Buffet for Unwelcome Guests Read Online Free Page B

did offer suggestions, when, having civilly waited for the laymen to speak first, Inspector Cockrill raised his unwelcome voice. ‘You reflected no doubt that the lover was really rather too good to be true. A “murderer”, seen by seven highly interested parties and by nobody else: whose existence, however, could never be disproved; and who was so designed as to throw no shadow of guilt on to any real man.’
    ‘It is always easy to be wise after the event,’ said the old man huffily. Even that, however, Inspector Cockrill audibly took leave to doubt. Their host asked somewhat hastily what the great man had done next. The great man replied gloomily that since his fellow guest, Inspector Cockrill, seemed so full of ideas, perhaps he had better say what he would have done.
    ‘Sent for the door-keeper and checked the stories together,’ said Cockie promptly.
    This was (to his present chagrin) precisely what the Great Detective had done. The stories, however, had proved to coincide pretty exactly, to the moment when the light had gone out. ‘Then I heard footsteps from the direction of the Green-room, sir. About twenty minutes later, you arrived. That’s the first I knew she was dead.’
    So: what to do next?
    ‘To ask oneself,’ said Inspector Cockrill, though the question had been clearly rhetorical, ‘why there had been fifteen minutes’ delay in sending for the police.’
    ‘Why should you think there had been fifteen minutes’ delay?’
    ‘The man said it was twenty minutes before you arrived. But you told us earlier, you were just across the street.’
    ‘No doubt,’ said the old man, crossly, ‘as you have guessed my question, you would like to—’
    ‘Answer it,’ finished Inspector Cockrill. ‘Yes, certainly. The answer is: because the cast wanted time to change back into stage costume. We know they had changed out of it, or at least begun to change…’
    ‘ I knew it: the ladies were not properly laced up, Iago had on an everyday shirt under his doublet—they had all obviously hurriedly redressed and as hurriedly re-made up. But how could you…?’
    ‘We could deduce it. Glenda Croy had had time to get back into her underclothes. The rest of them said they had been in the Green-room discussing the threat of her “affair”. But the affair had been going on for some time, it couldn’t have been suddenly so pressing that they need discuss it before they even got out of their stage-costume—which is, I take it, by instinct and training the first thing an actor does after curtain-fall. And besides, you knew that Othello, at least, had changed and changed back.’
    ‘I knew?’
    ‘You believed it was Othello—that’s to say James Dragon—who had been in the room with her. And the door-man had virtually told you that at that time he was not wearing his stage costume.’
    ‘I fear then that till this moment,’ said the great man, heavily sarcastic, ‘the door-man’s statement to that effect has escaped me.’
    ‘Well, but…’ Cockie was astonished. ‘You asked him how, having seen his silhouette on the window-blinds, he had “known” it was James Dragon. And he answered, after reflection, that he knew by his voice and by what he was saying. He did not say,’ said Cockie, sweetly reasonable, ‘what otherwise, surely, he would have said before all else: “I knew by the shape on the window-blind of the raised arms in those huge, padded, cantaloupe-melon sleeves.” ’
    There was a horrid little silence. The host started the port on its round again with a positive whizz, the guests pressed walnuts upon one another with abandon (hoarding the nut-crackers, however, to themselves); and, after all, it was a shame to be pulling the white rabbits all at once out of the conjurer’s top hat, before he had come to them—if he ever got there! Inspector Cockrill tuned his voice to a winning respect. ‘So then, do tell us, sir—what next did you do?’
    What the great man had done,