“To get some dinner,” he said.
“No one reported seeing you in the dining hall,” she said.
“I didn’t go to the dining hall. I came back here.”
“Here? To Mr. McPhee’s apartment?”
“No, here to the gym. To my own apartment.”
He said he arrived at his home around 6:30 and decided to make himself a bowl of soup for dinner. McPhee interrupted.
“It was a few minutes before 6:30, actually,” said McPhee. “Don’t you remember, Dan? We walked as far as the dining hall together. We commented on how they were having a buffet supper tonight.”
“Okay, sure,” said Farnham. “A few minutes before, then.” Carol Scott asked why he did not eat in the dining hall, where the meals were free.
“My stomach was bothering me a little,” he said. “I wanted a blander diet.”
“So you were alone from 6:30 until when?”
He said he walked back over to the theater around 6:50. “I wanted to be on time,” he said. “So that we could be ready to go when the boys arrived. And I also wanted to check with Cynthia Warden about why she seemed so distressed during rehearsal. She was uncharacteristically upset.”
Carol Scott asked him to go on.
“I got to the theater and was annoyed to find all the lights out—the houselights, the stage lights, everything.”
“The lights were off in the entire building?”
“No, not in the lobby area. But the theater itself was completely dark. I called out loud for Cynthia and got no answer, so I climbed up to the light booth to turn the stage lights back on, and when I got there, I discovered that they were already on. That is, they were turned on, but they weren’t casting any light.”
Carol Scott asked how that could be.
“It took me a second to figure it out,” said Farnham. “Then I realized that somebody must have thrown the blackout switch from backstage. Our theater is built so that the stage manager, in an emergency, can turn out all the lights on the stage from backstage if he needs to. He can also turn on and off the houselights. All the master controls are of course up in the light booth at the back of the auditorium.”
“So how did you relight the stage?”
“It was simple,” he said. “I just pushed the reset button on the master control panel. It overrides the backstage controls. The stage lights surged on, and that’s when I saw Cynthia.” He started to tremble. “Even from the back of the house, I could sense she was dead. But to make sure, I came down to the stage and took her pulse. Then I don’t know what happened. I just freaked out. I had to get out of the building right away, you know? I should have called the police or the switchboard from the phone backstage, but I didn’t think of that. I just thought that whoever had done it might still be in the building, and I wanted to get away.”
“And where did you go?”
“I ran all the way back here and saw Pat’s lights on. I pounded on his door. I told him what had happened, he told me to calm down, and then he offered to call the police for me.”
“But when I called,” said McPhee, “I heard that you were already on the way.”
“That’s when I remembered the boys who were on their way over for rehearsal,” said Farnham. “To my everlasting shame, I confess that I forgot all about the students. I behaved very selfishly.”
“And you had no curiosity about returning to the theater?”
“I did,” said McPhee. “In fact, I mentioned a couple of times that we should perhaps go over there.”
“I couldn’t,” said Farnham. “I couldn’t see Cynthia like that again. I touched her, and she was dead.” He held his fists to his temples as though his head might explode.
“I thought it was best to wait here with him,” said McPhee.
“I understand,” she said.
The other investigator and the two policemen knocked and entered through the door to the hallway of the gym. The investigator was carrying a tan cardboard shoe box. He conferred for a moment with Carol Scott, opened the box, showed her the contents. She took the box from him.
“Mr. Farnham, is this yours?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I keep my bank statements in it. What do you want with those?”
“These are not bank statements,” said Carol Scott.
She walked over to the chair where Farnham sat and held the box under the light of the floor lamp. Inside were several random items: a ticket stub from a theater in New York, a pair of athletic socks, the button from a shirt, a signet ring. And an embroidered handkerchief—two Cs on either side of a large W.
She did not touch the handkerchief but pointed to its monogram with a pencil.
“Whose handkerchief is this?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Farnham.
“Cynthia Cunningham Warden,” said Carol Scott. “Isn’t this her monogram?”
“What is all this?” said Farnham.
“They found this on the back of the top shelf in your bedroom,” said Carol Scott.
“That’s not mine,” said Farnham. He looked around the room for confirmation. McPhee spoke quietly.
“Dan,” said McPhee, “I got an idea about the blocking and left the dining hall without eating. I knocked on your door at 6:30. You weren’t home. I called you at 6:40. You still weren’t home. You were never home when you said you were. I tried calling the theater and couldn’t get you there, either. Where were you?”
Farnham shook his head and swallowed and held his hands out in front of him as if he were trying to settle down an unruly class of students.
“Now wait a minute,” he said. “I was at home when
