Ngaio Marsh - Night at the Vulcan

“Well, sir,” said Fox uneasily, “it’s a very unusual sort of procedure, isn’t it?”

“It’s a very unusual case,” Alleyn rejoined, and after a moment’s reflection he took Fox by the arm. “Come on, old trooper,” he said. “Let’s get it over.”

He walked onto the stage almost as if, like Poole, he were going to sum up a rehearsal. Fox went to his old chair near the back entrance. Martyn heard the other men move round behind the set. They took up positions, she thought, outside the entrances and it was unpleasant to think of them waiting there, unseen.

Alleyn stood with his back to the curtain and Poole at once slewed his chair round to face him. With the exception of Jacko, who was rolling a cigarette, they all watched Alleyn. Even the Doctor removed his newspaper, sat up, stared, groaned and returned ostentatiously to his former position.

For a moment Alleyn looked round the group, and to Martyn he seemed to have an air of compassion. When he began to speak his manner was informal but extremely deliberate.

“In asking you to come here together,” he said, “I’ve taken an unorthodox line. I don’t myself know whether I am justified in taking it, and I shan’t know until those of you who are free to do so have gone home. That will be in a few minutes, I think.

“I have to tell you that your fellow-player has been murdered. All of you must know that we’ve formed this opinion, and I think most of you know that I was first inclined to it by the circumstance of his behaviour on returning to his dressing-room. His last conscious act was to repair his stage make-up. While that seemed to me to be inconsistent with suicide, it was, on the other hand, much too slender a thread to tie up a case for homicide. But there is more conclusive evidence and I’m going to put it before you. He powdered his face. His dresser had already removed the pieces of cottonwool that had been used earlier in the evening and put out a fresh pad. Yet after his death there was no used pad of cotton-wool anywhere in the room. There is, on the other hand, a fresh stain near the gas fire which may, on analysis, turn out to have been caused by such a pad having been burnt on the hearth. The box of powder has been overturned on the shelf and there is a deposit of powder all over that corner of the room. As you know, his head and shoulders were covered, tent-wise, with his overcoat. There was powder on this coat and over his finger-prints on the top of the gas fire. The coat had hung near the door and would, while it was there, have been out of range of any powder flying about. The powder, it is clear, had been scattered after and not before he was gassed. If he was, in fact, gassed.”

Poole and Darcey made, simultaneous ejaculations. Helena and Gay looked bewildered, and Percival incredulous. Jacko stared at the floor and the Doctor groaned under his newspaper.

“The post mortem,” Alleyn said, “will of course settle this one way or the other. It will be exhaustive. No, it’s quite certain that the dresser didn’t go into the room after Mr. Bennington entered it this last time, and it is equally certain that the dresser left it in good order — the powder-pad prepared, the clothes hung up, the fire burning and the door unlocked. It is also certain that the powder was not overturned by the men who carried Mr. Bennington out. It was spilt by someone who was in the room after he was on the floor with the coat over his head. This person, the police will maintain, was his murderer. Now the question arises, doesn’t it, how it came about that he was in such a condition — comatose or unconscious — that it was possible to get him down on the floor, put out the gas fire, and then disengage the connecting tube, put the rubber end in his mouth and turn the gas on again, get his finger-prints on the wing-tap and cover him with his own overcoat There is still about one-sixth of brandy left in his flask. He was not too drunk to make up his own face and he was more or less his own man, though not completely so, when he spoke to Miss Tarne just before he went into his room. During the second interval Mr. Darcey hit him on the jaw and raised a bruise. I suppose it is possible that his murderer hit him again on the same spot — there is no other bruise — and knocked him out. A closer examination of the bruise may show if this was so. In that case the murderer would need to pay only one visit to the room: he would simply walk in a few minutes before the final curtain, knock his victim out and set the stage for apparent suicide.

“On the other hand, it’s possible that he was drugged.”

He waited for a moment. Helena Hamilton said: “I don’t believe in all this. I don’t mean, Mr. Alleyn, that I think you’re wrong: I mean it just sounds unreal and rather commonplace like a case reported in a newspaper. One knows that probably it’s all happened but one doesn’t actively believe it. I’m sorry. I interrupted.”

“I hope,” Alleyn said, “you will all feel perfectly free to interrupt at any point. About this possibility of drugging. If the brandy was drugged, then of course we shall find out. Moreover, it must have been tinkered with after he went on for his final scene. Indeed, any use of a drug, and one cannot disregard the possibility of even the most fantastic methods, must surely have been prepared while he was on the stage during the last act. We shall, of course, have a chemical analysis made of everything he used — the brandy, his tumbler, his cigarettes, his make-ups and even the greasepaint on his face. I tell you, quite frankly, that I’ve no idea at all whether this will get us any further.”

Fox cleared his throat. This modest sound drew the attention of the company upon him but he merely looked gravely preoccupied and they turned back to Alleyn.

“Following out this line of thought, it seems clear,” he said, “that two visits would have to be made to the dressing-room. The first, during his scene in the last act, and the second, after he had come off and before the smell of gas was first noticed — by Mr. Parry Percival.”

Percival said in a high voice: “I knew this was coming.” Gay Gainsford turned and looked at him with an expression of the liveliest horror. He caught her eye and said: “Oh, don’t be fantastic, Gay darling. Honestly !

“Mr. Percival,” Alleyn said, “whose room is next to Mr. Bennington’s and whose fire backs on his, noticed a smell of gas when he was about to go out for the curtain-call. He tells us he is particularly sensitive to the smell because of its associations in this theatre and that he turned his own fire off and went out. Thus his fingerprints were found on the tap.”

“Well, naturally they were,” Parry said angrily. “Really, Gay!”

“This, of course,” Alleyn went on, “was reminiscent of the Jupiter case, but in that case the tube was not disconnected because the murderer never entered the room. He blew down the next-door tube and the fire went out. In that instance the victim was comatose from alcohol. Now, it seems quite clear to us that while this thing was planned with one eye on the Jupiter case, there was no intention to throw the blame upon anyone else and that Mr. Percival’s reaction to the smell was not foreseen by the planner. What the planner hoped to emphasize was Mr, Bennington’s absorption in the former case. We were to suppose that when he decided to take his own life he used the method by which he was obsessed. Suppose this to have been so. Wouldn’t we, remembering the former case, suspect that it was not suicide at all and look for what my colleague likes to call funny business? On the other hand…” Alleyn paused. Percival, who was obviously lost in his sense of release, and Gay Gainsford, who equally obviously was in a high state of confusion, both seemed to pull themselves together.