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

‘Early at work?’ he fluted.

Martyn wished him good evening.

‘Helena not down yet?’

‘Not yet.’

He hung about the dressing-room, fingering photographs and eyeing Martyn.

‘I hear you come from Down Under,’ he said. ‘I nearly accepted an engagement to go out there last year but I didn’t really like the people so I turned it down. Adam played it in the year dot, I believe. Well, more years ago than he would care to remember, I dare say. Twenty, if we’re going to let our back hair down. Before you were born, I dare say.’

‘Yes,’ Martyn agreed. ‘Just before.’

Her answer appeared to give him extraordinary satisfaction. ‘Just before?’ he repeated. ‘Really?’ and Martyn thought: ‘I mustn’t let myself be worried by this.’

He seemed to hover on the edge of some further observation and pottered about the dressing-room examining the great mass of flowers. ‘I’ll swear,’ he said crossly, ‘those aren’t the roses I chose at Florian’s. Honestly that female’s an absolute menace.’

Martyn, seeing how miserable he looked, felt sorry for him. He muttered: ‘I do so abominate first nights,’ and she rejoined: ‘They are pretty ghastly, aren’t they?’ Because he seemed unable to take himself off, she added with an air of finality: ‘Anyway, may I wish you luck for this one?’

‘Sweet of you,’ he said. ‘I’ll need it. I’m the stooge of this piece. Well, thanks, anyway.’

He drifted into the passage, halted outside the open door of Poole’s dressing-room and greeted Bob Cringle. ‘Governor not down yet?’

‘We’re on our way, Mr Percival.’

Parry inclined his head and strolled into the room. He stood close to Bob leaning his back against the dressing-shelf, his legs elegantly crossed.

‘Our little stranger,’ he murmured, ‘seems to be new-brooming away next door.’

‘That’s right, sir,’ said Bob. ‘Settled in very nice.’

‘Strong resemblance,’ Parry said invitingly.

‘To the guvnor, sir?’ Bob rejoined cheerfully. ‘That’s right. Quite a coincidence.’

‘A coincidence!’ Parry echoed. ‘Well, not precisely, Bob. I understand there’s a distant relationship. It was mentioned for the first time last night. Which accounts for the set-up, one supposes. Tell me, Bob, have you ever before heard of a dresser doubling as understudy?’

‘Worked-out very convenient, hasn’t it, sir?’

‘Oh, very,’ said Parry discontentedly. ‘Look, Bob. You were with the governor on his New Zealand tour in ’30, weren’t you?’

Bob said woodenly: ‘That’s correct, sir. ’E was just a boy in them days. Might I trouble you to move, Mr Percival. I got my table to lay out.’

‘Oh, sorry. I’m in the way. As usual. Quite! Quite!’ He waved his hand and walked jauntily into the passage.

‘Good luck for tonight, sir,’ said Bob and shut the door after him.

Parry moved on to J. G. Darcey’s room. He tapped, was answered, and went in. J.G. was already embarked on his make-up.

‘Bob,’ said Parry, ‘refused to be drawn.’

‘Good evening, dear boy. About what?’

‘Oh, you know. The New Zealand tour and so on.’

‘Did you see her?’

‘I happened to look in.’

‘What’s she like?’

Parry lit a cigarette. ‘As you have seen,’ he said, ‘she’s fantastically like him. Which is really the point at issue. But fantastically like.’

‘Can she give a show?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Parry. He leaned forward and hugged his knees boyishly. ‘Oh, yes indeed. Indeed she can, my dear J.G. You’d be surprised.’

J.G. made a noncommittal sound and went on with his make-up.

‘This morning,’ Parry continued, ‘the doctor was there. And Ben. Ben, quite obviously devoured with chagrin. I confess I couldn’t help rather gloating. As I remarked, it’s getting under his skin. Together, no doubt, with vast potations of brandy and soda.’

‘I hope to God he’s all right tonight.’

‘It appears that Gay was in the back of the house, poor thing, while it was going on.’

‘She didn’t tell me that,’ J.G. said anxiously and, catching Parry’s sharpened glance, he added: ‘I didn’t really hear anything about it.’

‘It was a repetition of last night. Really, one feels quite dizzy. Gay rushed weeping to Adam and again implored him to let her throw in the part. The doctor, of course, was all for it. Adam was charming but Uncle Ben produced another temperament. He and the doctor left simultaneously in a silence more ominous, I assure you, than last night’s dog fight. Ben’s not down, yet.’

‘Not yet,’ J.G. said and repeated: ‘I hope to God he’s all right.’

For a moment the two men were united in a common anxiety. J.G. said: ‘Christ, I wish I didn’t get nervous on first nights.’

VI

Clark Bennington’s dresser, a thin melancholy man, put him into his gown and hovered, expressionless, behind him. ‘I shan’t need you before the change,’ said Bennington. ‘See if you can help Mr Darcey.’

The man went out. Bennington knew he had guessed the reason for his dismissal. He wondered why he could never bring himself to have a drink in front of his dresser. After all there was nothing in taking a nip before the show. Adam, of course, chose to make a great thing of never touching it. And at the thought of Adam Poole he felt resentment and fear stir at the back of his mind. He got his flask out of his overcoat pocket and poured a stiff shot of brandy.

‘The thing to do,’ he told himself, ‘is to wipe this afternoon clean out. Forget it. Forget everything except my work.’ But he remembered, unexpectedly, the way, fifteen years ago, he used to prepare himself for a first night. He used to make a difficult and intensive approach to his initial entrance so that when he walked out on the stage he was already possessed by a life that had been created in the dressing-room. Took a lot of concentration: Stanislavsky and all that. Hard going: but in those days it had seemed worth the effort. Helena had encouraged him. He had a notion she and Adam still went in for it. But now he had mastered the easier way: the repeated mannerism, the trick of pause and the unexpected flattening of the voice: the technical box of tricks.

He finished his drink quickly and began to grease his face. He noticed how the flesh had dropped into sad folds under the eyes, had blurred the jaw-line and had sunk into grooves about the nostrils and the corners of the mouth. All right for this part, of course, where he had to make a sight of himself, but he had been a fine-looking man. Helena had fallen for him in a big way until Adam cut him out. At the thought of Adam he experienced a sort of regurgitation of misery and anger. ‘I’m a haunted man,’ he thought suddenly.

He had let himself get into a state, he knew, because of this afternoon. Helena’s face, gaping with terror, like a fish, almost, kept rising up in his mind and wouldn’t be dismissed. Things always worked like that with him: remorse always turned into nightmare.

It had been a bad week altogether. Rows with everybody: with John Rutherford in particular and with Adam over that blasted little dresser. He felt he was the victim of some elaborate plot. He was fond of Gay: she was a nice friendly little thing: his own flesh and blood. Until he had brought her into this piece she had seemed to like him. Not a bad little artiste either and good enough, by God, for the artsy-craftsy part they had thrown at her. He thought of her scene with Poole and of her unhappiness in her failure and how, in some damned cock-eyed way, they all, including Gay, seemed to blame him for it. He supposed she thought he had bullied her into hanging on. Perhaps in a way he had, but he felt so much that he was the victim of a combined assault. ‘Alone,’ he thought, ‘I’m so desperately alone,’ and he could almost hear the word as one would say it on the stage, making an echo, forlorn and hopeless and extremely effective.

‘I’m giving myself the jim-jams,’ he thought. He wondered if Helena had told Adam about this afternoon. By God, that would rock Adam, if she had. And at once a picture rose up to torture him, a picture of Helena weeping in Adam’s arms and taking solace there. He saw his forehead grow red in the looking-glass and told himself he had better steady up. No good getting into one of his tempers with a first performance ahead of him and everything so tricky with young Gay. There he was, coming back to that girl, that phoney dresser. He poured out another drink and began his make-up.