“I suppose not.” Pauline’s smile had faded. She looked utterly spent. “I don’t like Wanda, but I don’t believe she would commit murder. Think what this means to her—wrecking her opening night, ruining her play. . . . Well, here’s the list, Inspector. I’ve done my good deed for the day—or was it a bad deed? Anyway, I’m going home.”
“I’ll take you home,” said Basil. “There’s nothing more to be done here tonight.”
VII
The street outside was almost empty now. Basil hailed a taxi, and they drove to Pauline’s apartment on the upper East Side.
“What shall I say?
“It was you who supplied the tickets and the murder! My idea of an evening’s entertainment is much less ambitious. . . .” He took her hand and turned it over. The palm of her white glove was still streaked with black. “How did that happen?”
“Oh!” She looked down at her glove with a fastidious grimace. “I must have done that on the backstage fire escape. The dust of ages has sifted all over it in a fine black powder.”
“Were you star-gazing?”
“No, there were no stars tonight. My watch stopped at seven-thirty, and I wanted to reset it. That fire escape is the only point in the theater where you can see the Tilbury clock.” Her laughter bubbled. “Are you suggesting that I was the mysterious dark figure on the fire escape?”
“No. Your coat and dress are both light blue, and blue is the last of all the colors to darken when light fades. That’s why a cloudless sky looks blue even at night if there’s any light at all.”
Pauline snatched her hand away. “So you did think of me! Basil Willing, what a nasty suspicious mind you have!”
He laughed.
“It isn’t funny. Good night!”
It was some time after midnight when Basil got back to his own home—an old-fashioned brownstone house on Park Avenue below Grand Central. As he fumbled in his pocket for a latch key, his glance happened on the floor of the vestibule—a tessellated pavement of black and white stone.
That brought back one detail of his wanderings backstage that had been lost in the excitement and confusion of later events. Like a miniature moving picture in vivid technicolor, his memory unreeled a vision of a woman in a black and white dress and a black cloak opening double doors to cross a dim, firelit stage and brush past him in the wings. Those double doors must have been the doors to the alcove.
Were there four suspects instead of three? There was nothing to prove that
BASIL’S HOUSE was at its best early in the morning when eastern sunshine flooded the principal rooms. The street was wide, the buildings opposite low; so the front windows had daylight all day and a segment of starry sky at night just as if they overlooked a small town instead of a skyscraper city. He had selected this house in the first place because it reminded him of his father’s home in Baltimore, and a home was what he wanted after years of wandering from one set of students’ lodgings to another in Paris and Vienna. It had high ceilings, thick walls, and deep fireplaces built for fires that would heat a whole room. Living room and dining room had cream paneled walls. Firelight painted them with apricot highlights; sunshine washed them with lemon yellow.
The original colors of the rugs had dulled to quiet shades of buff and brown, like dead flowers pressed in a book; and the whole place was faded, and comfortable as an old bedroom slipper.
The next morning in the sun-splashed dining room, Basil glanced at the daily paper as he started his grapefruit.
MURDER ON STAGE
MAN STABBED AT MORLEY OPENING
Only the barest outline of the crime had caugh the night shift of the morning paper in time for this edition. Basil turned to the theatrical page. For once a dramatic critic had paid some attention to what was occurring on the stage.
WANDA MORLEY
