Light Thickens (23 page)

“And a right proper young monster the boy was. This is altogether a different story. D’you know who this kid is?”

“No. Ought I to? Not anything in our line of business, I suppose.”

“No — well, that’s not quite true. He’s a nice, well-brought-up little chap and he’s the son of the Hampstead Chopper. He doesn’t know that and I’m extremely anxious that he won’t find out, Fox.”

“Harcourt-Smith, wasn’t it?”

“It was. His mother dropped the Harcourt. He knows his father’s in a loony-bin but not why.”

“Broadmoor?”

“Yes. A lifer.”

“Fancy that, now,” Fox said shaking his head.

“One of his father’s earlier victims was a Mrs. Barrabell.”

“You’re not telling me —”

“Yes, I am. Wife. Barrabell put those practical jokes together. He hoped the management would think the boy was responsible and give him the sack.”

“Has he told you? Barrabell?”

“Not in so many words but as-good-as.”

“He’s a member of some potty little way-out group, isn’t he?”

“The Red Fellowship. Yes.”

“What do we know about them?”

“The usual. Meeting once a week on Sunday mornings. Genuine enough. No real understanding of the extraordinary and extremely complicated in-fighting that goes on at sub-diplomatic levels. A bit dotty. He and his mates iron everything out to a few axioms and turn a blind eye to all that doesn’t fit. The terrible reality of Bruce Barrabell rests in the fact that his wife was beheaded by a maniac. I think he believes, or has brooded himself into believing, that the child has inherited the father’s madness and that sooner or later it’ll emerge and then it’ll be too late.”

“I still don’t know where Sir Dougal fits in. If he does.”

“Nor do I. Except that he was a far from subtle funster and Bruce came in for his share of the ragging. He was forever making snide references to leftish groups and so on.”

“Hardly enough to make Bruce cut his head off.”

“Not if we were dealing with anything like normal people. I’m beginning to believe there’s a stepped-up abnormality about the whole thing, Fox. As if the actors had become motivated by the play. That leads one to the proposition that no play should be as compulsive as
Macbeth
. Which is ridiculous.”

“All right. So what, to get down to our weekly pay packet, do we do to earn it?”

“Find a conclusive reason that will give us the time, as being immediately after
Brandish’d by man that’s of a woman born
. Find alibis for all but one of the company at that time and then face him with it. That’s the ideal, of course. Let’s tackle the alibis and see if we can do it with both feet on the ground. Now, the troops and all the extras and doubles are already engaged in battle. All the thanes; the doctor, disguised as one of Macbeth’s soldiers; Malcolm; Siward. Macduff’s out. That leaves Rangi, Gaston, and Banquo. The King. Props.”

“He was in and out of the O.P. corner fixing the claidheamh-mor. And that’s all,” said Fox.

“And we can cut out the King, I imagine.”

“Why?”

“Too silly,” said Alleyn. “And too elderly.”

“All right. No King. How about Props? Any motive at all?”

“Not unless something turns up. In a way he’s tempting, though. Nobody would pay any attention to him slipping into or out of the O.P. corner. He’d be there with the naked claidheamh-mor when Macbeth came off and could kill him and put his head on it.”

“He’d have to give the phony message to Gaston, but I think it would hold up,” said Fox. “Gaston’s hanging about there and Props says to him, ‘For Gawd’s sake, sir, he’s fainted. You’ve got this one speech and the fight. You know it. You can do it.’ And later on when the body’s found he says it was so dark he just saw it lying there and realizing there was only a matter of minutes before Macbeth’s entrance for the fight he rushed out, found Gaston, and asked him. It hangs together. Except —”

“No motive? Bloody hell, Fox,” shouted Alleyn, “we’ve lost our touch. We’ve gone to pieces. Gaston being told Macbeth’s fainted doesn’t work. It doesn’t work with anyone asking him to do it. He’d have told us. Of course he would. Back to square one.”

There was a long silence.

“No,” said Alleyn at last. “There’s only one answer.”

“I suppose so,” said Fox heavily.

The auditions were nearly over and the play almost fully cast from the present company. In the office, announcements for the press were being telephoned and Peregrine actually felt better. Whatever the outcome and whoever was arrested, they were doing their own thing. In their own theatre. They were doing what they were meant to do: getting on with a new piece.

The discordant note was sounded, needless to say, by Gaston. He had not, of course, auditioned but there he was at the theatre. No sooner had an audition finished than he began. He buttonholed one nervous actor after another and his subject was the claidheamh-mor. He wanted it back. Urgently. They tried to shut him up, but he kept recurring like a decimal and complaining in an audible rumble that he would not be held responsible for anything that happened to anyone into whose care it had been consigned.

He asked to see Alleyn and was told he and Fox were not at the theatre. Where had they gone? Nobody knew.

At last Peregrine stopped Rangi’s audition and said he could not allow Gaston into the auditorium while they were working. What did he want?

“My claidheamh-mor,” he roared. “How often must I say it! Are you an idiot, have you not been given sufficient evidence of what it can do if a desecrating hand is laid upon it? It is my fault,” he shouted. “I allowed it to become involved in this sanguinary play. I released its power. You have only to study its history to realize —”

“Gaston! Stop! We are busy and it is no affair of ours. We have no time to listen to your diatribe and it is not within my sphere of activities to demand the thing’s return. In any case I wouldn’t get it. Do pipe down like a good chap. The weapon is perfectly safe in police custody and will be returned in due course.”

“Safe!” he cried swinging his arms about alarmingly. “Safe! You will drive me demented.”

“Not far to go,” remarked a splendid voice in the back stalls.

“Who made that repulsive observation?”

“I did,” said Barrabell. “In my opinion you’re certifiable. In any correctly ordered state —”

“Shut up, both of you,” Peregrine cried. “Good Lord! Haven’t we had enough to put up with! If you can’t pipe down both of you go out of earshot and get on with it in the yard.”

“I shall bring this up with Equity. It is not the first time I have been insulted in this theatre —”

“— my claidheamh-mor. I implore you to consider —”

“Gaston! Answer me. Are you here to audition? Yes or no.”

“I am here… no.”

“Barrabell, are you here to audition?”

“I was. I now see that it would be useless.”

“In that case neither of you has any right to stay. I must ask you both to go. Go, for pity’s sake, both of you.”

The doors into the foyer opened. Winty Meyer’s voice said: “Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize —”

“Mr. Meyer, wait! I must speak with you. My claidheamh-mor! Mr. Meyer! Please!”

Gaston hurried down the aisle and out into the foyer. The doors swung to behind him and he became a distant rumpus.

Peregrine said: “I’m extremely sorry, Rangi. We’ll go on when I’ve settled this idiotic affair. Now then, Bruce.”

He took Barrabell’s elbow and led him aside. “My dear chap,” he said and forced his voice into a warmth he did not feel. “Alleyn has told me of your tragedy. I couldn’t be sorrier for you. But I must ask you this. Don’t you feel that with young William in the company you would be most unhappy? I do. I —”

Barrabell turned deadly white. He stared at Peregrine.

“You little rat,” he said. He turned on his heel and left the theatre.

“Whew!” said Peregrine. “Okay, Rangi. We’ll have an audition.”

And now the theatre was almost rid of
Macbeth
. The units that from the audience had seemed solid but had silently revolved, showing different aspects of the scenery, had been taken apart and stacked against the walls.

The stage, every inch of it, was scrubbed and smelled of disinfectant. In front-of-house, advertisements for the new play replaced the old
Macbeth
posters and in the foyer the giant photograph frames were empty. The life-size photograph of Sir Dougal was rolled up and slid into a cardboard cylinder. It disappeared into the basement.

The bookstall had its display for the most part taken down and stacked in cartons; the programmes had been cleared out and stuffed into rubbish bags that awaited the collectors.

Going, going, gone, thought Winter Meyer. It was a lovely show.

The dressing-rooms were empty and scrubbed. All except the star room, which was locked and untouched, except by the police, since Sir Dougal Macdougal had walked out of it for the last time. His solicitors had given notice of sending persons in to collect his possessions. His name had been removed from the door.

Nina in her diminutive flat told herself that the malign influence of
Macbeth
was now satisfied and made a solemn promise to herself that she would not talk about it inside the theatre. She was greatly distressed, of course, and she wondered avidly who had done the murder, but she was sustained and even excited by being so overwhelmingly right in all her pronouncements.

They’ve not got a leg to stand on, she thought triumphantly.

Simon Morten rang up Maggie Mannering and asked her to lunch with him at the Wig and Piglet. She said she would and invited him to come early for her so that they could have a good talk in private. He arrived at noon.

“Maggie,” he said holding her hands. “I wanted to ask you last night but you’ve been so
remote
, darling. I thought perhaps — I didn’t know how you felt or — well, I even thought you might have your doubts about me. And I thought that I’d better find out, one way or another. And so — here I am.”

Maggie stared at him. “Do you mean,” she said, “that you thought I wondered if you decapitated Dougal? Is that it?”

“Well — I know it’s idiotic but — well, yes. Don’t laugh at me, Maggie,
please
. I’ve been in hell.”

“I’ll try not to,” she said. “I’m sure you have. But why? Why would I think you’d done it? What motive could you have had for it?”

“I was still so horribly jealous,” he muttered, turning dark red. “And you did the sex thing with him so awfully well. Just looking at you and listening — I — well, I’m sorry.”

“Now, just you look here, Simon,” said Maggie vigorously. “We’re both going to play in
The Glove
. You’re going to be tormented by me and it is not going to be all muddled up with the real thing: that way it’ll go wrong. The audience will sense there’s another reality intruding on the dramatic reality and they’ll feel uncomfortable. Won’t they?”

“I know how
you
feel about the mask an actor wears,” he said.

“Yes, I do. And you take yours off at your peril. Right?”

“All right.”

“Shake?” she said holding out her hand.

“All right, shake,” he said and took it.

“Now we can go and have our blameless luncheon,” said Maggie. “Come on. For the first time since it happened, I’m nervous. Let’s talk about The Bard in love.”

So they went to the Wig and Piglet.

To everyone’s relief Gaston retired to his own premises, presumably to lick his incomprehensible wounds. But he renewed his assault on the Yard. Mr. Fox was called to the telephone, which was switched through to Alleyn’s room. “Hullo?” he said.

“First of all,” roared the intemperate man, “I intimated that I wished to communicate with Chief Superintendent Alleyn. You do not sound like the Chief Superintendent.”

“This is his room, sir, but I am not the Chief Superintendent. He is unable to come to the telephone and authorizes me to speak for him. What seems to be the trouble, sir?”

“Nothing
seems
to be the trouble. The trouble
is
. I
demand
— repeat
demand
— the instant return of my claidheamh-mor under police armed guard, to my personal address. Today. Now.”

“If you’ll hold on for a minute, sir, I’ll just write a note to that effect and leave it here in a prominent position on his desk.”

Fox clapped his enormous paw over the receiver and said: “Sears.”

“So I supposed.”

“Here we are, sir. What was the message?”

“Odds bodkins, fellow —”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

A stream of abuse, or what seemed to be abuse, followed by a deathly silence and then a high-pitched female voice.

“Master not velly well, please. Sank you. Good-bye,” and the telephone was disconnected.

The Jay boys were returning to school. Crispin left by train in a dignified manner with a number of young men of equal status, an array of noisy smaller boys, and a little group of white-faced new ones. Robin and Richard behaved with the eccentricity that the household had come to expect of them on these occasions, even though they frequently returned home on Sundays and gorged themselves. Peregrine came to bid them good-bye. Fishing in his pocket for some coins to give them for spending money, he found the toy crusader, which Alleyn had returned to him.

“I forgot about you,” he said and took it out and stared at it for a moment.

“May I have him back?” asked Robin. He took the mannikin and went to the telephone.

“Whom are you ringing up?” asked Peregrine.

“A boy.”

He consulted the list and dialed the number. “Hullo, Horrible,” he said. “What d’you think I’ve got? Three guesses. No… No… Yes. Hooray. Clever old you. What are you doing?… Oh,
Daddy’s
play? Well, I thought you’d like to know we’re going back to school today so we’ll be half-starved. Oh, well. Bung-ho.”

He hung up and immediately dialed again.

“It’s me again,” he said. “I forgot to mention that I knew all along the fighter wasn’t Macbeth. I’ll give you three guesses who… One. No… Two. No… Three. No. I’ll give you till next Sunday.” He replaced the receiver.

“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,” muttered Peregrine. “Robin! Come here. You must tell me. How did you know?”

Robin looked at his father and saw that he meant business. He adopted a defiant attitude: feet apart, hands on hips, slightly nervous smile. “Three guesses?” he invited.

But Peregrine needed only one.

He rang up Alleyn at the Yard.

The company of Dolphins at the Swan was diminished but Rangi and Ross and Lennox were still regulars and they met there for lunch. Rangi was quiet and withdrawn. His dark eyes and brilliant teeth dominated his face and it struck the others that he looked more “native” than he had before. But he was pleased with his new part, Mr. W.H., an ambiguous gentleman from Italy, overdressed and wearing a single earring.

“We start rehearsals tomorrow,” said Ross. “Thank God, without the ineffable Sears
or
dreary old Banquo. The whole tragedy as far as the Dolphin’s concerned is finished.” He made a dismissive gesture with both hands.

“It won’t be finished, my dear chap,” said Lennox, “until somebody’s under lock and key. Well, ask yourself. Will it?”

“
No
,” said Rangi. “The stigma remains. It must.”

“I looked in this morning. It’s as clean as a whistle and smells of disinfectant everywhere.”

“No policemen?”

“Not then, no. Just the offices clicking over merrily. There’s a big notice out in front saying people can use their tickets for the new play or get their money back at the box office. And a board with nothing but rave notices from the former production of
The Glove
.”

“Any reasons given?”

“There’s a piece in the papers. I suppose you saw.”

Lennox said yes, he had read it.

“I haven’t seen the papers,” said Rangi.

“It just says that Dougal died on Saturday night very suddenly in the theatre. And there’s the usual obituary: half a column and photographs. The Macbeth one’s very good,” said Ross.

“It said that ‘as a mark of respect’ the theatre would be dark for three weeks,” Ross added.

“It’s been an honor to play in it. It’ll be remembered,” said Lennox.

“Yes,” said Ross.

Rangi said, as if the words were dragged out of him, “It’s
tapu
. We are all
tapu
and will be until the murderer is found. And who will
whakamana
?”

There was an awkward silence.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Lennox said.

“Better that you don’t,” said Rangi. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Understand what?” asked Lennox.

“
Maoritanga.
”

“Maori how much?”

“Shut up, old boy,” said Ross and kicked him underneath the table.

“Why?” Lennox looked at Rangi and found something in his face that made him say hurriedly: “Sorry. Didn’t mean to pry.”

“Not at all,” said Rangi. He stood up. “I must get back. I’m late. Excuse me.”

He went to the counter, paid his bill, and left.

“What’s biting him?” Lennox said.

“Lord knows. Something to do with the case, I imagine. He’ll get over it, whatever it is.”

After a pause Lennox muttered, “I didn’t mean to be rude or anything. Well, I wasn’t, was I? I apologized.”

“Perhaps you said something that upset his
mana
.”

“Oh, to hell with him and his
mana
. Where did you pick up that word, anyway?”

“In conversation with him. It means all sorts of things but pride is the principal one.”

They ate their lunch in silence. Rangi had left a copy of
The Stage
on the bench. Ross looked at it. A small paragraph at the bottom of the page caught his eye. “Hi,” he said. “This would interest Barrabell. This is the lot he went abroad with. Take a look.”

Lennox bent over the table. He read:

“The Leftist Players are repeating their successful tour of Soviet Russia. They are now about to go into rehearsal with three contemporary plays. Ring club number for auditions.”

“That’s the gang he went with before,” said Ross.

“He wouldn’t be let go. Not while nobody’s been caught.”

“I suppose not.”

“I wonder if he’s seen this,” said Ross without interest.

They finished their lunch without much conversation.

Barrabell had seen it. He read it carefully and consulted his notebook for the club number.

His bed-sitting room carried the absolute negation of any personal characteristics whatever. It was on the large side, tidy and clean. Its two windows looked across an alley at the third-story shutters of an equally anonymous building.

He opened his wardrobe and took out the battered suitcase with the old Russian airways labels on it. Opened, some tidily folded garments — pajamas, underclothes and shirts — were revealed and under these a package of press cuttings and the glossy photograph of a good-looking young woman.

The press cuttings were mainly of productions that he had appeared in, but there were also relics of the trial of Harcourt-Smith. A photograph of the man himself, handcuffed between two policemen, entering the Old Bailey and looking blankly at nothing. Another, of Mr. Justice Swithering, and a third, of William and his mother, taken in the street. There were accounts of the trial.

Barrabell read the cuttings and looked at the photographs. He then put them one by one into the dead fireplace and burned them to ashes. He went to the bathroom on his landing and washed his hands. Then he replaced all the theatrical reviews in the suitcase and looked for a long time at the glossy photograph, which was signed “Muriel.” His hands trembled. He put it under the reviews and shut and locked the case.

Now he consulted his copy of
The Stage
and rang the number given for inquiries about auditions.

He made a quick calculation, arrived at the amount he owed his landlady, and put it in a used envelope with a cellophane window. He wrote her name on the front and added: “Called away very unexpectedly. B.B.”

Whistling almost inaudibly, he reopened the case and packed into it everything else in the room that he owned. He double-checked every drawer and shelf, put his passport in the breast pocket of his jacket, and, after a final look around, picked up his case and left the room. The landlady’s office was locked. He pushed the envelope under the door and walked out.

He was on a direct route for his destination and waited at the bus stop, dumping his case on the ground until the right bus came along. He climbed aboard, sat near the door, tucked his case under his legs, and paid his fare.

The man who had been behind him in the queue heard him give the address and gave the same one.

Shortly thereafter a message came through to Alleyn.

“Subject left lodging-house carrying suitcase with old Russian labels. Followed to address suggested and is still there.”

To which he replied: “Keep obbo. No arrest but don’t lose him.”

It’s one thing,” said Alleyn, “to have the whole case wrapped up in the copper’s mind and to be absolutely sure, as I am, who’s responsible; and it’s an entirely different cup of tea to get a jury to believe it. God knows it’s a tangle and can’t you hear counsel for the defense? ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you have listened very patiently to this impudent tarradiddle — ’ and so on and so on. I’ve been hoping for something more to break — the man himself, perhaps — but nothing — nothing.”

Fox made a long sympathetic rumbling sound.

“I’ve read and reread the whole case from the beginning, and to me it’s as plain as the nose on your old face, Br’er Fox, but I’m damned if it will be for anybody else. It’s too far removed from simple, short statements, although, God knows, they
are
there.
I
don’t know. You’ve got the warrant. Shall we walk in and feel his collar or shan’t we?”

“We’re not likely to pick up anything else if we don’t.”