Enter A Murderer

Fox had to drag Gardener down by his ankles. This time Alleyn had remembered his handcuffs.

CHAPTER XXIII

Epilogue to a Play

If Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn was interested in the dramatic unities it may have given him some sort of satisfaction to note that the epilogue to the Unicorn murder was spoken on the stage of the theatre.

Gardener had been taken away. Miss Emerald had indulged in a fit of genuine hysterics and had departed. Barclay Crammer, George Simpson, Howard Melville and Dulcie Deamer, all strangely unreal in the harsh light of actual tragedy, had walked down the stage door alley-way and disappeared. The Beadles had gone with old Blair.

Only Alleyn, Stephanie Vaughan, and a very shaken Nigel remained. The ceiling-cloth had been removed and the weighted sack that had hung from the top gallery lay in a rubbishy heap on the floor. Alleyn picked it up, and threw it into the dock, and shut the doors. Nigel stood in the stage door passage. Alleyn looked at him.

“Well, Bathgate,” he said. “Never make friends with a policeman.”

“I don’t think I feel that way about it,” decided Nigel slowly.

“You are generous,” said Alleyn.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“If I had told you what would you have done?”

Nigel couldn’t answer that.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Neither did I know.”

“I see.”

“Did the thought of it never enter your head?” Alleyn asked him compassionately.

“At first I thought it was Saint and then—” He looked through the wings on to the stage.

Stephanie Vaughan sat there in the arm-chair she had occupied on the night of the murder when Alleyn had first questioned her. She seemed lost in a profound meditation.

“Wait for me,” said Alleyn, “somewhere else.”

Nigel walked out into the yard. Alleyn went on to the stage.

“Come back from wherever you are,” he said softly.

She raised her head and looked at him.

“I can’t feel anything at all,” she murmured.

He put his hand over hers for a second.

“Cold,” he said. “That’s the shock. Whenever I have touched your hands they have been cold. Small wonder. Shall I get you a taxi?”

“Not yet. I want to get my bearings.”

She looked frowningly at her fingers as though she tried to remember something.

“I suppose you knew what I was up to all along?” she said at last.

“Not quite. I began to wonder, when you said the bruise on your shoulder was made by Surbonadier. I remembered how Gardener had stood with his hand on your shoulder when Surbonadier insulted you. I noticed how he gripped you, ”

She shivered.

“I was afraid then that he would do something dreadful,” she said.

“If it’s any comfort to you he would have done just what he did if you hadn’t existed.”

“I know. I was only an accessory after the fact, isn’t it? At any rate, not a motive.”

“In Surbonadier’s flat,” Alleyn told her, “I knew how much you were prepared to risk for him. I let you play your part. I let you think you had succeeded.”

“Why do you rub it in?”

“Why, to put it rather floridly, because I thought it would help you to hate me and so provide a counter-irritant.”

“Oh,” she said thoughtfully, “I don’t hate you.”

“That’s strange.”

“You were far too clever for me.”

“And yet,” said Alleyn, “half the victory is yours. From my heart I am sorry that it had to happen as it did. If I thought it would make any difference I would say I hated myself when I held you in my arms. It would only be half true. My thoughts were a mixture of grovel and glory.”

“What will happen to him?” she said suddenly. Her eyes dilated.

“I don’t know. He will be tried. He’s guilty and he’s a bad hat. You don’t love him. Don’t act. Don’t pretend. It’s going to be ghastly for you, but you left off loving him when you knew he’d done it.”

“Yes, that’s quite true.”

She began to weep, not at all beautifully, but with her face screwed up and with harsh sobs. He looked gravely at her and when she put out her hand, put his handkerchief into it. He went to Surbonadier’s dressing-room and found a nickel flask with whisky in it. With a grimace he washed a glass out and poured out a stiff nip. He took it back to her.

“Drink this. It’ll pull you together.”

She swallowed it, gasped, and shuddered.

“Now I’ll get you a taxi,” said Alleyn.

Nigel turned into the dock when he saw them come out. She got into the taxi.

“Good-bye,” she said. “You know where to find me if — I’m wanted.”

“Yes, you poor thing.”

She held out her hand and, after a moment’s hesitation, he kissed it.

“You’ll recover,” he told her. “Good-bye.”

He gave the address to the driver and stood for some time in the empty yard. Then he went back to Nigel.

“Well?” he said. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” said Nigel.

“All right. Lay back your ears. Here goes.”

He pulled forward a couple of dingy arm-chairs and rolled back the doors of the dock, letting in a thin flood of sunshine.

“Here goes,” he repeated and, lighting a cigarette, began his discourse.

“In homicide cases the police generally go for the obvious man. In spite of everything the psychologists say, and mind you they know what they’re talking about, the obvious man is generally the ‘he’ in the game. In this case the obvious man was the one who pulled the trigger — Gardener. So from the first I considered him carefully. Would anyone else have risked planting the cartridges? Suppose Gardener had not pulled the trigger or had pulled it too soon? Would anyone else be likely to chance this? Well, they might. But if Gardener himself was the murderer he stood to risk nothing. The next thing I reminded myself of was the fact that I was up against good acting. Gardener was a consummately good actor. So I discounted all his remorse and bewilderment. How cleverly he talked about the insincerity of actors, quietly building up a picture of himself as the only genuine one amongst them. I deliberately refused to accept all this. When we took the statements from the others I noted at once that he and Stephanie Vaughan were nearest to the stage.

“At this time I was, of course, still watching everybody. But he was in his room with her and her room next door was unoccupied and close to the stage. How easy for him to dart in there when he left her, pull on Saint’s gloves that he’d found on the stage (a stroke of luck that — he’d meant to use his own), make sure no one was in the passage, and then slip out, go on to the stage and in the dark change the cartridges. I wondered if his story of the sore foot was a fabrication, and deliberately I suggested the scent and he fell into the trap. That made me consider him seriously. Then he allowed you to get all that business about the libel case out of him, but only when he knew we’d find it out for ourselves. He told you Surbonadier had written the article. I wondered if he’d written it himself. When I found the forged signatures in Surbonadier’s flat I felt sure Gardener had been the author. Suppose Surbonadier had blackmailed him, threatening to expose him to Saint? Saint would have ruined his career. Suppose Surbonadier threatened to tell Stephanie Vaughan what I suspected was the truth about their Cambridge days? All supposition — but suggestive. I sent a man to Cambridge, who found the old servant who had looked after Gardener and who had overheard a conversation between him and Surbonadier in which Surbonadier accused him of writing the article. Gardener was much deeper in the drug-party stunts than he gave you to understand. No doubt his description of the passion he had for Stephanie Vaughan and the hatred he felt for Saint was true. This passion was drug-fed and inspired the article. I only got the Cambridge statement last night. It clinched matters.