Free Death on the Air by Ngaio Marsh Page A

wouldn’t it? I did try to get a ticket but the house was sold out.’
    â€˜If you’re going to deliver this case you’d better get a bend on.’
    â€˜It’s clearly an occasion for dressing up though, isn’t it? I say,’ said Mike modestly, ‘would you think it most frightful cheek if I – well I’d promise to come back and return everything. I mean—’
    â€˜Are you suggesting that my clothes look more like a vanman’s than yours?’
    â€˜I thought you’d have things—’
    â€˜For Heaven’s sake, Rory,’ said Mrs Alleyn, ‘dress him up and let him go. The great thing is to get that wretched man’s suitcase to him.’
    â€˜I know,’ said Mike earnestly. ‘It’s most frightfully sweet of you. That’s how I feel about it.’
    Alleyn took him away and shoved him into an old and begrimed raincoat, a cloth cap and a muffler. ‘You wouldn’t deceive a village idiot in a total eclipse,’ he said, ‘but out you go.’
    He watched Mike drive away and returned to his wife.
    â€˜What’11 happen?’ she asked.
    â€˜Knowing Mike, I should say he will end up in the front stalls and go on to supper with the leading lady. She, by the way, is Goralie Bourne. Very lovely and twenty years his senior so he’ll probably fall in love with her.’ Alleyn reached for his tobacco jar and paused. ‘I wonder what’s happened to her husband,’ he said.
    â€˜Who was he?’
    â€˜An extraordinary chap. Benjamin Vlasnoff. Violent temper. Looked like a bandit. Wrote two very good plays and got run in three times for common assault. She tried to divorce him but it didn’t go through. I think he afterwards lit off to Russia.’ Alleyn yawned. ‘I believe she had a hell of a time with him,’ he said.
    â€˜All Night Delivery,’ said Mike in a hoarse voice, touching his cap. ‘Suitcase. One.’
    â€˜Here you are,’ said the woman who had answered the door. ‘Carry it carefully, now, it’s not locked and the catch springs out.’
    â€˜Fanks,’ said Mike. ‘Much obliged. Chilly, ain’t it?’
    He took the suitcase out to the car.
    It was a fresh spring night. Sloane Square was threaded with mist and all the lamps had halos round them. It was the kind of night when individual sounds separate themselves from the conglomerate voice of London; hollow sirens spoke imperatively down on the river and a bugle rang out over in Chelsea Barracks; a night, Mike thought, for adventure.
    He opened the rear door of the car and heaved the case in. The catch flew open, the lid dropped back and the contents fell out. ‘Damn!’ said Mike and switched on the inside light.
    Lying on the floor of the car was a false beard.
    It was flaming red and bushy and was mounted on a chinpiece. With it was incorporated a stiffened moustache. There were wire hooks to attach the whole thing behind the ears. Mike laid it carefully on the seat. Next he picked up a wide black hat, then a vast overcoat with a fur collar, finally a pair of black gloves.
    Mike whistled meditatively and thrust his hands into the pockets of Alleyn’s mackintosh. His right hand fingers closed on a card. He pulled it out. ‘Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn,’ he read, ‘CID. New Scotland Yard.’
    â€˜Honestly,’ thought Mike exultantly, ‘this is a gift.’
    Ten minutes later a car pulled into the kerb at the nearest parking place to the Jupiter Theatre. From it emerged a figure carrying a suitcase. It strode rapidly along Hawke Street and turned into the stage door alley. As it passed under the dirty lamp it paused, and thus murkily lit, resembled an illustration from some Edwardian spy story. The face was completely shadowed, a black cavern from which there projected a square of scarlet beard, which was the only note of colour.
    The doorkeeper who was