Vintage Murder

Chapter XIV VARIATION ON A POLICE WHISTLE

Old Brandon Vernon looked a little the worse for wear. The hollows under his cheek bones and the lines round his eyes seemed to have made one of those grim encroachments to which middle-aged faces are so cruelly subject. A faint hint of a rimy stubble broke the smooth pallor of his chin; his eyes, in spite of their look of sardonic impertinence, were lack-lustre and tired. Yet when he spoke one forgot his age, for his voice was quite beautiful; deep, and exquisitely modulated. He was one of that company of old actors that are only found in the West End of London. They still believe in using their voices as instruments, they speak without affectation, and they are indeed actors.

“Well, Inspector,” he said to Alleyn, “you know how to delay an entrance. It was very effective business, coming out in your true colours like this.”

“I found it rather uncomfortable, Mr. Vernon,” answered Alleyn. “Do sit down, won’t you, and have a smoke? Cigarette?”

“I’ll have my comforter, if you don’t mind.” And Vernon pulled out a pipe and pouch. “Well,” he said, “I’m not sorry to leave the wardrobe-room. That young cub’s sulking and the other fellow has about as much conversation as a vegetable marrow. Dull.” He filled his pipe and gripped it between his teeth.

“We’re sorry to have kept you waiting so long,” said Alleyn.

“Don’t apologise. Used to it in this business. Half an actor’s life is spent waiting. Bad show this. Was Alfred murdered?”

“It looks rather like it, I’m afraid.”

“Um,” rumbled old Vernon. “I wonder why.”

“To be frank, so do we.”

“And I suppose we’re all suspect. Lord, I’ve played in a good many mystery dramas but I never expected to appear in the genuine thing. Let me see, I suppose you’re going to ask me what I was doing before and after the crime, eh?”

“That’s the idea,” agreed Alleyn smiling.

“Fire ahead, then,” said old Vernon.

Alleyn put the now familiar questions to him. He corroborated the account Liversidge and Broadhead had given of his movements. At the close of the play and after the catastrophe, he had gone straight to his dressing-room, where the other two afterwards joined him.

“I don’t know if that constitutes an alibi,” he said, rolling his eyes round at Wade. “If it doesn’t I understand I am almost certain to be innocent.”

“So the detective books tell us,” said Alleyn, “and they ought to know. As a matter of fact I think it does give you a pretty well cast-iron alibi.”

Vernon grimaced. “Not so good. I must watch my step.”

“You’ve been with the firm of Incorporated Playhouses a good time, haven’t you, Mr. Vernon?”

“Let me see. I started with Double Knock at the old Curtain.” He pondered. “Ten years. Ten years with Inky-P. Long time to work with one management, ten years.”

“You must be the senior member of the club?”

“Pretty well. Susie runs me close, but she left us for The Rat and the Beaver, two years ago.”

“Ah, yes. You must have known Mr. Meyer very well?”

“Yes, I did. As well as an actor ever knows his manager, and that’s very thoroughly in some ways and not at all in others.”

“Did you like him?”

“Yes, I did. He was honest. Very fair with his actors. Never paid colossal salaries — not as they go nowadays — but you always got good money.”

“Mr. Vernon, do you know of any incident in the past or present that could throw any light on this business?”

“I don’t.”

“The Firm is all right, I suppose? Financially, I mean?”

“I believe so,” answered Vernon. There was an overtone in his voice that suggested a kind of guardedness.

“Any doubt at all about that?” asked Alleyn.

“There are always rumours about managements like ours. I have heard a certain amount of gossip about some of the touring companies. They are supposed to have dropped money for the Firm. Then there was Time Payment. That did a flop. Still, Inky-P. has stood a flop or two in its time.”

“Were all Mr. Meyer’s interests bound up in the Firm, do you know?”

“I don’t know anything about it. George Mason could tell you that, probably. Alfred was a very shrewd business man and he and Carolyn are not the social spotlight hunters that most of ’em are nowadays. They lived very quietly. The theatre before everything. I should say Alfred had saved money. Only a guess, you know.”

“I know. It’ll all appear now, of course.”

“What puzzles me, Mr. Alleyn, is who on earth would want to do in Alfred Meyer. None of us, you’d have thought. Shops aren’t found so easily that we can afford to kill off the managers.” He paused and rolled his eyes round. “I wonder,” he said, “if that accident on Friday morning gave anybody the big idea.”

“What accident?” asked Alleyn sharply.

“The morning we got here. Didn’t you hear about it? One of the staff was up in the flies fixing the weight for the mast. The head mechanist and Ted Gascoigne were down below on the stage, having an argument. Suddenly the gentleman in the flies got all careless and dropped the weight. It fell plumb between the two men and crashed half through the stage. Ted Gascoigne raved at the poor swine for about ten minutes, and Fred — the head mechanist— nearly ate him. We all rushed out to see the fun. God, they were a sight! White as paper and making faces at each other.”

“Good Lord!” said Alleyn.

“Yes. It would have laid him out for keeps if it had hit one of ’em. Great leaden thing like an enormous sash-weight and as heavy—”

“As heavy, very nearly, as a jeroboam of champagne,” finished Alleyn. “It was used, afterwards, as a counterweight for the bottle.”

“Was it really!” exclaimed Vernon.

“Didn’t you know how they fixed the gear for the bottle?”

“I heard poor old Alfred holding forth on the subject, of course, but I’m afraid I didn’t pay much attention.”

“You all knew about the mishap with the counterweight?”

“Oh God, yes. Everyone came out helter-skelter. It shook the building. George ran along from the office, Val Gaynes flew out of her dressing-room in a pair of scanties. The two Australians nearly threw in their parts and returned to Sydney. It was a nine days’ wonder.”

“I see,” said Alleyn. He turned to Wade. “Anything else you’d like to ask Mr. Vernon, Inspector?”

“Well now,” said Wade genially, “I don’t know that there’s much left to ask, sir. I was wondering, Mr. Vernon, you having been so long with the company, if you could give us a little idea about the domestic side of the picture, as you might say.”

Old Vernon swung round in his chair and looked at Wade without enthusiasm.

“Afraid I don’t follow you,” he said.

“Well now, Mr. Vernon, you’ll understand we have to make certain inquiries in our line. You might say we have to get a bit curious. It’s our job, you understand, and we may fancy it as little as other folk do, but we’ve got to do it. Now, Mr. Vernon, would you describe Mr. and Mrs. Meyer as being a happy couple, if you know what I mean?”

“I can understand most common words of one or two syllables,” said Vernon, “and I do know what you mean. Yes, I should.”

“No differences of any sort?”

“None.”

“Good-oh, sir. That’s straight enough. So I suppose all this talk about her and Mr. Hambledon is so much hot air?”

“All what talk? Who’s been talking?”

“Now don’t you worry about that, Mr. Vernon. That’ll be quite all right, sir.”

“What the hell d’you mean? What’ll be quite all right? Who’s been talking about Miss Dacres and Mr. Hambledon?”

“Now never you mind about that, sir. We just want to hear—”

“If it’s that damned little footpath comedian,” continued Vernon, glaring angrily at Wade, “you can take it from me he’s about as dependable as a cockroach. He’s a very nasty little person, is Mr. St. John Ackroyd, né Albert Biggs, a thoroughly unpleasant piece of bluff and brass. And what a naughty actor!”

“Né Biggs?” murmured Alleyn.

“Certainly. And the sooner he goes back to his hairdresser’s shop in St. Helens the better for all concerned.”

“I gather,” said Alleyn mildly, “that he has already spoken to you about the conversation he overheard in his dressing-room.”

“Oh, yes,” said old Vernon, with a particular air of elaborate irony that Alleyn had begun to associate with actors’ conversation. “Oh, yes. I was told all about it as soon as he had a chance to speak his bit. Mr. Ackroyd came in well on his cue with the odd bit of dirt, you may be quite sure.”

Alleyn smiled: “And it’s as true as most gossip of that sort, I suppose?”

“I don’t know what Ackroyd told you, but I’d swear till it snowed pink that Carolyn Dacres hasn’t gone in for the funny business. Hailey may have talked a bit wildly. He may be very attracted. I don’t say anything about that, but on her side — well, I can’t believe it. She’s one of the rare samples of the sort that stay put.”

And Vernon puffed out his cheeks and uttered a low growl.

“That’s just what we wanted to know,” said Wade. “Just wanted your opinion, you see, sir.”

“Well, you’ve got it. And the same opinion goes for anything Mr. Ackroyd may have told you, including his little bit of dirt about George Mason. Anything else?”

“We’ll get you to sign a statement about your own movements later on, if you don’t mind,” said Wade.

“Ugh!”

“And that will be all.”

““Has the footpath comedian signed his pretty little rigmarole?”

“Not yet, Mr. Vernon.”

“Not yet. No doubt he will,” said Vernon bitterly. He shook hands with Alleyn. “Lucky you’re here, Mr. Alleyn. I shall now go to my home away from home. The bed is the undulating sort and I toboggan all night. The mattress appears to have been stuffed with the landlady’s apple dumplings of which there are always plenty left over. Talk of counterweights! My God! Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, bless the bed that I lie on. Good night. Good night, Inspector Wade.”

“What is the name of your hotel, sir?”

“The Wenderby, Inspector. It is a perfect sample of the Jack’s Come Home.”

“I’ve always heard it was very comfortable,” said Wade, with all the colonial’s defensiveness. “The landlady—”

sang old Vernon surprisingly in a wheezy bass:

He cocked his eyebrow, turned up the collar of his overcoat, clapped his hat on one side of his head and marched out.

“Aw, he’s mad,” said Wade disgustedly.

Alleyn lay back in his chair and laughed heartily.

“But he’s perfect, Wade. The real old actor. Almost too good to be true.”

“Making out he’s sorry deceased has gone and two minutes afterwards acting the fool. Our hotels are as good as you’d find anywhere,” grumbled Wade. “What’s he mean by a Jack’s Come Home, anyway?”

“I fancy it’s a professional term denoting a slapdash and carefree attitude on the part of the proprietress.”

“He’s mad,” repeated Wade. “Get the kid, Cass. Young Palmer.”

When Cass had gone, Wade got up and stamped about the office.

“It’s chilly,” he said.

The room was both cold and stuffy. The fire had gone out and the small electric heater was quite unequal to the thin draughts of night air that came in under the door and through the ill-fitting window-frame. The place was rank with tobacco-smoke and with an indefinable smell of dust and varnish. Somewhere outside in the sleeping town a clock struck two.

“Good Lord!” said Alleyn involuntarily.

“Like to turn it up for to-night, sir?” asked Wade.

“No, no.”

“Good-oh, then. Look, sir. On what we’ve got, who do you reckon are the possibles? Just on the face of it?”

“I’m afraid it’d be quicker to tick off the unlikelies,” said Alleyn.

“Well, take it that way.”

Alleyn did not reply immediately and Wade answered himself.

“Well, sir, I’ve got their names here and I’ll tick off the outsiders. Old Miss Max. No motive or opportunity. That old loony who’s just wafted away, Brandon Vernon. Same for him. Gascoigne, the stage-manager. Same for him on the evidence we’ve got so far. The funny little bloke, St. John Ackroyd, alias Biggs, according to Vernon. He may be a bit of a nosy but he doesn’t look like a murderer. Besides, his movements are pretty well taped out. The girl Gaynes. Well, I suppose you might say, if she’s going with Liversidge and knew Meyer was in the position to finish his career for him, that there’s a motive there, but I don’t see that silly little tart fixing counterweights and working out the machinery for a job of this sort. Do you?”

“The imagination does rather boggle,” agreed Alleyn.

“Yes. Well, now we get into shaky country. Hambledon. Let’s look at Mr. Hailey Hambledon. He’s after the woman. They none of them deny that. Seems as if he’s been kind of keen for a long while. Now if Ackroyd’s story is right, she said she’d marry him if Meyer was dead and not unless. There’s the motive. Now for opportunity. Hambledon could have gone aloft the first time and taken away the weight. He says he went to his dressing-room and took the muck off his dial. Maybe, but he told the dresser he wasn’t wanted, and he could have gone back on the stage, climbed aloft and done it. After the murder he went as far as her dressing-room with the Dacres woman— with deceased’s wife. She said she wanted to be alone and then sent for him, some time later. During the interval he may have gone up and put the weight back. That right?”

“Yes,” said Alleyn.

“Then there’s Carolyn Dacres. Same motive. Same opportunity. She was the last to appear for the party and she asked to be left alone after the fatality. I don’t know whether she’d be up to thinking out the mechanics of the thing but—”

“One should also remember,” said Alleyn, “that she was the one member of the party from whom the champagne stunt had been kept a secret.”

“By gum, yes. Unless she’d got wind of it somehow. Ye-ers. Well, that’s her. Now George Mason. Motive — he comes in for a fortune if the money’s still there. Opportunity — not so good. Before the show he was in this room. The stage-doorkeeper remembers Mason running out and warning him about the guests and returning here. Te Pokiha saw him here. You remember him coming out when you arrived. To get behind, between those times, he’d have had to pass the doorkeeper and would have been seen by anybody who happened to be about.”

“Is there a pass-door through the proscenium from the stalls?”

“Eh? No. No, there’s not. No, I don’t see how he could have done it. After the murder he came back with Te Pokiha and I saw him in the office here as I passed the door. We’ll check up just when Te Pokiha left him, but it doesn’t look too likely.”

“It does not. It looks impossible, Wade.”

“I hate to say so,” admitted Wade. “Next comes young Courtney Broadhead. If he stole the money and Meyer knew, that’s motive. Or if he doped it out he’d say Meyer had lent it to him — that’s another motive. There’s that business on the train—”

“Always remembering,” said Alleyn, “that the train attempt took place before Miss Gaynes discovered the theft of the money.”

“Aw, blast!” said Wade. “It just won’t make sense. Well — Liversidge. Motive. If he took the money and Meyer knew, and he knew Meyer knew — good enough. Opportunity. Each time he was the last to leave the stage. He could have done it. There you are, and where the bloody hell are you?”

“I weep with you,” said Alleyn. “I deeply sympathise. Isn’t Master Palmer taking rather a long time?”

He had scarcely asked his question before the most extraordinary rumpus broke out in the yard. There was a sudden scurry of running feet on asphalt, a startled bellow, and a crash, followed by a burst of lurid invective.

Alleyn, with Wade behind him, ran to the door, threw it open, and darted out into the yard. A full moon shone upon cold roofs and damp pavements, and upon the posterior view of Detective-Sergeant Cass. His head and shoulders were lost in shadow and he seemed, to their astonished eyes, to be attempting to batter his brains out against the wall of a bicycle shed. He was also kicking backwards with the brisk action of a terrier, this impression being enhanced by spurts of earth and gravel which shot out from beneath his flying boots.

“Here, ’ere, ’ere,” said Wade, “what’s all this!”

“Catch him!” implored a strangely muffled voice while Cass redoubled his activities. “Go after the… little… Get me out of this! Gawd! Get me out of it.”

Alleyn and Wade flew to the demented creature. Wade produced a torch, and by its light they saw what ailed the sergeant. His head and his enormous shoulders were wedged between the wall of the bicycle shed and that of a closely adjoining building. His helmet had slipped over his face like a sort of extinguisher, his fat arms were clamped to his sides. He could neither go forward nor back and he had already begun to swell.

“Get me out,” he ordered. “Leave me alone. Go after ’im. Go after the…! Gawd, get me out!”

“Go after who?” asked Wade. “What sort of game do you think you’re up to, Sergeant Cass?”

“Never mind what I’m up to, Mr. Wade. That young bleeder’s run orf behind this shed and it’s that narrer I can’t foller. Gawd knows where he is by this time!”

“By cripey, you’re a corker, you are,” said Wade hotly. “Here!”

He seized the sergeant’s belt and turned to Alleyn.

“Do you mind giving a hand, sir?”

Alleyn was doubled up in ecstasy of silent laughter, but he managed to pull himself together and, after a closer look at the prisoner, he hunted in the wooden shed, unearthed a length of timber which they jammed between the two walls and thus eased the pressure a little. Cass was pried and hauled out, sweating vigorously. Alleyn slipped into the passage and round to the rear of the shed. Here he found another path running back towards the theatre. He darted along this alley between a ramshackle fence and the brick wall of the property-room. The path led to the rear of the theatre, past a closed door, and finally to a narrow back street. Here Alleyn paused. Back in the stage-door yard he could hear one of the distracted officials blowing a police whistle. The little street was quite deserted, but in a moment or two a police officer appeared from the far end. Alleyn shouted to him and he broke into a run.

“What’s all this? Who’s blowing that whistle?”

“Inspector Wade and Sergeant Cass,” said Alleyn. “They’re in the theatre yard. Has a young man in evening dress passed you during the last few minutes?”

“Yes. Up at the corner. What about him?”

“He’s given us the slip. Which way?”

“Towards the Middleton Hotel. Here, you hold steady, sir. Where are you off to? You wait a bit.”

“Ask Wade,” said Alleyn. He sidestepped neatly and sprinted down the street.

It led him into a main thoroughfare. In the distance he recognized the familiar bulk of the Middleton Hotel. Three minutes later he was talking to the night porter.

“Has Mr. Gordon Palmer returned yet?”

“Yes, sir. He came in a minute ago and went up to his room — No. 51. Anything wrong, sir?” asked the night porter gazing at Alleyn’s filthy shirt-front.

“Nothing in the wide world. I shall follow his example.”

He left the man gaping and ran upstairs. No. 51 was on the second landing. Alleyn tapped at the door. There was no answer, so he walked in and turned up the light.

Gordon Palmer sat on the edge of his bed. He was still dressed. In his hand was a tumbler.

“Drinking in the dark?” asked Alleyn.

Gordon opened his mouth once or twice but failed to speak.

“Really,” said Alleyn, “you are altogether too much of a fool. Do you want to get yourself locked up?”

“You get to hell out of this.”

“I shall certainly go as quickly as I can. You reek of whisky, and you look revolting. Now listen to me. As you’ve heard already, I’m an officer of Scotland Yard. I shall be taking over certain matters in connection with this case. One of my duties will be to write to your father. Precisely what I put in my letter depends on our subsequent conversation. It’s much too late and we’re too busy to talk to you now. So I shall lock you in your room and leave you to think out a reasonable attitude. There’s a fifty-foot drop from your window to the pavement. Good morning.”