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

‘Can I open it? Oh, dear.’

She drank her scalding tea and watched him open the tin and turn its contents out on a more than dubious plate. Using his clasp knife he perched chunks of meat on a slab of bread and held it out to her. ‘You’re in luck,’ he said. ‘Eat it slow.’

She urged him to join her but he said he would set his share aside for later. They could both, he suggested, take another cut at it tomorrow. He examined the tin with interest while Martyn consumed her portion. She had never before given such intense concentration to a physical act. She would never have believed that eating could bring so fierce a satisfaction.

‘Comes from Australia, don’t it?’ her companion said, still contemplating the tin.

‘New Zealand.’

‘Same thing.’

Martyn said: ‘Not really. There’s quite a big sea in between.’

‘Do you come from there?’

‘Where?’

‘Australia.’

‘No. I’m a New Zealander.’

‘Same thing.’

She looked up and found him grinning at her. He made the gesture of wiping the smile off his face. ‘Oh, dear,’ he said.

Martyn finished her tea and stood up. ‘I must start my job,’ she said.

‘Feel better?’

‘Much, much better.’

‘Would it be quite a spell since you ate anything?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘I never fancy drinking on an empty stomach, myself.’

Her face burnt against the palms of her hands. ‘But I don’t … I mean, I know. I mean I was a bit faint and somebody … a girl … she was terribly kind …’

‘Does your mother know you’re aht?’ he asked ironically and took a key from a collection hung on nails behind the door. ‘If you must work,’ he said.

‘Please.’

‘Personally escorted tour abaht to commence. Follow in single file and don’t talk to the guide. I thank you.’

She followed him to the stage and round the back of the set. He warned her of obstructions by bobbing his torchlight on them and, when she stumbled against a muffled table, took her hand. She was disquieted by the grip of his fingers, calloused, and wooden, and by the warmth of his palm which was unexpectedly soft. She was oppressed with renewed loneliness and fear.

‘End of the penny section,’ he said, releasing her. He unlocked a door, reached inside and switched on a light.

‘They call this the greenroom,’ he said. ‘That’s what it was in the old days. It’s been done up. Guvnor’s idea.’

It was a room without a window, newly painted in green. There were a number of armchairs in brown leather, a round table littered with magazines, a set of well-stocked bookshelves and a gas-fire. Groups of framed Pollock’s prints decorated the walls: ‘Mr Dale as Claude Amboine’, ‘Mr T. Hicks as Richard I’, ‘Mr S. French as Harlequin’. This last enchanted Martyn because the diamonds of Mr French’s costume had been filled in with actual red and green sequins and he glittered in his frame.

Above the fireplace hung a largish sketch – it was little more than that – of a man of about thirty-five in medieval dress, with a hood that he was in the act of pushing away from his face. The face was arresting. It had great purity of form being wide across the eyes and heart shaped. The mouth, in particular, was of a most subtle character, perfectly masculine but drawn with extreme delicacy. It was well done: it had both strength and refinement yet it was not these qualities that disturbed Martyn. Reflected in the glass that covered the picture she saw her own face lying ghost-wise across the other; their forms intermingled like those in a twice-exposed photograph. It seemed to Martyn that her companion must be looking over her shoulder at this double image and she moved away from him and nearer to the picture. The reflection disappeared. Something was written faintly in one corner of the sketch. She drew closer and saw that it was a single word: ‘Everyman’.

‘Spitting image of him, ain’t it?’ said the doorkeeper behind her.

‘I don’t know,’ she said quickly; ‘is it?’

‘Is it! Don’t you know the guvnor when you see ’im?’

‘The governor?’

‘Streuth, you’re a caution and no error. Don’t you know who owns this show? That’s the great Mr Adam Poole, that is.’

‘Oh,’ she murmured after a pause and added uneasily, ‘I’ve seen him in the pictures, of course.’

‘Go on!’ he jeered. ‘Where would that be? Australia? Fancy!’

He had been very kind to her but she found his remorseless vein of irony exasperating. It would have been easier and less tedious to have let it go but she found herself embarked on an explanation. Of course she knew all about Mr Adam Poole, she said. She had seen his photograph in the foyer. All his pictures had been shown in New Zealand. She knew he was the most distinguished of the younger contemporary actor-managers. She was merely startled by the painting, because … But it was impossible to explain why the face in the painting disturbed her and the unfinished phrase trailed away into an embarrassed silence.

Her companion listened to this rigmarole with an equivocal grin and when she gave it up merely remarked: ‘Don’t apologize. It’s the same with all the ladies: ’E fair rocks ’em. Talk about ’aving what it takes.’

‘I don’t mean that at all,’ she shouted angrily.

‘You should see ’em clawing at each other to get at ’im rahnd the stage-door, first nights. Something savage! Females of the speeches? Disgrace to their sexes more like. There’s an ironing-board etceterer in the wardrobe-room farther along. You can plug in when you’re ready. ‘Er Royal ’Ighness is over the way.’

He went out, opened a further door, switched on a light and called to her to join him.

III

As soon as she crossed the threshold of the star dressing-room she smelt greasepaint. The dressing-shelf was bare, the room untenanted, but the smell of cosmetics mingled with the faint reek of gas. There were isolated dabs of colour on the shelves and the looking-glass; the lamp-bulbs were smeared with cream and red where sticks of greasepaint had been warmed at them and on a shelf above the wash-basin somebody had left a miniature frying-pan of congealed mascara in which a hair-pin was embedded.

It was a largish room, windowless and dank, with an air of submerged grandeur about it. The full-length cheval-glass swung from a gilt frame. There was an Empire couch, an armchair and an ornate stool before the dressing-shelf. The floor was carpeted in red with a florid pattern that use had in part obliterated. A number of dress-boxes bearing the legend ‘Costumes by Pierrot et Cie’ were stacked in the middle of the room and there were two suitcases on the shelf. A gas-heater stood against one wall and there was a caged jet above the wash-basin.

‘Here we are,’ said the doorkeeper. ‘All yer own.’

She turned to thank him and encountered a speculative stare. ‘Cosy,’ he said, ‘ain’t it?’ and moved nearer. ‘Nice little hidey-hole, ain’t it?’

‘You’ve been very kind,’ Martyn said. ‘I’ll manage splendidly now. Thank you very much indeed.’

‘Don’t mention it. Any time.’ His hand reached out clumsily to her. ‘Been aht in the rain,’ he said thickly. ‘Naughty girl.’

‘I’ll soon dry off. I’m quite all right.’

She moved behind the pile of dress-boxes and fumbled with the string on the top one. There was a hissing noise. She heard him strike a match and a moment later was horribly jolted by an explosion from the gas-heater. It forced an involuntary cry from her.

‘’Allo, ’allo!’ her companion said. ‘Ain’t superstitious, are we?’