“I don’t believe anyone will suspect you seriously,” argued Leonard. “It’s so obvious that you had no motive. A woman doesn’t kill an attractive young man of great wealth whom she expects to marry in a few months when there’s no cause for jealousy, unless he’s made a will in her favor; and Ingelow didn’t do anything like that, did he?”
With an angry gesture, Wanda tossed the cigarette she had just lighted down into the garden. “If you must know—he did.”
If Leonard wanted to revenge himself for Wanda’s revelation of his prison sentence, he had certainly succeeded. She looked at him with exasperation. Then she turned to Basil. “I suppose it’s all bound to come out now! John wanted to make a financial arrangement with his wife before she went to Reno, so all that business need not be discussed in court. He was going to settle a lump sum on her in lieu of alimony. Of course, his old will was in her favor. He just had it altered in my favor yesterday. The police are certain to regard that as a motive, absurd as it is that I would kill John for money.”
“Men have been killed for money,” returned Basil, “and Ingelow had rather a lot, hadn’t he?”
“Yes, he had.” Wanda sighed. “That was the only serious obstacle to our marriage.”
“Obstacle?” Basil was feeling his way cautiously in this conversation, like a man groping in the dark.
“I do so hate a life complicated by luxury and formality,” explained Wanda gravely. “I often told John that I would have felt much safer about our chances of happiness if he had been a simple bookkeeper or salesman making about thirty or forty dollars a week. You see, Dr. Willing, I am a frightfully simple person myself with very plain, ordinary tastes. If I had married John, I would have had to lead a much more elaborate life than I’ve been used to—two big households in New York and the Huntingdon Valley, a villa in Florida, a huge staff of butlers and maids and chauffeurs, a great deal of entertaining—it would have been a dreadful responsibility and, to be quite frank, an awful bore. If I hadn’t loved John very much indeed, I just wouldn’t have been able to put up with all that tinsel and sham. I have a beer and hamburger mentality—I detest caviar and champagne. So you see, I’m the last person in the world to commit a horrible crime for the sake of money.”
“I see.”
This was Basil’s second encounter with Wanda’s favorite line, and his first realization that it had any bearing on the murder. He wondered how the police would take it, now that Ingelow’s will gave Wanda a possible motive for murder, providing she was not immune to the normal human desire for money. He allowed a flavor of irony to invade his voice as he remarked: “When I noticed that simple, little fur cloak you were wearing last night it never occurred to me you had a beer and hamburger mentality.”
“Oh, that. It was a present from John, and I wore it on the stage because it did suit the part of
“Let me see, it’s mink, isn’t it?”
“Oh, no! It’s not mink at all—it’s Russian sable!” For a woman who cared nothing for luxury and ostentation, Wanda’s response was a little too heated.
“Seems dangerous to keep such valuable furs in the dressing room of a theater with everyone coming and going all the time.”
“It wasn’t there ‘all the time,’” returned Wanda. “I had it stored in February, and I had some trouble getting it out again in time for the opening. A bonded messenger brought it to the theater in the nick of time—after the curtain rose just before I went on stage.”
As Basil took his leave of Wanda a last question occurred to him. “Yesterday afternoon at the art gallery you said something about cutting some lines spoken by a character named
“No real difference,” she answered. “Of course it did telescope the action a little in that first scene where
“I can’t say I did.” Leonard smiled sardonically. “You could cut half the lines out of a Sardou play without damaging plot or action at all.”
He followed Basil toward the door into the living room.
“Not going already?” cried Wanda.
“I just stopped in to see how you were,” responded Leonard. “But you can take it. I leave you with a clear conscience.”
