Cue For Murder полностью

The little group of people in the lobby halted. Pauline turned. “You’re going to stay here alone?”

“If I may?” Basil looked at Foyle.

“Sure. Why not?”

“Do you think it’s quite safe?” asked Leonard.

“He won’t be entirely alone,” Foyle answered for Basil. “We always leave a patrolman on guard at the scene of a murder for a day or so.”

“Only one?” cried Pauline. “In a huge place like this?”

“It’s largely a matter of form,” answered Foyle. “We’ve finished the investigation here. Anything that could shed light on the crime—even a section of scenery that was splashed with blood—has been removed to the police laboratories.”

“Still . . .” Pauline looked at the sheer walls of the auditorium and the vaulted ceiling half lost in shadows. “One man . . .”

“Let me stay with you,” said Rod to Basil.

“No, I’ll be all right.” Basil smiled as if he didn’t think Rod would be much help in any circumstances.

“I don’t like the idea Dr. Willing,” said Hutchins seriously.

“Neither do I,” put in Wanda. “But Dr. Willing is very obstinate.”

Basil turned to Milhau. “May I borrow your keys?”

“The Inspector’s got them now. He’s running everything around here.”

Foyle handed the bunch of keys to Basil. “You can leave them with the patrolman when you go.” As the others drifted away, he went on in a low voice. “What’s the big idea?”

“The theater is the setting of both murders. I want to study its topography and absorb its atmosphere.”

“Sure you don’t want me to stay?”

“No, thanks. I can do better alone.”

Foyle looked down through the glass doors to the outside lobby. The others were leaving by the box office door. “What do you think of that bunch? Do they know anything?”

“At least four of them did—and one of the four is dead now.”

“Who are the other three?”

“Pauline, Hutchins, and Wanda.”

“What about putting tails on all of them?”

“I wouldn’t. I’d give them a little more rope. . . .”

III

After Foyle’s departure, Basil went down the aisle and crossed the stage. Beyond the wings he re-discovered the enclosed stairway that led to Milhau’s apartment. The door was locked, but he found the key on Milhau’s ring and unlocked it. When he switched on the light he saw everything just as they had left it—soiled plates and glasses in disarray on the supper table, chairs gathered before the panel in the wall, the panel itself pulled back to reveal the stage below. Even the stage was unchanged. Again he was looking down on Vladimir’s parlor in the antique Muscovite style with Parisian decorations. Footlights and spotlights had been turned out, but a single work light was burning.

He spent some time examining the apartment without discovering anything of interest. Then he sat down wearily in one of the armchairs. He smiled a little as he remembered Mark Twain’s advice to an apprentice author who had got into difficulties with his own plot: Have you tried thinking? The same advice held good in solving a complex crime. He reviewed the case from beginning to end—from the moment in the Washington plane when he had read the item about the canary in a newspaper to the moment when Pauline had screamed in the lobby just now. Slowly the churning sediment of his disturbed thoughts began to settle to the bottom of his mind leaving the clear essence of the case on top. That was the real reason he had wanted to stay in the theater after the others were gone—so he could be utterly alone in an empty place where he could hear himself think. From the first he had suspected the murderer. Now he was morally certain of the murderer’s guilt. How was he going to prove it in court? He would have to rely on Lambert’s evidence once the knife handles had been subjected to a spectroscope. That was rather a pity because most juries didn’t like chemical evidence . . . too technical . . .

Motion drew his eye to the gap in the wall. Far below something was moving across the shadows of the dimly lighted stage. Startled, he leaned forward. Whatever had moved was gone.

He waited. Again there was movement. Now he saw it clearly, in the path of the work light—a small yellow bird—a canary—flying across the stage.

OceanofPDF.com

BASIL WENT to the switch and turned out the apartment lights. Then he closed the door and went down the enclosed staircase. His footfalls sounded loud in the stillness. He had no idea if they could be heard beyond the walls that enclosed the stairs. At the foot he paused to listen. There was no sound. He opened the door and stepped across the wings to the stage.