The Mousetrap

MAYHEW. Orders to view. Sometimes I think that there’s hardly a house in England that’s ever been up for sale that my wife hasn’t been over. She plans how to apportion the rooms, and works out any structural alterations that will be necessary. She even plans the curtains and the covers and the general colour scheme. (He rises, puts the tobacco jar on the mantelpiece and feels in his pocket for a match.)

(SIR WILFRID and MAYHEW look at each other and smile indulgently.)

SIRWILFRID. H’m—well . . . (He becomes the Q.C. again.) The fantasies of our wives aren’t evidence, worse luck. But it helps one to understand why young Vole went asking for cruise literature.

MAYHEW. Pipe dreams.

SIRWILFRID. (Taking a matchbox from the desk drawer) There you are, John. (He puts the box on the desk.)

MAYHEW. (Crossing toL. of the desk and picking up the matchbox) Thank you, Wilfrid.

SIRWILFRID. I think we’ve had a certain amount of luck with Janet MacKenzie.

MAYHEW. Bias, you mean?

SIRWILFRID. That’s right. Overdoing her prejudice.

MAYHEW. (SittingL. of the desk) That was a very telling point of yours about her deafness.

SIRWILFRID. Yes, yes, we got her there. But she got her own back over the wireless.

(MAYHEW finds that the matchbox is empty, throws it in the wastepaper basket and puts his pipe in his pocket.)

Not smoking, John?

MAYHEW. No, not just now.

SIRWILFRID. John, what really happened that night? Was it robbery with violence after all? The police have to admit that it might have been.

MAYHEW. But they don’t really think so and they don’t often make a mistake. That inspector is quite convinced that it was an inside job—that that window was tampered with from the inside.

SIRWILFRID. (Rising and crossing below the desk toL.) Well, he may be wrong.

MAYHEW. I wonder.

SIRWILFRID. But if so who was the man Janet MacKenzie heard talking to Miss French at nine-thirty? Seems to me there are two answers to that.

MAYHEW. The answers being . . . ?

SIRWILFRID. First that she made the whole thing up, when she saw that the police weren’t satisfied about its being a burglary.

MAYHEW. (Shocked.) Surely she wouldn’t do a thing like that?

SIRWILFRID. (Crossing toC.) Well, what did she hear, then? Don’t tell me it was a burglar chatting amicably with Miss French—(He takes his handkerchief from his pocket.) before he coshed her on the head, you old clown. (He coshes MAYHEW with the handkerchief.)

MAYHEW. That certainly seems unlikely.

SIRWILFRID. I don’t think that that rather grim old woman would stick at making up a thing like that. I don’t think she’d stick at anything, you know. No—(Significantly.) I don’t think—she’d stick—at—anything.

MAYHEW. (Horrified) Good Lord! Do you mean . . . ?

CARTER. (Enters and closes the door behind him.) Excuse me, Sir Wilfrid. A young woman is asking to see you. She says it has to do with the case of Leonard Vole.

SIRWILFRID. (Unimpressed.) Mental?

CARTER. Oh, no, Sir Wilfrid. I can always recognize that type.

SIRWILFRID. (Moving above the desk and picking up the tea-cups) What sort of a young woman? (He crosses toC.)

CARTER. (Taking the cups fromSIRWILFRID) Rather a common young woman, sir, with a free way of talking.

SIRWILFRID. And what does she want?

CARTER. (Quoting somewhat distastefully) She says she ‘knows something that might do the prisoner a bit of good.’

SIRWILFRID. (With a sigh) Highly unlikely. Bring her in.

(CARTER exits, taking the cups with him.)

What do you think, John?

MAYHEW. Oh well, we can’t afford to leave any stone unturned.