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‘Good night, Mr Sears. I’m afraid the fight was a severe ordeal: you are still breathless. You shouldn’t have been so enthusiastic.’

  ‘No, no! A touch of asthma. It is nothing.’ He waved his hand and made an exit.

  The stagehands went at once and all together. At last there was only Nina Gaythorne and one man left, a pale, faintly ginger, badly dressed man with a beautiful voice.

  ‘Good night, Superintendent,’ he said.

  ‘Good night, Mr Barrabell,’ Alleyn returned and became immersed in his notebook.

  ‘A very interesting treatment, if I may say so.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘If I may say so, there was no need, really, to revive anything before Macbeth’s exit and from then up to the appearance of his head. About four minutes, during which time he was decapitated.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘So I wondered.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Poor dotty old Gaston,’ said the beautiful voice, ‘having to labour through that fight. Why?’

  Alleyn said to Fox: ‘Just make sure the rooms are all locked, will you, Mr Fox?’

  ‘Certainly, sir,’ said Fox: He walked past Barrabell as if he was not there, and disappeared.

  ‘One of the old type,’ said Barrabell. ‘We don’t see many of them nowadays, do we?’

  Alleyn looked up from his notebook. ‘I’m very busy,’ he said.

  ‘Of course. Young Macduff is not with us, I see.’

  ‘No, Mr Barrabell. They sent him home. Good night to you.’

  ‘You know who he is, of course?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Oh? Oh well, good night,’ said Barrabell. He walked away with his head up and a painful smile on his face. Nina went with him.

  ‘Br’er Fox,’ said Alleyn when that officer returned, ‘let us consider. Is it possible for the murder to have been performed after the fight?’

  ‘Just possible. Only just. But it was.’

  ‘Shall we try? I’ll be the murderer. You be Macbeth. Run into the corner. Scream and drop down. Hold on.’ He went into the dark area, OP. ‘We’ll imagine the Macduff. He runs after you and goes straight on and away. Ready? I’m using my stopwatch. Three, two, one, zero. Go.’

  Mr Fox was surprisingly agile. He imitated swordplay, backed offstage, yelled and fell at Alleyn’s feet. Alleyn had removed the imaginary dummy head from the imaginary claidheamh-mor. He raised the latter above his shoulder. It swept down. Alleyn let go, stooped and seized the imaginary head. He fixed it on the point of the claymore and rammed it home. He propped it in its corner, dragged the body (Mr Fox weighing fourteen stone) into the darkest corner, and clapped the dummy head down by it. And looked at his watch.

  ‘Four and a third minutes,’ he panted. ‘And the cast made it in three. It’s impossible.’

  ‘You don’t seem as disappointed as I’d have expected,’ said Fox.

  ‘Don’t I? I – I’m not sure. I may be going dotty. I am going dotty. Let’s check the possibles, Fox. Which is Number One?’

  ‘Macduff? He killed Macbeth as we were meant to think. Duel. Chased him off. Killed him. Fixed the head on the weapon and came on with Seyton carrying it behind him. Sounds simple.’

  ‘But isn’t. What was Macbeth doing? Macduff chased him in and then had to dodge about, take the dummy head off the claidheamh-mor, raise it and do the fell deed.’

  ‘Yerse.’

  ‘Did Macbeth lie there and allow him to get on with it? And how about the time? If I couldn’t do it in three minutes, nobody else could.’

  ‘Well, no. No.’

  ‘Next?’

  ‘Banquo?’ Fox suggested.

  ‘He could have done it. He was hanging about in that region after he was called. He could have slipped in and removed the dummy head. Waited there for the end of the duel. Done it. Fixed the head. And walked out in plenty of time for the second curtain call. He was wearing his bloodied cloak, which would have accounted for any awkward stains. Next?’

  ‘Duncan and/or one of his sons. Well,’ said Fox apologetically, ‘it’s silly, I know, but they could have. If nobody was watching them. And they could have come out just when nobody was there. If it wasn’t so beastly it would be funny. The old boy rolling up his sleeves and settling his crown and wading in. And, by the way, if there were two of them the time thing vanishes. The King beheads him and drags the body over and puts the dummy head by it while his son puts the real head on the weapon and places them in the corner. However,’ said Mr Fox, ‘it is silly. How about one of the witches? The man-witch?’

  ‘Rangi? Partly Maori. He was wonderful. Those grimaces and the dance. He was possessed. He was also with his girls, and you noted it, all through the crucial time.’

  ‘All right then. The other obvious one. Gaston,’ said Fox moodily.

  ‘But why obvious? Well, because he’s a bit dotty – but that’s not enough. Or is it? And again: time. We’ve got to face it, Fox. For all of them. Except for the royal family, Banquo, and the witches – time! Rangi could have taken a girl in to fix the head on the claidheamh-mor and thus saved about a minute. It’s impossible to imagine anybody collaborating with the exuberant Gaston.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Fox, ‘we’ve got to face it. They were all too busy fighting and on-going.’

  ‘It’s all approximate. Counsel for the defence, whatever the defence might be, would make mincemeat of it.’

  ‘They talked during the fight. Here.’ He flattened out his Penguin copy of the play. ‘I got this out of a dressing room,’ he said. ‘Look. The dialogue was cut pretty severely but there’s enough left. Macbeth gets the last word. “And damned,”’ quoted Mr Fox who read laboriously through his specs, ‘“be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’” and with that they set to again. And within the next three minutes, whoever did it, his head was off his shoulders and on the stick.’

  ‘Our case in a nutshell, Br’er Fox.’

  ‘Yerse.’

  ‘And now, if you will, let me examine what may or may not be the side issues in evidence. Where’s Peregrine Jay? Has he gone with the others?’

  ‘No,’ said Peregrine, ‘I’ve been here all the time.’ And he came down the centre aisle into the light. ‘Here I am,’ he said. ‘Not as bright as a button, I fear, but here.’

  ‘Sit down. Did you hear what I said?’

  ‘Yes. I’m glad you said it. I’m going to break my own rule and tell you more fully of what may be, as you’ve hinted, side issues.’

  ‘I’ll be glad to hear you.’

  Peregrine went on. He described the unsettling effect of the tales of ill-luck that had grown up round the play of Macbeth and his own stern injunctions to the company that they should ignore them.

  ‘The ones most committed, of course, like Nina Gaythorne, didn’t obey me but I think, though I can’t be sure, that on the whole they were more or less obeyed. For a time, at any rate. And then it began. With the Banquo mask in the King’s room.’

  He described it. ‘It was extraordinarily effective. Glaring there in the shadow. It’s like all Gaston’s work, extremely macabre. You remember the procession of Banquos in the witches’ scene?’

  ‘I do indeed.’

  ‘Well, to come upon one suddenly! I was warned but even then – horrid!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I examined it and I found the arrangement of string connected with the slate-coloured poncho. The head itself was fixed on a coat-hanger and the poncho hung from that. The long end of string reached down to the stage. There is a nail in the wall above the head. The string passed over it and down. To stage level. Now it seemed to me, it still seems to me, that if I’m on the right track this means that the cloak was pulled up to cover the head and the cord fastened down below. I’ve had a look and there’s a crosspiece in the back of the scenery in exactly the right place.’

  ‘It could be lowered from stage level?’

  ‘Yes. The intention being that it remained hidden until Macduff
went in.’

  ‘Macduff saw it first. He tried to warn Macbeth.’

  ‘What did you do with it?’

  ‘I called Props and wrapped it up in its cloak and told him to put it with its mates on the property table.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘The next thing that happened was a servant at the banquet swept off the dish-cover and there underneath was the man’s head again. Grinning at Macbeth. It was – well, awful. You know?’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I addressed the actors. All of them. I said – the expected things, I suppose. That it was a rather disgusting trick but as none of them was prepared to own up to being the perpetrator I thought the best thing we could do was ignore it. Something like that.’

  ‘Yes. It must have thrown a spanner in your works, didn’t it?’

  ‘Of course. But we rose above. Actors are resilient, you know. They react to something with violence and they talk a great deal but they go on. Nobody walked out on us, though there was a nasty feeling in the air. But I really think Rangi’s rat’s head was the worst.’

  ‘Rangi’s rat’s head?’ Alleyn repeated.

  ‘Well, it was the head that mattered. In his marketing bag. That’s what we called their bags – a sort of joke. For the things they collected for their spell, you know – some of them off the corpse on the gallows. Did you know the items they enumerate are really authentic?’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Well, they are. “For a charm of powerful trouble.” There’s no mention of a rat’s head, though.’

  ‘Have you got your own ideas about the author of these tricks?’

  ‘I have, yes. But they are not supported by any firm evidence. Merely unsecured ideas. They couldn’t be vaguer. They arise from a personal distaste.’

  ‘Can we hear them? We won’t attach too much importance to them.’

  Peregrine hesitated. Mr Fox completed his notes and looked benevolently at him, his vast hand poised over the notebook.

  ‘Have you spoken to Barrabell? The Banquo.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Alleyn. ‘Only to get his name and address and a very few bits of information about the other people’s positions.’

  ‘He’s a strange one. Beautiful voice, well managed. A mischief-maker. He belongs to some way-out society, the Red Fellowship, I think it’s called. He enjoys making sneaky little underhand jokes about other actors. I find myself thinking of him as a sea-lawyer. He’s always making objections to “business” in the play, which doesn’t endear him to me, of course.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I think he knows about young William.’

  Alleyn took the folded paper from his pocket, opened it and showed it to Peregrine.

  ‘This was left in Winter Morris’s office and typed on the machine there?’

  Peregrine looked at it. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Winty told me.’

  ‘Did you guess who did it?’

  ‘Yes. I thought so. Barrabell. It was only a guess but he was about. In the theatre at that time. The sort of thing he’d do, I thought.’

  ‘Did you say so to Winter?’

  ‘I did, yes. Winty says he went to the loo. It was the only time the room was free. About five minutes. There’s a window into the foyer. Anybody there could look in, see it was empty and – do it.’

  ‘One of the Harcourt-Smith victims was called Barrabell. Muriel Barrabell. A bank clerk. She was beheaded.’

  ‘Do you think –?’

  ‘We’ll have to find out,’ Alleyn said. ‘Even so, it doesn’t give him a motive to kill Macbeth.’

  ‘And there’s absolutely no connection that we know of with poor Sir Dougal.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Whereas with Simon Morten –’ Perry stopped.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Nothing. That sounds as if I was hiding something. I was only going to say Simon’s got a hot temper and he suspected Dougal of making passes at the Lady. She put that right with him.’

  ‘He hadn’t got the opportunity to do it. He must have chased Macbeth off with his own blunt weapon raised. He’d have to change his weapon for the real claidheamh-mor, from which he had to remove the dummy head while his victim looked on, did nothing and then obligingly stooped over to receive the stroke.’

  ‘And Gaston?’

  ‘First of all, time. I’ve done it in dumb show myself, all out and way over the time. And what’s even more convincing, Gaston was seen by the King and Nina Gaythorne and, as they came out, by people going on for the call. He actually spoke to them. This was while the murder was taking place. He went into the OP corner and collected the claidheamh-mor at the last moment when Macduff came round and he followed him on.’

  Peregrine raised his arms and let them drop. ‘Exit Gaston Sears,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I ever really thought he’d done it but I’m glad to have it confirmed. Who’s left?’

  ‘Without an alibi? Barrabell. The stagehands. Various thanes. Lady Macbeth. Old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all.’

  ‘I’d better go back to the boys in the office. They’re trying to make up their minds.’

  Alleyn looked at his watch. ‘It’s ten past two,’ he said. ‘If they haven’t made up their minds I suggest they sleep on it. Are the actors called?’

  ‘For four o’clock this afternoon, poor dears.’

  ‘It’s none of my business, of course, but I don’t think you should go on with Macbeth.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘It’s only a matter of time before the truth is known. A very short time probably. You’ll get a sort of horror-reaction, a great deal of morbid speculation, and, I should think, the kind of publicity that will be an insult to a beautiful production.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘There will be a trial. We hope. Your actors will be pestered by the press. Quite possibly the Harcourt-Smith case will be revived and young William cornered by the tabloids and awful interpretations put on his reactions. He and his mother will be hunted remorselessly.

  ‘This may happen whatever we do,’ said Peregrine unhappily.

  ‘Certainly. But to nothing like the same extent if you don’t do this play.’

  ‘No. No, nothing like.’ Peregrine got up and walked to the door.

  ‘I’ll speak to them,’ he said. ‘Along those lines. Good night, Alleyn.’

  ‘Good night, my dear chap.’

  CHAPTER 7

  The Junior Element

  It was a quarter past three when Peregrine let himself into his house and gave himself a very stiff whisky and a sandwich and then crept upstairs to bed.

  ‘Hullo,’ said Emily. ‘You needn’t creep about, I waked when you opened the front door.’

  He turned on his bedside lamp.

  ‘What’s happened?’ she said when she saw his face.

  ‘Didn’t Cip tell you?’

  ‘Only that there’d been an accident. He said, privately, that Robin didn’t understand. Not properly and he wasn’t sure that he did.’

  ‘Is Robin upset?’

  ‘You know what he’s like.’

  ‘Has he gone silent?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’d better tell you,’ said Peregrine. And did.

  ‘Oh, Perry,’ she whispered. ‘How awful!’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘What will you do? Go on?’

  ‘I think not. It’s not decided. Alleyn pointed out what would happen.’

  ‘Not the same Mr Alleyn?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Yes. The very same. He was in front last night. He’s a Chief Superintendent now. Very grand.’

  ‘Nice?’

  ‘Yes. There’s nobody arrested or anything like that. Shall I take a look at the boys?’

  ‘They were both asleep an hour ago. Have a look.’

  Peregrine crept along the landing and opened their doors. Steady regular breathing in each room.

  He came back to his wife and got into bed.

  ‘Sound asleep,’ he sa
id.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘God, I’m tired,’ he said. He kissed her and fell asleep.

  Maggie Mannering with Nanny was driven home in her hired car. She was in a state of bewilderment. She had heard the cast go by on their way for the second curtain call, the usual storm of applause and the rest of the company’s movement forward for the second curtain when everyone except herself and Macbeth went on. She heard Gaston cry out: ‘No! For God’s sake, no!’ and Bob Masters’s ‘Hold it! Hold everything.’ There had been a sudden silence while someone held the curtain back and he went out and then came his voice: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, I regret to tell you there has been an accident…’

  And then the confused sound of the audience leaving and Masters again, saying ‘Clear, please. Everybody off and to their dressing-rooms. Please.’ And hurrying figures stumbling past her and asking each other: ‘What accident? What’s happened?’ and Malcolm and the soldiers saying: ‘It’s him. Did you see? Christ Almighty!’

  There was a muddle of human beings, Nanny taking her to her dressing-room and she removing her make-up and Nanny getting her into her street clothes.

  ‘Nanny, what’s happened? Is it Sir Dougal? What accident?’

  ‘Never you mind, dear. We’ll be told. All in good time.’

  ‘Go out, Nanny. Ask somebody. Ask Mr Masters. Say I want to know.’

  Nanny went out. She ran into somebody, another woman, in the passage and there was a gabble of voices. There was no mistaking the high-pitched, nicely articulated wail.

  ‘Nina!’ Maggie had called. ‘Come in. Come in, darling.’

  Nina was in disarray but had changed and had pulled on a tamo’-shanter of the kind that needs careful adjustment and had not received it. There were traces of mascara under her eyes.

  ‘Maggie!’ she cried. ‘Oh, Maggie, isn’t it awful?’

  ‘Isn’t what awful? Here. Sit down and pull yourself together, for pity’s sake, and tell me. Is somebody dead?’

  Nina nodded her head a great many times.

  ‘Who? Is it Dougal? Yes? For heaven’s sake pull yourself together. Has everybody lost their heads?’

  Nina produced a shrill cackle of laughter.

  ‘What is it?’ Maggie demanded.