Enter A Murderer

CHAPTER XXIII Epilogue to a Play

If Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn was interested in the dramatic unities it may have given him some sort of satisfaction to note that the epilogue to the Unicorn murder was spoken on the stage of the theatre.

Gardener had been taken away. Miss Emerald had indulged in a fit of genuine hysterics and had departed. Barclay Crammer, George Simpson, Howard Melville and Dulcie Deamer, all strangely unreal in the harsh light of actual tragedy, had walked down the stage door alley-way and disappeared. The Beadles had gone with old Blair.

Only Alleyn, Stephanie Vaughan, and a very shaken Nigel remained. The ceiling-cloth had been removed and the weighted sack that had hung from the top gallery lay in a rubbishy heap on the floor. Alleyn picked it up, and threw it into the dock, and shut the doors. Nigel stood in the stage door passage. Alleyn looked at him.

“Well, Bathgate,” he said. “Never make friends with a policeman.”

“I don’t think I feel that way about it,” decided Nigel slowly.

“You are generous,” said Alleyn.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“If I had told you what would you have done?”

Nigel couldn’t answer that.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Neither did I know.”

“I see.”

“Did the thought of it never enter your head?” Alleyn asked him compassionately.

“At first I thought it was Saint and then—” He looked through the wings on to the stage.

Stephanie Vaughan sat there in the arm-chair she had occupied on the night of the murder when Alleyn had first questioned her. She seemed lost in a profound meditation.

“Wait for me,” said Alleyn, “somewhere else.”

Nigel walked out into the yard. Alleyn went on to the stage.

“Come back from wherever you are,” he said softly.

She raised her head and looked at him.

“I can’t feel anything at all,” she murmured.

He put his hand over hers for a second.

“Cold,” he said. “That’s the shock. Whenever I have touched your hands they have been cold. Small wonder. Shall I get you a taxi?”

“Not yet. I want to get my bearings.”

She looked frowningly at her fingers as though she tried to remember something.

“I suppose you knew what I was up to all along?” she said at last.

“Not quite. I began to wonder, when you said the bruise on your shoulder was made by Surbonadier. I remembered how Gardener had stood with his hand on your shoulder when Surbonadier insulted you. I noticed how he gripped you, ”

She shivered.

“I was afraid then that he would do something dreadful,” she said.

“If it’s any comfort to you he would have done just what he did if you hadn’t existed.”

“I know. I was only an accessory after the fact, isn’t it? At any rate, not a motive.”

“In Surbonadier’s flat,” Alleyn told her, “I knew how much you were prepared to risk for him. I let you play your part. I let you think you had succeeded.”

“Why do you rub it in?”

“Why, to put it rather floridly, because I thought it would help you to hate me and so provide a counter-irritant.”

“Oh,” she said thoughtfully, “I don’t hate you.”

“That’s strange.”

“You were far too clever for me.”

“And yet,” said Alleyn, “half the victory is yours. From my heart I am sorry that it had to happen as it did. If I thought it would make any difference I would say I hated myself when I held you in my arms. It would only be half true. My thoughts were a mixture of grovel and glory.”

“What will happen to him?” she said suddenly. Her eyes dilated.

“I don’t know. He will be tried. He’s guilty and he’s a bad hat. You don’t love him. Don’t act. Don’t pretend. It’s going to be ghastly for you, but you left off loving him when you knew he’d done it.”

“Yes, that’s quite true.”

She began to weep, not at all beautifully, but with her face screwed up and with harsh sobs. He looked gravely at her and when she put out her hand, put his handkerchief into it. He went to Surbonadier’s dressing-room and found a nickel flask with whisky in it. With a grimace he washed a glass out and poured out a stiff nip. He took it back to her.

“Drink this. It’ll pull you together.”

She swallowed it, gasped, and shuddered.

“Now I’ll get you a taxi,” said Alleyn.

Nigel turned into the dock when he saw them come out. She got into the taxi.

“Good-bye,” she said. “You know where to find me if — I’m wanted.”

“Yes, you poor thing.”

She held out her hand and, after a moment’s hesitation, he kissed it.

“You’ll recover,” he told her. “Good-bye.”

He gave the address to the driver and stood for some time in the empty yard. Then he went back to Nigel.

“Well?” he said. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” said Nigel.

“All right. Lay back your ears. Here goes.”

He pulled forward a couple of dingy arm-chairs and rolled back the doors of the dock, letting in a thin flood of sunshine.

“Here goes,” he repeated and, lighting a cigarette, began his discourse.

“In homicide cases the police generally go for the obvious man. In spite of everything the psychologists say, and mind you they know what they’re talking about, the obvious man is generally the ‘he’ in the game. In this case the obvious man was the one who pulled the trigger — Gardener. So from the first I considered him carefully. Would anyone else have risked planting the cartridges? Suppose Gardener had not pulled the trigger or had pulled it too soon? Would anyone else be likely to chance this? Well, they might. But if Gardener himself was the murderer he stood to risk nothing. The next thing I reminded myself of was the fact that I was up against good acting. Gardener was a consummately good actor. So I discounted all his remorse and bewilderment. How cleverly he talked about the insincerity of actors, quietly building up a picture of himself as the only genuine one amongst them. I deliberately refused to accept all this. When we took the statements from the others I noted at once that he and Stephanie Vaughan were nearest to the stage.

“At this time I was, of course, still watching everybody. But he was in his room with her and her room next door was unoccupied and close to the stage. How easy for him to dart in there when he left her, pull on Saint’s gloves that he’d found on the stage (a stroke of luck that — he’d meant to use his own), make sure no one was in the passage, and then slip out, go on to the stage and in the dark change the cartridges. I wondered if his story of the sore foot was a fabrication, and deliberately I suggested the scent and he fell into the trap. That made me consider him seriously. Then he allowed you to get all that business about the libel case out of him, but only when he knew we’d find it out for ourselves. He told you Surbonadier had written the article. I wondered if he’d written it himself. When I found the forged signatures in Surbonadier’s flat I felt sure Gardener had been the author. Suppose Surbonadier had blackmailed him, threatening to expose him to Saint? Saint would have ruined his career. Suppose Surbonadier threatened to tell Stephanie Vaughan what I suspected was the truth about their Cambridge days? All supposition — but suggestive. I sent a man to Cambridge, who found the old servant who had looked after Gardener and who had overheard a conversation between him and Surbonadier in which Surbonadier accused him of writing the article. Gardener was much deeper in the drug-party stunts than he gave you to understand. No doubt his description of the passion he had for Stephanie Vaughan and the hatred he felt for Saint was true. This passion was drug-fed and inspired the article. I only got the Cambridge statement last night. It clinched matters.

“Then the wet-white. It was spilled after we left the dressing-room. Miss Vaughan said no one but herself and Trixie had been in the room after Surbonadier left it. Gardener was the only person who could have gone there. Anyone else would have run into the Beadles, who stood in the elbow of the passage before they went to the wardrobe-room. Gardener left her in his room to go to the stage. If Props had done the job he would not have gone near the star-room. Nor would Simpson, who was on the stage. Nor would Saint, if he’d come through the proscenium door, which squeaks like sour hell, anyway. But Gardener would.”

“You mean,” said Nigel, “he left her in his room, went into hers and put on the gloves, made sure there was no one in the passage and darted on to the stage. That was when he got the wet-white on the gloves?”

“Yes.”

“What about the threatening letter?”

“Aha! His first bad break. He typed that letter on the stage during the last act for future use in case he wanted to substantiate that little romance of the sore toe. Then he must suddenly have remembered that after the murder he would probably be searched. He had prepared no plan to circumvent that; the whole business of the note was an impromptu effort suggested by his chance encounter in the dark. One imagines him regretting his cleverness then, for he couldn’t possibly destroy the paper completely while on the stage. On the spur of the moment he must have slipped it out of sight somewhere about the desk, perhaps simply in the pile of unused type-paper. After I’d searched him he had the opportunity to retrieve it while he waited on the stage for Miss Vaughan. You told me he always hammered away at the letter Q in that scene. He must have remembered telling you that, and when he recovered the paper he wiped away the prints on the machine from every letter except Q. Most artistic, but fortunately Bailey had already tested the machine, careful creature that he is, and found Gardener’s prints all over it. When we tested it again — no prints on any letter but Q. All would have been well if Bailey had been a little less industrious.”

“But Stephanie Vaughan’s confession—” began Nigel.

“Her confession! Her confession that she’d gone to Surbonadier’s flat and tried to get back the forged paper that she knew he kept in his box. Her confession that I’d found her and she hoped she’d bamboozled me into thinking she was after her letters. Her confession that I’d held her in my arms and that I was his worst enemy—” Alleyn stopped short.

There was a long pause, during which Nigel gazed speculatively at his friend.

“And Props?” he said at last.

“Props I never suspected. A guilty man would never have blackguarded Surbonadier as he did and he was too silly, poor chap, to have done it. He had recognized Gardener somehow in the dark. He may have brushed against him and given him the idea of the toe tarradiddle. Quite possible. Anyway, Props was all for shielding the murderer of his girl’s betrayer. Until he saw the news of Saint’s arrest. Then he wrote that note to me. He rang up Gardener and I suppose told him he knew something. Gardener suggested the theatre as a rendezvous, probably Props mentioned the window in Simon’s Alley. Gardener dressed up as the old boy in an opera cloak and completely diddled our Mr. Wilkins. Disguise is usually a figment of detective fictionists’ imagination, but again — Gardener was a consummate actor. He could risk it. You called while he was away murdering Props.”

Alleyn described his views as regards the second murder. Nigel listened appalled.

“Wilkins’s successor saw the old gentleman in the opera cloak return and failed to recognize him. The flat had been searched this morning. We hope to find evidence of the disguise. I think the overwhelming conceit of most murderers proved a little too much for Felix Gardener. The killing of Props was a bad mistake and yet — what could he do? Props, poor silly oaf that he was, evidently told him he wouldn’t stand for an innocent man’s trial and possible conviction. Props had to be got rid of. The method was not without points. If you hadn’t called and found him out, if the old servant had not overheard that years-old conversation between himself and Surbonadier, if he hadn’t got wet-white on his gloves — ah, well, there it is. We haven’t been very clever. I’m handing no bouquets to myself over this case.”

“Why did you want to get me out of the way?”

“My dear creature, because you were his friend, because he wondered how much you’d overheard in the flat, because — in short, because he’s a murderer.”

“I’m not convinced, Alleyn.”

“You mean you don’t want to be. It’s perfectly beastly for you, I know. Were you greatly attached to him? Come now — were you?”

“I — well, perhaps not greatly attached, but we are by way of being friends.”

“Where were you when I arrested him?”

“I had come round to the back. I stood under the electrician’s platform.”

“Then you saw him come down the ladder. You saw him kick down at me as he had kicked down at Props. You saw—”

“Yes — yes, I saw his face.”

“His behaviour was more damning than I dared hope it would be. When I sent him up the ladder I knew he was planning how he would play the part of the horrified discoverer of the suicide. I thought he would very likely recognise the dummy — it was simply a weighted sack — and I wanted to see how he would react. I hardly dared hope he would do what he did.”

“What do you mean?”

“He didn’t even look at it. He saw something that scraped the upper surface of the cloth and he thought it was the feet of the body. In his mind was the vivid picture of the swinging corpse and in the violent turbulence of his emotion he did not pause to look — did not want to look— He gave his magnificent performance of horror-struck discovery and — recognized Props! An innocent man would have looked and seen at once that a weighted sack hung from a rope.”

“I wonder he consented to go up the ladder.”

“He couldn’t refuse. I treated the unfortunate Simpson to a display of official suspicion. The little man was scared out of his life, and Gardener was reassured. To refuse would have been impossible.”

“There seems,” said Nigel, “so little motive for so big a risk.”

“Not when you go into the case. If Surbonadier had blown the gaff, Gardener would have been scrapped by Saint. If his authorship of the article in the Morning Express had come out, Saint could and would have done him incalculable harm. You may depend upon it that Surbonadier had been bleeding him for pretty hefty sums. A drug addict gets through lots of money. And Surbonadier could have given Stephanie Vaughan some very nasty information about Felix Gardener. I wonder how much Gardener himself had told her. Enough to make her risk that visit to the flat. She’s a courageous creature.”

Nigel looked curiously at him.

“She attracts you very much, doesn’t she?” he ventured.

Alleyn got up and stood looking out into the yard.

“When she’s not being a leading lady, she does,” he said coolly.

“You’re a rum old fish.”

“Think so? Come and have some lunch. I must get back to the Yard.”

“I don’t feel like eating,” said Nigel.

“You’d better try.”

They walked down the alley-way to the front of the theatre. The gigantic unicorn in steel and black glass guttered against its starry background. Alleyn and Nigel looked up at it for a moment

“There’s one unique feature in this case,” said Alleyn.

“What’s that?”

“Thanks to you I was able to watch the murder in comfort from a fifteen-and-sixpenny stall provided by the murderer.”

He held up his stick to a taxi and they drove away in silence.

The End