Night at the Vulcan

Chapter IX THE SHADOW OF OTTO BROD

Parry stood inside the door and pinched his lips as if he realized they were white and hoped to restore their colour.

“I don’t know anything about finger-prints,” he said. “I never read about crime. I don’t know anything about it. When I came off after my final exit I went to my room. I was just going back for the call when I smelt gas. We’re all nervous about gas in this theatre and anyway the room was frightfully hot. I turned the thing off. That’s all.”

“This was after Bennington tripped you up?”

“I’ve told you. It was after my last exit and before the call. It wasn’t—”

He walked forward very slowly and sat down in front of Alleyn. “You can’t think that sort of thing about me,” he said, and sounded as if he was moved more by astonishment than by any other emotion. “My God, look at me. I’m so hopelessly harmless. I’m not vicious. I’m not even odd. I’m just harmless.”

“Why didn’t you tell me at once that you noticed the smell of gas?”

“Because, as I’ve tried to suggest, I’m no good at this sort of thing. The Doctor got me all upset and in any case the whole show was so unspeakable.” He stared at Alleyn and, as if that explained everything, said: “I saw him. I saw him when they carried him out. I’ve never been much good about dead people. In the blitz I sort of managed but I never got used to it.”

“Was the smell of gas very strong in your room?”

“No. Not strong at all. But in this theatre — we were all thinking about that other time, and I just thought it was too bad of the management to have anything faulty in the system considering the history of the place. I don’t know that I thought anything more than that: I smelt it and remembered, and got a spasm of the horrors. Then I felt angry at being given a shock and then I turned my fire off and went out. It was rather like not looking at the new moon through glass. You don’t really believe it can do anything but you avoid it. I forgot all about the gas as soon as I got on-stage. I didn’t give it another thought until I smelt it again during the Doctor’s speech.”

“Yes, I see.”

“You do, really, don’t you? After all, suppose I — suppose I had thought I’d copy that other awful thing — well, I’d scarcely be fool enough to leave my finger-prints on the tap, would I?”

“But you tell me,” Alleyn said, not making too much of it, “that you don’t know anything about fingerprints.”

“God!” Parry whispered, Staring at him. “You do frighten me. It’s not fair. You frighten me.”

“Believe me, there’s no need for an innocent man to be frightened.”

“How can you be so sure of yourselves? Do you never make mistakes?”

“We do indeed. But not,” Alleyn said, “in the end. Not nowadays on these sorts of cases.”

“What do you mean these sorts of cases!”

“Why, I mean on what may turn out to be a capital charge.”

“I can’t believe it!” Parry cried out. “I shall never believe it. We’re not like that. We’re kind, rather simple people. We wear our hearts on our sleeves. We’re not complicated enough to kill each other.”

Alleyn said with a smile: “You’re quite complicated enough for us at the moment. Is there anything else you’ve remembered that you think perhaps you ought to tell me about?”

Parry shook his head and dragged himself to his feet. Alleyn saw, as Martyn had seen before him, that he was not an exceedingly young man. “No,” he said. “There’s nothing I can think of.”

“You may go to your dressing-room now, if you’d like to change into — what should I say? — into plain clothes?”

“Thank you. I simply loathe the thought of my room after all this but I shall be glad to change.”

“Do you mind if Lamprey does a routine search before you go? We’ll ask this of all of you.”

Parry showed the whites of his eyes but said at once: “Why should I mind?”

Alleyn nodded to young Lamprey, who advanced upon Parry with an apologetic smile.

“It’s a painless extraction, sir,” he said.

Parry raised his arms in a curve with his white hands held like a dancer’s above his head. There was a silence and a swift, efficient exploration. “Thank you so much, sir,” said Mike Lamprey. “Cigarette case, lighter and handkerchief, Mr. Alleyn.”

“Right. Take Mr. Percival along to his room, will you?”

Parry said: “There couldn’t be a more fruitless question, but it would be nice to know, one way or the other, if you have believed me.”

“There couldn’t be a more unorthodox answer,” Alleyn rejoined, “but at the moment I see no reason to disbelieve you, Mr. Percival.”

When Lamprey came back he found his senior officer looking wistfully at his pipe and whistling under his breath.

“Mike,” Alleyn said, “the nastiest cases in our game are very often the simplest. There’s something sticking out under my nose in this theatre and I can’t see it. I know it’s there because of another thing that, Lord pity us all, Fox and I can see.”

“Really, sir? Am I allowed to ask what it is?”

“You’re getting on in the service, now. What have you spotted on your own account?”

“Is it something to do with Bennington’s behaviour, sir?”

“It is indeed. If a man’s going to commit suicide, Mike, and his face is made up to look loathsome, what does he do about it? If he’s a vain man (and Bennington appears to have had his share of professional vanity), if he minds about the appearance of his own corpse, he cleans off the greasepaint. If he doesn’t give a damn, he leaves it as it is. But with time running short, he does not carefully and heavily powder his unbecoming makeup for all the world as if he meant to go on and take his curtain-call with the rest of them. Now, does he?”

“Well, no sir,” said Mike. “If you put it like that, I don’t believe he does.”

By half past twelve most of the company on the stage seemed to be asleep or dozing. Dr. Rutherford on his couch occasionally lapsed into bouts of snoring from which he would rouse a little, groan, take snuff and then settle down again. Helena lay in a deep chair with her feet on a stool. Her eyes were closed but Martyn thought that if she slept it was but lightly. Clem had made himself a bed of some old curtains and was curled up on it beyond the twisting stairway. Jacko, having tucked Helena up in her fur coat, settled himself on the stage beside her, dozing, Martyn thought, like some eccentric watch-dog at his post. After J.G. silently returned from the Greenroom, Gay Gainsford was summoned and in her turn came back — not silently, but with some attempt at conversation. In the presence of the watchful Mr. Fox this soon petered out. Presently she, too, fell to nodding. Immediately after her return Parry Percival suddenly made an inarticulate ejaculation and, before Fox could move, darted off the stage. Sergeant Gibson was heard to accost him in the passage. Fox remained where he was and there was another long silence.

Adam Poole and Martyn looked into each other’s faces. He crossed the stage to where she sat, on the left side, which was the farthest removed from Fox. He pulled up a small chair and sat facing her.

“Kate,” he muttered, “I’m so sorry about all this. There are haresfoot shadows under your eyes, your mouth droops, your hands are anxious and your hair is limp, though not at all unbecoming. You should be sound asleep in Jacko’s garret under the stars and there should be the sound of applause in your dreams. Really, it’s too bad.”

Martyn said: “It’s nice of you to think so but you have other things to consider.”

“I’m glad to have my thoughts interrupted.”

“Then I still have my uses.”

“You can see that chunk of a man over there. Is he watching us?”

“Yes. With an air of absent-mindedness which I’m not at all inclined to misunderstand.”

“I don’t think he can hear us, though it’s a pity my diction is so good. If I take your hand perhaps he’ll suppose I’m making love to you and feel some slight constabular delicacy.”

“I hardly think so,” Martyn whispered, and tried to make nothing of his lips against her palm.

“Will you believe, Kate, that I am not in the habit of making passes at young ladies in my company?”

Martyn found herself looking at the back of Helena’s chair.

“Oh yes,” Poole said. “There’s that, too. I make no bones about that. It’s another and a long and a fading story. On both parts. Fading on both parts, Kate. I have been very much honoured.”

“I can’t help feeling this scene is being played at the wrong time, in the wrong place and before the wrong audience. And I doubt,” Martyn said, not looking at him, “if it should be played at all.”

“But I can’t be mistaken. It has happened for us, Martyn. Hasn’t it? Suddenly, preposterously, almost at first sight we blinked and looked again and there we were. Tell me it’s happened. The bird under your wrist is so wildly agitated. Is that only because you are frightened?”

“I am frightened. I wanted to ask your advice and now you make it impossible.”

“I’ll give you my advice. There. Now you are alone again. But for the sake of the law’s peace of mind as well as my own you must take a firm line about your blushing.”

“It was something he said to me that morning,” she murmured in the lowest voice she could command.

“Do you mean the morning when I first saw you?”

“I mean,” Martyn said desperately, “the morning the photographs were taken. I had to go to his dressing-room.”

“I remember very well. You came to mine too.”

“He said something, then. He was very odd in his manner. They’ve asked us to try and remember anything at all unusual.”

“Are you going to tell me what it was?”

In a few words and under her breath she did so.

Poole said: “Perhaps you should tell them. Yes, I think you should. In a moment I’ll do something about it, but there’s one thing more I must say to you. Do you know I’m glad this scene has been played so awkwardly — inaudible, huddled up, inauspicious and uneffective. Technically altogether bad. It gives it a kind of authority, I hope. Martyn, are you very much surprised? Please look at me.”

She did as he asked and discovered an expression of such doubt and anxiety in his face that to her own astonishment she put her hand against his cheek and he held it there for a second. “God,” he said, “what a thing to happen!” He got up abruptly and crossed the stage.

“Inspector,” he said, “Miss Tarne has remembered an incident three days old which we both think might possibly be of some help. What should we do about it?” The others stirred a little. J.G. opened his eyes. Fox got up. “Thank you very much, sir,” he said. “When Mr. Alleyn is disengaged I’m sure he’ll— Yes? What is it?”

P. C. Lamprey had come in. He delivered a message that the dressing-rooms were now open for the use of their occupants. At the sound of his brisk and loudish voice they all stirred. Helena and Darcey got to their feet Jacko sat up. Clem, Gay and Dr. Rutherford opened their eyes, listened to the announcement and went to sleep again.

Fox said: “You can take this young lady along to the Chief in three minutes, Lamprey. Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you’d care to go to your rooms.”

He shepherded Helena and Darcey through the door and looked back at Poole. “What about you, sir?”

Poole, with his eyes on Martyn, said: “Yes, I’m coming.” Fox waited stolidly at the door for him and, after a moment’s hesitation, Poole followed the others. Fox went with them.

Mike Lamprey said: “We’ll let them get settled, Miss Tarne, and then I’ll take you along to Mr. Alleyn. You must be getting very bored with all this hanging about.” Martyns whose emotional processes were in a state of chaos, replied with a vague smile. She wondered disjointedly if constables of P. C. Lamprey’s class were a commonplace in the English Force. He glanced good-humouredly at Gay and the three dozing men and evidently felt obliged to make further conversation.

“I heard someone say,” he began, “that you are a New Zealander. I was out there as a small boy.”

“Were you, really?” Martyn said, and wondered confusedly if he could have been the son of a former governor-general.

“We had a place out there on a mountain. Mount Silver, it was. Would that be anywhere near your part of the world?”

Something clicked in Martyn’s memory. “Oh yes!” she said. “I’ve heard about the Lampreys of Mount Silver, I’m sure, and—” Her recollection clarified a little. “Yes, indeed,” she added lamely.

“No doubt,” said Mike with a cheerful laugh, “a legend of lunacy has survived us. We came Home when I was about eight, and soon afterwards my uncle happened to get murdered in our flat and Mr. Alleyn handled the case. I thought at the time I’d like to go into the Force and the idea sort of persisted. And there you are, you know. Potted autobiography. Shall we go along and see if he’s free?”

He escorted her down the passage to the Greenroom door, past Sergeant Gibson, who seemed to be on guard there. Mike chatted freely as they went, rather as if he were taking her into supper after a successful dance. The star-bemused Martyn found herself brightly chatting back at him.

This social atmosphere was not entirely dispelled, she felt, by Alleyn himself, who received her rather as a distinguished surgeon might greet a patient.

“Come in, Miss Tarne,” he said cordially. “I hear you’ve thought of something to tell us about this wretched business. Do sit down.”

She sat in her old chair, facing the gas fire and with her back to the table. Only when she looked up involuntarily at the sketch of Adam Poole did she realize that young Lamprey had settled himself at the table and taken out a note-book. She could see his image reflected in the glass.

Inspector Fox came in and went quietly to the far end of the room, where he sat in a shadowed corner and appeared to consult his own note-book.

“Well,” Alleyn said, “what’s it all about?”

“You’ll probably think it’s about nothing,” Martyn began, “and if you do I shall be sorry I’ve bothered you with it. But I thought — just in case—”

“You were perfectly right. Believe me, we are ‘conditioned,’ if that’s the beastly word, to blind alleys. Let’s have it.”

“On my first morning in this theatre,” Martyn said, “which was the day before yesterday… no, if it’s past midnight, the day before that.”

“Tuesday?”

“Yes. On that morning I went to Mr. Bennington’s room to fetch Miss Hamilton’s cigarette case. He was rather strange in his manner, but at first I thought that was because — I thought he’d noticed my likeness to Mr. Poole. He couldn’t find the case and in hunting through the pockets of a jacket, he dropped a letter to the floor. I picked it up and he drew my attention to it in the oddest sort of way. I’d describe his manner almost as triumphant. He said something about autographs. I think he asked me if I collected autographs or autographed letters. He pointed to the envelope, which I still had in my hand, and said there was somebody who’d give a hell of a lot for that one. Those, I’m almost sure, were his exact words.”

“Did you look at the letter?”

“Yes, I did, because of what he said. It was addressed to him and it had a foreign stamp on it. The writing was very bold and it seemed to me foreign-looking. I put it on the shelf face downwards and he drew my attention to it again by stabbing at it with his finger. The name of the sender was written on the back.”

“Do you remember it?”

“Yes, I do, because of his insistence.”

“Good girl,” said Alleyn quietly.

“It was Otto Brod and the address was a theatre in Prague. I’m afraid I don’t remember the name of the theatre or the street. I ought to remember the theatre. It was a French name, Théâtre de — something. Why can’t I remember!”

“You haven’t done badly. Was there something in the envelope?”

“Yes. It wasn’t anything fat. One sheet of paper, I should think.”

“And his manner was triumphant?”

“I thought so. He was just rather odd about it. He’d been drinking — brandy, I thought — the tumbler was on the dressing-shelf and he made as if to put the flask behind his looking-glass.”

“Did you think he was at all the worse for wear?”

“I wondered if it accounted for his queer behaviour.”

“Can you tell me anything else he said? The whole conversation if you remember it.”

Martyn thought back, and it seemed she had journeyed half a lifetime in three days. There was the room. There was J.G. going out and leaving her with Bennington, and there was Bennington staring at her and talking about the cigarette case. There was also something else, buried away behind her thoughts, of which the memory now returned. She was made miserable by it.

“He said, I think, something about the cigarette case. That he himself hadn’t given it to Miss Hamilton.”

“Did he say who gave it to her?”

“No,” Martyn said, “I don’t think he said that. Just that he didn’t.”

“And was his manner of saying this strange?”

“I thought his manner throughout was — uncomfortable and odd. He seemed to me to be a very unhappy man.”

“Yet you used the word ‘triumphant’?”

“There can be unhappy victories.”

“True for you. There can, indeed. Tell me one thing more. Do you connect the two conversations? I mean, do you think what he said about the cigarette case had anything to do with what he said about the letter?”

“I should say nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Oh Lord!” Alleyn said resignedly and called out: “Have you got all that, Mike?”

“Coming up the straight, sir.”

“Put it into longhand, now, will you, and we’ll ask Miss Tarne to have a look at it and see if she’s been misrepresented. Do you mind waiting a minute or two, Miss Tarne? It’ll save you coming back.”

“No, of course not,” said Martyn, whose ideas of police investigation were undergoing a private revolution. Alleyn offered her a cigarette and lit it for her. The consultation, she felt, was over, and the famous surgeon was putting his patient at her ease.

“I gather from Lamprey’s far-reaching conversation that you are a New Zealander,” he said. “If I may say so, you seem to have dropped out of a clear sky into your own success-story. Have you been long at the Vulcan, Miss Tarne?”

“A little over three days.”

“Good Lord! And in that time you’ve migrated from dresser to what sounds like minor stardom. Success-story, indeed!”

“Yes, but—” Martyn hesitated. For the first time since she walked into the Vulcan she felt able to talk about herself. It didn’t occur to her that it was odd for her confidant to be a police officer.

“It’s all been very eccentric,” she said. “I only reached England a little over a fortnight ago and my money was stolen in the ship, so I had to get some sort of job rather quickly.”

“Did you report the theft to the police?”

“No. The purser said he didn’t think it would do any good.”

“So much,” said Alleyn with a wry look, “for the police!”

“I’m sorry—” Martyn began and he said: “Never mind. It’s not an uncommon attitude, I’m afraid. So you had a rather unhappy arrival. Lucky there was your cousin to come to your rescue.”

“But — no — I mean—” Martyn felt herself blushing and plunged on, “That’s just what I didn’t want to do. I mean I didn’t want to go to him at all. He didn’t know of my existance. You see—”

It was part of Alleyn’s professional equipment that something in his make-up invited confidence. Mr. Fox once said of his superior that he would be able to get himself worked up over the life-story of a mollusc, provided the narrative was obtained first-hand. He heard Martyn’s story with the liveliest interest up to the point where she entered the theatre. He didn’t seem to think it queer that she should have been anxious to conceal her relationship to Poole, or that she was stupid to avoid the Vulcan in her search for a job. She was describing her interview with Bob Grantley on Monday night when Sergeant Gibson’s voice sounded in the passage. He tapped on the door and came in.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but could you see the night-watchman? He seems to think it’s important.”

He’d got as far as this when he was elbowed aside by Fred Badger, who came angrily into the room.

“ ’Ere!” he said. “Are you the guv’nor of this ’owd’yerdo?”

“Yes,” said Alleyn.

“Well, look. You can lay orf this young lady, see? No call to get nosey on account of what she done, see? I don’t know nothink abaht the law, see, but I’m in charge ’ere of a night and what she done she done wiv my permission, Nah!”

“Just a moment—” Alleyn began and was roared down.

“Suppose it was an offence! What abaht it! She never done no ’arm. No offence taken where none was intended, that’s correct, ain’t it! Nah ven!”

“What,” Alleyn said turning to Martyn, “is this about?”

“I’m afraid it’s about me sleeping in the theatre that first night. I’d nowhere to go and it was very late. Mr. Badger very kindly — didn’t turn me out.”

“I see. Where did you sleep?”

“Here. In this chair.”

“Like a charld,” Fred Badger interposed. “Slep’ like a charld all night. I looked in on me rahnds and seen ’er laying safe in the arms of Morpus. Innercent. And if anyone tells you different you can refer ’im to me. Badger’s the name.”

“All right, Badger.”

“If you put me pot on with the management fer what I done, leaving ’er to lay — all right. Aht! Finish! There’s better jobs rahnd the corner.”

“Yes. All right. I don’t think we’ll take it up.”

“Awright. Fair enough.” He addressed himself to Martyn. “And what was mentioned between you and me in a friendly manner needn’t be mentioned no more. Let bygones be bygones.” He returned to Alleyn. “She’s as innercent as a babe. Arst ’is nibs.”

Alleyn waited for a moment and then said: “Thank you.” Gibson succeeded in removing Fred Badger, but not before he had directed at Martyn that peculiar clicking sound of approval which is accompanied by a significant jerk of the head.

When he had gone Alleyn said: “I think I’d better ask you to interpret. What was his exquisite meaning?”

Martyn felt a dryness in her mouth. “I think,” she said, “he’s afraid he’ll get into trouble for letting me sleep in here that night and I think he’s afraid I’ll get into trouble if I tell you that he showed me how the murder in the Jupiter case was accomplished.”

“That seems a little far-fetched.”

Martyn said rapidly: “I suppose it’s idiotic of me to say this, but I’d rather say it. Mr. Bennington very naturally resented my luck in this theatre. He tackled me about it and he was pretty truculent. I expect the stage-hands have gossiped to Badger and he thinks you might — might—”

“Smell a motive?”

“Yes,” said Martyn.

“Did Bennington threaten you?”

“I don’t remember exactly what he said. His manner was threatening. He frightened me.”

“Where did this happen?”

“Off-stage, during the first dress rehearsal.”

“Was anyone present when he tackled you?”

The image of Poole rose in Martyn’s memory. She saw him take Bennington by the arm and twist him away from her.

“There were people about,” she said. “They were changing the set. I should think it very likely — I mean it was a very public sort of encounter.”

He looked thoughtfully at her and she wondered if she had changed colour. “This,” he said, “was before it was decided you were to play the part?”

“Oh, yes. That was only decided half an hour before the show went on.”

“So it was. Did he do anything about this decision? Go for you again?”

“He didn’t come near me until I’d finished. And knowing how much he must mind, I was grateful for that.”

Alleyn said: “You’ve been very sensible to tell me this, Miss Tarne.”

Martyn swallowed hard. “I don’t know,” she said, “that I would have told you if it hadn’t been for Fred Badger.”

“Ah, well,” Alleyn said, “one mustn’t expect too much. How about that statement, Mike?”

“Here we are, sir. I hope you can read my writing, Miss Tarne.”

When she took the paper, Martyn found her hands were not steady. Alleyn moved away to the table with his subordinate. She sat down again and read the large schoolboyish writing. It was a short and accurate résumé of the incident of the letter from Prague.

“It’s quite right,” she said. “Am I to sign it?”

“If you please. There will be statements for most of the others to sign later on, but yours is so short I thought we might as well get it over now.”

He gave her his pen and she went to the table and signed. P. C. Lamprey smiled reassuringly at her and escorted her to the door.

Alleyn said: “Thank you so much, Miss Tarne. Do you live far from here?”

“Not very far. A quarter of an hour’s walk.”

“I wish I could let you go home now but I don’t quite like to do that. Something might crop up that we’d want to refer to you.”

“Might it?”

“You never know,” he said. “Anyway, you can change now.” Lamprey opened the door and she went to the dressing-room.

When she had gone, Alleyn said: “What did you make of her, Mike?”

“I thought she was rather a sweetie-pie, sir,” said P. C. Lamprey. Fox, in his disregarded corner, snorted loudly.

“That was all too obvious,” said Alleyn. “Sweetness apart, did you find her truthful?”

“I’d have said so, sir, yes.”

“What about you, Br’er Fox? Come out of cover and declare yourself.”

Fox rose, removed his spectacles and advanced upon them. “There was something,” he observed, “about that business of when deceased went for her.”

“There was indeed. Not exactly lying, wouldn’t you think, so much as leaving something out?”

“Particularly in respect of whether there was a witness.”

“She had her back to you but she looked at this portrait of Adam Poole. I’d make a long bet Poole found Bennington slanging that child and ordered him off.”

“Very possibly, Mr. Alleyn. He’s sweet on the young lady. That’s plain to see. And she on him.”

“Good Lord!” Mike Lamprey ejaculated. “He must be forty! I’m sorry, sir.”

Mr. Fox began a stately reproof but Alleyn said: “Go away, Mike. Go back to the stage. Wake Dr. Rutherford and ask him to come here. I want a change from actors.”

Dr. Rutherford, on his entry into the Greenroom, was a figure of high fantasy. For his greater ease in sleeping he had pulled his boiled shirt from its confinement and it dangled fore and aft like a crumpled tabard. Restrained only by his slackened braces, it formed a mask, Alleyn conjectured, for a free adjustment of the Doctor’s trouser buttoning. He had removed his jacket and assumed an overcoat. His collar was released and his tie dangled on his bosom. His head was tousled and his face blotched.

He paused in the doorway while Lamprey announced him and then, with a dismissive gesture, addressed himself to Alleyn and Fox.

“Calling my officers about me in my branched velvet gown,” he shouted, “having come from a day-bed where I left Miss Gainsford sleeping, I present myself as a brand for the constabular burning. What’s cooking, my hearties?”

He stood there, puffing and blowings and eyed them with an expression of extreme impertinence. If he had been an actor, Alleyn thought, he would have been cast, and cast ideally, for Falstaff. He fished under his shirt-tail, produced his snuff-box, and helped himself, with a parody of Regency deportment, to a generous pinch. “Speak!” he said “Pronounce! Propound! I am all ears.”

“I have nothing, I’m afraid, to propound,” Alleyn said cheerfully, “and am therefore unable to pronounce. As for speaking, I hope you’ll do most of that yourself, Dr. Rutherford. Will you sit down?”

Dr. Rutherford, with his usual precipitancy, hurled himself into the nearest armchair. As an afterthought he spread his shirt-tail with ridiculous finicking movements across his lap. “I am a thought down-gyved,” he observed. “My points are untrussed. Forgive me.”

“Tell me,” Alleyn said. “Do you think Bennington was murdered?”

The Doctor opened his eyes very wide, folded his hands on his stomach, revolved his thumbs and said “No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“We do.”

“Why?”

“I’ll come to that when I’m quite sure you may be put into the impossible class.”

“Am I a suspect, by all that’s pettifogging?”

“Not if you can prove yourself otherwise.”

“By God,” said Dr. Rutherford deeply, “if I’d thought I could get away with it, be damned if I wouldn’t have had a shot. He was an unconscionable rogue, was Ben.”

“In what way?”

“In every way, by Janus. A drunkard. A wife-terrorist. An exhibitionist. And what’s more,” he went on with rising intensity, “a damned wrecker of plays. A yea-forsooth knavish pander, by Heaven! I tell you this, and I tell you plainly, if I, sitting in my O.P. box, could have persuaded the Lord to stoop out of the firmament and drop a tidy thunderbolt on Ben, I would have done it with bells on. Joyously!”

“A thunderbolt,” Alleyn said, “is one of the few means of dispatch that we have not seriously considered. Would you mind telling me where you were between the time when he made his last exit and the time when you appeared before the audience?”

“Brief let me be. In my box. On the stairs. Off-stage. On the stage.”

“Can you tell me exactly when you left your box?”

“While they were making their initial mops and mows at the audience.”

“Did you meet anyone or notice anything at all remarkable during this period?”

“Nothing, and nobody whatever.”

“From which side did you enter for your own call?”

“The O.P., which is actors’ right.”

“So you merely emerged from the stairs that lead from the box to the stage and found yourself hard by the entrance?”

“Precisely.”

“Have you any witness to all this, sir?”

“To my knowledge,” said the Doctor, “none whatever. There may have been a rude mechanical or so.”

“As far as your presence in the box is concerned, there was the audience. Nine hundred of them.”

“In spite of its mangling at the hands of two of the actors, I believe the attention of the audience to have been upon My Play. In any case,” the Doctor added, helping himself to a particularly large pinch of snuff and holding it poised before his face, “I had shrunk in modest confusion behind the curtain.”

“Perhaps someone visited you?”

“Not after the first act. I locked myself in,” he added, taking his snuff with uncouth noises, “as a precautionary measure. I loathe company.”

“Did you come back-stage at any other time during the performance?”

“I did. I came back in both intervals. Primarily to see the little wench.”

“Miss Tarne?” Alleyn ventured.

“She. A tidy little wench it is and will make a good player. If she doesn’t allow herself to be debauched by the sissies that rule the roost in our lamentable theatre.”

“Did you, during either of these intervals, visit the dressing-rooms?”

“I went to the Usual Office at the end of the passage, if you call that a dressing-room.”

“And returned to your box — when?”

“As soon as the curtain went up.”

“I see.” Alleyn thought for a moment and then said: “Dr. Rutherford, do you know anything about a man called Otto Brod?”

The Doctor gave a formidable gasp. His eyes bulged, his nostrils wrinkled and his jaw dropped. This grimace turned out to be the preliminary spasm to a Gargantuan sneeze. A handkerchief not being at his disposal, he snatched up the tail of his shirt, clapped it to his face and revealed a state of astonishing disorder below the waist

“Otto Brod?” he repeated, looking at Alleyn over his shirt-tail as if it were an improvised yashmak. “Never heard of him.”

“His correspondence seems to be of some value,” Alleyn said vaguely but the Doctor merely gaped at him. “I don’t,” he said flatly, “know what you’re talking about”

Alleyn gave up Otto Brod. “You’ll have guessed,” he said, “that I’ve already heard a good deal about the events of the last few days: I mean as they concerned the final rehearsals and the change in casting.”

“Indeed? Then you will have heard that Ben and I had one flaming row after another. If you’re looking for motive,” said Dr. Rutherford with an expansive gesture, “I’m lousy with it. We hated each other’s guts, Ben and I. Of the two I should say, however, that he was the more murderously inclined.”

“Was this feeling chiefly on account of the part his niece was to have played?”

“Fundamentally it was the fine flower of a natural antipathy. The contributive elements were his behaviour as an actor in My Play and the obvious and immediate necessity to return his niece to her squalid little métier and replace her by the wench. We had at each other on that issue,” said Dr. Rutherford with relish, “after both auditions and on every other occasion that presented itself.”

“And in the end, it seems, you won?”

“Pah!” said the Doctor with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Cat’s meat!”

Alleyn looked a little dubiously at the chaotic disarray of his garments. “Have you any objection,” he asked, “to being searched?”

“Not I,” cried the Doctor and hauled himself up from his chair. Fox approached him.

“By the way,” Alleyn said, “as a medical man, would you say that a punch on the jaw such as Bennington was given could have been the cause of his fainting some time afterwards? Remembering his general condition?”

“Who says he had a punch on the jaw? It’s probably a hypostatic discolouration. What do you want?” Dr. Rutherford demanded of Fox.

“If you wouldn’t mind taking your hands out of your pockets, sir,” Fox suggested.

The Doctor said: “Let not us that are squires of the night’s body be called thieves of the day’s beauty,” and obligingly withdrew his hands from his trousers pockets. Unfortunately he pulled the linings out of them.

A number of objects fell about his feet — pencils, his snuff-box, scraps of paper, a pill-box, a programme, a note-book and a half-eaten cake of chocolate. A small cloud of snuff floated above this collection. Fox bent down and made a clucking sound of disapproval. He began to collect the scattered objects, inhaled snuff and was seized with a paroxysm of sneezing. The Doctor broke into a fit of uncouth laughter and floundered damagingly among the exhibits.

“Dr. Rutherford,” Alleyn said with an air of the liveliest exasperation, “I would be immensely obliged to you if you’d have the goodness to stop behaving like a Pantaloon. Get off those things, if you please.”

The Doctor backed away into his chair and examined an unlovely mess of chocolate and cardboard on the sole of his boot. “But, blast your lights, my good ass.” he said, “there goes my spare ration. An ounce of the best rappee, by Heaven!” Fox began to pick the fragments of the pill-box from his boot. Having collected and laid aside the dropped possessions, he scraped up a heap of snuff. “It’s no good now, Dogberry,” said the Doctor with an air of intense disapproval. Fox tipped the scrapings into an envelope.

Alleyn stood over the Doctor. “I think,” he said, “you had better give this up, you know.”

The Doctor favoured him with an antic grimace but said nothing. “You’re putting on an act, Dr. Rutherford, and I do assure you it’s not at all convincing. As a red herring it stinks to high Heaven. Let me tell you this. We now know that Bennington was hit over the jaw. We know when it happened. We know that the bruise was afterwards camouflaged with makeup. I want you to come with me while I remove this make-up. Where’s your jacket?”

“Give me my robe; put on my crown; I have immortal longings in me…”

Fox went out and returned with a tail-coat that was in great disorder. “Nothing in the pockets, Mr. Alleyn,” he said briefly. Alleyn nodded and he handed it to Dr. Rutherford, who slung it over his shoulder.

Alleyn led the way down the passage, where Gibson was still on guard, and round the back of the stage to the dock. P. C. Lamprey came off the set and rolled the doors back.

Bennington had stiffened a little since they last looked at him. His face bore the expression of knowledgeable acquiescence that is so often seen in the dead. Using the back of a knife-blade, Alleyn scraped away the greasepaint from the right jaw. Fox held a piece of card for him and he laid smears of greasepaint on it in the manner of a painter setting his palette. The discoloured mark on the jaw showed clearly.

“There it is,” Alleyn said, and stood aside for Dr. Rutherford.

“A tidy buffet, if buffet it was. Who gave it him?” Alleyn didn’t answer. He moved round to the other side and went on cleaning the face.

“The notion that it could have contributed to his death,” the Doctor said, “is preposterous. If, as you say, there was an interval between the blow and the supposed collapse. Preposterous!”

Fox had brought cream and a towel, with which Alleyn now completed his task. The Doctor watched him with an air of impatience and unease. “Damned if I know why you keep me hanging about,” he grumbled at last.

“I wanted your opinion on the bruise. That’s all, Fox. Is the mortuary van here?”

“On its way, sir,” said Fox, who was wrapping his piece of card in paper.

Alleyn looked at the Doctor. “Do you think,” he said, “that his wife will want to see him?”

“She won’t want to. She may think she ought to. Humbug, in my opinion. Distress herself for nothing. What good does it do anybody?”

“I think, however, I should at least ask her.”

“Why the blazes you can’t let her go home passes my comprehension. And where do I go, now? I’m getting damn bored with Ben’s company.”

“You may wait either on the stage or, if you’d rather, in the unoccupied dressing-room. Or the office, I think, is open.”

“Can I have my snuff back?” Dr. Rutherford asked with something of the shamefaced air of a small boy wanting a favour.

“I think we might let you do that,” Alleyn said. “Fox, will you give Dr. Rutherford his snuff-box?”

Dr. Rutherford lumbered uncertainly to the door. He stood there, with his chin on his chest and his hands in his pockets.

“See here, Alleyn,” he said, looking from under his eyebrows at him. “Suppose I told you it was I who gave Ben that wallop on his mug. What then?”

“Why,” Alleyn said, “I shouldn’t believe you, you know.”