Cue For Murder

Chapter Eleven. Behind the Scenes

BASIL HAD ALMOST FORGOTTEN his appointment to meet Lambert, the toxicologist, in Foyle’s office at Police Headquarters late that afternoon. A taxi took him downtown through a twilight that the overcast sky turned into night. All the office buildings were gay with lighted windows, but it was no longer a pleasantly decorative sight to those who realized how ships bringing oil and sugar to New York were silhouetted against the glow of these towers for the benefit of submarines many miles at sea.

As Basil entered the Inspector’s private office he heard the hollow, dehumanized voice of a radio announcer: “When you hear the time signal it will be just five o’clock, Naval Observatory Time . . .” As the whistle tooted he looked at his own watch and found that it was nearly ten minutes fast.

At the radio controls stood Lambert himself—a short, chunky man with a porcine face who looked more like a stockbroker or an insurance salesman than a biological chemist. The Inspector was hunched over his own desk, his lean, sharp face twisted into a frowning knot as he read Lambert’s report on the knife handle.

“Just wanted to get the war news,” explained Lambert. “But there doesn’t seem to be any.”

“The city of New York will have a complete practice black-out tonight between 14th Street and 125th from nine-thirty to nine-fifty,” said the hollow voice. “In discussing plans for the dim-out, which will be enforced in the near future, General Wilkenson said—”

Foyle got up and turned off the radio. “What with black-outs and dim-outs and saboteurs and television lectures for air-raid wardens this place is becoming a mere branch of the War Department, and we have no time for ordinary murders. But we’re learning a lot about the physics of high explosive and the chemistry of poison gas. Being a noncombatant in a modern war is a liberal education!”

“Of course there’s no time for murder,” returned Lambert. “With scores of men dying at sea every day to say nothing of Europe, Asia and Africa why should we care who murdered this John Ingelow?”

“Force of habit,” suggested Basil. “A sort of hobby to keep up our morale.”

“Morale, what crimes are committed in thy name!” added Lambert.

Foyle greeted Basil sourly. “Your bright idea about the knife handle is a dud. Look at this analysis. It might mean anything!”

Basil glanced at Lambert’s report. “Chlorate of sodium . . . chlorate of potassium . . . minute quantities . . .” He turned to Lambert. “What does that suggest to you?”

“Well, chlorate of sodium and potassium are ingredients of human perspiration.”

“Sure, sweat is always salt, like tears!” agreed Foyle. “Loss of body salt through sweat is what causes heat prostration. But you said this stuff tasted sweet!”

“If you will take the trouble to read the whole report carefully you will see that I also identified glucose on the knife handle,” returned Lambert with dignity. “Of course glucose is sugar, and the explanation is childishly simple; the knife handle was grasped by a perspiring hand that had just been touching sugar in some form. Once or twice I caught a faint odor about the knife—sort of like baked apple—whatever that came from, there wasn’t enough to identify it as a chemical compound.”

“What earthly good does that do us?” asked Foyle. “Anybody might handle sugar. Probably it was apple jelly and that’s why you got an apple odor.”

“Not exactly apple,” mused Lambert. “More generalized . . . sort of fruity like—like—a fruit salad!”

Basil looked at Foyle. “Have you got any more background material?”

“Lots, but nothing of value,” retorted Foyle. “Just about what you’d expect. Wanda Morley is a stage name. Her real name was Wilhelmina Minton. She was born in Rochester in 1900 which makes her just forty-two. She attended public school and ran away to join a theatrical company at the age of fifteen. Her father was foreman in some factory there—glue, I think. He reported her disappearance to the police at the time, but they couldn’t find her. She seems to have had a pretty tough time the next twelve years doing all sorts of odd jobs more or less connected with the stage. She appeared in burlesque in Chicago and as an extra in Hollywood. She also sang with a jive band. At twenty-eight she had her first small part on Broadway in a Milhau production of a Noel Coward comedy. The show was a flop, but her performance was praised. In three years she was a star, and she has been with Milhau ever since. Maybe there was some sort of affair between her and Milhau at first, and that’s why he pushed her up the ladder. I wouldn’t know,” the Inspector added austerely. Basil had a theory that Foyle had developed his almost Puritanically strict moral sense as a reaction to his life-long association with crime.

“What about the others?”

“Rodney Tait is another type. Tait is his real name. He was born in Boston, went to a small private school and then to Harvard. Took all sorts of drama courses there and appeared in amateur shows given by some club or other. I forget the cockeyed name of it. When he was graduated he became an instructor in French literature there for a year, but he got fed up with academic life and chucked it for the stage. I gather there was consternation in the family. They all say they have absolutely no prejudice against the stage or stage people but—etc. All his pals say he’s a nice guy, but the older actors, who saw him in stock and on tour before he reached New York in Fedora say he can’t act. They have absolutely no prejudice against amateurs but—etc. They say he always plays himself on the stage. I gather he’s a sort of male ingenue, always the nice guy if you get what I mean.”

“And Leonard Martin?”

“Ah!” Foyle grinned reminiscently. “I never heard of him before, but according to the stage people he’s tops and would have been a star by now if he hadn’t dropped out of sight for over a year a few months ago. It seems he comes of old stage stock. His father and mother used to play Shakespeare, and he was actually born in a dressing room backstage during a performance of Macbeth. As a boy he played all sorts of child parts from the time he was carried on as a baby at the age of three. Apparently he never went to any school and his parents spent a lot of time dodging policemen who tried to enforce the laws about child labor and school attendance. Result, he may not be educated, but he can act. His first real acting part was in the Mary Pickford production of the Good Little Devil. He made his first hit as a young man when he played the lead in a road company of Young Woodley. You remember that play about an English schoolboy who fell for his teacher’s wife? Awful muck I thought, but the highbrows went for it in a big way. Anyway, it made Leonard Martin, and he’s played every sort of part ever since—old, young, good, bad, comic, tragic, everything from Iago to Raffles. According to Sam Milhau, Leonard Martin is really good, and he would have been great if the modern public had been educated up to his acting and if he’d been about three inches taller. His small size made it possible for him to play boys of fifteen in his twenties, but now he’s reached his forties he’s not quite tall enough for the important male leads. For all his talent, the managers feel he can’t quite get it across without those few extra inches. Still, he would’ve been a star by this time if he hadn’t dropped out for a year or so when that Chicago business came up.”

“What was that?” asked Lambert.

“He was mixed up in a nasty motor accident and served a prison term for manslaughter under another name.”

“I suppose you checked with the Chicago police?” put in Basil. “Was there any doubt about his guilt?”

“None whatever. A little girl was killed. When the police caught up with his car, five minutes later, he was still at the wheel. He swore then and all through the trial that he wasn’t drunk, but the motorcycle cop who caught him smelled liquor on his breath. There were tire marks from his car beside the kid’s body and bits of her hair and dress on the front wheels of his car.”

“I’m surprised the evidence of his drinking was so well established,” said Basil. “He still denies it, and he doesn’t seem like the sort of man who would be a drunken driver.”

“I dare say he isn’t habitually,” retorted Foyle. “He may not have been roaring drunk; he may just have had an extra highball. Drivers always deny they’re drunk unless they’re out cold. As I see it, the whole thing was just a tough break—the sort of thing that might happen to any man in a moment of carelessness.”

“What about Milhau?” asked Lambert. “Any dope on him?”

“Usual stuff. Born on the East Side and reached Broadway via Coney Island side shows. Good business man. His shows are often panned by the critics, but I don’t believe he’s ever really lost money on any of them. Claims he can always tell whether a script is a moneymaker or not when he reads it because he gets a sort of shiver down his spine.”

“A new version of the divining rod,” murmured Basil.

“So where do we go from here?” Foyle sighed and ran both hands through his graying hair until it stood up on his head like the plumage of a cockatoo. “Two nights ago everybody was sweet and innocent and loved everybody else. Nobody knew who Vladimir was, and nobody could think of any motive for murdering him. Now in forty-eight hours we’ve just scratched the surface, and we’ve already got three motives: 1 Wanda Morley murdered Ingelow so she could inherit his fortune under a new will in her favor which she believed he had signed; 2 Margaret Ingelow murdered Ingelow so she could inherit his fortune before he had time to sign the new will in Wanda’s favor; 3 Rodney Tait murdered Ingelow because he was in love with Wanda and jealous of Ingelow’s affair with her.”

“Are you quite sure Rodney was in love with Wanda?” asked Basil.

Foyle returned his gaze quizzically. “Well, she thinks so.”

“And he?”

“He’s sort of cagey about the whole thing. Naturally because he realizes it’s the key to his motive. But they were seen together all the time in public places, and there was a tremendous lot of gossip about them. What more do you want?”

“Suppose I were to tell you that Rod has been engaged to another woman all along—a particularly nice girl?”

“I’d say he’d got himself in one sweet mess,” retorted the Inspector. “It isn’t the first time that a good-looking young man has got himself into such a mess either—especially if he’s good-natured as well as good-looking and enjoys pleasing women and keeping the social atmosphere at a warm temperature.”

Basil decided this was not an auspicious moment to mention Pauline’s name. “Sometimes I think a popular man’s desire to please everybody does more harm than the worst vices,” he agreed blandly.

“Then there are at least three motives,” resumed Lambert. “And of course, that’s just two too many.”

“In other words, this murder follows the same pattern in motive as in opportunity,” responded Basil. “At first we had too many people with opportunity to commit the murder, and now we have too many people with motives. All three of these motives were matters of general public knowledge—two were rooted in a will, a matter of public record, and one in the affair between Wanda and Rodney which was widely publicized. It seems to me we were meant to discover these motives. It’s all part of the murderer’s plan to diffuse suspicion among as many people as possible.”

“But we still have one advantage,” insisted Foyle. “Opportunity limits our suspects to four people.”

“No,” said Basil. “Three—providing we accept Adeane’s testimony that Margot Ingelow left the alcove before her husband entered it. Only Wanda and Rod have both motive and opportunity. Leonard had opportunity without motive and Margot had motive without opportunity.”

“Can’t you break down the alibi Adeane is giving Margot?” suggested Lambert.

“Adeane is thinking only of himself,” answered Basil. “It’s hard to tell whether he’s telling the truth about Margot or whether he only gave her an alibi in the hope that she would repay him for it by backing his play.”

“What about finding a motive for Leonard?”

“This was a premeditated murder,” answered Basil. “The weapon—the situation—everything was prepared beforehand. That means that the motive must be unusually compelling. Almost anyone may kill on impulse, but premeditated murder must have a motive strong enough to sustain a mood of cold fury that nullifies all fear of punishment. It must be a motive that makes every alternative to murder seem intolerable. So far we haven’t learned anything about Leonard that suggests a motive of such intensity.”

“I don’t want motives!” exclaimed Foyle. “I want evidence. And I don’t see how I’m going to get it.”

“I can see several possibilities.” Basil turned to Lambert. “Have you tried a spectrograph on that knife handle?”

“Is it as important as all that?”

“It never hurts to try.”

“I don’t suppose you could give me any idea what to look for?”

“If I were you, I’d look for the constituents of butyric acid.”

This remark had no effect on Foyle, but it seemed to startle Lambert. “You don’t mean—?”

Basil cut him short. “I mean that every possibility should be tested.”

“Any little job for me?” queried Foyle.

“You might try to find out more about the dark figure on the fire escape that night. If it was the murderer—what was he or she doing there? Why was Wanda’s copy of the script dropped? And why was that line spoken by Hutchins marked?” I don’t believe it was anything so melodramatic as a warning or a threat. This murder was planned by a neat, ingenious mind—not a flamboyant one.”

“I’ve assumed all along that the figure was the murderer,” said Foyle. “But I suppose it could have been anyone.”

“Anyone who had a black cloak at the theater that night,” answered Basil. “Or a cloak that would look black in a dim light. I saw Wanda, Leonard, and Rodney so soon after that incident they wouldn’t have had time to change. Wanda was in yellow, Rodney in pale blue, Leonard in bright red. After the murder, when we searched the dressing rooms, we found that the men had no dark coats or cloaks they could have worn over their light-colored dressing gowns and suits. Wanda had a dark brown sable cloak that enveloped her from head to heels, but she told me this morning that it didn’t reach the theater until just after the curtain rose—a long time after the incident. Margot Ingelow was wearing a long, sooty, black velvet cloak at the theater that evening, and Ingelow himself was wearing a black overcoat and black trousers when I saw him at the cocktail bar just beforehand.”

“But what would either of the Ingelows be doing on the fire escape with Wanda’s script?” demanded Foyle.

“I don’t know. At the moment it seems as if it must have been one of them, and yet that doesn’t fit any other detail of the crime as I see it now.”

“It would make Mrs. Ingelow the most likely suspect,” went on Foyle. “Don’t you believe it’s possible that she is the murderer?”

Basil rose and turned toward the door. “I shan’t accuse anyone seriously until I find out exactly why the fly was attracted to the knife handle, and why the canary was let out of its cage.”

Lambert laughed. “He knows—or guesses—a lot more than he’s telling, Inspector. Butyric acid!” The words seemed to fascinate Lambert. “That’s what I call neat!”

II

That evening Basil dined at home without company. Juniper, waiting on table, noticed that his master was silent and preoccupied. They had reached the cheese and fruit course when the telephone rang in the hall. Juniper left the dining room. Basil heard his voice muffled by the closed door. A moment later he came back. “There’s a Mr. Lazarus on the telephone,” he announced.

“Lazarus?” Basil looked up from his figs with a frown.

He reached the telephone in a dozen quick strides. The voice on the wire had a small, far away sound that gave the words uncanny emphasis. It might have been a disembodied spirit calling faintly across the Styx.

“Dr. Willing? This is Lazarus, the knife-grinder in the alley beside the Royalty Theatre. Excuse me for bothering you; but something has happened, and you said—”

“What has happened?”

“Well . . .” The voice was still fainter. “Someone has been in my workshop again.”

“Was the door forced open?”

“No, that wasn’t necessary, because the broken window latch hasn’t been repaired yet.”

“Then how do you know anyone has been there?”

“Because of Dickie.”

“Dickie?”

“My canary. Don’t you remember? He’s been let out of the cage again. I don’t see why anybody should do such a thing but—somebody did.”

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