“Oh, yes, they could!” returned Basil. “They could say that you loved Rod, but that he didn’t love you. And they would say it if they heard you had broken your engagement to him yesterday.”
Tears stood in Pauline’s eyes. “Then you’ll have to find the murderer—as I said in the first place. The police wouldn’t listen to us, but they would listen to you. Last night that Inspector treated you as if you were a little tin god!”
Basil laughed. “That’s only because I have the District Attorney’s ear.” He looked Pauline in the eyes. “Are you quite sure you want me to find the murderer?”
“Sure? Why, of course!”
“Suppose it should be Rod after all?”
The tears that had gathered in her eyes slid down her cheeks unnoticed. Rod laughed awkwardly. “That’s frank anyway!” There was a brick-red flush on his face.
Pauline looked at Basil as directly as he had looked at her. “I know Rod has nothing to fear from truth. Go as far as you like!”
Something stirred in Rod’s eyes as he looked at her.
Basil hesitated. How young Pauline was! Only the very young had such faith that truth could not harm them or those they loved. He spoke briskly to scatter his own thoughts.
“All right. I’ll do what I can.” His eyes went to Rod’s hands. “Are you in the habit of that?”
“Of what?” Rod looked down at his hands. “Oh.” His flush deepened. He swept the sugar lumps together and dropped them into the bowl. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I do fiddle with things.”
“Especially sugar lumps at table.” Pauline eyed him with almost motherly indulgence. “It’s a filthy habit. And he’ll have to get over it, now that sugar is being rationed.”
Basil pushed back his chair from the table. “Suppose we adjourn to the next room. There’s something there I want to show you.”
They crossed the hall to another long, narrow room with cream paneled walls washed primrose by the eastern sun. Basil went to a desk and took out Wanda’s script of Fedora.
“Recognize this?”
Rod turned the pages. “It’s Wanda’s.”
“You’re sure it didn’t belong to the actor who played Siriex?”
“Of course not. I’ve seen this script in Wanda’s hands at every rehearsal. Seymour Hutchins, who played Siriex, had his script all marked up with notes in red ink.”
“Have you any idea why a line spoken by Siriex should be marked in Wanda’s script?”
“No, unless it was the cue for some bit of business she had worked out.”
“It couldn’t have been that,” cried Pauline. “She had no bit of business at that point in the first act.”
“Last night Milhau told the police that the running time of the first act was supposed to be forty-eight minutes,” went on Basil. “Did it run exactly that time last night?”
“Well, it may have been off schedule a minute or so either way,” admitted Rod. “But no more than that. Milhau’s very strict about timing.”
“Do you think you could make out a rough timetable of the principal incidents in the first act?”
“Such as?”
“Entrances and exits of Vladimir, Wanda, Leonard, and yourself. Also the occasions when any of you went near Vladimir on stage. If you can time the duration of such incidents it would help.”
“I can try.” Rod sat down at the desk and studied the script, jotting figures on the margin. After a few moments he drew a sheet of notepaper toward him and scribbled. “Is this what you want?”
Basil and Pauline read the time table over his shoulder.
Vladimir enters left and goes into alcove, closing doors:
8:35
Curtain rises:
8:40
Wanda enters left:
8:46
Leonard enters left and opens alcove doors:
8:51
Leonard near Vladimir:
8:51–8:52
Wanda near Vladimir:
8:53–9:00
Rodney enters left:
9:01
Rodney near Vladimir:
9:02–9:03
Leonard near Vladimir:
9:04–9:05
Leonard exits left:
9:06
Rodney near Vladimir:
9:07–9:24
Leonard re-enters:
9:24
Wanda near Vladimir:
9:25–9:28
Curtain:
9:28
Vladimir discovered dead:
9:30
“Of course you understand that’s only a rough estimate,” said Rod. “Based on my memory of about how long each scene ran at rehearsal.”
“Even if the timing isn’t accurate to the split second, it gives me an idea of the continuity of events on the stage,” replied Basil. “And that’s what I want.”
“That’s simple,” said Pauline. “Characters in order of their approaches to Vladimir: Leonard, Rod, Wanda, Leonard, Rod, Wanda. But I hope the police don’t get Milhau to make them a time table like this. Those seventeen minutes of Rod’s show up too clearly!”
“And that’s when I was holding the knife over Vladimir pretending to probe for a bullet!” Rod sighed wearily. “To hell with realism! I’ll never take a knife on stage again as long as I live.”
“I don’t believe you’ve allotted enough time to Wanda,” cried Pauline. “All during your scene with Grech and Siriex she kept edging up stage near the alcove to draw the attention of the audience away from you. Her scene-stealing gives her a longer time near the alcove than she would have had if she’d followed Milhau’s direction exactly.”
“But she wasn’t actually in the alcove!” insisted Rod. “She couldn’t have stabbed Vladimir from where she was.”
“N-no.” Pauline’s tone was grudging. “But she might have seen something . . .”
Basil was seeing the stage again in his mind’s eye—the actors coming and going as they had last night. “What about gloves?” he asked suddenly. “I seem to recall that Wanda came in carrying a muff without gloves, while you and Leonard both entered with gloves and pulled them off before approaching Vladimir in the alcove. Was that done on the spur of the moment? Or was it part of the direction of the play?”
“That was Milhau’s direction,” answered Rod. “The way we disposed of our wraps was supposed to indicate our characters in the play: Wanda, the great lady, careless of valuable furs; Leonard, the brisk and businesslike man-hunter, tearing off his gloves to get his hands free; I, the methodical professional man who won’t be hurried, piling everything neatly on a chair.”
“Then if any one of you had worn gloves on stage during the first act it would have attracted notice?”
“It would!”
“And it would have been impossible to put on gloves in the middle of the first act without drawing the attention of the audience, to say nothing of Milhau in the wings and the other actors on the stage?”
“Of course!”
Pauline’s eyes widened. “Were there fingerprints on the knife handle?”
“No.”
“Then why—?”
Basil cut her short. “One more question. Did you happen to notice a woman crossing the stage last night just before the curtain rose? She passed us in the wings.”
“No. What sort of woman?”
“A hard, plain suntanned face and brown hair about the same color. Eyes light—gray or blue. She wore no make-up but lipstick, and last night she wore a rather striking dress—diagonal black-and-white stripes—under a long, black velvet cloak. Is there any woman in the cast like that?”