Cue For Murder полностью

Bernhardt herself could not have looked the part more superbly. Wanda was cloaked from head to heels in dark, supple, plumy sables. A few flakes of stage snow clung artfully to hood and shoulders as if they had just fallen while she stepped from troika to porte-cochère. As she reached the stage fireplace, she tossed her small round muff on a chair and stretched out ungloved hands to a red cellophane fire, chafing them with a realistic shiver. Her hood fell back, and she allowed her open cloak to slide down to her elbows without dropping it altogether. Her shoulders were bare and dazzlingly white above the dark fur. For this scene Pauline had designed a dress of golden gauze, sleek at the waist, and foaming about the feet in a frothy glitter. Diamonds blazed at her throat and crowned her dark head, heightening the golden flash of her eyes. Obviously they were the real thing, cold and heavy. Her small head bore the weight proudly as she turned from the fire and spoke her first line. Is the master away?

No more shuffling of feet or rustling of programs. There was something in Wanda that bewitched an audience—a vitality, only partly sexual, that could be felt across the footlights like the warmth of a fire. She had the politician’s knack of infecting a crowd with uncritical enthusiasm for everything she did. Even the other actors on the stage responded to her vivacity. It was not a mere quickening of tempo, but a surge of power from a personality geared to a higher voltage than theirs. In a few moments the fate of Wanda as Fedora had become a matter of personal moment to every member of the audience. Would she discover that Vladimir had gone out to carouse with other women on the eve of his marriage to her?

Wanda dropped into an armchair before the fire. Its light turned her gauzy skirts to rose-gold. As a servant parried her questions, her glance strayed toward the closed double doors. What’s that?

The bedroom.

Wanda ignored the sly undertone in the servant’s voice. A charming tenderness infused her smile as she turned back to the fire.

Again the doorbell rang. Again a servant hurried to open the door at left. Wanda, lost in her own thoughts, did not turn her head as a man in the uniform of a Tsarist police officer entered brusquely. The count’s room—quick!

This was an actor Basil did not recognize, but he was reminded a little of his friend, Inspector Foyle. This was the universal policeman—robust, hard-headed, unimaginative, doing his duty as his superiors saw it and asking no inconvenient questions of God or man. It was a caricature, shrewdly observed, subtly suggestive, and the actor contrived all this without any help from Sardou who had roughed in Grech, the police officer, as carelessly as he sketched all his minor characters. Wanda had brought the warmth and color of a brilliant personality into the play and captured the sympathy of the audience. But for all her charm the play itself had remained an emotional illusion. Only when Grech entered the scene did the illusion suddenly become reality itself. Now the blue spotlight really was moonlight, and the painted roofs beyond the window really were the roofs of Moscow while Broadway and New York and even America were thousands of miles away.

Grech snatched off heavy, leather gauntlets and thrust them in his belt. The servant pointed to the double doors mutely. Grech strode upstage from left to center and threw the double doors open with a wide gesture.

Something between a gasp and a sob was wrenched from the audience. The alcove was a shallow oblong, and, as Basil had seen from the other side of the set, there were no doors or windows in the side and back walls. Within the alcove the only light came from a red-shaded candle that burned before a black and gold icon on the rear wall. It was furnished with a rug, a small table, and a narrow bed. On the bed a man lay on his back—a long figure stretched at full length under a crimson quilt. Only his head and one arm were uncovered. The arm dangled limply, lax fingers trailing to the floor. The head was turned toward the audience. Dim as the light was, Basil would have known that handsome, sulky face anywhere. It was the man he had seen in the cocktail bar.

But for him the alcove was empty.

His face was made up with considerable skill, Basil thought. It was exactly the shade of dirty white he had so often seen on faces of the dying and the dead in his medical experience. The make-up man had even contrived to suggest the sharpened nose and the pinched, blue look around the lips. Or perhaps that was another of the electrician’s blue lamps focused on the mouth . . .