Cue For Murder полностью

“Ah!” Foyle grinned reminiscently. “I never heard of him before, but according to the stage people he’s tops and would have been a star by now if he hadn’t dropped out of sight for over a year a few months ago. It seems he comes of old stage stock. His father and mother used to play Shakespeare, and he was actually born in a dressing room backstage during a performance of Macbeth. As a boy he played all sorts of child parts from the time he was carried on as a baby at the age of three. Apparently he never went to any school and his parents spent a lot of time dodging policemen who tried to enforce the laws about child labor and school attendance. Result, he may not be educated, but he can act. His first real acting part was in the Mary Pickford production of the Good Little Devil. He made his first hit as a young man when he played the lead in a road company of Young Woodley. You remember that play about an English schoolboy who fell for his teacher’s wife? Awful muck I thought, but the highbrows went for it in a big way. Anyway, it made Leonard Martin, and he’s played every sort of part ever since—old, young, good, bad, comic, tragic, everything from Iago to Raffles. According to Sam Milhau, Leonard Martin is really good, and he would have been great if the modern public had been educated up to his acting and if he’d been about three inches taller. His small size made it possible for him to play boys of fifteen in his twenties, but now he’s reached his forties he’s not quite tall enough for the important male leads. For all his talent, the managers feel he can’t quite get it across without those few extra inches. Still, he would’ve been a star by this time if he hadn’t dropped out for a year or so when that Chicago business came up.”

“What was that?” asked Lambert.

“He was mixed up in a nasty motor accident and served a prison term for manslaughter under another name.”

“I suppose you checked with the Chicago police?” put in Basil. “Was there any doubt about his guilt?”

“None whatever. A little girl was killed. When the police caught up with his car, five minutes later, he was still at the wheel. He swore then and all through the trial that he wasn’t drunk, but the motorcycle cop who caught him smelled liquor on his breath. There were tire marks from his car beside the kid’s body and bits of her hair and dress on the front wheels of his car.”

“I’m surprised the evidence of his drinking was so well established,” said Basil. “He still denies it, and he doesn’t seem like the sort of man who would be a drunken driver.”

“I dare say he isn’t habitually,” retorted Foyle. “He may not have been roaring drunk; he may just have had an extra highball. Drivers always deny they’re drunk unless they’re out cold. As I see it, the whole thing was just a tough break—the sort of thing that might happen to any man in a moment of carelessness.”

“What about Milhau?” asked Lambert. “Any dope on him?”

“Usual stuff. Born on the East Side and reached Broadway via Coney Island side shows. Good business man. His shows are often panned by the critics, but I don’t believe he’s ever really lost money on any of them. Claims he can always tell whether a script is a moneymaker or not when he reads it because he gets a sort of shiver down his spine.”

“A new version of the divining rod,” murmured Basil.

“So where do we go from here?” Foyle sighed and ran both hands through his graying hair until it stood up on his head like the plumage of a cockatoo. “Two nights ago everybody was sweet and innocent and loved everybody else. Nobody knew who Vladimir was, and nobody could think of any motive for murdering him. Now in forty-eight hours we’ve just scratched the surface, and we’ve already got three motives: 1 Wanda Morley murdered Ingelow so she could inherit his fortune under a new will in her favor which she believed he had signed; 2 Margaret Ingelow murdered Ingelow so she could inherit his fortune before he had time to sign the new will in Wanda’s favor; 3 Rodney Tait murdered Ingelow because he was in love with Wanda and jealous of Ingelow’s affair with her.”

“Are you quite sure Rodney was in love with Wanda?” asked Basil.

Foyle returned his gaze quizzically. “Well, she thinks so.”

“And he?”

“He’s sort of cagey about the whole thing. Naturally because he realizes it’s the key to his motive. But they were seen together all the time in public places, and there was a tremendous lot of gossip about them. What more do you want?”

“Suppose I were to tell you that Rod has been engaged to another woman all along—a particularly nice girl?”

“I’d say he’d got himself in one sweet mess,” retorted the Inspector. “It isn’t the first time that a good-looking young man has got himself into such a mess either—especially if he’s good-natured as well as good-looking and enjoys pleasing women and keeping the social atmosphere at a warm temperature.”