Margot Mary Wendice: Oh, there you are. We thought you were never coming. What have you been up to?
Tony Wendice: I'm sorry darling, but the boss came in just as I was leaving.
Margot Mary Wendice: Tony, this is Mark Halliday.
Tony Wendice: Hello Mark.
Mark Halliday: Hello.
Margot Mary Wendice: How long have you known this?
Chief Insp. Hubbard: Did you suspect it yourself?
Margot Mary Wendice: No, never. And yet... What's the matter with me, Mark? I don't seem able to feel anything.
Mark Halliday: What is all this?
Chief Insp. Hubbard: They talk about flat-footed policemen. May the saints protect us from the gifted amateur.
Chief Insp. Hubbard: There is evidence however that he was blackmailing you.
Tony Wendice: Blackmail?
Mark Halliday: Yes, I'm afraid it's true, Tony.
Chief Insp. Hubbard: And you suggest that he came in by the window. And we know that he came in by that door.
Margot Mary Wendice: But he can't have come in that way. That door was locked. And there are only two keys. My husband had his with him, and mine was in my handbag. Here.
Chief Insp. Hubbard: You could have let him in.
Tony Wendice: At exactly three minutes to eleven, you'll enter the house through the street door. You'll find the key to this door under the stair carpet here.
C.A. Swan: The fifth step?
Tony Wendice: That's the one. Go straight to the window, and hide behind the curtains. At exactly eleven o'clock, I shall go to the telephone in the hotel to call my boss. I shall dial the wrong number. This number. That's all I shall do.
Chief Insp. Hubbard: Sooner or later, he'll come back here. As I've pinched his latch key, he'll try the one in the handbag. When that doesn't fit, he'll realise his mistake, put two and two together, and look under the stair carpet.
Mark Halliday: If he doesn't do that, all of this is pure guess work. We can't prove a thing.
Chief Insp. Hubbard: That's perfectly true. But once he opens that door, we shall know everything.
C.A. Swan: Just a minute. I'm supposed to have come in through these windows. Suppose they'd been locked?
Tony Wendice: It wouldn't matter. You see, she often takes a walk around the garden before she goes to bed, and she usually forgets to lock up when she gets back. That's what I shall tell the police.
C.A. Swan: Yes, but she may say that.
Tony Wendice: But she isn't going to say anything, is she?
Chief Insp. Hubbard: Good morning, Sir. I'm Chief Inspector Hubbard, in charge of criminal investigation of this division.
Tony Wendice: Oh, I think we gave your sergeant all the necessary information.
Chief Insp. Hubbard: Yes, I've seen his report of course, but there are a few things I'd like to get firsthand.
Tony Wendice: I've been following you ever since.
C.A. Swan: Why?
Tony Wendice: Well, I was hoping that sooner or later I might catch you at something and be able to, ah.
C.A. Swan: Blackmail me?
Tony Wendice: Influence you.
Margot Mary Wendice: Anyone would have realised he was dead. Just one look at those staring eyes.
Chief Insp. Hubbard: So you did see his face, after all.
Margot Mary Wendice: I saw his eyes! I can't remember his face.
Tony Wendice: It's funny to think that just a year ago, I sat in that Knightsbridge Pub actually planning to murder her. And I might have done it, if I hadn't seen something that changed my mind.
C.A. Swan: Well? What did you see?
Tony Wendice: I saw you.
Chosen answer: It's mostly so the audience can see more of Tony's underlying character. This is Margo's bed, and Tony wanted it separate from the bedroom that they shared as husband and wife. Tony is "emotionally divorcing" himself from Margo as he is about to start a new life as a single man. Leaving the bed in the bedroom would serve as a reminder of his guilt in framing his innocent wife for a murder she did not commit. The bed is likely parked there until he can get rid of it.
raywest ★