Cue For Murder

Chapter Four. Ad Lib

THE HANDS of the Tilbury clock were pointing to ten-fifty-eight when a long, black limousine turned into West 44th Street from Broadway. The crowd was so dense that the car had to crawl an inch at a time. A mounted policeman leaned down from his horse and yelled at the chauffeur: “Wha’d’ye think yer—Oh.” His voice died away and his hand touched his cap as the pale beam of a street lamp crossed the tight, unsmiling profile of a man who sat alone in the darkness of the tonneau. “This way, Inspector!” The horse plunged ahead forcing the crowd back from the path of the car. It halted at the mouth of an alley. The door opened, and a compact, wiry figure just tall enough to meet the physical requirements of the New York Police Department stepped out. Eyes that darted here and there took in the scene swiftly. Then with the straightened back of a man resisting the drag of a heavy burden newly placed upon his shoulders, Inspector Foyle walked down the alley to the Stage Door of the Royalty Theatre.

A lieutenant from the Homicide Squad met him at the door and conducted him to the stage itself. The curtain was raised, the auditorium empty. Under the glare of footlights and a double bank of auxiliary lights overhead, the scene looked rather absurdly like the second act of a routine mystery play. An assistant medical examiner was working over a still figure in an alcove at the rear of the set. A police stenographer was writing in a notebook at a table in the foreground. A fingerprint man was busy with lens and insufflator over a silver samovar and a set of Sèvres tea cups. A police photographer was focusing a camera on the stage from the wings. Other detectives were comparing a designer’s drawing of the set with an architect’s plan of the theater building and scrutinizing every square inch of the actual boards and scenery.

Close at hand there was no illusion of a princely “parlor in the antique Muscovite style.” Here it was painfully obvious that the carved oak doors were plywood encrusted with plaster and paint, the Byzantine frescos crude oils on canvas, and the burning embers in the fireplace an artful contrivance of red cellophane and winking electric light bulbs.

A fat fly from the alley had drifted through the stage door with the Inspector. Now it cruised lazily around the set on transparent wings exploring the scene with detached, almost scientific interest in the odd behavior of the human species.

Without removing hat or coat, Foyle dropped into the armchair before the “fire” where Fedora had waited for Vladimir during the first act. Shoulders hunched, chin sunk on his chest, he listened impassively to the lieutenant’s verbal report.

“And no one in the theater could identify Vladimir?”

“No one.”

“Where is Miss Morley now?”

“Her maid took her to her dressing room before we got here. There’s a doctor with her now. The others are in Milhau’s office.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes, sir. Except one witness who says he knows you. Some name like Billings.” The lieutenant consulted his notes. “No, Willing. A Dr. Basil Willing. I didn’t pay much attention to him. Put him with the others in Milhau’s office. There’s always one fellow in these mix-ups who claims to be an intimate friend of yours or the Commissioner’s. It usually turns out he sat next to you at a ball game once twenty years ago.”

A smile softened the Inspector’s close mouth. “New to Homicide, aren’t you?”

“Transferred from Narcotics when Lieutenant Samson was detailed to Enemy Aliens, sir.”

“Well, if you stick around long enough, you’ll find out that Dr. Willing is a mighty handy man to have around when you’re trying to break a tough case. Incidentally, he’s one of the D.A.’s medical advisers. I’ll see him at once.”

The lieutenant colored richly and withdrew. When he came back Basil was with him. “If you’d only said you were in the D.A.s’ office . . .”

“I was going to. Then I realized that the moment I did every witness would shut up like a clam in my presence. I thought it would be more interesting to wear an invisible cap for a while.”

Foyle asked the lieutenant to collect Vladimir’s belongings and then greeted Basil with a tired grin. “Hello, doc. Who did it?”

“Isn’t that a little premature?” Basil had retrieved his hat and overcoat from the usher. He piled them on the sofa and sat down. “I’m not that good!”

“But you have the knack of seeing things other people miss. Where did you sit during the first act?”

“Fourth row, center.”

“Good Lord, you were practically on the stage!” Foyle sat up and stared. “Your eyes are good. You’re a doctor of medicine. How could you be so close to Vladimir and not see that he was dying?”

“You underestimate the murderer.” Basil took out his cigarette case. “As I’m on stage now I suppose I can smoke?”

Foyle shrugged. “That’s the Fire Department’s headache not mine. I believe the stage is the one place where you can smoke in a theater.”

Basil lit his cigarette and inhaled a deep draught of smoke. “I needed that. How do actors endure the No Smoking regulations back stage night after night?” He annexed one of the Sèvres saucers as an ash tray and settled himself more comfortably against the back of the sofa. “This crime was hatched in an ingenious brain.”

“What do you mean?”

“The character of Vladimir is supposed to be dying all during the first act. He has no lines to speak—no gestures to make. He just lies still on the bed in that alcove at the rear of the stage. The only light in the alcove comes from one votive candle burning under a red glass shade in front of the icon on the wall. Candlelight flickers deceptively and a red-shaded light is always dim. Not only that, but Vladimir is made up to look like a dying man—white face, blue shadows around eyes and mouth, gray lips. He is even supposed to assume the look of a man exhausted by pain, scarcely conscious. Now do you see what an unique opportunity for murder that provided? No one on stage or in the fourth row or anywhere else in the audience can tell at what moment the look of pain and exhaustion on Vladimir’s face ceased to be artifice and became reality. No one knows when he first turned white from a mortal wound under his white mask of grease paint.”

Foyle’s glance went swiftly to the alcove and then to the fourth row of seats in the orchestra. “I can see how you and the rest of the audience might mistake the real thing for acting and lighting and make-up at that distance, but what about the other actors on the stage? Are you asking me to believe they didn’t see that Vladimir was really suffering?”

“If they say so, how are we going to prove they are lying?”

“Conspiracy?”

“It might be. Or it might be the truth. Either way it protects the murderer. According to Milhau, the producer, who also directed the play, the first act is supposed to run forty-eight minutes—from eight-forty to nine twenty-eight. It’s impossible for us to fix the moment within those forty-eight minutes when the murder was committed. That makes it practically impossible to discover who committed the murder.”

“Why should that depend on timing?”

“When the curtain rises, four actors are discovered on stage playing dominoes. All four were on stage tonight when Vladimir crossed the stage alive and well and entered the alcove before the curtain rose. One of them spoke to him. He is said to have answered with a grin as he shut the double doors of the alcove behind him. The alcove has no other door and no windows or openings of any kind backstage. It even has a ceiling so no one could have climbed over the walls. After Vladimir entered that alcove, he could only be reached by someone crossing the stage to the double doors in full view of the actors on the stage and the people in the audience.

“During the first act, there were only three people who entered the alcove, actors who approached Vladimir separately on three different occasions as part of the action of the play.

“Therefore the murder must have been committed in full view of the audience by one of those three actors. But as we cannot fix the actual moment of the murder within the forty-eight minutes the first act lasted, we have no way of proving which of the three people who could have murdered Vladimir actually did so.

“As a rule a murderer tries to escape detection by dissociating himself from his murder with a false alibi, and that is often the very thing that leads to his detection. This murderer realized there is safety in numbers. Instead of giving himself an alibi, he has merely obliterated the alibi of two other people. Instead of dissociating himself from the murder, he has contrived to associate other people with it on the same terms as himself. He has dissipated suspicion by diffusing it equally among three people. He’s perfectly willing for us to know that he was at the scene of the crime when it was committed, because at least two other people were in exactly the same place at the same time. In ordinary circumstances no murderer could take the risk of having two witnesses to his crime. But the peculiar circumstances of Vladimir’s role in this play made it possible to commit a murder before several hundred witnesses on the stage, in the wings, and in the audience before their very eyes.

“It looks very much like the perfect crime. We’re up against the laws of physics. I saw murder committed with my own eyes and yet—thanks to the limitations of spacetime—I don’t know when the murder was committed or who did it or even who was murdered.”

Foyle got up and walked over to the alcove. Basil remained on the sofa placidly smoking his cigarette. Foyle nodded to the medical examiner and walked around the alcove, tapping the canvas walls, examining floor and ceiling. He came back frowning and stood with his back to the stage fire facing Basil. “It’s funny to think of those flimsy canvas walls being just as effective as bricks and mortar three feet thick!”

“For this purpose they are,” returned Basil. “There’s no way of getting around or under or over them. The canvas is stretched taut and the lath frame nailed to the floor. You couldn’t lift it and crawl under as if it were a tent. It’s a real box set—there are no gaps, except a very narrow one between the canvas wall and the proscenium arch. To reach the alcove doors that way you have to cross the stage just as you do if you come in by the single door at left, and there are no other doors to the set. When they shift the scene, they hoist the ceiling to the flies, push back the furniture, and drop the second act set inside the first act set. The ceilings of alcove and parlor are all in one piece. You couldn’t budge one without attracting attention of actors and audience.”

The fly from the alley buzzed inquisitively around the Inspector’s head. He brushed it away. “Who were these three people who came near enough to Vladimir to stab him during the first act?”

Basil had been waiting for that inevitable question. He answered with a sigh: “Wanda Morley, Rodney Tait, and Leonard Martin.” He liked the two men, and he was beginning to be a little sorry for Wanda.

“Are you sure all three were close enough to Vladimir to stab him on stage in full view of the audience?” pursued Foyle.

“Perfectly sure. Wanda, playing Fedora, was alone with Vladimir in the alcove on two occasions when all the other actors were downstage near the footlights. Both times she threw her arms around Vladimir and clung to him, groaning and weeping in a theatrical frenzy of grief. She could have stabbed him easily without anyone realizing what she was doing.

“It was Leonard, playing the policeman, Grech, who opened the alcove doors on stage the first time after the curtain rose. He went straight up to Vladimir’s bed and stood there for a full minute. His back was turned to the audience, and he was bending over Vladimir. In the play he was supposed to be ascertaining whether or not Vladimir was alive. He did the same thing again just before his exit to search for Vladimir’s murderer.

“Rodney, playing the surgeon, Lorek, was supposed to make a medical examination of Vladimir’s gunshot wound and extract the bullet. Rodney actually brought a surgeon’s bag on stage, took out a surgical knife, and pretended to work over Vladimir with it for several minutes. No one in the audience or on the stage could see what he was really doing.”

The Inspector made a sour grimace. “Then any one of three different people could have committed the murder on five different occasions, and one of them was actually seen with a knife in his hand bending over the murdered man?”

“Exactly. This whole thing was planned by a remarkably bold, clear, and original mind. The bold are so often reckless and stupid; the calculating, timid and meticulous. But this time, we have a justly balanced combination of boldness, calculation, and utter ruthlessness; for two innocent people are going to suffer just as much as the guilty third.”

The medical examiner came down to the footlights and laid a knife on the table. “Hiya, Willing!” He was a stolid young man to whom murder was just a “case” and nothing more. “Stabbed right through the heart so far as I can see without an autopsy. Awkward angle—couldn’t have been self-inflicted. Hardly any external bleeding. What there was was under the bedclothes.”

“Somebody with medical training?” suggested Foyle, hopefully.

“Not necessarily—in wartime, when every man, woman and child has taken a first-aid course in anatomy. The knife is a surgeon’s scalpel. Judging by the tarnished handle it’s an old one, but the blade has been sharpened recently, and rather amateurishly. There’s a lot of deep spiral grooving on the handle. You won’t get any fingerprints. Ideal weapon for murder.”

So far as Basil could see it was exactly like the scalpel Rodney had displayed in his dressing room before the curtain rose—except for the dark stains on the blade.

“Can you fix the time of death within forty-eight minutes?” demanded Foyle.

“I could. But I’d just be guessing,” returned the examiner. “Onset of rigor varies too much with constitution and circumstance, and you can’t go by temperature. Indoors in a warm room a dead body only loses heat at the rate of two degrees an hour.”

“Anything particular about the body?”

“Youngish—thirty to thirty-five. Healthy and clean, athletic, well-fed, rather sunburned. So far as I can see without stripping him no scars or deformities or chronic diseases. Might’ve been a horseman. Slightly bow-legged but so tall you wouldn’t notice it if you saw him walking around. Will you need me for anything else?”

“No, you can go.”

The inquisitive fly made a perfect six-point landing on the handle of the knife, folded his wings, and palpated the grooved metal with proboscis and forelegs.

“Damn that fly!” The Inspector made a mighty swoop at the knife. Quicker than human hand or eye, the fly spread his wings and rocketed into the air with a derisive buzz. But he didn’t go far. He hovered just above the knife handle.

The Homicide lieutenant came through the door at left carrying an overcoat, a dinner jacket, a white waistcoat, a top hat, and a bundle of small things wrapped in a handkerchief. He put them all down on the table. “Vladimir’s belongings—they were in Miss Morley’s dressing room.” Foyle’s hands moved briskly over the clothes. “Good quality. No labels. I suppose he was wearing costume on stage?”

“Not exactly, chief. Vladimir is supposed to wear just a shirt and trousers and socks. This man wore his own.”

As Foyle picked up the top hat, Basil recalled all the vitality in the cocky angle at which the dead man had worn it when he sauntered into the cocktail bar. Now it was just a shiny black silk beaver like any other.

“Pockets?”

The lieutenant opened the handkerchief bundle. Gold watch—silver cigarette case—linen handkerchief—five quarters—three dimes—one nickel—leather wallet. And a small sheet of lined paper torn from a notebook with some letters and numbers scrawled across it: RT, F:30.

“That’s your department—conundrums and riddles.” Foyle pushed the slip of paper over to Basil and picked up the wallet. “Money—no draft card—no driver’s license—”

“There was an official looking card of some sort in that cellophane pocket,” said Basil. “I saw it when he paid for a drink in the bar next door.”

“No sign of a card now,” insisted the lieutenant.

“Could it have been taken from him on stage?” demanded Foyle.

“He carried the wallet in the breast pocket of his waistcoat,” answered Basil. “And he didn’t wear the waistcoat on stage.”

“Detail two men to search the theater for an official-looking card,” Foyle instructed the lieutenant. “Any fingerprints on this cigarette case? Or lighter?”

“Yes. We’ve photographed them already. All his own.”

Foyle wiped both objects clean with his own handkerchief. “See if Miss Morley is ready to be questioned.”

The Homicide lieutenant returned in a few moments. “Miss Morley’s physician says she’s in no condition for questioning, but I told him she’d have to identify the body.”

There was a sound of footfalls beyond the canvas wall. The single door at left was thrown open. Foyle and Basil rose as Wanda Morley made the most dramatic entrance of her long stage career. She was still wearing Fedora’s dress of golden gauze, but it was crumpled since she had lain down in it, and the gilt glitter looked tawdry under a harsh, direct light. She had removed her diamonds. Dark hair hung in stringy locks about her ravaged face. At close range her coarse stage make-up buried her beauty like a barbaric mask of tragedy. Blackened brows, bronzed eyelids, and reddened lips were as grotesque as a clown’s paint beside cheeks that must have been gray under the ivory powder. She was supported by her personal physician and her lawyer on either side. They were followed by her press agent and Milhau. Next came her dresser carrying the sable cloak, a jewel case, and a phial of smelling salts.

“Sorry to trouble you, Miss Morley,” said Foyle gravely. “I am an Assistant Chief Inspector of Police. My name is Foyle.”

Wanda looked at him with dull eyes. This scene was unrehearsed, its lines unwritten, its cues untimed, its peripeties unplanned. She was on her own, improvising everything she said or did as she went along without the guidance of script or director. There was no prompter to come to her aid if she faltered, no understudy to fill her place if she collapsed. She seemed to be stumbling and groping through an unfamiliar world. “Oh . . . yes . . .” Her voice was hesitant, uncomprehending.

“This way, please.” Foyle led the whole group toward the alcove.

Wanda followed slowly. She made an apparent effort to look down at the dead man’s face. It was still coated thickly with the corpse make-up—marble white and ash gray with a blue tinge around lips and eyes. Yet it was a comely face now, with the sullen temper that had distorted the mouth gone forever. She bit her lower lip as it started to quiver.

“I—” She turned back to the Inspector hastily. Tears stood in her golden eyes. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was a mere breath. “I don’t know this man. I never saw him before tonight!”

Was it Basil’s imagination? Or was there something terrible about this denial. Somehow it seemed like a betrayal. . . . He tried to recall her smile as she turned toward this man in the alcove when the curtain fell. You can get up now, darling! First act’s over and your job is done. . . . Was it the smile she would give a stranger?

Basil’s quiet voice ended the silence. “You called him ‘darling.’”

Wanda closed her eyes. “I call everybody ‘darling.’ It means nothing in the theater.”

“But Miss Morley!” protested the Inspector. “I understood that it was you who secured this man to play the part of Vladimir tonight?”

“I—there is some mistake . . .” Wanda opened her eyes and looked at Milhau. “I had thought of getting some friend of mine to play the part, but you said you’d rather have a professional, Sam, don’t you remember? And I let the whole thing drop. So naturally tonight I assumed that . . . this man came from you.”

There was more realism in the theater than Milhau had bargained for. Real candles and real food were one thing, but a real murder was another. His round face was sallow and oily with sweat. He wrung his hands again. “But Wanda—you were so stubborn about it! Don’t you remember? I finally said ‘Okay, have it your own way!’ So I didn’t get anybody, and tonight when this fellow walked in I assumed that he came from you! My God, who did send him? And why? I’ve got eighty thousand of my own money in this show and now—it’s ruined! I’m ruined! You’re ruined!”

Wanda closed her eyes again.

Foyle could be ruthless on occasion. “Miss Morley! On the stage you actually kissed the dead man on the lips just before the curtain fell. Are you asking us to believe that you didn’t know then whether he was alive or dead? Or did you stab him yourself at that moment?”

“I—Oh—” Wanda slumped and the arms of her doctor caught her. Apparently she was unconscious.

The doctor addressed Foyle sternly. “Miss Morley is in no condition for questioning. She is a great artist, and her nervous system is too sensitive to bear shocks of this sort. I must get her home at once.”

Lawyer and press agent bristled, obviously determined to back up the doctor if necessary. Foyle wasn’t afraid of law or medicine, but he had a healthy respect for the press.

“All right,” he sighed. “Take her home.”

The dresser wrapped Wanda in her sable cloak. The lawyer helped the doctor carry her out to her car. The press agent followed to fend off reporters. As the stage door opened, Basil heard the “Ah’s” and “Oh’s” of the crowd. Flashlight bulbs flared briefly in the alley. The door closed.

Foyle turned to the lieutenant. “Mr. Tait next.”

II

Like a master of ceremonies the lieutenant brought his next number through the wings onto the stage. The immaculate morning dress of Dr. Lorek had wilted considerably. The Ascot tie was loosened, the stiff white collar unbuttoned, and sweat mingled with pink powder and grease paint to make Rod’s face a shiny red. His round eyes, lengthened by a few strokes of eyebrow pencil at the outer corners, rolled in their sockets displaying white rims like a startled horse. As he sat down he ran his fingers through his hair in a nervous gesture that disarranged all the neatly brushed waves. He looked very young and very distressed but not in the least guilty.

“Mr. Tait, do you recognize any of these things?” Foyle pointed to Vladimir’s belongings on the table.

“No.”

“Have you ever seen this before?” Foyle handed Rod the cigarette case. Rod turned it over, unconsciously leaving beautiful impressions of his fingertips on the freshly wiped surface. He returned it to Foyle with a shake of the head. “No.”

Foyle remained standing, hands behind his back, looking down on his victim. “Mr. Tait, on stage during the first act you approached the actor playing the part of Vladimir. Was he alive or dead at that moment?”

“Good Lord, I—I don’t know.”

“Do you really ask me to believe you could stand so close to a man and not know whether he was breathing or not?”

“But the light was so dim!” cried Rod. “He was made up to look like a corpse. He was supposed to act like a dying man—eyes half closed, lips parted, body still. When people are lying down they breathe quietly. Ordinarily you don’t notice whether people are breathing or not unless they’re panting or snoring. How can I tell now whether he was acting the part of a dying man or really dying? I wasn’t thinking about him then. I had my own part to think about.”

“Try thinking about him now,” suggested Foyle.

Basil intervened. “Take it step by step. When you first came on stage you took off your wraps—hat, coat, and gloves. As I remember you took them off slowly and piled them on a chair. Was that your own idea or part of the play?”

“It was Milhau’s idea. He directed. Leonard as Grech was supposed to rush in excitedly, tearing off his gauntlets and thrusting them in his belt in order to keep his hands free for his revolver.” Rod smiled slightly. “Milhau’s idea of a police officer at the scene of a murder—a sort of disciplined hustle. Then I was supposed to come in slowly and take my things off methodically and leave them neatly on a chair—the professional man who makes haste slowly and refuses to be rushed or rattled. Contrast. Get it?”

“Then it was part of Milhau’s direction that you should both remove your gloves?” continued Basil.

“Why, yes.” The question seemed to puzzle Rod.

“And then you entered the alcove and—take it on from there.”

“I went up to the bed and that was the first time I looked at Vladimir. I—I thought he was doing a pretty good job. He really looked like a dying man. He didn’t move or speak. His face was sort of relaxed. Usually when you play a dead man on the stage you want to sneeze—nerves, of course—and that makes your face look tense. I lifted his arm to feel his pulse and—”

“Was there any pulse?”

“I don’t know! Great Scott, I’m not a doctor. I’ve taken a first-aid course like everybody else, but I never can find any of the pulse and pressure points when I want to. I just pretended to feel his pulse tonight. I didn’t really feel it.”

“You shouldn’t have lifted his arm,” said Basil. “You’re more likely to find the pulse when the arm hangs down. Was the arm a dead weight?”

“It was relaxed. He was supposed to be limp. That’s part of the play.”

“But it wasn’t stiff?”

“Oh, no.”

“Was his skin warm?”

“Yes.”

“And then?”

“I pushed up his right eyelid. The way doctors do.”

“And still you can’t say whether he was dead or not!” Foyle was sarcastic.

“It’s difficult to tell whether a man at the point of death is alive or dead,” Basil reminded the Inspector. “Even doctors who are looking for signs of death can make mistakes at such moments. A layman who thinks he is dealing with a live man pretending to be dead could easily be mistaken one way or the other. A man may be alive and still have no perceptible pulse. The skin of a live man suffering from a chill may be cooler to the touch than the skin of a dead man who has just died of fever.” Basil turned back to Rod. “Did the eyeball move? Or the pupil expand?”

“I don’t think so. I remember thinking he was trying to keep as still as possible.”

“And after that?”

“I called for hot water and pretended to write a prescription. Then I opened the surgical bag and took out that probe you had told me a real surgeon would use. I pulled the bed quilt down just to his collar bone and pretended to dig a bullet out of his neck. Then I put a dressing on his neck where the wound was supposed to be—just a square of gauze, no bandage. That was the point where I left the alcove to consult Grech. A few moments later I returned to the alcove with the hot water and the prescribed medicine I had sent for, pretended to cleanse the wound, and made a more elaborate dressing. I fussed over him for a while, feeling his pulse again and pretending to let a few drops of medicine fall on his tongue. I didn’t really give him anything. Finally I went down stage right and announced that he was dead.”

“‘Downstage right?’” queried Foyle.

“Downstage is up near the footlights,” explained Rod. “Right is stage right—my right as I face the house on stage. In other words, stage right is house left.”

“Naturally,” Basil smiled. “The stage is the other side of the mirror held up to nature where right is left and up is down. We’ll remember that when you say ‘right’ you mean stage right. Did you go near Vladimir again?”

“No. I just stood there until the curtain fell. Then I took the first curtain call with Wanda and Leonard and—you know the rest.”

“According to your story, Vladimir did not move once when you were near him. Can’t you remember a single gesture? A flicker of an eyelid? A twitching of mouth or finger? A reflex flinching when you touched him?”

Rod closed his eyes for a moment. Suddenly he opened them flinging his head back. “Don’t go by what I say! It’s like trying to remember a dream. The image is so faint, and you’re trying so hard to grasp it that before you know it, you’re inventing instead of remembering. I don’t believe he moved, but I can’t swear it. I wasn’t paying close attention, and I won’t guess because—if he didn’t move—that would mean that Wanda or Leonard did it before I went near him, and I would be swearing away their lives!”

“Very altruistic of you,” said Foyle, coldly. “But what about your own position? You carried a bag of surgical knives on stage. The entire audience saw a knife in your hand when you leaned over Vladimir. Of the three people who had the opportunity to stab him you alone are known to have had a weapon at hand.”

For the first time Rod looked frightened. “But one of the knives was stolen from me . . . ” He turned to Basil.

“Is this the one that was missing?” Basil indicated the knife the medical examiner had left on the table.

Rod looked and winced as he saw the dark stains on the blade. “It looks like it.” He lifted his eyes to Foyle. “There wouldn’t have been a knife missing if—if—I—”

“On the contrary,” answered Foyle. “If you were the murderer the most obvious way to divert suspicion from yourself would be to pretend one of the knives was stolen before the curtain rose. Now will you tell us the truth?” Foyle leaned forward, chin out-thrust, hands still behind his back. “I don’t ask you to guess, and I don’t ask you to swear to anything. But I do ask you to give us your honest impression: Was Vladimir alive the first time you touched him?”

Rod dropped his eyelids. His mouth settled in a tragic line. His response was dragged from him. “Yes.”

“And was he alive the last time you touched him?”

This time the response was even more reluctant.

“I think so, but that’s just a guess.”

“How many people approached him after that?”

“One.”

“And that was?

“Miss Morley.”

“Thank you, Mr. Tait. That will be all for the present.”

Rod rose and stumbled toward the gap in the wings like a drunken man. Suddenly he halted. Pauline was standing there in the shadow of the proscenium arch. Basil wondered how long she had been listening. Rod stared at her as if he didn’t recognize her.

“Rod!” She plucked at his sleeve, face turned up to him. “Don’t look like that. Everything’s going to be all right. I’ll take you home now in my car.”

“What do you think I am? A baby? I can take myself home, thank you!” His voice rasped hoarsely and he stalked away toward his dressing room.

For a moment Pauline stood still looking after him. Then her head drooped like a wilting flower on its stalk. Basil rose and went toward her. “Pauline!”

“Oh, it’s you.” She lifted her head slowly as if it were too heavy for her neck to support. “Are you running with the hounds now?”

“I’m trying to get at the truth. That’s the best cure for everything. Why don’t you help?”

“What can I do?”

“Now, you’re a costume designer. You must understand clothes and textures and colors. We want someone to look all through the theater—dressing rooms, lockers, everywhere—for a long cloak or overcoat or dressing gown that would envelop an average figure from head to foot and look black after dark. Will you do it?”

“I suppose I might as well.” She turned away listlessly.

Foyle had listened to this in astonishment. “Don’t you know the lieutenant put a man on that job the minute he heard your story of the figure on the fire escape?”

“She needs something to do,” answered Basil. “And it’s always interesting to get two reports and compare them.”

III

Leonard Martin still wore the dark wig, padded shoulders, and high-heeled boots of Grech, the Russian police officer, but he was no longer Grech. The quiet voice and deprecating smile that acknowledged Foyle’s greeting were those of Leonard Martin himself.

“I enjoyed your performance,” said Basil. “Sardou left Grech a lay figure. You made him a neat sketch of a policeman on the job.”

Leonard was pleasantly surprised. “I’m glad you liked it. Most people prefer lay figures on stage and screen—especially if they have nice legs.”

“Wish I’d seen you.” Foyle grinned. “I might have picked up a few pointers. Let’s see if you’re as good a policeman off stage as on. Mr. Tait who played Dr. Lorek can’t even feel a pulse! Do you recognize any of these objects?”

“No.”

“Ever see this before?” Foyle held out the cigarette lighter.

But Leonard did not touch it. Hands resting easily on his knees, he bent his head forward to look at it. “No, I can’t say I have.”

Foyle put it back on the table. “Let’s see—you approached Vladimir twice, didn’t you?”

At mention of Vladimir Leonard lost his good humored smile. The hands that lay on his knees shook slightly. He must have seen them himself, for suddenly he thrust both hands in his hip pockets.

“The first time was your first entrance.” Foyle was looking at the lieutenant’s notes. Enter Grech, brusquely, from single door at left. He rushes excitedly to double doors and throws them wide open . . . “Well? What happened?”

“Nothing.” Leonard answered in a low voice—strained, yet under control. “The alcove was empty. Vladimir was lying on the bed. The candle was burning in front of the icon. I stood there for a moment pretending to examine him with my back to the audience. Then I went downstage right to speak my next line.”

“The second time you approached him was just before your first exit,” Foyle read again from the lieutenant’s notes of the play. Grech rises from desk and goes to bed in alcove. “What happened that time?”

“I looked at Vladimir for a few moments standing with my back to the audience again. Milhau’s direction—so Wanda could hog the scene as usual. Then I took a revolver out of my pocket and crossed the stage saying: Come on, men, we’ll get him now! After that I exited at left.”

“Now, think carefully. Was Vladimir alive or dead the first time you looked at him?”

“I don’t know.”

“And the second time?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come now, Mr. Martin! You must have noticed something. According to Dr. Willing who saw the play from the fourth row center, you actually fumbled with the bedclothes both times. Was there no sign of blood? No hump under the bedclothes where the knife handle protruded from his chest?”

“I didn’t notice anything of the sort at the time.”

“If there had been anything of that sort at the time, wouldn’t you have noticed it?”

The question seemed to startle Leonard. Something stirred behind his eyes.

Foyle pursued the advantage. “Even if you have no observed fact you can cite to prove Vladimir alive or dead, you must have some opinion of your own—a general impression based on small things noticed but unremembered. After all, you were close enough to touch him—closer than I am to you now. You might not realize he was dead or dying at the time when you assumed he was acting the part of a dying man. But now you know that he was really dying at some point during the first act of the play. Can’t you look backward in the light of this new knowledge and tell us when that point occurred? Surely you are not less observant than Mr. Tait?”

Leonard looked up in amazement. “You mean to say—that Rod said he knew—when—?”

“He did his best to give us an honest report of his impressions. I want you to do the same thing as honestly as he did.”

“This is dreadful! There were only three of us who went near Vladimir on stage tonight and—we’re all friends!”

The Inspector waited patiently.

“All right!” Leonard flung the words at him. “I’ll give you my opinion for what it’s worth. At the time, of course, I assumed Vladimir was all right. Now that I look back on it in the light of what has happened—I think—”

“Yes?”

“I know he was alive when I opened the alcove doors. I can’t say why—I just know it. But the second time—well, he could have been dead or dying.”

“Why?” The word was soft and insistent.

“I can’t say why. It’s just an intuitive feeling—a hunch, I guess.”

“How many people approached Vladimir in the interval between your two visits to the alcove? asked Foyle.

“Two.”

“And they were?”

“Wanda Morley and Rodney Tait.”

IV

When Leonard had gone, Foyle looked at Basil wearily. “Right back where we started! Rodney and Leonard cancel each other out. If Rodney’s right about the moment death occurred, Wanda is the murderer. If Leonard’s right, it could be either Wanda or Rodney. Is one of them lying? Or just mistaken? We can’t tell! We have three witnesses right on the spot when a man was stabbed and none of them is any good. Rodney is throwing suspicion on Wanda, and Leonard is throwing it back on Rodney and Wanda. Question: Is this deliberate or unconscious?”

“It may have been done reluctantly,” answered Basil. “But hardly unconsciously. An actor would not be likely to forget the topography and sequence of events in a scene acted so recently and rehearsed so often.”

Foyle yawned and rose. “Well, I guess that’s about all for the present. Or have you any aces up your sleeve?”

“No aces, just deuces and treys. But before I call it a night, I’d like to see the actor who played Siriex and the actor who spoke to Vladimir when he crossed the stage to enter the alcove before the curtain rose.”

Seymour Hutchins as Jean de Siriex of the French Embassy looked the way princes and ambassadors ought to look and rarely do. Age had blurred the noble lines of his profile without destroying them entirely. Dark eyes, brilliantly intelligent, looked out of a white face under whiter hair. It was impossible to imagine Wanda or Leonard following any other profession than the stage, but Basil had an impression that Hutchins was a man of parts who would have succeeded in almost any calling and who had just drifted onto the stage through force of circumstance or youthful inclination. According to the programme notes, he had once been a successful leading man himself, and even in his old age producers were glad to entrust him with supporting roles as important as Siriex.

“You come on stage with Grech when he makes his first entrance and remain there all during the rest of the first act,” said Basil. “Can you recall noticing anything wrong with Vladimir at any time?”

Hutchins considered the question carefully before he answered. “Toward the end of the act I had an impression that Vladimir’s portrayal of a dying man was overdone. At the time I thought his dying was unreal because he was overacting. Now, I think it seemed unreal because it was the real thing—which always seems out of key in a world of make-believe.”

“That’s interesting,” said Basil, “because I had the same impression; and when two witnesses reach the same conclusion independently it’s apt to be the truth. Can you say at what moment his overacting began?”

“I’m afraid not. Can you?”

Basil shook his head ruefully and took something out of his overcoat pocket—a manuscript bound in blue paper. “Do you recognize this script, Mr. Hutchins?”

“I believe it is Miss Morley’s.”

“As Siriex you have a line to speak on page 19 of Act I.” Basil read aloud from the script: “He cannot escape now, every hand is against him! Did you underscore that line in Miss Morley’s script?”

“Certainly not.” Hutchins was candidly puzzled.

“Did you underscore it in your own script?”

“No, I checked all my lines lightly in red ink. I didn’t underscore any of them.”

“Can you think of any reason why anyone else should wish to call attention to that line of yours in Miss Morley’s script?”

“No, I can’t.” He frowned, considering the question. “Of course, this is a revision as well as a translation of the original Fedora. We had some trouble finding a copy of the play. We tried various booksellers and libraries, both public and private, without discovering it. They had other plays of Sardou’s, but not Fedora; and Miss Morley had set her heart on doing Fedora. Finally at a music publisher’s we found a libretto of the opera Giordano wrote around Sardou’s play. It was in Italian, and Milhau had a translation made with a good deal of adaptation and modernization. Some superfluous characters were cut out; and in the course of the re-shuffling this line of mine was transferred from the end of the scene to the beginning, and the wording was altered. Originally it read: He cannot escape now, all the shadows are converging. It refers, of course, to Vladimir’s murderer when the police are closing in on him. But it is not a vitally important or significant line in the play, for as you doubtless recall, Vladimir’s murderer does escape at the end of the first act. The line has nothing to do with Miss Morley except that she as Fedora is listening to Siriex when he delivers it. I see no reason why Miss Morley or anyone else should mark that line in her script. I can see no reason why anyone should underscore it in any script unless—”

“Unless what?”

Seymour Hutchins’ fingertips brushed his eyes as if he were pushing away something that obscured his vision materially. “In view of what has happened could this marked passage have been a message of some sort? A warning? Or a threat?”

“A warning to whom?”

“I don’t know. It was just . . . an idea . . .”

V

The last of the five witnesses interviewed that evening faced Basil and Foyle with a certain truculence. His streamlined, bullet-shaped head was too small for the fleshy throat, thick wrists, and muscular forearms revealed by an open-necked short-sleeved shirt. Close-cropped, reddish hair grew so low on his forehead that it looked like a fur cap. His reddish-brown eyes were shrewd and impudent.

“Are you Dr. Willing, the psychiatrist?” he demanded.

“Yes.”

“Then maybe you can help me with my play. It’s about a nymphomaniac, and I was wondering—”

“We are here to investigate a murder,” interrupted Foyle, in his harshest voice. “Your full name is Derek Adeane, and you are an actor?”

“That’s my stage name. My real name is Daniel Adelaar—too long to put up in lights.”

Basil wondered if length were really the only objection to professional use of this Teutonic name at the present time. The bullet-shaped head suggested Prussian blood and Adeane seemed to have a little of the unimaginative Prussian’s inflexible insensibility to the reactions of others. He had already rubbed Inspector Foyle the wrong way, and now he proceeded to do so again. “I’m not really an actor,” he said arrogantly. “I’m just acting temporarily until I can find a producer for my play. The first act takes place in a waterfront saloon, and—”

Again Foyle cut him short. “Interesting as the play may be, I’m afraid we’ll have to postpone its discussion to another occasion.”

“Sure. Any time you like.” Adeane was impervious to irony.

“I understand you were one of the domino players on the stage before the curtain rose this evening?”

“That’s right. I play Nicola, one of Vladimir’s servants.”

“And you saw Vladimir when he crossed the stage to enter the alcove just before the curtain rose?”

“Uh-huh.” Adeane’s restless eyes followed the fly still banking and diving like a miniature plane above the knife on the table. Transparent wings folded, and the fly alighted on the handle. Again the Inspector slapped at it. Again it buzzed angrily as it soared into the air. But it didn’t go far away. It circled twice and returned to the handle of the knife.

“Suppose you tell us just what happened,” said Foyle.

Adeane yawned. Basil had an impression that Adeane became bored whenever a conversation shifted from such interesting subjects as himself, his career, and his play. “He came through that gap in the wings and crossed the stage,” said Adeane. “The double doors were closed. He opened them and went inside, shutting them behind him.”

“How did he look? Normal in every way?”

“Yeah.” Adeane’s eyes were still following the fly. His brow puckered as if something puzzled him. He seemed to be giving Foyle the lesser part of his attention. “Of course, he was all made up for the part of Vladimir—a white face with blue shadows around the eyes, mouth, and gray lips. But you could tell it was just make-up. He crossed the stage with a firm step, rather briskly because he was a bit late. The curtain was due to rise in three minutes, and he had to get settled on the bed before it rose, so there wouldn’t be any noise from behind the double doors after the first act began. Those doors are pretty flimsy—plywood and ground glass. If he’d moved around in the alcove after the curtain rose the audience could have seen his shadow on the glass panels.”

“How was he dressed?”

“Black socks and trousers, white shirt open at the throat.”

“Did anyone else enter the alcove afterward?”

“Not until Grech—that is Leonard Martin—threw open the doors during the first act. He and Wanda and Rodney Tait all had to enter the alcove in the course of the play.”

“According to others on the stage at that time, you were the only person who spoke to Vladimir when he crossed the stage. What exactly did you say?”

Adeane frowned as if he were trying to recall his words. Suddenly he laughed. “Good God, it sounds funny now!”

“What does?”

“What I said.” He laughed again, with apparently genuine amusement. “I said: ‘Hello, so you’re the corpse!’ ”

VI

When Adeane had gone, Foyle ambled back to his chair meditatively. “Sure is a queer set-up. I’m pretty good at reading emotions in faces and behavior. I have to be. But actors are trained to fake their emotions in every detail—eyes, face, voice, carriage, hands, feet, everything! And they can do it off stage as well as on. It is a world of make-believe—false names and false faces! How can I tell which one of these is playing a part?”

“That’s not the only thing that makes a stage murder difficult,” replied Basil.

“Hell, is there something else?”

“Timing.”

“Timing?”

“In a play, every line and gesture and bit of action has to be timed so accurately that the performance will last a certain period, each actor will get his cues at certain fixed moments and the whole thing will have pace and co-ordination. Most people have no idea how long it takes to do any specified thing—to walk across a room or carry on a conversation. But actors learn to think of their speeches and gestures and actions in terms of time. I suspect that this murderer knew exactly how long the action of stabbing would take and that he timed that action to fit smoothly into the chronological mosaic of the play. Many murderers are caught because they make some mistake in timing. An actor turned murderer is not likely to do that.”

“This is a streamlined murder!” exploded Foyle. “Only three suspects and no clues, no alibis, no fingerprints, no footprints, no motives, no telltale looks or gestures! How can anyone crack a case like that?”

“We have just three points of departure,” returned Basil.

“And they are?”

“The three things that no murderer can ever quite eliminate: the victim, the weapon, and the psychology of the crime. First, the weapon. It is the one tangible thing we possess that we are absolutely certain has been in contact with the murderer. Second, the victim. We don’t know who he is now, but as soon as his identity is established it should tell us something about the identity of his murderer. Third, the psychology of the murder—the subtle traces of character that are left behind in all acts of criminal behavior. This murderer has been clever about eliminating all the usual clues. But there has to be a victim, there has to be a weapon, and there has to be a mind behind that weapon. Perhaps the mind is our best bet. Every murder committed is in itself a clue to the nature of the mind that conceived it, and a mind is almost as individual as a fingerprint. Our job is to find out which of three people has the sort of mind that would act as this murderer has acted.”

“I don’t see how the weapon is going to help us.” Foyle picked up the knife again. The fly shot into space at a tangent. “Anyone in the theater could have taken it from Rodney Tait’s dressing room, including Tait himself. Anyone could have sharpened it in the knife-grinder’s workshop next door. And fingerprints don’t show on that grooved handle.” With a sigh, he laid it back on the table. The fly hovered over the blade for an instant; then it swerved and sank to the handle.

Basil drew near the table—so quietly that the fly did not move. “That’s queer.”

“What is?”

“There are bloodstains on the blade, but this fly keeps going back to the handle. It hasn’t settled on the blade once in all the time we’ve been here.”

The fly rocketed once more as Foyle picked up the knife by the handle. “Feels kind of sticky. What is there besides blood that would attract a fly? Gravy?”

“Yes. Or a sugar bowl.” Basil was conscious of a teasing, fugitive fragrance as he bent over the knife—something like the air in a walled orchard. “You might ask Lambert to test that handle for traces of sugar.”

Lambert was the city toxicologist who had made a name for himself identifying chemical ingredients in the smallest bits of matter—grease spots on a waistcoat, grime under a fingernail, the accumulation of dust in the welt around the sole of a shoe.

“Why sugar?” asked Foyle.

“Just an idea,” responded Basil. “Probably a foolish one. I haven’t worked it out yet.”

“Am I interrupting?”

It was Pauline. She came through the wings her hair in a misty disorder, her eyes like wilted bluebells. “I should get a bonus from the Police Department for this! It’s hard work.” She dropped into a chair Basil had pulled back for her. “And I don’t believe I’ve found your black cloak after all. I’ve made a list.”

“Let’s hear it.” Foyle was a little wary of this amateur assistant. Basil stood behind her chair looking over her shoulder at the paper in her hand.

“Well, in Wanda’s dressing room there’s a yellow satin housecoat and a dressing gown of chartreuse wool crêpe. Neither of those would fill the bill. Fedora doesn’t wear any coats or cloaks in the rest of the play, so that was all. Leonard wore a spring overcoat to the theater this evening—pale gray herringbone tweed. The uniform he wore on stage as Grech is dark blue, with silver braid and buttons that would shine in the dimmest light. His dressing gown is a clear cardinal red. There’s no other wrap in his room, and—” She hesitated, frowning.

“And Rodney Tait?” prompted the Inspector.

“I knew he was out of it before I started to look. Otherwise—” She smiled, “I wouldn’t have looked. The overcoat he wore to the theater is of beige camel’s hair. His dressing gown is light blue flannel. The long Russian overcoat he wore on stage as Dr. Lorek is black but it is fur-lined with a collar of silver gray squirrel. That collar would look pale in any light, and anyone can see the fur was sewn to the cloth by a professional furrier. It couldn’t have been removed and replaced quickly by an amateur like Rod, just as Leonard couldn’t have removed and replaced the intricate silver braiding on his dark blue coat. And that’s the lot. I looked all through the dressing rooms. I even looked in Milhau’s office. I looked through the lockers the stagehands use in the recreation room under the stage. There just wasn’t any long black cloak or even a darkish overcoat or dressing gown that would look black in a dim light.”

“What about the sable cloak Wanda wore in the first act?” asked Basil.

“Oh!” Pauline was startled. “I never thought of that. It wasn’t in her dressing room. I suppose she’s taken it home with her already.”

“It was a very dark brown,” went on Basil. “It enveloped her from head to heels, and it even had a hood. If she wore it over the house coat would the yellow satin show?”

“I suppose not.” Pauline’s smile had faded. She looked utterly spent. “I don’t like Wanda, but I don’t believe she would commit murder. Think what this means to her—wrecking her opening night, ruining her play. . . . Well, here’s the list, Inspector. I’ve done my good deed for the day—or was it a bad deed? Anyway, I’m going home.”

“I’ll take you home,” said Basil. “There’s nothing more to be done here tonight.”

VII

The street outside was almost empty now. Basil hailed a taxi, and they drove to Pauline’s apartment on the upper East Side.

“What shall I say? Thank you for a lovely evening, Dr. Willing? I did so enjoy the murder—we must do this again!” She smiled ruefully and held out her hand.

“It was you who supplied the tickets and the murder! My idea of an evening’s entertainment is much less ambitious. . . .” He took her hand and turned it over. The palm of her white glove was still streaked with black. “How did that happen?”

“Oh!” She looked down at her glove with a fastidious grimace. “I must have done that on the backstage fire escape. The dust of ages has sifted all over it in a fine black powder.”

“Were you star-gazing?”

“No, there were no stars tonight. My watch stopped at seven-thirty, and I wanted to reset it. That fire escape is the only point in the theater where you can see the Tilbury clock.” Her laughter bubbled. “Are you suggesting that I was the mysterious dark figure on the fire escape?”

“No. Your coat and dress are both light blue, and blue is the last of all the colors to darken when light fades. That’s why a cloudless sky looks blue even at night if there’s any light at all.”

Pauline snatched her hand away. “So you did think of me! Basil Willing, what a nasty suspicious mind you have!”

He laughed.

“It isn’t funny. Good night!”

It was some time after midnight when Basil got back to his own home—an old-fashioned brownstone house on Park Avenue below Grand Central. As he fumbled in his pocket for a latch key, his glance happened on the floor of the vestibule—a tessellated pavement of black and white stone.

That brought back one detail of his wanderings backstage that had been lost in the excitement and confusion of later events. Like a miniature moving picture in vivid technicolor, his memory unreeled a vision of a woman in a black and white dress and a black cloak opening double doors to cross a dim, firelit stage and brush past him in the wings. Those double doors must have been the doors to the alcove. Vladimir might have been already on his bed in the alcove at that moment, for the curtain rose only a few minutes afterward, and Adeane had seen Vladimir enter the alcove three minutes before the curtain rose.

Were there four suspects instead of three? There was nothing to prove that Vladimir had been alive at any moment during the first act. He could have been stabbed before the curtain rose. He could have lain there dead all during the silly posturing and mummery of the first act without anyone on stage or in the audience suspecting it. . . .

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