“What did you quarrel about?”
“Oh, nothing . . . everything . . .” She looked down now, playing with the gloves in her lap. “When a man gets tired of a woman any pretext for a quarrel will do.”
“Was one of the pretexts money?”
“Money?” Her light lashes flared back again and the wide, pale eyes stared into his. “No. I could have had all the money I wanted. But I didn’t want money—I wanted John. If only I’d realized sooner that he wanted children . . .” She spoke in a cold, level voice without apparent feeling. Basil wondered if it were really John she had wanted or the prestige and power of being his wife.
The taxi stopped in the shadow of a skyscraper apartment house towering against a sky that looked hard as a gray-blue stone.
“Won’t you come in?”
He followed her into the lobby. An express elevator rocketed twenty-three stories and they stepped into a vestibule made of glass walls. Through the glass they could see a living room, spacious and impersonal as a hotel lounge. It was surrounded by a terrace on all four sides. Each window framed a slice of garden chairs and shrubbery, parapet, and gray-blue sky. Awnings kept the living room shady and cool. It was furnished in the modern manner—an enormous, velvety rug all one color; plump davenports that seemed capacious enough to seat a regiment; radios that looked like tables and tables that looked like radios; little groups of book shelves with few books; and a great many bits of modern glass and pottery in unexpected corners. The whole thing was done in soothing, unobtrusive shades of cream and tan. The sober colors and stripped, functional lines expressed Margot’s nature perfectly. Had it expressed John Ingelow’s too? Or would he have preferred something more flamboyant—like Wanda’s drawing room?
There was no glossy display of silken luxury here. The magnificence of the place lay in its space and privacy—dearest of all luxuries on Manhattan Island.
“Wonderful place for children or pets,” said Basil.
“And I have neither!”
“Not even a canary?”
“Not in New York. I have a pair of Irish setters at Fernleigh and a whole stableful of saddle horses. I believe there are some canaries in the conservatory there. I never paid any attention to them. They belonged to John’s mother.”
With a crisp rustle of taffeta skirts Margot crossed the broad, shady room to the sunlit terrace. Far below the city lay wide and flat as a parti-colored carpet between its twin rivers. The clarity of the noon horizon had gone. The west was blurred with streamers of cloud. Glass and brightwork on cars and buildings glinted in the sun through a smoky blue haze.
The terrace was gay with spring flowers nodding to a brisk breeze. Margot dropped into a wicker armchair and touched a bell attached to the arm. It must have been a pre-arranged signal, for almost at once a maid appeared with a tray of Tom Collins’.
“There is a gentleman to see you, ma’am—Mr. Adeane.”
“I don’t believe I know a Mr. Adeane.” Margot cocked an inquiring brow at Basil.
“He played one of Vladimir’s servants last night.”
“Oh.” Margot considered this. “Perhaps I’d better see him.”
The maid disappeared into the living room. After a moment they heard the elevator doors sliding open once more. Apparently there was a reception room on the floor below. Without a sound of footfalls on the velvety rug the maid reappeared in the doorway and announced: “Mr. Adeane.”
He was hatless, and once more he wore a Byronic shirt open at the neck, but without a Byronic profile the effect was spoiled. His hairy tweed jacket had an unfortunate mustard tinge and brought out all the yellow undertones in his reddish hair and freckled skin. He was carrying a pipe and a bulky manuscript bound in green paper with brass staples that glittered in the sun. A shaggy dog was all he needed to look exactly like the standard publicity still of a Great Author.
He was obviously surprised to see Basil. It was to Margot he turned.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Ingelow. I’m afraid you don’t remember me; but I met you this morning in Sam Milhau’s office, and I was on stage last night when you left the alcove.”
“Yes?” Margot’s voice tinkled coolly as the ice cubes in her glass.
But it took more than mere coolness to daunt Adeane. He sat down without waiting for an invitation to do so and went on completely at his ease. “The police were asking me about it this morning. I told them you left the alcove before your husband entered it, so—” Adeane used a pause to emphasize his next words. “You couldn’t possibly have killed him.”
“That’s true.”
“Sure, it’s true, but—” A small, unpleasant smile played around Adeane’s mouth. “I’m the only witness you have to prove it.”
Margot looked at him contemptuously. “Did you come here to remind me of that?”
“Oh, no.” Adeane looked quickly at Basil as if he realized this was perilously close to blackmail. “I just want to say I’m sorry about your husband’s death, and all you’ve been through; and I have a suggestion to make. Sam Milhau says you’re interested in the theater. Now, you’re going to inherit the Ingelow fortune, so why don’t you back a play? I thought you might like to read mine.”
Margot stared at him speechless. Basil was reminded of the super-salesman who wrote: Dear Mr. Smith, I am very sorry to hear of the sad death of your mother, and I wonder if you would be interested in our new line of comic valentines?
“Take a look at it, will you?” Adeane thrust the thick manuscript into Margot’s hands and leaned back in his chair complacently as if he had conferred a favor upon her.
Margot seemed a little dazed by this frontal attack. Mechanically she began to turn the pages of the manuscript with one hand.
Adeane turned to Basil. “It’s called Destroying All Twigs.”
“Why?” asked Basil.
“Why not?” murmured Margot.
“That’s a quotation from Spender,” explained Adeane.
“And it means—well, it means any great social upheaval that sweeps all minor things aside.”
“Torn from the context, it sounds a little like Calling All Cars,” remarked Basil.
“Do you think anyone will know what it means?” added Margot.
“Why should they? Nobody knew what Dear Brutus meant at first. Or Cynara. Or Of Mice and Men. By getting an obscure, trick title you get people puzzled. They have to look it up, and that starts them talking about the play. My first scene is laid in a waterfront dive. There are three characters on stage when the curtain rises—Lulu, Rat-face, and Bugsy.”
Margot made a small gesture of distaste. “Is this another gangster play?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that. It’s more like Tobacco Road—only in New York.”
Basil noticed how quick Adeane was to cite models, or at least precedents, for everything about his play. Whatever talent he had appeared to be derivative rather than creative.
“They’re salty, down-to-earth characters,” he went on. “Lulu is a procuress. Rat-face had his head crushed in an hydraulic press when he was three years old, and he’s never been quite the same since. Bugsy is perfectly normal except that he has an overwhelming desire every now and then to taste human blood, and he has to kill somebody to gratify this impulse.”