Read Online Vintage Murder by Ngaio Marsh - Free Book Online Page B

was in the dressing-room. By George, I wonder if the fellow was up here on the platform when I came up the ladder. You had just got to the theatre when I went down.”
    “D’you mean,” asked Wade, “d’you mean to tell me that this gear was all different when we came in and someone’s changed it round since? We’d have known something about that, Mr. Alleyn.”
    “My dear chap, but would you? Look here, kick me out. I’ve no business to gate-crash on your job, Inspector. It’s insufferable. Just take my statement in the ordinary way and I’ll push off. Lord knows, I didn’t mean to buck round doing the C.I.D. official.”
    Wade, whose manner up to now had been a curious mixture of deference, awkwardness, and a somewhat forced geniality, now thawed completely.
    “Look, sir,” he said, “you don’t need to make any apologies. I reckon I know a gentleman when I meet one. We’ve read about your work out here, and if you like to interest yourself — well, we’ll be only too pleased. Now! Only too pleased.”
    “Extraordinary nice of you,” said Alleyn. “Thank you so much for those few nuts and so on. All right. Didn’t you stay by the stage-door for a bit, when you came in?”
    “Yes, that’s right, we did. Mr. Gascoigne met us there and started some long story. We didn’t know what was up. Simply got the message, there’d been an accident at the theatre. It took me a minute or two to get the rights of it and another minute or two to find out where the body was. You know how they are.”
    “Exactly. Well now, while that was going on, I fancy our gentleman was up here and very busy. He came up under cover of all the hoo-hah on the stage some time after the event. He was just going to put things straight, when he heard me climbin’ up de golden stair, as you might say. That must have given him a queasy turn. He took cover somewhere up here in the dark and as soon as I went down again he did what he had to do. Then, when you were safely on the stage and shut off by the walls of the scenery, down he came, pussy-foot, by the back-stage ladder, and mixed himself up with the crowd. Conjecture, perhaps—”
    “I’ve just been reading your views on conjecture, sir,” said Wade.
    “For the Lord’s sake, Wade, don’t bring my own burblings up against me, or I shall look the most unutterable ass. Conjecture or not, I think you’ll find traces of this performance if you look round up here.”
    “Come on, then, sir. Let’s go to it.”
    “Right you are. Tread warily, I would. Damn — it’s slatted.”
    The gallery turned out to be a narrow stretch of steel-slatted platform extending from the prompt corner to the back wall, round the back wall, and along the opposite side of the O.P. corner. It was guarded by a rail to which the ropes that raised the scenic cloths were made fast. They began to work their way round, hugging the wall and taking long steps on the tips of their toes.
    “There’s plenty of dust in these regions,” said Alleyn. “I had a case that hung on just such another spot. Hung, by the way, is the right word. The homicide swung his victim from the grid.”
    “You mean the Gardener case, sir? I’ve read about that.”
    “Bless me, Inspector, if you’re not better up in my cases than I am myself. Stop a moment.”
    They had moved out of the area of light, and switched on their torches. Alleyn swung his towards the rail.
    “Here, you see, we are opposite the pulley. Now when I came up here before, a piece of cord had been passed round the batten on which the pulley is rigged. That beam, there. The rope to the beam stopped it from slipping and it was made fast to this cleat on the rail here. The effect was to drag the pulley eighteen inches or so this way.”
    “What for, though?” asked Wade.
    “In order that the jeroboam of fizz should fall, not into the nest of ferns and fairy lights, but on to the naked pate of poor Alfred Meyer.”
    “Geeze!”
    “And here, I think, I