SUSAN DARE ROSE FROM the stage and brushed dust from her skirt. Death in its primary form is never pleasant, and this death was particularly ugly. She felt a queer desire to move the man at her feet so that his battered head no longer hung over into the footlights.
She felt ill and terribly shaken. No wonder that Adelaide Cholster was uttering one hysterical sob after another.
Adelaide Cholster. Susan’s eyes went thoughtfully to the small group huddled at the other side of the stage. Adelaide was the faded little blonde—sister, was it?—of the murdered man.
The brown-faced woman in the dark knitted suit, who was so terribly controlled, was his wife, then. Jane they had called her. Jane Cholster.
Susan looked again at the man sprawled upon the stage. He was a large man, heavy but well proportioned. He was blond and probably older than his sister and wife. Of course, the heavy make-up on his mouth and chin was a little confusing.
Susan forced herself to look at his face again. His face was unpowdered, and his eyes had not been touched; his mouth, however, was strongly outlined in soft crimson, and a small beard made of crêpe hair had been fastened to his chin. He had been, then, ready for rehearsal when he was murdered. The blow that had killed him had to be one of enormous power.
“Killed by blunt instrument,” thought Susan and looked around the stage. It was set simply for an exterior, a balcony scene, with two long French windows opening at either side upon the balcony of which the footlights defined the limits.
There were a table and two chairs near one of the windows, but neither table nor chairs were heavy enough to deal the blow that had crushed out that hearty, strong life.
She looked again at the small group across the stage. Adelaide was sobbing now in the arms of the slim, dark young man—the one who had called himself Clare Dickenson and whom the others called Dickie.
Jane Cholster was lighting a cigarette, and her brown face, outlined clearly in the small light that the other man was holding for her, looked set. Her full-lipped, strong mouth, however, puffed steadily, her topaz eyes reflected a gleam from the light; Susan realized suddenly that she was an extremely attractive woman, although the charm lay in something aside from beauty. She glanced at the sobbing Adelaide and turned again to the man next her. “How much longer do you think it will be, Tom? Surely, they’ve had time to find the murderer. He must be somewhere in the theater.”
Tom (he had given his name to the constable as Tom Remy, Susan remembered) shrugged and lit a cigarette for himself. “No telling,” he said.
Beyond the footlights was a brightly lighted cavern that contained rows and rows of empty seats. Away at the back stood a man on guard—a townsman hastily deputized by the undeniably flustered constable. Below the stage now and then could be heard a rumble of heavy voices, or the bang of a door, or footsteps. They were searching the dressing rooms, the furnace and storage rooms, then.
The Little Theater movement, thought Susan rather dryly, must have been very successful to permit the use of so large a theater—large, at least, for the size of the town. And ambitious! She remembered the placards she had seen in the crowded little drugstore where she and Jim had stopped for directions to reach the theater—large handsomely printed placards announcing the Little Theater’s newest production which was to be Private Lives and which was to open the following night for a three-night run.
Well, it wouldn’t open.
The Cholsters—the murdered man, Jane Cholster, the sister—were all of them exactly the type to go in strongly and rather cleverly for amateur theatricals. They were quite evidently people of means, of leisure, and probably an intelligent understanding of the arts, including the art of playmaking.
The man they called Dickie was the director. He would be, then, professional: a man of experience as an actor and a director, paid probably a generous sum by the members of the Little Theater group. He had a thin dark face; clever dark eyes, and an air of quick authoritative efficiency.
Tom Remy, who stood quietly smoking, was a little more difficult to orient. He was tall, stooped, grayish around the temples, and so far had said practically nothing.
All of the faces except the director’s showed signs of make-up, though Jane Cholster had wiped her face thoroughly with her handkerchief. Adelaide lifted her head and sobbed, and Jane Cholster said rather sharply: “Stop that, Adelaide.”
“Why don’t they get a doctor?” sobbed Adelaide.
“There’s no use getting a doctor now,” said Tom Remy quietly. “The constable is doing everything he can.”
“They’re trying to get the murderer before he has a chance to escape,” said Dickie quickly and in an efficient manner. “He must be somewhere in the building. The only possible way of escape would have been by the front door, and he didn’t go that way.”
Adelaide turned a small puffy face, on which heavy make-up was grotesquely streaked with tears, toward the other side of the stage and saw Susan. “Who’s that?” she said.
Jane’s topaz eyes gave Susan a cool glance.
“She came in with the reporter.”
“Reporter!” cried Adelaide. “What reporter?”
“The reporter from the Record. He was in Kittiwake for a story about something or other—spring floods probably, nothing else has happened here—and heard about the murder.”
Dickie turned quickly to Tom Remy.
“Oh, is he the fellow that came in with the constable?” His quick clever eyes darted to meet Susan’s. “Are you a reporter, too?”
“No. My name is Dare.” She looked at Jane. “May I do anything to help you?”
“Nothing, thank you,” said Jane. She glanced at the others and said, as if not wholly conscious of them or of Susan: “Miss Cholster. Mr. Remy. Mr. Dickenson.”
Something banged heavily below, and Adelaide cried: “What are they doing?” There were footsteps on the stairway off toward their right, resounding heavily and rousing dull murmurs that were echoes.
“I wonder if they’ve found anybody,” said Tom Remy. And then the three men were in the wings and approaching the stage again, the constable, red and puffing a bit, in the lead, an assistant (also, Susan suspected, hastily deputized) following him, and Jim Byrne bringing up the rear.
Jim took off his hat, and as the constable, puffing and clutching his revolver, addressed himself to Mrs. Cholster, Jim drew Susan aside.
“My God, Sue,” he said under his breath, “what a case! The whole theater’s locked up tight. The sheriff’s at the other end of the country. And I’ll bet my hat the murderer’s right here. Have I got a story or have I got a story?”
“You’ve got a story,” said Susan rather somberly. She glanced toward the sprawled gray figure, and Jim caught the look in her eyes. “I know, Sue,” he said. “But, after all, it happened.”
He stopped abruptly, struck by something the constable was saying, and Susan listened also.
“—And so the sheriff said over the telephone to keep you all here till he got back. He said he’d start right off quick. Now, I’m sorry about this, Mrs. Cholster; but it can’t be helped.”
“But this is preposterous!” Jane exclaimed. “Do you realize that while you are holding us here my husband’s murderer is escaping?”
“Well,” said the constable slowly, “we ain’t so sure about that.”
“What do you mean by that?” she demanded.
“That’s easy to answer, ma’am. According to this Dickenson fellow, nobody went out the front door of the theater. And the stage entrance is bolted on the inside. So it stands to reason that the murderer’s still here.”
“Do you mean to say that you will not even permit my husband’s body to be cared for? I insist upon calling Dr. Marks. And also my lawyer.”
“Now, Mrs. Cholster,” the constable said, “there ain’t no call for you to talk like that. The sheriff said to hold you here, and that’s what I’m going to do. He’s got to see the body just as it is, and we can’t move it till he looks at it and till the coroner looks at it. And I got to go ahead with my inquiry. That’s my duty, and I’d advise you folks not to resist the law. I got two deputies here with me, and all of us is armed.”
Jane’s eyes flashed dangerously. “Did the sheriff say to allow reporters here?” she asked sharply.
“Reporters,” said the constable largely, “is always permitted. Dunc, you might take something and cover Mr. Cholster.”
Tom Remy stepped forward. “Let’s get this straight,” he said. “Are you holding us for murder?”
Adelaide blinked and gave a little scream, and the constable said:
“Well, there ain’t anybody else around, is there?”
There was, not unnaturally, an abrupt silence.
Jane Cholster’s face was ashy again under the brown, but set and guarded. Tom Remy’s eyes retreated, and Adelaide blinked and gasped and balled her handkerchief at her mouth, and Dickenson’s handsome dark face became an impassive mask with only his quick dark eyes alive.
Around them the old theater was very still. Its stage that night already had played a strange and tragic drama, and Susan felt eerily that it was waiting for the play to go on, to play itself out. Below were passages and empty dressing rooms. Above was a dim loft extending mysteriously upward.
The constable’s voice broke the silence. “I reckon,” he said, “I’d better ask you some questions. And I reckon I don’t need to tell you that you’d better tell the truth. Now, then, there’s some chairs back there somewhere. Dunc,” he continued, “bring them out. We may as well be comfortable.” The little deputy disappeared, and the constable turned and shouted toward the bulky, dark figure standing at the back of the house. “Don’t let anybody in, Wid, till the sheriff gets here.”
“Here’s a chair, miss,” said Dunc’s small voice to Susan, and she accepted it.
She looked at the other people seating themselves in a kind of circle on the stage.
Was Jane Cholster’s character so strong that she could indefinitely withhold any signs of grief and shock? Was Adelaide so loving and so tender that she must collapse frequently into sobs? Was either of these women physically strong enough to deal the crushing blow that had been dealt Brock Cholster?
Jane was slender and brown and looked as if her muscles were hard. She must have, too, a tremendous reserve of nerve power. She sat now quietly erect and graceful—but under her quiet you felt that muscles might be gathered ready to spring.
Jane was only of medium height, but Adelaide looked small beside her. She huddled in the armchair that the deputy had given her. Her faded blonde curls were pushed up away from her puffy little face. She was older than Susan had surmised, for there were definite little pouches under her eyes and in the corners of her chin. Susan was vaguely aware that Jim and the constable were talking in a low murmur, there near the body; her eyes traveled on to the nervous, dark young director and to Tom Remy.
Either of the men might have been physically capable of that blow, providing a suitable weapon were at hand. (“Weapon?” thought Susan parenthetically. “What happened to it? And what was it?”)
Neither, however, looked exactly athletic, although you couldn’t measure the strength that sheer emotion might give to inadequate muscular force.
Tom Remy was smoking again; his eyes were narrowed into lines that made them look sharp and very observant and yet altogether unfathomable. As Susan watched, he gave Jane Cholster a long look which she returned, and Susan had a curious feeling that there was an unspoken communication between them, although neither face changed at all.
The dark young director passed a hand over his smooth black hair and said suddenly: “Who put the curtain up?”
“Curtain?” said Jane slowly. The constable turned abruptly to join the small circle, and Jim followed him, and the man Dickenson said quickly:
“Curtain, of course. It was down when I arrived, for I glanced at the stage. I didn’t put it up. Who did?”
No one replied, and the constable said:
“What’s all this about a curtain? You mean the fire curtain? It’s a village ordinance that it—”
“Exactly. Of course. I know.” Dickenson’s interruptions were sharp and quick. “Certainly it was down. And when I came out of the office down there—” he motioned, with the nervous quickness that characterized his gestures, toward the door leading to the foyer—“and walked up here, the curtain was up.”
“It was you that discovered the body?”
“Of course. You know that. I told you when I telephoned for you.”
“When did you know it was Mr. Cholster?”
“I—” he closed his eyes for an instant as if to recall and Susan could see a little flutter of his eyeballs under his thin dark lids—“I believe I was only aware that the curtain was up and that there was something humped up there. But I hurried up to the switchboard and turned on the lights and saw it was Mr. Cholster. I thought, of course, he’d fainted or something and ran out on the stage. And I stopped about there and knew—what had happened.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I—I think I called out. Everybody else, you know, was downstairs getting ready for rehearsal. Then I ran back to the telephone in the office again. When I came out, Tom and Mrs. Cholster and Adelaide were all on the stage—”
“You had the main door locked when I got here,” said the constable. “How was that? When did you lock it?”
“I had locked it as soon as everybody got here. Locked it simply because we needed a good last rehearsal, and if I had left the door unlocked we’d have been continually interrupted. A lot of Kittiwake residents prefer sneaking in to dress rehearsal to coming around the next night and paying for their tickets.”
Jim cleared his throat gently, and the constable cleared his also and said politely: “Did you say something, Mr. Byrne?”
“I was only wondering,” said Jim, “why you didn’t use the stage entrance. It would seem more convenient.”
“Well, it isn’t,” said the young director rather snappishly. “There’s no key to the thing extant, and you have to bolt it on the inside. It’s bolted now.”
“Then the only exit for the murderer was the door that the deputy is guarding now?”
“Yes,” said Dickenson.
“And the door to the office is just at right angles to it there in the foyer, isn’t it?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then you must have seen anyone entering or leaving the theater?”
“Why, I—” His quick dark eyes swept around the circle and he said—“that’s what I thought when you first questioned me. But I suppose I could have been mistaken.”
The constable cleared his throat again and looked at Jim, who said:
“I hope you don’t mind letting me get this straight? You told the constable you arrived at the theater at about twenty minutes to eight?”
“Yes.”
“You had called a dress rehearsal at eight?”
“I had said make-up at eight sharp. Rehearsal at eight-fifteen.”
“Was it customary to make up for dress rehearsal?” asked Jim, Irish honey on his tongue. “I thought that was only to get used to properties—all that.”
“Well,” said the director hesitating, “it is. But you see—” he paused, and then said with abrupt candor—“but you know how it is with amateurs. They like the smell of grease paint.” Dickenson stopped rather short and said: “Are you conducting this inquiry or getting a story for your paper?”
Jim said: “You unlocked the theater when you arrived?”
“Certainly. That is, I unlocked that one door.”
“Who arrived next?”
“Jane—Mrs. Cholster, and—Brock. They came together.”
Jim turned to Jane Cholster.
“Mrs. Cholster, do you know of anything that was worrying your husband? Was he quite as usual tonight?”
“Quite,” said Jane Cholster steadily. “He was a little sleepy, owing to having been gardening most of the afternoon. If you are trying to make out that my husband had any enemies, you are wasting your time. He had none.”
The constable spoke suddenly. “Now, Mrs. Cholster,” he said, “you and Miss Adelaide, there, living so close to him all in the same house—and Mr. Remy the next-door neighbor—between you, you ought to be able to give some sort of helpful evidence. This murder had a motive. It wasn’t an accident. And it wasn’t robbery. Nothing’s been taken from Mr. Cholster. You’d ought to be more helpful, Mrs. Cholster.”
“But I tell you—” Jane paused to control the impatience in her voice—“I tell you there is nothing,” she said. “Nothing. He was in no quarrel. He had no enemies.”
“The village has it that he’s a rich man.”
“Not rich,” said Jane. “He was no millionaire.”
“Did he leave any insurance?”
“Really, Mr. Lambrikin,” said Jane, the dangerous light flaring in her eyes again. “You’ll have to ask our lawyer about that. I can tell you, however, that my husband was always very generous with me and with Adelaide. It is true that he controlled all the Cholster money—my money and Adelaide’s inheritance, as well as his own. But he gave us anything we wanted. His will is no secret either: our own money was to revert to each of us and to each of us half of Brock’s estate. I assure you that there is no motive for murder there. If either of us wanted money we had only to ask for it at any time.”
“After Mr. and Mrs. Cholster arrived at the theater, what happened? Did they stop to speak to you?” It was Jim again, all his Celtic grace so smoothly to the fore that even Dickenson did not question his right to inquire.
“They stopped there in the doorway, and we chatted a moment. Then they said they were going down to the dressing rooms to make up, and Brock said he’d decided it would change his appearance more to an audience of townspeople if he wore a beard, and he’d got one already made. He handed Mrs. Cholster his make-up box and cap, and she went on into the theater while Brock showed me the beard—it’s there on his chin now—and then he went on.”
“I arrived next,” said Tom Remy suddenly. “I stopped, too, and spoke to Dickie, and then went directly through the house—up those steps and, without even glancing out on the stage, to the dressing rooms. The stage was dark. And I do remember that the curtain was down.”
“Did you see the Cholsters downstairs?” asked the constable quickly.
“I saw Mrs. Cholster,” said Tom Remy slowly. “She stood there in her dressing-room door. I spoke to her a moment and went on to my own dressing room. But I do not believe that Mrs. Cholster left her dressing room at all until we heard Dickie shouting for us from up here.”
“Why do you think that?” said Jim.
“Because,” said Tom Remy, “I could hear her voice.”
“Her voice?” cried the constable. “You mean she was talking to somebody? That would be Mr. Cholster, then. Was that—”
“No,” said Jane. “I was not talking to my husband. I never saw him again alive after I left him at the door of the office back there.” She stopped—deliberately, Susan thought—after throwing out the word “office.” The constable’s eyes went to Dickenson, who looked suddenly white.
Jim said: “To whom were you talking, Mrs. Cholster?”
Susan caught a tiny flame in Jane’s eyes. She said: “I was rehearsing my lines.”
Dickenson had got his breath.
“If you think that I killed Brock and dragged him up here to the stage you are wrong. I couldn’t have lifted him. It’s physically impossible.”
“Maybe,” said the constable. “But as to that, I don’t know as any of you could have lifted him. Or struggled with him, for that matter. He was easy stronger than any one of you. Any one of you.” He looked speculative and added: “Of course, two of you—”
“The wound,” said Jim in a voice without any inflection at all, “was in the forehead. Somebody had to be very close to him. And directly in front of him. Therefore someone he knew and did not fear.”
Jane leaped to her feet. “How dare you say such things! It is not true.”
“Jane—Jane—” said Tom Remy, with again a guarded note of warning in his voice. “Look here, Constable, I am sure that Mrs. Cholster was in her dressing room downstairs from the time I arrived to the time we heard Dickie shouting for us here on the stage.”
“We ain’t saying Mrs. Cholster is the murderer,” said the constable. “But Brock Cholster’s dead, ain’t he? Now then, Dickenson, you claimed that you saw everybody that entered the theater tonight.”
“I thought so,” he said rapidly. “But now that I’ve had time to think of it I realize that someone might have entered without my knowledge—”
“You said you were in the office the whole time from your arrival till everybody was here. Who came last? Miss Adelaide?”
“Yes, Adelaide. Yes, I said that in the haste of the moment when you arrived, Constable. But now I realize that someone must have slipped past the office door when I wasn’t looking.
“And then slipped out again after he’d murdered Brock Cholster?” inquired the constable heavily.
“Exactly,” said Dickenson eagerly. “That’s what must have happened. There’s no other explanation.”
“It’s pretty late for it, Dickenson,” said the constable. “And it ain’t reasonable to suppose that you saw everybody else that entered the theater and were sitting right there by the door from the time you unlocked it until you locked it again, and yet the murderer got past you twice without your seeing him. No, it ain’t reasonable. Now, Miss Adelaide, what’s your story?”
“Why, I—I came in, as Dickie said. And I went along the aisle there at the side and up those steps—just as the others did, I suppose, and then immediately down to my dressing room. That’s all I know. That is, till I heard Dickie calling for us up here on the stage, and we all hurried upstairs and saw—” she gave a convulsive shudder and finished—“saw him.”
“Was the curtain up when you came along the aisle?”
She blinked, hesitated, and then was certain. “I don’t know. I really don’t know. I don’t remember it at all.”
“Was the stage dark?”
“Yes. Yes, it must have been.”
Jim coughed lightly, and the constable looked at him, and Jim said: “Odd that no one heard any noise—”
“Did anyone hear a noise?” asked the constable directly.
No one replied, and the small silence grew oppressive. Again Susan was acutely conscious of the empty waiting theater, of the spaces, of the shadows, of the empty passages and rooms below them. Behind them, of course, was the balcony set with its French doors, and wings jutting out that looked like brick walls with vines over them. She glanced up and over her shoulder into what she could see of the loft. It, too, was dim in spite of lights, and hung with great ghostly ropes that stretched hazily upward into darkness.
She wondered if anyone could conceal himself up there in the dim reaches of the loft, clinging somehow to perilous ropes, and decided that it was not possible. She did not, however, like those mysterious dark spaces above and out in the wings.
The constable sighed and said: “Mrs. Cholster, didn’t you hear anything?”
Jane Cholster moistened her lips.
“I heard nothing like—like a blow,” she said as if forcing out the words. “I did hear someone on the stage. Arranging it, I thought, and supposed it was Mr. Dickenson. I didn’t give it much attention.”
“Mr. Remy?”
“Why, I—I didn’t hear anything like a blow, either. Could we have heard that?”
The constable glanced toward the heap under its covering and said: “I think you could have heard it. Did you hear anyone on the stage?”
“I don’t know,” said Tom Remy. “I remember thinking that Dickie was getting the stage ready, but I don’t know why I thought that—must have heard some sound, I suppose. Certainly,” he added, as if making amends to Dickenson, “I had no reason to think it was Dickenson except that he usually arranged the stage for us. And it was only a vague recognition of someone moving about above us. Then there was, too, a sort of rumbling sound.”
“A rumbling sound—”
“That was the ventilator,” said Dickenson at once. “I had turned it on—the switch is in the office—to see how it worked. It’s a recent addition and wasn’t made for old theaters. It makes a lot of noise here. We can only use it between acts and when the theater is empty. But I was not arranging the stage.”
“What time was the ventilator going?”
“I don’t know exactly. Around eight, I suppose.”
“Did you hear anything? Anything besides the—ventilator?”
“No,” said Dickenson. “Nothing. But I’d like to know who put the curtain up.”
Again no one spoke, and again the old theater waited. Someone behind Susan sighed: it was the little deputy. Jane Cholster was biting her lips, and Adelaide was staring upward in her turn into the mysterious ghostly reaches of the fly loft. Tom Remy blew out beige smoke, and quite suddenly there was a small skittering sound. Though it was faint, everyone started.
Then Dickenson said softly: “Mice,” and Adelaide screamed raggedly but softly and pulled up her feet and jerked her skirt tighter over her legs.
Mere nerves, of course. They were all terribly aware, as Susan herself was aware, that murder had walked that stage.
And the murderer was still at large—or at least still undiscovered. Which of those taut, unrevealing faces concealed murder?
Or was it possible that the search of the theater had left some dark corner unseen?
“Then some time between ten minutes till eight and ten minutes after eight the murder occurred,” said the constable suddenly. “Did you say they were to put this stuff on their faces at eight, Dickenson?”
Dickenson shrugged.
“Oh—I said make-up at eight,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean that Brock Cholster went down to his dressing room at exactly eight and then came up here again.”
“But he was in his dressing room at some time,” pressed the constable.
“Must have been.”
“And he was murdered after he was made up?”
“Well, obviously. And obviously he wasn’t murdered in his dressing room. Nobody could have got him up that stairway.”
“When was your husband in his dressing room, Mrs. Cholster?”
“I—don’t know.”
“You didn’t hear him at all?”
“No.”
“But you know Mr. Remy was there?”
It was then that the storm growing behind Jane Cholster’s lambent eyes burst into fury. She rose with a lithe movement and faced the constable.
“Constable,” she said furiously. “This is an outrage. You are keeping us in this horrible place, frightening us—inquiring; and we have no recourse but to stay here and wait for the sheriff. But we can refuse to talk, and I do so now. I will not answer another question. And I will wait for the sheriff how and where I please.”
She whirled and walked off the stage, turning aside beyond the switchboard. They could hear her quick footsteps as she went down the steps leading to the outside aisle of the house.
“Hey, there,” cried the constable, standing. “You can’t leave.”
The trim dark figure did not turn. They watched as she coolly selected a seat and sat down in it, leaning her head on her hand.
Tom Remy, Adelaide, and Dickenson had risen, too, as if Jane’s action had inspired them also to defiance, and were drifting toward the wings, Adelaide supported solicitously by the sleek young director.
“Well, let ’em go,” said the constable to the deputy, who looked troubled. “Guess there’s nothing much to do but wait for the sheriff.”
“What do you think of it?” said Jim.
“Well,” said the constable, “looks very much as if the deed was done around eight o’clock. Probably between eight and eight-ten. I figure it took Mr. Cholster a few minutes to get that stuff on his face. Then for some reason he came back here on the stage. Mr. Remy and Mrs. Cholster sort of alibi each other, but alibis ain’t always certain. Miss Adelaide didn’t hardly have time to kill him without an awful lot of luck before this Dickenson fellow locked the door and came straight up to the stage. I figure it wasn’t more than a minute. I—”
“What’s that?” It was Dickenson beside them suddenly, and Jim said:
“The constable and I were just saying that you must have followed Miss Adelaide into the theater almost at once.”
“I did. I spoke to her, and she came on in, and I turned off the ventilator, locked the door, and followed.”
“She must have put on her make-up very quickly,” said Susan.
Dickenson’s quick dark eyes gave her a very sharp look.
“Why, yes, I suppose she was hurrying. Probably hadn’t finished when I found Cholster and called. If you’re figuring whether she had time to—to kill him and then get down to her dressing room and get make-up on, why she didn’t. And I realize that that leaves me the only one without an alibi; but I didn’t kill him.”
The constable said something again about the uncertainty of alibis, and Susan drifted away.
No one looked at the small figure in brown that unobtrusively crossed the stage, rounded the end of the set, and found herself in the dim world backstage. Now Susan could see the fly loft more clearly, though it was still a mysterious dark realm draped in a ghostly etching of ropes. Away up there were—what did they call them? Grids, was it?—great pulleys, anyway, over which the ropes passed. And nearer but still far away, flys and borders and drops and even empty battens were hanging motionless in the musty air. A theater has, as if distilled within it, a life of its own, and Susan, standing backstage, was strongly aware of that sentience. Voices drifted to her, and Susan turned and made her way toward the railed stairway that descended to the dressing rooms.
The air was colder and felt dank, and the musty smells were heavier. As she reached the last step she reminded herself that the whole place had been thoroughly searched.
The narrow passage ran up and down, with doors opening from it. It was lighted, of course; they had turned on every light in the theater. The light, however, rather emphasized its dreariness. There were six dressing rooms. Two of them were empty; the other four had, each of them, a make-up box on the table below the mirror. Susan entered swiftly one after another.
The first was probably Adelaide’s, for a beige coat was flung hurriedly over the chair, and the top layer of the make-up box (Susan paused to remark the extremely nice make-up box that Adelaide had chosen to supply herself with for use merely as an amateur) had been removed, as if hastily, and lay on the bare table with its sticks of grease paint spilling. Pink powder lay open, also spilling, and a box of rouge. Susan looked carefully at the many sticks and pencils—liners, weren’t they called?—and their colors and went on to the next dressing room. It was empty except for a gray cap and a make-up box—the make-up box was open and was much like Adelaide’s. Because of the cap, Susan felt reasonably certain that it was the room the dead man was supposed to have used.
The other two dressing rooms were across the narrow passage and past an expanse of whitewashed wall and were not directly opposite the first two rooms. The first one held another handsome make-up box, identical with the other two. It was closed, but there was a towel on the table with wisps of powder on it, and two or three cigarette ends and ashes were on the floor. Probably that was Jane’s room, and she had apparently finished her make-up and closed the box. In the remaining room there was no make-up box at all, although on the table lay a box of tan powder, a black eyebrow liner, and a stick of carmine lip paste. Tom Remy, then, used only the barest essentials. Susan pulled her loose pigskin glove over her hand and picked up the stick of lip paste. And just then something flickered in the wavery mirror before her.
Susan stared and whirled.
The doorway was bare and there was only whitewashed wall opposite. Surely there had been a motion there at the door. Surely—she put down the carmine paste and was at the door. The passage was dreary and empty.
But she realized suddenly that she could no longer hear voices from above.
Well, she had seen what she came to see. She would return. The passage, however, was rather dark. And certainly very quiet. And the door to the room that had had the gray tweed cap in it was closed.
She stopped abruptly.
She had left it open. She was sure of that.
Quite suddenly and absurdly, she was frightened and wanted to scream. And just then there was a rustle in the room and a quick metallic click. The door swung wide, and Tom Remy stood on the threshold and saw her.
He said calmly: “Oh, Miss—er—Dare. You look frightened.”
“I—I didn’t know you were here,” said Susan.
His eyes retreated to dark, enigmatic slits, and for a long moment he stood there looking at her. Then he said finally and very slowly: “Yes, I—I came down to get Miss Adelaide’s coat.”
“What is your profession, Mr. Remy?” She was relieved to find that her question sounded quite steady.
“I’m a painter.”
“Landscape?” inquired Susan.
“Portraits,” he said. “Why?”
“There’s a beige coat in the dressing room nearest the stairs,” said Susan. “Did you—”
A figure emerged rather promptly from Adelaide’s dressing room. It had the beige coat over its arm and was Dickenson. He looked at them and said: “I’ve got her coat, Tom.”
“Why, I—” said Tom Remy and stopped abruptly and said: “Oh, I see.”
Which was it, thought Susan, preceding the two men up the stairway, who had been watching her? And why? At the top of the stairs she paused to look at the door that was the stage entrance.
“Here, Tom,” said Dickenson suddenly. “Take this coat on to Adelaide, will you? I’ll—er—be there in a minute, tell her.”
“All right,” said Remy briefly.
“This is the stage entrance?” murmured Susan.
“Certainly. Bolted up tight. Not even the cat could get in.”
“Of course,” said Susan. “I see.” She looked at the bolt, then lifted it and put her gloved hand on the under side of the heavy latch. The door opened, and night air swept in, and a stalwart figure loomed out of the darkness beyond.
“Hey, there,” it said truculently. “Shut that door and stay in there, miss.”
“Well guarded,” said Dickenson. His thin lips smiled, but his eyes looked worried, and Susan let the bolt fall back into place. He turned as she turned, and walked toward the stage beside her.
“That,” said Susan, “is, of course, the switchboard?” She indicated the panel set into the wall.
He nodded. “Here’s the signal for the asbestos curtain,” he volunteered. “It’s the only curtain or drop in the theater that’s controlled by an electric switch. The rest of these are lights.”
She walked out on the stage. Jane Cholster was still sitting coolly in the seat she had chosen. Tom Remy was bending over her, and both were talking.
Adelaide, wrapped now in her beige coat, was sitting near them, staring at nothing.
Away at the back, the constable was having a conference with the deputy on guard at the door. The other deputy—Dunc—was sitting on the stage looking thin and disconsolate. Jim was nowhere to be seen.
Susan approached the deputy, and he sprang up with a startled look and put his hand on his revolver. Dickenson was watching her from the wings with steady, knowing black eyes. She said in a low voice to the deputy: “Have any of those people down there moved about the theater much?”
“Huh?” He had pale blue eyes which opened in surprise. “No, I guess not. That is, Tom Remy went downstairs a few minutes ago. And this young Dickenson fellow, too.”
“Which one first?”
“Dickenson, I think.”
Susan said slowly: “I believe that one of them is going to try to hide something. Something that’s important. Do you—”
“Sure! I get it! I’ll watch every move they make.” His eyes had lighted up, and her tone must have carried conviction, for he did not question her, which was as well, for Dickenson was crossing the stage to her side. She turned toward the French doors, and again he turned with her, followed her as she went through them and stopped when she stopped.
Furniture for a drawing room was crowded in space between the two sets. A light couch, several chairs, a table.
“It’s for the second act,” said Dickenson, watching her. Curious, said something in the back of Susan’s mind, how quickly we are removed from the deputy—from the people sitting out there in the house. It’s almost as if we were entirely alone. She moved a little away from the slender, dark figure but he moved also. She was acutely conscious of his dark eyes, and of his shoulder all but touching her own as she bent closer to scrutinize the couch.
“They looked here for a weapon, I suppose,” she said.
“Yes, I—I think so.”
She moved around the couch, and he followed her. She was aware of his silent graceful tread behind her as she walked out into the wings again and around behind the second act set. She was plunged at once into a dark world of empty spaces that seemed, somehow, not empty. She looked up again into the shadowy loft.
Against the dark old wall and about thirty feet above the stage was a small wooden platform. Narrow wooden steps led upward to it, and ropes from away overhead dropped in long taut lines to its railing … Susan turned toward it, and the man at her side said suddenly:
“See here, you aren’t going up in the fly gallery, are you?”
“Why not?” said Susan, wondering what he would say.
“Well, it’s—it’s against union rules, you know. Nobody but stage crew is permitted up there. And—and then there must be two men; I mean to manipulate the ropes, you know. It’s—rather dangerous. Nearly had an accident myself once—fellow let down what looked like an empty rope, not realizing it held a weight. Came very near to hitting me. Since then, believe me, I warn my casts to stay away from the gallery. These amateurs—I say, what in the world do you want to go up there for? There’s nothing there.”
He wasn’t as quick-witted as somehow she had expected him to be; otherwise his objections would have been more forceful.
She put her hand on the railing of the steps and was glad it was there, for Susan had never liked a ladder or anything remotely resembling it.
“Union rules aren’t applying tonight,” she said lightly and started upward.
It was not a pleasant climb. The steps were very narrow and very steep, and she was altogether too acutely aware that he was still following her. Step by step, just there below her heels. Oh, well—she could always call out to the people below. That is, if there were need. But she rather wished she had waited for Jim.
And when she reached the small gallery it seemed very much farther to the floor of the stage than the same distance had seemed looking up. She closed her eyes against a momentary dizziness and clung to the heavy railing.
“If you’re looking for clues,” said Dickenson’s suave voice at her side, “there’s nothing at all here. Don’t you think you’d better go down again? I can’t have you fainting on my hands up here.”
Susan opened her eyes.
“I’m not fainting,” she said. “What are these things called?” She touched one of a line of long wooden pegs fastened along the railing, from which extended the ropes.
“Pins,” he said briefly. “Ropes pass over those pulleys up there and are looped in a half-hitch around these. Holds them. It takes an expert to manipulate these things. The flys and drops are very heavy, you know. The new theaters have everything controlled by electricity. It’s grand when you get in a place like that.” His eyes slid toward her face, and he said: “I shouldn’t dare to work one of these myself; though, of course, I’ve done it now and then in rehearsals. But the weight is much heavier than you’d think. Knew of a fellow once that got his ankle twisted in one of the coils, the thing got away from him, and he was carried clear up to the grids—an eighty-foot drop below.” He looked at her more fully and said very slowly and markedly: “It’s very dangerous.”
He knows that I know, thought Susan.
She looked downward. The back part of the stage was spread out below her as if it were on a platter. But the exterior set and the border above it cut off, except for a band of brighter light, a view of the deputy and of the seats. There were people near—yet no one was to be seen. And no one knew where she was.
It looked a long distance to the floor below. How easy an accident would be—how easy a slip and a fall!
It was just then that she saw the loops of rope. The loops that were not quite like those other loops—the loops that were irregular and lacked entirely the sureness that marked those about the other pins. For her life she could not have refrained from putting out her hand and clutching the rope above that pin.
“Look out,” said Dickenson in a swift hard voice.
Susan was looking upward through the dimness of the loft. It was dust that made it so dim—a lazy fog of dust hanging up there, moving in its own mysterious course. What did that rope support in the midst of the masking dusk?
Dickenson’s hands, like steel, were on her own. “Stop that,” he said. And then Susan knew that someone was moving on the floor below. It was a small figure in a beige coat, and it looked up and said: “Dickie. Dickie, darling, what are you doing?”
Susan could feel Dickenson’s muscles jerk at the sound of Adelaide’s voice. But he did not relinquish his grip, although he called out in a strange voice:
“Go back to Jane, Adelaide. And stay there. Go on—”
But Adelaide too was staring upward into the purple fog of dust. Susan, fascinated, watched her small face become rigid and her eyes become fixed and black and horrified.
“Dickie—” screamed Adelaide and turned blindly and fell in a huddled queer heap.
Dickenson released Susan’s hands and was climbing down the steps. The deputy reached Adelaide first, and then Jane came hurrying from somewhere, and Tom Remy followed. By the time they had moved Adelaide to the couch and pushed things about to give her air, the constable and Jim were there, too.
Susan clung to the railing and watched. The figures below were foreshortened and queer, but every word floated up to her ears.
So that was the weapon. But what was the motive?
Her knees were unsteady, and she glanced at the steep narrow steps at her side and did not want to undertake that descent It was always easier to climb a ladder than to go down it again. Jim, below, was looking for her.
She whistled softly, and he saw her, though no one else looked away from the couch where Adelaide was lying. His eyes looked relieved, and he walked directly under the gallery and said softly:
“Come down.”
Susan looked at the ladder-like steps again and shook her head. “Can’t.”
He started to speak, stopped, and decided to join her. Her breath began to come more evenly as she watched his gray shoulders come nearer and nearer.
He emerged onto the gallery and said rather grimly: “I was looking for you.”
“And high time,” said Susan unsteadily. “Take a girl for a ride, plunge her into murder, and leave her there, scared half to death.”
“Nonsense,” said Jim simply. “See here, Susan, what do you make of all this? And why did that woman down there faint?”
“Because I know what the weapon was that killed Brock Cholster,” said Susan. “And she knows, too.”
“Weapon?” said Jim.
Susan looked at the couch and then upward again into the purple dusk.
“Jim,” she said slowly. “I’m going to put myself in the place of the murderer for a moment. And I want you to listen. Suppose I want to murder Brock Cholster—perhaps have wanted to for a long time, or perhaps quite suddenly want to more overwhelmingly than I have ever wanted to before. Suppose I come up on the stage and the asbestos curtain is down and thus no one can see and for some reason I stop there and discover that Cholster is there, too. That he is sleepy and drowsy, for he’s been gardening all day—that he is lying at full length on the couch down there.”
“Susan—”
“Wait. I stand there perhaps and look at him and hate him. Hate him as I’ve never done before. Hate him until it is almost insupportable. For he stands in the way of something I must have. And I wish that he were dead. But the wish isn’t enough to kill him, and perhaps it’s accident—or perhaps it’s some memory of danger from above that makes me look upward. And way up there, hanging like a sword of Damocles I see a weapon—wait, Jim, don’t talk—
“It’s hanging there as if it were waiting for me. And it looks as if Cholster has actually chosen to put himself directly under it—as if fate itself were offering the weapon ready for my hand. I look at it and think only of that weapon at last ready for me and that no one will know—or dream of looking up there. There isn’t much time, so I hurry up to this gallery. And I find the rope that holds that weight. So I—I let down the rope—slowly, perhaps, until I discover that it is actually, as it looked from down there, directly above his head. And when I’m sure of that I let it fall. Heavily.”
She stopped and this time Jim did not offer to speak. He was staring upward, and his face looked white and grim. He said finally: “And then what?”
“Then,” said Susan. “I jerk the thing up again. I loop the rope hurriedly around this pin. I hurry down the steps. He is dead, and the thing is done. Suddenly the nervous tension of that awful emotion collapses, and I am terrified. How can I hide my own part in what has happened? How can I confuse things—make them seem different—somehow change things? The lack of a weapon will lead suspicion away from the people now in the theater and thus from myself. Fortunately he is on the couch, and the couch—Jim, you remember the rumbling sound they heard?”
Jim looked at her. “The ventilator?”
“Perhaps it was going, too, but the sound of someone arranging the stage was the sound of that light couch being pushed across the stage. (It’s got casters and would move readily; I looked to be sure.) It would not be difficult to pull the body off the couch and return the couch to its place. And as the body lay when it was discovered, there was nothing but proscenium and ceiling above it, for it was far out over the footlights. It was simple enough to put up the asbestos curtain and thus allow the body to project beyond the curtain line.”
Jim shook his head slowly.
“But the murderer couldn’t have known that Cholster would be exactly there.”
“The murderer didn’t know! Of course, he didn’t know. That’s the key to the whole affair. The crime wasn’t planned at all. All that stored-up hatred didn’t, perhaps, even reach the point of murder until the murderer saw the man and the weapon. Victim and weapon together, at a time when for some reason the murderer was worked up to a frenzy—all three combined like chemicals and produced murder.”
Susan’s grave low voice came to a stop. In the silence, she could hear the crisp flap of a newspaper with which Jane was fanning Adelaide and the murmur of Tom Remy’s voice speaking to Dickenson.
Jim sighed and said very soberly and deliberately:
“I believe you’re right, Sue. The weight will show it under analysis. And of course, if it didn’t come exactly over his head it would have been a simple matter to fasten the rope, run down to him without waking him and swing the thing so that it—accomplished its purpose. The weight itself isn’t much, but the momentum makes it deadly. Yes, Sue, I think you’re right. But any one of them could have done it. Who had a motive?”
“The motive must have been actually desire,” said Susan slowly. “Desire so strong that it produced a smoldering, gathering hatred. All ready to be lashed into frenzy. But I don’t know.” She paused, wishing she could seek objectively instead of subjectively through all those currents of feeling and motives and consciousness that are handily put together and labeled personality. Or character. Jim was more reasonable and more definite than she was; she could only push out blind tentacles of something that was perilously like intuition.
“I don’t know,” she said sadly, “what that lashing was.”
Jim said thoughtfully: “Revenge might come into it. A grudge. The constable says Cholster had really a wicked temper. Town gossip has it that he was nothing short of a tyrant in his own home.”
“Does the constable’s knowledge extend to Jane Cholster’s reaction?”
“I asked about that. He knew of nothing, except that she was a bit high-handed. But if there was trouble between them, the constable hadn’t heard of it. Oh, by the way, Sue—this young Dickenson isn’t altogether honest in his statement about what he was doing back there in the office. He was actually talking over long distance.”
“Talking!”
“Exactly. To some woman. I went back to telephone my story. Had to make a long distance call, and the girl asked if I wanted the charge reversed again. I said, ‘Again?’ and she said, ‘Oh I thought it was Mr. Dickenson. You’re at the Majestic, aren’t you?’ (The Majestic, dear Susan, is the name of this theater.) It took only a minute or two to get it out of her. At ten minutes to eight o’clock he was talking to a girl in Springfield. It lasted only a few minutes, so it isn’t an alibi. And from what central, who obligingly listened in, says, it was an extremely loving conversation. Why are you looking so queer?”
“Queer?” said Susan vaguely. “Oh—nothing. Except that there’s the weapon, you see. And the murderer. And—odd, isn’t it, if that telephone conversation hadn’t taken place there would have been no murder.”
“What—”
“Oh, yes, of course. It couldn’t have been any other way. But—oh, look—look, Jim, quick—down there! See, she’s becoming conscious again. She’s opening her eyes—she’s looking—she’s remembering.”
Jim, watching, saw the figure in the beige coat stir, sit upright, and fumble suddenly at the bottom of the coat.
Susan was leaning forward, her face white and her eyes frightened.
“Quick, Jim, get the coat. Somehow—anyhow—”
After all, she did not even remember going down that narrow, steep flight of steps. She didn’t know either what Jim said to the others. She only knew that he thrust the coat into her hands.
The pockets were empty, but she found it in the bottom of the coat between the lining and the soft beige wool. She worked the small hard object up until it emerged from a torn bit of the lining of a pocket and was in her fingers.
“What are you doing?” demanded Jane Cholster. Her face was pasty gray and her eyes blazing.
Susan did not reply. Instead she crossed the stage, and Jim was beside her when she knelt there at the body. It was he who thrust Tom Remy out of the way when he would have snatched at the thing that Susan held. Somebody—the constable it was—seized Remy and held him struggling, and the guard at the door and the little deputy were both running toward them.
Then Susan covered the face again.
“What—” said Jim. “Who did it?”
Susan felt ill and wished she had never heard of Kittiwake. She said to Jane: “Did you put the make-up box and cap in his dressing room?”
“Yes, of course,” said Jane slowly. “I left it open and ready for him.”
“You knew that he objected,” said Susan after a long moment. “You knew he refused.”
“God forgive me,” said Jane suddenly looking old and tired. “I knew—I think we all knew—”
Susan nodded to Jim. “I wasn’t sure,” she said, “until Mrs. Cholster admitted it just now. That is, I wasn’t sure of the motive. The rest of it was terribly simple.”
She held out her hand toward the constable. “Here it is,” she said. “The lipstick that was used on his mouth by the murderer.”
“Lip—” said the constable and after a long time added—“stick.” And away at the back someone was suddenly pounding on the doors—pounding so loud that the sound echoed in waves that all but submerged those on the stage.
The constable turned to the deputy.
“Open the door for the sheriff,” he said.
The group moved and wavered. The sound and motion left Jim and Susan for a moment as if on a small remote island.
“Are you sure?” said Jim.
Susan nodded. “The face was made up for only one motive, and that had to be to give the impression that it had been made up before the murder; thus that the murder had been done after, approximately, eight o’clock—the time set for make-up. Therefore, it must have been done before eight or thereabouts. Therefore it had to be done by someone who was here at eight—Dickenson—Jane—Tom Remy.”
“Wait. How do you know the face was made up by the murderer?”
“There was no powder on it and no cream. That would have been put on first. And the lipstick on his mouth was not matched in color or in quality by any of the lip paste in the make-up boxes downstairs. Of course, there were a hundred places to hide the lipstick. But it was not hidden till too late.”
The pounding stopped and there was a sound of voices—inquiring, explaining.
Jim glanced over Susan’s shoulder and said tersely: “Go on. Quick.”
“Well, then—since the murder wasn’t planned, there must be inconsistencies—things that changed somehow in the very act of being done. Blunders. I tried again to follow what I should have done in the murderer’s place: frantic, trying to confuse things again—changing the position of the body, putting on the beard—Cholster had it there in his hand, probably, and it must have suggested that attempt at make-up. Yet there was no time to open a make-up box and do it thoroughly. Besides, the powder would have spilled. The beard and lipstick were enough, anyway.”
“Yes—yes—”
“Well, then, I would have turned and—and passed the switchboard and put up the asbestos curtain—perhaps, as I said before, so the body could be dragged out near the footlights, perhaps merely from that frantic blind desire to confuse, to make things opposite to what they had been. I don’t know. But after that I would have gone down to the dressing room. And on the way I would have passed the stage entrance. And I would have known suddenly of another change—of another inconsistency. That I could walk out that door, wait outside for a few moments, walk slowly around to the front of the theater, enter again, and—this time—be very sure that I was seen by the man in the office. Then, in going down to the dressing room again, I could bolt that door, on the inside, as it had been.”
Jim’s eyes looked dark and shining. The confused voices of sheriff and men were coming closer.
Jim said, whispering: “Adelaide.”
“No one else entered after eight o’clock. If she had had time to plan, she wouldn’t have made up Cholster. But she was frantic, excited, obliged to snatch at defense. This time she snatched at an alibi. Dickenson discovered the murder only a moment or two after her arrival. But it was her second arrival. He really hadn’t seen her at first. He was too intent on the girl in Springfield probably.”
“But the motive?”
“Remember Cholster controlled her money and thus actually controlled her. He was tyrannical and violent-tempered. It seemed to me that her sobs were more frightened petulance than sorrow. And that she was much more concerned about Dickenson than anything else. That’s what I meant and what Jane meant when she replied. Probably Dickenson talked marriage: Cholster objected; refused to give Adelaide money that was rightfully her own; and Dickenson—I don’t suppose he wanted her without money.”
“And then she heard the telephone conversation—”
“Yes,” said Susan soberly. “She entered the theater and heard that. And jealousy—rage—the fury of a woman who sees the only thing she wants denied her (a vain woman, clutching at youth)—all of it swept to a climax. She walked up to the stage and saw Cholster lying there asleep. And at the same instant saw a weapon for her vengeance and for her release hanging there over his head.”
“It’s her lipstick?”
“Yes. It was in her coat pocket; that’s why she sent for her coat. Jane uses none. Adelaide does, and you can see a smear of it on her lips now. It’s called claret—a rather soft crimson. Any woman would note the exact shade. And Tom Remy saw it, too. He was looking in Cholster’s make-up box to see if there was a stick of lip paste of that shade of soft crimson. And without the odor of grease paints. But then,” said Susan slowly, “perhaps they all knew in their hearts who did it—and why. Jane admitted that. And—for proof there are fingerprints on the bolt of the stage door where Adelaide had to touch it.”
The sheriff reached the footlights and stopped.
Without looking Susan could see the group at the other side of the stage.
“So,” said the sheriff, “there’s a murder here.”
Jim’s hand touched Susan’s shoulder.
“The car’s outside at the corner where we left it. Go on and wait for me there.”