“Well now,” said Wade genially, “I don’t know that there’s much left to ask, sir. I was wondering, Mr. Vernon, you having been so long with the company, if you could give us a little idea about the domestic side of the picture, as you might say.”
Old Vernon swung round in his chair and looked at Wade without enthusiasm.
“Afraid I don’t follow you,” he said.
“Well now, Mr. Vernon, you’ll understand we have to make certain inquiries in our line. You might say we have to get a bit curious. It’s our job, you understand, and we may fancy it as little as other folk do, but we’ve got to do it. Now, Mr. Vernon, would you describe Mr. and Mrs. Meyer as being a happy couple, if you know what I mean?”
“I can understand most common words of one or two syllables,” said Vernon, “and I do know what you mean. Yes, I should.”
“No differences of any sort?”
“None.”
“Good-oh, sir. That’s straight enough. So I suppose all this talk about her and Mr. Hambledon is so much hot air?”
“All what talk? Who’s been talking?”
“Now don’t you worry about that, Mr. Vernon. That’ll be quite all right, sir.”
“What the hell d’you mean? What’ll be quite all right? Who’s been talking about Miss Dacres and Mr. Hambledon?”
“Now never you mind about that, sir. We just want to hear—”
“If it’s that damned little footpath comedian,” continued Vernon, glaring angrily at Wade, “you can take it from me he’s about as dependable as a cockroach. He’s a very nasty little person, is Mr. St. John Ackroyd, né Albert Biggs, a thoroughly unpleasant piece of bluff and brass. And what a naughty actor!”
“Né Biggs?” murmured Alleyn.
“Certainly. And the sooner he goes back to his hairdresser’s shop in St. Helens the better for all concerned.”
“I gather,” said Alleyn mildly, “that he has already spoken to you about the conversation he overheard in his dressing-room.”
“Oh, yes,” said old Vernon, with a particular air of elaborate irony that Alleyn had begun to associate with actors’ conversation. “Oh, yes. I was told all about it as soon as he had a chance to speak his bit. Mr. Ackroyd came in well on his cue with the odd bit of dirt, you may be quite sure.”
Alleyn smiled: “And it’s as true as most gossip of that sort, I suppose?”
“I don’t know what Ackroyd told you, but I’d swear till it snowed pink that Carolyn Dacres hasn’t gone in for the funny business. Hailey may have talked a bit wildly. He may be very attracted. I don’t say anything about that, but on her side — well, I can’t believe it. She’s one of the rare samples of the sort that stay put.”
And Vernon puffed out his cheeks and uttered a low growl.
“That’s just what we wanted to know,” said Wade. “Just wanted your opinion, you see, sir.”
“Well, you’ve got it. And the same opinion goes for anything Mr. Ackroyd may have told you, including his little bit of dirt about George Mason. Anything else?”
“We’ll get you to sign a statement about your own movements later on, if you don’t mind,” said Wade.
“Ugh!”
“And that will be all.”
““Has the footpath comedian signed his pretty little rigmarole?”
“Not yet, Mr. Vernon.”
“Not yet. No doubt he will,” said Vernon bitterly. He shook hands with Alleyn. “Lucky you’re here, Mr. Alleyn. I shall now go to my home away from home. The bed is the undulating sort and I toboggan all night. The mattress appears to have been stuffed with the landlady’s apple dumplings of which there are always plenty left over. Talk of counterweights! My God! Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, bless the bed that I lie on. Good night. Good night, Inspector Wade.”
“What is the name of your hotel, sir?”
“The Wenderby, Inspector. It is a perfect sample of the Jack’s Come Home.”
“I’ve always heard it was very comfortable,” said Wade, with all the colonial’s defensiveness. “The landlady—”
“Oh you must be a lover of your landlady’s daughter,
Or you don’t get a second piece of pie.”
sang old Vernon surprisingly in a wheezy bass:
“Piece of pie, piece of pie, piece of pie, piece of pie,
Or you don’t get a second piece of pie.”
He cocked his eyebrow, turned up the collar of his overcoat, clapped his hat on one side of his head and marched out.
“Aw, he’s mad,” said Wade disgustedly.
Alleyn lay back in his chair and laughed heartily.
“But he’s perfect, Wade. The real old actor. Almost too good to be true.”
“Making out he’s sorry deceased has gone and two minutes afterwards acting the fool. Our hotels are as good as you’d find anywhere,” grumbled Wade. “What’s he mean by a Jack’s Come Home, anyway?”
“I fancy it’s a professional term denoting a slapdash and carefree attitude on the part of the proprietress.”
“He’s mad,” repeated Wade. “Get the kid, Cass. Young Palmer.”
When Cass had gone, Wade got up and stamped about the office.
“It’s chilly,” he said.
The room was both cold and stuffy. The fire had gone out and the small electric heater was quite unequal to the thin draughts of night air that came in under the door and through the ill-fitting window-frame. The place was rank with tobacco-smoke and with an indefinable smell of dust and varnish. Somewhere outside in the sleeping town a clock struck two.
“Good Lord!” said Alleyn involuntarily.
“Like to turn it up for to-night, sir?” asked Wade.
“No, no.”
“Good-oh, then. Look, sir. On what we’ve got, who do you reckon are the possibles? Just on the face of it?”
“I’m afraid it’d be quicker to tick off the unlikelies,” said Alleyn.
“Well, take it that way.”
Alleyn did not reply immediately and Wade answered himself.
“Well, sir, I’ve got their names here and I’ll tick off the outsiders. Old Miss Max. No motive or opportunity. That old loony who’s just wafted away, Brandon Vernon. Same for him. Gascoigne, the stage-manager. Same for him on the evidence we’ve got so far. The funny little bloke, St. John Ackroyd, alias Biggs, according to Vernon. He may be a bit of a nosy but he doesn’t look like a murderer. Besides, his movements are pretty well taped out. The girl Gaynes. Well, I suppose you might say, if she’s going with Liversidge and knew Meyer was in the position to finish his career for him, that there’s a motive there, but I don’t see that silly little tart fixing counterweights and working out the machinery for a job of this sort. Do you?”
“The imagination does rather boggle,” agreed Alleyn.
“Yes. Well, now we get into shaky country. Hambledon. Let’s look at Mr. Hailey Hambledon. He’s after the woman. They none of them deny that. Seems as if he’s been kind of keen for a long while. Now if Ackroyd’s story is right, she said she’d marry him if Meyer was dead and not unless. There’s the motive. Now for opportunity. Hambledon could have gone aloft the first time and taken away the weight. He says he went to his dressing-room and took the muck off his dial. Maybe, but he told the dresser he wasn’t wanted, and he could have gone back on the stage, climbed aloft and done it. After the murder he went as far as her dressing-room with the Dacres woman— with deceased’s wife. She said she wanted to be alone and then sent for him, some time later. During the interval he may have gone up and put the weight back. That right?”