“It looks very much like the perfect crime. We’re up against the laws of physics. I saw murder committed with my own eyes and yet—thanks to the limitations of spacetime—I don’t know when the murder was committed or who did it or even who was murdered.”
Foyle got up and walked over to the alcove. Basil remained on the sofa placidly smoking his cigarette. Foyle nodded to the medical examiner and walked around the alcove, tapping the canvas walls, examining floor and ceiling. He came back frowning and stood with his back to the stage fire facing Basil. “It’s funny to think of those flimsy canvas walls being just as effective as bricks and mortar three feet thick!”
“For this purpose they are,” returned Basil. “There’s no way of getting around or under or over them. The canvas is stretched taut and the lath frame nailed to the floor. You couldn’t lift it and crawl under as if it were a tent. It’s a real box set—there are no gaps, except a very narrow one between the canvas wall and the proscenium arch. To reach the alcove doors that way you have to cross the stage just as you do if you come in by the single door at left, and there are no other doors to the set. When they shift the scene, they hoist the ceiling to the flies, push back the furniture, and drop the second act set inside the first act set. The ceilings of alcove and parlor are all in one piece. You couldn’t budge one without attracting attention of actors and audience.”
The fly from the alley buzzed inquisitively around the Inspector’s head. He brushed it away. “Who were these three people who came near enough to Vladimir to stab him during the first act?”
Basil had been waiting for that inevitable question. He answered with a sigh: “Wanda Morley, Rodney Tait, and Leonard Martin.” He liked the two men, and he was beginning to be a little sorry for Wanda.
“Are you sure all three were close enough to Vladimir to stab him on stage in full view of the audience?” pursued Foyle.
“Perfectly sure. Wanda, playing Fedora, was alone with Vladimir in the alcove on two occasions when all the other actors were downstage near the footlights. Both times she threw her arms around Vladimir and clung to him, groaning and weeping in a theatrical frenzy of grief. She could have stabbed him easily without anyone realizing what she was doing.
“It was Leonard, playing the policeman, Grech, who opened the alcove doors on stage the first time after the curtain rose. He went straight up to Vladimir’s bed and stood there for a full minute. His back was turned to the audience, and he was bending over Vladimir. In the play he was supposed to be ascertaining whether or not Vladimir was alive. He did the same thing again just before his exit to search for Vladimir’s murderer.
“Rodney, playing the surgeon, Lorek, was supposed to make a medical examination of Vladimir’s gunshot wound and extract the bullet. Rodney actually brought a surgeon’s bag on stage, took out a surgical knife, and pretended to work over Vladimir with it for several minutes. No one in the audience or on the stage could see what he was really doing.”
The Inspector made a sour grimace. “Then any one of three different people could have committed the murder on five different occasions, and one of them was actually seen with a knife in his hand bending over the murdered man?”
“Exactly. This whole thing was planned by a remarkably bold, clear, and original mind. The bold are so often reckless and stupid; the calculating, timid and meticulous. But this time, we have a justly balanced combination of boldness, calculation, and utter ruthlessness; for two innocent people are going to suffer just as much as the guilty third.”
The medical examiner came down to the footlights and laid a knife on the table. “Hiya, Willing!” He was a stolid young man to whom murder was just a “case” and nothing more. “Stabbed right through the heart so far as I can see without an autopsy. Awkward angle—couldn’t have been self-inflicted. Hardly any external bleeding. What there was was under the bedclothes.”
“Somebody with medical training?” suggested Foyle, hopefully.
“Not necessarily—in wartime, when every man, woman and child has taken a first-aid course in anatomy. The knife is a surgeon’s scalpel. Judging by the tarnished handle it’s an old one, but the blade has been sharpened recently, and rather amateurishly. There’s a lot of deep spiral grooving on the handle. You won’t get any fingerprints. Ideal weapon for murder.”
So far as Basil could see it was exactly like the scalpel Rodney had displayed in his dressing room before the curtain rose—except for the dark stains on the blade.
“Can you fix the time of death within forty-eight minutes?” demanded Foyle.
“I could. But I’d just be guessing,” returned the examiner. “Onset of rigor varies too much with constitution and circumstance, and you can’t go by temperature. Indoors in a warm room a dead body only loses heat at the rate of two degrees an hour.”
“Anything particular about the body?”
“Youngish—thirty to thirty-five. Healthy and clean, athletic, well-fed, rather sunburned. So far as I can see without stripping him no scars or deformities or chronic diseases. Might’ve been a horseman. Slightly bow-legged but so tall you wouldn’t notice it if you saw him walking around. Will you need me for anything else?”
“No, you can go.”
The inquisitive fly made a perfect six-point landing on the handle of the knife, folded his wings, and palpated the grooved metal with proboscis and forelegs.
“Damn that fly!” The Inspector made a mighty swoop at the knife. Quicker than human hand or eye, the fly spread his wings and rocketed into the air with a derisive buzz. But he didn’t go far. He hovered just above the knife handle.
The Homicide lieutenant came through the door at left carrying an overcoat, a dinner jacket, a white waistcoat, a top hat, and a bundle of small things wrapped in a handkerchief. He put them all down on the table. “Vladimir’s belongings—they were in Miss Morley’s dressing room.” Foyle’s hands moved briskly over the clothes. “Good quality. No labels. I suppose he was wearing costume on stage?”
“Not exactly, chief. Vladimir is supposed to wear just a shirt and trousers and socks. This man wore his own.”
As Foyle picked up the top hat, Basil recalled all the vitality in the cocky angle at which the dead man had worn it when he sauntered into the cocktail bar. Now it was just a shiny black silk beaver like any other.
“Pockets?”
The lieutenant opened the handkerchief bundle. Gold watch—silver cigarette case—linen handkerchief—five quarters—three dimes—one nickel—leather wallet. And a small sheet of lined paper torn from a notebook with some letters and numbers scrawled across it: RT, F:30.