Ngaio Marsh: Night at the Vulcan

He seemed to expect some comment on this. Alleyn said lightly: “The curse of greatness?”

“Nothing like it. I’m afraid. See here, Alleyn. There are some women who just can’t be fitted into any kind of ethical or sociological pigeon-hole. Ellen Terry was one of them. It’s not that they are above reproach in the sense most people mean by the phrase, but that they are outside it. They behave naturally in an artificial set-up. When an attachment comes to an end, it does so without any regrets or recrimination. Often, with an abiding affection on both sides. Do you agree?”

“That there are such women? Yes.”

“Helena is one. I’m not doing this very well but I do want you to believe that she’s right outside this beastly thing. I won’t get you any further and it may hurt her profoundly if you try to establish some link between her relationship with her husband or anyone else and the circumstances of his death. I don’t know what you said to each other, but I do know it would never occur to her to be on guard for her own sake.”

“I asked her to tell me about Otto Brod.”

Poole’s reaction to this was surprising. He looked exasperated. “There you are!” he said. “That’s exactly what I mean. Otto Brod! A fantastic irresponsible affair that floated out of some midsummer notion of Vienna and Strauss waltzes. How the devil you heard of it I don’t know, though I’ve no doubt that at the time she fluttered him like a plume in her bonnet for all to see. I never met him but I understand he was some young intellectual with a pale face, no money and an overdeveloped faculty for symbolic tragedy. Why bring him in?”

Alleyn told him that Bennington, when he came down to the theatre, had had a letter from Brod in his pocket and Poole said angrily: “Why the hell shouldn’t he? What of it?”

“The letter is not to be found.”

“My dear chap, I suppose he chucked it out or burnt it or something.”

“I hardly think so,” said Alleyn. “He told Miss Hamilton it was his trump card.”

Poole was completely still for some moments. Then he turned away to the dressing-shelf and looked for his cigarettes.

“Now what in the wide world,” he said with his back to Alleyn, “could he have meant by a trump card?”

“That,” said Alleyn, “is what, above everything else, I should very much like to know.”

“I don’t suppose it means a damn thing, after all. It certainly doesn’t to me.”

He turned to offer his cigarettes but found that Alleyn had his own case open in his hands. “I’d ask you to have a drink,” Poole said, “but I don’t keep it in the dressing-room during the show. If you’d come to the office—”

“Nothing I’d like more but we don’t have it in the working hours either.”

“Of course not. Stupid of me.” Poole glanced at his dress for the ball and then at his watch. “I hope,” he said, “that my business manager is enjoying himself with my guests at my party.”

“He rang up some time ago to enquire. There was no message for you.”

“Thank you.” Poole leant against the dressing-shelf and lit his cigarette.

“It seems to me,” Alleyn said, “that there is something you want to say to me. I’ve not brought a witness in here. If what you say is likely to be wanted as evidence I’ll ask you to repeat it formally. If not, it will have no official significance.”

“You’re very perceptive. I’m damned if I know why I should want to tell you this, but I do. Just out of earshot behind these two walls are two women. Of my relation with the one, you seem to have heard. I imagine it’s pretty generally known. I’ve tried to suggest that it has come to its end as simply, if that’s not too fancy a way of putting it, as a flower relinquishes its petals. For a time I’ve pretended their colour had not faded and I’ve watched them fall with regret. But from the beginning we both knew it was that sort of affair. She didn’t pretend at all. She’s quite above any of the usual subterfuges and it’s some weeks ago that she let me know it was almost over for her. I think we both kept it up out of politeness more than anything else. When she told me of Ben’s unspeakable behaviour yesterday, I felt as one must feel about an outrage to a woman whom one knows very well and likes very much, I was appalled to discover in myself no stronger emotion than this. It was precisely this discovery that told me that the last petal had indeed fallen and now—” He lifted his hands. “Now Ben gets himself murdered, you say, and I’ve run out of the appropriate emotions.”

Alleyn said: “We are creatures of convention and like our tragedies to take a recognizable form.”

“I’m afraid this is not even a tragedy. Unless—” He turned his. head and looked at the other wall. “I haven’t seen Martyn,” he said, “since you spoke to her. She’s all right, isn’t she?” Before Alleyn could answer he went on: “I suppose she’s told you about herself — her arrival out of a clear sky and all the rest of it?”

“Everything, I think.”

“I hope to God— I want to see her, Alleyn. She’s alone in there. She may be frightened. I don’t suppose you understand.”

“She’s told me of the relationship between you.”

“The relationship !” he said quickly. “You mean—”

“She’s told me you are related. It’s natural that you should be concerned about her.”

Poole stared at him. “My good ass,” he said, “I’m nineteen years her senior and I love her like a boy of her own age.”

“In that case,” Alleyn remarked, “you can not be said to have run out of the appropriate emotions.”

He grinned at Poole in a friendly manner and, accompanied by Fox, went to his final interview — with Jacques Doré.

It took place on the stage. Dr. Rutherford had elected to retire into the office to effect, he had told Fox, a few paltry adjustments of his costume. The players, too, were all in their several rooms and Clem Smith had been wakened, re-examined by Fox, and allowed to go home.

So Jacko was alone in the tortured scene he had himself designed.

He looked a frightful scarecrow in his working clothes, with grey stubble on his chin, grey bags under his eyes and grey fuzz standing up on his head. His long crepe-y neck stuck out of the open collar of his tartan shirt. His eyes were bloodshot and his delicate hands were filthy.

“I have slept,” he announced, rising from the heap of old curtains which Clem had transformed into a bed, “like the Holy Innocents, though it is possible that I do not resemble any of them. However deceptive the outward man may be, gentlemen, the inner is entirely at your service.” He smiled ingratiatingly at them. His lips curled back and exposed teeth like a row of yellow pegs in a dice box. “What do we talk about?” he asked, and began to roll himself a cigarette.

“First of all,” Alleyn said, “I must tell you that I am asking for a general search through the clothes that have been worn in the theatre. We have no warrant at this stage but so far no one has objected.”

“Then who am I to do so?”

Fox went through his pockets and found a number of curious objects. — chalk, pencils, a rubber, a surgeon’s scalpel which Jacko said he used for wood carving, and which was protected by a sheath, a pocket-book with money, a photograph of Helena Hamilton, various scraps of paper with drawings on them, pieces of cotton-wool and an empty bottle smelling strongly of ether. This, he told Alleyn, had contained a fluid used for cleaning purposes. “Always they are messing themselves and always I am removing the mess. My overcoat is in the junk room. It contains merely a filthy handkerchief, I believe.”

Alleyn thanked him and returned the scalpel, the pocket-book and drawing materials. Fox laid the other things aside, sat down and opened his note-book.