Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 11, No. 51, February 1948

The lady who laughed by Roy Vickers

If you are under thirty, the name of Lucien Spengrave probably suggests nothing but one of those “famous crimes” which are periodically retold. Actually, Spengrave himself was famous; his crime only so by virtue of the roundabout way in which it was uncovered by Scotland Yard.

You may have heard that he was a successful comedian. He was a unique comedian. He played only one role — that of a circus clown. But he had never played it in a circus. For the last ten years of his life he played it in his own West End theatre — in which the cheap seats were half and the expensive seats double the prevailing prices.

His jokes and stage business — as eminent historians of the theatre and the circus have pointed out — were literally hundreds of years old. For instance, that almost incredibly crude act in which the clown helps the Ringmasters attendants roll up a carpet, trips, and gets himself rolled up in the carpet. They say that, in a real circus, young children will still laugh at it. Spengrave played that act to the most sophisticated audiences in the world. From all classes he drew belly-laughs and tears — from that same carpet that can be traced back to Eleventh Century Bohemia.

The clue to the mystery — as opposed to evidence of the murder — lay in the personality of the man who could evolve such a technique. When June, Spengrave’s wife, disappeared so dramatically and was later found dead, the armchair detective might well have beaten the practical man by betting blindly on Spengrave’s genius in manipulating the deadly obvious.

She disappeared during a cocktail party on the lawn of their riverside house at Binbury on the last Thursday of August, 1936. Spengrave never played during August, though he had to practice in his gymnasium five days a week, muscular control being as essential to him as to a pianist.

There were some twenty guests, all being June’s friends. She had complained that he was never “matey” with her friends — he was, indeed, rather ponderous in private life and a, poor mixer; so he said he would give the guests a light version of the lecture he periodically delivered to Universities — the lecture that had brought him three honorary degrees.

The guests felt themselves highly privileged. From the gymnasium, whose double doors gave on to the garden, six of the male guests brought the classic carpet; others, the tray with the goblet screwed down and the masks for the two-headed dog. There was brisk competition for the honor of being selected as stooges to roll the carpet for Spengrave’s demonstration.

“The Clown is traditionally a subhuman, struggling to reach the level of humanity. The Clown never consciously plays the fool. He is desperately anxious to help the normal men roll the carpet in the normal way. Observe my shoulders as I approach the men at the carpet.”

Thus he dissected the carpet act. The two-headed dog act followed. The garden sloped down to the river in three little leveled lawns. June led her guests to the second lawn, clear of the carpet.

For some six minutes he traced the act from its origin at the court of King Henry VIII, then turned to the tray and goblet.

“In this act we see anxiety expressed exclusively with the feet. I shall need more space for this. The upper lawn is wide enough, I think. Oh, the carpet is in the way!”

“Shall we roll it up again and put it back in the gym, Mr. Spengrave?”

The speaker was Fred Periss, a youngish, handsome man. Spengrave turned and looked at him as if the offer were surprising. Then:

“Yes, please,” said Spengrave.

There was a scramble to deal with the carpet, in which some of the girls joined. It would be something to talk about afterwards — that they had once helped the great Spengrave with the very carpet that was used on the stage.

When they had all come back from the gymnasium, Spengrave resumed his lecture.

“The Clown is proud because he has been entrusted with the dignified duty of carrying wine to the Lady. To reduce this to its basic values, I shall want June to stooge for me, if she will.” He called: “June, dear!”

To keep the great man waiting — even if it was his wife who was doing it — was an outrage.

“June!” they shouted. “June, where are you? June!”

The time when they were calling her was reconstructed and checked as being about six-fifty. At six-thirty she had been well in evidence, fussing a little over her duties as hostess.

Her disappearance spoiled the lecture. The party began to break up. The honored stooges returned the tray and goblet and the masks for the two-headed dog act to the gymnasium. By seven-fifteen the last guest had gone.

At eight Spengrave toyed with a lonely dinner. At eight-thirty he rang the Reading police. The Inspector came at once with a sergeant. The routine investigation revealed that there were no signs whatever of Mrs. Spengrave having prepared for her departure. The possibility of her having thrown herself into the river, unobserved, was explored and dismissed.

An hour later, because Spengrave was so distinguished, the Chief Constable appeared in person.

“There’s one question I must ask in your own interest, Mr. Spengrave—”

“Has my wife bolted with a lover?” cut in Spengrave. “No. If there had been a lover in the offing, she would thoroughly have enjoyed telling me.” The Chief was sufficiently convinced. His eye strayed to a large photograph of a woman with a strange, cold beauty.

“Is that Mrs. Spengrave?” As her husband nodded, “I have never had the pleasure of meeting her. But I’ve seen her somewhere.”

“Perhaps in one of the many pictures of her in the Academy years ago. She used to be an artist’s model. Also, she appeared in one of my Acts for four years — before we were married.”

“That’s where I saw her! In The Lady Who Wouldn’t Laugh.”

“Correct! She ought to be easy to find.”

“If nothing happens by mid-day tomorrow we’ll fix a broadcast appeal,” said the Chief, and departed.

Close upon midnight on Friday the police rang. There had been an answer from Edinburgh, of a loss-of-memory case, which bore some slight resemblance to the description of Mrs. Spengrave.

“I’ll go by plane early tomorrow,” said Spengrave.

Before leaving, after a very early breakfast, he told his housekeeper: “The men should be here this morning from the theatre to overhaul my things and take some of them back. If they aren’t here by eleven, ’phone the theatre and tell the manager I want to know why. When they come, make things easy for them, will you, and give them all they want.”

All that the men wanted was the loan of a vacuum cleaner. And when they unrolled the classic carpet, they found the dead body of June Spengrave.

Lucien Spengrave had begun as an artist. At the Slade School, where he learned his technique, he kept his individuality in check. When he began painting he attracted a great deal of attention but very few checks.

As a person he enjoyed a kind of oblique popularity. “Funny thing, but I can’t help rather liking Spengrave.” His life was blameless, yet men tended to apologize for liking him. There was the hint of a reason in the background, unexpressed because no one knew how to express it.

There was nothing odd about him physically except that, if you were to see him for the first time sitting down, you might think that he was a large, tall man, whereas he just escaped being short. That was because he had a large, long, lean face, suggesting a scholarly monk; the mouth was long and thin-lipped, but in the eyes — wide and unusually blue — the prevailing expression was that of gentleness.

When Kenfield became a Minister, he commissioned Spengrave to paint him, but refused to accept the portrait on the ground that it was not like him. Carron James, whose plays were about to earn him a knighthood, gave Spengrave a hundred guineas for the portrait.

“I’m buying it, Spengrave, because it’s an excellent bit o’ work. Also because I have always hated Kenfield. Cosh, he must have felt that portrait like.a whip across the face! It enables me to see him as a poor, ineffectual devil like myself. And I don’t hate him any more. D’you see what I mean?”

“No,” said Spengrave. “But your check is a godsend.”

“Is it? It oughtn’t to be, to a man of your talent.” Carron James couldn’t help rather liking the fellow. “If you’re hard up, why not try a sideline in caricature? I’ll give you an introduction if you like.”

With a topical caricature of the Prime Minister under his arm, Spengrave kept an appointment with the editor of a leading Opposition paper. The editor looked at the caricature. He chuckled but the chuckle died in his throat.

“I like that! But I can’t publish it. If you care to sell it to me pel tonally I’ll give you a tenner for it.”

“You can have it for nothing,” said Spengrave, “if you will tell me why you won’t publish it, though you obviously like it.”

“Your picture is true. But it tells an unbearable truth. It’s — cruel! It even pulls me into a kind of nervous sympathy with him.”

“Thank you,” said Spengrave. “The drawing is yours.”

Spengrave walked back to his studio, wishing he could have accepted the tenner without wounding his self-respect. Things were getting very low. In three months he would be starting the round of the pawnshops. He looked at himself in one of the long mirrors.

“You thought you were being topical and damned witty. And you were only being cruel and killing your market. Clown!”

He snatched the brush and palette and began to paint a portrait of himself — became absorbed, barely conscious that the clown-theme was predominating until, four hours later, he had finished.

He stood back, looking at his self-portrait.

“The best thing I’ve done!” He giggled weakly and the tears ran down his cheeks. “But it tells an unbearable truth. It’s cruel!”

He began to pace the studio, uncertainly, like a drunkard.

“Carron James said much the same thing. That means I must have a streak of cruelty in me without knowing it. But the others know it. However civil people are, they never accept me as one of themselves.

“I want to be like other men. I want to eat and drink without thought and be clean and have proper clothes. I want a woman to love me terrifically and be glad to have children with me. I want to be life other men!”

Melancholia drove him to self-pity, but intelligence warned him that if he wanted something he must fight for it. He returned to the portrait.

“If I turn the cruelty on to myself, the others will be — ‘pulled into a kind of nervous sympathy’ with me. That’s what he said. And then I can make them laugh or cry.”

Thus he found the formula which carried him to stardom in three months and kept him there for the rest of his life.

For five years he was the star turn in the music halls, touring all the capitals that could fill a large house at good prices. Always he played the circus clown in difficulties. He used the fact that a whitefaced clown is not particularly funny to a modern audience — he exposed the clown’s unfunniness with a stark brutality that shocked his audience into sympathy with the clown — a twist in the story brought release and the belly-laugh. That put the audience in his pocket. He could play on all the basic emotions. The idiot face of the clown could flash into a disconcerting sensitiveness that gave a new tang to poltroonery.

With the coming of the talkies and the decay of the music hall, he took a theatre for himself, filling it with straight musical and dramatic acts of a high class.

He met June in the course of a visit to one of his artist friends. She was tall and blonde with regular features and regular lines, handsome rather than beautiful. Her curves were artistically correct rather than voluptuous. His glance was wholly professional.

“Let me know when you’ve finished with that girl,” he said in an undertone.

“I’ve finished now, if you’ve got work for her — I owe her for three sittings. June, come and meet Mr. Spengrave.”

Like many an artist’s model, June was respectable to the point of prudery, educated in genteel snobbery but hardly anything else. She was conscientious and unmercenary at this stage of her life, and would work loyally for anyone who would affect to treat her as a lady. Her lucky physicality gave her the appearance of a solemn young queen disguised as a housemaid.

On Spengrave’s stage she was required to behave exactly as she behaved in a studio — sit stock still, not utter a word and look handsomely expressionless — The Lady Who Wouldn’t Laugh.

On the first night she virtually killed the act. For when the twist came in the story, bringing the release, June laughed too.

“Don’t laugh, you dreadful little fool!” he whispered with such venom that she had no difficulty in obeying. He more or less gagged his way out of the debacle, but the act was not a success that night.

Afterwards, she came tearfully to his dressing-room.

“I’m very sorry indeed, Mr. Spengrave. No wonder you were so angry! But it was suddenly all so funny!”

“My fault for not rehearsing you enough. Be here tomorrow at ten, and we’ll go over it again.”

He was not quite sure of her after the morning rehearsal. He gave her lunch in his suite at the top of the theatre, and afterwards asked her if she felt confident.

“I’m still worried about that bit where you fall in the carpet the second time the funny time, Mr. Spengrave!”

“Hm! I know you’re trying hard. Perhaps too hard. Sit in that arm-chair and relax all you can. Now, don’t make any effort. Just let your will gently slide into your mind and tell it you mustn’t laugh. Repeat this after me... The carpet isn’t funny... The goblet and tray isn’t funny... Nothing that he does is funny... I will never laugh again.”

He left her, went to his bedroom to rest. A couple of hours later when he returned to the living-room she was still there.

“Ooh! I must have had a nap!” she added: “It’s all right now, Mr. Spengrave. I’ll never laugh again.”

The Lady Who Wouldn’t Laugh became one of the most popular acts. It stayed in the bill for four years — and was only taken off when June contracted pneumonia. He could fairly easily have replaced her, but she had been loyal and efficient and regular, and he felt that as a decent employer he owed her some consideration.

As a decent employer, he went to see her at the nursing home when she was convalescent, bringing her the usual gift of grapes. In four years, with other members of the company, she had toured Europe and America with him; yet he had had hardly any personal conversation with her, knew nothing about her.

He exerted himself to draw her out, discovered that, when she forgot to be genteel, she was a simple, likeable person. He suspected that she had few friends and at his next visit asked her whether this were true.

“Oh, I don’t know, Mr. Spengrave! I get on well enough with most people, though I do keep myself to myself. Of course, there are always men of the wrong sort, but they don’t appeal to me. I’ll own up I’ve got the idea that ordinary people think me a bit queer. It makes you feel lonely, sometimes, if you know what I mean.”

Spengrave knew what she meant — knew it a hundred times better than she did. In those hours of self-revelation when he had painted his own portrait, he had found a formula for commercial success; but he had found nothing else.

At his next call at the nursing home he asked her to marry him.

“Ooh! Mr. Spengrave!” She was staggered. “Well, of course I will, if you’re sure you want to!”

After a while she said: “It’ll take a bit of getting used to. You see, I’ve always thought of you as not being like other men.”

He caught his breath as if she had stabbed him.

“Ever since you were so kind to me that first time when I let you down by laughing, I’ve put you in a class apart. I thought you superior to all the men and women I’ve ever met. And I still think it. So, naturally, it makes me a bit shy of you.”

“Oh, my darling!” He kissed her with love and overwhelming gratitude. “And I am shy of you, June — because you think that of me. We’ll help each other.”

So they did, for three years — with very different effects on their very different natures. June, who had been a conscientious stooge, became a conscientious wife, striving solemnly to serve him and to please him. She discovered that he liked her to look always as nice as possible, so she studied dress. When he did not require her presence she regarded her time as her own, and developed along her own lines. In a sense she loved him — did not suspect that, in no sense, was she in love with him.

In an undreamed affluence, dormant traits in her character became active. She began to preen herself as the wife of a wealthy celebrity, cultivated by High-ups, who were seeking neither money nor publicity nor introductions. Such people were outside her orbit, but at the local river-sailing club and the tennis club she was somebody.

She gathered a large circle of friends. Although she patronized them a little, they liked her. That she never laughed at their quips they took as her reminder that she was the wife of the world’s greatest clown. One youngish man, Fred Periss, tall and dark, handsome as a stage Guardsman, was particularly attracted to her.

Spengrave for his part was aware of partial failure, for which he blamed himself with secret humiliation. In the essentials of their life together she obeyed him punctiliously as she had formerly obeyed a call to rehearsal. But there was a barrier he had never passed. She never actually called him “Mr. Spengrave,” but he could not rid himself of the fear that she might absent-mindedly do so. Like a damp cloud the conviction settled on him that he was not regarded by his wife as other men were regarded by their wives.

He had not the leisure to go visiting with her. His appearances at her parties were perfunctory. He was glad for her sake that she had made so many friends, though he found them noisy and dull-witted.

One afternoon in the first week in August, when he was dozing in the drawing-room, he was startled by an unfamiliar sound. He sat bolt upright, fully awake. The sound came again, from the garden.

It was the sound of June laughing.

In his spine was an eerie tingling as a thought formed itself against his will.

“I’ve never heard her laugh — since that night she killed the act.”

He ran into the garden, could not see her. He turned the corner by the laurel bushes and saw her in the arms of Fred Periss. She was not struggling.

“Fred! Oh, why did you have to do that!” she cried in distress.

“Why pretend? You didn’t hate it, darling, did you!”

“That makes it all the worse. I shall have to tell Lucien now. It wasn’t worth troubling him before.”

Spengrave slipped back to his chair in the drawing-room and picked up a book. Within a few minutes she came. She had smoothed her hair and shaken out her frock, where Periss had rumpled it.

“Lucien, Fred Periss kissed me just now. Not a party kiss — the real sort, I think it was. I expect it was partly my fault.”

“We needn’t lose our heads. Better ask him in here.”

“He’s gone. Are you angry with me?”

Spengrave was thinking. He himself could crush her up and kiss her. But he could not draw from her that lovely rippling laugh — full of fun and games. Other men, of course, could make their wives laugh like that.

“I’m not angry with you, June. It isn’t the sort of thing one can be angry about. Are you in love with him?”

She meditated her answer, tried honestly to clear her thought, and failed.

“Ooh! I don’t understand love.”

She meant it, but it was obviously untrue. She would very soon discover that she did understand love. Perhaps, thought Spengrave, there was still time for him.

“Then let’s forget it, dear.”

“I’m so glad you aren’t angry, Lucien. And I think I can forget it all right. I’ll try hard to think of other things.”

“Try thinking of me!” he said, rising nimbly from his chair.

Again came the delicious rippling sound that was her rediscovered laughter. Vibrant with happiness he put his arms round her. “You laugh because at last you’re happy?” he asked.

“I laughed because you looked so funny, jumping out of that chair — like a jack-in-the-box.”

It spoiled the kiss, ruined his moment. He was not disconsolate. There were kisses to come — “the real sort,” if he could thrust himself into her imagination.

She said she would like to go on the river before dinner. He brought the punt alongside, called to her when he was ready, steadied the boat with one foot on the landing stage. He watched her approaching, watched her with reawakened desire — and again she laughed.

“Standing like that with that funny look on your face, you reminded me of something,” she explained. “Can’t think what it was.”

“Somebody’s pet poodle begging for its dinner?” he suggested.

“No, it wasn’t that.” She had taken his question seriously. “I wish I could remember.”

In himself was a deep inner disturbance which he shrank from defining. Presently she was babbling about giving a cocktail party.

“When will it be, dear?”

“On the last Thursday of the month. It would be so nice if you could spare an hour or so. They would appreciate it so!”

He would give her anything, do anything for her, if only she would regard him as other men were regarded by their wives. And perhaps she would.

“Darling, I’ll be there the whole time and I’ll do everything I can to make your party a riproaring success.” When she had finished exclaiming, he went on: “I always feel I’m a bit of a wet blanket at parties. I just haven’t got the trick of sitting around and swapping backchat, and that sort of thing. How would they like it if I were to give them the lecture I gave at Oxford last year? We could get the props out on the lawn.”

They would adore it, she assured him. She knew that, though much of it might be above their heads, they would be flattered by his condescension.

Over dinner she was companionable, more light hearted, more spirited than he had ever known her to be. She was expanding, he thought, opening like a rose in the sunshine of their new understanding. He held fast to that conception throughout the evening.

That night she laughed — she said — at his dressing gown. It was an ordinary silk dressing gown, by no means new, which she had often seen before. Uncertain of himself and her, he sat on the edge of her bed and talked of anything that came into his head — became aware that she was unconscious of any strain.

“There’s plenty of time before the party, June. Would you like us to go away for a fortnight somewhere? We might pop over to Switzerland.”

“Well, if it’s for me I’m in no hurry to go away.” She added: “I love it here.”

“So do I!” He touched her hand, gripped it. “It’s our home, yours and mine. Not a bad old place, is it? And it would be just fine if we happened to have a family. Wouldn’t it, June?”

She did not answer. Her face was hard and drawn, and he feared lest she had read into his words a reproach that she had not yet borne him a child.

“June, darling!” He bent over her, touched her hair with his lips. “I only meant—”

From the back of her nostrils came the absurd noise made by a schoolboy trying not to laugh in class.

As he sprang away, she burst into open laughter. He stood at a distance from the bed, staring down at her. When she looked up at him, the laughter started afresh. He waited, standing very still, until she stopped from exhaustion.

“Perhaps you will tell me why you laugh at me, though I think I know.”

“I couldn’t help it!” she gasped. “You, perched on the side of the bed with that dressing gown, saying — all that! — you were so funny!” She spluttered with the aftermath of laughter.

He strode in silence to the door.

“Oh, Lucien, it’s not fair to be offended and angry with me! You are funny — or you wouldn’t be you — especially when you’re saying something serious. You can’t expect me to behave as if you were like other men.”

“Yes. I thought that was why,” he said, and left her room.

Her reasoning was slovenly, for she had forgotten that she had not thought him funny in his personal life until today. The man who intended to be her lover had already awakened her to full womanhood — had enabled her to see that she was in very truth married to a clown.

He went downstairs to his study, which adjoined the gymnasium, poured himself a stiff brandy. Presently, rummaging in a cabinet, he took out the portrait of himself which he had painted long ago in his Bloomsbury studio.

“The best thing I’ve done!” The words echoed down the years. “And it tells an unbearable truth. It’s cruel!”

But its cruelty was not as unbearable as the cruelty of that laughter which was as a flaming sword holding him from his human heritage — a mirror into which he must gaze and see himself “not like other men.”

He turned again to the self-portrait, remembered his despair.

“Last time, I cashed on in my own misery. Can I do it a second time? Work. Thank heavens she didn’t want to go for that holiday! I can work instead of thinking.”

With nervous eagerness he grabbed a pencil and a folder. He flopped into his armchair and began to work up some notes he had made for a new scene — a change ring on the classic carpet act, introducing a girl stooge.

He drove up to London next day, put in a couple of hours desk work at the theatre, which he was re-opening in the second week in September. There was a letter from the mother of June’s successor saying the girl had had measles, but expected to be well enough to rehearse in a fortnight.

A week later, June, passing by the open garden doors of the gymnasium, saw him leaning ill-temperedly against the wall.

“Do you want anything, Lucien?”

“Mabel is sick. I wanted to rehearse myself rather than her. Hangs me up.”

“Well, what’s wrong with me?” She came in from the garden. “What’s the job?”

“Nothing you’d fancy, my dear. The girl gets rolled in the carpet instead of the clown.”

“All right. Only, it’ll ruin this dress.” She slipped it off.

“The carpet will scratch your shoulders. Here!” He helped her into a dressing-gown — it happened to be the green silk dressing-gown.

“I shall split the seams,” she warned. “I’m bigger than you.”

The words made him feel as if he were a dwarf, which added a spur to rehearsal.

“When I unroll you, sit up and stare at me; hold the stare while I do my business. You’ll want two coils of the carpet, or else you’ll show. Better do it yourself, or I may hurt you. Lie down, your middle as near dead centre as you can. You can pull one coil over you. Then use all your weight to complete another coil.”

For two hours she helped him uncomplainingly, while the idea came to her that it would be rather a lark if he would consent to doing the act at her party, with herself as the stooge. She was a little anxious lest that lecture on the theory of the clown, which appealed to the dons of Oxford, might be above the heads of her friends. She at any rate, would give them a good laugh when she popped out of the carpet. She knew that the carpet was used in the lecture.

When she asked him, he showed no enthusiasm. But she pointed out how easily she could steal away while he was holding their attention.

“What about your frock, though? You’ll be varnished up for the party, won’t you?”

“I was thinking — I could nip up to my room and slip on the frock I used in the act. No one has worn it since I dropped out. It’s still in the property wardrobe — if you’ll bring it down for me tomorrow. It’s velvet corduroy, and the carpet won’t do it any harm — being red, it’ll make a fine splash of color.”

“I might keep you there two or three minutes. You could breathe all right, couldn’t you?”

“Yes — it’s a bit stuffy. And when I called out to you when you kept me waiting just now, you couldn’t hear me. Anyway, I shan’t mind.”

“Hm! I must be careful not to suffocate Mabel. She’ll have to lie in it for upwards of ten minutes.”

When he was at the theatre the following morning, there was no dresser present. He himself collected the key from the caretaker, found the number of the list, and took the velvet corduroy frock from one of the fireproof cupboards and put it in June’s suitcase.

“She has the mind of a child,” he reflected as he drove home. Her child-mind labeled him a very clever man, strong, kind, good, rich, influential. But her adult woman’s instinct thought him funny.

With the impetus given by the stage hands, the corpse of June Spengrave rolled clear of the carpet. When they had recovered from the momentary shock, the men correctly shut the gymnasium and mounted guard, while one rang the police.

The Inspector was shortly followed by the Chief Constable. He caused a telephone message, sympathetically worded, to be sent to the airfield at Edinburgh. By the time Spengrave arrived, after stopping at the mortuary in Reading to identify the body, the Chief had possessed himself of the main facts. It was assumed that June had died of asphyxia, though the later medical report established that the immediate cause of death was shock.

Spengrave’s account of the incidents of the party did not differ in any essential detail from that already obtained from some of the guests.

“When you asked the men of the party to roll up the carpet and take it back to the gym, Mr. Spengrave, I gather that they all went at the job, and some of the women joined in. D’you think it possible that poor Mrs. Spengrave may have joined in the scramble, that she may have fallen down and been rolled up without anybody noticing — in fact, just as the thing happens in the circus?”

“You ask if I think it possible. Theoretically, anything is possible. I think it very grossly improbable. There were at least six men rolling. If she fell flat on the carpet, the faces of at least three of them would have been within a few feet of her. They must have seen her.”

“Then she must have been inside the first coil or two of the carpet when the men started to roll it?”

“Obviously!” agreed Spengrave.

“The doctor is already able to say that there are no signs of violence on the body. No one knocked her out and partly rolled her in the carpet. Therefore — a hostess suddenly slips away from her guests, rolls herself in the carpet — so that her guests may unconsciously assist her to commit suicide?”

Spengrave looked tired and indifferent, as if all this were none of his business.

“She was not happy with me, as I hinted to you yesterday. But she was not melancholic. The last person to think of suicide.”

Spengrave, thought the Chief, was no humbug. He was not pretending to be grid-stricken. But he was being very wooden, showed no desire to help.

“Against the theory of her having rolled herself up,” continued the Chief, “is the fact that she had had some stage experience under yourself. She was familiar with that carpet, knew how heavy it was, must have known she was doing a very dangerous thing.”

Spengrave snapped his fingers excitedly.

“That’s a glimmer in the dark!” he exclaimed. “She was familiar with that carpet, you said. Hold that thought, while I add something. That carpel was rolled up the wrong way — namely from right to left, standing with your back to the river. I noticed it, but did not want to ask the guests to unroll it and start again. Now are you guessing what I’ve guessed?”

This was what the Chief had been waiting for.

“She assumed it would be rolled up from the other end,” said the Chief, “and that therefore she would be unrolled.” As Spengrave nodded encouragingly: “But why — when there was no need to be there at all?”

“To give her guests a laugh — and to guy my lecture. She had,” he added, “the mind of a child;”

Thus Spengrave, for all his subtlety, had suggested a cause of death other than murder — always an unwise course when there is any chance of murder being suspected.

At the inquest Spengrave gave substantially the same answers as he had given to the Chief. The Chief Constable did not waste time studying him while he was giving evidence. Actors never betray themselves with involuntary movements of body, hands, or face. The jury returned a verdict of death by misadventure. The Chief, without any publicity, consulted Scotland Yard.

Chief Inspector Karslake was very dubious.

“If it’s murder at all, where is the overt act?” he asked. “The guests did the actual killing. And Spengrave didn’t even incite them to it.”

“If you were to induce a drunkard to lie down on a railway track and then watched him being killed, I could hang you, Mr. Karslake, without proving that you had incited the engine driver,” said the Chief Constable.

“But the lady wasn’t drunk,” objected Karslake. “And Spengrave didn’t—”

“Yes, he did. Look here!” The Chief spread out a chart of the garden, with all distances noted in feet and inches. “The woman was last seen at six thirty-five, when Spengrave finished his demonstration with the carpet. Between six forty and about six forty-seven, the guests were all — here — their eyes glued to Spengrave, who was lecturing about the double-headed dog.” He carried his pencil upwards and to the right. “Spengrave alone can see the carpet — he has a clear view. He would have seen his wife — must have seen her — go to that carpet.”

“You’ve certainly got something there,” admitted Karslake.

“Spengrave told them he doubted whether he had enough room on the lower lawn for the tray-and-goblet business. One of the men — Periss — asked him if they should roll up the carpet at once and take it back to the gym. Spengrave said, ‘Yes, please.’ That’s incitement.” The Chief went on: “As Spengrave is standing pat, it won’t matter if he knows we’re on his track. He thinks that, whatever we suspect, we can’t get any evidence.”

“So do I!” said Karslake gloomily. “But we’ll try.”

Karslake tried so hard that he came within an ace of committing homicide himself. He had his junior rolled in Spengrave’s carpet, observed that at the fourth coiling the weight of the carpet bore down the fringes so that air was excluded. The unfortunate junior had observed the same phenomenon some minutes before Karslake.

“That Chief Constable was simply passing the buck!” said Karslake after a month of fruitless investigation. “How can we prove that Spengrave induced her to get into the carpet, and that he wasn’t looking at his notes or something when she did it? I’m sick of the sight of those dossiers. Shove ’em along to the Department of Dead Ends and forget ’em!”

Spengrave sold his house by the river, warehoused his expensive furniture, and resumed residence in the suite at the top of the theatre. The act of the girl in the carpet was never put on.

The Department of Dead Ends, by its nature, could not function until a new light was thrown on a case by some tangential occurrence, some chance echo, even if it were only a chance remark. When this happened and a prosecution followed, Chief Inspector Karslake always called it Detective Inspector Rason’s “luck.”

“I’ve got a niece too,” protested Karslake. “And I hope I’m at least as good an uncle as you are. But my niece has never yet happened to babble out the dope on a case that’s been dead meat for over a year. So I will say it’s luck.”

This, in a police car shortly before mid-day in October 1937 — some fourteen months after the death of June Spengrave. They labored the matter of Rason’s niece because they were both secretly ill at ease. For they were on their way to Spengrave’s theatre, to ask him some questions they were confident he could not answer — which is a strange state of mind for a detective. But Spengrave was a distinguished man, whom nearly everybody could not help liking.

“She didn’t give me any dope — she gave me backchat,” retorted Rason. “I told her she didn’t need a new frock because she had a lovely one already. And she said if she went to a garden party in August in her corduroy velvet, people would be laughing over it when she was an old woman. I happened to remember the words ‘corduroy velvet’ in the dossier — and a garden party tool I’ve put in more than two months’ work on that bit o’ corduroy velvet, and you call it luck — sir!”

“You don’t have to ‘sir’ me till we get back,” chuckled Karslake. “This is your case, my boy, and welcome!”

The car stopped at the theatre. Rason thrust his card through the window of the box office. In due course an attendant presented himself.

“Mr. Spengrave is sorry he will have to keep you waiting for a few minutes. Will you follow me, please?” They were led through unsuspected corridors to the back of the stage and thence, up a single flight of stairs, to Spengrave’s dressing-room. It was a very large room with more than the usual number of mirrors. Above the mirrors was a frieze, depicting the Clown throughout the ages. In one wide corner was a writing table. There were two divans. The detectives took one each.

“Haven’t had much to do with the stage!” remarked Karslake. “What’s the good of putting all those telephones over the wash basin? — to say nothing of there being a bath-room behind this curtain.”

“They use the dressing-room as an office and a parlor as well,” Rason’s eye traveled along the frieze, to the court jester, to the hunchback pelted by the mediaeval audience, to the buffoon-god of Greek comedy, to the Sacaea of ancient Babylon where the King of the Revels, still wearing his mock crown, is sacrificed to the goddess Ishtar.

“Good Lord, they’ve all got Spengrave’s face!” ejaculated Rason. He caught Karslake’s eye and added defiantly: “I’m going to put the cards on the table with this bloke.”

For some minutes they sat in silence. Then the door opened. Both men gasped. Both were momentarily as confused as schoolboys.

“I’m sorry I had to keep you waiting, gentlemen.”

Spengrave was in make-up. They stared at the gray-white, idiot face of the Clown, the splash of carmine, harsh and hideous at close quarters, the bald wig, the conical cap.

“Perhaps we — perhaps you would rather we waited while you change, Mr. Spengrave?” faltered Rason.

“Quite unnecessary! You don’t imagine that I’m going to make jokes and fall over carpets.” The voice coming out of that preposterous face was both irritable and authoritative. “I’ve just been having stills taken of a new act. Sit down, please. What can I do for you?”

“We’ve come on a very serious matter, Mr. Spengrave. We have to put to you certain questions arising out of your wife’s death. If you refuse to answer, or if your answers are unsatisfactory, we shall have to ask you to come along with us.”

As Spengrave swung a swivel chair from his dressing-table the mirrors caught him in cross-reflection, so that Rason was compelled to contemplate the Clown face multiplied to infinity, staring into his.

“Go ahead, Inspector.”

“Can you describe the dress your wife was wearing at that party?”

“No. I’ve no eye for women’s dress and no memory.”

“That’s unusual in one of your profession, especially as you yourself were once a pictorial artist.” Rason was opening an attaché case. He took out a mill board, on which was a painting of a woman’s dress of green crepe.

“Is this the dress she was wearing?”

“It may have been,” he said. “I think it is.”

“Quite right. It is. Five of the women who were your guests that day have identified it.” Rason added: “I obtained a judge’s order to examine your furniture at the repository. That dress was in the wardrobe of the deceased! By the way, both the men and women guests remarked that they had not been allowed to see the poor lady after death.”

“That was nothing to do with me — the local police were in charge,” rasped Spengrave. “In any case it was unnecessary. I identified the body.”

“Yes, of course. After you had flown down from Edinburgh. The major examination had not then taken place. The body was almost exactly as it had been found in the gymnasium.” Rason leaned forward and tapped the picture of the green crepe dress. “Did you see that dress on the dead body of your wife?”

“I can’t remember.”

“You can’t remember!” echoed Rason. “Do you mean that you may or may not have seen that dress on the body?” As Spengrave assented, Rason produced a police photograph of the corpse taken in the gymnasium.

“That is the dress you saw in the mortuary. You can’t see the color, but the line of that dress is quite different. And here it is in color.”

Rason thrust at him a second mill board, a little crumpled and faded, on which was a painting of a red dress in velvet corduroy.

“Do you recognize that red velvet corduroy dress, Mr. Spengrave?”

“No,” snapped Spengrave “I’ve told you I’ve no memory for women’s dress.”

“But you’ve a memory for your own work, haven’t you? You designed that dress yourself. You painted the picture you have in your hand. It’s the dress she wore in her act with you — The Lady Who Wouldn’t Laugh.”

“By Jove, you’re right!” exclaimed Spengrave, as if surprised.

“On August 18th last year,” continued Rason, “you signed the book, in the keeping of your caretaker, for the key of the robe-room, or whatever you call it. You entered the robe-room with a suitcase. On August 21st, your chief dresser sent you a chit reporting that that dress was missing. You wrote on the chit ‘O.K.’ and initialed it. Why did your wife want that property dress, Mr. Spengrave?”

“I now remember the incidents you describe.” Spengrave spoke in the same authoritative, irritable voice. “But I don’t remember why my wife wanted that dress.”

“Let me suggest why you wanted her to have it, and you tell me if I’m wrong,” pressed Rason. “You created an act in which a girl is rolled in that carpet of yours. You asked your wife to play the girl and said you’d put on the act for the party. You fixed it so that she could slip into that carpet without anyone seeing her but you. And you fixed it so that someone should suggest rolling that carpet up. When Mr. Periss offered to do it you said, ‘Yes, please,’ thereby procuring the death of your wife. And that means murder.”

“You asked me to tell you if you were wrong,” chuckled Spengrave. “You are.”

“Maybe I’ve slipped up on a few details,” said Rason. “But do you deny that you created an act in which a girl is rolled up—”

“I deny it absolutely,” thundered Spengrave. “It would be an utterly futile act.”

“At the repository I found nothing in your desk — it was practically empty,” said Rason. “But under the cushion of the armchair that used to be in your study I found a manuscript in your handwriting. Here’s a typed copy. I don’t altogether understand stage directions. But there’s one bit where it says: ‘Clown kicks coil of carpet (laugh). Clown struggles with carpet. Fails. Walks away (laugh). Returns. Unrolls carpet. Girl sits up—’ ”

“All right!” Spengrave stood up. The figure of the clown facing destruction was not even tragic, only bizarre. “It will take me twenty minutes to change. Do you mind waiting in the foyer?”

“Sorry, Mr. Spengrave.” Again Rason’s eye traveled along the frieze — to the altar of lshtar, where the Clown is slain. “We shall have to stay with you.”

But, as is well known, Spengrave succeeded in shooting himself while he was changing, with the gun which he kept in a drawer for precisely that contingency.