“Now, you’re a costume designer. You must understand clothes and textures and colors. We want someone to look all through the theater—dressing rooms, lockers, everywhere—for a long cloak or overcoat or dressing gown that would envelop an average figure from head to foot and look black after dark. Will you do it?”
“I suppose I might as well.” She turned away listlessly.
Foyle had listened to this in astonishment. “Don’t you know the lieutenant put a man on that job the minute he heard your story of the figure on the fire escape?”
“She needs something to do,” answered Basil. “And it’s always interesting to get two reports and compare them.”
III
Leonard Martin still wore the dark wig, padded shoulders, and high-heeled boots of Grech, the Russian police officer, but he was no longer Grech. The quiet voice and deprecating smile that acknowledged Foyle’s greeting were those of Leonard Martin himself.
“I enjoyed your performance,” said Basil. “Sardou left Grech a lay figure. You made him a neat sketch of a policeman on the job.”
Leonard was pleasantly surprised. “I’m glad you liked it. Most people prefer lay figures on stage and screen—especially if they have nice legs.”
“Wish I’d seen you.” Foyle grinned. “I might have picked up a few pointers. Let’s see if you’re as good a policeman off stage as on. Mr. Tait who played Dr. Lorek can’t even feel a pulse! Do you recognize any of these objects?”
“No.”
“Ever see this before?” Foyle held out the cigarette lighter.
But Leonard did not touch it. Hands resting easily on his knees, he bent his head forward to look at it. “No, I can’t say I have.”
Foyle put it back on the table. “Let’s see—you approached Vladimir twice, didn’t you?”
At mention of Vladimir Leonard lost his good humored smile. The hands that lay on his knees shook slightly. He must have seen them himself, for suddenly he thrust both hands in his hip pockets.
“The first time was your first entrance.” Foyle was looking at the lieutenant’s notes. Enter Grech, brusquely, from single door at left. He rushes excitedly to double doors and throws them wide open . . . “Well? What happened?”
“Nothing.” Leonard answered in a low voice—strained, yet under control. “The alcove was empty. Vladimir was lying on the bed. The candle was burning in front of the icon. I stood there for a moment pretending to examine him with my back to the audience. Then I went downstage right to speak my next line.”
“The second time you approached him was just before your first exit,” Foyle read again from the lieutenant’s notes of the play. Grech rises from desk and goes to bed in alcove. “What happened that time?”
“I looked at Vladimir for a few moments standing with my back to the audience again. Milhau’s direction—so Wanda could hog the scene as usual. Then I took a revolver out of my pocket and crossed the stage saying: Come on, men, we’ll get him now! After that I exited at left.”
“Now, think carefully. Was Vladimir alive or dead the first time you looked at him?”
“I don’t know.”
“And the second time?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come now, Mr. Martin! You must have noticed something. According to Dr. Willing who saw the play from the fourth row center, you actually fumbled with the bedclothes both times. Was there no sign of blood? No hump under the bedclothes where the knife handle protruded from his chest?”
“I didn’t notice anything of the sort at the time.”
“If there had been anything of that sort at the time, wouldn’t you have noticed it?”
The question seemed to startle Leonard. Something stirred behind his eyes.
Foyle pursued the advantage. “Even if you have no observed fact you can cite to prove Vladimir alive or dead, you must have some opinion of your own—a general impression based on small things noticed but unremembered. After all, you were close enough to touch him—closer than I am to you now. You might not realize he was dead or dying at the time when you assumed he was acting the part of a dying man. But now you know that he was really dying at some point during the first act of the play. Can’t you look backward in the light of this new knowledge and tell us when that point occurred? Surely you are not less observant than Mr. Tait?”
Leonard looked up in amazement. “You mean to say—that Rod said he knew—when—?”
“He did his best to give us an honest report of his impressions. I want you to do the same thing as honestly as he did.”
“This is dreadful! There were only three of us who went near Vladimir on stage tonight and—we’re all friends!”
The Inspector waited patiently.
“All right!” Leonard flung the words at him. “I’ll give you my opinion for what it’s worth. At the time, of course, I assumed Vladimir was all right. Now that I look back on it in the light of what has happened—I think—”
“Yes?”
“I know he was alive when I opened the alcove doors. I can’t say why—I just know it. But the second time—well, he could have been dead or dying.”
“Why?” The word was soft and insistent.
“I can’t say why. It’s just an intuitive feeling—a hunch, I guess.”
“How many people approached Vladimir in the interval between your two visits to the alcove? asked Foyle.
“Two.”
“And they were?”
“Wanda Morley and Rodney Tait.”
IV
When Leonard had gone, Foyle looked at Basil wearily. “Right back where we started! Rodney and Leonard cancel each other out. If Rodney’s right about the moment death occurred, Wanda is the murderer. If Leonard’s right, it could be either Wanda or Rodney. Is one of them lying? Or just mistaken? We can’t tell! We have three witnesses right on the spot when a man was stabbed and none of them is any good. Rodney is throwing suspicion on Wanda, and Leonard is throwing it back on Rodney and Wanda. Question: Is this deliberate or unconscious?”
“It may have been done reluctantly,” answered Basil. “But hardly unconsciously. An actor would not be likely to forget the topography and sequence of events in a scene acted so recently and rehearsed so often.”
Foyle yawned and rose. “Well, I guess that’s about all for the present. Or have you any aces up your sleeve?”
“No aces, just deuces and treys. But before I call it a night, I’d like to see the actor who played Siriex and the actor who spoke to Vladimir when he crossed the stage to enter the alcove before the curtain rose.”
Seymour Hutchins as Jean de Siriex of the French Embassy looked the way princes and ambassadors ought to look and rarely do. Age had blurred the noble lines of his profile without destroying them entirely. Dark eyes, brilliantly intelligent, looked out of a white face under whiter hair. It was impossible to imagine Wanda or Leonard following any other profession than the stage, but Basil had an impression that Hutchins was a man of parts who would have succeeded in almost any calling and who had just drifted onto the stage through force of circumstance or youthful inclination. According to the programme notes, he had once been a successful leading man himself, and even in his old age producers were glad to entrust him with supporting roles as important as Siriex.
“You come on stage with Grech when he makes his first entrance and remain there all during the rest of the first act,” said Basil. “Can you recall noticing anything wrong with Vladimir at any time?”