“The first time? Or the second?”
“Both times.”
“You realize that would mean he was stabbed at the beginning of the first act? And that only one person approached him on stage before you did?”
The golden eyes widened with horror. “What have I said! Poor Leonard would never do such a thing! It’s ridiculous! What possible motive could Leon have? I was the only person in the company who knew John. When the police discover that they’ll argue that I’m the only person who could have had a motive for stabbing him. That’s why I lied about knowing him last night. It was just self-preservation.”
“There is another possibility—Margaret Ingelow.”
“But she wasn’t on stage!”
“Not after the curtain rose. But she was seen leaving the alcove and crossing the stage just before the curtain rose. Apparently she left the alcove after Vladimir had entered it, and she was the only person to do so before Grech opened the alcove doors.”
Wanda smiled her wry, uneven smile. “So there are four of us? Leonard, Rod, Magpie, and me! It could have been Magpie, I suppose . . .”
Basil noticed that Wanda preferred the derisive “Magpie” to the sedate “Margot” as a nickname for Margaret Ingelow.
“John could have been dying or dead all through the first act without one of us suspecting anything wrong. How awful!” Wanda shivered under her sweater in the warm sun.
“Are you sure no one else in the company knew Ingelow by sight?”
“I don’t know.” She flung out her hands in an almost Gallic gesture. “We had to be careful until his wife agreed to a divorce. Neither of us wanted scandal, and Magpie was being a little difficult. She hates me, because it was she herself who first introduced John to me. Magpie was stage-struck, and that was how we met. John didn’t care for the theater or know any stage people until he met me. Of course, it was John who put up the money for Fedora. But I dealt with Sam Milhau myself. John was never inside the theater until last night, and so far as I know no one there knew him even by sight. He was just back from Panama, and I happened to tell him that old yarn about Bernhardt’s friends playing the part of Vladimir. He thought it would be a lark to do the same thing. It was rather reckless under the circumstances, but we thought no one would recognize him in his corpse make-up; and taking a chance was what made it a lark. He always was a reckless devil. You should have seen him on a horse!”
“How did you happen to hear of the old legend about Bernhardt and Edward VII?” asked Basil.
“Oh, I don’t know. I think from Seymour Hutchins who played Siriex last night. Do you mean you think that story was revived purposely just now?”
“It’s possible. Pauline told me yesterday that you like to identify yourself with the great actresses of the past, by reviving their plays and even imitating their foibles. It was a probability you would ask Ingelow to play Vladimir when you heard that yarn. And that gave the murderer an opportunity.”
“But Hutchins would never do that!”
“Perhaps the revival of the story didn’t originate with Hutchins himself. He may have got it second or even third hand.”
“How horrible!”
“Why do you say everyone ‘hoped’ that you had murdered Vladimir?”
“I could sense it in the theater last night. That was what frightened me. That was why I was afraid to admit I knew who the murdered man was. You have no idea how people hate me—how jealous they are of my success! Even Rod is sometimes a little resentful of my being a star when he isn’t. And Leonard doesn’t like playing second fiddle to Rod. Of course Leonard is the better actor—but he’s been ill for a whole year, and I just couldn’t keep the lead in Fedora open for him on the chance that he might recover in time—could I? And Magpie hated me because she knew I was going to marry John. . . . Do you realize that no matter who killed him or when, he must have been either dead or dying by the time I wept over his body at the end of the first act? For no one else went near him afterward. Don’t you see what a horrible, spiteful thing that was? Whoever the murderer is, he or she was jeering at me then—making me go through a scene of mock grief for a stage lover mimicking death when he was really my lover and really dead though I didn’t know it. You needn’t tell me it wasn’t planned that way! It was pure malice directed against me as well as John. It’s as malicious as that French story of the man who walled up his wife’s closet where her lover was hidden, pretending all the time he didn’t know the lover was there.”
“Then you suspect Rodney Tait?”
Her eyes widened. “He’s not my husband!”
“But he would like to be?”
Wanda took on the preening, relaxed content of a cat that is being stroked along the spine. “Rod is—fond of me,” she murmured. “Of course, he’s only a boy . . .”
Basil was interested. “You really believe he is fond of you?”
“Well, he’s always running after me. Sometimes it’s quite embarrassing. All those items in the newspapers and magazines about us. John didn’t like it at all; but I couldn’t help it, could I? Oh, I know that in books written by men women are always held responsible for men falling in love with them; but in real life no woman can make a man fall for her if he doesn’t want to, just as you can’t hypnotize anyone who doesn’t want to be hypnotized. I think even Rod himself would admit that I never did anything to encourage him!”
“Was Rod jealous of John Ingelow?” inquired Basil.
“He didn’t know anything about John. And anyway, I just can’t see Rod as a murderer, can you?” With another little shrug, Wanda returned to her rolls and honey. “I don’t suspect anyone in particular, Dr. Willing, but I do believe that the murderer is someone who hates me, and that the whole thing was planned to hurt me as well as to kill John.”
“Is there any way Rodney could have found out that you were going to marry Ingelow?”
“Well, if people listen at doors and windows they can find out anything. . . .”
“Does Rodney do that?”
“He never has but he might if he were jealous. . . .”
“I wonder you kept Rodney in your company—all things considered.”
“You can’t break contracts as cheaply as all that. Sam put us both under contract to play Fedora several months before Rod developed this silly infatuation with me. Sam was grateful to Rod for taking Leonard’s part at short notice in Chicago when Leonard ran over that poor child and . . .” Wanda stopped as she saw Basil’s astonishment.
“I thought Leonard Martin left the company in Chicago because he fell ill?”
“Oh, dear,” Wanda sighed. “I have spilled the beans!”
“What really happened to Leonard?”
“I suppose you might as well know. I was in a hurry to get to a night club, and Leonard borrowed a car to drive me there. He ran over a little girl playing in the street. She was killed instantly. He had only had one highball, but the police insisted he was drunk. He was really just shaken and staggering from shock. His first thought was the effect on me and the show and his own career so, on impulse, he gave a false name—Lawrence Miller. He knew no one was likely to recognize him; all his published photos had been taken in stage make-up, and he had always played parts that required him to alter his appearance. It’s always a shock to his fans when they discover that he’s bald off stage.