I was sorry for the fumigation company. This probably left a black mark on their reputation. But by that time I had become far too caught up in my own affairs to have much sorrow left over for anyone else.
I would have felt almost cheerful if it hadn’t been for the glance thrown at me by Inspector Clarke just as the jury had given its verdict.
It was a very unnerving glance—amiable, congratulatory, but distinctly sardonic.
I had left the courtroom and was moving down a dreary corridor in the direction of daylight when a voice behind me drawled:
“Good morning, Peter.”
I swung round. Roland Gates stood behind me, his small hands tidily sheathed in kid gloves, his eyes watching me, bright, amused. With a certain satisfaction, I noticed a large, bluish bruise on his jaw.
“You must permit me to congratulate you on your performance in the courtroom, Peter,” he said. “You have an unexpectedly convincing stage presence.”
I said: “What the hell are you doing here?”
“My dear Peter, aren’t I entitled to a little curiosity? George Kramer was something of a friend of mine. I was shocked to hear of his lamentable demise.” He paused. “Now that I’ve attended the inquest, I’m even more intrigued. Really, Peter, you seem to be doing the most bizarre things at the Dagonet.”
“I thought,” I said coldly, “that you and Kramer between you were responsible for whatever bizarre things may have happened at the Dagonet.”
“Peter, how interesting.” His waxy eyelids flickered. “I’m afraid you over-estimated my ingenuity. I confess 1 indulged one rather childish whim. I did procure that singularly repellent cat… .”
“You got that cat into the theater?”
“But all in the spirit of innocent fun. I wouldn’t have had the temerity to do it if I’d known what I was competing against.” He cast a quick glance down the bleak passage. “But we shouldn’t be talking this way in a hotbed of law and order, should we? So far as the authorities are concerned, everything seems to be explained away. I don’t want to put ideas in anyone’s head.”
He added: “About the Wessler role, Peter. It might interest you to know that I’ve learned most of it, and it fascinates me. Just the sort of part I like.” One of his small gloved hands moved to the bruise on his cheek. “After your pugilistic display the other day, I almost decided to let everything drop. But now—I’ve made up my mind to forgive you. I can’t resist that second act.”
There were a thousand and one things I wanted to tell Roland Gates. I wanted to tell him that I knew how Kramer had worked on Mirabelle to let Gates into the play; I wanted to tell him I knew that he or one of his satellites had been in that upstairs dressing-room when Theo had been scared by the face in the mirror; I wanted to tell him that my fondest wish was to be attending his own inquest in the very near future. But I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing he riled me that much.
“There’s one thing I forgot to ask you the other day,” Gates said suddenly. “I seem to be news at the moment —America’s ranking Krafft-Ebing husband. You won’t have any objection to my informing the press that I’m definitely connected with Mirabelle’s show, will you?”
I didn’t see any way I could stop him. He still had all the cards. I told him so.
“Thanks, Peter. Thanks a lot.” Those flat, dark eyes were staring at me with absolutely no expression in them. “I’m developing a very genuine admiration for you. You’re the only theatrical producer in Broadway history who’s managed to get away with murder—twice in one week.”
He stared at me insolently. I stared back.
My fingers were itching. But I couldn’t sock him again —not in the city morgue.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I DROVE straight to the Dagonet where the company was waiting, very restless and on edge. They flocked around me nervously and Mirabelle asked the question that must have been in all their minds.
“What—what was the verdict, Peter?”
“Accidental death,” I said. “Looks as if it’s going to be okay.”
I didn’t tell them about that one, sardonic glance Inspector Clarke had thrown at me; I didn’t tell them about Gates, either. But I couldn’t forget them myself. Even if Iris had been right last night, even if the disturbances were going to stop now Kramer was dead, we were not out of the wood by a long way. There was not only the menace of Gates; there was the menace of the police. On one side Troubled Waters was still exposed to lawlessness; on the other side, it had to be prepared for a flank attack from the law.
That wasn’t a very promising set-up.
Although my news from the inquest had brought a certain amount of relief, the company was still pretty shaken. Eddie informed me that the coffin had been rendered one hundred percent safe again; but, even so, its very presence on the stage was enough to remind us all of the Dagonet’s mortality rate.
I got the rehearsal going at last, ready for the worst. But you can never foresee things in the theater. For some cockeyed reason that rehearsal kicked up its heels and galloped off down the straight as sweetly as if the play were in its second year instead of its second homicide. It was only Mirabelle who worried me. In spite of the flawless technique, there was something wrong, something very deep down—a lack of conviction that she was playing right. Once she had to break the action to pour herself a jigger of brandy and her hand was trembling when she put the empty glass back on the table.
Maybe she had made a point of flourishing the liquor habit in the past just to irritate Wessler. But I knew she wasn’t doing it on account of Wessler then, she needed that brandy badly.
But she picked up as the play went on. By the time I called a halt at six, she was almost back in her stride. And later that evening, when I got them to work again after dinner, she was running on all six cylinders.
In fact, she was alarmingly good. The whole flood of her antagonism to Wessler, which seemed to have dropped during the Kramer interim, was back in her playing. She had all her Wessler scenes keyed up to snapping point, so that at any moment I expected the atmosphere on stage to crackle and shoot out blue sparks.
The others reacted to her. Everyone played with a sort of added intensity. Particularly Wessler. I’d never seen him put the role across with such violence.
The rehearsal reached its climax in the big second act scene between Mirabell and Wessler. It was a scene with a hell of a punch in which Mirabelle used a lot of tough language and where the outraged Wessler finally cut her short with a slap in the face.
From the moment when the others slipped down into the house and left them alone on the stage, Wessler and Mirabelle were dynamite. Mirablle went into her denunciation. I saw Gerald watching her with cautious attention from his place in the aisle. I noticed Theo, too, staring fascinated at Wessler as he stood facing Mirabelle, the very essence of ominous contempt.
Then the time came where the script had Mirabelle’s dialogue break, had her come forward, grip Wessler’s arms and shake him. She did it marvelously. You could see the murder in her eye. And you could see murder in Wessler’s eye, too.
He jerked his arm free; he lifted his hand. In rehearsal, I cut the slap. But that night Wessler seemed carried right out of himself. With sudden violent force he brought his great hand down square on Mirabelle’s cheek.
She gave a little cry, staggered backward and stumbled onto her knees.
I knew she was hurt. I knew, too, that Wessler had meant to hurt her. I sprung up onto the stage, but Gerald reached her first. He dropped onto the worn boards beside her, slipping his young arms around her, supporting her.
“Mirabelle, darling, are you all right?”
He lifted her small body. One of her hands was pressed tight against her cheek. She seemed half dazed.
“It’s—it’s all right, Gerald. Really …”
Gerald swung round to Wessler, his face white, the veins in his temples standing out hard and thick.
“You dirty German swine
,” he said.
Before any of us moved, he had carried Mirabelle to the swing-door and off the stage.
Wessler stared after them blindly. “I do not know what I do,” he whispered. “It is just that Miss Rue, she is that woman in the play. She make me forget. I do not know what I do.” He turned to me, his bearded face haggard, miserable. “I must go to her, tell her how I am sorry, how…”
“I’d leave her alone,” I said curtly.
For a few seconds we stood around doing nothing. Then I happened to notice Mirabelle’s brandy bottle and her empty glass. She’d be needing something to pick her up. I poured brandy from the bottle. There was just enough to make about three inches in the glass. I took it with me offstage.
The door to Mirabelle’s dressing-room was shut. I suppose I should have knocked, but I never thought about it. I knew Mirabelle so well.
I pushed open the door.
“I’ve brought the brand…” I began.
But I didn’t finish the sentence. Mirabelle and Gerald were standing close together by the mirror. Gerald’s arms were still aound her; Mirabelle’s face was pressed against his shoulder, turned away from me. Her body was quivering.
Gerald was saying: “Darling, you don’t have to worry. I’ll never leave you. What the hell do my problems matter compared to this? We’ll fight it together. It’ll be all right”
“Mirabelle,” I said, “isn’t there anything I can do?”
She didn’t answer. I don’t think either of them had noticed me until then. But Gerald wheeled round, sharply, his eyes blazing.
“Get out of here,” he said.
“But, Gerald …”
“Get out, I say.” His voice was savage. “For God’s sake, leave us alone.”
I went. As I shut the door behind me, I heard a faint, strangled sob. I knew then that Mirabelle was crying— crying with the dull, numbed despair of a woman with no hope.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THAT WAS one thing too much. I’d been struggling like hell to get through that nerve-racking day without giving up. But this brutal eruption of the Wessler-Mirabelle volcano swept me right off my precarious foothold.
I stood there in the corridor, alone with Mirabelle’s brandy glass. There couldn’t possibly have been a worse moment for a retired drunk to be left alone with a glass of brandy. I’d given Lenz my solemn word never to touch liquor; I’d given it to Iris too. Until then I’d been able to resist temptation. But I couldn’t resist it any more. Five seconds after I had left that dressing-room, I had taken a large swig of Mirabelle’s drink.
I would probably have drained the glass if it hadn’t been for the taste. At first I thought it was just me, that I’d avoided alcohol for so long that I’d forgotten the way it tasted. Then I took another sip, let it rest on my tongue. Yes, it was like brandy and yet it wasn’t. There was a bitter flavor—something wrong.
For a moment I stood there stone still, trying to fight back the thoughts that were coming into my head. I remembered the various episodes in which Mirabelle’s brandy had featured. It had stayed over night at Wessler’s; Gerald had come all the way crosstown to pick it up; Kramer had poured some for Mirabelle at his last rehearsal. This was that same brandy. And it tasted wrong.
I didn’t know what to do. I looked at the veins on my left wrist. They were twitching. And the thoughts that I tried not to have rushed up so that they were blazing like neon signs in my mind. The crazy, inexplicable menace at the Dagonet was not over. Someone had fixed Mirabelle’s brandy. Someone had poisoned Mirabelle’s brandy.
I stood there, twisting the glass, completely without constructive thought. Heavy footsteps sounded behind me and I turned to see Dr. Lenz, immensely impressive in his black hat and black topcoat. He gazed at the glass with a slight furrowing of his forehead. I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking he’d caught me out delibratetly backsliding.
I faltered: “Mirabelle’s not—not feeling so hot. I was taking her a drink.”
He listened gravely while I blurted out what had just happened on stage. All the time I talked, my mind was working furiously, trying to decide whether or not to pass on to him my insane suspicions about Mirabelle’s brandy. I almost told him. Then I didn’t. I didn’t have the nerve to admit I’d tasted the drink. I didn’t have the nerve, either, to let my psychiatrist think I was cuckoo enough to believe what I did believe. I shirked it.
But I had an idea. As Lenz moved toward the stage, I followed. Just as he pushed through the swing-door, I slipped the glass of brandy behind a red fire-bucket. I had a friend who was a chemist. I could get him to analyze it right away. Then I’d know just where I was—what I was up against this time.
I wasn’t sure whether Lenz noticed what I had done. If he did, he showed no sign.
Back on the stage, rehearsal enthusiasm had decidedly dwindled. Wessler still looked shaken. He was listening with absent politeness to Theo’s far too hearty attempt to be conversational, while Eddie and Iris stood around disconsolately.
I couldn’t bear to have any more time wasted. I took Iris and Theo through a couple of scenes in which they figured alone together. Eventually Gerald appeared, pale and tight-lipped. Mirabelle was resting, he explained. She’d be back again in a few minutes, ready to go on rehearsing.
And she did come back, her eyes too bright, her lips slashed red across a clown-white face. But she was wonderfully in control. She went straight up to Wessler. She held out her hand.
“We should have rehearsed that slap before, Herr Wessler. It’s hard to get it the right strength.”
Wessler’s mouth relaxed its miserable line. He smiled brokenly. “You mean, it is forgiven?”
“Of course.” Mirabelle smiled a brief, impersonal smile. “Come on, Peter. Let’s finish the act.”
And after that, surprisingly, the rehearsal went well. Maybe they were putting up a front for Lenz. Or maybe that violent scene had somehow cleared the air.
But it didn’t cheer me any. I was too busy thinking about the brandy.
I got my plans figured out. After rehearsal I told Lenz and Iris to go back to the apartment, retrieved the glass of brandy and took it in a taxi to my analyst friend. I didn’t tell him anything. I just asked him to find out what was in it and pass on the good news.
With my suspicions still red-hot inside me, I went back to the apartment. Lenz and Iris were both of them relaxed, almost cheerful. Iris talked as if we had nothing more to worry about.
I didn’t disillusion her. After all, someone might as well have a few moments’ basking in a fool’s paradise.
Lenz was suggesting bed when the phone rang. Iris leaped on it before I could get there. I watched her apprehensively.
“Yes,” she said. “Oh, hello … yes … no, I’m afraid I haven’t … no, I can’t imagine… . Where? … Oh … yes, I’ll ask Peter, of course … sorry … isn’t it?”
She let the receiver slide back onto the stand. Her lips were rather tight.
Both Lenz and I were staring at her.
“Come on” I said. “Tell us the worst.”
“Worst?” Iris looked far too casual. “My dear, it’s nothing. Only Theo. She called up about having mislaid her handbag. She wanted to know if any of us had seen it. Seems she must have left it at the theater tonight.”
“Her handbag?” I said. For a moment that sounded innocent enough. Then I began to see what was bothering Iris. “Do you mean she’s lost her handbag with the …?”
“Yes,” put in Iris. “That’s why she’s worried. She had a lot of those codeine pills Dr. Lenz recommended. They were in the bag.” She glanced at Lenz. “You said codeine was poisonous, didn’t you?”
I felt hot and cold all over. Lenz returned Iris’s gaze.
“Yes, Miss Pattison, codeine is a poison, just as veronal is. That is to say, its cumulative effect may be dangerously toxic if it is taken in excess over any period of time. That is true of all derivatives of opium, though some of them —heroin, for examp
le—are more violent in their action.” He smiled briefly. “To relieve your mind, however, I should tell you that one could hardly produce a lethal effect with a single dose.”
Iris looked less worried. “Thank God for that. After what happened to Kramer, I wouldn’t like to have any violent poisons floating around the Dagonet. But—” she smiled awkwardly—“I guess it’s nothing to worry about Theo’s always losing things.”
That’s where the matter ended. Soon we all went to bed. But I couldn’t get that lost codeine out of my mind. It was quite a long time before I went to sleep.
That night I had bad dreams. Ever since the terrible theater fire which had killed my wife, I had been plagued by a periodic nightmare. It always took the same form. I was alone in an enormous darkened theater and I knew, somehow, that it was impossible for me to get out. I was sitting in the highest balcony, miles up in the air and I was afraid—horribly afraid because something told me that within five minutes the place would catch fire.
I was going through it all again that night—only this time the theater was the Dagonet. I was leaning forward in a narrow balcony seat, every nerve in my body waiting for that first yellow flame. And then—a new development in that cyclic dream—the theater was suddenly filled with noise, shrill, throbbing noise, the ringing of a thousand fire-alarms. I sprang from my seat, started dashing madly up the steep aisle toward the exit doors which I knew to be locked. I was beating on them….
And then I was awake, sitting up in bed, beads of sweat breaking out on my forehead. The echo of those nightmare fire-alarms still rang in my ears. Only gradually did they dwindle to one sound—one real sound, the ringing of the telephone at my bedside.
For a moment I did not move. I sat there, staring at the small black instrument until I had shaken off the memory of my dream. The bell had stopped ringing now. Wondering who on earth could be calling at this remote hour, I picked up the receiver.
I heard voices at once—voices which told me that Lenz with his trained doctor’s ear for noises at night, had got there first and was answering the call on the connection in the living-room. I was still pretty dazed with sleep. That’s why, perhaps, that second voice, the voice from the other end of the wire, didn’t mean anything to me at first.
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