Seymour Hutchins as Jean de Siriex of the French Embassy looked the way princes and ambassadors ought to look and rarely do. Age had blurred the noble lines of his profile without destroying them entirely. Dark eyes, brilliantly intelligent, looked out of a white face under whiter hair. It was impossible to imagine Wanda or Leonard following any other profession than the stage, but Basil had an impression that Hutchins was a man of parts who would have succeeded in almost any calling and who had just drifted onto the stage through force of circumstance or youthful inclination. According to the programme notes, he had once been a successful leading man himself, and even in his old age producers were glad to entrust him with supporting roles as important as Siriex.
“You come on stage with Grech when he makes his first entrance and remain there all during the rest of the first act,” said Basil. “Can you recall noticing anything wrong with Vladimir at any time?”
Hutchins considered the question carefully before he answered. “Toward the end of the act I had an impression that Vladimir’s portrayal of a dying man was overdone. At the time I thought his dying was unreal because he was overacting. Now, I think it seemed unreal because it was the real thing—which always seems out of key in a world of make-believe.”
“That’s interesting,” said Basil, “because I had the same impression; and when two witnesses reach the same conclusion independently it’s apt to be the truth. Can you say at what moment his overacting began?”
“I’m afraid not. Can you?”
Basil shook his head ruefully and took something out of his overcoat pocket—a manuscript bound in blue paper. “Do you recognize this script, Mr. Hutchins?”
“I believe it is Miss Morley’s.”
“As Siriex you have a line to speak on page 19 of Act I.” Basil read aloud from the script: “He cannot escape now, every hand is against him! Did you underscore that line in Miss Morley’s script?”
“Certainly not.” Hutchins was candidly puzzled.
“Did you underscore it in your own script?”
“No, I checked all my lines lightly in red ink. I didn’t underscore any of them.”
“Can you think of any reason why anyone else should wish to call attention to that line of yours in Miss Morley’s script?”
“No, I can’t.” He frowned, considering the question. “Of course, this is a revision as well as a translation of the original Fedora. We had some trouble finding a copy of the play. We tried various booksellers and libraries, both public and private, without discovering it. They had other plays of Sardou’s, but not Fedora; and Miss Morley had set her heart on doing Fedora. Finally at a music publisher’s we found a libretto of the opera Giordano wrote around Sardou’s play. It was in Italian, and Milhau had a translation made with a good deal of adaptation and modernization. Some superfluous characters were cut out; and in the course of the re-shuffling this line of mine was transferred from the end of the scene to the beginning, and the wording was altered. Originally it read: He cannot escape now, all the shadows are converging. It refers, of course, to Vladimir’s murderer when the police are closing in on him. But it is not a vitally important or significant line in the play, for as you doubtless recall, Vladimir’s murderer does escape at the end of the first act. The line has nothing to do with Miss Morley except that she as Fedora is listening to Siriex when he delivers it. I see no reason why Miss Morley or anyone else should mark that line in her script. I can see no reason why anyone should underscore it in any script unless—”
“Unless what?”
Seymour Hutchins’ fingertips brushed his eyes as if he were pushing away something that obscured his vision materially. “In view of what has happened could this marked passage have been a message of some sort? A warning? Or a threat?”
“A warning to whom?”
“I don’t know. It was just . . . an idea . . .”
V
The last of the five witnesses interviewed that evening faced Basil and Foyle with a certain truculence. His streamlined, bullet-shaped head was too small for the fleshy throat, thick wrists, and muscular forearms revealed by an open-necked short-sleeved shirt. Close-cropped, reddish hair grew so low on his forehead that it looked like a fur cap. His reddish-brown eyes were shrewd and impudent.
“Are you Dr. Willing, the psychiatrist?” he demanded.
“Yes.”
“Then maybe you can help me with my play. It’s about a nymphomaniac, and I was wondering—”
“We are here to investigate a murder,” interrupted Foyle, in his harshest voice. “Your full name is Derek Adeane, and you are an actor?”
“That’s my stage name. My real name is Daniel Adelaar—too long to put up in lights.”
