Cue For Murder

Chapter Fourteen. Scène-à-Faire

LEONARD MARTIN SPOKE his lines on cue: “Reckless, aren’t you, Dr. Willing? A little too reckless! You’ll be found in the alley tomorrow morning with a knife through your heart, and every bone in your body broken by your fall. But they’ll never catch me. Wanda’s too frightened to talk even though she’s the one who’ll be suspected, because she’s the one who asked Milhau for a stage-door key tonight. I learned to pick any kind of lock years ago when I played Raffles—a concession to Milhau’s realism. I slipped in by the stage door when the patrolman was on the other side of the building, and I can slip away now in the black-out unobserved. There won’t be anything to connect me with any of these crimes. I stabbed Ingelow and Adeane without leaving one single clue for the police to work on.” There was perverted pride in Leonard’s voice and something else—doubt.

Basil played up to both. “You were clever—but not quite clever enough. Inspector Foyle has evidence that you are guilty.”

“You’re lying! I don’t believe it!”

Basil knew that if he lived he would never forget these perilous moments watching that murderous face in the starlight high above the blacked-out city. But if he could only play upon the actors’ instinct for dramatizing every situation and keep Leonard talking long enough. . . .

“You overlooked three main clues,” said Basil calmly. “A clock, a fly, and a canary.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“When we found that Ingelow had been murdered, your watch agreed with mine while Rodney Tait’s was ten minutes slower. This afternoon in Foyle’s office I found that my watch was ten minutes fast when I compared it with the correct time given by the Naval Observatory on the radio. So Rodney’s watch must have been right two nights ago. Why was mine fast? Because I set it by the Tilbury clock just before the murder, and the Tilbury clock gains several minutes on windy days. Why was yours fast on the same occasion? Because you had just set your watch by the Tilbury clock, too. The Tilbury clock can’t be seen from any point in the theater except the top of this fire escape. So you were the dark figure on the fire escape the night Ingelow was murdered. It was you who dropped Wanda’s script when I passed underneath, and it was you who underscored the line that Hutchins spoke: He cannot escape now, every hand is against him. . . . From the first, Hutchins said he had not underscored it in Wanda’s script, and there was no reason to doubt him as he was not under suspicion. So the line must have been underscored by someone who did not speak it in the play. Why? When does anyone mark a line in a play that he doesn’t speak himself? When it’s a cue for some bit of stage business. The line you underscored in Wanda’s script was not only a clue, but also a cue for a bit of business; and that ‘business’ was murder. You had to have a cue for stabbing Ingelow on the stage in order to fit his murder smoothly into the chronological pattern of the play, so there would be no danger of another actor interrupting you at that moment. That pattern was changed at the last moment when the actor playing Desiré fell ill, and his few lines were cut. You first learned this when I did—at the art gallery a few hours before the opening. When you got to the theater you snatched up Wanda’s script—the only script where the deletions were marked—in order to see if they affected your cue for murder. The cut had to be a line spoken by another actor when you were alone with Vladimir, and the omission of Desiré might have altered one of those conditions. Or it may be that one of Desiré’s lines was your original cue, and you had to find another one at short notice when his lines were cut. Anyway, in your haste you marked your cue for murder automatically as you would any other cue. You went out on the fire escape so you could set your watch by the Tilbury clock and time the cue as exactly as possible. As Milhau told me, you had never lived at Hutchins’ little hotel overlooking the Tilbury clock, so you had never had occasion to notice that the clock was inaccurate. The script fell out of your hands when you were startled by my appearance in the alley. My appearance was startling to you because you mistook me for Ingelow, the man you were planning to murder, just as Wanda did when I knocked on her door a few moments later. We were the same height, and we were dressed alike that evening as I noticed when I first saw him. You dared not recover the script from me in the alley for fear of exciting my suspicion of you when Ingelow was stabbed on cue. There wasn’t time then for you to select another cue.

“The next morning Rodney Tait provided me with a time table of the first act. During rehearsal this morning I found that time table was correct, and I added to it the exact time the cue for murder was spoken by Hutchins. Then I saw you were the only actor on stage near enough Vladimir to stab him at the moment Hutchins spoke that line. Hutchins himself was the first to suspect that his own voice had been the signal for two murders. He wasn’t sure, so he tried to convey the information to me indirectly by a Shakespearean quotation. Even Pauline suspected you tonight when Inspector Foyle turned on the light in the lobby, and she saw that a curtain which looked black in a very faint light was really red. Of all colors, red is the first to lose its characteristic hue when light fails. Just as blood and lipstick look black in a dim light or a photograph, your red dressing gown looked black on the fire escape in the darkness beyond the faint red radiance from the Tilbury clock.”

“That is an ingenious reconstruction,” said Leonard. “But it’s largely surmise. You haven’t proved me guilty.”

“I haven’t, but the fly and the canary have.”

“What about the canary?”

“It was clever of you to steal Rodney’s surgical knives and break into Lazarus’ shop to sharpen them. That way you thought there would be no record that you had ever sharpened a knife or had one in your possession. But there was a record. First, the night before Ingelow’s murder you had a cut on your forefinger and Lazarus tells me such cuts are characteristic of knife-grinders whether professional or amateur. Secondly, each time you were in Lazarus’ shop you set the canary free. You even did so a third time this evening, when you broke into Milhau’s office to get another knife from his safe and saw that the canary’s cage was there. What sort of man would feel an irrational, irresistible impulse to set a caged bird free every time he saw one, regardless of consequences to himself or the bird? Only a man who knew how agonizing the sense of forced confinement can be—an ex-convict who had served a prison term that he considered unjust. You were the only ex-convict among the suspects. As Wanda knew about your prison sentence she began to suspect you when she first heard that a burglar who sharpened a knife had also freed a canary. She must have wondered then if you knew Ingelow. But she couldn’t be sure, and she was too frightened to talk. None of the others suspected you even after the murder because they didn’t know about your prison sentence or your motive. Of course, you never dreamed we would associate the freeing of the bird with your prison sentence, because you had never associated the two yourself. An irresistible, irrational impulse is neurotic, and a neurosis is by definition a failure to associate consciously an act with its emotional cause.”

Leonard Martin laughed. “Cobwebs and moonshine! Psychology is a joke to the layman, and juries are made up of laymen. The only things they believe are eye witnesses and material evidence—bloodstains and fingerprints. You haven’t got anything like that!”

“Murder is rarely performed before an eye witness. But we have material evidence far more conclusive than most fingerprints and bloodstains. That’s where the fly comes in.”

“The fly?”

“Do you know how the Hindus diagnose diabetes mellitus? There is an account of their procedure in Dr. Heiser’s autobiography. They set the patient’s urine outdoors in the sun. If it attracts flies they know it contains sugar and is therefore diabetic urine. The same sugar is present in the perspiration of a diabetic. When I first met you at the art gallery I saw you were a sick man. As I happen to be a doctor of medicine, I soon noticed the principal external symptoms of diabetes in you, just as I noticed that Pauline was anemic. You had the bronze skin of the diabetic in place of the prison pallor one expects to see in a man just out of prison. You had the extreme emaciation of the diabetic and his avoidance of sweet food. You refused French pastry at the art gallery, and you didn’t even take sugar in your coffee at Wanda’s this morning. Finally, there was the peculiar sweet, fruity odor of your breath which indicates butyric acid in the lungs.

“You wore no gloves when you clasped the handle of the knife you used to stab Ingelow, because Milhau had directed you to remove your gloves during the action of the play, and you couldn’t ignore his direction without rousing suspicion. In your character as a Russian detective, you had to wear heavy leather gloves—too heavy for such a delicate operation as stabbing Ingelow in a certain anatomical spot. But there was no danger of fingerprints, because you chose a knife handle that was elaborately grooved. Excitement and perhaps a recent dose of insulin made your palms perspire freely. The grooved surface of the knife handle rejected fingerprints, but it retained more perspiration than a smooth handle would have done. When a fly was attracted to the handle and ignored the bloodstained blade, I began to suspect the truth. The city toxicologist has already reported that he had found chemical traces of human perspiration and sugar on the knife handle. As soon as he subjects it to a spectroscope he will find some indication of butyric acid. This was the one fact Adeane knew that was not known to anyone else. He was the only witness present with the Inspector and myself when the fly alighted on the knife handle. He noticed it as we did and that cost him his life. This morning before rehearsal he told me in your presence that he had been reading about diseases of the pancreas at the medical library when he spoke of the suggestive effect on the body of such reading. He also mentioned Dr. Heiser’s book which he was carrying under one arm, and dropped a broad hint about the Fly who witnessed the murder of Cock Robin. Apparently he thought you could be bullied into helping his career. He wanted you to put two and two together—and you did. You knew from experience that diabetes was a disease of the pancreas, and you glanced through Adeane’s copy of Heiser’s book and saw that the only reference to flies concerned the Hindu method of diagnosing diabetes. You concluded as Adeane wanted you to, that he had read enough medical literature to recognize the symptoms of diabetes in you and that in some way the action of a fly had indicated to him that the murderer was a diabetic. But instead of allowing Adeane to blackmail you, you killed him; and he had so little realization of his danger that he gave you an opportunity to do so by playing Vladimir in order to bring himself and his plays to Milhau’s attention.”

“Anyone who had just touched candy might have left sugar and perspiration on that knife handle!” protested Leonard.

“But not butyric acid as well. The knife handle had the same fruity odor as your breath. So did the handkerchief you dropped beside Pauline when you stabbed her tonight. There is enough acid on the handkerchief for it to be identified by chemical analysis. You must have wiped brow and neck and hands with it and—that will convict you of murder.”

“Without a motive?”

“You loved Wanda, didn’t you? That was why you introduced her to Milhau when she was unknown and gave her a chance on the stage. In the art gallery you said that Wanda’s allure was like an X-ray burn—a delayed reaction. You weren’t thinking of Rodney then—you were thinking of yourself. You had thought you could get over it, and you were finding that you couldn’t. Perhaps she wouldn’t let you. She didn’t like her victims to be cured. She was flirting with you as well as Rodney when Pauline and I watched her in the art gallery that afternoon. When you came back to New York after serving your prison term in Illinois you found she no longer cared for you or even pretended to do so. You were too shrewd to be taken in by the publicity romance Milhau staged between Wanda and Rodney. You spied on her as a jealous man will—as you did the morning you discovered her with me on the balcony—and so you unearthed something unknown to her other friends: her secret engagement to John Ingelow; and his pending divorce from Margot, which had come to a head while you were in prison. Yet you so masked your feelings that Wanda had no idea you even knew Ingelow by sight. He was younger, richer and more eligible than you, so you had no hope of supplanting him. Your old place as Wanda’s leading man was gone. Rodney was the rising star because he was young and attractive; yet you were the better actor. That was a bitter pill. You hated Rodney for that. You hated Wanda whom you had once loved for her fickleness and ingratitude. You were jealous of Ingelow. Since you couldn’t have Wanda yourself, you determined that Ingelow should never have her either; and you murdered him in such a way that Wanda and Rodney became the principal suspects. You arranged that cleverly by prompting Hutchins to tell Wanda the old story of Edward VII playing Vladimir to Bernhardt’s Fedora, knowing that Wanda would want her lover to do the same thing because she was always imitating great actresses of the past. Perhaps you even suggested to her that she revive Fedora.

“Do you know one reason I suspected you from the very beginning? Because you were the only real actor among the suspects. Margaret Ingelow wasn’t an actress at all; Wanda and Rodney just played themselves on the stage. But you played roles entirely different from your real self. Wanda could simulate various emotions, but she couldn’t act any personality other than her own. You alone of the suspects were artist enough to simulate a personality entirely alien to your own. You were the only one who could have been a murderer at heart and still have put on a convincing performance as an innocent man.”

“You’ve got most of it right—but not the motive.” Leonard’s voice was very quiet now. “That prison sentence was unjust because I was not a drunken driver.”

“You mean you hadn’t been drinking?”

“I’d been drinking all right but—I wasn’t driving.”

“Wanda?”

“Yes. She ran over the child. She drove on, and I changed places with her. Like a sap I took the wheel before the traffic cop caught up with us; and I took the rap for her afterward. The sudden change to a sedentary life and starchy diet in prison gave me diabetes. You know how it is—an officer transferred suddenly from the field to staff work gets diabetes the same way sometimes. I came out of prison to find my career ruined as well as my health and Wanda all set to marry this Ingelow. The diabetes had produced hardening of the arteries, and the doctors gave me only a few months to live. I had nothing to lose by murder—I was going to die anyway. What did I want in the last few weeks before I died? Just one thing—Wanda. Sometimes a man condemned to death asks for special food or other privileges. All I asked for was Wanda, and the only way to get her was by killing Ingelow.”

“No wonder Wanda suspected you,” said Basil. “She was the only one who knew all this.”

“But she needn’t have been afraid of me. I never would have killed her. It was for her I did it.”

“And the knife you threw at her a few moments ago?”

“That was for you. You knew too much and—”

A voice spoke from below. “Do you people realize that this is supposed to be a total black-out and there is a light shining through that fire door that’s standing open? If you don’t close it immediately, I’ll call the police!”

Leonard smiled.

“This is my cue for an exit.”

Quick as a monkey he turned and clambered upon the iron railing. Basil sprang forward to seize him. But Leonard had jumped already.

Just then the street lamp at the corner blazed into light. Basil’s eyes were so used to the darkness that it looked like a star shell radiating sparks in all directions. As he ran down the fire escape the Tilbury clock flashed red again. The air-raid warden’s gray overcoat turned faintly pink in the reflected light as he bent over the dark figure sprawled prone in the alley.

“This man is badly hurt!” he cried aghast.

“He’s dead,” answered Basil after a quick look. “Better go ahead and call the police.”

“There’s one little point I’d like to clear up,” said Foyle some time later. “Since Rod and Wanda were not guilty, why did they contradict each other in fixing the moment when Ingelow died that first night?”

“Perhaps because they were just guessing,” suggested Basil. “And guessing is a form of wishful thinking. When there are no facts for the mind to follow it follows its own fancy. Wanda said Ingelow seemed dead the first time she kissed him—thereby throwing suspicion on Leonard, the only person who approached Ingelow on stage before Wanda’s first kiss. She did that, consciously or unconsciously, because she hated Leonard as only such a woman can hate a discarded lover, and she was beginning to fear him. In the same way Rod ‘guessed’ Ingelow was alive the last time Rod touched him, thereby throwing suspicion on Wanda, the only person to approach Ingelow after that. Rod disliked Wanda because she had pursued him and made Pauline jealous. Actually both Rod and Wanda were wrong in this testimony. Compare Rod’s time table of the first act with the timing of the cue for murder, and you’ll see that Ingelow was alive when Wanda first kissed him and dead when Rod last touched him. Of course, Leonard, as the murderer, did his best to throw suspicion on both Rod and Wanda by saying Ingelow was alive before either had approached him on stage and dead after both had done so.”

One morning a few weeks later, Pauline and Rodney came once again to breakfast with Basil. But this time they seemed like any other pair of young lovers—carefree and rather charmingly absurd. Rodney shook hands with Basil three times and Pauline kissed him.

“I had nothing to do with it!” he protested. “You owe everything to a canary and a house fly.”

The End

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