Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 6: Opening Night, Spinsters in Jeopardy, Scales of Justice

‘So you think you could do it, dear, do you?’ he said.

Martyn stammered: ‘I’m sorry. Miss Hamilton will want me,’ and dodged past him towards the improvised dressing-room. He followed and with a conventionally showy movement, barred her entrance.

‘Wait a minute, wait a minute,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you.’

She stood there, afraid of him, conscious of his smell of greasepaint and alcohol and thinking him a ridiculous as well as an alarming person.

‘I’m so angry,’ he said conversationally, ‘just literally so angry that I’m afraid you’re going to find me quite a difficult man. And now we’ve got that ironed out perhaps you’ll tell me who the bloody hell you are.’

‘You know who I am,’ Martyn said desperately. ‘Please let me go in.’

‘M’wife’s dresser?’

He took her chin in his hand and twisted her face to the light. Poole came round the back of the set. Martyn thought: ‘He’ll be sick of the sight of me. Always getting myself into stupid little scenes.’ Bennington’s hand felt wet and hot round her chin.

‘M’wife’s dresser,’ he repeated. ‘And m’wife’s lover’s little by-blow. That the story?’

The edge of Poole’s hand dropped on his arm. ‘In you go,’ he said to Martyn, and twisted Bennington away from the door. Martyn slipped through and he shut it behind her. She heard him say: ‘You’re an offensive fellow in your cups, Ben. We’ll have this out after rehearsal. Get along and change for the third act.’

There was a moment’s pause. The door opened and he looked in.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘Perfectly, thank you,’ Martyn said and in an agony of embarrassment added, ‘I’m sorry to be a nuisance, sir.’

‘Oh, don’t be an ass,’ he said with great ill-humour. The next moment he had gone.

Miss Hamilton, looking desperately worried, came in to change for the third act.

IV

The dress-rehearsal ended at midnight in an atmosphere of acute tension. Because she had not yet been paid, Martyn proposed to sleep again in the greenroom. So easily do our standards adjust themselves to our circumstances that whereas on her first night at the Vulcan the greenroom had been a blessed haven, her hours of precarious security had bred a longing for a bed and ordered cleanliness, and she began to dread the night.

In groups and singly, the actors and stage-staff drifted away. Their voices died out in the alley and passages, and she saw, with dismay, that Fred Badger had emerged from the door of his cubby-hole and now eyed her speculatively. Desolation and fear possessed Martyn. With a show of preoccupation, she hurried away to Miss Hamilton’s dressing-room which she had already set in order. Here she would find a moment’s respite. Perhaps in a few minutes she would creep down the passage and lock herself in the empty room and wait there until Fred Badger had gone his rounds. He would think she had found a lodging somewhere and left the theatre. She opened the door of Miss Hamilton’s room and went in.

Adam Poole was sitting in front of the gas-fire.

Martyn stammered, ‘I’m sorry,’ and made for the door.

‘Come in,’ he said and stood up. ‘I want to see you for a moment.’

‘Well,’ Martyn thought sickly, ‘this is it. I’m to go.’

He twisted the chair round and ordered rather than invited her to sit in it. As she did so she thought: ‘I won’t be able to sleep here tonight. When he’s sacked me I’ll get my suitcase and ask my way to the nearest women’s hostel. I’ll walk alone through the streets and when I get there the hostel will be shut.’

He had turned his back to her and seemed to be examining something on the dressing-shelf.

‘I would very much rather have disregarded this business,’ he said irritably, ‘but I suppose I can’t. For one thing, someone should apologize to you for Bennington’s behaviour. He’s not likely to do it for himself.’

‘It really didn’t matter.’

‘Of course it mattered,’ he said sharply. ‘It was insufferable. For both of us.’

She was too distressed to recognize as one of pleasure the small shock this last phrase gave her.

‘You realize, of course, how this nonsense started,’ he was saying. ‘You’ve seen something of the play. You’ve seen me. It’s not a matter for congratulation, I dare say, but you’re like enough to be my daughter. You’re a New Zealander, I understand. How old are you?’

‘Nineteen, sir.’

‘You needn’t bother to pepper your replies with this “sir” business. It’s not in character and it’s entirely unconvincing. I’m thirty-eight. I toured New Zealand in my first job twenty years ago, and Bennington was in the company. That, apparently, is good enough for him. Under the circumstances I hope you won’t mind my asking you who your parents are and where you were born.’

‘I’ve no objection whatever,’ said Martyn with spirit. ‘My father was Martyn Tarne. He was the son and grandson of a high-country run-holder – a sheep-farmer – in the South Island. He was killed on Crete.’

He turned and looked directly at her for the first time since she had come into the room.

‘I see. And your mother?’

‘She’s the daughter of a run-holder in the same district?’

‘Do you mind telling me her maiden name, if you please?’

Martyn said: ‘I don’t see what good this will do.’

‘Don’t you, indeed? Don’t you, after all, resent the sort of conjecture that’s brewing among these people?’

‘I certainly haven’t the smallest desire to be thought your daughter.’

‘And I couldn’t agree more. Good Lord!’ he said. ‘This is a fatheaded way for us to talk. Why don’t you want to tell me your mother’s maiden name? What was the matter with it?’

‘She always thought it sounded silly. It was Paula Poole Passington.’

He brought the palm of his hand down crisply on the back of her chair. ‘And why in the world,’ he asked, ‘couldn’t you say so at once?’ Martyn was silent. ‘Paula Poole Passington,’ he repeated. ‘All right. An old cousin of my father’s – cousin Paula – married someone called Passington and disappeared. I suppose to New Zealand. Why didn’t she look me up when I went out there?’

‘I believe she didn’t care for theatricals,’ said Martyn. ‘She was my grandmother. The connection is really quite distant.’

‘You might at least have mentioned it.’

‘I preferred not to.’

‘Too proud?’

‘If you like,’ she said desperately.

‘Why did you come to England?’

‘To earn my living.’

‘As a dresser?’ She was silent. ‘Well?’ he said.