“Does a motive have to be solid?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Then it was Wanda.” The pale eyes caught Basil’s and held them. “Dr. Willing, take my word for it. Wanda is the murderer. Everybody on stage saw John enter the alcove. He was alive, and the alcove was empty. The doors weren’t opened again until after the first act had started. Only three people approached John during the first act—Wanda, Rodney Tait, and Leonard Martin. The two men had no motive for killing John—they don’t even know him by sight. I introduced John to Wanda a few months before he went to Panama. He’s only been back three days, and last night was his first visit to the theater. Wanda was his only link with these people. She must have killed him—either because she believed he had signed the new will leaving everything to her, or because she had some reason to think he was tired of her and ripe for a reconciliation with me.”
“You can’t have it both ways.”
“No, but it might be either way.”
“Did anyone overhear your talk with Ingelow back stage?”
“Of course not.”
“Then we only have your word for it that there was a reconciliation. It’s equally possible that Ingelow refused to come back to you and that you waited for him in the alcove and stabbed him before the curtain rose, knowing that if he lived he would sign the will leaving everything to Wanda Morley and you would have nothing but your divorce settlement.”
“But I left the alcove before John entered it.”
“Can you prove that?”
Margot was relieved by the approach of the waiter. She pushed away her lobster without finishing it. “Omelette au rhum,” she said to Milhau. “And coffee.” She lit a cigarette and drew on it as if she felt the need of solace.
“It’s all the fault of that wretched Morley creature,” she went on almost passionately. “If she hadn’t run after John, all this would never have happened. It was such a silly infatuation of his! He never really cared for those sexy women. My God!” Margot’s eyes widened until a rim of white showed around the iris. She was staring beyond Basil. “Has the woman no shame? There she is now!”
Basil turned his head. Wanda was standing at the head of the stairs. Characteristically, Margot Ingelow thought it was all right for herself to lunch at Capri’s the day after the murder but all wrong for Wanda Morley to do so.
Blue flame flickered in a spoon as a waiter ladled burning rum and sugar over Margot’s omelette, but she had lost all interest in food. Her eyes were still on the stairs.
Wanda looked excessively thin in black from head to toe relieved only by topaz earrings and clip. Her freshly made up face was composed in an expression of interesting melancholy. Leonard was in attendance, quiet and self-effacing as he always was off stage.
Everyone waited to see if Wanda would pass Margot’s table. Basil saw Pauline’s little face, white and tense. Rodney was folding and unfolding his napkin quite unconscious of what he did.
Wanda reached the foot of the stairs. The head waiter tried to lead her to the other side of the room. She looked at him haughtily. “I want my usual table, Gennaro!” She swept down the left side of the buffet. She came face to face with Margot. Lines sprang into being as the muscles of her face grew taut. Milhau and the men who had flocked about Margot were not the only people who had heard the rumor of her newly acquired wealth. There was a gleam of savage hate in Wanda’s yellow eyes. She was no longer the famous actress or the charming woman—she was the gamine, grown old, but still redolent of the gutter.
Milhau half rose from his chair. “Wanda, I—I can explain. I need backing for your next show, and she’s just inherited the Ingelow fortune; and—”
“So I’ve heard!” Wanda flicked him with a glance, and his voice died. The hush became breathless. Leonard moved forward to Wanda’s side. She might have been transparent for any sign Margot gave of seeing her. That was too much for Wanda. Her hand darted out like a snake’s tongue. She snatched Milhau’s glass of liqueur from the table and dashed the contents into Margot’s eyes. She put all her trained power of expression into one word:
“Murderess!”
Margot rose with her hand over her eyes. She gave no sign of pain. She ignored Wanda. She ignored Milhau. “Will you get me a taxi, Dr. Willing? This is disgusting.”
Wanda burst into loud sobs. Leonard tried to comfort her, wiping her eyes with his own handkerchief.
Milhau looked after Margot with a moan. “There goes my eighty thousand bucks!”
In the taxi, Margot looked at Basil. For the first time he saw uncertainty in her eyes. “You know she spoke as if she really thought I did it. That would mean that she didn’t do it. But then . . . who did?”
Basil made no answer. He was wondering if Margot Ingelow might not be a better actress than Wanda Morley. . . .
II
The taxi moved up Fifth Avenue in a stream of cars that stopped and started for red and green lights as uniformly as if they were all controlled by a master switch. To a Martian who didn’t know the significance of traffic lights and one-way streets, it would have seemed as if some great game were being played on a chessboard with city blocks for squares and cars for chessmen, so strictly were the length and direction of each move prescribed. Margot sat leaning against the back of the seat, eyes closed, face blank as a mask carved in wood. Basil wondered why John Ingelow had been drawn to her in the first place. Just because she was different from most women? A young man of such wealth would get more than his share of feminine attention. He would soon grow tired of the simpering sweet, the fluffy frivolous, the austerely noble, and the lusciously earthy. To such a man satiated with the sickly sweet scents of the boudoir Margot might seem as refreshing as a sea-breeze. But what had driven him from Margot to Wanda and . . .
“Why Magpie?” asked Basil aloud.
She opened her eyes wide in surprise. The inner lids were still red with inflammation. “What do you mean?”
“Why do some people call you ‘Magpie’?”
“I didn’t know they did.” She stroked the rustling black and white silk skirt that billowed over her knee. “A magpie’s plumage is black and white, and I’m fond of the combination. I suppose that’s why. It saves time and trouble shopping to confine yourself to a few colors. And it impresses your personality on people.”
So her effects were deliberately contrived. She must realize that in a ruffled dress with permanented hair and china doll make-up she would be not only plain but commonplace. It was the severely straight hair, the sun-browned skin, and the crips dresses with their emphatic contrast of the darkest and lightest of colors that made her a personage. “Is that the only reason?”
“For what?”
“For the nickname Magpie.”
“Of course.” Her eyelids dropped. “What other reason could there be?”
“I don’t know. I wondered.”
“My friends call me Margot, and Margot means Magpie in French. John was the first to call me Margot. His mother was French, you know. She came to America as a governess. John’s father was a friend of her first employer and a good many years older than she. John was an only child, and between them they spoiled him.”
“How did his affair with Wanda Morley start?”
She shrugged with a twisted smile. “How do those affairs always start? John and I were quarreling a good bit. I had become interested in the stage. I met Wanda somewhere, and she said she would help me to get a start. I invited her to the house and . . . it wasn’t long before she was John’s friend instead of mine. He even talked of backing her plays. But as she was still theoretically my friend seeing him in my home and in my presence, no one suspected an affair between them at first, and later they were very careful. They even tried to hide the affair from me, so I wouldn’t bring counter charges and demand big alimony. Before he went to Panama he said he wanted a divorce from me. I wasn’t supposed to know he meant to marry Wanda; but I had guessed, and I refused. I tried everything I could think of to get him back but—we had quarreled too much. We no longer had any illusions about each other. Something that had been between us was gone, and you just couldn’t bring it back again.”