Swan Song

People drifted away, chattering in a subdued fashion. The orchestra began to dismantle and pack up their instruments. Joan Davis accosted Adam.

‘How is he?’ she asked.

‘I don’t like it,’ said Adam. ‘I don’t like it at all. Where’s Edwin?’

‘He left immediately after Peacock.’

Adam sighed. ‘Well, there’s no point in lingering here. Let’s go back to the hotel and get a drink.’

‘Do you think we should have a conference?’

‘A conference … I scarcely see what would come of it.’

Joan smiled wryly. ‘Nothing, in all probability. But it might clear the air.’

‘After dinner, then – preferably over a drink.’

‘I’ll arrange something.’ Joan nodded briskly, and went off to her dressing-room.

At the stage door Adam met Shorthouse on the point of leaving.

On a sudden impulse: ‘What the hell is the matter with you, Edwin?’ he demanded.

Shorthouse looked at him queerly, almost blankly. His thin grey hair was dishevelled, and there was sweat on his cheeks and forehead. It came to Adam, with a sudden twinge of horror, that the man might be growing insane. Irrationally, and quite unexpectedly, Adam had a feeling of pity.

But it was wiped away when Shorthouse spoke – thickly, as though the movement of his mouth were painful to him.

‘I shall telephone Levi,’ he said, ‘and get that little whipper-snapper kicked out.’

‘Don’t be a fool, Edwin.’ Adam spoke sharply. ‘Even if Levi agreed, it’d be the beginning of the end for you. You can’t antagonize people beyond a certain point without suffering for it.’

But Shorthouse, surprisingly, took no offence. ‘Suffering,’ he repeated dully. ‘People don’t realize how I suffer already …’ He paused: then, collecting himself, blundered out into the early darkness.

Adam followed him shortly afterwards.

Dennis Rutherston, the inevitable hat perched on the back of his head, leaned back and stared fixedly at the pale amber of the whisky in his glass.

‘Why worry?’ he said. ‘It’ll smooth itself out. These things always do.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Adam interposed with unwonted vigour. ‘But I don’t agree.’

They were in the bar of the Randolph Hotel, seated round a table near the door – Adam, Elizabeth, Joan, Rutherston, Karl Wolzogen, and John Barfield. It was eight o’clock of the same evening, and the after-dinner crowd had not yet collected. Nonetheless, a few persistent drinkers shared the room with them. At a neighbouring table, a tall, dark man with a green scarf round his neck was holding forth learnedly on the subject of rat-poisons to a neat middle-aged gentleman of military aspect and an auburn-haired youth with unsteady hands and a rose in his buttonhole. The place was predominantly blue and cream. It was blessedly warm after the cold outside. The clink of glasses, the angry fizzing of a beer-machine behind the bar, and the bell of the cash-register mingled agreeably with the hum of conversation.

Adam was argumentative. ‘This thing is cumulative,’ he stated, wagging his forefinger at them by way of warning. ‘It isn’t sporadic. And in Edwin’s case it seems to be complicated by self-pity. But what it amounts to in the end is this: that either Edwin or Peacock will have to go if we’re to open at all.’

‘… red squill,’ said the dark man at the next table. ‘It causes a very painful death.’

Rutherston sighed. ‘Well, what do you suggest?’ he asked. ‘A deputation to Levi?’

‘We’ve been over all this ground already.’ Joan Davis, whom the events of the afternoon had made a trifle reckless in the matter of smoking, lit a new cigarette from the end of the old. ‘Levi would never agree to getting rid of Edwin. Edwin’s still box-office, remember. No operatic management can afford to annoy him.’

‘Well, for that matter,’ said Adam irritably, ‘no operatic management can afford to annoy us.’

‘Dear Adam.’ Joan patted his hand affectionately. ‘Are you suggesting that we threaten to walk out if Edwin isn’t removed? Because I, for one, don’t feel much like dealing with an action for breach of contract.’

There was a silence, which was broken at last by Karl Wolzogen.

‘Ach!’ he snorted. ‘That fool! Art means nothing to him. The Meister means nothing to him. At the age of four I was presented to the Meister, in Bayreuth. It was the year before his death. He was abstracted, but kind, and he said—’

The others, though sympathizing with Karl’s enthusiasm for this elevating, if precocious experience, had all of them heard about it several times before. They hastened to bring the conversation back to the problem of Shorthouse.

‘Well, have you any views, John?’ Joan demanded.

Barfield, who was eating ginger biscuits from a paper bag on the table in front of him, choked noisily as a crumb lodged in his windpipe.

‘It seems to me that there’s only one answer,’ he announced when he had recovered. ‘And that is—’

‘Zinc phosphide,’ said the dark man at the next table. ‘A singularly effective poison.’

Barfield was momentarily unnerved by the appositeness of this.

‘I was going to say,’ he proceeded cautiously, ‘that we shall simply have to let Peacock go.’

There were cries of protest.

‘All right, all right!’ he added hastily. ‘I know it’s unjust. I know it’s detestable. I know the heavens will cry aloud for vengeance. But what other solution is there?’

‘Zinc phosphide,’ Elizabeth suggested. It was her first contribution to the discussion.

‘It would be nice,’ said Joan wistfully, ‘if we could poison him just a little – just so as to make him unable to sing.’

And perhaps it was at this point that the conference drifted away from the subject of Shorthouse. Certainly it had become apparent by then that no fresh light on the matter was forthcoming. At about nine the party broke up, and Adam walked back to the ‘Mace and Sceptre’ with Elizabeth and Joan.

It was after eleven when he discovered that his pocket-book was missing. Elizabeth was already in bed, and Adam was undressing. The process of disburdening his pockets revealed the loss, and he remembered that during the evening he had paid for drinks out of an accumulation of change.

‘Damn!’ he said, irresolute. ‘I believe I left it in my dressing-room at the theatre. I really think I’d better go and fetch it.’

‘Won’t tomorrow do?’ said Elizabeth. Adam thought that she looked particularly beautiful tonight, with her hair glowing like satin in the light of the bedside lamp.

He shook his head. ‘I really shan’t feel happy unless I go and get it. There’s rather a lot of money in it.’

‘But won’t the theatre be locked up?’

‘Well, it may be. But the old stage door keeper sleeps there, and he may not have gone to bed yet. I’ll try, anyway.’ He was dressing again as he spoke.

‘All right, darling.’ Elizabeth’s voice was sleepy. ‘Don’t be long.’

Adam went over and kissed her. ‘I won’t,’ he promised. ‘It’s only three minutes’ walk.’