even break.” She added quietly: “How about that policeman, Clarke? I didn’t trust him. He’s too bright. He suspects something, doesn’t he?”

  “I think he does. We’re just hoping he’ll give up being suspicious.” Her hands were still on mine. They were very cold. I said: “But there’s such a hell of a lot of things to be suspicious about—if he gets onto them.”

  “I suppose there are.”

  “That’s why I’ve come, Theo,” I said bluntly. “Gerald tells me…”

  ‘That I was round at Kramer’s studio this afternoon with a gun,” she cut in. “I expected he’d tell you.”

  I said: “I guess Kramer’s been trying to blackmail you,too?”

  “Me! Good God, no.” Her thoroughbred profile tilted upward. “That poisonous piece of vermin had nothing against me.”

  “Then why did you go there? Why the gun?”

  She didn’t speak for a while. When she did, she took her hands away; there was an awkward flush on her cheeks. “I wouldn’t tell anyone but you, Peter. You’re the only one who knows just how much of a bloody fool I am. And I don’t mind your knowing, somehow. I went round to that studio fully prepared to riddle Mr. Kramer with bullets. But it wasn’t because he’d done me any harm personally. It—it was because of Wessler.”

  I might have guessed that.

  “This morning at rehearsal before you came, Kramer started talking to Wessler in German. I picked up some German when I played Shaw in Vienna. I listened. It was all very veiled and subtle. Kramer said he had some photographs Wessler might be interested in and couldn’t he bring them round sometime? I thought at first it was just one of those ‘feelthy picture’ rackets; then I started to think just how queerly Mirabelle and Gerald and Henry had been acting about Kramer and it dawned on me that he was up to some real dirty work—like blackmail. Wessler didn’t get onto the idea at all. He was just polite and Austrian. But I understood and suddenly I thought Kramer was probably back of that first blasted scheme to scare Wessler. I thought if—if I went round to his place and forced him to speak the truth, I could get things straightened out for Wessler.”

  “So that’s what you were doing at the studio.”

  “Yes. Kramer wasn’t there, of course. I didn’t go in.”

  Theo stifled a cough and made a little grimace. “The gun was a typical piece of theater. I bought it. I didn’t have the faintest idea what to pull or anything. That’s all I know. I was probably being damn stupid; but then I’m damn stupid about Wessler anyway.”

  We neither of us spoke for a while. We just sat there, Theo half lying back against the pillows while I perched on the edge of the bed.

  Suddenly she said: “Peter, have you ever been in love with the wrong person?”

  “Often,” I said smiling.

  “Then you haven’t been.” She shook her head very slowly. “You can only be really in love with the wrong person once. I’m so mad about Wessler that I’d commit murder for him. And it’s all caged up inside me like a thousand rats gnawing my vitals.” She laughed rather harshly, trying to mock herself. “That’s what it’s like being in love with the wrong person. You can only go through it once.”

  I moved up the bed closer to her; I put my hands on her shoulders and kissed her cold, firm lips.

  “Do you know something, darling?” I said.

  “No.”

  “You handed me exactly the same line last year when you were hopelessly in love with that waiter at the Waldorf who had red hair and a wife in Hackensack.”

  She looked up at me, her gray eyes slowly crinkling at the corners. She said: “Peter, you’re a louse to bring that up. And it wasn’t Hackensack, it was Jersey City.”

  I left her then without asking any more questions. But as a taxi drove me home again, I couldn’t help checking up that, in the past few hours, at least three members of my company had expressed an almost indecent relief that George Kramer was out of the way.

  When I got back to the apartment, it was in darkness. Iris had departed and Lenz, presumably, was asleep in bed.

  I was just going to follow suit when the phone rang.

  The quiet, alarmingly pleasant voice of Inspector Clarke said: “I called thirty minutes ago and they told me you were out. Keeping kind of late hours these days, aren’t you?”

  “I was out at a friend’s house,” I said.

  “You were? Well, I thought you might be interested

  in how your little accident’s working out. I talked to the fumigation people. They think it’s mighty queer that one of those discoids managed to get in that coffin.”

  “That makes two of us,” I said, trying to sound blase. Inspector Clarke placidly ignored the interruption.

  “Sure. Kind of indignant when I suggested it. But I guess that’s what happened. Don’t see how there could be any other explanation, do you?” “I don’t,” I lied.

  “Just one thing more. They’re holding the inquest ten-thirty tomorrow morning. Afraid you and Lenz will have to attend.” His voice suddenly changed. It was flippant, far too flippant. He said: “Don’t get het up, though. It’ll be just routine. No one’s going to ask you
—awkward questions, not yet anyway. Goodnight” “Goodnight,” I said.

  But it didn’t seem at all a good night to me. Next morning at ten-thirty, Lenz and I turned up for the inquest. I was jittery as hell but tried not to show it. I don’t know what Lenz was feeling. He gave the appearance of being a rather impatient important personage, compelled to waste valuable time on a mere matter of red tape.

  There were quite a few people at the inquest I don’t know what they came for. Lenz and I sat up front, close to the coroner and the jury. Clarke was there, deceptively quiet and innocuous; with him was a red-faced angry man who turned out to be the representative from the fumigation company.

  Clarke started the ball rolling with a flat report of his activities at the Dagonet. I was called next. I answered curt questions from the coroner. I said we had decided to fumigate because the rats were bad; I explained Kramer’s role and the exact reasons why he had to be left in a closed coffin; I mentioned the provisional tormentor which had made it impossible for us to notice whether or not he had emerged from the coffin when the scene was over. I also pointed out that Kramer had said he was leaving right after he’d finished playing and that consequently his absence had not seemed strange.

  Eventually Lenz took my place. He was magnificent; using a great amount of dignity and words of at least six syllables, he explained his own reactions on examining the body and expressed it as his expert and weighty opinion that an unfortunate accident had occurred. He wowed the jury.

  In fact, they were so impressed that they paid very little attention to the indignant representative from the fumigators who, although admitting the possibility of Lenz’s theory, quoted lengthy chapter and verse in an attempt to prove that his company had never been guilty of negligence before.

  The coroner summed up and, very shortly afterward, the jury gave its verdict. The verdict was accidental death caused by hydrocyanic gas absorbed and retained in the upholstery of the coffin. They added a rather bad-tempered rider, censuring the fumigation company for negligence and censuring me for not having arranged more efficent ventilation in the coffin itself.