Night at the Vulcan (17 page)

“I told him he was shining with sweat,” said Jacko. “And he went into his room.”

“Alone?” Alleyn asked.

“I just looked in to make sure he had heard me. I told him again he needed powder and then went at once to this Infant.”

“Miss Tarne, can you remember anything else Mr. Bennington said?”

“Not really. I’m afraid I was rather in a haze myself just then.”

“The great adventure?”

“Yes,” said Martyn gratefully. “I’ve an idea he said something about my performance. Perhaps I should explain that I knew he must be very disappointed and upset about my going on instead of Miss Gainsford, but his manner was not unfriendly and I have the impression that he meant to say he didn’t bear for me, personally, any kind of resentment. But that’s putting it too definitely. I’m not at all sure what he said, except for that one sentence. Of that I’m quite positive.”

“Good,” Alleyn said. “Thank you. Did you hear this remark, Mr. Doré?”

Jacko said promptly: “But certainly. I was already in the passage and he spoke loudly as I came up.”

“Did you form any opinion as to what he meant?”

“I was busy and very pleased with this Infant and I did not concern myself. If I thought at all it was to wonder if he was going to make a scene because the niece had not played. He had a talent for scenes. It appears to be a family trait. I thought perhaps he meant that this Infant would not be included in some scene he planned to make or be scolded for her success.”

“Did he seem to you to be upset?”

“Oh, yes. Yes. Upset. Yes.”

“Very much distressed, would you say?”

“All his visage wann’d?” inquired a voice in the background. “Tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect?”

Alleyn moved his position until he could look past Gay and Darcey at the recumbent Doctor. “Or even,” he said, “his whole function suiting with forms to his conceit?”

“Hah!” The Doctor ejaculated and sat up. “Upon my soul, the whirligig of time brings in his revenges. Even to the point where dull detection apes at artifice, inspectors echo with informed breath their pasteboard prototypes of fancy wrought. I am amazed and know not what to say.” He helped himself to snuff and fell back into a recumbent position.

“Please don’t mind him,” Helena said, smiling at Alleyn. “He is a very foolish vain old man and has read somewhere that it’s clever to quote in a muddled sort of way from the better known bits of the Bard.”

“We encourage him too much,” Jacko added gloomily.

“We have become too friendly with him,” said Poole.

“And figo for thy friendship,” said Dr. Rutherford.

Parry Percival sighed ostentatiously and Darcey said: “Couldn’t we get on?” Alleyn looked good-humouredly at Jacko and said: “Yes, Mr. Doré?”

“I would agree,” Jacko said, “that Ben was very much upset, but that was an almost chronic condition of late with poor Ben. I believe now with Miss Hamilton that he had decided there was little further enjoyment to be found in observing the dissolution of his own character and was about to take the foolproof way of ending it. He wished to assure Martyn that the decision had nothing to do with chagrin over Martyn’s success or the failure of his niece. And that, if I am right, was nice of Ben.”

“I don’t think we need use the word ‘failure,’ ” J.G. objected. “Gay was quite unable to go on.”

“I hope you are better now, Miss Gainsford,” Alleyn said.

Gay made an eloquent gesture with both hands and let them fall in her lap. “What does it matter?” she said. “Better? Oh, yes, I’m better.” And with the closest possible imitation of Helena Hamilton’s familiar gesture she extended her hand, without looking at him, to J.G. Darcey. He took it anxiously. “Much better,” he said, patting it.

Martyn thought: “Oh, dear, he
is
in love with her.
Poor
J.G.!”

Alleyn looked thoughtfully at them for a moment and then turned to the others.

“There’s a general suggestion,” he said, “that none of you was very surprised by this event. May I just — sort of tally-up the general opinion as far as I’ve heard it? It helps to keep things tidy, I find. Miss Hamilton, you tell us that your husband had a curious, an almost morbid interest in the Jupiter case. You and Mr. Doré agree that Mr. Bennington had decided to take his life because he couldn’t face the ‘dissolution of his character.’ Miss Gainsford, if I understand her, believes he was deeply disturbed by the
mise-en-scéne
and also by her inability to go on to-night for this part. Miss Tarne’s account of what was probably the last statement he made suggests that he wanted her to understand that some action he had in mind had nothing to do with her. Mr. Doré supports this interpretation and confirms the actual words that were used. This, as far as it goes, is the only tangible bit of evidence as to intention that we have.”

Poole lifted his head. His face was very white and a lock of black hair had fallen over his forehead, turning him momentarily into the likeness, Martyn thought inconsequently, of Michelangelo’s Adam. He said: “There’s the fact itself, Alleyn. There’s what he did.”

Alleyn said carefully: “There’s an interval of perhaps eight minutes between what he said and when he was found.”

“Look here—” Parry Percival began, and then relapsed. “Let it pass,” he said. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Pipe up, Narcissus,” Dr. Rutherford adjured him, “the Inspector won’t bite you.”

“Oh, shut up!” Parry shouted, and was awarded a complete and astonished silence. He rose and addressed himself to the players. “You’re all being so bloody frank and sensible about this suicide,” he said, “You’re
so
anxious to show everybody how honest you are. The Doctor’s
so
unconcerned he can even spare a moment to indulge in his favourite pastime of me-baiting. I know what the Doctor thinks about me and it doesn’t say much for his talents as a diagnostician. But if it’s queer to feel desperately sorry for a man who was miserable enough to choke himself to death at a gas jet, if it’s queer to be physically and mentally sick at the thought of it, then, by God, I’d rather be queer than normal. Now!”

There followed a silence broken only by the faint whisper of the young constable’s pencil.

Dr. Rutherford struggled to his feet and lumbered down to Parry.

“Your argument, my young coxcomb,” he said thoughtfully, “is as sea-worthy as a sieve. As for my diagnosis, if you’re the normal man you’d have me believe, why the hell don’t you show like one? You exhibit the stigmata of that water-fly whom it is a vice to know, and fly into a fit when the inevitable conclusion is drawn.” He took Parry by the elbow and addressed himself to the company in the manner of a lecturer. “A phenomenon,” he said, “that is not without its dim interest. I invite your attention. Here is an alleged actor who, an hour or two since, was made a public and egregious figure of fun by the deceased. Who was roasted by the deceased before an audience of a thousand whinnying nincompoops. Who allowed his performance to be prostituted by the deceased before this audience. Who before his final and most welcome exit suffered himself to be tripped up contemptuously by the deceased, and who fell on his painted face before this audience. Here is this phenomenon, ladies and gents, who now proposes himself as Exhibit A in the Compassion Stakes. I invite your—”

Poole said “
Quiet
!” and when Dr. Rutherford grinned at him added: “I meant it, John. You will be quiet if you please.”

Parry wrenched himself free from the Doctor and turned on Alleyn. “You’re supposed to be in charge here—” he began, and Poole said quickly: “Yes, Alleyn, I really do think that this discussion is getting quite fantastically out of hand. If we’re all satisfied that this is a case of suicide—”

“Which,” Alleyn said, “we are not.”

They were all talking at once: Helena, the Doctor, Parry, Gay and Darcey. They were like a disorderly chorus in a verse-play. Martyn, who had been watching Alleyn, was terrified. She saw him glance at the constable. Then he stood up.

“One moment,” he said. The chorus broke off as inconsequently as it had begun.

“We’ve reached a point,” Alleyn said, “where it’s my duty to tell you I’m by no means satisfied that this is, in fact, a case of suicide.”

Martyn was actually conscious, in some kind, of a sense of relief. She could find no look either of surprise or of anger in any of her fellow-players. Their faces were so many white discs and they were motionless and silent. At last Clem Smith said with an indecent lack of conviction: “He was horribly careless about things like that — taps, I mean—” His voice sank to a murmur. They heard the word “accident.”

“Is it not strange,” Jacko said loudly, “how loath one is to pronounce the word that is in all our minds. And truth to tell, it has a soft and ugly character.” His lips closed over his fantastic teeth. He used the exaggerated articulation of an old actor. “Murder,” he said. “So beastly, isn’t it?”

It was at this point that one of the stage-hands, following, no doubt, his routine for the night, pulled up the curtain and exhibited the scene of climax to the deserted auditorium.

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.”