Cue For Murder

Chapter Six. First Lady

WANDA MORLEY lived in a little house with a garden that went down to the edge of the East River. It was perfection in miniature—a doll’s house for a child princess. The walls were white-washed brick, roof and shutters were green, and the door was painted yellow. A mulatto maid answered Basil’s ring. He gave his name and waited in a shallow green and white hall, wondering if Wanda would receive him. The maid returned and led him up a flight of narrow, curving stairs to a long, pale drawing room with French windows that gave on a balcony overlooking garden and river. Though it was nearly noon, Wanda was at breakfast on the balcony—a Swiss breakfast of coffee with hot milk, hot buttered rolls, and honey. Her dark hair was gathered in a loose coil on the nape of her neck. She looked rested and comfortable in beautifully cut slacks of gray flannel and a yellow sweater.

The morning sun brought out lines in her face that Basil had not noticed before. Ordinarily he found the look of disillusioned maturity more interesting in women than the blank freshness of youth. But middle age had carved lines of slyness in Wanda’s face that were unpleasing in spite of her vivid coloring and regular features. There was still a certain melancholy in her eyes, but the morbid hysteria of last night was gone. He had an impression that she was essentially a practical person. As soon as the first shock of any disaster was over, she would pick up the pieces and put them together somehow. She would never nurse a grief and wallow in it for sheer emotional luxury.

“Dr. Willing, how nice of you to call! And how nice of you to bring my script back!” She smiled, eyes narrowed against the sun. Their golden color was no trick of eye shadow or indirect lighting. Here in the sun’s glare he could see the irises plainly, and they were a pure, buttercup yellow without a trace of chartreuse or hazel. He recalled a tale he had read years ago in French because it was then considered too “daring” for translation into English: La Fille aux Yeux d’Or. Was Wanda as savagely sensual as Paquita Valdes? Then he remembered that Balzac had wanted to call the story La Fille aux Yeux Rouge and that it was his publisher who had insisted upon changing the red eyes to gold. . . .

“Everyone else has deserted me this morning,” Wanda was saying. “Sam, Rod, Leonard—not one of them had the grace to telephone, let alone appear in person. Yet Sam is my favorite producer, and Leonard and Rod are my very best friends. Leonard gave me my first start by introducing me to Sam and making him give me a part, and I did the same thing for Rod. . . . Will you have coffee?”

“No, thanks. I’ve had breakfast.” Basil dropped into a wicker chair. It was a day of cool wind and brilliant sunshine, hard and clear as a diamond. Not a cloud flecked the pure blue of the sky. The horizon was sharp as a line drawn with a ruler, and every detail of the landscape stood out precisely—flower-beds and fruit trees in the garden, barges on the river, even houses on the Long Island shore.

“This isn’t a purely social call. Can you tell me when you last saw this script?”

“Last night when you showed it to me.”

“And before that?”

“It was in my dressing room yesterday afternoon.”

“Who could have taken it?”

“Why—anybody—” One by one, Wanda dropped four lumps of sugar in her coffee. “Everything was in confusion—the eve of an opening is always hectic. Everyone was running in and out of my dressing room all the time.”

Basil watched her, feeling like a man who is about to pull the firing pin on a hand grenade. Of course, it might not go off, but . . .

“Miss Morley,” he continued, “the police are bound to identify Vladimir as John Ingelow sooner or later. Wouldn’t it be wise for you to anticipate them?”

Her eyes flashed in the sun, but the face, schooled to mask emotion, remained impassive. At last she spoke. “So you know. How did you find out?”

“Last night at the theater I saw a woman in a black and white dress. Pauline identified her from my description as Margaret Ingelow. Pauline’s description of her husband John Ingelow fitted Vladimir.”

Wanda seemed disappointed. “You mean you identified Vladimir on the strength of a physical description? That’s just guessing! If I’d denied it—”

“Not a physical description.” Basil shook his head, smiling. “A psychological description. I had already seen Vladimir for a few moments and surmised or ‘guessed’ if you like, that he was an only son of wealthy parents, born in Philadelphia, educated in France and returned from Panama recently. Also that he was a horseman. Pauline’s description of John Ingelow included all those details—too many to be coincidental.”

“But if you only saw Vladimir for a few moments, how could you ‘guess’ so much about him?”

“I first saw him in a cocktail bar near the theater early last evening. He behaved with the immature arrogance Adler attributes to an only son or a younger son. He ordered an exotic drink—rum, gum, and lime. That is a favorite substitute for whisky and soda among junior officers of the Army in Panama. Rum, sugar-cane syrup, and lime juice are cheap native products. Only senior officers can afford to import whisky there. Vladimir’s sunburn suggested the Panama visit had been recent. When he asked the bartender the way to the stage door, he said he’d been all ‘around the square.’ A New Yorker would have said ‘around the block.’ His guttural ‘R’ was Philadelphian. That suggested he had been born in Philadelphia—not that he just lived there, since accent is usually determined by birth, no matter how widely a man travels. After death, the medical examiner noticed that his legs were slightly bowed. In such a healthy, prosperous young man that suggested long hours in the saddle rather than rickets in childhood. The police found a slip of paper in his pocket which seemed to read: RT, F:30.

“Of course ‘RT’ suggested Royalty Theatre—a memorandum of his appointment with you that evening. Such memoranda usually include time as well as place, and it was just seven-thirty when I first saw him in the neighborhood of the theater, looking for the stage door. The ‘:30’ was clear enough, but what about that ‘F’? Then I remembered that the French always write the figure 7 with a cross bar—‘F’—so it looks like a capital letter F in its customary hand-written form. It only remained to link Vladimir with you, and that was easy. When you opened the door of your dressing room to me last night, you smiled as if you were welcoming someone you expected. Then you saw my face, and the smile turned into a look of surprise. I wasn’t the person you had expected, though at first glance you took me for that person. In the cocktail bar I had noticed that Vladimir was just my own height and dressed as I was. I had heard him asking for the stage door and I saw no one else backstage dressed that way. Obviously you had mistaken me for Vladimir, and that meant you did know him in spite of your denials. I suppose it was he who sent you the red roses at the end of the first act?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know where he was between the time he left the cocktail bar and the time he reached your dressing room?”

Wanda was surprised. “Didn’t he come directly to me?”

“He left the bar several minutes before I did. But you were still expecting him when I reached your dressing-room door, or you wouldn’t have mistaken me for him.”

Wanda had listened to all this with absorption. Now her smile was challenging. “I’m afraid of you, Dr. Willing! You notice too many things. And you put them together too quickly. I’m glad I have no idea what you’re thinking about me at this moment!”

“I’m thinking that you were most unwise to mislead the police last night by pretending you didn’t know Vladimir. I suppose it was you who took the labels out of his clothing and destroyed the card in his wallet?”

“How dare you suggest—”

“You had the opportunity. He left his coat and other things in your dressing room. Your maid took you back there after your faint—before the police arrived. Why did you do it?”

“I was frightened. I didn’t want the police to connect him with me. I hoped they wouldn’t identify him for a long time. I flushed the labels and the draft card down the drain. I didn’t know how to get rid of the clothes. My maid was going to put them somewhere else when the police arrived. What else could I do?” She leaned forward in her chair, tense and supple as a coiled spring. There was irritation in her voice and a hint of bitterness. “Everyone thinks I murdered him! Everyone hopes that I murdered him! Of all the people on stage I did have the best opportunity. That last scene where I clasped the body . . . and wept over it . . .” A trace of emotion shook her voice.

“As I recall it there were two scenes where you clasped the body and wept over it. The first was just after Leonard as Grech opened the alcove doors and Vladimir was discovered to the audience. The second was at the end of the first act just after Rodney as Lorek announced Vladimir’s death. Those two occasions bracketed the first act—one at the beginning, one at the end. Both times you actually touched Vladimir’s cheeks and lips with your lips, as well as your hands. The shock of a stab wound should have made his skin cool to the touch, and lips are more sensitive to temperature than fingertips. Did you notice anything different between the first time you kissed him on stage and the second?”

Wanda closed her eyes for a moment. Was she overcome with emotion? Or merely trying to summon the memory of last night as vividly as possible? Her eyelids lifted slowly, as if the weight of the heavy black lashes dragged them down. “At the time, I thought nothing was wrong with him. A stage kiss is different from an ordinary kiss. I barely touched his lips with mine. But now—as I look back in the light of what has happened—it seems to me that his cheek and lips were colder than they should have been.”

“The first time? Or the second?”

“Both times.”

“You realize that would mean he was stabbed at the beginning of the first act? And that only one person approached him on stage before you did?”

The golden eyes widened with horror. “What have I said! Poor Leonard would never do such a thing! It’s ridiculous! What possible motive could Leon have? I was the only person in the company who knew John. When the police discover that they’ll argue that I’m the only person who could have had a motive for stabbing him. That’s why I lied about knowing him last night. It was just self-preservation.”

“There is another possibility—Margaret Ingelow.”

“But she wasn’t on stage!”

“Not after the curtain rose. But she was seen leaving the alcove and crossing the stage just before the curtain rose. Apparently she left the alcove after Vladimir had entered it, and she was the only person to do so before Grech opened the alcove doors.”

Wanda smiled her wry, uneven smile. “So there are four of us? Leonard, Rod, Magpie, and me! It could have been Magpie, I suppose . . .”

Basil noticed that Wanda preferred the derisive “Magpie” to the sedate “Margot” as a nickname for Margaret Ingelow.

“John could have been dying or dead all through the first act without one of us suspecting anything wrong. How awful!” Wanda shivered under her sweater in the warm sun.

“Are you sure no one else in the company knew Ingelow by sight?”

“I don’t know.” She flung out her hands in an almost Gallic gesture. “We had to be careful until his wife agreed to a divorce. Neither of us wanted scandal, and Magpie was being a little difficult. She hates me, because it was she herself who first introduced John to me. Magpie was stage-struck, and that was how we met. John didn’t care for the theater or know any stage people until he met me. Of course, it was John who put up the money for Fedora. But I dealt with Sam Milhau myself. John was never inside the theater until last night, and so far as I know no one there knew him even by sight. He was just back from Panama, and I happened to tell him that old yarn about Bernhardt’s friends playing the part of Vladimir. He thought it would be a lark to do the same thing. It was rather reckless under the circumstances, but we thought no one would recognize him in his corpse make-up; and taking a chance was what made it a lark. He always was a reckless devil. You should have seen him on a horse!”

“How did you happen to hear of the old legend about Bernhardt and Edward VII?” asked Basil.

“Oh, I don’t know. I think from Seymour Hutchins who played Siriex last night. Do you mean you think that story was revived purposely just now?”

“It’s possible. Pauline told me yesterday that you like to identify yourself with the great actresses of the past, by reviving their plays and even imitating their foibles. It was a probability you would ask Ingelow to play Vladimir when you heard that yarn. And that gave the murderer an opportunity.”

“But Hutchins would never do that!”

“Perhaps the revival of the story didn’t originate with Hutchins himself. He may have got it second or even third hand.”

“How horrible!”

“Why do you say everyone ‘hoped’ that you had murdered Vladimir?”

“I could sense it in the theater last night. That was what frightened me. That was why I was afraid to admit I knew who the murdered man was. You have no idea how people hate me—how jealous they are of my success! Even Rod is sometimes a little resentful of my being a star when he isn’t. And Leonard doesn’t like playing second fiddle to Rod. Of course Leonard is the better actor—but he’s been ill for a whole year, and I just couldn’t keep the lead in Fedora open for him on the chance that he might recover in time—could I? And Magpie hated me because she knew I was going to marry John. . . . Do you realize that no matter who killed him or when, he must have been either dead or dying by the time I wept over his body at the end of the first act? For no one else went near him afterward. Don’t you see what a horrible, spiteful thing that was? Whoever the murderer is, he or she was jeering at me then—making me go through a scene of mock grief for a stage lover mimicking death when he was really my lover and really dead though I didn’t know it. You needn’t tell me it wasn’t planned that way! It was pure malice directed against me as well as John. It’s as malicious as that French story of the man who walled up his wife’s closet where her lover was hidden, pretending all the time he didn’t know the lover was there.”

“Then you suspect Rodney Tait?”

Her eyes widened. “He’s not my husband!”

“But he would like to be?”

Wanda took on the preening, relaxed content of a cat that is being stroked along the spine. “Rod is—fond of me,” she murmured. “Of course, he’s only a boy . . .”

Basil was interested. “You really believe he is fond of you?”

“Well, he’s always running after me. Sometimes it’s quite embarrassing. All those items in the newspapers and magazines about us. John didn’t like it at all; but I couldn’t help it, could I? Oh, I know that in books written by men women are always held responsible for men falling in love with them; but in real life no woman can make a man fall for her if he doesn’t want to, just as you can’t hypnotize anyone who doesn’t want to be hypnotized. I think even Rod himself would admit that I never did anything to encourage him!”

“Was Rod jealous of John Ingelow?” inquired Basil.

“He didn’t know anything about John. And anyway, I just can’t see Rod as a murderer, can you?” With another little shrug, Wanda returned to her rolls and honey. “I don’t suspect anyone in particular, Dr. Willing, but I do believe that the murderer is someone who hates me, and that the whole thing was planned to hurt me as well as to kill John.”

“Is there any way Rodney could have found out that you were going to marry Ingelow?”

“Well, if people listen at doors and windows they can find out anything. . . .”

“Does Rodney do that?”

“He never has but he might if he were jealous. . . .”

“I wonder you kept Rodney in your company—all things considered.”

“You can’t break contracts as cheaply as all that. Sam put us both under contract to play Fedora several months before Rod developed this silly infatuation with me. Sam was grateful to Rod for taking Leonard’s part at short notice in Chicago when Leonard ran over that poor child and . . .” Wanda stopped as she saw Basil’s astonishment.

“I thought Leonard Martin left the company in Chicago because he fell ill?”

“Oh, dear,” Wanda sighed. “I have spilled the beans!”

“What really happened to Leonard?”

“I suppose you might as well know. I was in a hurry to get to a night club, and Leonard borrowed a car to drive me there. He ran over a little girl playing in the street. She was killed instantly. He had only had one highball, but the police insisted he was drunk. He was really just shaken and staggering from shock. His first thought was the effect on me and the show and his own career so, on impulse, he gave a false name—Lawrence Miller. He knew no one was likely to recognize him; all his published photos had been taken in stage make-up, and he had always played parts that required him to alter his appearance. It’s always a shock to his fans when they discover that he’s bald off stage.

“He pretended he had no driver’s license to avoid showing them one with his name on it. That was another charge against him—driving without a license. He was tried in Chicago for manslaughter and sentenced as ‘Lawrence Miller’ to one year in prison. I paid his legal expenses so he wouldn’t have to give away his real name by signing checks. Of course, I kept quiet about it for my own sake as well as Leonard’s. The theater is a profession that depends on popular favor, and running over children is not a popular thing to do—especially if there’s any suggestion you were drunk at the time. The fact that I had been a passenger in the car was quite bad enough for the show as it was. The newspapers were told that Leonard left the company because he was ill, and they never caught on. Only a few local police reporters attended the trial, and none of them knew him by sight without his make-up. The day I testified there were a few men from the news services there, but Leonard sat with his face in his hands all the time they were in the courtroom.

“This spring, when Leonard turned up in New York after his year in prison, he looked so thin and sick he had no trouble making people believe he really had been ill.”

A voice spoke from the French window. “Don’t you think you’re being a little indiscreet, Wanda?”

Leonard Martin was standing in the window behind them. Basil wondered how long Leonard had been listening. Outwardly he showed no ill effect of last night’s disaster—largely because his long, sober face had always suggested strain and weariness off stage. It was hard to realize now that this sickly, quiet, almost shy man was the actor who had made the part of Grech, the policeman such a robust characterization last night. On stage, wig and costume, and, above all, vigorous bearing had made Leonard seem younger and taller. Now, his bald head and dull, sallow face seemed colorless—a blank page upon which any message could be written. The muscles around his mouth looked stretched and tired, like rubber that has been pulled and pushed into so many different shapes it has finally lost its resilience. The skin on his high forehead was a mottled bronze, drawn tight as a drum head over his unfleshed skull. Perhaps he had always suppressed his own personality that he might never develop mannerisms to interfere with his portrayal of characters on the stage.

Basil tried to reassure him. “Miss Morley hasn’t given anything away that I hadn’t surmised already. I suspected from the beginning that you had served a prison term. I’m glad it was only a traffic accident. I was afraid it might be a deliberate crime.”

Leonard stared. “Why did you suspect?”

Wanda laughed thinly. “If you have secrets, Leonard, prepare to shed them now! Dr. Willing is practically clairvoyant!”

“Are you?” Leonard fixed a direct gaze on Basil.

“Not in the least. Any rookie cop would have recognized you as an old lag. Inspector Foyle is probably trying to get hold of your record at this moment, though the false name will make it a little harder for him. Last night when you were pacing up and down Rodney’s dressing room you went just five single paces either way before you stopped and turned. That’s about twelve feet for a man of your stature, but there was a vacant space in the center of the room fifteen or sixteen feet square. No obstacle barred your path, for all furniture was pushed back to the walls. I’ve seen other men do that after spending months in a cell twelve feet square. Habit surrounds them with invisible walls wherever they go long after they are free. Last night you also recognized and avoided a simple fingerprint trap rather pointedly when Inspector Foyle handed you the dead man’s cigarette case of polished silver for identification. As a rule, only the man with a police record has the wish to hide his fingerprints and the experience to know a police trap when he sees one—especially at such a moment when we were all shaken by the discovery of the murder. Rodney Tait fell into the same trap immediately without realizing it was one. Foyle would never have tried such a simple trick on you if he’d realized you were an ex-convict.

“You even showed your police record in your characterization of Grech, the policeman in the play. It was an amusing satire on police mannerisms, obviously contrived by an actor who had a grudge against policemen in general.”

Leonard’s astonishment yielded to pleasure—the pleasure an artist takes in his own craftsmanship. For a moment the murder was forgotten. “Did you like my Grech?” he cried eagerly. “I’m glad! I always try to be as lifelike as possible in every detail of a characterization, and I thought some of the points I made last night were pretty good! The change in my voice between the moment I said: Who is that woman? and the moment I said: The Princess! And the bit of business where I pick up Fedora’s cloak and stroke it as if I were admiring the quality of the fur. Sam didn’t want me to do that, but I insisted it was essential. Contrasted with my rudeness to Vladimir’s servants it gives a perfect picture of a greedy beggar-on-horseback using a murder case as a stepping stone—”

“Leonard, darling, Dr. Willing isn’t interested in stage technique!” Wanda’s shoulders were shaking with laughter.

“But I am!” insisted Basil stoutly. “For instance, I noticed last night that even when you weren’t in the alcove you were up stage or near it. Was that Milhau’s direction, Miss Morley? Or your own idea?”

Leonard answered before Wanda could speak. “She’s always up stage, and it’s entirely her own idea.”

“Did you see anything unusual going on in the alcove when you were near it?” continued Basil.

Wanda was no longer laughing. “I wasn’t even looking at the alcove!” she protested a little shrilly. “I was entirely absorbed in playing my own part.”

“You can rely on the latter statement absolutely,” murmured Leonard.

“Why don’t you sit down, Leonard?” said Wanda in her most wheedling tone. “Have some coffee?”

“Thanks. Milk, but no sugar, please.”

“Rolls? Honey?”

“No, thanks.”

“It’s rose honey from Guatemala.”

“You know I have no sweet tooth, Wanda!”

“A break for Leon Henderson!” murmured Wanda.

Cup in hand, Leonard’s idle gaze followed a tugboat plowing sturdily through the wind-whipped water.

“The police are certain to discover the truth when they get your fingerprints and check with the F.B.I.,” said Basil. “But your secret will be safe enough with them unless its publication proves necessary to the conviction of the murderer.”

Leonard sat down on the wrought-iron railing of the balcony and sipped his café-au-lait with his back to the river. “I wouldn’t make a secret of it if I felt guilty. But that child ran right out under the wheels of my car before I could stamp on the brake. It was the police charge of drunkenness that prejudiced the jury against me. A medical test for drunkenness would have cleared me, but they didn’t bother with that. They just got up on the witness stand and swore that I had been drunk at the time. That was enough for judge and jury. As I wasn’t drunk, I felt I didn’t deserve a prison sentence. It ruined my health—I lost over twenty pounds in prison. But I’m not going to let it ruin my career too—if I can help it.”

Wanda wiped her hands on a napkin. “Honey is like a ripe mango,” she announced. “It should only be eaten in the bath tub. Tell me, Leon, how long were you standing in that window just now?”

“Only a few moments. I did hear about John Ingelow. I won’t tell the police, but,” he smiled, “I hope you will.”

“How can I, without drawing suspicion on myself?”

“I don’t believe anyone will suspect you seriously,” argued Leonard. “It’s so obvious that you had no motive. A woman doesn’t kill an attractive young man of great wealth whom she expects to marry in a few months when there’s no cause for jealousy, unless he’s made a will in her favor; and Ingelow didn’t do anything like that, did he?”

With an angry gesture, Wanda tossed the cigarette she had just lighted down into the garden. “If you must know—he did.”

If Leonard wanted to revenge himself for Wanda’s revelation of his prison sentence, he had certainly succeeded. She looked at him with exasperation. Then she turned to Basil. “I suppose it’s all bound to come out now! John wanted to make a financial arrangement with his wife before she went to Reno, so all that business need not be discussed in court. He was going to settle a lump sum on her in lieu of alimony. Of course, his old will was in her favor. He just had it altered in my favor yesterday. The police are certain to regard that as a motive, absurd as it is that I would kill John for money.”

“Men have been killed for money,” returned Basil, “and Ingelow had rather a lot, hadn’t he?”

“Yes, he had.” Wanda sighed. “That was the only serious obstacle to our marriage.”

“Obstacle?” Basil was feeling his way cautiously in this conversation, like a man groping in the dark.

“I do so hate a life complicated by luxury and formality,” explained Wanda gravely. “I often told John that I would have felt much safer about our chances of happiness if he had been a simple bookkeeper or salesman making about thirty or forty dollars a week. You see, Dr. Willing, I am a frightfully simple person myself with very plain, ordinary tastes. If I had married John, I would have had to lead a much more elaborate life than I’ve been used to—two big households in New York and the Huntingdon Valley, a villa in Florida, a huge staff of butlers and maids and chauffeurs, a great deal of entertaining—it would have been a dreadful responsibility and, to be quite frank, an awful bore. If I hadn’t loved John very much indeed, I just wouldn’t have been able to put up with all that tinsel and sham. I have a beer and hamburger mentality—I detest caviar and champagne. So you see, I’m the last person in the world to commit a horrible crime for the sake of money.”

“I see.”

This was Basil’s second encounter with Wanda’s favorite line, and his first realization that it had any bearing on the murder. He wondered how the police would take it, now that Ingelow’s will gave Wanda a possible motive for murder, providing she was not immune to the normal human desire for money. He allowed a flavor of irony to invade his voice as he remarked: “When I noticed that simple, little fur cloak you were wearing last night it never occurred to me you had a beer and hamburger mentality.”

“Oh, that. It was a present from John, and I wore it on the stage because it did suit the part of Fedora. I never really liked it though—so ostentatious and vulgar.”

“Let me see, it’s mink, isn’t it?”

“Oh, no! It’s not mink at all—it’s Russian sable!” For a woman who cared nothing for luxury and ostentation, Wanda’s response was a little too heated.

“Seems dangerous to keep such valuable furs in the dressing room of a theater with everyone coming and going all the time.”

“It wasn’t there ‘all the time,’” returned Wanda. “I had it stored in February, and I had some trouble getting it out again in time for the opening. A bonded messenger brought it to the theater in the nick of time—after the curtain rose just before I went on stage.”

As Basil took his leave of Wanda a last question occurred to him. “Yesterday afternoon at the art gallery you said something about cutting some lines spoken by a character named Desiré. Did that make much difference in the action of the play?”

“No real difference,” she answered. “Of course it did telescope the action a little in that first scene where Grech comes in and throws open the alcove doors. Didn’t you notice that, Leonard?”

“I can’t say I did.” Leonard smiled sardonically. “You could cut half the lines out of a Sardou play without damaging plot or action at all.”

He followed Basil toward the door into the living room.

“Not going already?” cried Wanda.

“I just stopped in to see how you were,” responded Leonard. “But you can take it. I leave you with a clear conscience.”

Wanda went indoors with them. Basil’s glance swept the long, pale room with its velvet carpet and curtains in faint shades of gray, lime and lemon. It was silken and cushioned, as a case for jewels or wedding silver. There was a hint of the boudoir about the chaise longue of tufted, oyster-white satin with its heap of pillows in fresh laundered slips of fine lawn and lace, its fleecy coverlet of pale green wool neatly folded at one end. Surely this was not the room of a woman who scorned pleasure and ease for the sake of a robust simplicity? Basil’s glance came to rest on an elaborate birdcage that hung from a stand in the sunshine by a window. Cage and stand were wood, painted gray and carved with little flying birds in low relief picked out in bright colors. Inside on the central perch two small green birds, something like parrots, sat side by side, beaks touching in a parody of a human kiss.

As he drew near the cage the birds did not flutter or even turn their heads. With a little shock, he realized that they were dead birds, stuffed and mounted by a taxidermist.

“Love birds?” queried Basil.

“They were pets of mine when they were alive, and after they died I had them preserved like this.”

Basil had once known a woman who did the same thing when a favorite horse died, but the idea did not appeal to him.

“That parrot green is a little crude for the rest of the room.” His gaze went to the lemon yellow hangings. “Why not . . . canaries?”

Wanda lifted both hands, crossed them against her throat as if something were choking her. “Because I hate canaries!” Her voice quavered out of control. “That bilious yellow. Those ugly, raw, peeled-looking pink legs—ugh!”

The two men stepped through the doorway from the sunlit room overlooking the river into a dim, windowless hall. As they turned the sharp curve in the narrow stair, they looked back and saw Wanda standing in the doorway watching them, one hand braced against the lintel, the other still clasping her throat. The tall, slim figure outlined darkly against the light of the room beyond might have been a girl of nineteen or twenty. In contour Wanda was still a young woman; only the texture of her skin and the expression of her face betrayed her real age. The dimness of the hallway veiled her face now, and her pose was arresting and eloquent.

Leonard turned his head. Basil rather expected some expression of sympathy for Wanda. But Leonard said: “What a wonderful gesture that was—when she clasped both hands across her throat. I must remember that. It would be most effective on the stage. If ever I have a part that calls the same emotion into play, I shall use it.”

“And just what is that emotion?” asked Basil.

The question seemed to surprise Leonard. “Why, fear—of course!”

II

They were in the lower hall now. Daylight streamed through a lunette fanlight thinly veiled in white muslin. The mulatto produced their hats and opened the door for them.

“A charming house,” mused Leonard as they went down the steps. “It always reminds me of Becky Sharpe’s little slice of house in Mayfair. You remember the cramped little stairway, and how all the great personages of the day crowded into it? To me there is always something fascinating about a little house—particularly when it’s a town house, luxurious and complete to the last detail, but all on the smallest possible scale. And there must be a pretty woman nestling inside like a jewel in a plush-lined box.”

“Doubtless it is charming,” agreed Basil. “But not precisely the home of a beer and hamburger mentality.”

Leonard’s sudden, harsh laughter sounded loud in Beekman Place, quiet and shady as a courtyard with the two big apartment buildings and the double row of small houses enclosing it almost entirely on four sides. “You mustn’t let Wanda’s inverted boasting confuse you!”

“Inverted boasting?”

“That’s what it is. Didn’t you notice how she got in all her points in the very act of deprecating them? Sable, not mink; two homes and a villa in Florida; a huge household staff; etc. She couldn’t have told you more if she’d been bragging about those things instead of deploring them, now could she? You see, luxury is the breath of life to Wanda. Years ago, as a child, she was starved of comforts and even necessities, and she’s always trying to get the chill of that early poverty out of her bones. When she first came to New York, green and raw from a factory town, she used to admire quite openly everything that glittered. She would go to the most elaborate trouble to drag the conversation around to mention of some well known person she had met. If you gave her an orchid or an opera ticket she would tell everyone she knew all about it. Her snobbery was so transparent it was innocent and childlike. I thought it rather attractive for that reason. But others did not agree with me. She was well and truly snubbed. After a year or so she developed the formula you heard today as protective coloring, to wit: a cruel fate has imposed a life of luxury and ostentation upon her, but she remains a simple soul at heart who longs for nothing so much as hard work and obscurity. Since the modern mind is as prudish about snobbery as the Victorians were about sex, this blatantly phony, pseudo-democracy of Wanda’s has made a big hit with everybody. She is no longer snubbed by the rich and famous, for she tells them to their faces that she loathes their riches and despises their fame; and they are impressed by her righteous scorn for them as they would be impressed by nothing else. As for the poor and obscure—well, you can imagine how they eat it up. Her personal popularity dates from the day she had a poor-little-rich-girl interview published in one of the women’s magazines. Wanda Morley says that the poorest housewife rich in a home and babies is far happier than a woman like herself who has nothing but the hollow joys of fame and glamour. . . . I really believe Pauline is the the first person who’s ever said to Wanda: Well, if you don’t like this sort of life why not give it up? That was hitting below the belt!”

They turned into East 51st Street past old slum houses converted into prosperous dwellings with gaily painted doors and arty brass knockers.

“Why does Miss Morley hate canaries?” inquired Basil.

“Because she used to be a canary herself.”

“She—what?”

“‘Canary’ is jive slang for a girl who sings with a hot band. Wanda got her start as a canary. Those were her leanest years. It wasn’t just that she went hungry. She had no professional dignity; no one took her work seriously. She doesn’t like to be reminded in any way of the time when she sang for her supper. I remember one evening we were at Sam Milhau’s house in the country, and a pet canary he had began to sing. Wanda screamed at it: ‘Stop that noise!’ No one but me knew her well enough to know why.”

“You’ve known her a long time?”

“Ever since she first joined one of Sam’s companies.” Leonard smiled reminiscently, almost sentimentally. “She was a regular little guttersnipe in those days—or shall we be polite and say gamine? But there was something attractive about her—a black-haired, yellow-eyed alley kitten, a scrapper tough as they come, all legs and bones and claws. I liked her better then than I do now. She was real then. Of course, the reality is still there; but it’s buried under layers and layers of egoism. I don’t suppose she can help it. We all worship our creator, and so the self-made worship themselves. It isn’t ordinary selfishness—it’s the occupational disease of the successful. Wanda shows it in a thousand little ways, from taking the largest piece of candy in the box to talking the way she did just now about the murder. You heard her say that the murder was committed in order to hurt her feelings and her career? That the murderer was mocking her when he planned his crime so she would weep over the stage death of a stage lover who was really her lover and really dead without her knowing it? Of course, the truth is probably that the murderer was not thinking of her at all. But she transposes everything into terms of its effect on herself. She hardly seemed to think of Ingelow at all. He was just the poor sucker who got murdered. The only important thing about his murder was its effect on Wanda Morley—her reputation, her fortunes, her future.”

“You must have been standing in that French window for some time before you spoke!” remarked Basil.

“It was far too interesting to interrupt,” returned Leonard. “I particularly enjoyed the way she scattered suspicion right and left on Rod and me and even on Mrs. Ingelow. That wasn’t malice—just selfishness. If only four people could have committed the murder and Wanda was one of the four, then the police must be made to think that one of the other three is guilty; even if two of them happen to be close friends of hers. So she hinted—with the most beguiling air of inadvertence—that her affair with Ingelow had made Mrs. Ingelow jealous; that Rod was in love with Wanda, and, therefore, jealous of Ingelow; and finally, that I was a dangerous character who had served a prison term for manslaughter.”

“You revenged yourself promptly,” said Basil. “That shot about the Ingelow will went home.”

“A shot in the dark. But I had to do something in self-defense.”

At Madison Avenue the two men parted. Leonard went on west toward the theater. Basil entered a hotel and found a telephone booth. He called Inspector Foyle at his office.

“Have you traced Vladimir yet?”

“No dice,” returned the Inspector crisply. “One of the newspaper boys says Vladimir’s face is familiar, but he can’t place it. He’s combing the morgue now—newspaper morgue.”

“Tell him to look under I—Ingelow, John.”

“Who’s that?”

“Engineer—young—wealthy—just back from a war job in Panama. Had an apartment in New York and a home near Philadelphia—Huntingdon Valley. His wife can identify the body. She might be at the New York apartment. She was backstage last night. I didn’t know who she was then, but I saw her leave the alcove and cross the stage to the wings just before the curtain rose.”

“Was Vladimir—I mean, Ingelow—already in the alcove then?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible.”

Foyle whistled under his breath. “Did anyone but you see her leaving the alcove?”

“Adeane and the other actors playing Vladimir’s servants were already on stage at the time. Even if they didn’t know who she was, they must have noticed her dress—black and white stripes—rather striking. Have you anything from Lambert on the knife yet?”

“He’s going to drop in my office tomorrow about five o’clock. You’d better come, too. He says he’s on to something.”

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