“Do you know one reason I suspected you from the very beginning? Because you were the only real actor among the suspects. Margaret Ingelow wasn’t an actress at all; Wanda and Rodney just played themselves on the stage. But you played roles entirely different from your real self. Wanda could simulate various emotions, but she couldn’t act any personality other than her own. You alone of the suspects were artist enough to simulate a personality entirely alien to your own. You were the only one who could have been a murderer at heart and still have put on a convincing performance as an innocent man.”
“You’ve got most of it right—but not the motive.” Leonard’s voice was very quiet now. “That prison sentence was unjust because I was not a drunken driver.”
“You mean you hadn’t been drinking?”
“I’d been drinking all right but—I wasn’t driving.”
“Wanda?”
“Yes. She ran over the child. She drove on, and I changed places with her. Like a sap I took the wheel before the traffic cop caught up with us; and I took the rap for her afterward. The sudden change to a sedentary life and starchy diet in prison gave me diabetes. You know how it is—an officer transferred suddenly from the field to staff work gets diabetes the same way sometimes. I came out of prison to find my career ruined as well as my health and Wanda all set to marry this Ingelow. The diabetes had produced hardening of the arteries, and the doctors gave me only a few months to live. I had nothing to lose by murder—I was going to die anyway. What did I want in the last few weeks before I died? Just one thing—Wanda. Sometimes a man condemned to death asks for special food or other privileges. All I asked for was Wanda, and the only way to get her was by killing Ingelow.”
“No wonder Wanda suspected you,” said Basil. “She was the only one who knew all this.”
“But she needn’t have been afraid of me. I never would have killed her. It was for her I did it.”
“And the knife you threw at her a few moments ago?”
“That was for you. You knew too much and—”
A voice spoke from below. “Do you people realize that this is supposed to be a total black-out and there is a light shining through that fire door that’s standing open? If you don’t close it immediately, I’ll call the police!”
Leonard smiled.
“This is my cue for an exit.”
Quick as a monkey he turned and clambered upon the iron railing. Basil sprang forward to seize him. But Leonard had jumped already.
Just then the street lamp at the corner blazed into light. Basil’s eyes were so used to the darkness that it looked like a star shell radiating sparks in all directions. As he ran down the fire escape the Tilbury clock flashed red again. The air-raid warden’s gray overcoat turned faintly pink in the reflected light as he bent over the dark figure sprawled prone in the alley.
“This man is badly hurt!” he cried aghast.
“He’s dead,” answered Basil after a quick look. “Better go ahead and call the police.”
“There’s one little point I’d like to clear up,” said Foyle some time later. “Since Rod and Wanda were not guilty, why did they contradict each other in fixing the moment when Ingelow died that first night?”
“Perhaps because they were just guessing,” suggested Basil. “And guessing is a form of wishful thinking. When there are no facts for the mind to follow it follows its own fancy. Wanda said Ingelow seemed dead the first time she kissed him—thereby throwing suspicion on Leonard, the only person who approached Ingelow on stage before Wanda’s first kiss. She did that, consciously or unconsciously, because she hated Leonard as only such a woman can hate a discarded lover, and she was beginning to fear him. In the same way Rod ‘guessed’ Ingelow was alive the last time Rod touched him, thereby throwing suspicion on Wanda, the only person to approach Ingelow after that. Rod disliked Wanda because she had pursued him and made Pauline jealous. Actually both Rod and Wanda were wrong in this testimony. Compare Rod’s time table of the first act with the timing of the cue for murder, and you’ll see that Ingelow was alive when Wanda first kissed him and dead when Rod last touched him. Of course, Leonard, as the murderer, did his best to throw suspicion on both Rod and Wanda by saying Ingelow was alive before either had approached him on stage and dead after both had done so.”
One morning a few weeks later, Pauline and Rodney came once again to breakfast with Basil. But this time they seemed like any other pair of young lovers—carefree and rather charmingly absurd. Rodney shook hands with Basil three times and Pauline kissed him.
“I had nothing to do with it!” he protested. “You owe everything to a canary and a house fly.”
The End
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