“No. Your coat and dress are both light blue, and blue is the last of all the colors to darken when light fades. That’s why a cloudless sky looks blue even at night if there’s any light at all.”
Pauline snatched her hand away. “So you did think of me! Basil Willing, what a nasty suspicious mind you have!”
He laughed.
“It isn’t funny. Good night!”
It was some time after midnight when Basil got back to his own home—an old-fashioned brownstone house on Park Avenue below Grand Central. As he fumbled in his pocket for a latch key, his glance happened on the floor of the vestibule—a tessellated pavement of black and white stone.
That brought back one detail of his wanderings backstage that had been lost in the excitement and confusion of later events. Like a miniature moving picture in vivid technicolor, his memory unreeled a vision of a woman in a black and white dress and a black cloak opening double doors to cross a dim, firelit stage and brush past him in the wings. Those double doors must have been the doors to the alcove. Vladimir might have been already on his bed in the alcove at that moment, for the curtain rose only a few minutes afterward, and Adeane had seen Vladimir enter the alcove three minutes before the curtain rose.
Were there four suspects instead of three? There was nothing to prove that Vladimir had been alive at any moment during the first act. He could have been stabbed before the curtain rose. He could have lain there dead all during the silly posturing and mummery of the first act without anyone on stage or in the audience suspecting it. . . .
Chapter Five. Leading Juvenile
BASIL’S HOUSE was at its best early in the morning when eastern sunshine flooded the principal rooms. The street was wide, the buildings opposite low; so the front windows had daylight all day and a segment of starry sky at night just as if they overlooked a small town instead of a skyscraper city. He had selected this house in the first place because it reminded him of his father’s home in Baltimore, and a home was what he wanted after years of wandering from one set of students’ lodgings to another in Paris and Vienna. It had high ceilings, thick walls, and deep fireplaces built for fires that would heat a whole room. Living room and dining room had cream paneled walls. Firelight painted them with apricot highlights; sunshine washed them with lemon yellow.
The original colors of the rugs had dulled to quiet shades of buff and brown, like dead flowers pressed in a book; and the whole place was faded, and comfortable as an old bedroom slipper.
The next morning in the sun-splashed dining room, Basil glanced at the daily paper as he started his grapefruit.
MURDER ON STAGE
MAN STABBED AT MORLEY OPENING
Only the barest outline of the crime had caugh the night shift of the morning paper in time for this edition. Basil turned to the theatrical page. For once a dramatic critic had paid some attention to what was occurring on the stage.
WANDA MORLEY in FEDORA
Reviewed by Milverton Trowbridge
The sensational discovery of a murdered man on the stage of the Royalty Theatre last night interrupted Sam Milhau’s production of Fedora starring Wanda Morley, at the end of the first act. If such an incredible event had occurred in the action of the play, the writer would have condemned it unhesitatingly as a stale theatrical contrivance—a piece of pure ham, mechanical and impossible. But it is scarcely the function of a dramatic critic to subject reality to the same austere standard of criticism as make-believe. Suffice it to say that the impossible did happen last night at the Royalty, and it is now a story for the news section rather than an occasion for comment in this column. The identity of the murdered man, a super playing the walk-on part of Vladimir, has not been established. Apparently he was an amateur who had no connection with the stage. That is one of the many inexplicable features of the case. Many of us have felt on occasion that murdering an actor would be justifiable homicide, and there have been plays that would have justified the murder of the playwright; but it is difficult to understand why anyone would launch a murderous attack upon an inoffensive super who was apparently unknown to anyone else on the stage.
Everyone in the theatrical world will feel deep sympathy for Miss Morley who must have suffered a severe shock when she discovered the body. Judging by the first act alone her Fedora was a warm, highly colored interpretation, breathing new life into the lath and plaster of Sardou’s creaky old melodrama. When will our theater provide Miss Morley with a vehicle worthy of her great talent as an actress? She is wasted on this pinchbeck stuff that Huneker used to call “Sardoodle.”
Leonard Martin turned in one of his usual smooth performances as Grech, the police officer. Rodney Tait, making his debut on Broadway, was decidedly miscast as the elderly Dr. Lorek. Unfortunately there was no opportunity to observe him in the possibly more congenial role of Loris Ipanov as Loris does not appear until the second act.
There will be no performance of Fedora this evening. At the moment, it is uncertain whether or not the play will be resumed later this week.
This review irritated Basil. He had read it hoping to glean some significant sidelight on the murder. But, possibly through force of habit, the critic treated the murder the way he treated everything else that occurred on stage—as a peg on which to hang his own rather tepid “cuteness”—so Basil learned nothing.
Juniper came in with bacon and eggs. “Yo’ coffee’s gettin’ cold, Doctah Willin’,” he said, almost as grimly as a wife.
“I like my coffee cold—sometimes!”
The front doorbell rang.
“If that’s a bomb insurance salesman or a man from the Society for the Suppression of Red Nail Polish with a petition to be signed, just say that I died last week and was buried yesterday.”
As a rule Juniper was a blandly impenetrable obstruction to all casual time-wasters. This morning he met his match. As soon as the door opened, there was a rush of feet in the hall, and Pauline appeared in the doorway with Rodney Tait.
“Basil! You must help us!”
Astonished, Basil was on his feet already. “What can I do? What’s wrong?”
“You can find out who killed that man last night and you must—please! If you don’t, they’ll arrest Rod. I know they will. They’ve been questioning him for hours.”
Basil looked at Rodney. His eyes were puffy and red, as if he had been up all night. His jaw was set with a new firmness.
“I’m afraid we oughtn’t to have barged in like this at breakfast—” he began.
“Not at all,” interrupted Basil quickly. “Suppose you both sit down and tell me all about it. Coffee?”
“No, thanks. But we will cadge cigarettes.”
They sat on either side of him, opposite each other. Pauline was trim in the same neat suit she had worn yesterday. She faced the sun fearlessly. But Rod sat with his back to it, his eyes veiled in shadow. There was a V-shaped frown between his brows. His hands were restless.
Apparently last night’s quarrel was healed. Pauline looked at Rod, though she was speaking to Basil. “You’re a policeman, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“Well, you’re an Assistant District Attorney or something official. That Inspector Foyle behaved as if you were his bosom friend. All the police did.”