A Moment On the Edge : 100 Years of Crime Stories By Women

I Can Find My Way Out NGAIO MARSH

At half-past six on the night in question, Anthony Gill, unable to eat, keep still, think, speak, or act coherently, walked from his rooms to the Jupiter Theatre. He knew that there would be nobody backstage, that there was nothing for him to do in the theater, that he ought to stay quietly in his rooms and presently dress, dine, and arrive at, say, a quarter to eight. But it was as if something shoved him into his clothes, thrust him into the street and compelled him to hurry through the West End to the Jupiter.

His mind was overlaid with a thin film of inertia. Odd lines from the play occurred to him, but without any particular significance.

He found himself busily reiterating a completely irrelevant sentence:

“She has a way of laughing that would make a man’s heart turn over.”

Piccadilly, Shaftesbury Avenue. “Here I go,” he thought, turning into Hawke Street, “towards my play. It’s one hour and twenty-nine minutes away. A step a second. It’s rushing towards me. Tony’s first play. Poor young Tony Gill. Never mind. Try again.”

The Jupiter. Neon lights: I CAN FIND MY WAY OUT— by Anthony Gill. And in the entrance the bills and photographs. Coralie Bourne with H. J. Bannington, Barry George and Canning Cumberland.

Canning Cumberland. The film across his mind split and there was the Thing itself and he would have to think about it. How bad would Canning Cumberland be if he came down drunk? Brilliantly bad, they said. He would bring out all the tricks. Clever actor stuff, scoring off everybody, making a fool of the dramatic balance. “In Mr. Canning Cumberland’s hands indifferent dialogue and unconvincing situations seemed almost real.” What can you do with a drunken actor?

He stood in the entrance feeling his heart pound and his insides deflate and sicken.

Because, of course, it was a bad play. He was at this moment and for the first time really convinced of it. It was terrible. Only one virtue in it and that was not his doing. It had been suggested to him by Coralie Bourne: “I don’t think the play you have sent me will do as it is but it has occurred to me—” It was a brilliant idea. He had re-written the play round it and almost immediately and quite innocently he had begun to think of it as his own although he had said shyly to Coralie Bourne: “You should appear as joint author.” She had quickly, over emphatically, refused. “It was nothing at all,” she said. “If you’re to become a dramatist you will learn to get ideas from everywhere. A single situation is nothing. Think of Shakespeare,” she added lightly. “Entire plots! Don’t be silly.” She had said later, and still with the same hurried, nervous air: “Don’t go talking to everyone about it. They will think there is more, instead of less, than meets the eye in my small suggestion. Please promise.”

He promised, thinking he’d made an error in taste when he suggested that Coralie Bourne, so famous an actress, should appear as joint author with an unknown youth. And how right she was, he thought, because, of course, it’s going to be a ghastly flop. She’ll be sorry she consented to play in it.

Standing in front of the theater he contemplated nightmare possibilities. What did audiences do when a first play flopped? Did they clap a little, enough to let the curtain rise and quickly fall again on a discomforted group of players? How scanty must the applause be for them to let him off his own appearance? And they were to go on to the Chelsea Arts Ball. A hideous prospect. Thinking he would give anything in the world if he could stop his play, he turned into the foyer. There were lights in the offices and he paused, irresolute, before a board of photographs. Among them, much smaller than the leading players, was Dendra Gay with the eyes looking straight into his. She had a way of laughing that would make a man’s heart turn over. “Well,” he thought, “so I’m in love with her.” He turned away from the photograph. A man came out of the office. “Mr. Gill? Telegrams for you.”

Anthony took them and as he went out he heard the man call after him: “Very good luck for tonight, sir.”

There were queues of people waiting in the side street for the early doors.

At six thirty Coralie Bourne dialed Canning Cumberland’s number and waited.

She heard his voice. “It’s me,” she said.

“O, God! darling, I’ve been thinking about you.” He spoke rapidly, too loudly. “Coral, I’ve been thinking about Ben. You oughtn’t to have given that situation to the boy.”

“We’ve been over it a dozen times, Cann. Why not give it to Tony?

Ben will never know.” She waited and then said nervously, “Ben’s gone, Cann. We’ll never see him again.”

“I’ve got a ‘Thing’ about it. After all, he’s your husband.”

“No, Cann, no.”

“Suppose he turns up. It’d be like him to turn up.”

“He won’t turn up.”

She heard him laugh. “I’m sick of all this,” she thought suddenly.

“I’ve had it once too often. I can’t stand any more…Cann,” she said into the telephone. But he had hung up.

At twenty to seven, Barry George looked at himself in his bathroom mirror. “I’ve got a better appearance,” he thought, “than Cann Cumberland. My head’s a good shape, my eyes are bigger, and my jawline’s cleaner. I never let a show down. I don’t drink. I’m a better actor.” He turned his head a little, slewing his eyes to watch the effect. “In the big scene,” he thought, “I’m the star. He’s the feed.

That’s the way it’s been produced and that’s what the author wants.

I ought to get the notices.”

Past notices came up in his memory. He saw the print, the size of the paragraphs; a long paragraph about Canning Cumberland, a line tacked on the end of it. “Is it unkind to add that Mr. Barry George trotted in the wake of Mr. Cumberland’s virtuosity with an air of breathless dependability?” And again: “It is a little hard on Mr. Barry George that he should be obliged to act as foil to this brilliant performance.” Worst of all: “Mr. Barry George succeeded in looking tolerably unlike a stooge, an achievement that evidently exhausted his resources.”

“Monstrous!” he said loudly to his own image, watching the fine glow of indignation in the eyes. Alcohol, he told himself, did two things to Cann Cumberland. He raised his finger. Nice, expressive hand. An actor’s hand. Alcohol destroyed Cumberland’s artistic integrity. It also invested him with devilish cunning. Drunk, he would burst the seams of a play, destroy its balance, ruin its form, and himself emerge blazing with a showmanship that the audience mistook for genius. “While I,” he said aloud, “merely pay my author the compliment of faithful interpretation. Psha!”

He returned to his bedroom, completed his dressing and pulled his hat to the right angle. Once more he thrust his face close to the mirror and looked searchingly at its image. “By God!” he told himself, “he’s done it once too often, old boy. Tonight we’ll even the score, won’t we? By God, we will.”

Partly satisfied, and partly ashamed, for the scene, after all, had smacked a little of ham, he took his stick in one hand and a case holding his costume for the Arts Ball in the other, and went down to the theatre.

At ten minutes to seven, H. J. Bannington passed through the gallery queue on his way to the stage door alley, raising his hat and saying:

“Thanks so much,” to the gratified ladies who let him through. He heard them murmur his name. He walked briskly along the alley, greeted the stage-doorkeeper, passed under a dingy lamp, through an entry and so to the stage. Only working lights were up. The walls of an interior set rose dimly into shadow. Bob Reynolds, the stage manager, came out through the prompt-entrance. “Hello, old boy,” he said, “I’ve changed the dressing rooms. You’re third on the right: they’ve moved your things in. Suit you?”

“Better, at least, than a black hole the size of a WC but without its appointments,” H.J. said acidly. “I suppose the great Mr. Cumberland still has the star-room?”

“Well, yes, old boy.”

“And who pray, is next to him? In the room with the other gas fire?”

“We’ve put Barry George there, old boy. You know what he’s like.”

“Only too well, old boy, and the public, I fear, is beginning to find out.” H.J. turned into the dressing-room passage. The stage manager returned to the set where he encountered his assistant. “What’s biting him?” asked the assistant. “He wanted a dressing room with a fire.”

“Only natural,” said the ASM nastily. “He started life reading gas meters.”

On the right and left of the passage, nearest the stage end, were two doors, each with its star in tarnished paint. The door on the left was open. H.J. looked in and was greeted with the smell of greasepaint, powder, wet-white, and flowers. A gas fire droned comfortably. Coralie Bourne’s dresser was spreading out towels.

“Good evening, Katie, my jewel,” said H.J. “La Belle not down yet?”

“We’re on our way,” she said.

H.J. hummed stylishly: “Bella filia del amore,” and returned to the passage. The star-room on the right was closed but he could hear Cumberland’s dresser moving about inside. He went on to the next door, paused, read the card, “MR. BARRY GEORGE,” warbled a high derisive note, turned in at the third door, and switched on the light.

Definitely not a second lead’s room. No fire. A wash basin, however, and opposite mirrors. A stack of telegrams had been placed on the dressing table. Still singing he reached for them, disclosing a number of bills that had been tactfully laid underneath and a letter, addressed in a flamboyant script.

His voice might have been mechanically produced and arbitrarily switched off, so abruptly did his song end in the middle of a roulade.

He let the telegrams fall on the table, took up the letter and tore it open. His face, wretchedly pale, was reflected and endlessly rereflected in the mirrors.

At nine o’clock the telephone rang. Roderick Alleyn answered it.

“This is Sloane 84405. No, you’re on the wrong number. No.” He hung up and returned to his wife and guest. “That’s the fifth time in two hours.”

“Do let’s ask for a new number.”

“We might get next door to something worse.”

The telephone rang again. “This is not 84406,” Alleyn warned it.

“No, I cannot take three large trunks to Victoria Station. No, I am not the Instant All Night Delivery. No.”

“They’re 84406,” Mrs. Alleyn explained to Lord Michael Lamprey.

“I suppose it’s just faulty dialing, but you can’t imagine how angry everyone gets. Why do you want to be a policeman?”

“It’s a dull hard job, you know—” Alleyn began.

“Oh,” Lord Mike said, stretching his legs and looking critically at his shoes, “I don’t for a moment imagine I’ll leap immediately into false whiskers and plainclothes. No, no. But I’m revoltingly healthy, sir. Strong as a horse. And I don’t think I’m as stupid as you might feel inclined to imagine—”

The telephone rang.

“I say, do let me answer it,” Mike suggested and did so.

“Hullo?” he said winningly. He listened, smiling at his hostess.

“I’m afraid—,” he began. “Here, wait a bit — Yes, but—” His expression became blank and complacent. “May I,” he said presently, “repeat your order, sir? Can’t be too sure, can we? Call at 11 Harrow Gardens, Sloane Square, for one suitcase to be delivered immediately at the Jupiter Theatre to Mr. Anthony Gill. Very good, sir. Thank you, sir. Collect. Quite.”

He replaced the receiver and beamed at the Alleyns.

“What the devil have you been up to?” Alleyn said.

“He just simply wouldn’t listen to reason. I tried to tell him.”

“But it may be urgent,” Mrs. Alleyn ejaculated.

“It couldn’t be more urgent, really. It’s a suitcase for Tony Gill at the Jupiter.”

“Well, then—”

“I was at Eton with the chap,” said Mike reminiscently. “He’s four years older than I am so of course he was madly important while I was less than the dust. This’ll larn him.”

“I think you’d better put that order through at once,” said Alleyn firmly.

“I rather thought of executing it myself, do you know, sir. It’d be a frightfully neat way of gate-crashing the show, wouldn’t it? I did try to get a ticket but the house was sold out.”

“If you’re going to deliver this case you’d better get a bend on.”

“It’s clearly an occasion for dressing up though, isn’t it? I say,”

said Mike modestly, “would you think it most frightful cheek if I — well I’d promise to come back and return everything. I mean—”

“Are you suggesting that my clothes look more like a vanman’s than yours?”

“I thought you’d have things—”

“For Heaven’s sake, Rory,” said Mrs. Alleyn, “dress him up and let him go. The great thing is to get that wretched man’s suitcase to him.”

“I know,” said Mike earnestly. “It’s most frightfully sweet of you.

That’s how I feel about it.”

Alleyn took him away and shoved him into an old and begrimed raincoat, a cloth cap, and a muffler. “You wouldn’t deceive a village idiot in a total eclipse,” he said, “but out you go.”

He watched Mike drive away and returned to his wife.

“What’ll happen?” she asked.

“Knowing Mike, I should say he will end up in the front stalls and go on to supper with the leading lady. She, by the way, is Coralie Bourne. Very lovely and twenty years his senior so he’ll probably fall in love with her.” Alleyn reached for his tobacco jar and paused. “I wonder what’s happened to her husband,” he said.

“Who was he?”

“An extraordinary chap. Benjamin Vlasnoff. Violent temper.

Looked like a bandit. Wrote two very good plays and got run in three times for common assault. She tried to divorce him but it didn’t go through. I think he afterwards lit off to Russia.” Alleyn yawned.

“I believe she had a hell of a time with him,” he said.

“All Night Delivery,” said Mike in a hoarse voice, touching his cap.

“Suitcase. One.” “Here you are,” said the woman who had answered the door. “Carry it carefully, now, it’s not locked and the catch springs out.”

“Thanks,” said Mike. “Much obliged. Chilly, ain’t it?”

He took the suitcase out to the car.

It was a fresh spring night. Sloane Square was threaded with mist and all the lamps had halos round them. It was the kind of night when individual sounds separate themselves from the conglomerate voice of London; hollow sirens spoke imperatively down on the river and a bugle rang out over in Chelsea Barracks; a night, Mike thought, for adventure.

He opened the rear door of the car and heaved the case in. The catch flew open, the lid dropped back and the contents fell out.

“Damn!” said Mike and switched on the inside light.

Lying on the floor of the car was a false beard.

It was flaming red and bushy and was mounted on a chin-piece.

With it was incorporated a stiffened moustache. There were wire hooks to attach the whole thing behind the ears. Mike laid it carefully on the seat. Next he picked up a wide black hat, then a vast overcoat with a fur collar, finally a pair of black gloves.

Mike whistled meditatively and thrust his hands into the pockets of Alleyn’s mackintosh. His right-hand fingers closed on a card. He pulled it out. “Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn,” he read, “CID.

New Scotland Yard.”

“Honestly,” thought Mike exultantly, “this is a gift.”

Ten minutes later a car pulled into the curb at the nearest parking place to the Jupiter Theatre. From it emerged a figure carrying a suitcase. It strode rapidly along Hawke Street and turned into the stage-door alley. As it passed under the dirty lamp it paused, and thus murkily lit, resembled an illustration from some Edwardian spy story. The face was completely shadowed, a black cavern from which there projected a square of scarlet beard, which was the only note of color.

The doorkeeper who was taking the air with a member of stage staff, moved forward, peering at the stranger.

“Was you wanting something?”

“I’m taking this case in for Mr. Gill.”

“He’s in front. You can leave it with me.”

“I’m so sorry,” said the voice behind the beard, “but I promised I’d leave it backstage myself.”

“So you will be leaving it. Sorry, sir, but no one’s admitted be’ind without a card.”

“A card? Very well. Here is a card.”

He held it out in his black-gloved hand. The stage-doorkeeper, unwillingly removing his gaze from the beard, took the card and examined it under the light. “Coo!” he said, “what’s up, governor?”

“No matter. Say nothing of this.”

The figure waved its hand and passed through the door. “’Ere!”

said the doorkeeper excitedly to the stagehand, “take a slant at this.

That’s a plainclothes flattie, that was.”

“Plain clothes!” said the stagehand. “Them!”

“’E’s disguised,” said the doorkeeper. “That’s what it is. “E’s disguised ’isself.”

“’E’s bloody well lorst ’isself be’ind them whiskers if you arst me.”

Out on the stage someone was saying in a pitched and beautifully articulate voice: “I’ve always loathed the view from these windows.

However if that’s the sort of thing you admire. Turn off the lights, damn you. Look at it.”

“Watch it, now, watch it,” whispered a voice so close to Mike that he jumped. “OK,” said a second voice somewhere above his head. The lights on the set turned blue. “Kill that working light.”

“Working light gone.”

Curtains in the set were wrenched aside and a window flung open.

An actor appeared, leaning out quite close to Mike, seeming to look into his face and saying very distinctly: “God: it’s frightful!” Mike backed away towards a passage, lit only from an open door. A great volume of sound broke out beyond the stage. “House lights,” said the sharp voice. Mike turned into the passage. As he did so, someone came through the door. He found himself face to face with Coralie Bourne, beautifully dressed and heavily painted.

For a moment she stood quite still; then she made a curious gesture with her right hand, gave a small breathy sound and fell forward at his feet.

Anthony was tearing his program into long strips and dropping them on the floor of the OP box. On his right hand, above and below, was the audience; sometimes laughing, sometimes still, sometimes as one corporate being, raising its hands and striking them together.

As now; when down on the stage, Canning Cumberland, using a strange voice, and inspired by some inward devil, flung back the window and said: “God: it’s frightful!”

“Wrong! Wrong!” Anthony cried inwardly, hating Cumberland, hating Barry George because he let one speech of three words over-ride him, hating the audience because they liked it. The curtain descended with a long sigh on the second act and a sound like heavy rain filled the theatre, swelled prodigiously and continued after the house lights welled up.

“They seem,” said a voice behind him, “to be liking your play.”

It was Gosset, who owned the Jupiter and had backed the show.

Anthony turned on him stammering: “He’s destroying it. It should be the other man’s scene. He’s stealing.”

“My boy,” said Gosset, “he’s an actor.”

“He’s drunk. It’s intolerable.”

He felt Gosset’s hand on his shoulder.

“People are watching us. You’re on show. This is a big thing for you; a first play, and going enormously. Come and have a drink, old boy. I want to introduce you—”

Anthony got up and Gosset, with his arm across his shoulders, flashing smiles, patting him, led him to the back of the box.

“I’m sorry,” Anthony said, “I can’t. Please let me off. I’m going backstage.”

“Much better not, old son.” The hand tightened on his shoulder.

“Listen, old son—” But Anthony had freed himself and slipped through the pass-door from the box to the stage.

At the foot of the breakneck stairs Dendra Gay stood waiting. “I thought you’d come,” she said.

Anthony said: “He’s drunk. He’s murdering the play.”

“It’s only one scene, Tony. He finishes early in the next act. It’s going colossally.”

“But don’t you understand—”

“I do. You know I do. But you’re a success, Tony darling! You can hear it and smell it and feel it in your bones.”

“Dendra—” he said uncertainly.

Someone came up and shook his hand and went on shaking it.

Flats were being laced together with a slap of rope on canvas. A chandelier ascended into darkness. “Lights,” said the stage manager, and the set was flooded with them. A distant voice began chanting.

“Last act, please. Last act.”

“Miss Bourne all right?” the stage manager suddenly demanded.

“She’ll be all right. She’s not on for ten minutes,” said a woman’s voice.

“What’s the matter with Miss Bourne?” Anthony asked.

“Tony, I must go and so must you. Tony, it’s going to be grand.

Please think so. Please.”

“Dendra—,” Tony began, but she had gone.

Beyond the curtain, horns and flutes announced the last act.

“Clear please.”

The stagehands came off.

“House lights.”

“House lights gone.”

“Stand by.”

And while Anthony still hesitated in the OP corner, the curtain rose. Canning Cumberland and H. J. Bannington opened the last act.

As Mike knelt by Coralie Bourne he heard someone enter the passage behind him. He turned and saw, silhouetted against the lighted stage, the actor who had looked at him through a window in the set.

The silhouette seemed to repeat the gesture Coralie Bourne had used, and to flatten itself against the wall.

A woman in an apron came out of the open door.

“I say — here!” Mike said.

Three things happened almost simultaneously. The woman cried out and knelt beside him. The man disappeared through a door on the right.

The woman, holding Coralie Bourne in her arms, said violently:

“Why have you come back?” Then the passage lights came on. Mike said: “Look here, I’m most frightfully sorry,” and took off the broad black hat. The dresser gaped at him, Coralie Bourne made a cres-cendo sound in her throat and opened her eyes. “Katie?” she said.

“It’s all right, my lamb. It’s not him, dear. You’re all right.” The dresser jerked her head at Mike: “Get out of it,” she said.

“Yes, of course, I’m most frightfully—” He backed out of the passage, colliding with a youth who said: “Five minutes, please.”

The dresser called out: “Tell them she’s not well. Tell them to hold the curtain.”

“No,” said Coralie Bourne strongly. “I’m all right, Katie. Don’t say anything. Katie, what was it?”

They disappeared into the room on the left.

Mike stood in the shadow of a stack of scenic flats by the entry into the passage. There was great activity on the stage. He caught a glimpse of Anthony Gill on the far side talking to a girl. The call-boy was speaking to the stage manager who now shouted into space: “Miss Bourne all right?” The dresser came into the passage and called: “She’ll be all right. She’s not on for ten minutes.” The youth began chanting: “Last act, please.” The stage manager gave a series of orders. A man with an eyeglass and a florid beard came from farther down the passage and stood outside the set, bracing his figure and giving little tweaks to his clothes. There was a sound of horns and flutes. Canning Cumberland emerged from the room on the right and on his way to the stage, passed close to Mike, leaving a strong smell of alcohol behind him. The curtain rose.

Behind his shelter, Mike stealthily removed his beard and stuffed it into the pocket of his overcoat.

A group of stagehands stood nearby. One of them said in a hoarse whisper: “’E’s squiffy.” “Garn, ’e’s going good.” “So ’e may be going good. And for why? Becos ’e’s squiffy.”

Ten minutes passed. Mike thought: “This affair has definitely not gone according to plan.” He listened. Some kind of tension seemed to be building up on the stage. Canning Cumberland’s voice rose on a loud but blurred note. A door in the set opened. “Don’t bother to come,” Cumberland said. “Good-bye. I can find my way out.”

The door slammed. Cumberland was standing near Mike. Then, very close, there was a loud explosion. The scenic flats vibrated, Mike’s flesh leapt on his bones, and Cumberland went into his dressing room. Mike heard the key turn in the door. The smell of alcohol mingled with the smell of gunpowder. A stagehand moved to a trestle table and laid a pistol on it. The actor with the eyeglass made an exit. He spoke for a moment to the stage manager, passed Mike, and disappeared in the passage.

Smells. There were all sorts of smells. Subconsciously, still listening to the play, he began to sort them out. Glue. Canvas. Greasepaint.

The call-boy tapped on doors. “Mr. George, please.” “Miss Bourne, please.” They came out, Coralie Bourne with her dresser. Mike heard her turn a door handle and say something. An indistinguishable voice answered her. Then she and her dresser passed him. The others spoke to her and she nodded and then seemed to withdraw into herself, waiting with her head bent, ready to make her entrance. Presently she drew back, walked swiftly to the door in the set, flung it open, and swept on, followed a minute later by Barry George.

Smells. Dust, stale paint, cloth. Gas. Increasingly, the smell of gas.

The group of stagehands moved away behind the set to the side of the stage. Mike edged out of cover. He could see the prompt-corner. The stage manager stood there with folded arms, watching the action. Behind him were grouped the players who were not on.

Two dressers stood apart, watching. The light from the set caught their faces. Coralie Bourne’s voice sent phrases flying like birds into the auditorium.

Mike began peering at the floor. Had he kicked some gas fitting adrift? The call-boy passed him, stared at him over his shoulder and went down the passage, tapping. “Five minutes to the curtain, please.

Five minutes.” The actor with the elderly makeup followed the call-boy out. “God, what a stink of gas,” he whispered. “Chronic, ain’t it?” said the call-boy. They stared at Mike and then crossed to the waiting group. The man said something to the stage manager who tipped his head up, sniffing. He made an impatient gesture and turned back to the prompt-box, reaching over the prompter’s head.

A bell rang somewhere up in the flies and Mike saw a stagehand climb to the curtain platform.

The little group near the prompt-corner was agitated. They looked back towards the passage entrance. The call-boy nodded and came running back. He knocked on the first door on the right. “Mr. Cumberland! Mr. Cumberland! You’re on for the call.” He rattled the door handle. “Mr. Cumberland! You’re on.”

Mike ran into the passage. The call-boy coughed retchingly and jerked his hand at the door. “Gas!” he said. “Gas!”

“Break it in.”

“I’ll get Mr. Reynolds.”

He was gone. It was a narrow passage. From halfway across the opposite room Mike took a run, head down, shoulder forward, at the door. It gave a little and a sickening increase in the smell caught him in the lungs. A vast storm of noise had broken out and as he took another run he thought: “It’s hailing outside.”

“Just a minute if you please, sir.”

It was a stagehand. He’d got a hammer and screwdriver. He wedged the point of the screwdriver between the lock and the doorpost, drove it home and wrenched. The screws squeaked, the wood splintered and gas poured into the passage. “No winders,”

coughed the stagehand.

Mike wound Alleyn’s scarf over his mouth and nose. Half-forgotten instructions from antigas drill occurred to him. The room looked queer but he could see the man slumped down in the chair quite clearly. He stooped low and ran in.

He was knocking against things as he backed out, lugging the dead weight. His arms tingled. A high insistent voice hummed in his brain. He floated a short distance and came to earth on a concrete floor among several pairs of legs. A long way off, someone said loudly: “I can only thank you for being so kind to what I know, too well, is a very imperfect play.” Then the sound of hail began again.

There was a heavenly stream of clear air flowing into his mouth and nostrils. “I could eat it,” he thought and sat up.

The telephone rang. “Suppose,” Mrs. Alleyn suggested, “that this time you ignore it.”

“It might be the Yard,” Alleyn said, and answered it.

“Is that Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn’s flat? I’m speaking from the Jupiter Theatre. I’ve rung up to say that the Chief Inspector is here and that he’s had a slight mishap. He’s all right, but I think it might be as well for someone to drive him home. No need to worry.”

“What sort of mishap?” Alleyn asked.

“Er — well — er, he’s been a bit gassed.”

“Gassed! All right. Thanks, I’ll come.”

“What a bore for you, darling,” said Mrs. Alleyn. “What sort of case is it? Suicide?”

“Masquerading within the meaning of the act, by the sound of it.

Mike’s in trouble.”

“What trouble, for Heaven’s sake?”

“Got himself gassed. He’s all right. Good night, darling. Don’t wait up.”

When he reached the theatre, the front of the house was in darkness. He made his way down the side alley to the stage-door where he was held up.

“Yard,” he said, and produced his official card.

“’Ere,” said the stage-doorkeeper. “’ow many more of you?”

“The man inside was working for me,” said Alleyn and walked in. The doorkeeper followed, protesting.

To the right of the entrance was a large scenic dock from which the double doors had been rolled back. Here Mike was sitting in an armchair, very white about the lips. Three men and two women, all with painted faces, stood near him and behind them a group of stagehands with Reynolds, the stage manager, and, apart from these, three men in evening dress. The men looked woodenly shocked.

The women had been weeping.

“I’m most frightfully sorry, sir,” Mike said. “I’ve tried to explain.

This,” he added generally, “is Inspector Alleyn.”

“I can’t understand all this,” said the oldest of the men in evening dress irritably. He turned on the doorkeeper. “You said—”

“I seen ’is card—”

“I know,” said Mike, “but you see—”

“This is Lord Michael Lamprey,” Alleyn said. “A recruit to the Police Department. What’s happened here?”

“Doctor Rankin, would you—?”

The second of the men in evening dress came forward. “All right, Gosset. It’s a bad business, Inspector. I’ve just been saying the police would have to be informed. If you’ll come with me—”

Alleyn followed him through a door onto the stage proper. It was dimly lit. A trestle table had been set up in the center and on it, covered with a sheet, was an unmistakable shape. The smell of gas, strong everywhere, hung heavily about the table.

“Who is it?”

“Canning Cumberland. He’d locked the door of his dressing room.

There’s a gas fire. Your young friend dragged him out, very pluckily, but it was no go. I was in front. Gosset, the manager, had asked me to supper. It’s a perfectly clear case of suicide as you’ll see.”

“I’d better look at the room. Anybody been in?”

“God, no. It was a job to clear it. They turned the gas off at the main. There’s no window. They had to open the double doors at the back of the stage and a small outside door at the end of the passage.

It may be possible to get in now.”

He led the way to the dressing-room passage. “Pretty thick, still,”

he said. “It’s the first room on the right. They burst the lock. You’d better keep down near the floor.”

The powerful lights over the mirror were on and the room still had its look of occupation. The gas fire was against the left-hand wall, Alleyn squatted down by it. The tap was still turned on, its face lying parallel with the floor. The top of the heater, the tap itself, and the carpet near it, were covered with a creamish powder. On the end of the dressing-table shelf nearest to the stove was a box of this powder. Farther along the shelf, grease-paints were set out in a row beneath the mirror. Then came a wash basin and in front of this an overturned chair. Alleyn could see the track of heels, across the pile of the carpet, to the door immediately opposite. Beside the wash basin was a quart bottle of whiskey, three-parts empty, and a tumbler. Alleyn had had about enough and returned to the passage.

“Perfectly clear,” the hovering doctor said again, “isn’t it?”

“I’ll see the other rooms, I think.”

The one next to Cumberland’s was like his in reverse, but smaller.

The heater was back to back with Cumberland’s. The dressing-shelf was set out with much the same assortment of greasepaints. The tap of this heater, too, was turned on. It was of precisely the same make as the other and Alleyn, less embarrassed here by fumes, was able to make a longer examination. It was a common enough type of gas fire. The lead-in was from a pipe through a flexible metallic tube with a rubber connection. There were two taps, one in the pipe and one at the junction of the tube with the heater itself. Alleyn disconnected the tube and examined the connection. It was perfectly sound, a close fit and stained red at the end. Alleyn noticed a wiry thread of some reddish stuff resembling packing that still clung to it. The nozzle and tap were brass, the tap pulling over when it was turned on, to lie in a parallel plane with the floor. No powder had been scattered about here.

He glanced round the room, returned to the door and read the card: MR. BARRY GEORGE.

The doctor followed him into the rooms opposite these, on the left-hand side of the passage. They were a repetition in design of the two he had already seen but were hung with women’s clothes and had a more elaborate assortment of greasepaint and cosmetics.

There was a mass of flowers in the star-room. Alleyn read the cards. One in particular caught his eye: “From Anthony Gill to say a most inadequate ‘thank you’ for the great idea.” A vase of red roses stood before the mirror: “To your greatest triumph, Coralie darling. C.C.” In Miss Gay’s room there were only two bouquets, one from the management and one “from Anthony, with love.”

Again in each room he pulled off the lead-in to the heater and looked at the connection.

“All right, aren’t they?” said the doctor.

“Quite all right. Tight fit. Good solid gray rubber.”

“Well, then—”

Next on the left was an unused room, and opposite it, “Mr. H. J.

Bannington.” Neither of these rooms had gas fires. Mr. Bannington’s dressing-table was littered with the usual array of greasepaint, the materials for his beard, a number of telegrams and letters, and several bills.

“About the body,” the doctor began.

“We’ll get a mortuary van from the Yard.”

“But — Surely in a case of suicide—”

“I don’t think this is suicide.”

“But, good God! — D’you mean there’s been an accident?”

“No accident,” said Alleyn.

At midnight, the dressing-room lights in the Jupiter Theatre were brilliant, and men were busy there with the tools of their trade. A constable stood at the stage-door and a van waited in the yard. The front of the house was dimly lit and there, among the shrouded stalls, sat Coralie Bourne, Basil Gosset, H. J. Bannington, Dendra Gay, Anthony Gill, Reynolds, Katie the dresser, and the call-boy. A constable sat behind them and another stood by the doors into the foyer. They stared across the backs of seats at the fire curtain. Spirals of smoke rose from their cigarettes and about their feet were discarded programs. “Basil Gosset presents I Can Find My Way Out by Anthony Gill.”

In the manager’s office Alleyn said: “You’re sure of your facts, Mike?”

“Yes, sir. Honestly. I was right up against the entrance into the passage. They didn’t see me because I was in the shadow. It was very dark offstage.”

“You’ll have to swear to it.”

“I know.”

“Good. All right, Thompson. Miss Gay and Mr. Gosset may go home. Ask Miss Bourne to come in.”

When Sergeant Thompson had gone Mike said: “I haven’t had a chance to say I know I’ve made a perfect fool of myself. Using your card and everything.”

“Irresponsible gaiety doesn’t go down very well in the service, Mike. You behaved like a clown.”

“I am a fool,” said Mike wretchedly.

The red beard was lying in front of Alleyn on Gosset’s desk. He picked it up and held it out. “Put it on,” he said.

“She might do another faint.”

“I think not. Now the hat: yes — yes, I see. Come in.”

Sergeant Thompson showed Coralie Bourne in and then sat at the end of the desk with his notebook.

Tears had traced their course through the powder on her face, carrying black cosmetic with them and leaving the greasepaint shining like snail-tracks. She stood near the doorway looking dully at Michael. “Is he back in England?” she said. “Did he tell you to do this?” She made an impatient movement. “Do take it off,” she said,

“it’s a very bad beard. If Cann had only looked—” Her lips trembled.

“Who told you to do it?”

“Nobody,” Mike stammered, pocketing the beard. “I mean — as a matter of fact, Tony Gill—”

“Tony? But he didn’t know. Tony wouldn’t do it. Unless—”

“Unless?” Alleyn said.

She said frowning: “Tony didn’t want Cann to play the part that way. He was furious.”

“He says it was his dress for the Chelsea Arts Ball,” Mike mumbled. “I brought it here. I just thought I’d put it on — it was idiotic, I know — for fun. I’d no idea you and Mr. Cumberland would mind.”

“Ask Mr. Gill to come in,” Alleyn said.

Anthony was white and seemed bewildered and helpless. “I’ve told Mike,” he said. “It was my dress for the ball. They sent it round from the costume-hiring place this afternoon but I forgot it. Dendra reminded me and rang up the Delivery people — or Mike, as it turns out — in the interval.”

“Why,” Alleyn asked, “did you choose that particular disguise?”

“I didn’t. I didn’t know what to wear and I was too rattled to think. They said they were hiring things for themselves and would get something for me. They said we’d all be characters out of a Russian melodrama.”

“Who said this?”

“Well — well, it was Barry George, actually.”

“Barry,” Coralie Bourne said. “It was Barry.”

“I don’t understand,” Anthony said. “Why should a fancy dress upset everybody?”

“It happened,” Alleyn said, “to be a replica of the dress usually worn by Miss Bourne’s husband who also had a red beard. That was it, wasn’t it, Miss Bourne? I remember seeing him—”

“Oh, yes,” she said, “you would. He was known to the police.”

Suddenly she broke down completely. She was in an armchair near the desk but out of the range of its shaded lamp. She twisted and writhed, beating her hand against the padded arm of the chair. Sergeant Thompson sat with his head bent and his hand over his notes.

Mike, after an agonized glance at Alleyn, turned his back. Anthony Gill leant over her: “Don’t,” he said violently. “Don’t! For God’s sake, stop.”

She twisted away from him and gripping the edge of the desk, began to speak to Alleyn; little by little gaining mastery of herself.

“I want to tell you. I want you to understand. Listen.” Her husband had been fantastically cruel, she said. “It was a kind of slavery.” But when she sued for divorce he brought evidence of adultery with Cumberland. They had thought he knew nothing. “There was an abominable scene. He told us he was going away. He said he’d keep track of us and if I tried again for divorce, he’d come home. He was very friendly with Barry in those days.” He had left behind him the first draft of a play he had meant to write for her and Cumberland.

It had a wonderful scene for them. “And now you will never have it,” he had said, “because there is no other playwright who could make this play for you but I.” He was, she said, a melodramatic man but he was never ridiculous. He returned to the Ukraine where he was born and they had heard no more of him. In a little while she would have been able to presume death. But years of waiting did not agree with Canning Cumberland. He drank consistently and at his worst used to imagine her husband was about to return. “He was really terrified of Ben,” she said. “He seemed like a creature in a nightmare.”

Anthony Gill said: “This play — was it—?”

“Yes. There was an extraordinary similarity between your play and his. I saw at once that Ben’s central scene would enormously strengthen your piece. Cann didn’t want me to give it to you. Barry knew. He said: ‘Why not?” He wanted Cann’s part and was furious when he didn’t get it. So you see, when he suggested you should dress and make-up like Ben—” She turned to Alleyn. “You see?”

“What did Cumberland do when he saw you?” Alleyn asked Mike.

“He made a queer movement with his hands as if — well, as if he expected me to go for him. Then he just bolted into his room.”

“He thought Ben had come back,” she said.

“Were you alone at any time after you fainted?” Alleyn asked.

“I? No. No, I wasn’t. Katie took me into my dressing room and stayed with me until I went on for the last scene.”

“One other question. Can you, by any chance, remember if the heater in your room behaved at all oddly?”

She looked wearily at him. “Yes, it did give a sort of plop, I think.

It made me jump. I was nervy.”

“You went straight from your room to the stage?”

“Yes. With Katie. I wanted to go to Cann. I tried the door when we came out. It was locked. He said: ‘Don’t come in.’ I said: ‘It’s all right. It wasn’t Ben,’ and went on to the stage.”

“I heard Miss Bourne,” Mike said.

“He must have made up his mind by then. He was terribly drunk when he played his last scene.” She pushed her hair back from her forehead. “May I go?” she asked Alleyn.

“I’ve sent for a taxi. Mr. Gill, will you see if it’s there? In the meantime, Miss Bourne, would you like to wait in the foyer?”

“May I take Katie home with me?”

“Certainly. Thompson will find her. Is there anyone else we can get?”

“No, thank you. Just old Katie.”

Alleyn opened the door for her and watched her walk into the foyer. “Check up with the dresser, Thompson,” he murmured, “and get Mr. H. J. Bannington.”

He saw Coralie Bourne sit on the lower step of the dress-circle stairway and lean her head against the wall. Nearby, on a gilt easel, a huge photograph of Canning Cumberland smiled handsomely at her.

H. J. Bannington looked pretty ghastly. He had rubbed his hand across his face and smeared his makeup. Florid red paint from his lips had stained the crêpe hair that had been gummed on and shaped into a beard. His monocle was still in his left eye and gave him an extraordinarily rakish look. “See here,” he complained, “I’ve about had this party. When do we go home?”

Alleyn uttered placatory phrases and got him to sit down. He checked over H.J.’s movements after Cumberland left the stage and found that his account tallied with Mike’s. He asked if H.J. had visited any of the other dressing rooms and was told acidly that H.J.

knew his place in the company. “I remained in my unheated and squalid kennel, thank you very much.”

“Do you know if Mr. Barry George followed your example?”

“Couldn’t say, old boy. He didn’t come near me.”

“Have you any theories at all about this unhappy business, Mr.

Bannington?”

“Do you mean, why did Cann do it? Well, speak no ill of the dead, but I’d have thought it was pretty obvious he was morbid-drunk.

Tight as an owl when we finished the second act. Ask the great Mr.

Barry George. Cann took the big scene away from Barry with both hands and left him looking pathetic. All wrong artistically, but that’s how Cann was in his cups.” H.J.’s wicked little eyes narrowed. “The great Mr. George,” he said, “must be feeling very unpleasant by now. You might say he’d got a suicide on his mind, mightn’t you?

Or don’t you know about that?”

“It was not suicide.”

The glass dropped from H.J.’s eye. “God!” he said. “God, I told Bob Reynolds! I told him the whole plant wanted overhauling.”

“The gas plant, you mean?”

“Certainly. I was in the gas business years ago. Might say I’m in it still with a difference, ha-ha!”

“Ha-ha!” Alleyn agreed politely. He leaned forward. “Look here,”

he said: “We can’t dig up a gas man at this time of night and may very likely need an expert opinion. You can help us.”

“Well, old boy, I was rather pining for a spot of shut-eye. But, of course—”

“I shan’t keep you very long.”

“God, I hope not!” said H.J. earnestly.

Barry George had been made up pale for the last act. Colorless lips and shadows under his cheekbones and eyes had skillfully under-lined his character as a repatriated but broken prisoner-of-war. Now, in the glare of the office lamp, he looked like a grossly exaggerated figure of mourning. He began at once to tell Alleyn how grieved and horrified he was. Everybody, he said, had their faults, and poor old Cann was no exception but wasn’t it terrible to think what could happen to a man who let himself go downhill? He, Barry George, was abnormally sensitive and he didn’t think he’d ever really get over the awful shock this had been to him. What, he wondered, could be at the bottom of it? Why had poor old Cann decided to end it all?

“Miss Bourne’s theory—” Alleyn began. Mr. George laughed.

“Coralie?” he said. “So she’s got a theory! Oh, well. Never mind.”

“Her theory is this. Cumberland saw a man whom he mistook for her husband and, having a morbid dread of his return, drank the greater part of a bottle of whiskey and gassed himself. The clothes and beard that deceived him had, I understand, been ordered by you for Mr. Anthony Gill.”

This statement produced startling results. Barry George broke into a spate of expostulation and apology. There had been no thought in his mind of resurrecting poor old Ben, who was no doubt dead but had been, mind you, in many ways one of the best. They were all to go to the Ball as exaggerated characters from melodrama. “Not for the world—” He gesticulated and protested. A line of sweat broke out along the margin of his hair. “I don’t know what you’re getting at,” he shouted. “What are you suggesting?”

“I’m suggesting, among other things, that Cumberland was murdered.”

“You’re mad! He’d locked himself in. They had to break down the door. There’s no window. You’re crazy!”

“Don’t,” Alleyn said wearily, “let us have any nonsense about sealed rooms. Now, Mr. George, you knew Benjamin Vlasnoff pretty well. Are you going to tell us that when you suggested Mr. Gill should wear a coat with a fur collar, a black sombrero, black gloves, and a red beard, it never occurred to you that his appearance might be a shock to Miss Bourne and to Cumberland?”

“I wasn’t the only one,” he blustered. “H.J. knew. And if it had scared him off, she wouldn’t have been so sorry. She’d had about enough of him. Anyway if this is murder, the costume’s got nothing to do with it.”

“That,” Alleyn said, getting up, “is what we hope to find out.”

In Barry George’s room, Detective-Sergeant Bailey, a fingerprint expert, stood by the gas heater. Sergeant Gibson, a police photographer, and a uniformed constable were near the door. In the center of the room stood Barry George, looking from one man to another and picking at his lips.

“I don’t know why he wants me to watch all this,” he said. “I’m exhausted. I’m emotionally used up. What’s he doing? Where is he?”

Alleyn was next door in Cumberland’s dressing room, with H.J., Mike, and Sergeant Thompson. It was pretty clear now of fumes and the gas fire was burning comfortably. Sergeant Thompson sprawled in the armchair near the heater, his head sunk and his eyes shut.

“This is the theory, Mr. Bannington,” Alleyn said. “You and Cumberland have made your final exits; Miss Bourne and Mr. George and Miss Gay are all on the stage. Lord Michael is standing just outside the entrance to the passage. The dressers and stage-staff are watching the play from the side. Cumberland has locked himself in this room. There he is, dead drunk and sound asleep. The gas fire is burning, full pressure. Earlier in the evening he powdered himself and a thick layer of the powder lies undisturbed on the tap. Now.”

He tapped on the wall.

The fire blew out with a sharp explosion. This was followed by the hiss of escaping gas. Alleyn turned the taps off. “You see,” he said, “I’ve left an excellent print on the powdered surface. Now, come next door.”

Next door, Barry George appealed to him stammering: “But I didn’t know. I don’t know anything about it. I don’t know.”

“Just show Mr. Bannington, will you, Bailey?”

Bailey knelt down. The lead-in was disconnected from the tap on the heater. He turned on the tap in the pipe and blew down the tube.

“An air lock, you see. It works perfectly.”

H.J. was staring at Barry George. “But I don’t know about gas, H.J. H.J., tell them—”

“One moment.” Alleyn removed the towels that had been spread over the dressing-shelf, revealing a sheet of clean paper on which lay the rubber push-on connection.

“Will you take this lens, Bannington, and look at it. You’ll see that it’s stained a florid red. It’s a very slight stain but it’s unmistakably greasepaint. And just above the stain you’ll see a wiry hair. Rather like some sort of packing material, but it’s not that. It’s crêpe hair, isn’t it?”

The lens wavered above the paper.

“Let me hold it for you,” Alleyn said. He put his hand over H.J.’s shoulder and, with a swift movement, plucked a tuft from his false moustache and dropped it on the paper. “Identical, you see. Ginger.

It seems to be stuck to the connection with spirit gum.”

The lens fell. H.J. twisted round, faced Alleyn for a second, and then struck him full in the face. He was a small man but it took three of them to hold him.

“In a way, sir, it’s handy when they have a smack at you,” said Detective-Sergeant Thompson half an hour later. “You can pull them in nice and straightforward without any ‘will you come to the station and make a statement’ business.”

“Quite,” said Alleyn, nursing his jaw.

Mike said: “He must have gone to the room after Barry George and Miss Bourne were called.”

“That’s it. He had to be quick. The call-boy would be round in a minute and he had to be back in his own room.”

“But look here — what about motive?”

“That, my good Mike, is precisely why, at half-past one in the morning, we’re still in this miserable theatre. You’re getting a view of the duller aspect of homicide. Want to go home?”

“No. Give me another job.”

“Very well. About ten feet from the prompt-entrance, there’s a sort of garbage tin. Go through it.”

At seventeen minutes to two, when the dressing rooms and passage had been combed clean and Alleyn had called a spell, Mike came to him with filthy hands. “Eureka,” he said, “I hope.”

They all went into Bannington’s room. Alleyn spread out on the dressing-table the fragments of paper that Mike had given him.

“They’d been pushed down to the bottom of the tin,” Mike said.

Alleyn moved the fragments about. Thompson whistled through his teeth. Bailey and Gibson mumbled together.

“There you are,” Alleyn said at last.

They collected round him. The letter that H. J. Bannington had opened at this same table six hours and forty-five minutes earlier, was pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle.

“Dear H.J.

Having seen the monthly statement of my account, I called at my bank this morning and was shown a check that is undoubtedly a forgery. Your histrionic versatility, my dear H.J., is only equalled by your audacity as a calli-graphist. But fame has its disadvantages. The teller recognized you. I propose to take action.”

“Unsigned,” said Bailey.

“Look at the card on the red roses in Miss Bourne’s room, signed C.C. It’s a very distinctive hand.” Alleyn turned to Mike. “Do you still want to be a policeman?”

“Yes.”

“Lord help you. Come and talk to me at the office tomorrow.”

“Thank you, sir.”

They went out, leaving a constable on duty. It was a cold morning.

Mike looked up at the facade of the Jupiter. He could just make out the shape of the neon sign: I CAN FIND MY WAY OUT by Anthony Gill.