Night at the Vulcan (19 page)

“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.”