would look after those arrangements."
"I can only say," said Mrs. Mundon Mandeville rather wearily, "that I gave
her what ought to be the best part. It's supposed to be what stage-struck
young women want, isn't it--to act the beautiful young heroine
and marry the beautiful young hero in a shower of bouquets and cheers
from the gallery? Women of my age naturally have to fall back on acting
respectable matrons, and I was careful to confine myself to that."
"It would be devilish awkward to alter the parts now, anyhow," said
Randall.
"It's not to be thought of," declared Norman Knight firmly. "Why, I
could hardly act--but anyhow it's much too late."
Father Brown had slipped forward and was standing outside the locked
door listening.
"Is there no sound?" asked the manager anxiously; and then added in a
lower voice: "Do you think she can have done herself in?"
"There is a certain sound," replied Father Brown calmly. "I should be
inclined to deduce from the sound that she is engaged in breaking
windows or looking-glasses, probably with her feet. No; I do not think
there is much danger of her going on to destroy herself. Breaking
looking-glasses with your feet is a very unusual prelude to suicide. If
she had been a German, gone away to think quietly about metaphysics and
_weltschmerz_, I should be all for breaking the door down. These Italians
don't really die so easily; and are not liable to kill themselves in a
rage. Somebody else, perhaps ... yes, possibly ... it might be well to take
ordinary precautions if she comes out with a leap."
"So you're not in favour of forcing the door?" asked Mandeville.
"Not if you want her to act in your play," replied Father Brown. "If you
do that, she'll raise the roof and refuse to stay in the place; if you
leave her alone she'll probably come out from mere curiosity. If I were
you, I should just leave somebody to guard the door, more or less, and
trust to time for an hour or two."
"In that case," said Mandeville, "we can only get on with rehearsing the
scenes where she doesn't appear. My wife will arrange all that is
necessary for scenery just now. After all, the fourth act is the main
business. You had better get on with that."
"Not a dress rehearsal," said Mandeville's wife to the others.
"Very well," said Knight, "not a dress rehearsal, of course. I wish the
dresses of the infernal period weren't so elaborate."
"What is the play?" asked the priest with a touch of curiosity.
"_The School for Scandal_," said Mandeville. "It may be literature, but I
want plays. My wife likes what she calls classical comedies. A long
sight more classic than comic."
At this moment, the old doorkeeper known as Sam, and the solitary
inhabitant of the theatre during off-hours, came waddling up to the
manager with a card, to say that Lady Miriam Marden wished to see him.
He turned away, but Father Brown continued to blink steadily for a few
seconds in the direction of the manager's wife, and saw that her wan
face wore a faint smile; not altogether a cheerful smile.
Father Brown moved off in company with the man who had brought him in,
who happened, indeed, to be a friend and person of a similar persuasion,
which is not uncommon among actors. As he moved off, however, he heard
Mrs. Mandeville give quiet directions to Mrs. Sands that she should take
up the post of watcher beside the closed door.
"Mrs. Mandeville seems to be an intelligent woman," said the priest to
his companion, "though she keeps so much in the background."
"She was once a highly intellectual woman," said Jarvis sadly; "rather
washed out and wasted, some would say, by marrying a bounder like
Mandeville. She has the very highest ideals of the drama, you know; but,
of course, it isn't often she can get her lord and master to look at
anything in that light. Do you know, he actually wanted a woman like
that to act as a pantomime boy? Admitted that she was a fine actress,
but said pantomimes paid better. That will give you about a measure of
his psychological insight and sensibility. But she never complained. As
she said to me once: 'Complaint always comes back in an echo from the
ends of the world; but silence strengthens us.' If only she were married
to somebody who understood her ideas she might have been one of the
great actresses of the age; indeed, the highbrow critics still think a
lot of her. As it is, she is married to that."
And he pointed to where the big black bulk of Mandeville stood with his
back to them, talking to the ladies who had summoned him forth into the
vestibule. Lady Miriam was a very long and languid and elegant lady,
handsome in a recent fashion largely modelled on Egyptian mummies; her
dark hair cut low and square, like a sort of helmet, and her lips very
painted and prominent and giving her a permanent expression of contempt.
Her companion was a very vivacious lady with an ugly attractive face and
hair powdered with grey. She was a Miss Theresa Talbot and she talked a
great deal, while her companion seemed too tired to talk at all. Only,
just as the two men passed. Lady Miriam summoned up the energy to say:
"Plays are a bore; but I've never seen a rehearsal in ordinary clothes.
Might be a bit funny. Somehow, nowadays, one can never find a thing
one's never seen."
"Now, Mr. Mandeville," said Miss Talbot, tapping him on the arm with
animated persistence, "you simply must let us see that rehearsal. We
can't come to-night, and we don't want to. We want to see all the funny
people in the wrong clothes."
"Of course I can give you a box if you wish it," said Mandeville
hastily. "Perhaps your ladyship would come this way." And he led them
off down another corridor.
"I wonder," said Jarvis in a meditative manner, "whether even Mandeville
prefers _that_ sort of woman."
"Well," asked his clerical companion, "have you any reason to suppose
that Mandeville does prefer her?"
Jarvis looked at him steadily for an instant before answering.
"Mandeville is a mystery," he said gravely. "Oh, yes, I know that he
looks about as commonplace a cad as ever walked down Piccadilly. But he
really is a mystery for all that. There's something on his conscience.
There's a shadow in his life. And I doubt whether it has anything more
to do with a few fashionable flirtations than it has with his poor
neglected wife. If it has, there's something more in them than meets the
eye. As a matter of fact, I happen to know rather more about it than
anyone else does, merely by accident. But even I can't make anything of
what I know, except a mystery."
He looked around him in the vestibule to see that they were alone and
then added, lowering his voice:
"I don't mind telling you, because I know you are a tower of silence
where secrets are concerned. But I had a curious shock the other day;
and it has been repeated several times since. You know that Mandeville
always works in that little room at the end of the passage, just under
the stage. Well, twice over I happened to pass by there when everyone
thought he was alone; and what's more, when I myself happened to be able
to account for all the women in the company, and all the women likely to
have to do with him, being absent or at their usual posts."
"All the women?" remarked Father Brown inquiringly.
"There was a woman with him," said Jarvis almost in a whisper. "There is
some woman who is always visiting him; somebody that none of us knows. I
don't even know how she comes there, since it isn't down the passage to
the door; but I think I once saw a veiled or cloaked figure passing out
into the twilight at the back of the theatre, like a ghost. But she
can't be a ghost. And I don't believe she's even an ordinary 'affair'. I
don't think it's love-making. I think it's blackmail."
"What makes you think that?" asked the other.
"Because," said Jarvis, his face turning from grave to grim, "I once
heard sounds like a quarrel; and then the strange woman said in a
metallic, menacing voice, four words: 'I am your wife.'"
"You think he's a bigamist," said Father Brown reflectively. "Well,
bigamy and blackmail often go together, of course. But she may be
bluffing as well as blackmailing. She may be mad. These theatrical
people often have monomaniacs running after them. You may be right, but
I shouldn't jump to conclusions.... And talking about theatrical
people, isn't the rehearsal going to begin, and aren't you a theatrical
person?"
"I'm not on in this scene," said Jarvis with a smile. "They're only
doing one act, you know, until your Italian friend comes to her senses."
"Talking about my Italian friend," observed the priest, "I should rather
like to know whether she has come to her senses."
"We can go back and see, if you like," said Jarvis; and they descended
again to the basement and the long passage, at one end of which was
Mandeville's study and at the other the closed door of Signora Maroni.
The door seemed to be still closed; and Mrs. Sands sat grimly outside
it, as motionless as a wooden idol.
Near the other end of the passage they caught a glimpse of some of the
other actors in the scene mounting the stairs to the stage just above.
Vernon and old Randall went ahead, running rapidly up the stairs; but
Mrs. Mandeville went more slowly, in her quietly dignified fashion, and
Norman Knight seemed to linger a little to speak to her. A few words
fell on the ears of the unintentional eavesdroppers as they passed.
"I tell you a woman visits him," Knight was saying violently.
"Hush!" said the lady in her voice of silver that still had in it
something of steel. "You must not talk like this. Remember, he is my
husband."
"I wish to God I could forget it," said Knight, and rushed up the stairs
to the stage.
The lady followed him, still pale and calm, to take up her own position
there.
"Somebody else knows it," said the priest quietly; "but I doubt whether
it is any business of ours."
"Yes," muttered Jarvis; "it seems as if everybody knows it and nobody
knows anything about it."
They proceeded along the passage to the other end, where the rigid
attendant sat outside the Italian's door.
"No; she ain't come out yet," said the woman in her sullen way; "and she
ain't dead, for I heard her moving about now and then. I dunno what
tricks she's up to."
"Do you happen to know, ma'am," said Father Brown with abrupt
politeness, "where Mr. Mandeville is just now?"
"Yes," she replied promptly. "Saw him go into his little room at the end
of the passage a minute or two ago; just before the prompter called and
the curtain went up. Must be there still, for I ain't seen him come out."
"There's no other door to his office, you mean," said Father Brown in an
offhand way. "Well, I suppose the rehearsal's going in full swing now,
for all the Signora's sulking."
"Yrs," said Jarvis after a moment's silence; "I can just hear the voices
on the stage from here. Old Randall has a splendid carrying voice."
They both remained for an instant in a listening attitude, so that the
booming voice of the actor on the stage could indeed be heard rolling
faintly down the stairs and along the passage. Before they had spoken
again or resumed their normal poise, their ears were filled with another
sound. It was a dull but heavy crash and it came from behind the closed
door of Mundon Mandeville's private room.
Father Brown went racing along the passage like an arrow from the bow
and was struggling with the door handle before Jarvis had wakened with a
start and begun to follow him.
"The door is locked," said the priest, turning a face that was a little
pale. "And I am all in favour of breaking down _this_ door."
"Do you mean," asked Jarvis with a rather ghastly look, "that the
unknown visitor has got in here again? Do you think it's ... anything
serious?" After a moment he added: "I may be able to push back the bolt;
I know the fastening on these doors."
He knelt down and pulled out a pocket knife with a long steel implement,
manipulated it for a moment, and the door swung open on the manager's
study. Almost the first thing they noticed was that there was no other
door and even no window, but a great electric lamp stood on the table.
But it was not quite the first thing that they noticed; for even before
that they had seen that Mandeville was lying flat on his face in the
middle of the room and the blood was crawling out from under his fallen
face like a pattern of scarlet snakes that glittered evilly in that
unnatural subterranean light.
They did not know how long they had been staring at each other when
Jarvis said, like one letting loose something that he had held back with
his breath:
"If the stranger got in somehow, she has gone somehow."
"Perhaps we think too much about the stranger," said Father Brown.
"There are so many strange things in this strange theatre that you
rather tend to forget some of them."
"Why, which things do you mean?" asked his friend quickly.
"There are many," said the priest. "There is the other locked door, for
instance."
"But the other door _is_ locked," cried Jarvis staring.
"But you forgot it all the same," said Father Brown. A few moments
afterwards he said thoughtfully: "That Mrs. Sands is a grumpy and gloomy
sort of card."
"Do you mean," asked the other in a lowered voice, "that she's lying and
the Italian did come out?"
"No," said the priest calmly; "I think I meant it more or less as a
detached study of character."
"You can't mean," cried the actor, "that Mrs. Sands did it herself?"
"I didn't mean a study of _her_ character," said Father Brown.
While they had been exchanging these abrupt reflections, Father Brown
had knelt down by the body and ascertained that it was beyond any hope
or question a dead body. Lying beside it, though not immediately visible
from the doorway, was a dagger of the theatrical sort; lying as if it
had fallen from the wound or from the hand of the assassin. According to
Jarvis, who recognized the instrument, there was not very much to be
learned from it, unless the experts could find some finger-prints. It
was a property dagger; that is, it was nobody's property; it had been
kicking about the theatre for a long time, and anybody might have picked
it up. Then the priest rose and looked gravely round the room.
"We must send for the police," he said; "and for a doctor, though the
doctor comes too late.... looking at this room, by the way, I don't see how
our Italian friend could manage it."
"The Italian!" cried his friend; "I should think not. I should have
thought she had an alibi, if anybody had. Two separate rooms, both
locked, at opposite ends of a long passage, with a fixed witness
watching it."
"No," said Father Brown. "Not quite. The difficulty is how she could
have got in this end. I think she might have got out the other end."
"And why?" asked the other.
"I told you," said Father Brown, "that it sounded as if she was breaking
glass; mirrors or windows. Stupidly enough I forgot something I knew
quite well; that she is pretty superstitious. She wouldn't be likely to
break a mirror; so I suspect she broke a window. It's true that all this
is under the ground floor; but it might be a skylight or a window
opening on an area. But there don't seem to be any skylights or areas
here." And he stared at the ceiling very intently for a considerable
time.
Suddenly he came back to conscious life again with a start. "We must go
upstairs and telephone and tell everybody, It is pretty painful.... My
God, can you hear those actors still shouting and ranting upstairs? The
play is still going on. I suppose that's what they mean by tragic
irony."
When it was fated that the theatre should be turned into a house of
mourning, an opportunity was given to the actors to show many of the
real virtues of their type and trade. They did, as the phrase goes,
behave like gentlemen; and not only like first walking gentlemen. They
had not all of them liked or trusted Mandeville, but they knew exactly
the right things to say about him; they showed not only sympathy but
delicacy in their attitude to his widow. She had become, in a new and
very different sense, a tragedy queen, her lightest word was law and
while she moved about slowly and sadly, they ran her many errands.
"She was always a strong character," said old Randall rather huskily;
"and had the best brains of any of us. Of course poor Mandeville was
never on her level in education and so on; but she always did her duty
splendidly. It was quite pathetic the way she would sometimes say she
wished she had more intellectual life; but Mandeville--well, _nil nisi
bonum_, as they say." And the old gentleman went away wagging his head
sadly.
"_Nil nisi bonum_ indeed," said Jarvis grimly. "I don't think Randall at
any rate has heard of the story of the strange lady visitor. By the way,
don't you think it probably _was_ the strange woman?"
"It depends," said the priest, "whom you mean by the strange woman."
"Oh! I don't mean the Italian woman," said Jarvis hastily. "Though, as a
matter of fact, you were quite right about her, too. When they went in
the skylight was smashed and the room was empty; but so far as the
police can discover, she simply went home in the most harmless fashion.
No, I mean the woman who was heard threatening him at that secret
meeting; the woman who said she was his wife. Do you think she really
was his wife?"
"It is possible," said Father Brown, staring blankly into the void,
"that she really was his wife."
"That would give us the motive of jealousy over his bigamous
remarriage," reflected Jarvis, "for the body was not robbed in any way.
No need to poke about for thieving servants or even impecunious actors.
But as for that, of course, you've noticed the outstanding and peculiar
thing about the case?"
"I have noticed several peculiar things," said Father Brown. "Which one
do you mean?"
"I mean the corporate alibi," said Jarvis gravely. "It's not often that
practically a whole company has a public alibi like that; an alibi on a
lighted stage and all witnessing to each other. As it turns out it is
jolly lucky for our friends here that poor Mandeville did put those two
silly society women in the box to watch the rehearsal. They can bear
witness that the whole act was performed without a hitch, with the
characters on the stage all the time. They began long before Mandeville
was last seen going into his room. They went on at least five or ten
minutes after you and I found his dead body. And, by a lucky
coincidence, the moment we actually heard him fall was during the time
when all the characters were on the stage together."
"Yes, that is certainly very important and simplifies everything,"
agreed Father Brown. "Let us count the people covered by the alibi.
There was Randall: I rather fancy Randall practically hated the manager,
though he is very properly covering his feelings just now. But he is
ruled out; it was his voice we heard thundering over our heads from the
stage. There is our _jeune premier_, Mr. Knight: I have rather good reason
to suppose he was in love with Mandeville's wife and not concealing that
sentiment so much as he might; but he is out of it, for he was on the
stage at the same time, being thundered at. There was that amiable Jew
who calls himself Aubrey Vernon, he's out of it; and there's Mrs.
Mandeville, she's out of it. Their corporate alibi, as you say, depends
chiefly on Lady Miriam and her friend in the box; though there is the
general common-sense corroboration that the act had to be gone through
and the routine of the theatre seems to have suffered no interruption.
The legal witnesses, however, are Lady Miriam and her friend, Miss
Talbot. I suppose you feel sure _they_ are all right?"
"Lady Miriam?" said Jarvis in surprise. "Oh, yes.... I suppose you mean
that she looks a queer sort of vamp. But you've no notion what even the
ladies of the best families are looking like nowadays. Besides, is there
any particular reason for doubting their evidence?"
"Only that it brings us up against a blank wall," said Father Brown.
"Don't you see that this collective alibi practically covers everybody?
Those four were the only performers in the theatre at the time; and
there were scarcely any servants in the theatre; none indeed, except old
Sam, who guards the only regular entrance, and the woman who guarded
Miss Maroni's door. There is nobody else left available but you and me.
We certainly might be accused of the crime, especially as we found the
body. There seems nobody else who can be accused. You didn't happen to
kill him when I wasn't looking, I suppose?"
Jarvis looked up with a slight start and stared a moment, then the broad
grin returned to his swarthy face. He shook his head.
"You didn't do it," said Father Brown; "and we will assume for the
moment, merely for the sake of argument, that I didn't do it. The people
on the stage being out of it, it really leaves the Signora behind her
locked door, the sentinel in front other door, and old Sam. Or are you
thinking of the two ladies in the box? Of course they might have slipped
out of the box."
"No," said Jarvis; "I am thinking of the unknown woman who came and told
Mandeville she was his wife."
"Perhaps she was," said the priest; and this time there was a note in
his steady voice that made his companion start to his feet once more and
lean across the table.
"We said," he observed in a low, eager voice, "that this first wife
might have been jealous of the other wife."
"No," said Father Brown; "she might have been jealous of the Italian
girl, perhaps, or of Lady Miriam Marden. But she was not jealous of the
other wife."
"And why not?"
"Because there was no other wife," said Father Brown. "So far from being
a bigamist, Mr. Mandeville seems to me to have been a highly monogamous
person. His wife was almost too much with him; so much with him that you
all charitably suppose that she must be somebody else. But I don't see
how she could have been with him when he was killed, for we agree that
she was acting all the time in front of the footlights. Acting an
important part, too...."
"Do you really mean," cried Jarvis, "that the strange woman who haunted
him like a ghost was only the Mrs. Mandeville we know?" But he received
no answer; for Father Brown was staring into vacancy with a blank
expression almost like an idiot's. He always did look most idiotic at
the instant when he was most intelligent.
The next moment he scrambled to his feet, looking very harassed and
distressed. "This is awful," he said. "I'm not sure it isn't the worst
business I ever had; but I've got to go through with it. Would you go
and ask Mrs. Mandeville if I may speak to her in private?"
"Oh, certainly," said Jarvis, as he turned towards the door. "But what's
the matter with you?"
"Only being a born fool," said Father Brown; "a very common complaint in
this vale of tears. I was fool enough to forget altogether that the play
was _The School For Scandal_."
He walked restlessly up and down the room until Jarvis reappeared at
the door with an altered and even alarmed face.
"I can't find her anywhere," he said. "Nobody seems to have seen her."
"They haven't seen Norman Knight either, have they?" asked Father Brown
dryly. "Well, it saves me the most painful interview of my life. Saving
the grace of God, I was very nearly frightened of that woman. But she
was frightened of me, too; frightened of something I'd seen or said.
Knight was always begging her to bolt with him. Now she's done it; and
I'm devilish sorry for him."
"For him?" inquired Jarvis.
"Well, it can't be very nice to elope with a murderess," said the other
dispassionately. "But as a matter of fact she was something very much
worse than a murderess."
"And what is that?"
"An egoist," said Father Brown. "She was the sort of person who had
looked in the mirror before looking out of the window, and it is the
worst calamity of mortal life. The looking-glass was unlucky for her,
all right; but rather because it wasn't broken."
"I can't understand what all this means," said Jarvis. "Everybody
regarded her as a person of the most exalted ideals, almost moving on a
higher spiritual plane than the rest of us...."
"She regarded herself in that light," said the other; "and she knew how
to hypnotize everybody else into it. Perhaps I hadn't known her long
enough to be wrong about her. But I knew the sort of person she was five
minutes after I clapped eyes on her."