Cue For Murder полностью

“I don’t know.” She flung out her hands in an almost Gallic gesture. “We had to be careful until his wife agreed to a divorce. Neither of us wanted scandal, and Magpie was being a little difficult. She hates me, because it was she herself who first introduced John to me. Magpie was stage-struck, and that was how we met. John didn’t care for the theater or know any stage people until he met me. Of course, it was John who put up the money for Fedora. But I dealt with Sam Milhau myself. John was never inside the theater until last night, and so far as I know no one there knew him even by sight. He was just back from Panama, and I happened to tell him that old yarn about Bernhardt’s friends playing the part of Vladimir. He thought it would be a lark to do the same thing. It was rather reckless under the circumstances, but we thought no one would recognize him in his corpse make-up; and taking a chance was what made it a lark. He always was a reckless devil. You should have seen him on a horse!”

“How did you happen to hear of the old legend about Bernhardt and Edward VII?” asked Basil.

“Oh, I don’t know. I think from Seymour Hutchins who played Siriex last night. Do you mean you think that story was revived purposely just now?”

“It’s possible. Pauline told me yesterday that you like to identify yourself with the great actresses of the past, by reviving their plays and even imitating their foibles. It was a probability you would ask Ingelow to play Vladimir when you heard that yarn. And that gave the murderer an opportunity.”

“But Hutchins would never do that!”

“Perhaps the revival of the story didn’t originate with Hutchins himself. He may have got it second or even third hand.”

“How horrible!”

“Why do you say everyone ‘hoped’ that you had murdered Vladimir?”

“I could sense it in the theater last night. That was what frightened me. That was why I was afraid to admit I knew who the murdered man was. You have no idea how people hate me—how jealous they are of my success! Even Rod is sometimes a little resentful of my being a star when he isn’t. And Leonard doesn’t like playing second fiddle to Rod. Of course Leonard is the better actor—but he’s been ill for a whole year, and I just couldn’t keep the lead in Fedora open for him on the chance that he might recover in time—could I? And Magpie hated me because she knew I was going to marry John. . . . Do you realize that no matter who killed him or when, he must have been either dead or dying by the time I wept over his body at the end of the first act? For no one else went near him afterward. Don’t you see what a horrible, spiteful thing that was? Whoever the murderer is, he or she was jeering at me then—making me go through a scene of mock grief for a stage lover mimicking death when he was really my lover and really dead though I didn’t know it. You needn’t tell me it wasn’t planned that way! It was pure malice directed against me as well as John. It’s as malicious as that French story of the man who walled up his wife’s closet where her lover was hidden, pretending all the time he didn’t know the lover was there.”

“Then you suspect Rodney Tait?”

Her eyes widened. “He’s not my husband!”

“But he would like to be?”

Wanda took on the preening, relaxed content of a cat that is being stroked along the spine. “Rod is—fond of me,” she murmured. “Of course, he’s only a boy . . .”

Basil was interested. “You really believe he is fond of you?”

“Well, he’s always running after me. Sometimes it’s quite embarrassing. All those items in the newspapers and magazines about us. John didn’t like it at all; but I couldn’t help it, could I? Oh, I know that in books written by men women are always held responsible for men falling in love with them; but in real life no woman can make a man fall for her if he doesn’t want to, just as you can’t hypnotize anyone who doesn’t want to be hypnotized. I think even Rod himself would admit that I never did anything to encourage him!”

“Was Rod jealous of John Ingelow?” inquired Basil.

“He didn’t know anything about John. And anyway, I just can’t see Rod as a murderer, can you?” With another little shrug, Wanda returned to her rolls and honey. “I don’t suspect anyone in particular, Dr. Willing, but I do believe that the murderer is someone who hates me, and that the whole thing was planned to hurt me as well as to kill John.”

“Is there any way Rodney could have found out that you were going to marry Ingelow?”

“Well, if people listen at doors and windows they can find out anything. . . .”

“Does Rodney do that?”

“He never has but he might if he were jealous. . . .”

“I wonder you kept Rodney in your company—all things considered.”