“I don’t believe anyone will suspect you seriously,” argued Leonard. “It’s so obvious that you had no motive. A woman doesn’t kill an attractive young man of great wealth whom she expects to marry in a few months when there’s no cause for jealousy, unless he’s made a will in her favor; and Ingelow didn’t do anything like that, did he?”
With an angry gesture, Wanda tossed the cigarette she had just lighted down into the garden. “If you must know—he did.”
If Leonard wanted to revenge himself for Wanda’s revelation of his prison sentence, he had certainly succeeded. She looked at him with exasperation. Then she turned to Basil. “I suppose it’s all bound to come out now! John wanted to make a financial arrangement with his wife before she went to Reno, so all that business need not be discussed in court. He was going to settle a lump sum on her in lieu of alimony. Of course, his old will was in her favor. He just had it altered in my favor yesterday. The police are certain to regard that as a motive, absurd as it is that I would kill John for money.”
“Men have been killed for money,” returned Basil, “and Ingelow had rather a lot, hadn’t he?”
“Yes, he had.” Wanda sighed. “That was the only serious obstacle to our marriage.”
“Obstacle?” Basil was feeling his way cautiously in this conversation, like a man groping in the dark.
“I do so hate a life complicated by luxury and formality,” explained Wanda gravely. “I often told John that I would have felt much safer about our chances of happiness if he had been a simple bookkeeper or salesman making about thirty or forty dollars a week. You see, Dr. Willing, I am a frightfully simple person myself with very plain, ordinary tastes. If I had married John, I would have had to lead a much more elaborate life than I’ve been used to—two big households in New York and the Huntingdon Valley, a villa in Florida, a huge staff of butlers and maids and chauffeurs, a great deal of entertaining—it would have been a dreadful responsibility and, to be quite frank, an awful bore. If I hadn’t loved John very much indeed, I just wouldn’t have been able to put up with all that tinsel and sham. I have a beer and hamburger mentality—I detest caviar and champagne. So you see, I’m the last person in the world to commit a horrible crime for the sake of money.”
“I see.”
This was Basil’s second encounter with Wanda’s favorite line, and his first realization that it had any bearing on the murder. He wondered how the police would take it, now that Ingelow’s will gave Wanda a possible motive for murder, providing she was not immune to the normal human desire for money. He allowed a flavor of irony to invade his voice as he remarked: “When I noticed that simple, little fur cloak you were wearing last night it never occurred to me you had a beer and hamburger mentality.”
“Oh, that. It was a present from John, and I wore it on the stage because it did suit the part of Fedora. I never really liked it though—so ostentatious and vulgar.”
“Let me see, it’s mink, isn’t it?”
“Oh, no! It’s not mink at all—it’s Russian sable!” For a woman who cared nothing for luxury and ostentation, Wanda’s response was a little too heated.
“Seems dangerous to keep such valuable furs in the dressing room of a theater with everyone coming and going all the time.”
“It wasn’t there ‘all the time,’” returned Wanda. “I had it stored in February, and I had some trouble getting it out again in time for the opening. A bonded messenger brought it to the theater in the nick of time—after the curtain rose just before I went on stage.”
As Basil took his leave of Wanda a last question occurred to him. “Yesterday afternoon at the art gallery you said something about cutting some lines spoken by a character named Desiré. Did that make much difference in the action of the play?”
“No real difference,” she answered. “Of course it did telescope the action a little in that first scene where Grech comes in and throws open the alcove doors. Didn’t you notice that, Leonard?”
“I can’t say I did.” Leonard smiled sardonically. “You could cut half the lines out of a Sardou play without damaging plot or action at all.”
He followed Basil toward the door into the living room.
“Not going already?” cried Wanda.
“I just stopped in to see how you were,” responded Leonard. “But you can take it. I leave you with a clear conscience.”
Wanda went indoors with them. Basil’s glance swept the long, pale room with its velvet carpet and curtains in faint shades of gray, lime and lemon. It was silken and cushioned, as a case for jewels or wedding silver. There was a hint of the boudoir about the chaise longue of tufted, oyster-white satin with its heap of pillows in fresh laundered slips of fine lawn and lace, its fleecy coverlet of pale green wool neatly folded at one end. Surely this was not the room of a woman who scorned pleasure and ease for the sake of a robust simplicity? Basil’s glance came to rest on an elaborate birdcage that hung from a stand in the sunshine by a window. Cage and stand were wood, painted gray and carved with little flying birds in low relief picked out in bright colors. Inside on the central perch two small green birds, something like parrots, sat side by side, beaks touching in a parody of a human kiss.
As he drew near the cage the birds did not flutter or even turn their heads. With a little shock, he realized that they were dead birds, stuffed and mounted by a taxidermist.
“Love birds?” queried Basil.
“They were pets of mine when they were alive, and after they died I had them preserved like this.”
Basil had once known a woman who did the same thing when a favorite horse died, but the idea did not appeal to him.
“That parrot green is a little crude for the rest of the room.” His gaze went to the lemon yellow hangings. “Why not . . . canaries?”
Wanda lifted both hands, crossed them against her throat as if something were choking her. “Because I hate canaries!” Her voice quavered out of control. “That bilious yellow. Those ugly, raw, peeled-looking pink legs—ugh!”
The two men stepped through the doorway from the sunlit room overlooking the river into a dim, windowless hall. As they turned the sharp curve in the narrow stair, they looked back and saw Wanda standing in the doorway watching them, one hand braced against the lintel, the other still clasping her throat. The tall, slim figure outlined darkly against the light of the room beyond might have been a girl of nineteen or twenty. In contour Wanda was still a young woman; only the texture of her skin and the expression of her face betrayed her real age. The dimness of the hallway veiled her face now, and her pose was arresting and eloquent.
Leonard turned his head. Basil rather expected some expression of sympathy for Wanda. But Leonard said: “What a wonderful gesture that was—when she clasped both hands across her throat. I must remember that. It would be most effective on the stage. If ever I have a part that calls the same emotion into play, I shall use it.”
“And just what is that emotion?” asked Basil.
The question seemed to surprise Leonard. “Why, fear—of course!”
II
They were in the lower hall now. Daylight streamed through a lunette fanlight thinly veiled in white muslin. The mulatto produced their hats and opened the door for them.
“A charming house,” mused Leonard as they went down the steps. “It always reminds me of Becky Sharpe’s little slice of house in Mayfair. You remember the cramped little stairway, and how all the great personages of the day crowded into it? To me there is always something fascinating about a little house—particularly when it’s a town house, luxurious and complete to the last detail, but all on the smallest possible scale. And there must be a pretty woman nestling inside like a jewel in a plush-lined box.”