Chapter Eight. Enter Rumor, Painted Full of Tongues
CAPRI’S RESTAURANT was below street level. From the entrance, a flight of steps led down to a dim, cavernous dining room decorated in red and black. The dark paneled walls were enlivened with mirrors and framed caricatures of theatrical personalities. A plush carpet made every footfall stealthy. Tables were ranged around the walls in front of upholstered benches. In the center a buffet displayed all sort of delicacies—cold smoked turkey, squabs in aspic, hot-house strawberries, and a huge cake with green icing soaked in rum. In the foreground was a small horseshoe bar. It was there that Basil discovered Pauline and Rodney.
Their glasses were empty. The ash tray in front of Rodney was piled with cigarette stubs. Pauline had her sketch pad on her knee, and her restless pencil was tracing profiles—always a sign of anxiety in her.
“Hello,” she greeted Basil. “Margot Ingelow hasn’t put in an appearance yet.”
“I don’t believe she’ll come,” he answered. “Shall we find a table?”
They got one facing the entrance. Pauline and Rodney sat on the bench; Basil took a chair opposite. A mirror above Pauline’s head gave him a clear view of the entrance and most of the room. They ordered the beer and club sandwiches for which the place was famous.
“Why isn’t Mrs. Ingelow coming?” asked Rodney.
Basil’s eyes were on the mirror as he told them about his visit to Wanda’s house. “And,” he concluded, “she identified Vladimir as John Ingelow.”
“Oh!” The exclamation was torn from Pauline.
Rodney seemed equally astonished.
Color flooded Pauline’s cheeks. “Then—if Wanda was really going to marry Ingelow . . .” She turned a radiant face to Rodney. “Can you ever forgive me?”
He smiled at her. Watching the two young faces, Basil hated to sound a note of warning. “This makes it all the more curious that Wanda should have been so . . .” He sought a euphemism. “So interested in Rodney.”
Pauline’s gladness faded like a mirror tarnished with a breath. “Maybe she just craves admiration from every man she meets.”
“Possibly.” Basil was studying Rod. Was this young man as frank and open as he appeared? Was this really the first time he had heard that Wanda planned to marry Ingelow? He had been seen so often with Wanda in the last few weeks, and she had seemed so certain he was infatuated with her. . . .
Rod grew uneasy under Basil’s scrutiny. “Do the police know about Ingelow?”
“Yes. It’s in the early editions of the evening papers.”
“Then of course Margot won’t come,” cried Pauline. “She’s as bold as brass and hard as nails, but even she would hardly lunch in public the day after her husband’s murder!”
“It seems unlikely,” agreed Basil. “The police are probably questioning her now.”
“Could she be the murderess?” suggested Pauline. “You saw her leaving the alcove. That gives her both motive and opportunity.”
Basil laughed. “Opportunity, yes—but is marriage alone a motive for murder?”
“They were estranged. They were going to be divorced.”
“Why risk your neck by murdering a husband when you can get rid of him by divorce and secure a handsome financial settlement besides?” returned Basil. “Today, marital murders are confined to sadists and those stern moralists who believe murder more virtuous or at least more respectable than divorce.”
“But she knew him.” Pauline was fighting to the last ditch for her theory. “That’s more than anyone else did—except Wanda.”
Basil turned to Rod. “Can you prove that you didn’t know Ingelow even by sight?”
“Well, no.” Rod’s restless fingers began tilting the salt cellar back and forth. “How can anyone prove a negative like that?”
“You can’t. You were seen everywhere with Wanda, and Ingelow was her lover. The police will assume that you knew who Ingelow was, and they will consider that a motive. So would a jury drawn at random from the citizens of a big city. One woman plus two men equals jealousy.”
“But it’s such damned nonsense!” exploded Rod. “Going about now and then with a woman you met casually in your daily work doesn’t mean you’re in love with her. And no man would risk his neck for anything less than love!”
Basil nodded, but there was doubt in his eyes. Wanda was an alluring woman. Rod was too young to be very experienced. A certain boyish naïveté was part of his charm. Suppose he had got beyond his depth with Wanda and then discovered she was playing with him while she planned to marry Ingelow? Men have been killed for less. . . . And such a killer might return to Pauline afterward in order to hide his motive from the police. . . .
“There she is,” said Basil quietly.
“Who?” They turned back to him as if they were coming out of a fog.
“Margot Ingelow.”
Evidently it took more than the murder of a husband to keep Margot away from her favorite restaurant at lunch time. She paused at the head of the stairs. Her gray eyes looked almost white in her smooth, brown face; her thin lips were firmly set together. She wore shepherd’s plaid taffeta with white doeskin gloves and patent leather sandals. Jaunty white wings decorated her small black hat.
“Who is the man with her?” murmured Rod. As the pair descended the stairs, he answered himself. “Good Lord, it’s Sam Milhau!”
The headwaiter seated them with a flourish and took their order himself. Milhau fussed and fluttered over his guest, arranging cushions at her back and taking her jacket. Margot received homage as calmly as an empress holding court. Other men began pausing at her table on their way in or out of the restaurant. She welcomed them with a smile that discovered a deep dimple in one cheek. It was hardly the smile of a brokenhearted widow, nor were the men who spoke to her mourners consoling the bereaved. Evidently she ranked already as a divorcée. But that didn’t quite explain the attitude of these men toward her. As Basil watched the pantomime in the mirror, he felt that these were not the poses and gestures of gallants flocking around a pretty woman. For one thing Margot was not pretty; for another, the men were all a little old for gallantry. Like Milhau, their manner was oddly deferential, pathetically eager.
At one end of the buffet were some live lobsters on ice. Milhau got up to select the ones he wanted.
“Now’s your chance,” whispered Pauline.
Basil rose, but he didn’t go to Margot’s table. He joined Milhau at the buffet.
“Oh, Dr. Willing!” Milhau’s plump face sagged unhappily. He lost interest in the lobsters. “Those’ll do.” The waiter took them away.
“Isn’t this devotion to Mrs. Ingelow rather sudden?” suggested Basil.
Milhau’s eyes were round and black and beady, like the canary’s eyes on a larger scale. “Well, business is business, Dr. Willing. I’m in rather a hole. My show is broken up, and my star is on the verge of a nervous break-down. I stand to lose about eighty thousand dollars unless I do something and do it quick. I’ve got a lot of people under contract, and I’ve got to put on another show as quickly as I can.” Milhau contemplated the lobsters that remained on their bed of ice with a deep sigh. “Mrs. Ingelow has always been nuts about the theater so—I’m trying to promote a little first aid to my bank account by getting her to back my next show.”
Basil was surprised. “Can Mrs. Ingelow afford that?”
“Can she?” Milhau’s eyes gleamed hungrily. “I’ll say she can! With all that Ingelow money!”
“I thought the money went to Miss Morley now.”
“That’s what Wanda thought!” said Milhau curtly. “But she thought wrong. I’ve just been down to Police Headquarters this morning and they’ve got the facts straight from Ingelow’s own lawyer. That new will leaving everything to Wanda hadn’t been signed yet. The whole fortune goes to ‘my beloved wife, Margaret Adams Ingelow’ as it says in the old will. Poor Wanda!”