Night at the Vulcan

Chapter VIII AFTERPIECE

From this time onward, through the watches of that night, it seemed to Martyn that a second play was acted out in the Vulcan: a play that wrote itself as it went along, with many excursions into irrelevance, with countless longueurs and with occasional unanticipated scenes of climax. She was unable to dismiss the sense of an audience that watched in the shrouded seats, or the notion that the theatre itself was attentive to the action on its stage.

This illusion was in some sort created by the players, for it seemed to Martyn that each of them was acting a part. She was not on this account repelled by any of them, but rather felt drawn towards them all as one is to people with whom one shares a common danger. They were of one guild. Even Gay Gainsford’s excesses were at first a cause only of resigned irritation, and Parry Percival’s outburst, Martyn felt, was understandable. On the whole she thought the better of him for it.

When she considered them all as they sat about their own working-stage, bruised by anxiety and fatigue, Jacko’s ugly word sounded not so much frightening as preposterous. It was unthinkable that it could kindle even a bat-light of fear in any of their hearts. “And yet,” thought Martyn, “it has done so. There are little points of terror burning in all of us like match-flames.”

After Jacko had spoken there was a long silence, broken at last by Adam Poole, who asked temperately: “Are we to understand, Alleyn, that you have quite ruled out the possibility of suicide?”

“By no means,” Alleyn rejoined. “I still hope you may be able, among you, to show that there is at least a clear enough probability of suicide for us to leave the case as it stands until the inquest. But where there are strong indications that it may not be suicide we can’t risk waiting as long as that without a pretty exhaustive look round.”

“And there are such indications?”

“There are indeed.”

“Strong?”

Alleyn waited a moment. “Sufficiently strong,” he said.

“What are they?” Dr. Rutherford demanded.

“It must suffice,” Alleyn quibbled politely, “that they are sufficient.”

“An elegant sufficiency, by-God!”

“But, Mr. Alleyn,” Helena cried out, “what can we tell you. Except that we all most sincerely believe that Ben did this himself. Because we know him to have been bitterly unhappy. What else is there for us to say?”

“It will help, you know, when we get a clear picture of what you were all doing and where you were between the time he left the stage and the time he was found. Inspector Fox is checking now with the stage-staff. I propose to do so with the players.”

“I see,” she said. She leant forward and her air of reasonableness and attention was beautifully executed. “You want to find out which of us had the opportunity to murder Ben.”

Gay Gainsford and Parry began an outcry, but Helena raised her hand and they were quiet. “That’s it, isn’t it?” she said.

“Yes,” Alleyn said, “that really is it. I fancy you would rather be spared the stock evasions about routine enquiries and all the rest of it.”

“Much rather.”

“I was sure of it,” Alleyn said. “Then shall we start with you, if you please?”

“I was on the stage for the whole of that time, Mr. Alleyn. There’s a scene, before Ben’s exit, between J.G. — that’s Mr. Darcey over there — Parry, Adam, Ben and myself. First Parry and then J.G. goes off and Ben follows a moment later. Adam and I finish the play.”

“So you, too,” Alleyn said to Poole, “were here, on the stage, for the whole of this period?”

“I go off for a moment after his exit. It’s a strange, rather horridly strange, coincidence that in the play he — the character he played, I mean — does commit suicide off-stage. He shoots himself. When I hear the shot I go off. The two other men have already made their exits. They remain off but I come on again almost immediately. I wait outside the door on the left from a position where I can watch Miss Hamilton, and I re-enter on a ‘business’ cue from her.”

“How long would this take?”

“Shall we show you?” Helena suggested. She got up and moved to the centre of the stage. She raised her clasped hands to her mouth and stood motionless. She was another woman.

As if Clem had called “Clear stage”—and indeed he looked about him with an air of authority — Martyn, Jacko and Gay moved into the wings. Parry and J.G. went to the foot of the stairs and Poole crossed to above Helena. They placed themselves thus in the businesslike manner of a rehearsal. The Doctor, however, remained prone on his sofa, breathing deeply and completely disregarded by everybody. Helena glanced at Clem Smith, who went to the book.

“From Ben’s exit, Clem,” Poole said, and after a moment Helena turned and addressed herself to the empty stage on her left.

“I’ve only one thing to say, but it’s between the three of us.” She turned to Parry and Darcey. “Do you mind?” she asked them.

Parry said: “I don’t understand and I’m past minding.”

Darcey said: “My head is buzzing with a sense of my own inadequacy. I shall be glad to be alone.”

They went out, each on his own line, leaving Helena, Adam, and the ghost of Bennington on the stage.

Helena spoke again to vacancy. “It must be clear to you, now. It’s the end, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Clem’s voice said. “I understand you perfectly. Good-bye, my dear.”

They watched the door on the left. Alleyn took out his watch. Helena made a quick movement as if to prevent the departure of an unseen person and Poole laid his hand on her arm. They brought dead Ben back to the stage by their mime and dismissed him as vividly. It seemed that the door must open and shut for him as he went out.

Poole said: “And now I must speak to you alone.” There followed a short passage of dialogue which he and Helena played a tempo but with muted voices. Jacko, in the wings, clapped his hands and the report was as startling as a gun-shot. Poole ran out through the left-hand door.

Helena traced a series of movements about the stage. Her gestures were made in the manner of an exercise but the shadow of their significance was reflected in her face. Finally she moved into the window and seemed to compel herself to look out. Poole re-entered.

“Thank you,” Alleyn said, shutting his watch. “Fifty seconds. Will you all come on again, if you please?”

When they had assembled in their old positions, he said: “Did anyone notice Mr. Poole as he waited by the door for his re-entry?”

“The door’s recessed,” Poole said. “I was more or less screened.”

“Someone off-stage may have noticed, however.” He looked from Darcey to Percival.

“We went straight to our rooms,” said Parry.

“Together?”

“I was first. Miss Tarne was in the entrance to the passage and I spoke to her for a moment. J.G. followed me, I think.”

“Do you remember this, Miss Tarne?”

It had been at the time when Martyn had begun to come back to earth. It was like a recollection from a dream. “Yes,” she said. “I remember. They both spoke to me.”

“And went on down the passage?”

“Yes.”

“To be followed in a short time by yourself and Mr. Bennington?”

“Yes.”

“And then Mr. Doré joined you and you went to your rooms?”

“Yes.”

“So that after Mr. Bennington had gone to his room, you, Mr. Percival, were in your dressing-room, which is next door to his, Mr. Darcey was in his room which is on the far side of Mr. Percival’s, and Miss Tarne was in her room — or more correctly, perhaps, Miss Gainsford’s — with Mr. Doré, who joined her there after looking in on Mr. Bennington. Right?”

They murmured an uneasy assent.

“How long were you all in these rooms?”

Jacko said: “I believe I have said I adjusted this Infant’s make-up and returned with her to the stage.”

“I think,” said Martyn, “that the other two went out to the stage before we did. I remember hearing them go up the passage together. That was before the call for the final curtain. We went out after the call, didn’t we, Jacko?”

“Certainly, my Infant. And by that time you were a little more awake, isn’t it? The pink clouds had receded a certain distance?”

Martyn nodded, feeling foolish. Poole came behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders. “So there would appear at least to be an alibi for the Infant Phenomenon,” he said. It was the most natural and inevitable thing in the world for her to lean back. His hands moved to her arms and he held her to him for an uncharted second while a spring of well-being broke over her astounded heart.

Alleyn looked from her face to Poole’s and she guessed that he wondered about their likeness to each other. Poole, answering her thoughts and Alleyn’s unspoken question, said: “We are remotely related, but I am not allowed to mention it. She’s ashamed of the connection.”

“That’s unlucky,” Alleyn said with a smile, “since it declares itself so unequivocally.”

Gay Gainsford said loudly to Darcey: “Do you suppose, darling, they’d let me get my cigarettes?”

Helena said: “Here you are, Gay.” Darcey had already opened his case and held it out to her in his right hand. His left hand was in his trousers pocket. His posture was elegant and modish, out of keeping with his look of anxiety and watchfulness.

“Where are your cigarettes?” Alleyn asked and Gay said quickly: “It doesn’t matter, thank you. I’ve got one. I won’t bother. I’m sorry I interrupted.”

“But where are they?”

“I don’t really know what I’ve done with them.”

“Where were you during the performance?”

She said impatiently: “It really doesn’t matter. I’ll look for them later or something.”

“Gay,” said Jacko, “was in the Greenroom throughout the show.”

“Lamprey will see if he can find them.”

The young constable said: “Yes, of course, sir,” and went out.

“In the Greenroom?” Alleyn said. “Were you there all the time, Miss Gainsford?”

Standing in front of her with his back to Alleyn, Darcey held a light to her cigarette. She inhaled and coughed violently. He said: “Gay didn’t feel fit enough to move. She curled up in a chair in the Greenroom. I was to take her home after the show.”

“When did you leave the Greenroom, Miss Gainsford?”

But it seemed that Gay had half-asphyxiated herself with her cigarette. She handed it wildly to Darcey, buried her face in her handkerchief and was madly convulsed. P. C. Lamprey returned with a packet of cigarettes, was waved away with vehemence, gave them to Darcey and on his own initiative fetched a cup of water.

“If the face is congested,” Dr. Rutherford advised from the sofa, “hold her up by the heels.” His eyes remained closed.

Whether it was the possibility of being subjected to this treatment or the sip of water that Darcey persuaded her to take or the generous thumps on her back, administered by Jacko, that effected a cure, the paroxysm abated. Alleyn, who had watched this scene thoughtfully, said: “If you are quite yourself again, Miss Gainsford, will you try to remember when you left the Greenroom?”

She shook her head weakly and said in an invalid’s voice: “Please, I honestly don’t remember. Is it very important?”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Gay!” cried Helena, with every sign of the liveliest irritation. “Do stop being such an unmitigated ass. You’re not choking: if you were your eyes would water and you’d probably dribble. Of course it’s important. You were in the Greenroom and next door to Ben. Think!”

“But you can’t imagine—” Gay said wildly. “Oh, Aunty — I’m sorry, I mean Helena — I do think that’s a frightful thing to suggest.”

“My dear Gay,” Poole said, “I don’t suppose Helena or Mr. Alleyn or any of us imagines you went into Ben’s room, knocked him senseless with a straight left to the jaw and then turned the gas on. We merely want to know what you did do.”

J.G., who had given a sharp ejaculation and half risen from his chair, now sank back.

Alleyn said: “It would also be interesting, Mr. Poole, to hear how you knew about the straight left to the jaw.”

Poole was behind Martyn and a little removed from her. She felt his stillness in her own bones. When he spoke it was a shock rather than a relief to hear how easy and relaxed his voice sounded.

“Do you realize, Alleyn,” he said, “you’ve given me an opportunity to use, in reverse, a really smashing detective’s cliché: ‘I didn’t know. You have just told me!’ ”

“And that,” Alleyn said with some relish, “as I believe you would say in the profession, takes me off with a hollow laugh and a faint hiss. So you merely guessed at the straight left?”

“If Ben was killed, and I don’t believe he was, it seemed to me to be the only way this murder could be brought about.”

“Surely not,” Alleyn said without emphasis. “There is the method that was used before in this theatre with complete success.”

“I don’t know that I would describe as completely successful a method that ended with the arrest of its employer.”

“Oh,” Alleyn said lightly, “that’s another story. He underestimated our methods.”

“A good enough warning to anyone else not to follow his plan of action.”

“Or perhaps merely a hint that it could be improved upon,” Alleyn said. “What do you think, Mr. Darcey?”

“I?” J.G. sounded bewildered. “I don’t know. I’m afraid I haven’t followed the argument.”

“You were still thinking about the straight-left theory, perhaps?”

“I believe with the others that it was suicide,” said J.G. He had sat down again beside Gay. His legs were stretched out before him and crossed at the ankles, his hands were in his trousers pockets and his chin on his chest. It was the attitude of a distinguished M.P. during a damaging speech from the opposite side of the House.

Alleyn said: “And we still don’t know when Miss Gainsford left the Greenroom.”

“Oh, lawks!” Parry ejaculated. “This is too tiresome. J.G., you looked in at the Greenroom door when we came back for the curtain-call, don’t you remember? Was she there then? Were you there then, Gay darling?”

Gay opened her mouth to speak but J.G. said quickly: “Yes, of course I did. Stupid of me to forget Gay was sound asleep in the armchair, Mr. Alleyn. I didn’t disturb her.” He passed his right hand over his beautifully groomed head. “It’s a most extraordinary thing,” he said vexedly, “that I should have forgotten this. Of course she was asleep. Because later, when — well, when, in point of fact, the discovery had been made — I asked where Gay was and someone said she was still in the Greenroom, and I was naturally worried and went to fetch her. She was still asleep and the Greenroom, by that time, reeking with gas. I brought her back here.”

“Have you any idea, Miss Gainsford,” Alleyn asked, “about when you dropped off?”

“I was exhausted, Mr. Alleyn. Physically and emotionally exhausted. I still am.”

“Was it, for instance, before the beginning of the last act?”

“N — n—no. No. Because J.G. came in to see how I was in the second interval. Didn’t you, darling? And I was exhausted, wasn’t I?”

“Yes, dear.”

“And he gave me some aspirins and I took two. And I suppose, in that state of utter exhaustion, they worked. So I fell into a sleep — an exhausted sleep, it was.”

“Naturally,” Helena murmured with a glance at Alleyn, “it would be exhausted.”

“Undoubtedly,” said Jacko, “it was exhausted.”

“Well, it was,” said Gay crossly. “Because I was. Utterly.”

“Did anyone else beside Mr. Darcey go into the Greenroom during the second interval?”

Gay looked quickly at J.G. “Honestly,” she said, “I’m so muddled about times it really isn’t safe to ask me. I’m sure to be wrong.”

“Mr. Darcey?”

“No,” J.G. said.

“Well, my dearest J.G.,” Parry said, “I couldn’t be more reluctant to keep popping in like one of the Eumenides in that utterly incomprehensible play, but I do assure you that you’re at fault here. Ben went into the Greenroom in the second interval.”

“Dear Heaven!” Helena said, on a note of desperation. “What has happened to us all!”

“I’m terribly sorry, Helena darling,” Parry said, and sounded it.

“But why should you be sorry? Why shouldn’t Ben go and see his niece in the interval? He played the whole of the third act afterwards. Of course you should say so, Parry, if you know what you’re talking about. Shouldn’t he, Adam? Shouldn’t he, Mr. Alleyn?”

Poole was looking with a sort of incredulous astonishment at Darcey. “I think he should,” he said slowly.

“And you, Mr. Darcey?” asked Alleyn.

“All right, Parry,” said J.G., “go on.”

“There’s not much more to be said, and anyway I don’t suppose it matters. It was before they’d called the third act. Helena and Adam and Martyn had gone out. They begin the act. I come on a bit later and Ben after me and J.G. later still. I wanted to see how the show was going and I was on my way in the passage when Ben came out of his room and went into the Greenroom next door. The act was called soon after that.”

“Did you speak to him?” Alleyn asked.

“I did not,” said Parry with some emphasis. “I merely went out to the stage and joined Jacko and the two dressers and the call-boy, who were watching from the Prompt side, and Clem.”

“That’s right,” Clem Smith said. “I remember telling you all to keep away from the bunches. The boy called J.G. and Ben about five minutes later.”

“Were you still in the Greenroom when you were called, Mr. Darcey?”

“Yes.”

“With Mr. Bennington?”

“He’d gone to his room.”

“Not for the life of me,” Helena said wearily, “can I see why you had to be so mysterious, J.G.”

“Perhaps,” Alleyn said, “the reason is in your left trousers pocket, Mr. Darcey.”

J.G. didn’t take his hand out of his pocket. He stood up and addressed himself directly to Alleyn.

“May I speak to you privately?” he asked.

“Of course,” Alleyn said. “Shall we go to the Greenroom?”

In the Greenroom and in the presence of Alleyn and of Fox, who had joined them there, J. G. Darcey took his left hand out of his trousers pocket and extended it palm downwards for their inspection. It was a well-shaped and well-kept hand but the knuckles were grazed. A trace of blood had seeped out round the greasepaint and powder which had been daubed over the raw skin.

“I suppose I’ve behaved very stupidly,” he said. “But I hoped there would be no need for this to come out. It has no bearing whatever on his death.”

“In that case,” Alleyn said, “it will not be brought out. But you’ll do well to be frank.”

“I dare say,” said J.G. wryly.

“There’s a bruise on the deceased’s jaw on the right side that could well have been caused by that straight left Mr. Poole talked about. Now, we can of course determine whether make-up from your left fist is mixed with Bennington’s own make-up over this bruise. If you tell me you didn’t let drive at him we’ll make this experiment.”

“I assure you that you don’t need to do any such thing. I’ll willingly admit that I hit him,” J.G. said with a shudder.

“And also why you hit him?”

“Oh, yes, if I can. If I can,” he repeated and pressed his hand to his eyes. “D’you mind if we sit down, Alleyn? I’m a bit tired.”

“Do.”

J.G. sat in the leather armchair where Martyn, and, in her turn, Gay Gainsford had slept. In the dim light of the Greenroom his face looked wan and shadowed. “Not the chicken I was,” he said, and it was an admission actors do not love to make.

Alleyn faced him. Fox sat down behind him, flattened his notebook on the table and placed his spectacles across his nose. There was something cosy about Fox when he took notes. Alleyn remembered absently that his wife had once observed that Mr. Fox was a cross between a bear and a baby and exhibited the most pleasing traits of both creatures.

The masked light above Jacko’s sketch of Adam Poole shone down upon it, and it thus was given considerable emphasis in an otherwise shadowed room.

“If you want a short statement,” J.G. said, “I can give it to you in a sentence. I hit Ben on the jaw in this room during the second act wait. I didn’t knock him out but he was so astonished he took himself off. I was a handy amateur welter-weight in my young days but it must be twenty years or more since I put up my hands. I must say I rather enjoyed it.”

“What sort of condition was he in?”

“Damned unpleasant Oh, you mean drunk or sober? I should say ugly-drunk. Ben was a soak. I’ve never seen him incapacitated, but really I’ve hardly ever seen him stone-cold either. He was in his second degree of drunkenness: offensive, outrageous and incalculable. He’d behaved atrociously throughout the first and second acts.”

“In what way?”

“As only a clever actor with too much drink in him can behave. Scoring off other people. Playing for cheap laughs. Doing unrehearsed bits of business that made nonsense of the production. Upon my word,” said J.G. thoughtfully, “I wonder Adam or the Doctor or poor little Parry, if he’d had the guts, didn’t get in first and give him what he deserved. A perfectly bloody fellow.”

“Was it because of his performance that you hit him?”

J.G. looked at his finger-nails and seemed to ponder. “No,” he said at last. “Or not directly. If I thought you’d believe me I’d say yes, but no doubt you’ll talk to her and she’s so upset anyway—”

“You mean Miss Gainsford?”

“Yes,” said J.G. with the oddest air of pride and embarrassment. “I mean Gay.”

“Was it on her account you dotted him one?”

“It was. He was damned offensive.”

“I’m sorry,” Alleyn said, “but you’ll realize that we do want to be told a little more than that about it.”

“I suppose so.” He clasped his hands and examined his bruised knuckles. “Although I find it extremely difficult and unpleasant to go into the wretched business. It’s only because I hope you’ll let Gay off, as far as possible, if you know the whole story. That’s why I asked to see you alone.” He slewed round and looked discontentedly at Fox.

“Inspector Fox,” Alleyn said, “is almost pathologically discreet.”

“Glad to hear it. Well, as you’ve heard, I’d managed to get hold of a bottle of aspirins and I brought them to her, here, in the second interval. Gay was sitting in this chair. She was still terribly upset. Crying. I don’t know if you’ve realized why she didn’t go on for the part?”

“No. I’d be glad to have the whole story.” J.G. embarked on it, with obvious reluctance, but as he talked his hesitancy lessened and he even seemed to find some kind of ease in speaking. He described Gay’s part and her struggle at rehearsals. It was clear that, however unwillingly, he shared the general opinion of her limited talent. “She’d have given a reasonable show,” he said, “if she’d been given a reasonable chance but from the beginning the part got her down. She’s a natural ingenue and this thing’s really ‘character.’ It was bad casting. Adam kept the Doctor at bay as much as possible but she knew what he thought. She didn’t want the part. She was happy where she was in repertory but Ben dragged her in. He saw himself as a sort of fairy-godfather-uncle and when she found the part difficult he turned obstinate and wouldn’t let her throw it in. Out of vanity really. He was very vain. She’s a frail little thing, you know, all heart and sensitivity, and between them they’ve brought her to the edge of a breakdown. It didn’t help matters when Miss Martyn Tarne appeared out of a clear sky, first as Helena Hamilton’s dresser and then as Gay’s understudy and then — mysteriously, as some of the cast, Ben in particular, thought — as Adam’s distant cousin. You noticed the uncanny resemblance but you may not know the part in the play requires it. That was the last straw for Gay. She’d been ill with nerves and fright and to-night she cracked up completely and wouldn’t — couldn’t go on. When I saw her in the first interval she was a bit quieter but in the second act little Miss Tarne did very well indeed. Quite startling, it was. Incidentally, I suppose her success infuriated Ben. And Gay heard everybody raving about her as they came off. Naturally that upset her again. So she was in tears when I came in.”

He leant forward and rested his head in his hands. His voice was less distinct “I’m fond of her,” he said. “She’s got used to me being about. When I came in she ran to me and — I needn’t go into the way I felt. There’s no explaining these things. She was sobbing in my arms, poor bird, and God knows my heart had turned over. Ben came in. He went for her like a pickpocket. He was crazy. I tried to shut him up. He didn’t make a noise — I don’t mean that — matter of fact what he said streamed out of him in a whisper. He was quite off his head and began talking about Helena — about his wife. He used straight-out obscenities. There’d been an episode in the afternoon and — well, he used the sort of generalization that Lear and Othello and Leontes use, if you remember your Shakespeare.”

“Yes.”

“Gay was still clinging to me and he began to talk the same sort of stuff about her. I’m not going into details. I put her away from me and quite deliberately gave him what was coming to him. I don’t remember what I said. I don’t think any of us said anything. So he went out nursing his jaw and they called me for the last act and I went out too. During this last act, when we were on together, I could see the bruise coming out under his make-up.”

“What was his general behaviour like during the final act?”

“As far as I was concerned he behaved in the way people do when they play opposite someone they’ve had a row with off-stage. He didn’t look me in the eye. He looked at my forehead or ears. It doesn’t show from the front. He played fairly soundly until poor Parry got out of position. Parry is his butt in the piece, but of course what Ben did was outrageous. He stuck out his foot as Parry moved and brought him down. That was not long before his own exit. I never saw him again after that until he was carried out. That’s all. I don’t know if you’ve believed me but I hope you’ll let Gay off any more of this stuff.”

Alleyn didn’t answer. He looked at the young-old actor for a moment. J.G. was lighting a cigarette with that trained economy and grace of movement that were part of his stock-in-trade. His head was stooped, and Alleyn saw how carefully the silver hair had been distributed over the scalp. The hands were slightly tremulous. How old was J.G.? Fifty? Fifty-five? Sixty? Was he the victim of that Indian Summer that can so unmercifully visit an ageing man?

“It’s the very devil, in these cases,” Alleyn said, “how one has to plug away at everyone in turn. Not that it helps to say so. There’s one more question that I’m afraid you won’t enjoy at all. Can you tell me more specifically what Bennington said about — I think you called it an episode — of the afternoon, in which his wife was concerned?”

“No, by God, I can’t,” said J.G. hotly.

“He spoke about it in front of Miss Gainsford, didn’t he?”

“You can’t possibly ask Gay about it. It’s out of the question.”

“Not, I’m afraid, for an investigating officer,” said Alleyn, who thought that J.G.’s delicacy, if delicacy were in question, was possibly a good deal more sensitive than Miss Gainsford’s. “Do you suppose Bennington talked about this episode to other people?”

“In the condition he was in I should think it possible.”

“Well,” Alleyn said, “we shall have to find out.”

“See here, Alleyn. What happened, if he spoke the truth, was something entirely between himself and his wife and it’s on her account that I can’t repeat what he said. You know she and Poole were on-stage at the crucial time and that there’s no sense in thinking of motive, if that’s what you’re after, where they are concerned.”

Alleyn said: “This episode might constitute a motive for suicide, however.”

J.G. looked up quickly. “Suicide? But — why?”

“Shame?” Alleyn suggested. “Self-loathing if he sobered up after you hit him and took stock of himself? I imagine they’ve been virtually separated for some time.”

“I see you have a talent,” said J.G., “for reading between the lines.”

“Let us rather call it an ugly little knack. Thank you, Mr. Darcey, I don’t think I need bother you any more for the moment.”

J.G. went slowly to the door. He hesitated for a moment and then said: “If you’re looking for motive, Alleyn, you’ll find it in a sort of way all over the place. He wasn’t a likeable chap and he’d antagonized everyone. Even poor little Parry came off breathing revenge after the way he’d been handled, but, my God, actors do that kind of thing only too often. Feeling runs high, you know, on first nights.”

“So it would seem.”

“Can I take that child home?”

“I’m sorry,” Alleyn said, “not yet. Not just yet.”

“Well,” Alleyn said when J.G. had gone, “what have you got at your end of the table, Br’er Fox?”

Fox turned back the pages of his note-book.

“What you might call negative evidence, on the whole, Mr. Alleyn. Clearance for the understudies, who watched the show from the back of the circle and then went home. Clearance for the two dressers (male), the stage-manager and his assistant, the stage-hands and the night-watchman. They were all watching the play or on their jobs. On statements taken independently, they clear each other.”

“That’s something.”

“No female dresser,” Mr. Fox observed. “Which seems odd.”

“Miss Tarne was the sole female dresser and she’s been promoted overnight to what I believe I should call starletdom. Which in itself seems to me to be a rum go. I’ve always imagined female dressers to be cups-of-tea in alpaca aprons and not embryo actresses. I don’t think Miss Tarne could have done the job, but she comes into the picture as the supplanter of Uncle Ben’s dear little niece, whom I find an extremely irritating ass with a certain amount of low cunning. Miss Tarne, on the other hand, seems pleasant and intelligent and looks nice. You must allow me my prejudices, Br’er Fox.”

“She’s Mr. Poole’s third cousin or something.”

“The case reeks with obscure relationships — blood, marital and illicit, as far as one can see. Did you get anything from Bennington’s dresser?”

“Nothing much,” said Fox, sighing. “It seems the deceased didn’t like him to hang about on account of being a secret drinker. He was in the dressing-room up to about seven and was then told to go and see if he could be of any use to the other gentlemen, and not to come back till the first interval when the deceased changed his clothes. I must say that chap earns his wages pretty easily. As far as I could make out the rest of his duties for the night consisted in tearing off chunks of cotton-wool for the deceased to do up his face with. I checked his visits to the dressing-room by that. The last time he looked in was after the deceased went on the stage in the third act. He cleared away the used cottonwool and powdered a clean bit. In the normal course of events I suppose he’d have put Mr. Bennington into the fancy dress he was going to wear to the ball and then gone home quite worn out.”

“Was he at all talkative?”

“Not got enough energy, Mr. Alleyn. Nothing to say for himself barring the opinion that deceased was almost on the D.T. mark. The other dresser, Cringle, seems a bright little chap. He just works for Mr. Poole.”

“Have you let them go?”

“Yes, sir, I have. And the stage-hands. We can look them out again if we want them, but for the moment I think we’ve just about cleaned them up. I’ve let the assistant stage-manager — A.S.M. they call him — get away, too. Wife’s expecting any time and he never left the prompting book.”

“That reduces the mixed bag a bit. You’ve been through all the rooms, of course, but before we do anything else, Br’er Fox, let’s have a prowl.”

They went into the passage. Fox jerked his thumb at Bennington’s room. “Gibson’s doing a fly-crawl in there,” he said. “If there’s anything, he’ll find it. That dresser-chap didn’t clear anything up except his used powder-puffs.”

They passed Bennington’s room and went into Parry Percival’s, next door. Here they found Detective-Sergeants Thompson and Bailey, the one a photographic and the other a finger-print expert. They were packing up their gear. “Well, Bailey?” Alleyn asked. Bailey looked morosely at his superior. “It’s there all right, sir,” he said grudgingly. “Complete prints, very near, and a check-up all over the shop.”

“What about next door?”

“Deceased’s room, sir? His prints on the wing-tap and the tube. Trace of red greasepaint on the rubber connection at the end of the tube. Matches paint on deceased’s lips.”

“Very painstaking,” said Alleyn. “Have you tried the experiment?”

“Seeing the fires are back-to-back, sir,” Fox said, “we have. Sergeant Gibson blew down this tube and deceased’s fire went out. As in former case.”

“Well,” Alleyn said, “there you are. Personally I don’t believe a word of it, either way.“ He looked, without interest, at the telegrams stuck round the frame of Parry’s looking-glass and at his costume for the ball.

“Very fancy,” he muttered. “Who’s in the next room?”

“Mr. J. G. Darcey,” said Thompson.

They went into J.G.’s room, which was neat and impersonal in character and contained nothing, it seemed, of interest, unless a photograph of Miss Gainsford looking insouciante could be so regarded.

In the last room on this side of the passage they saw the electric sewing-machine, some rough sketches, scraps of material and other evidences of Martyn’s sewing-party for Jacko. Alleyn glanced round it, crossed the passage and looked into the empty room opposite. “Dismal little cells when they’re unoccupied, aren’t they?” he said, and moved on to Gay Gainsford’s room.

He stood there, his hands in his pockets, with Fox at his elbow. “This one suffers from the fashionable complaint, Fox,” he said. “Schizophrenia. It’s got a split personality. On my left a rather too-smart overcoat, a frisky hat, chi-chi gloves, a pansy purse-bag, a large bottle of one of the less reputable scents, a gaggle of mascots, a bouquet from the management and orchids from — who do you suppose?” He turned over the card. “Yes. Alas, yes, with love and a thousand good wishes from her devoted J.G. On my right a well-worn and modest little topcoat, a pair of carefully tended shoes and gloves that remind one of the White Rabbit, a grey skirt and beret and a yellow jumper. A hand-bag that contains, I’m sure, one of those rather heartrending little purses and — what else?” He explored the bag. “A New Zealand passport issued this year in which one finds Miss Tarne is nineteen years old and an actress. So the dresser’s job was — what? The result of an appeal to the celebrated third cousin? But why not give her the understudy at once? She’s fantastically like him and I’ll be sworn he’s mightily catched with her. What’s more, even old Darcey says she’s a damn good actress.” He turned the leaves of the passport. “She only arrived in England seventeen days ago. Can that account for the oddness of the set-up? Anyway, I don’t suppose it matters. Let’s go next door, shall we?”

Cringle had left Poole’s room in exquisite order. Telegrams were pinned in rows on the walls. A towel was spread over the make-up. A cigarette had been half-extracted from a packet and a match left ready on the top of its box. A framed photograph of Helena Hamilton stood near the glass. Beside it a tiny clock with a gay face ticked feverishly. It stood on a card. Alleyn moved it delicately and read the inscription. From Helena. To-night and to-morrow and always — bless you.

“The standard for first-night keepsakes seems to be set at a high level,” Alleyn muttered. “This is a French clock, Fox, with a Sèvres face encircled with garnets. What do you suppose the gentleman gave the lady?”

“Would a tiara be common?” asked Fox.

“Let’s go next door and see.”

Helena’s room smelt and. looked like a conservatory. A table had been brought in to carry the flowers. Jacko had set out the inevitable telegrams and had hung up the dresses under their dust sheets.

“Here we are,” Alleyn said. “A sort of jeroboam of the most expensive scent on the market. Price, I should say, round about thirty pounds. ‘From Adam.’ Why don’t you give me presents when we solve a petty larceny, Foxkin? Now, I may be fanciful, but this looks to me like the gift of a man who’s at his wit’s end and plumps for the expensive, the easy and the obvious. Here’s something entirely different. Look at this, Fox.” It was a necklace of six wooden medallions strung between jade rings. Each plaque was most delicately carved in the likeness of a head in profile and each head was a portrait of one of the company of players. The card bore the date and the inscription: From J.

“Must have taken a long time to do,” observed Fox. “That’ll be the foreign gentleman’s work, no doubt. Mr. Doré.”

“No doubt. I wonder if love’s labour has been altogether lost,” said Alleyn. “I hope she appreciates it.”

He took up the leather case with its two photographs of Poole. “He’s a remarkable looking chap,” he said. “If there’s anything to be made of faces in terms of character, and I still like to pretend there is, what’s to be made of this one? It’s what they call a heart-shaped face, broad across the eyes with a firmly moulded chin and a generous but delicate mouth. Reminds one of a Holbein drawing. Doré’s sketch in the Greenroom is damn good. Doré crops up all over the place, doesn’t he? Designs their fancy dresses. Paints their faces, in a double sense. Does their décor and, with complete self-effacement, loves their leading lady.”

“Do you reckon?”

“I do indeed, Br’er Fox,” Alleyn said and rubbed his nose vexedly. “However. Gibson’s done all the usual things in these rooms, I suppose?”

“Yes, Mr. Alleyn. Pockets, suitcases and boxes. Nothing to show for it.”

“We can let them come home to roost fairly soon, then. We’ll start now to see them separately. Blast! I suppose I’ll have to begin with checking Darcey’s statement with the Gainsford. She gives me the horrors, that young woman.”

“Shall I see her, Mr. Alleyn?”

“You can stay and take your notes. I’ll see her in the Greenroom. No, wait a bit. You stay with the others, Fox, and send young Lamprey along with her. And you might try again if you can dig up anything that sounds at all off-key with Bennington over the last few days. Anything that distressed or excited him.”

“He seems to have been rather easily excited.”

“He does, doesn’t he, but you never know. I don’t believe it was suicide, Fox, and I’m not yet satisfied that we’ve unearthed anything that’s good enough for a motive for murder. Trip away, Foxkin. Ply your craft.”

Fox went out sedately. Alleyn crossed the passage and opened the door of Bennington’s room. Sergeant Gibson was discovered, squatting on his haunches before the dead gas fire. “Anything?” Alleyn asked.

“There’s this bit of a stain that looks like a scorch on the hearth, sir.”

“Yes, I saw that. Any deposit?”

“We-ll—”

“We may have to try.”

“The powder pads deceased’s dresser cleared away were in the rubbish bin on the stage where he said he put them. Nothing else in the bin. There’s this burnt paper on the floor, but it’s in small flakes — powder almost.”

“All right. Seal the room when you’ve finished. And Gibson, don’t let the mortuary van go without telling me.”

“Very good, sir.”

Alleyn returned to the Greenroom. He heard Miss Gainsford approaching under the wing of P.C. Lamprey. She spoke in a high grand voice that seemed to come out of a drawing-room comedy of the twenties.

“I think you’re too intrepid,” she was saying, “to start from rock bottom like this. It must be so devastatingly boring for you, though I will say it’s rather a comfort to think one is in the hands of, to coin a phrase, a gent. Two gents, in fact.”

“Chief Inspector Alleyn,” said P. C. Lamprey, “is in the Greenroom I think, Miss.”

“My dear, you do it quite marvellously. You ought, again to coin a phrase, to go on the stage.”

Evidently Miss Gainsford lingered in the passage.

Alleyn heard his subordinate murmur: “Shall I go first?” His regulation boots clumped firmly to the door, which he now opened.

“Will you see Miss Gainsford, sir?” asked P. C. Lamprey, who was pink in the face.

“All right, Mike,” Alleyn said. “Show her in and take notes.”

“Will you come this way, Miss?”

Miss Gainsford made her entrance with a Mayfairish gallantry that was singularly dated. Alleyn wondered if she had decided that her first reading of her new role was mistaken. “She’s abandoned the brave little woman for the suffering mondaine who goes down with an epigram,” he thought, and sure enough, Miss Gainsford addressed herself to him with staccato utterance and brittle high-handedness.

“Ought one to be terribly flattered because one is the first to be grilled?” she asked. “Or is it a sinister little hint that one is top of the suspect list?”

“We have to start somewhere,” Alleyn said. “I thought it might be convenient to see you first. Will you sit down, Miss Gainsford?”

She did so elaborately, gave herself a cigarette, and turned to P. C. Lamprey. “May one ask The Force for a light,” she asked, “or would that be against the rules?”

Alleyn lit her cigarette while his unhappy subordinate retired to the table. She turned in her chair to watch him. “Is he going to take me down and use it all in evidence against me?” she asked. Her nostrils dilated, she raised her chin and added jerkily, “That’s what’s called the Usual Warning, isn’t it?”

“A warning is given in police practice,” Alleyn said as woodenly as. possible, “if there is any chance that the person under interrogation will make a statement that is damaging to himself. Lamprey will note down this interview and, if it seems advisable, you will be asked later on to give a signed statement.”

“If that was meant to be reassuring,” said Miss Gainsford, “I can’t have heard it properly. Could we get cracking?”

“Certainly. Miss Gainsford, you were in the Greenroom throughout the performance. During the last interval you were visited by Mr. J. G. Darcey and by your uncle. Do you agree that as the result of something the deceased said, Mr. Darcey hit him on the jaw?”

She said: “Wasn’t it too embarrassing! I mean the Gorgeous Primitive Beast is one thing, but one old gentleman banging another about is so utterly another. I’m afraid I didn’t put that very clearly.”

“You agree that Mr. Darcey hit Mr. Bennington?”

“But madly. Like a sledge-hammer. I found it so difficult to know what to say. There just seemed to be no clue to further conversation.”

“It is the conversation before than after the blow that I should like to hear about, if you please.”

Alleyn had turned away from her and was looking at Jacko’s portrait of Poole. He waited for some moments before she said sharply: “I suppose you think because I talk like this about it I’ve got no feeling. You couldn’t be more at fault.” It was as if she called his attention to her performance.

He said, without turning: “I assure you I hadn’t given it a thought. What did your uncle say that angered Mr. Darcey?”

“He was upset,” she said sulkily, “because I was ill and couldn’t play.”

“Hardly an occasion for hitting him.”

“J.G. is very sensitive about me. He treats me like a piece of china.”

“Which is more than he did for your uncle, it seems.”

“Uncle Ben talked rather wildly.” Miss Gainsford seemed to grope for her poise and made a half-hearted return to her brittle manner. “Let’s face it,” she said, “he was stinking, poor pet.”

“You mean he was drunk?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And abusive?”

“I didn’t care. I understood him.”

“Did he talk about Miss Hamilton?”

“Obviously J.G.’s already told you he did, so why ask me?”

“We like to get confirmation of statements.”

“Well, you tell me what he said and I’ll see about confirming it.”

For the first time Alleyn looked at her. She wore an expression of rather frightened impertinence. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that won’t quite do. I’m sure you’re very anxious to get away from the theatre, Miss Gainsford, and we’ve still a lot of work before us. If you will give me your account of this conversation I shall be glad to hear it; if you prefer not to do so I’ll take note of your refusal and keep you no longer.”

She gaped slightly, attempted a laugh and seemed to gather up the rags of her impersonation.

“Oh, but I’ll tell you,” she said. “Why not? It’s only that there’s so pathetically little to tell. I can’t help feeling darling Aunty — she likes me to call her Helena — was too Pinero and Galsworthy about it. It appears that poorest Uncle Ben came in from his club and found her in a suitable setting and — well, there you are, and — well, really, even after all these years of segregation, you couldn’t call it a seduction. Or could you? Anyway, she chose to treat it as such and raised the most piercing hue-and-cry and he went all primitive and when he came in here he was evidently in the throes of a sort of hangover, and seeing J.G. was being rather sweet to me he put a sinister interpretation on it and described the whole incident and was rather rude about women generally and me and Aunty in particular. And J.G. took a gloomy view of his attitude and hit him. And, I mean, taking it by and large one can’t help feeling: what a song and dance about nothing in particular. Is that all you wanted to know?”

“Do you think any other members of the company know of all this?”

She looked genuinely surprised. “Oh yes,” she said. “Adam and Jacko, anyway. I mean Uncle Ben appeared to have a sort of nation-wide hook-up idea about it but even if he didn’t mention it, she’d naturally tell Adam, wouldn’t you think? And Jacko, because everybody tells Jacko everything. And he was doing dresser for her. Yes, I’d certainly think she’d tell Jacko.”

“I see. Thank you, Miss Gainsford. That’s all.”

“Really?” She was on her feet. “I can go home?”

Alleyn answered her as he had answered J.G. “I’m sorry, not yet. Not just yet.”

P. C. Lamprey opened the door. Inevitably, she paused on the threshold. “Never tell me there’s nothing in atmosphere,” she said. “I knew when I came into this theatre. As if the very walls screamed it at me. I knew.”

She went out.

“Tell me, Mike,” Alleyn said, “are many young women of your generation like that?”

“Well, no, sir. She’s what one might call a composite picture, don’t you think?”

“I do, indeed. And I fancy she’s got her genres a bit confused.”

“She tells me she’s been playing in Private Lives, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray and Sleeping Partners in the provinces.”

“That may account for it,” said Alleyn.

An agitated voice — Parry Percival’s — was raised in the passage, to be answered in a more subdued manner by Sergeant Gibson’s.

“Go and see what it is, Mike,” Alleyn said.

But before Lamprey could reach the door it was flung open and Parry burst in, slamming it in Gibson’s affronted face. He addressed himself instantly and breathlessly to Alleyn.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’ve just remembered something. I’ve been so hideously upset, I just simply never gave it a thought. It was when I smelt gas. When I went back to my room, I smelt gas and I turned off my fire. I ought to have told you. I’ve just realized.”

“I think perhaps what you have just realized,” Alleyn said, “is the probability of our testing your gas fire for finger-prints and finding your own.”