Buffet for Unwelcome Guests (4 page)

The effect was extraordinary. The scream broke short, petered out into a sort of yelp of terrified astonishment. Mrs. Dragon cried out sharply, ‘Oh, no!’ and James Dragon said, ‘Leila, you
fool
!’ They all stood staring, utterly in dismay. And Leila Dragon blurted out: ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. It was because she screamed. It was—a sort of reaction, instinctive, a sort of reaction to hysteria…’ She seemed to plead with them. It was curious that she seemed to plead with them, and not with the girl.

James Dragon broke through the ice-wall of their dismay. He said uncertainly: ‘It’s just that… We don’t want to make—well, enemies of people,’ and the girl broke out wildly: ‘How dare you touch me? How dare you?’

It was as though an act which for a moment had broken down, reduced the cast to gagging, now received a cue from prompt corner and got going again. Leila Dragon said, ‘You were hysterical, you were losing control.’

‘How dare you?’ screamed the girl. Her pretty face was waspish with spiteful rage. ‘All I’ve done is to try to protect him, like the rest of you…’

‘Be quiet,’ said Mrs. Dragon, in The Voice.

‘Let her say what she has to say,’ the detective said. She was silent. ‘Come now. “He was wearing it when he came back”—the Othello costume. “
When he came back
.” From finding the body, Miss Leila Dragon now says. But he didn’t “come back”. You all followed him to the dressing-room—you said so.’

She remained silent, however; and he could deal with her later—time was passing, clues were growing cold. ‘Very well then, Mr. Dragon, let us get on with it. I want to see your wrists and arms.’

‘But why me?’ said James Dragon, almost petulantly; and once again there was that strange effect of an unreal act being staged for some set purpose: and once again the stark reality of a face grown all in a moment haggard and old beneath the dark stain of the Moor.

‘It’s not only you. I may come to the rest, in good time.’

‘But me first?’

‘Get on with it, please,’ he said impatiently.

But when at last, fighting every inch of the way, with an ill grace he slowly divested himself of the great sleeves—there was nothing to be seen: nothing but a brown-stained hand whose colour ended abruptly at the wrist, giving place to forearms startlingly white against the brown—but innocent of scratches or marks of any kind.

‘Nor did Iago, I may add in passing, nor did Cassio nor the Clown nor anyone else in the room, have marks of any kind on wrists or arms. So there I was—five minutes wasted and nothing to show for it.’

‘Well hardly,’ said Inspector Cockrill, passing walnuts to his neighbour.

‘I beg your pardon? Did Mr. Cockrill say something again?’

‘I just murmured that there was after all, something to show for it—for the five minutes wasted.’

‘?’

‘Five minutes wasted,’ said Inspector Cockrill.

Five minutes wasted. Yes. They had been working for it, they were playing for time. Waiting for something. Or postponing something? ‘And of course, meanwhile, there had been the scene with the girl,’ said Cockie. ‘That wasn’t a waste of time. That told you a lot. I mean—losing control and screaming out that he had been wearing Othello’s costume “at the very moment…” and, “when he came back”. “Losing control”—and yet what she screamed out contained at least one careful lie. Because he hadn’t been wearing the costume—that we know for certain.’ And he added inconsequently that they had to remember all the time that these were acting folk.

But that had not been the end of the scene with the girl. As he perfunctorily examined her arms—for surely no woman had had any part in the murder—she had whispered to him that she wanted to speak to him: outside. And, darting looks of poison at them, holding her hand to her slapped face, she had gone out with him to the corridor. ‘I stood with her there while she talked,’ said the old man. ‘Her face, of course, was heavily made up; and yet under the make-up I could see the weal where Leila Dragon had slapped her. She was not hysterical now, she was cool and clear; but she was afraid and for the first time it seemed to be not at all an act, she seemed to be genuinely afraid, and afraid at what she was about to say to me. But she said it. It was a—solution: a suggestion of how the crime had been done; though she unsaid nothing that she had already said. I went back into the Green-room. They were all standing about, white-faced, looking at her as she followed me in; and with them, also, there seemed to be an air of genuine horror, genuine dread, as though the need for histrionics had passed. Leila Dragon was holding the wrist of her right hand in her left. I said to James Dragon: “I think at this stage it would be best if you would come down to the station with me, for further questioning…”

‘I expected an uproar and there was an uproar. More waste of time. But now, you see,’ said the old man, looking cunningly round the table, ‘I knew—didn’t I? Waiting for something? Or postponing something? Now, you see, I knew.’

‘At any rate, you took him down to the station?’ said Cockie, sickened by all this gratuitous mystificating. ‘On the strength of what the girl had suggested?’

‘What that was is, of course, quite clear to
you
?’

‘Well, of course,’ said Cockie.

‘Of course, of course,’ said the old man angrily. He shrugged. ‘At any rate—it served as an excuse. It meant that I could take him, and probably hold him there, on a reasonable suspicion: it did him out of the alibi, you see. So off he went, at last, with a couple of my men; and, after a moment, I followed. But before I went, I collected something—something from his dressing-room.’ Another of his moments had come; but this time he addressed himself only to Inspector Cockrill. ‘No doubt what that was is also clear to you?’

‘Well, a pot of theatrical cleansing cream, I suppose,’ said Inspector Cockrill; almost apologetically.

The old man, as has been said, was something of an actor himself. He affected to give up. ‘As you know it so well, Inspector, you had better explain to our audience and save me my breath.’ He gave to the words ‘our audience’ an ironic significance quite shattering in its effect; and hugged to himself a secret white rabbit to be sprung, to the undoing of this tiresome little man, when all seemed over, out of a secret top hat.

Inspector Cockrill in his turn affected surprise, affected diffidence, affected reluctant acceptance. ‘Oh, well, all right.’ He embarked upon it in his grumbling voice. ‘It was the slap across the girl, Bianca’s, face. Our friend, no doubt, will tell you that he paid very little attention to whatever it was she said to him in the corridor.’ (A little more attention, he privately reflected, would have been to advantage; but still…) ‘He was looking, instead, at the weal on her face: glancing in through the door, perhaps, to where Leila Dragon sat unconsciously clasping her stinging right hand with her left. He was thinking of another hand he had recently seen, with a pink mark across the palm. He knew now, as he says. He knew why they had been so appalled when, forgetting herself, she had slapped the girl’s face: because it might suggest to his mind that there had been another such incident that night. He knew. He knew what they all had been waiting for, why they had been marking time. He knew why they had scrambled back into stage costume, they had done it so that there might be no particularity if James Dragon appeared in the dark make-up of Othello the Moor. They were waiting till under the stain, another stain should fade—the mark of Glenda Croy’s hand across her murderer’s cheek.’ He looked into the Great Detective’s face. ‘I think that’s the way your mind worked?’

The great one bowed. ‘Very neatly thought out. Very creditable.’ He shrugged. ‘Yes, that’s how it was. So we took him down to the station and without more delay we cleaned the dark paint off his face. And under the stain—what do you think we found?’

‘Nothing,’ said Inspector Cockrill.

‘Exactly,’ said the old man, crossly.

‘You can’t have found anything; because, after all, he was free to play Othello for the next three weeks,’ said Cockie, simply. ‘You couldn’t detain him—there was nothing to detain him on. The girl’s story wasn’t enough to stand alone, without the mark of the slap: and now, if it had ever been there, it had faded. Their delaying tactics had worked. You had to let him go.’

‘For the time being,’ said the old man. The rabbit had poked its ears above the rim of the hat and he poked them down again. ‘You no doubt will equally recall that at the end of three weeks, James Dragon was arrested and duly came up for trial?’ Hand over hat, keeping the rabbit down, he gave his adversary a jab. ‘What do you suggest, sir, happened in the meantime?—to bring that change about.’

Inspector Cockrill considered, his splendid head bowed over a couple of walnuts which he was trying to crack together. ‘I can only suggest that what happened, sir, was that you went to the theatre.’

‘To the theatre?’

‘Well, to The Theatre,’ said Cockie. ‘To the Dragon Theatre. And there, for the second time, saw James Dragon play Othello.’

‘A great performance. A great performance,’ said the old man, uneasily. The rabbit had poked his whole head over the brim of the hat and was winking at the audience.

‘Was it?’ said Cockie. ‘The first time you saw him—yes. But that second time? I mean, you were telling us that people all around you were saying how much he had aged.’ But he stopped. ‘I beg your pardon, sir: I keep forgetting that this is your story.’

It had been the old man’s story—for years it had been his best story, the pet white rabbit out of the conjurer’s mystery hat; and now it was spoilt by the horrid little boy who knew how the tricks were done. ‘That’s all there is to it,’ he said sulkily. ‘She made this threat about exposing the prison sentence—as we learned later on. They all went back to their dressing-rooms and changed into every-day things. James Dragon, as soon as he was dressed, went round to his wife’s room. Five minutes later, he assembled his principals in the Greenroom: Glenda Croy was dead and he bore across his face the mark where she had hit him, just before she died.

‘They were all in it together; with James Dragon, the company stood or fell. They agreed to protect him. They knew that from where he sat the door-keeper might well have seen the shadow-show on her dressing-room blinds, perhaps even the blow across the face. They knew that James Dragon must come under immediate suspicion; they knew that at all costs they must prevent anyone from seeing the mark of the blow. They could not estimate how long it would take for the mark to fade.

‘You know what they did. They scrambled back into costume again, they made up their faces—and beneath the thick greasepaint they buried the fatal mark. I arrived. There was nothing for it now but to play for time.

‘They played for time. They built up the story of the lover—who, in fact, eventually bore the burden of guilt, for as you know, no one was ever convicted: and he could never be disproved. But still only a few minutes had passed and now I was asking them to change back into day dress. James created a further delay in refusing to have his arms examined. Another few moments gone by. They gave the signal to the girl to go into her pre-arranged act.’

He thought back across the long years. ‘It was a very good act: she’s done well since but I don’t suppose she ever excelled the act she put on that night. But she was battling against hopeless odds, poor girl. You see—I did know one thing by then; didn’t I?’

‘You knew they were playing for time,’ said Inspector Cockrill. ‘Or why should James Dragon have refused to show you his arms? There was nothing incriminating about his arms.’

‘Exactly: and so—I was wary of her. But she put up a good performance. It was easier for her, because of course by now she was really afraid: they were all afraid—afraid lest this desperate last step they were taking in their delaying action should prove to have been a step too far: lest they found their “solution” was so good that they could not go back on it.’

‘This solution, however, of course you had already considered and dismissed?’

‘Mr. Cockrill, no doubt, will be delighted to tell you what the solution was.’

‘If you like,’ said Mr. Cockrill. ‘But it
could
be only the one “solution”, couldn’t it? Especially as you said that she stuck to what she’d earlier said. She’d given him an alibi—they’d all given him an alibi—for the time up to the moment the light went out. She dragged you out into the corridor and she said…’

‘She said?’

‘Well, nothing new,’ said Cockie. ‘She just—repeated, only with a special significance, something that someone else had said.’

‘The Clown, yes.’

‘When he was describing what they were supposed to have seen against the lighted blinds. He said that they saw the man pounce down upon the woman: that the light went out and they heard the noise of the window being thrown up. That James, his son, rushed out and that when they followed, he was bending over her. I suppose the girl repeated with direful significance: “
He was bending over her
.” ’

‘A ridiculous implication, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said Inspector Cockrill, readily. ‘If, which I suppose was her proposition, the pounce had been a pounce of love, followed by an extinction of the lights, it seemed hardly likely that the gentleman concerned would immediately leave the lady and bound out of the nearest window—since she was reputedly complacent. But supposing that he had, supposing that the infuriated husband, rushing in and finding her thus deserted, had bent over and impulsively strangled her where, disappointed, she reclined—it is even less likely that his own father would have been the first to draw your attention to the fact. Why mention, “he was bending over her”?’

‘Precisely, excellent,’ said the old man: kindly patronization was the only card left in the conjurer’s hand.

‘Her story had the desired effect, however?’

‘It created further delay, before I demanded that they remove their make-up. It was beyond their dreams that I should create even more, myself, by taking James Dragon to the police station.’

‘You were justified,’ said Cockie, indulging in a little kindly patronization on his own account. ‘Believing what you did. And having received that broad hint—which they certainly had never intended to give you—when Leila Dragon lost her head and slapped Bianca’s face…’