Cue For Murder

Chapter Nine. Aside

IN THE WEST FORTIES there is a small shabby hotel. To people from out of town it looks exactly like all the other small, shabby hotels in the theatrical district. Only dyed-in-the-wool New Yorkers who know the various planes and facets of their city well realize that this particular hotel has been for years the headquarters of all those stage people who cannot afford to live at clubs or luxury hotels. Young actors on their way up and old actors on their way down pass each other at this half-way house between success and failure. Seymour Hutchins had lived there before he became a star and returned there now he had ceased to be one. According to Milhau, who gave Basil the address, Wanda and Rod had both lived there in their salad days, but not Leonard, who always occupied a little attic room at the Players when he was in New York, no matter how much money he was making.

There were only three people in the shallow lobby, yet Basil recognized each face as one he had seen on the stage that season in a minor part. He gave his name at the desk and asked if Mr. Hutchins could see him. The message was relayed through a switchboard operator, and a moment later he was in a rheumatic elevator creaking up to the twelfth floor and room 1243.

Perhaps nothing is more revealing of character than the condition of a hotel room when you descend on the occupant without warning. Hutchins passed the test with flying colors. It was a large double room with a bay window and bathroom. There was no kitchenette and no evidence of those furtive attempts at housekeeping with a small electric stove in defiance of the Fire Department that most elderly women living alone in hotel rooms seem unable to resist. Nor was there any pathetic assumption that a bedroom can be turned into a living room accessible to both sexes without impropriety by keeping combs and brushes in a bureau drawer and substituting a hard, narrow couch with a dingy cretonne cover for a wide, comfortable bed with an immaculate white counterpane and pillow slips. The moment Basil saw that bed he concluded that Seymour Hutchins was a man who had an intelligently selfish interest in his own comfort and a refreshingly candid indifference to the comfort of others. He had supplied himself with one large armchair, a case for his own books, and a powerful radio. But there was no armchair for visitors, and Basil was not offered any such feminine amenity as weak tea hastily brewed in the bathroom or any such bachelor refreshment as rye whisky in a tooth glass.

The window opened on a courtyard, but it was high enough to look over the roof of a lower building opposite to a wide view of skyscrapers massed irregularly which seemed oddly familiar. The rain had stopped now, and the sun was already far down the western hemisphere of the sky in a pool of saffron light that washed the tall buildings with a roseate glow making them unnaturally radiant under the dull, gray clouds overhead. Basil had seen the same appearance in the mountains at sunset on a rainy day, and once again he realized how closely the skyscrapers approximated a range of hills in their scenic effect.

“I hope I’m not intruding,” he said to Hutchins, “but there are some things I can learn from you in this case that I could not learn from anyone else involved.”

“Not at all.” With his usual ambassadorial dignity, Hutchins waved Basil to the lone armchair beside the bay window and perched himself on a narrow window seat. “I’m glad to help you if I can. But frankly I can’t imagine how. If it’s that line of mine about Vladimir—He cannot escape now, every hand is against him—there’s nothing more I can tell you. I’ve thought it over carefully, and it has no special significance for me.”

Basil took a sheet of paper from his pocket—the time table of the first act that Rod had prepared for him that morning. “There’s one thing I forgot to ask. Have you any idea of the approximate time when you spoke that line?”

Hutchins bent his white head as if he were looking down into the question. “I can only give you a very rough approximation,” he answered finally. “Curtain rises at 8:40, I go on at 8:51. That line comes about twenty minutes later—about four or five minutes after nine.”

“Well, an approximation is better than nothing.” Basil jotted down the hour on the margin of Rod’s time table.

“You can do better than an approximation.” Suddenly Hutchins lifted his eyes, searching Basil’s face. “Have you heard that Sam Milhau is going to go on with Fedora? He’s called a rehearsal for tomorrow morning at nine-thirty. If you’d care to come to the theater as my guest—” Another touch of ambassadorial urbanity—“you can time the whole thing exactly yourself.”

“I’d like to very much.” Basil saw that Hutchins was troubled. “You don’t like the idea of a revival?”

The answer came in a roundabout way. “Have you ever heard of the doctrine of ‘eternal recurrence?’”

“You mean the idea that time has latitude as well as longitude?”

“Roughly, yes. We all think and speak of the length of time, but some philosophers have suggested that it may have width as well—that there is more than one twentieth century and that we recur in all of them, repeating all the mistakes and misfortunes in our lives throughout eternity.”

Basil smiled. “That idea of lateral time is an amusing intellectual exercise, but I doubt if the universe is organized in quite that way. Certainly, I hope not. A hell of fire and brimstone would be a cozy summer resort in comparison, and it makes the annihilation of the atheist seem like Paradise.”

“Perhaps. But such an idea must appeal to an actor, because he spends so much of his life doing the same thing over and over again. No one understands better the enormous impulsive force of habit.”

“It has a certain appeal for a psychiatrist, too,” admitted Basil. “The Viennese School collected a good bit of evidence suggesting that a man who fails to meet one situation in life adequately will go on through his whole life repeating the same failure each time he is confronted with a similar situation. In most cases habit is far stronger than the lessors of experience, possibly because the psychic factors that formed the habit in the first place are always there to support it and continue it. Of course this tendency to repeat is even more marked in neurotics and criminals.”

“And in murderers?” Hutchins’ smile had a fine edge. “Now you see why I don’t like the idea of going on with Fedora. I certainly wouldn’t care to take Ingelow’s place as Vladimir!”

“I understand that Vladimir will be played by some actor who was not in the original company,” replied Basil. “That ought to eliminate any motive for a second murder, and it would certainly involve great risk to the murderer.”

“That’s entirely reasonable but—I still don’t like the idea. People say we stage folk are superstitious. How can we help it when our success depends so much on chance? You can never predict whether a play will succeed or not until after the first night, and sometimes not even then. It’s all a gamble, and we all have a gambler’s psychology.”

Basil saw an opportunity to ask another question without appearing to attach much importance to it. “It seems all the more strange that Milhau should revive Fedora this season,” he said in his most casual voice. “So far as I could tell from the first act, the play has nothing in it to appeal to a modern audience. Do you know what first put it into his head?”

“I believe that Wanda wanted to play the part.” Hutchins answered as if he saw no significance in the question. “I don’t know just where she got the idea. But I don’t agree with you that the play is dead. I think it has far more vitality than some of the modern amorphous tripe—” He stopped himself with a smile. “I don’t suppose tripe can be called amorphous.” His glance went to Basil’s hat lying on the bed. “What do you call that?”

“A gray felt hat.”

“Yes, and what else?”

“A soft felt hat.”

“And?”

Basil laughed. “A fedora!”

“Exactly. That gives you some idea of how popular the play was originally. If you could have seen Bernhardt do it you might understand.”

“Was it you who told Wanda Morley the anecdote about Edward VII playing Vladimir to Bernhardt’s Fedora?”

“Yes.” Hutchins’ face sobered. “Leonard Martin had heard it from someone, and one day at rehearsal he asked me if it were true. Wanda overheard us talking and asked about it. That must be how she got the idea of having Ingelow play Vladimir. In a way it makes me feel responsible for what happened. Dr. Willing, I wish you’d persuade Sam Milhau to give up this idea of going on with Fedora. Have you any idea why he insists on it?”

“Partly because he’s found a backer,” explained Basil without naming the backer. “And he wants to recover the money he’s invested in costumes, scenery, salaries, and so forth.”

“Is there any other reason?” demanded Hutchins shrewdly.

“I think he imagines it’s the best way to safeguard the reputation of his cast—particularly Miss Morley’s reputation. The official story as it appears in the papers by grace of his publicity department seems to be that Ingelow was just a casual acquaintance of Miss Morley’s and that his murder has nothing to do with her or any members of her company. The best way to prove that is to have her go on with the same play as if nothing had happened.”

“But obviously some member of the cast is the murderer!”

Basil shrugged. “So long as the murder is unsolved everyone is presumed innocent. Perhaps Milhau has some idea that going on with the play will keep the actors psychologically steady—like sending an aviator up in a plane directly after an accident.”

“If I know anything about Milhau he has no such altruistic motive,” returned Hutchins, bitterly. “His only idea is to make money out of the morbid curiosity of the general public, and he will. People will flock to see the first act that was performed when Ingelow was killed just because they’ll be reasonably sure that one of the actors on the stage is Ingelow’s murderer. This is more of Milhau’s literal realism. What a thrill to see a real murderer on the stage in a murder play that led to a real murder! But it won’t be very pleasant for us on the stage to know that we’re rubbing elbows with a murderer, especially when we don’t know which one he or she is.”

Basil decided not to tell Hutchins that there was a fourth suspect—Margot Ingelow. And that again she would have access to the stage—this time as backer of the play.

“Do you think any actors will resign from the cast?” queried Basil.

“None of us can afford to break a contract with a producer as influential as Milhau, but—” A cold light shone in Hutchins eyes. “He has nobody under contract to play Vladimir, and he’ll have a hard time getting anybody. He’d never use a dummy. Not realistic enough. Vladimir may put a stop to the whole thing. I hope it does.”

“Mr. Hutchins,” said Basil. “You’ve known most of these people for some years. You may be able to tell us more about them than anyone else. Just what is your opinion of Derek Adeane?”

“‘A louse in the locks of literature,’” returned Hutchins promptly. “An intellectual parasite. Whenever a play is a hit he immediately writes one as near like it as possible. He calls it ‘following a trend’; I call it plagiarism. He did have a play produced once—a faint carbon copy of Our Town called Your City. It ran exactly four nights. Now he’s going in for the hard-boiled cult—a round denial of human virtues and an unctuous sympathy for human vices. As soon as another point of view becomes fashionable he’ll adopt that with equal enthusiasm. Some men have great talent and no ambition; Adeane has colossal ambition and no talent. There are a good many like him, and some more successful than he. To them the arts are simply an easy way of earning a living. Easy because they never go through the agonies of creation that afflict a real artist.”

“Is Adeane monstrously stupid?” asked Basil. “Or simply insensitive?”

“He’s not stupid in the ordinary sense of the word. I should say he had intelligence but no intellect, cunning but no wisdom. And, of course, he has none of the sympathetic qualities—no charms or graces. That’s the real reason he hasn’t been more successful. He has never learned to conceal his egoism as most of us do, so he is heartily disliked.”

“Would he lie if he thought the lie would help him to get a play produced?”

“I should imagine he would.”

“And what is your opinion of the three under suspicion—Wanda Morley, Rodney Tait, and Leonard Martin?”

“Leonard is a sterling actor of the old school who can play any part. Wanda and Rod are products of the modern type-casting idea—artless naturalism reduced to an absurdity; you have a part for a handsome young man, so you get a handsome young man to play it. Disgusting! I can remember the days when an ugly old man could act the part of a handsome young man with far more dash and conviction than any of these toothpaste-ad boys who walk through their parts being themselves. There was Gregory Lawrence—ugly as sin off stage—who used to get torrents of fan mail and even presents of gold cigarette cases and jeweled cuff links from matinée girls because he could re-create the spirit of a handsome young man on stage. That’s art—the sort of thing Rod does isn’t even artifice!”

Basil smiled at the way Hutchins had answered his question by describing the acting ability of the three suspects instead of their moral or emotional attributes. If Hutchins were called as a character witness he would probably devote his testimony entirely to saying whether or not the accused was a true artist or a product of type casting. It would not be surprising to hear Hutchins say that an actor who would “walk through” his part was capable of homicide, arson, sabotage and any other crime in the calendar.

“One more thing.” Basil was watching Hutchins’ face closely. “Does the word ‘canary’ suggest anything to you in connection with any of these three people—Wanda, Leonard, or Rodney?”

“No.”

Hutchins looked so puzzled that Basil explained. “We have reason to believe that the murderer sharpened the knife he used in Lazarus’ workshop. Before leaving he released a pet canary from its cage. It seems a wanton, capricious thing to do, but there must have been some reason for it. Think over the past lives of these people and see if you can suggest any reason for it.”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” answered Hutchins, after a moment. “You think it might be a symbol or signal of some kind?”

“Frankly, I don’t know. Of course, all criminals are neurotic. Indeed, crime in most cases is really an exaggerated form of compulsion neurosis. That’s why criminals, like neurotics, delight in symbolism and fetichism. I could cite you hundreds of cases—burglars who always leave a colored napkin at the scene of a crime and so on.”

“But what would a canary symbolize?” Hutchins’ lively intellectual curiosity was aroused. “Maybe the dictionary will help!” He went to his bookcase and took out the first volume of a large dictionary. “Let me see—” He looked like an elderly scholar as his hoary head bent over the huge book on his knees. He began reading aloud; abbreviations and all:

Ca-na-ry, a. Of or pertaining to the color of a canary; of a bright yellow color.

Ca-na-ry, n; pl. ca-na-ries. (Sp., canario, a bird, a dance; from L. Canaria insula, canary island, so-called from its large dogs; L. canis, a dog.)

1. Wine made in the Canary Islands.

2. An old dance. (Obs.)

3. The canary bird or its characteristic color.

4. A word put by Shakespeare in its singular and plural forms into the mouth of Mrs. Quickly, (Merry Wives) which commentators differ in explaining. It is probably a blunder for quandary.

ca-na-ry, v.i. To dance, to frolic; to perform the old dance called a canary. (Obs.)

ca-na-ry-bird, n. An insessorial singing bird, a kind of finch, from the Canary Islands, the Carduelis canaria or Fringilla canaria of the finch family, much esteemed as a household pet, being one of the most common cage birds.

“Not much help I’m afraid!” Hutchins looked up with a smile. “A dog? An island? A wine? A dance? You have a wide choice. And here are a lot of derived words—canary-bird flower, canary-vine, canary-moss, canary-stone, canary-wood.”

“That’s enough!” cried Basil. “You’re making it too complicated!”

Hutchins laughed and shut the book with a loud clap. Basil rose and picked up his hat. Lights in the windows of various buildings were beginning to glow through the early dusk. Suddenly he saw letters of fire: Time For Tilbury’s Tea! Now he understood why the skyline looked so oddly familiar—it was the same scene he had observed last night from a different angle. “That wall with the fire escape must be the Royalty Theatre!” he exclaimed. “And the low building opposite us is the taxpayer beside the stage door alley!”

“Yes.” Hutchins’ gaze followed Basil’s. “Amazing how a little shift in the angle of vision can change the look of everything, isn’t it? This hotel faces on 45th Street, but as my window is in the back it overlooks 44th. New York is full of these surprises. When you enter a building you can never tell from the front door view what unexpected sights you may see from a back, top-floor window. Over there is a physical culture school that has classes on the roof all during the day though nobody in the street knows anything about it.”

“I should think that Tilbury neon sign would get on your nerves.”

“One gets used to things, and I won’t have to put up with it much longer. I understand Broadway is to be dimmed out in a few days, and before the war is over it’ll probably be blacked out.”

As Basil started for the door, Hutchins called after him. “One moment.” Hutchins laid aside the book and came over to the door. His eyes were fixed on Basil’s earnestly. “You know you said something important a moment ago.”

“What?”

“You said I was making the canary business too complicated. Has it occurred to you that you are making it too complicated yourself?”

Basil smiled. “Maybe you have something there! It’s one of my worst failings—to elaborate an idea with so many fine shadings of implication and potential meaning that I lose sight of the essential thing. The murderer’s motive for releasing the canary is probably something extremely simple and obvious, and that’s why I’ve missed it. I’ve been looking for something subtle and complex. I needed what I got from your window—a little shift in the angle of vision!”

As Basil went down in the elevator he made an effort to dismiss all the complexities and think of the simplest, most obvious significance implied in the act of releasing a canary from its cage. For a moment an idea seemed to flicker on the periphery of consciousness. But strain his attention as he would its color and shape still eluded him.

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