Chapter Two

“You may be justified in making all this fuss,” said Humbleby. “Maurice Crane may have been poisoned—as you seem to imagine. But really, you ought at least to explain what it is that’s made you suspicious. The position at present is distressingly complicated and—um—irregular.”

He looked for support to Superintendent Capstick, who responded with bemused signals of assent. In the twenty minutes since his arrival at the studios Superintendent Capstick had achieved a condition of bewilderment so complete and far-reaching that it had altogether bereft him of speech. By the antiphonal narrative of Fen and Humbleby his intellect had been utterly fogged, and for the moment, and in spite of the fact that theoretically he was in charge, he was capable of nothing more constructive than sitting and staring, with his mouth ajar. It must not, however, be thought that Capstick was a stupid man. He possessed, as a matter of fact, a very fair share of natural intelligence. But he had been haled away from the Gisford Police-station with his mind full of a cherished project for reforming the town’s traffic arrangements, and this preoccupation, combined with Fen and Humbleby’s allusive habit of speech, had disastrously limited his mental reach. He had not, so far, succeeded in grasping who Gloria Scott was, why she had committed suicide, what connection she had with Maurice Crane, what Fen was doing at the studios, or why it should have been suggested that in the manner of Maurice Crane’s death there was anything at all sinister; and being slightly awed by Humbleby, and much more awed by his surroundings (for he was an assiduous film-goer), he had not cared to press for a more lucid explanation of these matters than he had received so far. At Humbleby’s demand to Fen, therefore, he leaned forward hopefully in his chair: one point at least, he told himself, was going to be cleared up.

But to his chagrin it was not. Fen grew testy at being pinned down, and spoke annoyingly of premonitions. The doctor, he said, had agreed that it might have been poison that had killed Maurice Crane; and on its being pointed out to him that the doctor had also agreed that it might not, he countered by reminding Humbleby that both Madge and Nicholas had testified to their brother s unexceptionally good health.

“All the same, natural deaths do occur now and then,” said Humbleby rather nastily. “Just once in a while someone pops off for some reason other than malice aforethought. And the mere fact that Maurice Crane hadn’t been ill isn’t evidence. Everyone has to make a start with illness sooner or later.”

“He was sick.” Capstick, who was becoming unnerved at his own inanition, plunged headlong in with what appeared to be one of the few incontrovertible features of the affair. “That was why he went out of the room. To be sick.”

Both Fen and Humbleby ignored this—not because they wished to be rude but because it was so negative as to defy answering. And Capstick, brought once again to a stand, slumped back in his chair and wiped a large handkerchief across his mottled, sweating brow.

“No, my point is this,” Humbleby went on. “Unless Crane’s death has some significant relation to the suicide of Gloria Scott, I’m trespassing on officially forbidden territory, and I must get off it, quick. But when I ask you to establish a significant relation, it turns out that all you can do is mutter about some reasonless foreboding or other…”

“Damn it,” said Fen, nettled, “Crane was a material witness in the Gloria Scott affair, wasn’t he? You shouldn’t fret so much about red tape, Humbleby: it’s not as if there were any question of your taking charge of the case. All you’re doing is asking Capstick for his co-operation in dealing with a matter which may possibly be connected with it. Isn’t that so, Capstick?”

“Ah,” said Capstick hurriedly. “Ah.”

“All right,” said Humbleby, with the air of one compelled against his will to abandon all responsibility. “All right. But for heaven’s sake, why murder?”

“Because someone tried to prevent you from finding out who Gloria Scott really was.”

“Now, that’s an interesting thing,” said Capstick. “I remember once when we were rounding up a gang of racecourse touts—”

“I fail altogether,” said Humbleby, “to see the connection.”

Capstick was abashed. “I only thought,” he said submissively, “that it might be interesting for you to hear how—”

“No, no. I mean the connection between the obliteration of Gloria Scott’s identity and the notion that Maurice Crane was murdered.”

“Really, Humbleby, you’re unenviably dense.” And Fen stared at that officer in some suspicion. “You’d agree, I suppose, that the motive of the person who ransacked the girl’s rooms wasn’t to conceal her identity as ‘Gloria Scott’?”

“I’ll grant you that, yes. Since she’s been in a film or two, that was bound to come to light pretty rapidly.”

“The idea, then, was to conceal her real identity.”

“Yes.”

“And since the motive for her suicide was almost certainly something recent—that’s to say, something that had happened to her while she was calling herself Gloria Scott—then X’s purpose in turning her rooms upside down can’t very well have been to hide that motive.”

“You mean,” Capstick interposed cautiously, “that if some chap was introduced to her as Gloria Scott and did her a mischief, and she killed herself because of it, then he couldn’t hope to avoid being tied up with the business just by cutting the laundry-marks out of her clothes and so forth?”

“Exactly. You see, Humbleby, how readily Capstick has grasped the essentials of the situation.” And upon this unwitting irony Fen paused for breath. “Therefore X’s purpose in visiting her rooms was something quite different.”

“There are a lot of loopholes in this exposition,” Humbleby complained. “Not to say—um—paralogisms. But go on. What was X’s purpose?”

“As far as I can see, we’re bound to assume that his purpose was to keep secret a connection between himself and her which existed before she took the name of Gloria Scott and which ceased to exist—so far as anyone could, know—as soon as she took that name.”

“Not bad,” Humbleby conceded. “Not bad at all… And we can trace her back for about two years in the identity of Gloria Scott…”

“Can you?”

“Yes. I’ve rung up Charles again, and in the last hour or two he’s had a good many telephone calls from people who’ve seen the photograph, including two from Menenford, one from the producer at the repertory theatre and one from a woman who keeps a boarding-house where the girl lived while she was working there. It seems that no one at Menenford realised that her name wasn’t Gloria Scott. In fact, no one we’ve heard from knew her under any other name.”

“Perhaps,” said Capstick warily, “that actually was her real name.”

“We’ve no definite proof that it wasn’t,” Humbleby agreed. “But on the other hand, no one so far has admitted to knowing her prior to two years ago, when she turned up as ‘Gloria Scott’ at Menenford.”

“That’s a paralogism, if you like,” said Fen; and was on the point of explaining why when Capstick, in hungry pursuit of his momentary advantage, forestalled him.

“But it’s her face you’ve asked people to identify,” said Capstick. “And even if she changed her name, she can’t have changed her face. The fact that no one’s come forward who knew her earlier than two years ago probably means that up to two years ago she just wasn’t in England.”

“Just so,” said Fen.

“Ah, yes. Stupid of me,” said Humbleby with aggravating cheerfulness. “I ought to have seen that. So perhaps her real name was Gloria Scott. She may simply have said it wasn’t in order to make an impression by being mysterious.”

But Fen shook his head. “In that case the destruction in her rooms becomes totally inexplicable.”

“Oh, yes, so it does,” said Capstick after a moment’s cogitation; and thereupon he retired from the field—though not, he felt, wholly without honour—and reverted to mopping his brow.

And Humbleby gestured assent. “So getting back to X’s purpose in trying to conceal an at least two-year-old connection with the girl…” He hesitated, considering. “I grant that it wouldn’t be reasonable to look as far back as that for a motive for her suicide—though now I come to think of it”—and here he unexpectedly changed his tack—“I suppose it’s not inconceivable that something or someone cropping up out of her past drove her to it. Blackmail, for instance.”

“I think, you know,” said Fen, “that we shall probably find the motive for her suicide very much nearer at hand. And if that’s so—if it’s something which concerns Gloria Scott and not Aggie Thistleton, or whatever her real name was—then as far as I can see there’s only one explanation of X’s invading her rooms and doing what he did.”

“And that is?”

“Vengeance,” said Fen.

The word has ordinarily a distinct flavour of melodrama about it; but at its use in this context neither Humbleby nor Capstick felt much inclined to smile. Perhaps this was because the proximity of Maurice Crane’s body, lying covered with a dust-sheet where it had fallen, had a sobering effect even on men professionally inured to death. Apart from it, and from themselves, the room was now empty. The scattered scribbling paper on the table, the loaded ash-trays and the jettisoned scripts of The Unfortunate Lady bore mute witness to the conference which an hour ago had been so catastrophically broken up. The trolley stood loaded with half-empty coffee-cups, their contents cold, grey and unappetising, and other cups had been put down in other places about the room. The hand of the electric clock above the door jolted forward audibly in the silence; beyond the windows the breeze was freshening in the trees, tossing the buds like a juggler’s balls, so that their tender green glistened in the sunlight. And Humbleby, very pensive, said:

“‘On all the line a sudden vengeance waits...’ Is that what you have in mind?”

“It was that which first suggested the possibility.”

“A sudden vengeance waits,” said Capstick bemusedly. “A sudden—” With an effort he pulled himself together. “What are you talking about now?” he demanded.

They explained what they were talking about and failed to impress him with it.

“But that’s nothing but a poem,” he said rather indignantly. “Poems haven’t got anything to do with what happens in real life. I tell you frankly, I don’t at all see what you’re getting at.”

“What I’m getting at is this,” said Fen. “If a man wanted to revenge Gloria Scott’s suicide by killing the people who drove her to it, and if that man was known to be connected with her only under her real identity, then effacing that identity would be a step towards ensuring his own safety. Suppose that you’re her brother, Capstick. She’s run away from home and you haven’t seen her or heard of her for three years. Then one evening, quite accidentally, you meet her somewhere in London. She explains that she is in great trouble and tells you who is responsible. She kills herself, and you, witnessing the suicide or hearing of it, decide to take vengeance. But you know that the police will visit her rooms and will find, pretty certainly, evidence that her name is really Jane Capstick. And that means that as soon as the people who wronged her start dying off, the police are going to start investigating you with some care. But if you can hide the fact that your sister was called Capstick, then you’ve got a much better chance of getting away with your murders undetected, since the police won’t know in what direction to look. So you go to her rooms and obliterate that name from all her belongings. And then you make a start on your victim or victims.”

“It’s a very fine fantasy,” said Humbleby. “But nothing more than that.”

“It’s at least a possible hypothesis,” said Fen defensively. “And if Maurice Crane proves to have been poisoned I shall consider it a probable one. He has good qualifications for the role of First Victim, you know, since it’s tolerably certain that he got the girl with child.”

“Well, I grant you all that, sir.” Capstick’s weak spasm of annoyance was subsiding as the issues became more comprehensible to him. “But the question is, Does your hypothesis justify me in treating this business”—he nodded towards the body on the floor—“as murder, and all these folk we’ve got shut up in the next room as suspects?”

“There are some things,” said Humbleby, “which you can do without treading on anybody’s toes. For example, you can impound these coffee-cups and have their contents analysed, and you can take a sample of what was—um—egested. Also, you can try to find out which of the cups was Maurice Crane’s, though this room’s in such a muddle that I’m afraid it’ll be difficult.”

“And what about searching people?” Fen asked.

Capstick was shocked. “Search them, sir?”

“Why not? just because they’re in the film industry that doesn’t mean they’re vested with—with Benefit of Clergy or any such privilege.”

“I doubt if it’d be wise.” Capstick spoke glumly. “They’re influential people with a lot of money, and you have to watch yourself when you’re dealing with that type. As it is, we’ve kept them shut up a sight longer than we ought.” He sighed nostalgically, remembering the comfortable impersonality of parking regulations and one-way streets. “I don’t want to neglect anything, of course, but…”

He paused and looked appealingly at Humbleby, who to his relief said:

“Anyway, I can’t imagine that searching them would do much good. If there is a poisoner among them, he’ll obviously be prepared for that. But we must interview them, of course, even if it means keeping them here another half-hour or so. I hope it won’t disrupt half the business of the studios.”

“This is a Saturday,” said Fen, “and work here stops at mid-day on Saturdays. You may upset their week-ends, but I can’t say the thought of that distresses me very much.”

Capstick looked again at Humbleby. “Well, would you be prepared to do the talking, Inspector? I know you’ve got questions of your own to ask about the girl, and one way and another,” said Capstick with some pathos, “I should say that for the moment you’re rather more in the picture than I am.”

“If you want me to, of course I will,” said Humbleby. “You’d better keep quiet, Fen,” he added as an afterthought. “They’ll definitely resent it if you start putting on a Torquemada act, and that might make trouble for the Superintendent.”

“You seem to have no faith at all in my discretion,” Fen grumbled as he got to his feet, “and I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve it, I’m sure. If I’m to be gagged, you must ask my question for me.”

“And that is?”

“Ask Madge and Nicholas Crane if they know of any reason, other than Maurice’s salacity, why Gloria Scott should have killed herself. They’ll say they don’t, but go on asking just the same.”

“Have you got information that you’re keeping from me?” said Humbleby suspiciously.

“No, it’s another premonition.” And Fen nodded affably. “I’m very fertile in premonitions today. Give me time and I’ll dream up the winner of the three-thirty for you… Shall we go?”

In the adjacent room some restiveness was apparent. Had Leiper been present, the Unfortunate Lady conference would have gone on till one o’clock or later, but this reflection in no way palliated the prevailing sense of injury at being still confined to the studios. In one corner Madge Crane was displaying quiet grief, and but for the fact that her immediate reactions to her brother’s death had not been of quite that order, might have been supposed to have been actually experiencing the emotion. Stuart North, impelled by some obscure sense of duty, was sneezing fitful consolation at her, while Caroline Cecil, as the only other woman present, gravely abetted his efforts. Medesco sat alone, defiantly sketching grottoes, while the young man from the Music Department stared out of the window and whistled the Berenice Minuet through his teeth. Evan George, resolutely though discreetly cheerful, was talking to Nicholas Crane; Jocelyn Stafford prowled up and down, scowling; and Gresson, in an undertone, was regaling the blonde stenographers with what he conceived to be light badinage. They all looked up as Fen, Capstick and Humbleby entered, and Fen at least they eyed with distinct mistrust; it was disconcerting, no doubt, and obscurely suggestive of betrayal, to find an erstwhile collaborator suddenly transferred to the opposite side of the fence.

Humbleby got down to business without delay.

“We’re extremely sorry to have kept you so long,” he said ingratiatingly, “and particularly in such distressing circumstances.” He bowed to Madge Crane, who summoned up, in response, an effectively lachrymose little smile. “Our trouble has been that Mr. Crane’s death was so very sudden and unexpected.”

Medesco grunted. “Who are you?” he demanded.

Humbleby contemplated him with disfavour. “I am a Detective-Inspector from Scotland Yard,” he said. “And I’m here on business which may in some way be linked up with Mr. Crane’s death… Sudden and unexpected, I was saying; and unfortunately the doctor hasn’t been able to give us any information as to what caused it.”

“So you’re thinking he may have poisoned himself,” said Medesco brusquely, “or that someone did him in.”

At this, Madge Crane gave vent to a little cry of dismay. Such things need careful practice if they are to come off, and the effect of this essay suggested not so much spiritual anguish as the callous insertion of a pin. Nicholas Crane, sensible, perhaps, that she was a little over-playing the part, frowned slightly and said:

“Really, Aubrey, I don’t think that’s in the best of taste.”

“It is not,” said Humbleby—and he uttered the reproof with a gravity so overwhelming that Jocelyn Stafford stopped pacing in order to regard him with a startled and speculative eye; film people are always on the look-out for fresh acting talent, or anyway delude themselves that they are. “We are not,” Humbleby continued mendaciously, “entertaining any such suspicions as those which you—um—adumbrate. But naturally there’s bound to be an inquest, and we’re obliged, therefore, to investigate all possible contingencies, however remote and unlikely they may seem. Now, if I may have your cooperation for a few minutes…”

They gave it—in a few cases with truculence, but for the most part readily enough. It revealed nothing whatever that was to the purpose. No one could remember where Maurice Crane had put his cup when he had finished with it, and no one, up to the moment of his leaving the room, had observed anything unusual in his behaviour or in anyone else’s.

“Thank you,” said Humbleby when this parade of nescience was at last over. “And now we come to the matter with which I’m more directly concerned. The matter of Gloria Scott.”

There was a sudden pregnant hush, in which Madge Crane’s face hardened and she glanced swiftly at her brother. Of all the people there, only Gresson and the young man from the Music Department seemed unaffected by the name. The two stenographers, their poise momentarily in abeyance, looked at one another meaningly. And Stuart North was so surprised that he simply gaped.

“Gloria Scott?” he said. “What the hell…?”

“I take it you haven’t seen this morning’s papers, Mr. North.”

“No, I have not. My eyes are so rheumy I shouldn’t be able to read them.”

“In the majority of them,” said Humbleby, “there’s a picture of Miss Scott. Some of you others may have seen it.” Madge, Nicholas, Medesco and Jocelyn Stafford all nodded. “The picture has been published thanks to the fact that during the night before last Miss Scott committed suicide.”

Something like horror appeared in Stuart North’s brown, creased face.

“M-my God,” he stammered. “You—you can’t m-mean that.”

“It’s true, I’m afraid.”

North stared dazedly at the damp handkerchief crumpled in his hand. “That sweet, silly child,” he said vehemently. “It’s incredible… Why, she—”

And then, recollecting something, he checked himself and looked down at Madge Crane where she sat beside him in grey and olive-green. Everyone there was displaying some degree of astonishment—everyone, that is, except Nicholas Crane, who remained impassive, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his over-elegant sports jacket. To Fen it seemed probable that he was deliberately avoiding his sister’s eye. There was little that Humbleby missed, and he, too, must have observed this, but he made no comment, and his voice was non-committal as he said:

“We have reason to believe that ‘Gloria Scott’ was merely a stage name. Does anyone know what this girl’s real name was?”

Silence.

“Was anyone here acquainted with her before she came to the studios a year ago?”

Again silence.

“Can any of you suggest a reason why she should have killed herself?”

And now there was restless, uneasy movement. Heads were turned, feet shuffled, eye met eye in dumb interrogation. But still no one spoke.

“It may be,” said Humbleby, “that one of you has an answer to that question, but doesn’t want to blurt it out in public. If that’s so, either the Superintendent”—he indicated Capstick, who was hovering self-consciously at his elbow—“or myself will be available in private after we disperse or at any time.”

Evan George, small, harassed and untidy, opened his mouth as if to speak and then hurriedly shut it again. There was no other response.

“Very well,” said Humbleby. “Now, there’s just one other matter… Mr. Crane, I believe you gave a party the evening before last—Thursday evening, that is.”

Almost imperceptibly Nicholas Crane stiffened. Then, relaxing again, he produced a gold case from an inside pocket, took a flat cigarette from it, and put it with deliberation into the corner of his mouth. His grey eyes were intent beneath heavy lids; his corn-coloured hair, with its displeasing suggestion of an artificial wave at the front, gleamed where the sun caught it; his body, the body of an athlete run to seed, seemed to droop from his shoulders like a coat on a hanger. His left cheek twitched with what could be the beginnings of a tic douleureux, and when, lighting the cigarette, he curled back his full lips, you could glimpse strong, yellow, irregular teeth.

He inhaled and blew out smoke before replying.

“Yes,” he said indifferently. “I gave a party all right. What about it?”

“And Miss Scott was one of the guests?”

“Certainly.”

“May I ask, please, why you invited her?”

Nicholas’s eyes widened. “I liked her,” he said mildly—and there was something about the statement which compelled belief. “She was a nice kid. Unaffected.”

It occurred to Fen that with persons as important as Nicholas she would, of course, necessarily be that: only professional inferiors such as Valerie Bryant would see the less prepossessing side of her character. Fen stirred where he stood, and Humbleby, noting the movement and apparently fearing that he was on the point of breaking his vows of silence, hastened to say:

“And was anyone else here at your party?”

Nicholas glanced round the room. He took his time about it, though he was not so leisurely as to be uncivil.

“Madge was,” he said. “And Aubrey—Mr. Medesco. And Mr. Evan George. And Mr. Stuart North. And Miss Caroline Cecil.” He seemed to take an ironic relish in this formal mode of speech. “There were others, too—my brother David, for instance. I can give you a complete list if you need it.”

“And Mr. Maurice Crane?”

“He wasn’t able to come.”

“I see.” Humbleby devoted a moment to ingesting this information. “That seems clear enough… I should like the people who were at that party to remain for just a few minutes longer. The rest, I think, can go, unless—” He turned interrogatively to Capstick, who, caught off-balance, made a hurried, evasive noise in his nose. “Right you are, then. Remember, please, that the Superintendent and myself are at your disposal if you should feel you have anything important to tell us about Miss Scott or Mr. Maurice Crane… Thank you all very much.”

In an unnatural silence, with downcast gaze and stepping warily, like mourners at a funeral, Gresson, Stafford, the two stenographers and the young man from the Music Department took their departure. As soon as their rearguard had closed the door, a babble of pent-up talk penetrated through it, and presently diminished along the corridor outside.

Nicholas Crane, who had settled himself on the edge of a table and was swinging an impeccably trousered leg, raised his eyebrows quizzically.

“Gossip and scandal-mongering,” he said. “We’re going to get a lot of that for the next week or two… Would it be in order, Inspector, for me to ask what my party has to do with this wretched girl’s death?”

Madge lifted to Stuart North a face whose tear-stains she did not seem in any hurry to remove.

“Poor darling Maurice,” she murmured. “And now—and now poor sweet little Gloria…” She turned to Humbleby. “I know it’s awful about Gloria,” she pleaded, with a catch in her voice, “but Maurice was nearer to me, and somehow—oh, I don’t want to be brutal, but somehow it seems so awful to be talking calmly about her when darling Maurice is next door, l-lying—”

“Lying dead.” It was Medesco, cold, massive and immovable, who contributed this unfeeling gloss—and as he spoke, Madge’s pretty face grew suddenly mean and spiteful.

“You mind what you’re saying,” she told him, her voice sharp and purposive, “or I’ll see to it that you never get another—”

She stopped abruptly, belatedly aware that this would not do. In another moment, and with an aplomb which Fen could not but admire, she was quietly sobbing, the heel of one slim and delicate hand pressed shamefastly against her brow.

“Oh God, I’m getting hysterical,” she whispered. “I’m getting overwrought. Stuart… darling…”

Stuart North somewhat ineptly patted her shoulder, uttering condolences which would have been more effective if they had not coincided with a prolonged fit of coughing. And Nicholas, who had been contemplating his sister without any very evident sympathy, took the opportunity of repeating his question to Humbleby.

“Oh, that.” Humbleby had abandoned his official manner and seemed friendly and confiding. “That’s easy. We don’t understand why Miss Scott killed herself, and as we’re professional busybodies we want to find out. We know she was cheerful and normal at lunch-time that day; we also know that at two a.m. that night she committed suicide. So you see, it’s a question of trying to discover what upset her, and your party is a possible line of approach.” Humbleby raised his voice to address the company at large. “Listen, please, everybody. I want to know all you can tell me about what Gloria Scott said and did at Thursday evening’s party, what sort of mood she was in, and so forth… Was there any special reason for the party, by the way?”

Nicholas grinned, not unattractively. “It was my birthday.”

“Congratulations,” said Humbleby politely. “A very good pretext for a party, I always think… And now, about Gloria Scott…”

She had been almost the last to arrive, he learned, and the time of her arrival was agreed to have been roughly ten o’clock. She had been cheerful enough. And the only odd thing was that in the first minute or two something had apparently startled her. It was Nicholas and Caroline Cecil who were the witnesses to this; the others, Humbleby gathered, had not noticed it.

“Startled?” he said. “In what way startled?”

“Oh… rather as if she’d seen a ghost,” said Caroline Cecil. She was an agreeable, black-haired girl who in private life compensated for her screen roles with an unflagging amiability. “It didn’t last long—she got over it almost at once. I asked her what was the matter, and she embarked on some tale about imagining the elastic of her knickers had given way.” Miss Cecil chuckled earthily. “I admit that sort of thing does give you a turn—but just the same, I didn’t believe a word of it: it was obviously a smoke-screen.”

“But a smoke-screen for what?”

Miss Cecil shook her head. “There you’ve got me. And as I say, it didn’t last.”

“Apart from that she was cheerful, was she?”

“We-ell.” Miss Cecil pursed her lips dubiously. “She was thoughtful, I’d say. Not gloomy. Just thoughtful. As though there were a problem she had to work out—not a distressing problem, but a difficult one.”

“Not, in fact, the sort of problem that would drive her to suicide?”

“Good Lord, no. She’d forget about it for minutes at a time, and be just as riotous as the rest of us. Then she’d remember it again and go all distrait.”

“Was she watching any particular person there?”

“Well,” said Miss Cecil, “I did get the impression that she was avoiding watching some particular person. But that may have been just a romantic fancy of mine—and which of the gang it was I can’t tell you.”

“Who did she talk to?”

“Everyone, I should say. The party was getting pretty lively when she arrived, and people were shifting about a lot. She got landed with me to start with, but that wasn’t for long, and I honestly can’t remember how she made out later. By midnight,” said Miss Cecil, pleased, “the males had got their sexual steam up, and us girls were being bounced from hand to hand like a lot of beachballs… So we none of us had much time to watch what the others were doing. It really was a lovely party,” she concluded in heartfelt tones.

And this seemed to be the general opinion; people had been so busy enjoying themselves that they had had no attention to spare for Gloria Scott, and although it was agreed that she had not seemed at all in a suicidal frame of mind, there emerged nothing more substantial concerning her than the information Caroline Cecil had already given. Had she run amok, with a bread-knife—thought Humbleby gloomily—the occurrence might have been noted and remembered; but any nuance of behaviour subtler than that had been doomed by the circumstances to be swept permanently out of recollection the instant after it happened.

“And when did she leave?” he asked.

She had been the last to go, Nicholas Crane said. A small diehard contingent which included Medesco, Caroline Cecil and Evan George had made their farewells and clattered downstairs into the street, and Gloria Scott had remained behind for a minute or two, alone in the flat, with her host.

“Why was that?” said Humbleby.

“She wanted to talk about her part in The Unfortunate Lady. Getting it had rather gone to her head. I shooed her away as soon as I possibly could. Films are just work as far as I’m concerned, and when I’m not actually doing that work I like to forget about it.”

“And you didn’t upset her in any way?”

“Good heavens, no. She went off quite happily to join the others, who were still hanging about chatting on the pavement. That was about two in the morning, I fancy.”

“And you others—did you find her cheerful when she came out of the flat and joined you?”

Medesco sniffed. “We didn’t have time to notice, my dear man,” he growled. “She picked up Evan George in a single comprehensive movement and trotted away with him towards Piccadilly… ‘You’ll take me home, won’t you, Mr. George?’” Medesco mimicked. “And pouf!—they’d gone.”

Humbleby turned to that novelist, who was slightly flushed with embarrassment. “Did you know her well, then, sir?”

“I never set eyes on her before the party,” said George hurriedly. “It’s quite true—you can ask anyone.” He looked round for support. “She’d—well, she’d been making up to me a bit during the evening. I don’t know why, I’m sure,” he said apologetically, “because there were plenty of younger men about… Anyway, it’s true that she asked me to take her home. We went off to try and find a taxi.”

“And what did you talk about while you were finding it?”

George looked blank as he struggled to remember. “Oh, anything and everything,” he said at last with exacerbating vagueness. “The party. The film—I told her a bit about what had been going on at script conferences. Oh, and just people. The trouble is,” he said uncomfortably, “that I was a bit under the weather… But she didn’t look to me as if she was going to commit suicide, and I’m sure I can’t have said anything to upset her. Damn it, I scarcely knew the girl.”

“And in the end you didn’t take her home?”

“No, I didn’t. I was quite liking the prospect, I tell you that frankly, but when we got to the Piccadilly end of Half Moon Street she suddenly flared up at something I said.”

“What was that?”

“Well, it was about Miss Crane.” George cleared his throat uneasily and flushed again. “I just happened to mention how much I admired her looks.” Miss Crane, at this, smiled a little smile which combined in very masterly fashion diffidence, gratitude and overweening sadness at her brother’s death. “Obviously that was a mistake, because Miss Scott said something like: ‘Oh, for God’s sake, must you talk about other women when you’re with me?’ and there was a cab coming along and she hailed it and ran and got into it without saying good night or anything, and just drove off leaving me standing there.”

“It doesn’t sound to me,” said Medesco, “as if she was in a very well-balanced state of mind. And my own recollection is that you’d reached such an advanced stage of alcoholic stupor that you wouldn’t have noticed if she’d stopped in her tracks and stripped herself naked.”

“I’ve already admitted,” said George with an attempt at dignity which his size, and the ravaged condition of his clothes, somewhat nullified, “that I was a bit under the weather.” He paused. “Come to think of it, though, she was rather silent. I seemed to be doing most of the talking.” He scratched his head. “I wish I could remember more about it—I’m afraid I’m not being a very good witness.”

“None of this is helpful,” said Humbleby with candour. “Mr. Crane, was there any opportunity for Miss Scott to talk to anyone, or make a ‘phone call or read a letter, between the time she left you and the time she joined the group on the pavement?”

Fen had been watching Nicholas, and had been interested to observe in him, as Evan George’s narrative proceeded, an appearance of growing relief. By now he appeared to be positively light-hearted.

“None whatever, Inspector,” he said. “I took her down to the door myself and saw her join the others before I closed it.”

Humbleby flicked his fingers in uncontrollable irritation; the evidence was nebulous to a degree, and an explanation of the motive for Gloria Scott’s suicide apparently as far off as ever. Something had startled her—no one knew what. And something, at some stage in the proceedings, had been said to her which had caused her to brood and brood more and more dementedly, until on Waterloo Bridge the thread of reason had snapped and an insane impulse had scourged her with horrible pain into eternity… But why? And as Humbleby, recalling the question he had been told to press, glanced at Fen, he saw that Fen was very slightly shaking his head. It was likely, the gesture said, that Nicholas Crane could not be induced to change his story, and any effort expended in that direction would certainly be effort wasted. Humbleby went on, accordingly, to the last questions which he had to ask.

“Just who,” he demanded, “was responsible for giving Miss Scott the part of Martha Blount in The Unfortunate Lady? Mr. Stafford, was it?”

Nicholas looked surprised. “The final decision was his, of course. He’s producing.”

“And did he select the girl on his own initiative?”

“No,” said Nicholas. “I put him up to it.”

“You did?” It was Humbleby’s turn to be surprised. “Not your brother Maurice?”

“Not my brother Maurice,” said Nicholas gravely.

“May I be told your reasons?”

“Certainly. She wasn’t at all a bad actress—she had a cameo part in Visa for Heaven, which I directed, so I knew what she could do—and in appearance and physique she fitted the part. And besides that, I liked her, and wanted to give her a leg-up. Fortunately, the casting of Martha Blount was one of the few things in the film that Mr. Leiper didn’t have preconceived ideas about, and Jocelyn had an open mind on the subject, so he accepted my recommendation quite readily.”

“And you, Miss Crane,” said Humbleby with deceptive mildness. “Did you think it was a good selection?”

Without thinking, she burst out: “I thought it was a—” But then, as she became conscious of Stuart North’s regard, her tone altered. “Why, yes, of course. Gloria needed training and experience, but one day she was going to be a very, very good actress: I was looking forward to working with her.”

“Were you, dear?” Caroline Cecil spoke with tempered malice. “I did get the impression that you were a little bit doubtful about it.”

“Oh no, darling,” Madge answered sweetly. “Or if I was, it was only because I was afraid that Gloria might damage her chances by not being quite up to standard. You see, Inspector, you have to be so awfully careful in the film business; because if you fail just once you’re never forgiven.”

“And you didn’t”—Humbleby’s tones flattered like an unguent—“you didn’t at all resent Mr. North’s attentions to her?”

For a fraction of a second there was hatred in Madge’s eyes; then, as though a lantern-slide had been whisked from a screen and another substituted for it, she was all amazement.

“But why should I? I didn’t even know that Stuart was interested in her.” She looked up at him. “Were you, darling?”

Mr. North vociferously sneezed.

“I don’t quite know how you’d define ‘interested’,” he said peevishly. “I took her out once or twice, if that’s what you mean, but there was nothing serious about it… How the hell have we got on to this dreary topic, anyway? What does it matter?”

He looked at Capstick, who nodded haplessly—and then, resipiscently and with equal ambiguity, shook his head.

“Anyway, it provides us with a sequitur”—Humbleby was unperturbed—“to my final questions: which concern the relationship between Miss Scott and Mr. Maurice Crane.”

“Final,” echoed Medesco. “Let’s hope they are. I want my lunch.”

“I believe”—once more Humbleby was addressing himself to Nicholas—“I believe that last Christmas Miss Scott was staying in your household. Is that right?”

“She stayed at my mother’s house.”

“You yourself don’t live there?”

“No. Nor Madge. Maurice and David do.”

“I should like to know who invited her.”

“Maurice did.”

“Were you there at the time of this visit?”

“No. David and I were away sailing in Bermuda.”

“And in that case your brother Maurice would be the only man in the house—unless your father—”

“My father died years ago… Yes, Maurice would have been the only man in the house. Was Gloria going to have a baby?”

“She was, yes… And now, Mr. Crane, if you’ll just let me have a complete list of the guests at your party…”

It was done; and presently the assembly dispersed. Nicholas, Madge and Stuart North were the last to leave the room, and Nicholas nodded to Fen as he went.

“This is very much your element, isn’t it?” he said in passing.

“Perhaps,” said Fen non-committally. “May I give you a word of advice?”

“Please do.”

“For a few days,” said Fen, “don’t eat or drink anything that other people aren’t eating and drinking. That goes for your sister, too… And suppose you wanted to break an actress’s contract without getting into legal trouble—how would you set about it?”

Nicholas’s eyes narrowed. “Well, well,” he murmured. “There’s a law of slander, Professor Fen. If you should think of making any rash accusations, I’m sure it could be brought into service against you. So be careful, there’s a good man…and good-bye for now. We shall meet again, I hope.” With a quick smile he went.

An hour later, after a hurried ale-and-sandwich lunch at “The Bear”, Fen was on his way back to Oxford. He gave little thought to the morning’s events, for he realised that without more data speculation would yield nothing new. Instead, he fell to conceiving and casting a film about Wordsworth and Annette, and this, combined with occasional sanitary draughts of Jamesian hyperbole, kept his mind occupied until he arrived home.

On the morning of the following day—which was the Sunday—he was removing his gown in his rooms in College after attending Matins when the telephone rang, and with a civility begotten probably of awe the operator announced a Personal Call from New Scotland Yard.

“Gervase Fen speaking,” said Fen.

“Mr. Gervase Fen?”

“Speaking.”

“One moment, please, Mr. Fen.” The diaphragm of the receiver crackled morosely at Fen’s ear. “You’re through now. I say, you’re through now, Mr. Fen.”

“Yes, very well.”

“Are you there?”

“Gervase Fen speaking now.”

“Here is your call, sir.”

The line immediately went dead—but presently, as the consequence of a series of reverberating clicks, it was possible to make out a murmur of background noises: a typewriter, crockery, conversation, someone whistling. Fen put the instrument down in order to light a cigarette. After about half a minute the mistrustful hallo-ing of Humbleby, issuing from it like the voice of an incarcerated elf, caused him to pick it up again.

“Are you there?” Humbleby was saying. “Is anyone there at all?”

“Calm yourself,” said Fen, “and tell me what has happened.”

“Oh, there you are at last… Well, they’ve done the autopsy on Maurice Crane, and it’s as you said: he was poisoned.”

“What with?”

“Colchicine.”

Fen frowned. “Colchicine? Well, well. It’s a pity we bothered about the coffee-cups, then.”

“Oh, so you know all about colchicine, do you? I’m damned if I did: poisoners aren’t usually so—um—esoteric in their choice.”

“How was it administered? “

“In a bottle of some tonic he was taking. Bagley routed it out when he went to the house late last night.”

“And when?”

“It could have been almost any time. The house is one of those big, rambling affairs where you can easily sneak in and out. I can’t pin it down at all.”

“Well, obviously Crane drank the stuff before leaving for the studios yesterday morning—so that must be the terminus ad quem.”

“Yes. But it’s the terminus a quo that’s the trouble. The bottle says twice daily after meals, but people often forget to take medicine—or else just can’t be bothered.”

“M’m. How do you stand?”

“I’m officially in charge now. Capstick persuaded his Chief Constable to call in the Yard, and I persuaded the A.C. to let me postpone my holiday and take the case on.”

“And what have you discovered so far?”

“Nothing.”

“I see. Who gets Maurice Crane’s money?”

“Ah, that’s a point. His mother does, and there’s quite a lot of it. The father was a well-to-do manufacturer of flea-powders and laxatives and things, and he left fifty thousand to each of his children. Only they can’t touch it till they’re thirty-five, and if they die before they’re thirty-five, it reverts to the mother… It’s a motive, you know.”

“Thank you, I can see that. What about Gloria Scott?”

“Poor Charles has been inundated. Half of England seems to have recognised that photograph. But no one claims to have known her under any other name, or earlier than two years ago. There’s been a lot of routine investigation going on, but the upshot of it all is that we still don’t know anything more about her than we knew yesterday morning.”

“And in the cold light of a new day you’re afflicted with considerable doubts as to whether Maurice Crane’s death has anything to do with her at all.”

“Yes, I don’t mind saying I am… You know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think you’re detecting things that aren’t there.”

“Indeed.”

“I think that the coincidence about the film and that ode has thrown you a bit off balance.”

“You think my mind is softening.”

“Since you insist on it, yes.”

“I don’t insist on it at all. In fact I deny it. But you people simply won’t be told… What are your plans?”

“We’re going through the motions prescribed for cases of murder. Something will turn up.”

“Good heavens. Micawber Humbleby, the Demon of the Yard. Are you going to keep me posted?”

“Yes, I see no objection to doing that. In the meantime, have you any suggestions?”

“Yes. Steamship companies. Circulate Gloria Scott’s photograph to the stewardesses of passenger boats which arrived in England during the month before she turned up at Menenford. Once you find out who she was, you’ll have a line on Maurice Crane’s murderer.”

“‘That strain again’.”

“Well, if you won’t, you won’t. But don’t blame me if anything happens to the other Cranes.”

Fen rang off. Colchicine, he thought. Whatever the ultimate issue of the case, it would certainly become a toxicological classic. His text-books on poisons were all at his North Oxford home, but he found that he was able, without too much difficulty, to recall the chief characteristics of this particular toxin. It constituted, he remembered, one of the two active principles in the bulbs and seeds of the autumn crocus or meadow saffron, and a powerful decoction of the stuff could be obtained from those two sources without very great trouble. Its symptoms were vomiting, salivation and stomach pains, and death resulted from failure of the respiratory centre. And in one respect it was almost unique among poisons: it had no effect at all on the victim for several hours after ingestion. Fen could think of no instance in which it had ever before been used homicidally…

And in the meantime, what was to be done? As far as he was concerned, he felt, the answer would have to be Nothing. Crimes calling for routine investigation were not at all in his line, and from what he knew already the last dram of enlightenment had been squeezed—without, however, giving him the smallest clue as to who Maurice Crane’s murderer might be. Something further would have to be discovered, or to happen, before speculation could usefully be resumed. Accordingly, he went home and spent the remainder of the day eating, sleeping, reading, vilifying his children and practising desultorily on the French horn. From his viewpoint the case was becalmed; and it was not until the appearance, towards teatime on the following day, of the four o’clock edition of The Evening Mercury, that the winds began to blow again and the ship to veer towards new shallows, new reefs.

Fen was apt to say subsequently that he had never known a case in which the murderer was so inexorably hemmed in by mere unforeseeable circumstance. At every turn of the way Chance lay in ambush, plotting his progress as on a map, sketching in his face feature by feature, in the upshot announcing quite plainly and incontrovertibly his identity and name. And in hastening that final revelation nothing that Fen or Humbleby could do was of any avail; until such time as the Norns condescended to supply the final link which gave coherence to the whole chain of events, they were obliged to kick their heels in ignominious passivity. Although the crime presented a problem whose solution required deduction and hard thinking, the data required for that deduction and that thinking remained throughout inexorably the prerogative of blind destiny…

And on the Monday morning destiny wove the first strand of the net.

Her instrument was named Bartholomew Snerd, and by profession Mr. Snerd was a private enquiry agent. Private enquiry agents are commonly persons of integrity, but to a dishonest man their business offers certain violent temptations, and to all of these Mr. Snerd had at one time or another wittingly succumbed. He had, indeed, so often and so narrowly escaped prison that he had come half to believe that there hovered at his elbow a personal deity unremittingly sequacious of his interests; and this sense of supernatural protection had brought him, at the time of the events to be described, to a condition in which the balance between rapacity and caution was being only very precariously maintained. Mr. Snerd was aware, certainly, of the dangers of over-confidence; but the capacity of men for deluding themselves is virtually infinite, and the warnings of Mr. Snerd’s more circumspect instincts, though increasing daily in vehemence and number, were paradoxically less and less heeded by that part of him which took decisions and which acted. And it was this dangerous psychological condition, presumably, which involved him in the perilous enterprise of robbing Madge Crane’s flat.

Mr. Snerd was a personable man, well built (though tending unobtrusively to fat) and with an agreeably candid physiognomy. Though he was nearing forty he looked at least ten years younger, and the care with which he performed his toilet and chose his clothes helped to make a very presentable figure of him. In the grades and varieties of courtship he was widely experienced, and his flair for suiting his approach to his victim had proved to be one of his most valuable business assets, as well as a source of much more or less innocent pleasure to himself. He always went for the women; with men, despite his bluff and comradely manner, he was somewhat ill at case. And going for the women had this advantage in the way of business, that it frequently opened up lucrative opportunities for a little quiet blackmail—and in blackmail Mr. Snerd was an artist. It was a rigid law with him never to make an excessive demand and never to make more than one, and it was doubtless this wise and temperate plan which kept him immune from retribution. Indeed, it had developed, as time went on, into something very like a principle of ethics; unfair, or ungentlemanly, were the terms with which Mr. Snerd would have stigmatised any attempt to take the pitcher a second time to a previously plundered well; and his attitude to his victims, once they had acceded to his demands, was a kindly, paternal tolerance. In many ways, and in spite of encountering so much of life’s seamy side, Mr. Snerd had a very simple and unsullied mind; the fornication, perversions and trivial betrayals with which it was necessarily stocked made no more profound impression on it than if they had been the multiplication table; and this ingenuousness, when at last and inevitably his sins found him out, was so clearly unfeigned that if the evidence against him had not been overwhelming, his tutelary spirit—the magistrate being an impressionable man—might well have salvaged him once again.

Among his more legitimate activities the pursuit and detection of marital infidelity easily preponderated, and his neat and tasteful office off Long Acre had witnessed many distressing confessions of conjugal mistrust. It is one of the advantages enjoyed by private enquiry agents that, since the middle and upper classes resort to them only furtively, they are ranged in no universally recognised hierarchy of reliability and competence such as exists among tradesmen and even, to some extent, among lawyers, doctors and other professional persons who do not have to be consulted under the rose; and the consequence of this is that, as the clients of private enquiry agents are obliged to select them at random, the plums of the profession are not reserved to the more sober and experienced firms, but fall with reasonable frequency into the laps of quite lowly practitioners. It thus came about that there appeared one day in Mr. Snerd’s office the wife of an eminent film magnate who had, it transpired, reason to suspect her husband of adulterous inclinations and practices, and who for reasons into which Mr. Snerd did not enquire was anxious to have proof of these goings-on; and one of the considerable list of supposititious inamorate with which she assaulted Mr. Snerd’s ear was Madge Crane.

The progress of Mr. Snerd’s investigation—which was interesting as well as profitable—need not be related here. It is sufficient to say that although a fair proportion of the film magnate’s wife’s guesses turned out to be well founded, that relating to Madge Crane was, so far as Mr. Snerd could ascertain, wholly unjustified. And there the matter might well have ended, but for the fact that Mr. Snerd’s examination of Miss Crane’s private life had involved his making acquaintance with Miss Crane’s personal maid, an attractive brunette called Felicity Flanders. Miss Flanders, thanks to the fame of her mistress, was a supercilious young woman, not to say cagey, and even for one as practised as Mr. Snerd the process of gaining her affections (and thereby such confidential information about Miss Crane as she might possess) had been a long and arduous one. Once gained, however, those affections were revealed as being of so passionate a sort that Mr. Snerd began to fear he would never again be able to disentangle himself from them. Miss Flanders was, he perceived, the sort of girl whom it is not politic to jettison too abruptly. And so, long after his original motive for establishing the relationship had ceased to be operative, long after the film magnate’s wife had paid him off and departed with the ammunition against her luckless husband which he had provided, Mr. Snerd continued to pay his attentions to Miss Flanders. When all was said and done it could hardly be described as a penitential exercise, for Miss Flanders was good-looking, complaisant and not, apparently, at all zealous to regularise the granting of her favours with bell and book. At the time of Maurice Crane’s death, therefore, Mr. Snerd was still able to regard the association as an agreeable one; and when Felicity, informing him that her mistress was away for the week-end, for the first time invited him to the luxurious little Westminster flat, Mr. Snerd cancelled his other plans and accepted the invitation with genuine pleasure.

That was on the Sunday, the day following those events at the Long Fulton studios which have already been described. At nine o’clock that evening Mr. Snerd met Felicity for a sandwich supper and a drink or two at “The Queen’s Head” in Great Peter Street, and heard from her such details of yesterday’s catastrophe as she had succeeded in picking up.

“Not that Madge was all that upset,” she said; behind Miss Crane’s back Felicity always referred to her by her baptismal name, since she liked to be thought of as a confidante of that famous young woman rather than as a servant. “There wasn’t any love lost between her and Maurice, if you ask me. And I don’t wonder at it, either, not with him being the sort of man he was.”

“Ropy type, eh?” Mr. Snerd, though he had ingeniously evaded conscription in the late war, was prolific of Service slang.

“No better than a—than a satyr, he was. The way he used to behave to me!”

“Ah, I know the sort.” Mr. Snerd nodded sagely. “Can’t keep their hands off a girl’s ins and outs.” He winked. “Not that I really blame him, darling, where you’re concerned.”

Felicity giggled. “Oh, go on with you, Peter,” she said (Mr. Snerd had not thought fit to entrust her with his own name; or with his vocation, since she supposed him to be in the motor business). “You’re awful, really you are.”

“Well, how’s about shutting out the horrid sight with another of the same?”

“D’you think I could have a gin this time?”

“Better stick to beer, ducks.” Mr. Snerd was careful with his money. “Upsets the old tum-jack to mix ’em.” He ordered another round. “Look here, you’re sure it’s safe for me to come up to the flat? I don’t want you to get into trouble if she was to come back unexpectedly.”

“She won’t come back, don’t you fret. She spent last night with her mother and today she’s gone on to her cottage.”

“Where’s that?”

“Doon Island. Near Portsmouth.”

“I’d have thought she’d have needed you with her wherever she was.”

“Said it was time for me to have an ’oliday.” Felicity considered retrieving the truant “h”, and decided that this would only draw attention to its absence. “Quite true, at that. So I’m me own mistress till she comes back on Wednesday.”

“And what about the secretary?”

“Lord, Pete, you aren’t half nervy.”

“I’m not nervy,” Mr. Snerd asserted stoutly. “Not me, ducks. It’s you I’m thinking of.”

Being of the more percipient sex, Felicity thought this profession unlikely; but she accepted the fact that men habitually lied as a part of the order of things, and so made no attempt to argue the matter.

“Secretary’s gone with her,” she said. “She’s well out of the way; never you fear.”

“Just as well to be sure about these things,” said Mr. Snerd cheerfully. “I remember when I was in the RAF we had a flight-sergeant who…”

He drifted off into fictitious war anecdotes.

At closing time they finished their drinks and left.

Madge Crane’s apartments, near the Westminster Hospital, were in a small, expensive block of service flats of the sort which in these latter days are within the reach only of the exceptionally well-to-do. Mr. Snerd knew what things cost, and the sight of its furnishings and fittings impressed him mightily, though he took care to conceal this fact beneath the casual air of one inured from birth to such opulence. From a sideboard in the dining-room Felicity fetched gin and orange squash; and having liberally sampled this they retired about midnight to bed.

Mr. Snerd was awakened at seven o’clock by the Monday morning traffic. Felicity was still soundly asleep, and it occurred to Mr. Snerd that here would be a suitable opportunity to have a look round the flat. It is doubtful if he intended to steal anything much, for such larcenies as he was accustomed to commit concerned objects so little valuable as to make it seem likely, when their owners discovered the loss, that they had been merely mislaid. It is even more doubtful if he had blackmail in mind; he had never yet selected a victim who was eminent or notorious, being aware that, even in this democratic day and age, wealth and influence are still liable to get round behind a man and deal him shrewd knocks. No; his motive, so far as it can be ascertained at all, seems to have been mere curiosity—or, if you prefer it, a natural love of surreptitious doings even when they served no useful purpose. His reasons are not, in any event, important to this chronicle. It is his actions that count—for those actions were destined to be largely instrumental in cornering a particularly subtle and ruthless murderer.

As he climbed cautiously out of the bed, perfunctorily covered his nakedness and slipped barefooted from the room, Mr. Snerd was not at all conscious of the portentousness of what he did: he was conscious, rather, of that exhilaration which comes to a man when his actions are unlawful without being specially perilous. Outside in the passage he paused for a moment, and then made his way silently to the sitting-room, where the previous evening he had noticed a small rosewood desk which would probably repay attention. With ears alert for the slightest sound of movement from Felicity he began to investigate it, replacing everything, once examined, with scrupulous accuracy in the position in which he had found it. However, little that was noteworthy rewarded his efforts, and presently he was reduced to a speculative contemplation of the desk’s only locked drawer. His proceedings were disinterested, and he knew that there was absolutely no necessity for him to see what was inside it; having absented himself from Felicity a sufficient while, he might at this point quite easily have returned to her and left it at that. But his habit of inquisitiveness pricked him like a goad, and there came a crucial moment when he was no longer capable of denying it. He crept back to the bedroom.

Felicity lay as he had left her, the damp flush of exhausted slumber on her brow. Pausing only to assure himself that she really was asleep, Mr. Snerd took his gloves from the dressing-table and put them on (since he was wearing nothing else but pants, this gave his appearance a decided quality of the bizarre), extracted a bunch of skeleton keys from his trousers pocket and again slipped from the room.

The drawer’s contents might be confidential, but they were not, he found, at all numerous. To start with, there was a packet of treasury notes; over these Mr. Snerd lingered wistfully, but in the end he virtuously replaced them untouched. Next came a privately printed volume, with curious illustrations, entitled A Whip for Veronica, and this, after a little thought, Mr. Snerd determined to appropriate for his own use and enjoyment. Finding it gone, Miss Crane would probably imagine that she had left it lying about and that a servant, perhaps Felicity, had picked it up; but she would scarcely be in a position to enquire about it, and although relations between mistress and maid would undoubtedly deteriorate as a consequence, that (Mr. Snerd felt) was Felicity’s look-out…

Finally, there was a letter.

It was written on good-quality notepaper in a sprawling, slightly childish hand. And as Mr. Snerd read it, his knees grew weak with excitement, and in order to avoid tottering and perhaps falling he was obliged hurriedly to sit down. The cause of this excess of emotion was as follows:

 

Thursday night, 2 a.m.

 

My dear Madge:

 

It’s done, and now I’m wishing like hell it weren’t. I’ve just told Gloria—asked her to wait behind after the others had gone—and I was afraid she was going to faint or be sick or go for my throat. I’ve never seen anyone in such a state—getting that part meant absolutely everything to her. I warned her she’d find herself facing a slander action if she said anything about being tricked into breaking her contract, and for reasons you know, Jedd won’t talk. But it’s a devil of a risk. If anything comes out I’m finished in films—and I don’t mind saying I’ll see to it that you are, too. For God’s sake burn this letter and never breathe a word about it to a living soul.

She certainly won’t wait for the studios to sue her for breach of contract—couldn’t possibly afford to fight the action. I said I’d do what I could for her in the future, but of course she didn’t believe that for a single moment—thinks she’s completely washed up in films. She knows damn well you’re at the back of it all, too, with your ridiculous jealousy. I should watch out for yourself. She hardly seemed sane when she left here.

I feel very bad about it all. As you know, I like the kid—not in Maurice’s way, either. Don’t try to talk about it when we meet on Saturday morning.

 

Nicholas

 

Mr. Snerd did some quick thinking. An enterprising Press had nosed out the fact that there was an element of mystery in Gloria Scott’s suicide, and the Sunday papers had reported it at length, touching discreetly on Nicholas Crane’s party and stating that the police had been unable so far to uncover any motive for the act. Mr. Snerd was therefore familiar with the general outlines of the affair: he had, he realised, chanced on a particularly revealing document connected with it—and one, moreover, which disgracefully implicated two notabilities of the film world; and as he sat there, grotesquely arrayed and clutching the letter in his gloved hand, he asked himself, with as much detachment as he could muster, what would be the most profitable thing to do about it.

And presently, after much strenuous cerebral effort, Mr. Snerd determined to take the letter and purvey it to The Evening Mercury.

Now in this decision, that softening of the intellect in which Mr. Snerd’s ever-growing confidence had resulted is very clearly exemplified. He realised, of course, that once the letter was published there would no longer be any discretionary bar to Miss Crane’s reporting its theft to the police; he realised that Felicity would know him for the culprit. But he was foolish enough to suppose that for fear of losing her job Felicity would not denounce him; and even if she did, he fondly imagined that providing he never saw her again his pseudonym would protect him. With the money obtained—which should be a very tolerable sum—he would shut up his office and go away on a holiday; and by the time he returned the whole business would have blown over.

Thus did Mr. Snerd plot and plan, while unobtrusively his guardian angel abandoned ship. As we shall see, he badly underestimated both Felicity and the resources of the Metropolitan Constabulary. But for the time being his scheming seemed to him good, and he proceeded immediately to put it into action.

In the bedroom Felicity slept on. Mr. Snerd gathered up his garments and donned them elsewhere. Nicholas Crane’s letter he enclosed in the pages of A Whip for Veronica, and A Whip for Veronica he placed in the pocket of his raincoat. Subsequently, having closed and relocked the rifled drawer, he prowled about the flat, wiping his finger-prints off everything he could remember having touched. If by some mischance any remained, that could not be helped; his prints were not in the police files, and any that were found would therefore remain inexplicable. He considered forcing a window, so as to make it appear that the flat had been broken into, but decided, on further reflection, that it would be difficult to make this look at all plausible; moreover, it would involve noise, and noise would waken Felicity. For her he scribbled a note, explaining that his work called him away early and arranging to meet her at “The Queen’s Head” that evening—a rendezvous at which, needless to say, he had no intention of turning up. And having deposited this on the dressing-table, he waved a regretful but determined last farewell at her unconscious form and let himself quietly out of the flat.

It was a grey morning, promising rain. Out on the pavement with his spoils in his pocket, Mr. Snerd at first hesitated as to what direction to take. But presently, his mind made up, he boarded an 88 bus, which took him up Whitehall to Charing Cross. Alighting there, he headed for St. Martin’s Lane. And the clocks were striking eight-thirty when he pushed open the ornate bar door of “The Scissors”.

Being in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden, where they work all night and require a drink early in the morning, “The Scissors” was enabled by special dispensation of the Licensing Laws to trade at this hour; and consequently, confirmed alcoholics, as well as the market porters, were regularly to be found there. It was for a person of this former class that Mr. Snerd was looking—a person named Rouncey who reported for the Mercury. Mr. Rouncey and Mr. Snerd were old cronies; in this and other bars they had over a period of several years cemented that companionship in shadiness which served them for friendship; and so far as either of them was capable of trusting anyone, they trusted one another. It was by the agency of Mr. Rouncey, then, that Mr. Snerd proposed to convey Nicholas Crane’s letter to the Mercury—and he had little doubt that the Mercury would pay well for it. For the Mercury, almost alone among English newspapers, was a scandal-sheet of the worst and most unscrupulous sort. Its sales were founded on vilification and near-pornography, the latter type of pabulum being justified by the adoption of hypocritical moral attitudes (“Such a state of affairs, we believe, will not be tolerated by the British people…” “It is our view that we are performing a public service in revealing the practices of this depraved and vicious section of the community…” and so forth); its myrmidons paraded monotonously in and out of the civil and criminal courts and were frequently gaoled; and yearly it disbursed huge sums by way of damages for libel, regarding these, apparently, as no different in kind from any other overhead expenses. Its policy earned it very large dividends and the execration of all who were intelligent enough to see through its pretensions to high-mindedness; and since it professed an unwavering abhorrence of the rich (“Whatever happens, it will not be Lord X who will suffer; it will be the decent, ordinary folk—the miners and railwaymen and steel-workers and their wives and children…“), the Mercury was a very popular paper indeed.

Mr. Snerd soon saw that he had come to the right tavern, for Mr. Rouncey was established in his usual corner of the bar, with whisky in his hand, a Woodbine in his mouth and a battered felt hat on the back of his head. He was an elderly, shifty man, whose peculiarity it was that alcohol invariably made him cry. This reaction was wholly physical and not related in any way to his mood, which though commonly gloomy was hardly ever lachrymose, and on strangers it was apt to have a disconcerting effect. Mr. Snerd, however, was accustomed to it and had long since ceased to think of it as out of the way. Undeterred by Mr. Rouncey’s smeared cheeks and overflowing eyes, Mr. Snerd advanced on him with affability.

“Morning, old man,” he said. “What’s yours?”

Without replying, or even looking up, Mr. Rouncey emptied his glass, pushed it across the bar and waited in silence while it was replenished at Mr. Snerd’s expense. Such demonstrations of incivility, which were habitual with him, had persuaded Mr. Snerd that he was a ‘character’, and so Mr. Snerd was not offended by his lack of response, but settled down at his side, drank manfully, fought off a sudden attack of queasiness and presently tapped his companion confidentially on the knee.

“Got something for you,” said Mr. Snerd. “Something hot.”

Mr. Rouncey turned a welling eye on him and removed the sodden cigarette from his mouth.

“And what’d that be?” he said without perceptible interest.

“Soon show you.” After glancing round to make sure that they were not overlooked, Mr. Snerd produced Nicholas Crane’s letter. “Just you take a gander at that.”

Having wiped his eyes and wearily adjusted in front of them a pair of bifocal steel-rimmed spectacles, Mr. Rouncey obeyed. When he had read the letter, without any change of expression, he handed it back and swallowed his drink at a gulp.

“How about another?” he said.

“Your round, old man.”

“Is it?”

“You know bloody well it is.” Mr. Snerd spoke without rancour; attempts to avoid paying for rounds were part of his conception of Mr. Rouncey as a ‘character’. “I’ll have the same again.”

Mr. Rouncey resignedly gave the order.

“Well?” said Mr. Snerd.

“Yes, it’s hot stuff all right,” said Mr. Rouncey. “Too bloody hot, if you ask me.”

“Don’t tell me that. You can use it.”

“How do I know it isn’t a fake?”

“You’ve got my word for it,” said Mr. Snerd with dignity.

“Oh, yes. Sure I have. But my News Editor doesn’t know you, Bart boy, not like I do. It’s him that’s got to be persuaded.”

“Get a sample of Crane’s writing. Have ‘em compared.”

“Where the hell do you think I can… Wait, though.” Mr. Rouncey, in a formidable burst of energy, contrived to snap his fingers. “He wrote a letter to the paper, not more than a week ago, and I’ve an idea it was written, not typed. There’s a chance there.”

“Go for it, old man.”

“It’ll have to be carefully written up,” said Mr. Rouncey meditatively. “Full of allegeds and we make no comment. Whatever happens it’ll mean a libel action, but we might get away with that on the Public Interest tack… Where’d you get the letter?”

Mr. Snerd winked. “Blew out of a window. So of course I had to look at it to see whose it was, and there weren’t any surnames or addresses, so I brought it along to you thinking you might be able to help, and—”

“Stow all that, Bart boy,” said Mr. Rouncey amiably. “It won’t do for the paper. I think our line’ll be that it came anonymously through the post, from someone who wanted to See Justice Done. Of course, we don’t like anonymous letters, not when we’re holding forth to the ruddy public anyway, but we thought it was our duty as citizens to get the handwriting experts on to it and then turn it over to the police… Yes, that’s our line, I’d say: just reporting what we’ve done. We Make No Comment And Shall Be More Delighted Than Anyone If The Name of These Fine Artists Can Be Cleared.” Exhausted by his performance, Mr. Rouncey paused and groped for his drink. “Here, let’s have another look at the thing.”

Mr. Snerd handed the letter over, and Mr. Rouncey, shaking away the tears which blurred his vision, read it again.

“Jedd,” he murmured. “We’ll have to rout him out before we print anything.”

“Who is Jedd, anyway?”

“Theatrical manager. Lover’s Luck, at the Curtain.” Mr. Rouncey’s eyes widened suddenly “That’d be it, Bart boy.”

“What’d be what?”

“This Scott girl stood in for Marcia Bloom at Tuesday’s performances. I remember hearing Sark—that’s our theatre stooge—talking about it.”

“So what, old man?”

“Easy. When you sign up with the films you guarantee not to appear in any shows without permission. So it looks as if Crane tricked the Scott girl into thinking she’d got the studios’ permission to play in Lover’s Luck when actually she hadn’t. And that meant Crane could blackmail her into cancelling the contract by threatening a suit for breach.”

Mr. Snerd was genuinely indignant at this disclosure. “Dirty trick,” he said.

“Show business, that’s all.” Mr. Rouncey, Mr. Snerd felt, was sneering at his ingenuousness. “Well, we’ll have to see what can be done.” He got unsteadily to his feet. “How much do you want?”

“A clear one-fifty.”

“You won’t get that much, Bart boy.”

“That’s my price,” said Mr. Snerd easily. “It’s up to you to get it. I’ll collect in ‘The Feathers’ at opening time tonight.” He caught Mr. Rouncey by the elbow as he turned to go. “And you won’t forget I know about that business at Brighton, will you, old man? I shouldn’t like you to get into any trouble over that.”

“Ruddy blackmailer,” said Mr. Rouncey.

“Now, that’s no way to talk,” said Mr. Snerd eupeptically. “We’re good pals, aren’t we? You do your best for me, and I’ll do my best for you. Can’t say fairer than that, can I?”

Mr. Rouncey was pocketing the letter.

“Bart boy, I can’t promise anything,” he said earnestly. “This ruddy letter’s dynamite, see? If I can sell it ‘em at all, you’ll get your money. And that’s the most I can say.” He moved towards the door. “Remember, boy, it’s ten to one they just won’t touch it at all, scoop or no.”

But Mr. Rouncey’s prognosis was altogether too flattering to his employers’ sense of decency. They touched it all right.