Cue For Murder полностью

“You can’t break contracts as cheaply as all that. Sam put us both under contract to play Fedora several months before Rod developed this silly infatuation with me. Sam was grateful to Rod for taking Leonard’s part at short notice in Chicago when Leonard ran over that poor child and . . .” Wanda stopped as she saw Basil’s astonishment.

“I thought Leonard Martin left the company in Chicago because he fell ill?”

“Oh, dear,” Wanda sighed. “I have spilled the beans!”

“What really happened to Leonard?”

“I suppose you might as well know. I was in a hurry to get to a night club, and Leonard borrowed a car to drive me there. He ran over a little girl playing in the street. She was killed instantly. He had only had one highball, but the police insisted he was drunk. He was really just shaken and staggering from shock. His first thought was the effect on me and the show and his own career so, on impulse, he gave a false name—Lawrence Miller. He knew no one was likely to recognize him; all his published photos had been taken in stage make-up, and he had always played parts that required him to alter his appearance. It’s always a shock to his fans when they discover that he’s bald off stage.

“He pretended he had no driver’s license to avoid showing them one with his name on it. That was another charge against him—driving without a license. He was tried in Chicago for manslaughter and sentenced as ‘Lawrence Miller’ to one year in prison. I paid his legal expenses so he wouldn’t have to give away his real name by signing checks. Of course, I kept quiet about it for my own sake as well as Leonard’s. The theater is a profession that depends on popular favor, and running over children is not a popular thing to do—especially if there’s any suggestion you were drunk at the time. The fact that I had been a passenger in the car was quite bad enough for the show as it was. The newspapers were told that Leonard left the company because he was ill, and they never caught on. Only a few local police reporters attended the trial, and none of them knew him by sight without his make-up. The day I testified there were a few men from the news services there, but Leonard sat with his face in his hands all the time they were in the courtroom.

“This spring, when Leonard turned up in New York after his year in prison, he looked so thin and sick he had no trouble making people believe he really had been ill.”

A voice spoke from the French window. “Don’t you think you’re being a little indiscreet, Wanda?”

Leonard Martin was standing in the window behind them. Basil wondered how long Leonard had been listening. Outwardly he showed no ill effect of last night’s disaster—largely because his long, sober face had always suggested strain and weariness off stage. It was hard to realize now that this sickly, quiet, almost shy man was the actor who had made the part of Grech, the policeman such a robust characterization last night. On stage, wig and costume, and, above all, vigorous bearing had made Leonard seem younger and taller. Now, his bald head and dull, sallow face seemed colorless—a blank page upon which any message could be written. The muscles around his mouth looked stretched and tired, like rubber that has been pulled and pushed into so many different shapes it has finally lost its resilience. The skin on his high forehead was a mottled bronze, drawn tight as a drum head over his unfleshed skull. Perhaps he had always suppressed his own personality that he might never develop mannerisms to interfere with his portrayal of characters on the stage.

Basil tried to reassure him. “Miss Morley hasn’t given anything away that I hadn’t surmised already. I suspected from the beginning that you had served a prison term. I’m glad it was only a traffic accident. I was afraid it might be a deliberate crime.”

Leonard stared. “Why did you suspect?”

Wanda laughed thinly. “If you have secrets, Leonard, prepare to shed them now! Dr. Willing is practically clairvoyant!”

“Are you?” Leonard fixed a direct gaze on Basil.