“Anyone who had just touched candy might have left sugar and perspiration on that knife handle!” protested Leonard.
“But not butyric acid as well. The knife handle had the same fruity odor as your breath. So did the handkerchief you dropped beside Pauline when you stabbed her tonight. There is enough acid on the handkerchief for it to be identified by chemical analysis. You must have wiped brow and neck and hands with it and—that will convict you of murder.”
“Without a motive?”
“You loved Wanda, didn’t you? That was why you introduced her to Milhau when she was unknown and gave her a chance on the stage. In the art gallery you said that Wanda’s allure was like an X-ray burn—a delayed reaction. You weren’t thinking of Rodney then—you were thinking of yourself. You had thought you could get over it, and you were finding that you couldn’t. Perhaps she wouldn’t let you. She didn’t like her victims to be cured. She was flirting with you as well as Rodney when Pauline and I watched her in the art gallery that afternoon. When you came back to New York after serving your prison term in Illinois you found she no longer cared for you or even pretended to do so. You were too shrewd to be taken in by the publicity romance Milhau staged between Wanda and Rodney. You spied on her as a jealous man will—as you did the morning you discovered her with me on the balcony—and so you unearthed something unknown to her other friends: her secret engagement to John Ingelow; and his pending divorce from Margot, which had come to a head while you were in prison. Yet you so masked your feelings that Wanda had no idea you even knew Ingelow by sight. He was younger, richer and more eligible than you, so you had no hope of supplanting him. Your old place as Wanda’s leading man was gone. Rodney was the rising star because he was young and attractive; yet you were the better actor. That was a bitter pill. You hated Rodney for that. You hated Wanda whom you had once loved for her fickleness and ingratitude. You were jealous of Ingelow. Since you couldn’t have Wanda yourself, you determined that Ingelow should never have her either; and you murdered him in such a way that Wanda and Rodney became the principal suspects. You arranged that cleverly by prompting Hutchins to tell Wanda the old story of Edward VII playing Vladimir to Bernhardt’s Fedora, knowing that Wanda would want her lover to do the same thing because she was always imitating great actresses of the past. Perhaps you even suggested to her that she revive Fedora.
“Do you know one reason I suspected you from the very beginning? Because you were the only real actor among the suspects. Margaret Ingelow wasn’t an actress at all; Wanda and Rodney just played themselves on the stage. But you played roles entirely different from your real self. Wanda could simulate various emotions, but she couldn’t act any personality other than her own. You alone of the suspects were artist enough to simulate a personality entirely alien to your own. You were the only one who could have been a murderer at heart and still have put on a convincing performance as an innocent man.”
“You’ve got most of it right—but not the motive.” Leonard’s voice was very quiet now. “That prison sentence was unjust because I was not a drunken driver.”
“You mean you hadn’t been drinking?”
“I’d been drinking all right but—I wasn’t driving.”
“Wanda?”
“Yes. She ran over the child. She drove on, and I changed places with her. Like a sap I took the wheel before the traffic cop caught up with us; and I took the rap for her afterward. The sudden change to a sedentary life and starchy diet in prison gave me diabetes. You know how it is—an officer transferred suddenly from the field to staff work gets diabetes the same way sometimes. I came out of prison to find my career ruined as well as my health and Wanda all set to marry this Ingelow. The diabetes had produced hardening of the arteries, and the doctors gave me only a few months to live. I had nothing to lose by murder—I was going to die anyway. What did I want in the last few weeks before I died? Just one thing—Wanda. Sometimes a man condemned to death asks for special food or other privileges. All I asked for was Wanda, and the only way to get her was by killing Ingelow.”
“No wonder Wanda suspected you,” said Basil. “She was the only one who knew all this.”
“But she needn’t have been afraid of me. I never would have killed her. It was for her I did it.”
“And the knife you threw at her a few moments ago?”
“That was for you. You knew too much and—”
A voice spoke from below. “Do you people realize that this is supposed to be a total black-out and there is a light shining through that fire door that’s standing open? If you don’t close it immediately, I’ll call the police!”
Leonard smiled.
“This is my cue for an exit.”
Quick as a monkey he turned and clambered upon the iron railing. Basil sprang forward to seize him. But Leonard had jumped already.
Just then the street lamp at the corner blazed into light. Basil’s eyes were so used to the darkness that it looked like a star shell radiating sparks in all directions. As he ran down the fire escape the Tilbury clock flashed red again. The air-raid warden’s gray overcoat turned faintly pink in the reflected light as he bent over the dark figure sprawled prone in the alley.
“This man is badly hurt!” he cried aghast.
“He’s dead,” answered Basil after a quick look. “Better go ahead and call the police.”
“There’s one little point I’d like to clear up,” said Foyle some time later. “Since Rod and Wanda were not guilty, why did they contradict each other in fixing the moment when Ingelow died that first night?”
“Perhaps because they were just guessing,” suggested Basil. “And guessing is a form of wishful thinking. When there are no facts for the mind to follow it follows its own fancy. Wanda said Ingelow seemed dead the first time she kissed him—thereby throwing suspicion on Leonard, the only person who approached Ingelow on stage before Wanda’s first kiss. She did that, consciously or unconsciously, because she hated Leonard as only such a woman can hate a discarded lover, and she was beginning to fear him. In the same way Rod ‘guessed’ Ingelow was alive the last time Rod touched him, thereby throwing suspicion on Wanda, the only person to approach Ingelow after that. Rod disliked Wanda because she had pursued him and made Pauline jealous. Actually both Rod and Wanda were wrong in this testimony. Compare Rod’s time table of the first act with the timing of the cue for murder, and you’ll see that Ingelow was alive when Wanda first kissed him and dead when Rod last touched him. Of course, Leonard, as the murderer, did his best to throw suspicion on both Rod and Wanda by saying Ingelow was alive before either had approached him on stage and dead after both had done so.”
One morning a few weeks later, Pauline and Rodney came once again to breakfast with Basil. But this time they seemed like any other pair of young lovers—carefree and rather charmingly absurd. Rodney shook hands with Basil three times and Pauline kissed him.
“I had nothing to do with it!” he protested. “You owe everything to a canary and a house fly.”
The End
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