“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 commonsense 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 of her 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
