“I suppose,” said Marigold, at a pause in the tea-time conversation, “you’ve asked me here for some reason apart from mes beaux yeux.”
“Not to beat about the bush,” replied Laura, “they are rather a secondary consideration at the moment.” She caught her employer’s eye and Dame Beatrice took up the running.
“I remember you as Lucy Lockit, do I not?” she said. “A most enjoyable performance until its unfortunate ending.”
“I had to take on the part at a moment’s notice, so I don’t think I did too badly.”
“I would have suppose you to have rehearsed for weeks.”
“Thanks, but no. The girl who had the part—I expect Laura has told you—wasn’t fit to go on.”
“Dear me!”
“Yes, got herself plastered. Personally, I don’t think any man’s worth it.”
“Any man?”
“Oh, yes. She was immersed enough to confide in me. She was expecting to marry that man who was strangled. Crashaw, you know. They’d had a pretty hectic affair, I gathered, and she confidently expected marriage to come of it before the baby arrived. Lucky for her, as it turned out, that she did get tight, or I might have thought that she’d done Crashaw a mischief. He’d just turned her down, you see. That’s why she got sloshed and smacked his face. His was a very funny accident, though, if you ask me.”
“Did you leave Miss Cardew in the dressing-room when you went on stage?”
“Yes, fast asleep and with two of the students who had been in the ‘ladies of the town’ scene to keep an eye on her. I didn’t like the wild way she’d been talking before she fait dormir.”
“Threats?”
“Yes, to kill herself. She’s the type to do it, too. I’ll tell you one funny thing, though, which it’s hard to believe, but is perfectly true: Crashaw has left her all his money.”
“How do you know?” asked Laura.
“Ma Blaine and I witnessed the will. It was quite short. He invited us to read it. He said, ‘Melanie is going to have my kid. I’ve had two wives, but no kid. I can’t do the obvious thing by her, so, if anything happens to me, this may do something to put me right with her.’”
“Did Melanie herself know about the will?”
“She must have done. She was shouting the odds loudly enough about it just before she passed out under the influence. I should think half the cast must have heard her.”
“Including the wardrobe mistress?”
“La bombe blonde? Oh, yes, definitely. She was flitting about from dressing-room to dressing-room all the performance, putting in a stitch here and chasing up a shoe there and touching up somebody’s make-up with a dab of powder. You know the kind of thing. The only part she herself had was that of one of the chorus ladies, you see, so most of her time she was off-stage,”
“And I see,” said Laura, when the bilingual guest had gone, “what you meant when you said there was one person who couldn’t be said to have an alibi. There was nobody who could vouch for the wardrobe mistress the whole of the time, and she could have heard what Melanie was shouting about the money.”
“I wonder what she had planned, if anything, before she heard Miss Cardew’s drunken ravings? She must have known about the affair between Miss Cardew and Lawrence, since she herself lived with him. The knowledge that she could expect nothing at his death, except what an appeal to the courts might bring her, probably precipitated an act which, up to that point, could have petered out in mere wishful thinking. Melanie’s baby and the loss of the money clinched matters, I think. Besides, Lawrence may have threatened to inform upon her for the murder of his wife. Well, I think we have enough to take to the police.”
“Do we want to avenge Lawrence’s death? He was a rotten type, you know.”
“A tainted wether of the flock, meetest for death? Maybe so. I was thinking on Mrs. Lawrence’s death, not his. I feel sure that Coralie killed her.”
“We can’t bring that murder up, can we?”
“No, but the police may. The case is not closed,”
“How about William Caxton? Of course we don’t know he’s Mrs. Lawrence’s brother, do we?”
“Yes, we do. He told me so when he occupied your seat during the first Act. I asked him whether William Caxton was a trade name and he agreed that it was and confessed to being Caret.”
“Well, he must have been the person that Lawrence went to prison for—to get away from, I mean. He must have threatened Lawrence in some way, and, as you’ve just pointed out, he was in the town hall that night.”
“I think young Tom Blaine’s evidence absolves him. He was playing backgammon with Tom until Mrs. Blaine collected him from the porters’ room to run him home. He was not in the town hall when the cart received the push which hanged Lawrence.”
The police, having listened to Dame Beatrice, paid a surprise visit to Lawrence’s house. They held a search warrant. The missing wedges were found at the bottom of Coralie’s wardrobe. She did not attempt to explain how the had come to be there. She was formally charged with Lawrence’s murder.
“He had it coming to him,” she said, “the heel! I meant to have his money, but he double-crossed and done me out of it. Born crooked, I reckon. Well, I’ve been give bracelets in me time. Don’t I get a couple from you blokes?” She grinned amiably at the officer arresting her, patted her hair and went quietly.
About the Author
Gladys Mitchell was born in the village of Cowley, Oxford, in April 1901. She was educated at the Rothschild School in Brentford, the Green School in Isleworth, and at Goldsmiths and University Colleges in London. For many years Miss Mitchell taught history and English, swimming, and games. She retired from this work in 1950 but became so bored without the constant stimulus and irritation of teaching that she accepted a post at the Matthew Arnold School in Staines, where she taught English and History, wrote the annual school play, and coached hurdling. She was a member of the Detection Club, the PEN, the Middlesex Education Society, and the British Olympic Association. Her father’s family are Scots, and a Scottish influence has appeared in some of her books.
Fault in the Structure (Mrs. Bradley) Page 20