“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.”
“You mean he was drunk?”
“Yes, I do.”
“And abusive?”
“I didn’t care. I understood him.”
“Did he talk about Miss Hamilton?”
“Obviously J.G.’s already told you he did, so why ask me?”
“We like to get confirmation of statements.”
“Well, you tell me what he said and I’ll see about confirming it.”
For the first time Alleyn looked at her. She wore an expression of rather frightened impertinence. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that won’t quite do. I’m sure you’re very anxious to get away from the theatre, Miss Gainsford, and we’ve still a lot of work before us. If you will give me your account of this conversation I shall be glad to hear it; if you prefer not to do so I’ll take note of your refusal and keep you no longer.”
She gaped slightly, attempted a laugh and seemed to gather up the rags of her impersonation.
“Oh, but I’ll tell you,” she said. “Why not? It’s only that there’s so pathetically little to tell. I can’t help feeling darling Aunty — she likes me to call her Helena — was too Pinero and Galsworthy about it. It appears that poorest Uncle Ben came in from his club and found her in a suitable setting and — well, there you are, and — well, really, even after all these years of segregation, you couldn’t call it a seduction. Or could you? Anyway, she chose to treat it as such and raised the most piercing hue-and-cry and he went all primitive and when he came in here he was evidently in the throes of a sort of hangover, and seeing J.G. was being rather sweet to me he put a sinister interpretation on it and described the whole incident and was rather rude about women generally and me and Aunty in particular. And J.G. took a gloomy view of his attitude and hit him. And, I mean, taking it by and large one can’t help feeling: what a song and dance about nothing in particular. Is that all you wanted to know?”
“Do you think any other members of the company know of all this?”
She looked genuinely surprised. “Oh yes,” she said. “Adam and Jacko, anyway. I mean Uncle Ben appeared to have a sort of nation-wide hook-up idea about it but even if he didn’t mention it, she’d naturally tell Adam, wouldn’t you think? And Jacko, because everybody tells Jacko everything. And he was doing dresser for her. Yes, I’d certainly think she’d tell Jacko.”
“I see. Thank you, Miss Gainsford. That’s all.”
“Really?” She was on her feet. “I can go home?”
Alleyn answered her as he had answered J.G. “I’m sorry, not yet. Not just yet.”
P. C. Lamprey opened the door. Inevitably, she paused on the threshold. “Never tell me there’s nothing in atmosphere,” she said. “I knew when I came into this theatre. As if the very walls screamed it at me. I knew.”
She went out.
“Tell me, Mike,” Alleyn said, “are many young women of your generation like that?”
“Well, no, sir. She’s what one might call a composite picture, don’t you think?”
“I do, indeed. And I fancy she’s got her genres a bit confused.”
“She tells me she’s been playing in Private Lives, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray and Sleeping Partners in the provinces.”
“That may account for it,” said Alleyn.
An agitated voice — Parry Percival’s — was raised in the passage, to be answered in a more subdued manner by Sergeant Gibson’s.
“Go and see what it is, Mike,” Alleyn said.
But before Lamprey could reach the door it was flung open and Parry burst in, slamming it in Gibson’s affronted face. He addressed himself instantly and breathlessly to Alleyn.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’ve just remembered something. I’ve been so hideously upset, I just simply never gave it a thought. It was when I smelt gas. When I went back to my room, I smelt gas and I turned off my fire. I ought to have told you. I’ve just realized.”
“I think perhaps what you have just realized,” Alleyn said, “is the probability of our testing your gas fire for finger-prints and finding your own.”
Chapter IX
THE SHADOW OF OTTO BROD
Parry stood inside the door and pinched his lips as if he realized they were white and hoped to restore their colour.
“I don’t know anything about finger-prints,” he said. “I never read about crime. I don’t know anything about it. When I came off after my final exit I went to my room. I was just going back for the call when I smelt gas. We’re all nervous about gas in this theatre and anyway the room was frightfully hot. I turned the thing off. That’s all.”
“This was after Bennington tripped you up?”
“I’ve told you. It was after my last exit and before the call. It wasn’t—”
He walked forward very slowly and sat down in front of Alleyn. “You can’t think that sort of thing about me,” he said, and sounded as if he was moved more by astonishment than by any other emotion. “My God, look at me. I’m so hopelessly harmless. I’m not vicious. I’m not even odd. I’m just harmless.”
“Why didn’t you tell me at once that you noticed the smell of gas?”
“Because, as I’ve tried to suggest, I’m no good at this sort of thing. The Doctor got me all upset and in any case the whole show was so unspeakable.” He stared at Alleyn and, as if that explained everything, said: “I saw him. I saw him when they carried him out. I’ve never been much good about dead people. In the blitz I sort of managed but I never got used to it.”
“Was the smell of gas very strong in your room?”
“No. Not strong at all. But in this theatre — we were all thinking about that other time, and I just thought it was too bad of the management to have anything faulty in the system considering the history of the place. I don’t know that I thought anything more than that: I smelt it and remembered, and got a spasm of the horrors. Then I felt angry at being given a shock and then I turned my fire off and went out. It was rather like not looking at the new moon through glass. You don’t really believe it can do anything but you avoid it. I forgot all about the gas as soon as I got on-stage. I didn’t give it another thought until I smelt it again during the Doctor’s speech.”
“Yes, I see.”
“You do, really, don’t you? After all, suppose I — suppose I had thought I’d copy that other awful thing — well, I’d scarcely be fool enough to leave my finger-prints on the tap, would I?”
“But you tell me,” Alleyn said, not making too much of it, “that you don’t know anything about fingerprints.”
“God!” Parry whispered, Staring at him. “You do frighten me. It’s not fair. You frighten me.”