Ha'penny (21 page)

How fantastic, Carmichael thought. “Why take a bomb when a pistol would do as well or better?” he asked.

Bannon looked annoyed at having his theory questioned. “Perhaps he couldn’t easily get hold of a gun. Or perhaps he too had been influenced by all this hysteria about bombs in the press, and believed a bomb was the modern weapon of choice?”

“Perhaps this will all turn out to be the answer,” Carmichael said, humoring him. “But for a moment, consider, from your knowledge of Miss Gilmore, if you can think of any circumstances in which she would have wanted to have made a bomb?”

“None,” Bannon said immediately. “It’s ridiculous. No, I don’t have any idea why she might have been doing that.”

“You invited her to lunch with you last Friday,” Carmichael said.

“And she came, of course. Lunch at the Venezia. That was to offer her the part. Gertrude, of course.”

One more theatrically obsessed actor, Carmichael thought. There probably wasn’t any more to be got out of Bannon than Gilmore’s other friends, though his denial was more severe than most. “You were probably the last person other than her servants and Marshall to talk to her. What mood was she in? What did you discuss over lunch?”

“She was happy. Thrilled with the part. And of course we discussed the play. The rest of the cast. I had wanted Pamela Brown for Hamlet, but she was adamant she didn’t want to play cross-cast. Lauria and I discussed several other possibilities, and she helped me decide for sure on Viola Lark.”

“Was that all you discussed?” Carmichael asked.

“Well, I did confide in her one other thing, which I’m not sure I ought to tell you as it hasn’t been announced yet.” Bannon looked a little guilty.

“You should certainly tell us,” Carmichael said. “Anything you said, that she said, could have bearing on her motives. It’s very important that you cooperate with us.”

“Yes, Inspector,” Bannon said, licking his lips nervously. “It’s just I’d been told not to tell anyone, but I was so proud. You must have heard that Hitler’s going to be in London. He’s coming over to see
Parsifal,
and while he’s here he’s going to have meetings with the king and the Prime Minister, and he’s also going to come here, on first night, with the Prime Minister, to see
Hamlet
. It’ll be announced soon, the Fuhrer seeing English culture at its best, but I was asked not to tell anyone before the announcement.”

“And you told Gilmore?” Carmichael could hardly believe it. He had told her, and she had immediately gone home to make an appointment with Marshall to begin building a bomb. He met Royston’s eyes, and Royston shook his head a little in incredulity.

“I was so proud,” Bannon repeated. “They chose my play. My
Hamlet
. Anyone would be proud.”

“Have you told anyone else?” Carmichael asked.

“No,” Bannon said, in such a way that Carmichael was sure that at the very least the whole cast knew.

“How did Gilmore react to the news about the celebrities coming to the first night?” Royston asked.

Bannon peered past Carmichael and looked at Royston as if he’d forgotten he was there. “She seemed very pleased, very excited, just as I’d expect. She asked if the Fuhrer spoke English, and I said I didn’t think he did, and she said Shakespeare rose beyond language. She asked where they’d sit, and I told her it would be in the Royal Box.”

“Where’s that?” Carmichael asked. Bannon pointed up and back. Carmichael stood and turned and looked up at a bowed box. Carmichael imagined it blowing up, turning Hitler and Mark Normanby into bloody bodies like Marshall’s, changing the history of the world.

“She was right, wasn’t she?” Bannon asked.

“I don’t know,” Carmichael said.

“ ‘To be or not to be,’ you don’t need to understand English to understand that. It is more than the language, it is the human condition. And besides, it’ll be a very visual production, the ballet, the swordfights—and we’re going to provide a special program in German explaining the plot.”

Carmichael turned to sit down again, and as he did so a girl and a man came down the stairs from the pass door. The girl was beautiful in a crisply aristocratic way, her blonde hair glossy, her features crisply defined. He had seen her, photographed in gentler focus, on the covers of magazines, and knew she was Viola Lark, previously Larkin, of the notorious Larkins of Carnforth. He thought now, as he had thought before, that there was something a little unstable about her. The man behind her looked like a bruiser; he wondered if he was a bodyguard.

She came directly towards them. She ignored Carmichael and Royston entirely. The man with her nodded to them in a friendly way. “Oh, Antony, Jackie said you were down here. I wanted to ask if it’s all right if Devlin sits in on the rehearsal today. He’ll be as silent as the grave, I promise.”

“Oh Viola, you know I don’t like this kind of thing,” Bannon said. “Yes, I suppose he can, but don’t make a habit of it. Pleased to meet you, Devlin.”

Devlin shook Bannon’s hand. “Oh, and these are Inspector Carmichael and Sergeant Um. Viola Lark and her boyfriend Devlin.”

Carmichael had been looking at Viola, and he saw fear in her eyes for a moment, before it was glossed over by an actor’s smooth confidence. She shook his hand without a tremor. “Devlin Connelly,” her boyfriend said, revealing a strong Irish accent. Carmichael shook his hand too.

“Did you know Lauria Gilmore?” he asked him, to be sure.

“I never had the pleasure, Inspector,” he said.

“I acted with her in
The Importance of Being Earnest,
but I didn’t know her well,” Viola said. There was no trace now of the nervousness or fear or whatever it had been. He almost wondered if he had imagined it.

“I saw that production,” Carmichael said. “Just after the war, wasn’t it? And you were Cecily?”

“That’s right,” she said. “I hadn’t really seen much of Lauria since. I was looking forward to working with her again, and horrified when I heard about the bomb.”

“We all were, Viola,” Bannon said.

Connelly, Carmichael noticed, was looking where he had been looking, up to the Royal Box. He saw Carmichael looking at him, and smiled. “Fancy place this,” he said.

“It’s one of the most beautiful theaters in London, I always think,” Bannon said. “Now, Inspector, have you finished with me? Because I really should be getting this rehearsal going.”

“I’m finished with you for the time being, but if I think of anything else I want to ask you, would it be all right if I came back? You’re a hard man to catch on the telephone.”

“I’m here most of the time. Fix it up with Jackie if you want to see me.” He turned away as if they had already left. “Now Devlin, you really must sit still here and be quiet, and not do anything to distract anyone. And if I find that Viola is nervous or off her form because she knows you’re here, I’ll send you out straight away. I won’t give warnings, I won’t hesitate.” Connelly was twice Antony’s size, and it was comical to see Bannon addressing him like a schoolboy.

“I’m hearing you clearly, Antony,” Connelly said. He sounded amused, and when his eyes met Carmichael’s there was a twinkle in them.

“Do we go out through the pass door, or can we get out at the front?” Carmichael asked.

“Just go back the way you came in, if you don’t mind,” Bannon said. “I could have them open up the front-of-house for you, but there isn’t really any point. Just straight along the corridor. Shall I send Jackie with you?”

“We can find our way,” Carmichael said. “Come on, sergeant. Good-bye Miss Lark, Mr. Connelly. Thank you, Mr. Bannon, you’ve really been most helpful.”

Bannon looked blank, as if he wasn’t at all sure how he might have helped. Viola Lark looked arrogant and impervious. He wondered how she had wound up involved with Connelly, who at least seemed as if he had a sense of humor.

They walked to the steps and through the pass door. Carmichael turned around for a last glance at the Royal Box and the assassination that had been averted by Gilmore’s incompetence. “Well,” Royston said as the door closed behind them. “Well!”

19

I
had no trouble getting Devlin past the doorman. He’d seen me getting out of the car enough times, and we wandered up to him hand in hand. He didn’t even ask his name. I showed him my dressing room, and Mollie’s, which was empty because Mollie wasn’t due in until the afternoon. We were doing my mad scenes and the Ophelia scenes that morning, so we didn’t need Gertrude. Mollie had a little posy by her mirror, white carnations and a bit of fern, and Devlin asked about that. “By first night all our dressing rooms will look like flower shops,” I said. “I don’t know who sent Mollie that, some admirer probably.”

He didn’t say anything, just nodded, and walked behind me down the corridor.

As soon as we came out into the wings I knew it was a bad day to have brought Devlin into the theater. There was a change in the atmosphere, an awkwardness in the way people were standing about that told me something was wrong. Pat was leaning against a flat smoking. His eyes rested on Devlin a moment as we came past, and I saw admiration but also something else, a kind of speculation. “Where’s Antoine?” I said. Pronouncing his name as if it were French was the way we’d been teasing Antony the last couple of days.

“Ask Jackie,” Pat said.

Jackie was making notes. She looked up when she heard her name. “He’s in the pit,” she said. “You’d better go down if you want him.”

I took Devlin back and down the stairs through the pass door. Antony was sitting in the front row, casually, with a couple of men next to him. As we walked towards them I looked back at Devlin and saw that he was looking up at the boxes, calmly assessing already.

I don’t know what I said to Antony after he told me they were policemen. I felt sick, and I just acted over it all as best I could. At least the stage gives you practice for that sort of thing. They went quite quickly, thank heavens, and before I knew it I was in position with Pat, and Devlin was sitting with Jackie in the front row of the stalls.

I knew my lines quite thoroughly by this time. Antony had been lighting all morning, which had put him into a foul mood, like always. He wanted me to run through my soliloquy first and then go straight on with Ophelia. He was considering having Ophelia watch me all the time, to make him generally less sympathetic, and so Pat stood at the back of the stage ominously when I came down to the front to address the audience. I had to hold a prop rose and twist it in my hands. The rose had come, a ghastly silk thing, and Antony had me make various moves with it.

“How does it look, Jackie?” he called. I looked out into the pit. I couldn’t see Jackie or Devlin now; we had the proper stage lights that make everything else seem like the inside of a dark hollow shell.

“Ghastly,” Jackie called back. “You can tell it’s a fake. Fake flowers are never convincing. We could have a real one if you like.”

“The trouble with a real one is that it might die on stage, and also it would be different every night, with thorns in different places. The thorns on this are quite blunt,” I said, in an ordinary voice but pitched to carry.

“There’s color matching too,” Antony said. “Well, let’s have the speech.”

Three words in, he stopped me and rearranged my hands. I began again; this time I got to the second line. I couldn’t help wondering what kind of impression this was making on Devlin. He had seen me act, but acting is different from taking direction. I did what Antony asked, even when he snapped, changing my emphases until they were just as he wanted.

Then I did the speech again from the top, only being stopped twice, while he arranged Pat. “This is the heart of the play,” Antony said. It was also the bit of the play everybody knows by heart, and therefore the most tedious. It would have been hard to make it sound fresh and natural in any conditions, and that morning, with Devlin out there, I couldn’t leave myself behind and sink into Hamlet as I usually did.

“Once again, from the top, both of you, and don’t forget to move forward, Viola,” Antony said.

As I started again, I felt all the audience attention, such as it was, leave me. I kept on, but the auditorium felt hollow. It’s a truism that it’s different acting with an audience, and with a full house rather than an empty house, but I’d never before felt the difference made by losing the attention of a bare half-dozen people.

“Sorry, but someone else to see you, Antony,” Jackie called.

I stopped on “sea of troubles,” absolutely amazed. Jackie never interrupted like that.

“Is this Piccadilly Circus?” Antony asked, with rhetorical fury. He went stamping down through the wings and the pass door, calling for house lights.

I realized then that someone must have come in through the pass door and down the steps, someone who had taken all the attention. I should have stayed where I was, but I was curious as to who it could possibly be, so I followed Antony. Pat gave me a grin and trailed along behind me.

There were three men. One of them was bland and English, one of them had only one arm and a very German face, and the third man was the one who knew how to make an unlit entrance well enough to take everyone’s eyes from the stage. He was over six feet tall and wearing a black German uniform with silver eagles on the shoulders—and one thing you absolutely have to give the Nazis, whatever you think of them, they do have a simply splendid sense of style. His face was chiseled, and his hair was graying a touch at the temples in a most distinguished way. Yet, although he was a splendid physical specimen, he chilled me entirely.

We got down just as Antony was shaking hands, and though he didn’t look pleased, he had to introduce us as well. “This is my star couple, my Hamlet and my Ophelia, Viola Lark and Pat McKnight,” he said. “Viola, this is Mr. Um, of the Foreign Office, and Herr Schnell, of—the German Embassy, is it? And this is Captain Keiler of the SS.”

Pat and I shook hands with Mr. Um and with Herr Schnell. The latter shook left-handed, as his right arm was an empty sleeve pinned to his side. I noticed several ribbons and medals on his uniformed chest but didn’t recognize them. Then it was Keiler’s turn. His eyes reminded me of the boy in the fairy tale who has swallowed a splinter of magic ice and is slowly turning to ice from the inside out.