Light Thickens Page 20

  ‘Under flawless direction, Perry,’ said Maggie and the others after a murmured agreement clapped him: a desultory sound in the empty Dolphin. It died away. A throat was cleared. Gaston stepped forward.

  Somebody said: ‘Oh no.’

  ‘I may not,’ Gaston proclaimed with an air of infinite conceit, ‘be considered the appropriate figure to voice our corporate approval of the style in which the play has been presented. However, as no one else has come forward, I shall attempt to do so.’ He spread his feet and grasped his lapels. ‘I have been glad to offer my assistance in matters of production and to have been able to provide the replicas for the weapons used by Macbeth and Macduff. I made them,’ he said, with a modest cough. ‘I do, however, now frankly deplore the use of the actual, historical claidheamh-mor. At the time I felt that since no hands but mine own would touch it, there would be no desecration. I was utterly mistaken and take this opportunity of admitting as much. The claidheamh-mor is possessed of a power – ‘

  ‘For God’s sake, somebody stop him,’ muttered Simon.

  ‘– it moves in its own appointed way – ‘

  The doors at the back of the stalls opened and Alleyn came into the house and walked down the centre aisle.

  Gaston paused, his mouth open. Peregrine said: ‘Excuse me, Gaston. I think Mr Alleyn wants to speak to me.’ The actors, intensely relieved, set up a buzz of affirmation.

  ‘It’s to say that we’ve just about finished our work in the theatre,’ Alleyn said, ‘and the dressing-rooms are now open for use. I understand that the production of Macbeth will be discontinued and that the Management will make an announcement, now, to the company. I must ask you all to remain at your present addresses or, if any of you change your address, to let us know. If this is inconvenient for any of you I am very sorry. It will not, I hope, be for long.’

  He turned to Peregrine. ‘I think the Management would like a word with you,’ he said.

  Bruce Barrabell said importantly, ‘I am the Union’s representative in this production. I will have to ask for a ruling on the situation.’

  ‘No doubt,’ said Alleyn politely, ‘they will be glad to advise you. There is a telephone in the Prompt corner.’ And to the company: ‘Mr Fox has the keys. He’s in the greenroom.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Barrabell, ‘you’ve been through our private possessions like the proverbial toothcomb.’

  ‘I’m not sure how proverbial toothcombs work but I expect you’re right.’

  ‘And retired to your virtuous bed to sleep the sleep of the just, no doubt?’

  ‘I didn’t go to bed last night,’ said Alleyn mildly. He surveyed the company. ‘The typescripts of your statements are in the greenroom,’ he said. ‘We’d be grateful if you’d be kind enough to read them and, if they’re correct, sign them before you go. Thank you all very much.’

  In the boardroom, Peregrine faced his fellow guardians and Winter Morris. Mrs Abrams was secretary.

  ‘In the appalling situation in which we find ourselves,’ he said, ‘the immediate problem is how we conduct our policy. We’ve been given twenty-four hours in which to decide. One: we can go dark and advertise that money for advance bookings will be refunded at the box office. Two: we can continue with the presentation with Simon Morten in the lead and his understudy playing Macduff. The fight at the end would be replaced by a much simpler routine. Or, and this is an unorthodox decision, Gaston Sears would play the lead. He tells me he is in a fair way to being word-perfect and of course he knows the fight, but he adds that he feels he would have to decline. Three: we can take a fortnight off and re-open with the revival of one of our past successes. The Glove has been mentioned. As the author, I feel I can’t speak for or against the play. I can, however, say that I have heard William Smith read the very important part of the young Hamnet Shakespeare and he promised extremely well. We can cast it from the present company. Maggie would be splendid as the Dark Lady and I fancy Simon as the Bard and Nina as Anne.’

  He was silent for a second or two and then went on: ‘This is a terrible thing that has happened. One would have said that our dear Sir Dougal had no enemies. I still can’t get myself round to – to – facing it and I dare say you can’t either. Of one thing we may all be sure: he would have wanted us to do what is best for the Dolphin.’

  He sat down.

  For a time nobody spoke. Then one bald and stout guardian whispered to another and a little pantomime of nods and portentous frowns passed round the table. The senior guardian, who was thin and had a gentle air, stood up.

  ‘I move,’ he said, ‘that we leave the matter in Mr Peregrine Jay’s hands and do so with our complete trust in his decision.’

  ‘Second that,’ said an intelligent Jewish guardian.

  ‘Those in favour? Unanimous,’ said the chairman.

  CHAPTER 8

  Development

  ‘I suppose I ought to be feeling all glowing and grateful,’ said Peregrine, ‘but I’m afraid I don’t. They are nice old boys all of them but they’re dab hands at passing the buck and making it look like a compliment.’

  ‘You’ve been given a completely free hand and if it turns out a dead failure you’ll find yourself out on a limb and all of them saying, ever so delicately, that they felt at the time the decision was a mistaken one,’ Alleyn observed.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘If it’s any comfort, which it isn’t, I’m familiar with these tactics.’

  ‘Why don’t we leave them to make the decision? Why don’t I say I feel it would be better, in the circumstances, for somebody less intimately concerned with the Dolphin to produce the next show? God knows, it’d be true.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘But I’d feel I was ratting.’ He dug his hands into his pockets. ‘I’m fond of them. We’ve taken a journey together and come out on the golden sands. We’ve found Macbeth. It’s a marvellous feeling. Or was. Are you any further on?’

  ‘A little, I think. Not enough, not anything like enough, to think of an arrest.’

  Peregrine’s fingers had been playing with something in his pocket. They closed round it and fetched it out, a dilapidated little figure, jet black, flourishing a bent weapon behind its shoulder.

  ‘Where did you find that?’ Alleyn asked.

  ‘It’s one of my boy’s toy soldiers – a Crusader. William found it.’

  ‘William?’

  ‘Smith. He spent the day with us. He’s the same age as young Robin. They got on like a house on fire playing with the boys’ electric train. This thing was a passenger, picked up at Crewe. He said he was hurt but he had to get to the theatre at seven. It gave me quite a shock – all black and with a claymorish thing – like Sir Dougal. Only they called him Sears. Extraordinary, how children behave. You know? William didn’t know what had happened in the theatre but he guessed Sir Dougal was dead. Robin didn’t know, or wasn’t certain about the decapitation, though he’d been very much upset when it happened. I’d realized that, but he didn’t ask any questions and now there he was making a sort of game of it.’

  ‘Extraordinary,’ said Alleyn. ‘May I see it? The Crusader?’

  Peregrine handed it over. ‘It might be Sir Dougal or Barrabell or Sears or nobody,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t look tall enough for Simon Morten. It’s masked, of course.’

  ‘He wasn’t masked. And in any case – ‘

  ‘No. In any case the whole thing’s a muddle and a coincidence. William fished this thing out of a box full of battered Crusaders.’

  ‘And called it – what? Sears?’

  ‘Not exactly. I mean it became Sears. They picked him up at Crewe. Before that, William – being Sears at the moment when he used the telephone – rang up the station for an emergency stop. He said – what the hell did he say? That he was hurt and had to get to the Dolphin by seven. That’s when William took this thing from the box and they put it in the train. It was a muddle. They hooted and whistled and shouted and changed the plot. William gasped an
d panted a lot.’

  ‘Panted? As if he’d been running?’ Alleyn asked.

  ‘Yes. Sort of. I think he said something about trying not to. I’m not sure. He said it was asthma but Sears wouldn’t let on because he was an actor. One thing I am sure about, though.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘They got rid of whatever feelings they had about the real event by turning it all into a game.’

  ‘That sounds like good psychology to me,’ said Alleyn. ‘But then I’m no psychologist. I can understand Robin calling this thing Sears, though.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He was here, wasn’t he? In the theatre. He saw the real Sears carry the head on. Associated images.’

  ‘I think I see what you mean,’ said Peregrine doubtfully. ‘Oh well, I’ll have to go up to the offices and get an audition notice typed out. What about you?’

  ‘We’ll see them out of here,’ said Alleyn.

  ‘Good luck to you,’ said Peregrine. He vaulted down into the orchestral well and walked away up the centre aisle. The doors opened and shut behind him.

  Alleyn went over his notes.

  Is there a connection or isn’t there? he asked himself. Did the perpetrator of these nasty practical jokes have anything to do with the beheading of an apparently harmless star actor or was he practising along his own beastly self-indulgent lines? Who is he? Bruce Barrabell? Why are his fellow actors and – well, Peregrine Jay – so sure he’s the trickster? Simply because they don’t like him and he seems to be the only person in the company capable of such murky actions? But why would he do it? I’d better take a pot-shot and try to find out. He looked at his notes. Red Fellowship. H’m. Silly little outfit but they’re on the lists and so’s he, so here goes.

  He walked down the dressing-room corridor until he came to the one shared by Barrabell and Morten. He paused and listened. Not a sound. He knocked and a splendid voice said ‘Come’. They always made such a histrionic thing of it when they left out the ‘in’, Alleyn thought.

  Bruce Barrabell was seated in front of his looking glass. The lights were switched on and provided an unmotivated brilliance to the dead room. The make-up had all been laid by in the old cigar-box fastened by two rubber bands and put into a suitcase. The dirty grease-cloths were neatly rolled up in a paper bag, the dull red dressing gown folded and in the bottom of the same battered suitcase with Russian labels stuck on it. On the top of his belongings was a programme, several review pages and a small collection of cards and telegrams. Crumpled tissues lay about the dressing table.

  Simon Morten’s possessions were all packed away in his heavily labelled suitcase which was shut and waited on the floor, inside the door. The indescribable smell of greasepaint still hung on the air and the room was desolate.

  ‘Ah. Mr Alleyn!’ said Barrabell expansively. ‘Good evening to you. Can I be of any help? I’m just tidying up, as you see.’ He waved his hand at the disconsolate room. ‘Do sit down,’ he invited.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Alleyn. He took the other chair and opened his file. ‘I’m checking all your statements,’ he said.

  ‘Ah yes. Mine is quite in order, I hope?’

  ‘I hope so, too,’ Alleyn said. He turned the papers slowly until he came to Mr Barrabell’s statement. He looked at his man and saw two men. The silver-voiced Banquo saying so beautifully, ‘There’s husbandry in Heaven. Their candles are all out,’ and the unnaturally pale actor with light eyes whose hands trembled a little as he lit a cigarette.

  ‘I’m sorry. Do you?’ Barrabell asked winningly and offered his cigarettes.

  ‘No, thank you. I don’t. About these tricks that have been played during the rehearsal period. I see you called them “schoolboy hoaxes” when we asked you about them.’

  ‘Did I? I don’t remember. It’s what they were, I suppose. Isn’t it?’

  ‘Two extremely realistic severed heads? A pretty case-hardened schoolboy. Had you one in mind?’

  ‘Oh no. No.’

  ‘Not the one in Mr Winter Morris’s “co.” for instance?’

  There was a pause. Barrabell’s lips moved, repeating the words, but no sound came from them. He shook his head slightly. ‘There was somebody,’ Alleyn went on, ‘a victim, in the Harcourt-Smith case. Her name was Muriel Barrabell, a bank clerk.’ He waited. Somewhere along the corridor a door banged and a man’s voice called out: ‘In the greenroom, dear.’

  ‘Was she your sister?’

  Silence.

  ‘Your wife?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Did you want the boy to get the sack?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘He was supposed to have perpetrated these tricks. And all to do with severed heads. Like his father’s crimes. Even the rat’s head. A mad boy, we were meant to think. Like his father. Get rid of him, he’s mad, like his father. It’s inherited.’

  There was another long silence.

  ‘She was my wife,’ said Barrabell. ‘I never knew at the time what happened. I didn’t get their letter. He was charged with another woman’s murder. Caught red-handed. I was doing a long tour of Russia with the Leftist Players. It was all over when I got back. She was so beautiful, you can’t think. And he did that to her. I made them tell me. They didn’t want to but I kept on and on until they did.’

  ‘And you took it out on this perfectly sane small boy?’

  ‘How do you know he’s perfectly sane? Could you expect me to be in the same company with him? I wanted this part. I wanted to work for the Dolphin. But do you imagine I could do so with that murderer’s brat in the cast? Not bloody likely,’ said Barrabell and contrived a sort of laugh.

  ‘So you came to the crisis. All the elaborate attempts to incriminate young William came to nothing. And then suddenly, inexplicably, there was the real, the horrible crime of Sir Dougal’s decapitation. How do you explain that?’

  ‘I don’t,’ he said at once. ‘I know nothing about it. Nothing. Apart from his vanity and his accepting that silly title, he was harmless enough. A typical bourgeois hero, which maybe is why he excelled as Macbeth.’

  ‘You see the play as an anti-heroic exposure of the bourgeois way of life, do you? Is that it? Can that be it?’

  ‘Certainly. If you choose to put it like that. It’s the Macbeths’ motive. Their final desperate gesture. And they both break under the strain.’

  ‘You really believe that, don’t you?’

  ‘Certainly,’ he repeated. ‘Of course, our reading was, as usual, idiotic. Take the ending: “Hail, King of Scotland.” In other words: “Hail to the old acceptable standards. The old rewards and the old dishing out of cash and titles.” We cut all that, of course. And the bloody head of Macbeth stared the young Malcolm in the face. Curtain,’ said Barrabell.

  ‘Have you discussed the play with your political chums at the Red Fellowship meetings?’

  ‘Yes. Not in detail. More as a joke, really.’

  ‘A joke,’ Alleyn exclaimed. ‘Did you say a joke?’

  ‘A bit on the macabre side, certainly. There’s a meeting every Sunday morning. You ought to come. I’ll bring you in on my ticket.’

  ‘Did you talk about the murder?’

  ‘Oh yes. Whodunnit talk. You know.’

  ‘Who did do it?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. I don’t know, do I?’

  Alleyn thought: He’s not so frightened, now. He’s being impudent.

  ‘Have you thought about the future, Mr Barrabell? What do you think of doing?’

  ‘I haven’t considered it. There’s talk of another Leftist Players Tour but of course I thought I was settled for a long season here.’

  ‘Of course. Would you read this statement and, if it’s correct, sign it? Pay particular attention to this, will you?’

  The forefinger pointed to the typescript.

  ‘You were asked: where were you between Macbeth’s last speech and Old Siward’s epitaph for his son? It just says: “Dressing-room and OP centre waiting for call.�
� Could you be a little more specific?’ Alleyn asked.

  ‘I really don’t see quite how.’

  ‘When did you leave the dressing-room?’

  ‘Oh. We were called on the tannoy. They’ll give you the time. I pulled on my ghost’s head and the cloak and went out.’

  ‘Did you meet anybody in the passage?’

  ‘Meet anyone? Not precisely. I followed the old King and the Macduffs, mother and son, I remember. I don’t know if anyone followed me. Any of the other “corpses”.’

  ‘And you were alone in the dressing-room?’

  ‘Yes, my dear Chief Superintendent. Absolutely alone.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Alleyn made an addition and offered his own pen. ‘Will you read and sign it, please? There.’

  Barrabell read it. Alleyn had written: ‘Corroborative evidence: none.’

  He signed it.

  ‘Thank you,’ Alleyn said and left him.

  In the passage he ran into Rangi. ‘Hullo,’ he said, ‘I’m getting statements signed. Would it suit you to do yours now?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Where’s your room?’

  ‘Along here.’

  He led the way to where the passage turned left and the rooms were larger.

  ‘I’ve got Ross and Lennox and Angus in with me,’ Rangi said. He came to the correct door and opened it. ‘Nobody here. It’s a bit of a muddle, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. You’ve packed up, I see.’

  He cleared a chair for Alleyn and took one himself.

  ‘Yours was a wonderful performance,’ said Alleyn. ‘It was a brilliant decision to use those antipodean postures: the whole body working evil.’

  ‘I’ve been wondering if I should have done it. I don’t know what my Elders would say: the strict ones. It seemed to be right for the play. Mr Sears approved of it. I thought maybe he would think it all nonsense but he said there are strong links throughout the world in esoteric beliefs. He said all or anyway most of the ingredients in the spell are correct.’