Vintage Murder (13 page)

“Now, Miss Gaynes,” said Alleyn patiently, “it’s a very simple question. Why not let us have the answer to it?”

Valerie Gaynes lay back in the office arm-chair and stared at him like a frightened kitten. At the beginning of the interview she had been in good histrionic form and, it seemed to Alleyn, thoroughly enjoying herself. She had accounted for her whereabouts during the two crucial periods, she had taken the tiki in her stride, with many exclamations as to it’s ill-omened significance, she had discoursed at large on the subject of her own temperament, and she had made use of every conceivable piece of theatrical jargon that she could haul into the conversation in order to show them how professional she was. Alleyn had found all this inexpressibly tedious and quite barren of useful information, but he had listened with an air of polite interest, chosen his moment, and put the question that had so greatly disconcerted her:

“What did you and Mr. Liversidge talk about before you left the stage after the final curtain?”

He could have sworn that under her make-up she turned white. Her enormous brown eyes blinked twice exactly as though he had offered to hit her. Her small red mouth opened and literally her whole body shrank back into the chair. Even after he had spoken again, she made no attempt to answer him, but lay there gaping at him.

“Come along,” said Alleyn.

When she did at last muster up her voice it was almost comically changed.

“Why — nothing in particular,” said Miss Gaynes.

“May we just hear what it was?”

She moistened her lips.

“Didn’t Frankie tell you? What did he say?”

“That’s the sort of question we particularly never ask a policeman,” said Alleyn. “I want
you
to tell me.”

“But — it was just about poor Mr. Meyer — nothing else.”

“Nothing else?”

“I tell you I don’t remember. It was nothing.”

“It wasn’t something very private and personal— between you and Mr. Liversidge?”

“No. Of course not. We haven’t anything — like that — to say.”

“Funny!” said Alleyn. “Mr. Liversidge told us you had.”

Miss Gaynes burst into tears.

“Look here,” said Alleyn after a pause, “I’m going to give you a very hackneyed bit of advice, Miss Gaynes. It’s extremely good advice and you may land yourself in a very uncomfortable position if you don’t take it. Here it is. Don’t lie to the police when there’s a murder charge brewing. Nobody else can make things quite as awkward for you as they can.
Nobody
. If you don’t want to answer my question you can refuse to do so. But don’t lie.”

“I–I’m frightened.”

“Would you rather refuse to give us your answer?”

“But if I do that you’ll think — you’ll suspect — terrible things.”

“We shall merely note that you declined—”

“No. No. What are you thinking! You’re suspecting
me
! I wish I was out of it all. I wish I’d never told him. I wish I’d never met him. I don’t know
what
to do.”

“What do you wish you’d never told him?”

“That I knew — who it was.”

Wade uttered a sort of strangled grunt. Cass looked up from his notes and opened his mouth. Alleyn raised an eyebrow and stared thoughtfully at Valerie Gaynes.

“You knew — who it was who did
what
?”

“You know what. You’ve known all the time haven’t you? Why did you ask me what we talked about if you didn’t know?”

“You mean that Mr. Liversidge is responsible for this business to-night?”

“To-night!” She almost screamed it at him. “I didn’t say that. You can’t say I said that.”

“Good heavens,” said Alleyn. “This is becoming altogether too difficult. We seem unable to understand each other, Miss Gaynes. Please let us tidy up this conversation. Will you tell us in so many words, what is this matter between you and Mr. Liversidge? You suspect him of something, obviously. Apparently it is not murder. What is it?”

“I–I don’t want to tell you.”

“Very well,” said Alleyn coldly. He stood up. “We must leave it at that and go elsewhere for our information.”

She made no attempt to get up. She sat there staring at him, her fingers at her lips and her face disfigured with tears. She looked genuinely terrified.

“I’ll have to tell you,” she whispered at last.

“I think it would be wiser,” said Alleyn, and sat down again.

“It’s the money,” said Miss Gaynes. “I think Frankie took my money. I didn’t believe it at first, when Mr. Meyer spoke to me about it.”

“Lummie!” thought Alleyn. “Now we’re getting it.” He began to question her systematically and carefully, taking pains not to alarm her too much, so that gradually she became more composed, and out of her disjointed half-phrases an intelligible sequence of events began to appear. It seemed that on the last evening in the ship, when she paid her poker debts, Liversidge actually went into her cabin with her. She took the money from her suit-case while he was there, and gave him the ten pounds she owed him. At the same time she took out a ten-pound note which she subsequently changed at the first saloon bar and paid out in tips. Liversidge told her that she was a fool to leave her money in an unlocked suit-case. She told him she had lost the key of the suit-case and said she was not going to bother about it, now, at the end of the voyage. He repeated his warning and left her. Next morning, when she returned from breakfast to pack her luggage, she prodded the leather note-case, felt the thick wad of paper, and fastened the suit-case without making any further investigation. It was not until she opened the note-case in the train that she knew she had been robbed. It was then that she paid her dramatic call on the Meyers and found Alleyn in their sleeper.

“And you suspected Mr. Liversidge when you began to tell us about paying your debt to him?”

She said yes. The thought of Liversidge’s possible complicity occurred to her at that moment. The next morning Meyer had taken her aside and questioned her closely about the money.

“He seemed to suspect Frankie — I don’t know why — but he seemed to suspect him.”

It was then that Meyer had insisted on paying her the amount that had been stolen. He had not made any definite accusation against Liversidge but had warned her against forming any attachment that she might afterwards regret.

“Did Miss Dacres speak to you about Mr. Liversidge?”

But it appeared Carolyn had said nothing definite though Miss Gaynes had received an impression that Carolyn, too, had something up her sleeve.

“And have you yourself said anything about this matter to Mr. Liversidge?”

Here a renewed display of emotion threatened to appear. Alleyn steered her off it and got her back to the conversation that took place off-stage. She said that, guessing at Meyer’s view of the theft, “all sorts of dreadful thoughts” came into her mind when he was killed.

“Then you thought, at the outset, that it was a case of murder?”

Only, it seemed, because Gascoigne kept saying that there must have been some hanky-panky with the gear. After a great many tedious false starts she at last told Alleyn that, when they were all hustled away from the scene of the disaster, she had blurted out a single question to Liversidge: “Has this got anything to do with my money?” and he had answered: “For God’s sake don’t be a bloody little fool. Keep quiet about your money.” Then he had kept her back and had said hurriedly that for Courtney Broadhead’s sake she had better not mention the theft. “I’d never thought of Court until then,” said Miss Gaynes, “but after that I got all muddled and of course I remembered how hard-up Court was and then I began to wonder. And now — now I–I simply don’t know where I am, honestly I don’t. If Frankie was trying to help Court and I’ve — I’ve betrayed him—”

“Nonsense,” said Alleyn very crisply. “There’s no question of betrayal. You have done the only possible thing. Tell me, please, Miss Gaynes, are you engaged to Mr. Liversidge?”

She flushed at that and for the first time showed a little honest indignation.

“You’ve no business to ask me that.”

“I can assure you I am not prompted by idle curiosity,” said Alleyn equitably. “The question is relevant. I still ask it.”

“Very well, then, I’m not actually engaged.”

“There is an understanding of some sort, perhaps?”

“I simply haven’t made up my mind.” A trace of complacency crept into her voice. Alleyn thought: “She is the type of young woman who always represents herself as a fugitive before the eager male. She would never admit lack of drawing-power in herself.”

“But now—” she was saying, “I wish we had never thought of it. I want to get away from all this. It’s all so hateful — I want to get away from it. I’m going to cable to daddy and ask him to send for me. I want to go home.”

“As a preliminary step,” said Alleyn cheerfully, “I am going to send you off to your hotel. You are tired and distressed. Things won’t seem so bad in the morning, you know. Good night.”

He shut the door after her and turned to the two New Zealanders.

“Silly young woman,” said Alleyn mildly.

But Wade was greatly excited.

“I reckon this changes the whole outfit,” he said loudly. “I reckon it does. If Liversidge stole the cash, it changes the whole show. By crikey, sir, you caught them out nicely. By crikey, it was a corker! He tells you one story about this conversation with the girl Gaynes, and you get the other tale from her and then face her up with it. By gee, it was a beauty!”

“My dear Inspector,” said Alleyn uncomfortably, “you are giving me far too much encouragement.”

“It wasn’t so much the line taken,” continued Wade, explaining Alleyn to Cass, “as the manner of taking it. I don’t say I wouldn’t have gone on the same lines myself. It was indicated, you might say, but I wouldn’t have got in the fine work like the chief inspector. The girl Gaynes would have turned dumb on us very, very easy, but the chief just trotted her along quietly and got the whole tale. You seemed to guess there was something crook about this Liversidge from the kick-off, sir. What put you on to that, if I might ask?”

“In the first instance, Miss Gaynes herself. That night in the train she was full of the theft until she began to account for the money she had spent. She mentioned Francis Liversidge, suddenly looked scared, and then shut up like an oyster. To-night Mr. Liversidge’s gallantry in defending young Broadhead seemed to me to be as bogus as the rest of his behaviour.”

“Including the queenie voice,” agreed Wade. “Sounds as if he’d swallowed the kitchen sink.”

“I fancy,” continued Alleyn, “that Miss Dacres also doubts the integrity of our Mr. Liversidge. I fancy she does. She has made one or two very cryptic remarks on the subject”

“The girl Gaynes never said just
why
she reckoned he looked suspicious. Was it simply because he’d been in the cabin and seen where she kept the money?”

“That, perhaps; and also, don’t you think, because of whatever Mr. Alfred Meyer said to her on the subject?”

“
Cert-ain-ly
,” agreed Wade, with much emphasis.

“And if the deceased knew Liversidge pinched the money and let the Gaynes woman see he knew, maybe she put in the good word to Liversidge and he thought: ‘That’s quite enough from you, Mr. Meyer,’ and fixed it accordingly.”

“In which case,” said Alleyn, offering Wade a cigarette, “we have two murderous gentlemen instead of one?”

“Uh?”

“The first attempt on his life was made in the train before the theft was discovered.”

“Aw, hell!” said Inspector Wade wearily. After a moment’s thought he brightened a little. “Suppose Liversidge had found out by some other means that the deceased knew he had taken the money. Suppose he knew the deceased was on to his little game before they left the ship?”

“By Jove, yes,” said Alleyn, “that’d do it, certainly. But look here, Wade, does one man murder another simply because he’s been found out in a theft?”

“Well, sir, when you put it like that—”

“No,” interrupted Alleyn, “you’re quite right. It’s possible. Meyer would give him the sack, of course, and make the whole thing public. That would ruin Liversidge’s career as an actor, no doubt. If he could kill Meyer before he spoke — Yes, it’s possible, but — I don’t know. We’ll have to see Miss Dacres and George Mason again, Wade. If Meyer confided in anyone, it would be his wife or his partner. But there’s one catch in your theory.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“It’s rather nebulous perhaps, but when the little man told me about the assault in the train he was obviously at a complete loss to account for it. Now, if he’d already let Liversidge see he suspected the theft, he would have thought of him as a possible enemy. But he told me he was on terms of loving-kindness and all the rest of it with his entire company, and I think he meant it.”

“It’s a fair cow, that’s what it is,” grunted Wade.

“Beg pardon, Inspector,” said the silent Cass after a pause, “but if I might make a suggestion — it’s just an idea, like.”

“Go ahead,” commanded Wade graciously.

“Well, sir, say this Mr. Liversidge knew the deceased gentleman had seen him take the money, without deceased having let on that he saw, if you understand me, sir.”

“Well done, sergeant,” said Alleyn quietly.

“Yes, but how?” objected Wade.

“Mr. Liversidge might have overheard deceased say something to his wife or somebody, sir.” Cass took a deep breath and fixed his eyes on the opposite wall. “What I mean to say,” he said doggedly, “Mr. Meyer saw Mr. Liversidge take the money. Mr. Liversidge knew Mr. Meyer saw him. Mr. Meyer thought Mr. Liversidge didn’t know he saw him.”

“And there,” concluded Alleyn, “would be the motive without Mr. Meyer realising it. He’s quite right. You’re fortunate, Inspector. An intelligent staff is not always given to us.”

Cass turned purple in the face, squared his enormous shoulders, and glared at the ceiling.

“There you are, Cass!” said Wade good-humouredly. “Now buzz off and get us another of these actors.”

Old Brandon Vernon looked a little the worse for wear. The hollows under his cheek bones and the lines round his eyes seemed to have made one of those grim encroachments to which middle-aged faces are so cruelly subject. A faint hint of a rimy stubble broke the smooth pallor of his chin; his eyes, in spite of their look of sardonic impertinence, were lack-lustre and tired. Yet when he spoke one forgot his age, for his voice was quite beautiful; deep, and exquisitely modulated. He was one of that company of old actors that are only found in the West End of London. They still believe in using their voices as instruments, they speak without affectation, and they are indeed actors.

“Well, Inspector,” he said to Alleyn, “you know how to delay an entrance. It was very effective business, coming out in your true colours like this.”

“I found it rather uncomfortable, Mr. Vernon,” answered Alleyn. “Do sit down, won’t you, and have a smoke? Cigarette?”

“I’ll have my comforter, if you don’t mind.” And Vernon pulled out a pipe and pouch. “Well,” he said, “I’m not sorry to leave the wardrobe-room. That young cub’s sulking and the other fellow has about as much conversation as a vegetable marrow. Dull.” He filled his pipe and gripped it between his teeth.

“We’re sorry to have kept you waiting so long,” said Alleyn.

“Don’t apologise. Used to it in this business. Half an actor’s life is spent waiting. Bad show this. Was Alfred murdered?”

“It looks rather like it, I’m afraid.”

“Um,” rumbled old Vernon. “I wonder why.”

“To be frank, so do we.”

“And I suppose we’re all suspect. Lord, I’ve played in a good many mystery dramas but I never expected to appear in the genuine thing. Let me see, I suppose you’re going to ask me what I was doing before and after the crime, eh?”

“That’s the idea,” agreed Alleyn smiling.

“Fire ahead, then,” said old Vernon.

Alleyn put the now familiar questions to him. He corroborated the account Liversidge and Broadhead had given of his movements. At the close of the play and after the catastrophe, he had gone straight to his dressing-room, where the other two afterwards joined him.

“I don’t know if that constitutes an alibi,” he said, rolling his eyes round at Wade. “If it doesn’t I understand I am almost certain to be innocent.”

“So the detective books tell us,” said Alleyn, “and they ought to know. As a matter of fact I think it does give you a pretty well cast-iron alibi.”

Vernon grimaced. “Not so good. I must watch my step.”

“You’ve been with the firm of Incorporated Playhouses a good time, haven’t you, Mr. Vernon?”

“Let me see. I started with
Double Knock
at the old Curtain.” He pondered. “Ten years. Ten years with Inky-P. Long time to work with one management, ten years.”

“You must be the senior member of the club?”

“Pretty well. Susie runs me close, but she left us for
The Rat and the Beaver
, two years ago.”

“Ah, yes. You must have known Mr. Meyer very well?”

“Yes, I did. As well as an actor ever knows his manager, and that’s very thoroughly in some ways and not at all in others.”

“Did you like him?”

“Yes, I did. He was honest. Very fair with his actors. Never paid colossal salaries — not as they go nowadays — but you always got good money.”

“Mr. Vernon, do you know of any incident in the past or present that could throw any light on this business?”

“I don’t.”

“The Firm is all right, I suppose? Financially, I mean?”

“I believe so,” answered Vernon. There was an overtone in his voice that suggested a kind of guardedness.

“Any doubt at all about that?” asked Alleyn.

“There are always rumours about managements like ours. I have heard a certain amount of gossip about some of the touring companies. They are supposed to have dropped money for the Firm. Then there was
Time Payment
. That did a flop. Still, Inky-P. has stood a flop or two in its time.”

“Were all Mr. Meyer’s interests bound up in the Firm, do you know?”

“I don’t know anything about it. George Mason could tell you that, probably. Alfred was a very shrewd business man and he and Carolyn are not the social spotlight hunters that most of ’em are nowadays. They lived very quietly. The theatre before everything. I should say Alfred had saved money. Only a guess, you know.”

“I know. It’ll all appear now, of course.”

“What puzzles me, Mr. Alleyn, is who on earth would want to do in Alfred Meyer. None of us, you’d have thought. Shops aren’t found so easily that we can afford to kill off the managers.” He paused and rolled his eyes round. “I wonder,” he said, “if that accident on Friday morning gave anybody the big idea.”

“What accident?” asked Alleyn sharply.

“The morning we got here. Didn’t you hear about it? One of the staff was up in the flies fixing the weight for the mast. The head mechanist and Ted Gascoigne were down below on the stage, having an argument. Suddenly the gentleman in the flies got all careless and dropped the weight. It fell plumb between the two men and crashed half through the stage. Ted Gascoigne raved at the poor swine for about ten minutes, and Fred — the head mechanist— nearly ate him. We all rushed out to see the fun. God, they were a sight! White as paper and making faces at each other.”

“Good Lord!” said Alleyn.

“Yes. It would have laid him out for keeps if it had hit one of ’em. Great leaden thing like an enormous sash-weight and as heavy—”

“As heavy, very nearly, as a jeroboam of champagne,” finished Alleyn. “It was used, afterwards, as a counterweight for the bottle.”

“Was it really!” exclaimed Vernon.

“Didn’t you know how they fixed the gear for the bottle?”

“I heard poor old Alfred holding forth on the subject, of course, but I’m afraid I didn’t pay much attention.”

“You all knew about the mishap with the counterweight?”

“Oh God, yes. Everyone came out helter-skelter. It shook the building. George ran along from the office, Val Gaynes flew out of her dressing-room in a pair of scanties. The two Australians nearly threw in their parts and returned to Sydney. It was a nine days’ wonder.”

“I see,” said Alleyn. He turned to Wade. “Anything else you’d like to ask Mr. Vernon, Inspector?”

“Well now,” said Wade genially, “I don’t know that there’s much left to ask, sir. I
was
wondering, Mr. Vernon, you having been so long with the company, if you could give us a little idea about the domestic side of the picture, as you might say.”

Old Vernon swung round in his chair and looked at Wade without enthusiasm.

“Afraid I don’t follow you,” he said.

“Well now, Mr. Vernon, you’ll understand we have to make certain inquiries in our line. You might say we have to get a bit curious. It’s our job, you understand, and we may fancy it as little as other folk do, but we’ve got to do it. Now, Mr. Vernon, would you describe Mr. and Mrs. Meyer as being a happy couple, if you know what I mean?”

“I can understand most common words of one or two syllables,” said Vernon, “and I do know what you mean. Yes, I should.”

“No differences of any sort?”

“None.”

“Good-oh, sir. That’s straight enough. So I suppose all this talk about her and Mr. Hambledon is so much hot air?”

“All what talk? Who’s been talking?”

“Now don’t you worry about that, Mr. Vernon. That’ll be quite all right, sir.”

“What the hell d’you mean? What’ll be quite all right? Who’s been talking about Miss Dacres and Mr. Hambledon?”

“Now never you mind about that, sir. We just want to hear—”

“If it’s that damned little footpath comedian,” continued Vernon, glaring angrily at Wade, “you can take it from me he’s about as dependable as a cockroach. He’s a very nasty little person, is Mr. St. John Ackroyd,
né
Albert Biggs, a thoroughly unpleasant piece of bluff and brass. And
what
a naughty actor!”

“
Né
Biggs?” murmured Alleyn.

“Certainly. And the sooner he goes back to his hairdresser’s shop in St. Helens the better for all concerned.”

“I gather,” said Alleyn mildly, “that he has already spoken to you about the conversation he overheard in his dressing-room.”

“
Oh
, yes,” said old Vernon, with a particular air of elaborate irony that Alleyn had begun to associate with actors’ conversation. “
Oh
, yes. I was told
all
about it as soon as he had a chance to speak his bit. Mr. Ackroyd came in
well
on his cue with the odd bit of dirt, you may be
quite
sure.”

Alleyn smiled: “And it’s as true as most gossip of that sort, I suppose?”

“I don’t know what Ackroyd told you, but I’d swear till it snowed pink that Carolyn Dacres hasn’t gone in for the funny business. Hailey
may
have talked a bit wildly. He
may
be very attracted. I don’t say anything about that, but on her side — well, I can’t believe it. She’s one of the rare samples of the sort that stay put.”

And Vernon puffed out his cheeks and uttered a low growl.

“That’s just what we wanted to know,” said Wade. “Just wanted your opinion, you see, sir.”

“Well, you’ve got it. And the same opinion goes for anything Mr. Ackroyd may have told you, including his little bit of dirt about George Mason. Anything else?”

“We’ll get you to sign a statement about your own movements later on, if you don’t mind,” said Wade.

“Ugh!”

“And that will be all.”

““Has the footpath comedian signed his pretty little rigmarole?”

“Not yet, Mr. Vernon.”

“Not yet. No doubt he will,” said Vernon bitterly. He shook hands with Alleyn. “Lucky you’re here, Mr. Alleyn. I shall now go to my home away from home. The bed is the undulating sort and I toboggan all night. The mattress appears to have been stuffed with the landlady’s apple dumplings of which there are always plenty left over. Talk of counterweights! My God! Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, bless the bed that I lie on. Good night. Good night, Inspector Wade.”

“What is the name of your hotel, sir?”

“The Wenderby, Inspector. It is a perfect sample of the Jack’s Come Home.”

“I’ve always heard it was very comfortable,” said Wade, with all the colonial’s defensiveness. “The landlady—”

sang old Vernon surprisingly in a wheezy bass:

He cocked his eyebrow, turned up the collar of his overcoat, clapped his hat on one side of his head and marched out.

“Aw, he’s mad,” said Wade disgustedly.

Alleyn lay back in his chair and laughed heartily.

“But he’s perfect, Wade. The real old actor. Almost too good to be true.”

“Making out he’s sorry deceased has gone and two minutes afterwards acting the fool. Our hotels are as good as you’d find anywhere,” grumbled Wade. “What’s he mean by a Jack’s Come Home, anyway?”

“I fancy it’s a professional term denoting a slapdash and carefree attitude on the part of the proprietress.”

“He’s mad,” repeated Wade. “Get the kid, Cass. Young Palmer.”

When Cass had gone, Wade got up and stamped about the office.

“It’s chilly,” he said.

The room was both cold and stuffy. The fire had gone out and the small electric heater was quite unequal to the thin draughts of night air that came in under the door and through the ill-fitting window-frame. The place was rank with tobacco-smoke and with an indefinable smell of dust and varnish. Somewhere outside in the sleeping town a clock struck two.

“Good Lord!” said Alleyn involuntarily.

“Like to turn it up for to-night, sir?” asked Wade.

“No, no.”

“Good-oh, then. Look, sir. On what we’ve got, who do you reckon are the possibles? Just on the face of it?”

“I’m afraid it’d be quicker to tick off the unlikelies,” said Alleyn.

“Well, take it that way.”

Alleyn did not reply immediately and Wade answered himself.

“Well, sir, I’ve got their names here and I’ll tick off the outsiders. Old Miss Max. No motive or opportunity. That old loony who’s just wafted away, Brandon Vernon. Same for him. Gascoigne, the stage-manager. Same for him on the evidence we’ve got so far. The funny little bloke, St. John Ackroyd, alias Biggs, according to Vernon. He may be a bit of a nosy but he doesn’t look like a murderer. Besides, his movements are pretty well taped out. The girl Gaynes. Well, I suppose you might say, if she’s going with Liversidge and knew Meyer was in the position to finish his career for him, that there’s a motive there, but I don’t see that silly little tart fixing counterweights and working out the machinery for a job of this sort. Do you?”

“The imagination does rather boggle,” agreed Alleyn.

“Yes. Well, now we get into shaky country. Hambledon. Let’s look at Mr. Hailey Hambledon. He’s after the woman. They none of them deny that. Seems as if he’s been kind of keen for a long while. Now if Ackroyd’s story is right, she said she’d marry him if Meyer was dead and not unless. There’s the motive. Now for opportunity. Hambledon could have gone aloft the first time and taken away the weight. He says he went to his dressing-room and took the muck off his dial. Maybe, but he told the dresser he wasn’t wanted, and he could have gone back on the stage, climbed aloft and done it. After the murder he went as far as her dressing-room with the Dacres woman— with deceased’s wife. She said she wanted to be alone and then sent for him, some time later. During the interval he may have gone up and put the weight back. That right?”

“Yes,” said Alleyn.

“Then there’s Carolyn Dacres. Same motive. Same opportunity. She was the last to appear for the party and she asked to be left alone after the fatality. I don’t know whether she’d be up to thinking out the mechanics of the thing but—”

“One should also remember,” said Alleyn, “that she was the one member of the party from whom the champagne stunt had been kept a secret.”