He leant forward and rested his head in his hands. His voice was less distinct “I’m fond of her,” he said. “She’s got used to me being about. When I came in she ran to me and — I needn’t go into the way I felt. There’s no explaining these things. She was sobbing in my arms, poor bird, and God knows my heart had turned over. Ben came in. He went for her like a pickpocket. He was crazy. I tried to shut him up. He didn’t make a noise — I don’t mean that — matter of fact what he said streamed out of him in a whisper. He was quite off his head and began talking about Helena — about his wife. He used straight-out obscenities. There’d been an episode in the afternoon and — well, he used the sort of generalization that Lear and Othello and Leontes use, if you remember your Shakespeare.”
“Yes.”
“Gay was still clinging to me and he began to talk the same sort of stuff about her. I’m not going into details. I put her away from me and quite deliberately gave him what was coming to him. I don’t remember what I said. I don’t think any of us said anything. So he went out nursing his jaw and they called me for the last act and I went out too. During this last act, when we were on together, I could see the bruise coming out under his make-up.”
“What was his general behaviour like during the final act?”
“As far as I was concerned he behaved in the way people do when they play opposite someone they’ve had a row with off-stage. He didn’t look me in the eye. He looked at my forehead or ears. It doesn’t show from the front. He played fairly soundly until poor Parry got out of position. Parry is his butt in the piece, but of course what Ben did was outrageous. He stuck out his foot as Parry moved and brought him down. That was not long before his own exit. I never saw him again after that until he was carried out. That’s all. I don’t know if you’ve believed me but I hope you’ll let Gay off any more of this stuff.”
Alleyn didn’t answer. He looked at the young-old actor for a moment. J.G. was lighting a cigarette with that trained economy and grace of movement that were part of his stock-in-trade. His head was stooped, and Alleyn saw how carefully the silver hair had been distributed over the scalp. The hands were slightly tremulous. How old was J.G.? Fifty? Fifty-five? Sixty? Was he the victim of that Indian Summer that can so unmercifully visit an ageing man?
“It’s the very devil, in these cases,” Alleyn said, “how one has to plug away at everyone in turn. Not that it helps to say so. There’s one more question that I’m afraid you won’t enjoy at all. Can you tell me more specifically what Bennington said about — I think you called it an episode — of the afternoon, in which his wife was concerned?”
“No, by God, I can’t,” said J.G. hotly.
“He spoke about it in front of Miss Gainsford, didn’t he?”
“You can’t possibly ask Gay about it. It’s out of the question.”
“Not, I’m afraid, for an investigating officer,” said Alleyn, who thought that J.G.’s delicacy, if delicacy were in question, was possibly a good deal more sensitive than Miss Gainsford’s. “Do you suppose Bennington talked about this episode to other people?”
“In the condition he was in I should think it possible.”
“Well,” Alleyn said, “we shall have to find out.”
“See here, Alleyn. What happened, if he spoke the truth, was something entirely between himself and his wife and it’s on her account that I can’t repeat what he said. You know she and Poole were on-stage at the crucial time and that there’s no sense in thinking of motive, if that’s what you’re after, where they are concerned.”
Alleyn said: “This episode might constitute a motive for suicide, however.”
J.G. looked up quickly. “Suicide? But — why?”
“Shame?” Alleyn suggested. “Self-loathing if he sobered up after you hit him and took stock of himself? I imagine they’ve been virtually separated for some time.”
“I see you have a talent,” said J.G., “for reading between the lines.”
“Let us rather call it an ugly little knack. Thank you, Mr. Darcey, I don’t think I need bother you any more for the moment.”
J.G. went slowly to the door. He hesitated for a moment and then said: “If you’re looking for motive, Alleyn, you’ll find it in a sort of way all over the place. He wasn’t a likeable chap and he’d antagonized everyone. Even poor little Parry came off breathing revenge after the way he’d been handled, but, my God, actors do that kind of thing only too often. Feeling runs high, you know, on first nights.”
“So it would seem.”
“Can I take that child home?”
“I’m sorry,” Alleyn said, “not yet. Not just yet.”
“Well,” Alleyn said when J.G. had gone, “what have you got at your end of the table, Br’er Fox?”
Fox turned back the pages of his note-book.
“What you might call negative evidence, on the whole, Mr. Alleyn. Clearance for the understudies, who watched the show from the back of the circle and then went home. Clearance for the two dressers (male), the stage-manager and his assistant, the stage-hands and the night-watchman. They were all watching the play or on their jobs. On statements taken independently, they clear each other.”
“That’s something.”
“No female dresser,” Mr. Fox observed. “Which seems odd.”
“Miss Tarne was the sole female dresser and she’s been promoted overnight to what I believe I should call starletdom. Which in itself seems to me to be a rum go. I’ve always imagined female dressers to be cups-of-tea in alpaca aprons and not embryo actresses. I don’t think Miss Tarne could have done the job, but she comes into the picture as the supplanter of Uncle Ben’s dear little niece, whom I find an extremely irritating ass with a certain amount of low cunning. Miss Tarne, on the other hand, seems pleasant and intelligent and looks nice. You must allow me my prejudices, Br’er Fox.”
“She’s Mr. Poole’s third cousin or something.”
“The case reeks with obscure relationships — blood, marital and illicit, as far as one can see. Did you get anything from Bennington’s dresser?”
“Nothing much,” said Fox, sighing. “It seems the deceased didn’t like him to hang about on account of being a secret drinker. He was in the dressing-room up to about seven and was then told to go and see if he could be of any use to the other gentlemen, and not to come back till the first interval when the deceased changed his clothes. I must say that chap earns his wages pretty easily. As far as I could make out the rest of his duties for the night consisted in tearing off chunks of cotton-wool for the deceased to do up his face with. I checked his visits to the dressing-room by that. The last time he looked in was after the deceased went on the stage in the third act. He cleared away the used cottonwool and powdered a clean bit. In the normal course of events I suppose he’d have put Mr. Bennington into the fancy dress he was going to wear to the ball and then gone home quite worn out.”
“Was he at all talkative?”
“Not got enough energy, Mr. Alleyn. Nothing to say for himself barring the opinion that deceased was almost on the D.T. mark. The other dresser, Cringle, seems a bright little chap. He just works for Mr. Poole.”
“Have you let them go?”
“Yes, sir, I have. And the stage-hands. We can look them out again if we want them, but for the moment I think we’ve just about cleaned them up. I’ve let the assistant stage-manager — A.S.M. they call him — get away, too. Wife’s expecting any time and he never left the prompting book.”
“That reduces the mixed bag a bit. You’ve been through all the rooms, of course, but before we do anything else, Br’er Fox, let’s have a prowl.”
They went into the passage. Fox jerked his thumb at Bennington’s room. “Gibson’s doing a fly-crawl in there,” he said. “If there’s anything, he’ll find it. That dresser-chap didn’t clear anything up except his used powder-puffs.”