Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 6: Opening Night, Spinsters in Jeopardy, Scales of Justice. Ngaio Marsh

remarkable looking chap,’ he said. ‘If there’s anything to be made of faces in terms of character, and I still like to pretend there is, what’s to be made of this one? It’s what they call a heart-shaped face, broad across the eyes with a firmly moulded chin and a generous but delicate mouth. Reminds one of a Holbein drawing. Doré’s sketch in the greenroom is damn good. Doré crops up all over the place, doesn’t he? Designs their fancy dresses. Paints their faces, in a double sense. Does their décor and with complete self-effacement, loves their leading lady.’

      ‘Do you reckon?’

      ‘I do indeed, Br’er Fox,’ Alleyn said and rubbed his nose vexedly. ‘However. Gibson’s done all the usual things in these rooms, I suppose?’

      ‘Yes, Mr Alleyn. Pockets, suitcases and boxes. Nothing to show for it.’

      ‘We may as well let them come home to roost, then. We’ll see them separately. They can change into their day clothes. The Gainsford has already, of course, done so. Blast! I suppose I’ll have to check Darcey’s statement with the Gainsford. She gives me the horrors, that young woman.’

      ‘Shall I see her, Mr Alleyn?’

      ‘You can stay and take your notes. I’ll see her in the greenroom. No, wait a bit. You stay with the others, Fox, and send young Lamprey along with her. Tell them they can change in their rooms, fan them before they go, and make sure they go singly. I don’t want them talking together. And you might try again if you can dig up anything that sounds at all off-key with Bennington over the last few days. Anything that distressed or excited him.’

      ‘He seems to have been rather easily excited.’

      ‘He does, doesn’t he, but you never know. I don’t believe it was suicide, Fox, and I’m not yet satisfied that we’ve unearthed anything that’s good enough for a motive for murder. Trip away, Foxkin. Ply your craft.’

      Fox went out sedately. Alleyn crossed the passage and opened the door of Bennington’s room. Sergeant Gibson was discovered, squatting on his haunches before the dead gas-fire.

      ‘Anything?’ Alleyn asked.

      ‘There’s this bit of a stain that looks like a scorch on the hearth, sir.’

      ‘Yes, I saw that. Any deposit?’

      ‘We-ll.’

      ‘We may have to try.’

      ‘The powder-pads the deceased’s dresser cleared away were in the rubbish bin on the stage where he said he put them. Nothing else in the bin. There’s this burnt paper on the floor but it’s in small flakes – powder almost.’

      ‘All right. Seal the room when you’ve finished. And Gibson, don’t let the mortuary van go without telling me.’

      ‘Very good, sir.’

      Alleyn returned to the greenroom. He heard Miss Gainsford approaching under the wing of PC Lamprey. She spoke in a high grand voice that seemed to come out of a drawing-room comedy of the twenties.

      ‘I think you’re too intrepid,’ she was saying, ‘to start from rock bottom like this. It must be so devastatingly boring for you, though I will say it’s rather a comfort to think one is in the hands of, to coin a phrase, a gent. Two gents in fact.’

      ‘Chief Inspector Alleyn’ said PC Lamprey, ‘is in the greenroom I think, Miss.’

      ‘My dear, you do it quite marvellously. You ought, again to coin a phrase, to go on the stage.’

      Evidently Miss Gainsford lingered in the passage. Alleyn heard his subordinate murmur: ‘Shall I go first?’ His regulation boots clumped firmly to the door which he now opened.

      ‘Will you see Miss Gainsford, sir?’ asked PC Lamprey, who was pink in the face.

      ‘All right, Mike,’ Alleyn said. ‘Show her in and take notes.’

      ‘Will you come this way, Miss?’

      Miss Gainsford made her entrance with a Mayfairish gallantry that was singularly dated. Alleyn wondered if she had decided that her first reading of her new role was mistaken. ‘She’s abandoned the brave little woman for the suffering mondaine who goes down with an epigram,’ he thought and sure enough Miss Gainsford addressed herself to him with staccato utterance and brittle highhandedness.

      ‘Ought one to be terribly flattered because one is the first to be grilled?’ she asked. ‘Or is it a sinister little hint that one is top of the suspect list?’

      ‘As you don’t have to change,’ Alleyn said, ‘I thought it would be convenient to see you first. Will you sit down, Miss Gainsford?’

      She did so elaborately, gave herself a cigarette, and turned to PC Lamprey: ‘May one ask The Force for a light?’ she asked. ‘Or would that be against the rules?’

      Alleyn lit her cigarette while his unhappy subordinate retired to the table. She turned in her chair to watch him. ‘Is he going to take me down and use it all in evidence against me?’ she asked. Her nostrils dilated, she raised her chin and added jerkily: ‘That’s what’s called the Usual Warning, isn’t it?’

      ‘A warning is given in police practice,’ Alleyn said as woodenly as possible, ‘if there is any chance that the person under interrogation will make a statement that is damaging to himself. Lamprey will note down this interview and if it seems advisable you will be asked, later on, to give a signed statement.’

      ‘If that was meant to be reassuring,’ said Miss Gainsford, ‘I can’t have heard it properly. Could we get cracking?’

      ‘Certainly. Miss Gainsford, you were in the greenroom throughout the performance. During the last interval you were visited by Mr J. G. Darcey and by your uncle. Do you agree that as the result of something the deceased said, Mr Darcey hit him on the jaw?’

      She said: ‘Wasn’t it too embarrassing! I mean the Gorgeous Primitive Beast is one thing but one old gentleman banging another about is so utterly another. I’m afraid I didn’t put that very clearly.’

      ‘You agree that Mr Darcey hit Mr Bennington?’

      ‘But madly. Like a sledge-hammer. I found it so difficult to know what to say. There just seemed to be no clue to further conversation.’

      ‘It is the conversation before rather than after the blow that I should like to hear about, if you please.’