Buffet for Unwelcome Guests (5 page)

‘And then sat unconsciously holding her stinging hand.’

‘So you’d almost decided to have him charged. But it would be most convenient to do the whole thing tidily down at the station, cleaning him up and all…’

‘We weren’t a set of actor-fellows down there,’ said the old man defensively, though no one had accused him of anything. ‘We cleaned away the greasepaint enough to see that there was no mark of the blow. But I dare say we left him to do the rest—and I dare say he saw to it that a lot remained about the forehead and eyes… I remember thinking that he looked old and haggard, but under the circumstances that would not be surprising. And when at last I got back to the theatre, no doubt the same thing went on with “Arthur” Dragon; perhaps I registered that he looked young for his years—but I have forgotten that.’ He sighed. ‘By then, of course, anyway, it was too late. The mark was gone.’ He sighed again. ‘A man of thirty with a red mark to conceal: and a man of fifty. The family likeness, the famous voice, both actors, both familiar with Othello, since the father had produced it: and both with perhaps the most effective disguises that fate could possibly have designed for them…’

‘The Moor of Venice,’ said Inspector Cockrill.

‘And—a Clown,’ said the Great Detective. The white rabbit leapt out of the hat and bowed right and left to the audience.

‘Whether, as I say, he continued to play his son’s part—on the stage as well as off,’ said the Great Detective, ‘I shall never know. But I think he did. I think they would hardly dare to change back before my very eyes. I think that, backed up by a loyal company, they played Cox and Box with me. I said to you earlier that while his audiences believed their Othello to be in fact a murderer—he was: and he was not. I think that Othello was a murderer; but I think that the wrong man was playing Othello’s part.’

‘And you,’ said Inspector Cockrill, in a voice hushed with what doubtless was reverence, ‘went to see him play?’

‘And heard someone say that he seemed to have aged twenty years… And so,’ said the Great Detective, ‘we brought him to trial, as you know. We had a case all right: the business about the prison sentence, of course, came to light; we did much to discredit the existence of any lover; we had the evidence of the stage door-keeper, the evidence of the company was not disinterested. But alas!—the one tangible clue, the mark of that slap, had long since gone: and there we were. I unmasked him; I built up a case against him: I brought him to trial. The jury failed to convict.’

‘And quite right too,’ said Inspector Cockrill.

‘And quite right too,’ agreed the great man graciously. ‘A British jury is always right. Lack of concrete evidence, lack of unbiased witnesses, lack of demonstrable proof…’

‘Lack of a murderer,’ said Inspector Cockrill.

‘Are you suggesting,’ said the old man, after a little while, ‘that Arthur Dragon did not impersonate his son? And if so—will you permit me to ask, my dear fellow, who then impersonated who? Leila Dragon, perhaps, took her brother’s place? She had personal grudges against Glenda Croy. And she was tall and well-built (the perfect Rosalind—a clue, my dear Inspector, after your own heart!) and he was slight, for a man. And of course she had the famous Dragon voice.’

‘She also had a “well-rounded bosom”,’ said Inspector Cockrill, ‘exposed, as you told us, by laced bodice and low-cut gown. She might have taken her brother’s part: he can hardly have taken hers.’ And he asked, struggling with the two walnuts, why anybody should have impersonated anybody, anyway.

‘But they were… But they all… But everything they said or did was designed to draw attention to Othello, was designed to gain time while the mark was fading under the make-up of—’

‘Of the Clown,’ said Inspector Cockrill: and his voice was as sharp as the crack of the walnuts suddenly giving way between his hard brown hands.

‘It was indeed,’ said Inspector Cockrill, ‘ “a frightened and angry man” who rushed round to her dressing-room that night: after his son had told him of the threat hissed out on the stage. “Something about gaol…. Something about prisoners…” ’ He said to the old man: ‘You did not make it clear that it was
Arthur
Dragon who had served a prison sentence, all those years ago.’

‘Didn’t I?’ said the old man. ‘Well, it made no difference. James Dragon was their star and their “draw”, Arthur Dragon was their manager—without either, the company couldn’t undertake the tour. But of course it was Arthur: who on earth could have thought otherwise?’

‘No one,’ agreed Cockie. ‘He said as much to her in the dressing-room. “If you’re referring to me…” and, “We were all wild and silly in those days before the war…” That was the 1914 war, of course: all this happened thirty years ago. But in the days before the 1914 war, James Dragon would have been a child: he was born at the turn of the century—far too young to be sent to prison, anyway.

‘You would keep referring to these people by their stage names,’ said Cockie. ‘It was muddling. We came to think of the Clown as the Clown, and not as Arthur Dragon, James Dragon’s father—and manager and producer for Dragon Productions. “I am taking the company to America…” It was not for James Dragon to say that; he was their star, but his father was their manager, it was he who “took” the company here or there… And, “You can come if you like—playing Celia.” It was not for James Dragon to say that: it was for Arthur Dragon, their producer, to assign the parts to the company…

‘It was the dressing-gown, I think, that started me off on it,’ said Inspector Cockrill, thoughtfully. ‘You see—as one of them said, the profession is not fussy about the conventional modesties. Would Glenda Croy’s husband really have knocked?—rushing in there, mad with rage and anxiety, would he really have paused to knock politely at his wife’s door? And she—would she really have waited to put on a dressing-gown over her ample petticoat, to receive him? For her father-in-law, perhaps, yes: we are speaking of many years ago. But for her husband…? Well, I wouldn’t know. But it started me wondering.

‘At any rate—he killed her. She could break up their tour, she could throw mud at their great name: and he had everything to lose, an ageing actor who had given up his own career for the company. He killed her; and a devoted family and loyal, and “not disinterested” company, hatched up a plot to save him from the consequences of what none of them greatly deplored. We made our mistake, I think,’ said Cockie, handsomely including himself in the mistake, ‘in supposing that it would be an elaborate plot. It wasn’t. These people were actors and not used to writing their own plots: it was in fact an incredibly simple plot. “Let’s all put on our greasepaint again and create as much delay as possible while, under the Clown make-up, the red mark fades. And the best way to draw attention from the Clown, will be to draw it towards Othello.” No doubt they will have added civilly, “James—is that all right with you?”

‘And so,’ said Inspector Cockrill, ‘we come back again to James Dragon. Within the past hour he had had a somewhat difficult time. Within the past hour his company had been gravely threatened and by the treachery of his own wife; within the past hour his wife had been strangled and his father had become a self-confessed murderer… And now he was to act, without rehearsal and without lines, a part which might yet bring him to the Old Bailey and under sentence of death. It was no wonder, perhaps, that when the greasepaint was wiped away from his face that night, our friend thought he seemed to have aged…’ If, he added, their friend really had thought so at the time and was not now being wise after the event.

He was able to make this addition because their friend had just got up and, with a murmured excuse, had left the room. In search of a white rabbit, perhaps?

‘A
ND DEVOTED, I HEAR,
’ he says, ‘David and Jonathan,’ he says. ‘In fact you might properly be called,’ he says, with that glitter in his eye, ‘blood brothers?’

Well, he can sneer but it’s true we was pally enough, Fred and me, till Lydia came along. Shared the same digs in the village—Birdswell’s our village, if you know it?—Birdswell, in Kent. Everyone in Birdswell knows us—even if they can’t easily tell the difference between us—and used to say how wonderful it was, us two so alike, with our strong legs and big shoulders and curly red hair, like a kid’s: and what a beautiful understanding we had, what a bond of union. People talk a lot of crap about identical twins.

Lydia couldn’t tell the difference between us either—seemingly. Was that my fault? Fair enough, she was Fred’s girl first—unless you counted her husband, and to some extent you did have to count him: six foot five, he is, and it isn’t only because he’s the blacksmith that they call him in the village, Black Will. But she switched to me of her own accord, didn’t she?—even if I wasn’t too quick to disillusion her, the first time she started with her carryings-on, mistaking me for Fred. ‘
I
can’t help it if she fancies me more than you, now,’ I said to Fred.

‘You’ll regret this, you two-timing, double-crossing bastard,’ said Fred: he always did have a filthy temper, Fred.

Well, I did regret it: and not so very long after. Fred and me shares a car between us—a heavy old, bashed-up, fourth-hand ‘family model’, but at least it goes. And one evening, when he’d slouched off, ugly and moody as he was those days, to poach the river down by the Vicarage woods, I picked up Lydia and took her out in it, joy-riding. Not that there was much joy in it. We hadn’t been out twenty minutes when, smooching around with Lydia, I suppose, not paying enough attention to the road—well, I didn’t see the kid until I’d hit him. Jogging along the grass verge he was, with his little can of blackberries: haring home as fast as his legs would go, a bit scared, I daresay, because the dark was catching up on him. Well—the dark caught him up all right: poor little bastard. I scrambled out and knelt down and turned him over; and got back again, quick. ‘He’s gone,’ I said to Lydia, ‘and we’d best be gone too.’ She made a lot of fuss, woman-like, but what was the point of it? If he wasn’t dead now, he would be mighty soon, there wasn’t any doubt of it: lying there with the can still clutched in his fat little hand and the blackberries spilt, and scattered all around him. I couldn’t do nothing; if I could have I dare say I’d have waited, but I couldn’t. So what was the use of bringing trouble on myself, when the chances were that I could get clear away with it?

And I did get clear away with it. The road was hard and dry, the cars that followed and stopped must have obscured my tyre marks, if there were any. They found half a footprint in the dried mud, where I’d bent over him; but it was just a cheap, common make of shoe, pretty new so it had no particular marks to it; and a largish size, of course, but nothing out of the ordinary. No one knew I’d been on that road—everything Lydia did with us two was done in deep secret, because of Black Will. Will was doing time at the moment, for beating up a keeper who came on him, poaching, (we all spent most of our evenings poaching.) But he’d be back some day.

And Fred promised me an alibi, when I told him about it: clutching at his arm, shaking a bit by this time, losing confidence because Lydia was threatening to turn nasty. ‘I’ll say you was in the woods with me,’ he said. And he did, too. They came to our door, ‘regulation police enquiries’; but Lydia wouldn’t dare to tell, not really. I could see that in the light of day, and they had no other sort of reason to suspect me, especially. And nobody did—it could have been any stranger, speeding along the empty country roads. Fred pretended to be reluctant to alibi me, cagey about saying where we was—because of the poaching. He managed it fine, it sort of threw their interest half way in a different direction. I thought it was decent of Fred, considering about me and Lydia. But brotherly love is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?

Or isn’t it? Because it hadn’t been all for nothing. No sooner was I clear of that lot than he says to me: ‘Well—has she told you?’

‘Told me what?’ I says. ‘Who? Lydia?’

‘Lydia,’ he says. ‘She’s having a baby.’

‘Well, don’t look at me,’ I said, and quick. ‘I’ve only been going with the girl a couple of weeks.’

‘And her husband hasn’t been going with her at all,’ said Fred. ‘On account of he’s been in prison for the past five months.’

‘For half killing a man,’ I said, thoughtfully; and I looked Fred up and down. Fred and me are no weeds, like I said; but Black Will, he’s half way to a giant.

‘And due out at the end of October,’ said Fred.

‘Well, good luck to the two of you,’ says I. ‘It’s nothing to do with me. I had her for a couple of weeks, and now even that’s over. She reckons I ought to have stopped and seen to the kid: she’s given me the bird.’

‘She’ll give you more than the bird,’ he says, ‘and me too when Will comes home. When he knows about the baby, he’ll beat the rest out of her; and then God help you and me too.’

‘The baby could be Jimmy Green’s,’ I said. ‘Or Bill Bray’s. She’s been out with them, too.’

‘That’s her tales,’ he said, ‘to make you jealous. They’re a sight too scared of Will to let Lydia make up to them. And so ought you and I to have been too, if we’d had any sense.’ Only where Lydia was concerned, there never seemed to be time to have sense; and six months ago, Fred said, Black Will’s return had seemed like an aeon away. ‘So what are you going to do?’ I said.

‘What are
you
going to do?’ he said. ‘A hit-and-run driver—you can get a long stretch for that. The kid wasn’t dead yet, when they found him.’

Good old brotherly love!—Fred worrying about me, when after all I
had
pinched his girl. And him in such trouble himself.

We went out in the car, where no one could hear us: our old landlady’s pretty deaf and takes no interest at all in our comings and goings, but Fred wasn’t taking no chances…

Because it was all Fred’s idea: that I will say, and stick to it—it was Fred’s idea. Dead men tell no tales, said Fred; nor dead girls, neither. ‘If they find she’s in the family way—it’s like you said, she was spreading it around she’d been going with half the village. Once she was past talking, Will couldn’t pin it on us two: not to be certain.’