Vintage Murder

‘That’s how I feel about it, too.’

‘Carolyn and Meyer have gone to theirs. They are the only other members of the company who have risked it. That young woman has just go to be expensive. Valerie, I mean.’

‘I noticed that in the ship. Who is she? Any relation of old Pomfret Gaynes, the shipping man?’

‘Daughter.’ Hambledon leant forward again. ‘Academy of Dramatic Art. Lord knows how big an allowance, an insatiable desire for the footlights and adores the word “actress” on her passport.’

‘Is she a good actress?’

‘Dire.’

‘Then how—?’

‘Pomfret,’ said Hambledon, ‘and push.’

‘It seems a little unjust in an overcrowded profession.’

‘That’s how it goes,’ said Hambledon with a shrug. ‘The whole business is riddled with preferment nowadays. It’s just one of those things.’

Susan Max’s head lolled to one side. Hambledon took her travelling cushion and slipped it between her cheek and the wall. She was fast asleep.

‘There’s your real honest-to-God actress,’ he said, leaning forward again. ‘Her father was an actor-manager in Australia and started life as a child performer in his father’s stock company. Susan has trouped for forty-five years. It’s in her blood. She can play anything from grande dame to trollop, and play it well.’

‘What about Miss Dacres? Or should I say Mrs Meyer? I never know with married stars.’

‘She’s Carolyn Dacres all the time. Except in hotel registers, of course. Carolyn is a great actress. Please don’t think I’m using the word “great” carelessly. She is a great actress. Her father was a country parson, but there’s a streak of the stage in her mother’s family, I believe. Carolyn joined a touring company when she was seventeen. She was up and down the provinces for eight years before she got her chance in London. Then she never looked back.’ Hambledon paused and glanced apologetically at his companion. ‘In a moment you will accuse me of talking shop.’

‘Why not? I like people to talk shop. I can never understand the prejudice against it.’

‘You don’t do it, I notice.’

The tall man raised one eyebrow.

‘I’m on a holiday. When did Miss Dacres marry Mr Alfred Meyer?’

‘About ten years ago,’ said Hambledon, shortly. He turned in his seat and looked down the carriage. The Carolyn Dacres Company had settled down for the night. George Mason and Gascoigne had given up their game of two-handed whist and had drawn their rugs up to their chins. The comedian had spread a sheet of newspaper over his head. Young Courtney Broadhead was awake, but Mr Liversidge’s mouth was open and those rolls of flesh, so well disciplined by day, were now subtly predominant. Except for Broadhead they were all asleep. Hambledon looked at his watch.

‘It’s midnight,’ he said.

Midnight. Outside their hurrying windows this strange country slept. Farm houses, lonely in the moonlight, sheep asleep or tearing with quick jerks at the short grass, those aching hills that ran in curves across the window-panes, and the white flowering trees that had made old Susan dab her eyes. They were all there, outside, but remote from the bucketing train with its commercial travellers, its tourists and its actors.

‘The fascination of a train journey,’ thought the tall man, ‘lies in this remoteness of the country outside, and in the realisation that it is so close. At any station one may break the spell of the train and set foot on the earth. But as long as one stays in the train, the outside is a dream country. A dream country.’ He closed his eyes again and presently was fast asleep and troubled by long dreams that were half broken by a sense of discomfort. When he woke again he felt cold and stiff. Hambledon, he saw, was still awake.

Their carriage seemed to be continually turning. His mind made a picture of a corkscrew with a gnat-sized train twisting industriously. He looked at his watch.

‘Good lord,’ he said. ‘It’s ten past two. I shall stay awake. It’s a mistake to sleep in these chairs.’

‘Ten past two,’ said Hambledon. ‘The time for indiscreet conversation. Are you sure you do not want to go to sleep?’

‘Quite sure. What were we speaking of before I dozed off? Miss Dacres?’

‘Yes. You asked about her marriage. It is difficult even to guess why she married Alfred Meyer. Not because he is the big noise in Incorporated Playhouses. Carolyn had no need of that sort of pull. She had arrived. Perhaps she married him because he was so essentially commonplace. As a kind of set-off to her own temperament. She has the true artistic temperament.’

The tall man winced. Hambledon had made use of a phrase that he detested.

‘Don’t misunderstand me,’ Hambledon continued very earnestly. ‘Alf is a good fellow. He’s very much liked in the business. But – well, he has never been a romantic figure. He lives for the firm, you know. He and George Mason built it between them. I’ve played in I.P. productions for twelve years now. Eight pieces in all and in five of them I’ve played opposite Carolyn.’

He had the actor’s habit of giving full dramatic value to everything he said. His beautiful voice, with its practised inflexions, suggested a romantic attachment.

‘She’s rather a wonderful person,’ he said.

‘He means that,’ thought his companion. ‘He is in love with her.’

His mind went back to the long voyage in the ship with Carolyn Dacres very much the star turn, but not, he had to admit, aggressively the great actress. She and her pale, plump, rather common, rather uninteresting husband, had sat in deck chairs, he with a portable typewriter on his knees and she with a book. Very often Hambledon had sat on the other side of her, also with a book. They had none of them joined in the all-night poker parties with young Courtney Broadhead, Liversidge and Valerie Gaynes. Thinking of these three he turned to look up the dim carriage. There was young Broadhead, still awake, still staring at the blind window-pane with its blank reflections. As if conscious of the other’s gaze he jerked his head uneasily and with an abrupt movement rose to his feet and came down the carriage. As he passed them he said:

‘Fresh air. I’m going out to the platform.’

‘Young ass,’ said Hambledon when he had gone through the door. ‘He’s been losing his money. You can’t indulge in those sorts of frills, on his salary.’

They both looked at the glass door. Broadhead’s back was against it.

‘I’m worried about that boy,’ Hambledon went on. ‘No business of mine, of course, but one doesn’t like to see that kind of thing.’

‘They were playing high, certainly.’

‘A fiver to come in, last night, I believe. I looked into the smoke-room before I went to bed. Liversidge had won a packet. Courtney looked very sick. Early in the voyage I tried to tip him the wink, but he’d got in with that bear leader and his cub.’

‘Weston and young Palmer, you mean?’

‘Yes. They’re on the train. The cub’s likely to stick to our heels all through the tour, I’m afraid.’

‘Stage-struck?’

‘What they used to call “shook on the pros.” He hangs round Carolyn, I suppose you’ve noticed. She tells me his father – he’s a Sir Something Palmer and noisomely rich – has packed him off to New Zealand with Weston in the hope of teaching him sense. Weston’s his cousin. The boy was sacked from his public school, I believe. Shipboard gossip.’

‘It is strange,’ said the tall man, ‘how a certain type of Englishman still regards the Dominions either as a waste-paper basket or a purge.’

‘You are not a colonial, surely?’

‘Oh, no. I speak without prejudice. Hullo, I believe we’re stopping.’

A far-away whistle was followed by the sound of banging doors and a voice that chanted something indistinguishable. These sounds grew louder. Presently the far door of their own carriage opened and the guard came down the corridor.

‘Five minutes at Ohakune for refreshments,’ he chanted, and went out at the near door. Broadhead moved aside for him.

‘Refreshments!’ said Hambledon. ‘Good lord!’

‘Oh, I don’t know. A cup of coffee, perhaps. Anyway a gulp of fresh air.’