Vintage Murder

by Ngaio Marsh

  “On the last night we were in the ship. After we’d finished playing. Actually it was about one o’clock in the morning.”

  “She still had her money then, evidently.”

  “Yes.”

  “She got this tenner from the hoard in the suitcase, did she?”

  “I—I think so. Yes, she did.”

  “You saw her, did you, Mr. Liversidge?”

  “Well—not exactly. I walked along to her cabin and waited outside in the corridor. She came out and gave me the tenner. I didn’t know, then, where she got it from.”

  “You couldn’t see her?”

  “No, I couldn’t. Damn’ it all, Alleyn, what’s the idea of all this?”

  “No offence in the world. Good night, Mr. Liversidge.”

  “Eh?”

  “Good night,” repeated Alleyn cheerfully.

  Liversidge stared uncomfortably at him and then got to his feet. Wade made a movement and was checked by a glint in Alleyn’s eye.

  “Well, so long,” said Mr. Liversidge and went away.

  “Let him go,” said Alleyn when the door had slammed, “let him go. He’s so uncomfortable and fidgety. You can get him again when he’s spent a beastly night. He’ll do very nicely for the time being. Let him go.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Miss Gaynes Goes Up-Stage

  “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 its 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.

  “Did 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 tonight?”

  “Tonight!” 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 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 matt
er 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. Tonight 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.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Variation on a Police Whistle

  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.”