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

‘In New Zealand.’

‘Really?’ he said as if she had answered some vitally important question.

‘I’m afraid,’ Martyn went on quickly, ‘it’s not in the overcoat.’

‘God, what a bore! Give me my jacket then, would you? The grey flannel.’

She handed it to him and he fumbled through the pockets. A pocket-book dropped on the floor, spilling its contents. Martyn gathered them together and he made such a clumsy business of taking them from her that she was obliged to put them on the shelf. Among them was an envelope bearing a foreign stamp and postmark. He snatched it up and it fluttered in his fingers. ‘Mustn’t lose track of that one, must we?’ he said and laughed. ‘All the way from Uncle Tito.’ He thrust it at Martyn. ‘Look,’ he said and steadied his hand against the edge of the shelf. ‘What d’you think of that? Take it.’

Troubled at once by the delay and by the oddness of his manner Martyn took the envelope and saw that it was addressed to Bennington.

‘Do you collect autographs?’ Bennington asked with ridiculous intensity –’or signed letters?’

‘No, I’m afraid I don’t,’ she said and put the letter face down on the shelf.

‘There’s someone,’ he said with a jab of his finger at the envelope, ‘who’d give a hell of a lot for that one in there. A hell of a lot.’

He burst out laughing, pulled a cigarette-case out of the jacket and handed it to her with a flourish. ‘Purest gold,’ he said. ‘Birthday present but not from me. I’m her husband you know. What the hell! Are you leaving me? Don’t go.’

Martyn made her escape and ran back to Miss Hamilton’s room where she found her in conference with Adam Poole and a young man of romantic appearance whom she recognized as the original of the last of the photographs in the foyer – Mr Parry Percival. The instinct that makes us aware of a conversation in which we ourselves have in our absence been involved, warned Martyn that they had been talking about her and had broken off on her entrance. After a moment’s silence, Mr Percival, with far too elaborate a nonchalance, said: ‘Yes: well there you have it,’ and it was obvious that there was a kind of double significance in this remark. Miss Hamilton said: ‘My poor Martyn, where have you been?’ with a lightness that was not quite cordial.

‘I’m sorry,’ Martyn said: ‘Mr Bennington had trouble in finding the case.’ She hesitated for a moment and added, ‘Madam.’

‘That,’ Miss Hamilton rejoined, looking at Adam Poole, ‘rings dismally true. Would you believe it, darling, I became so furious with him for taking it that, most reluctantly, I gave him one for himself. He lost it instantly of course and now swears he didn’t and mine is his. If you follow me.’

‘With considerable difficulty,’ Poole said, ‘I do.’

Parry Percival laughed gracefully. He had a winning, if not altogether authentic air of ingenuousness, and at the moment seemed to be hovering on the edge of some indiscretion. ‘I am afraid,’ he said ruefully to Miss Hamilton, ‘I’m rather in disgrace myself.’

‘With me, or with Adam?’

‘I hope not with either of you. With Ben.’ He glanced apologetically at Poole, who did not look at him. ‘Because of the part, I mean. I suppose I spoke out of turn, but I really did think I could play it – still do for a matter of that, but there it is.’

It was obvious that he was speaking at Poole. Martyn saw Miss Hamilton look from one man to the other before she said lightly, ‘I think you could too, Parry, but as you say, there it is. Ben has got a flair, you know.’

Percival laughed. ‘He has indeed,’ he said, ‘he has had it for twenty years. Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Honestly, I am sorry.’

Poole said, ‘I dislike post-mortems on casting, Parry.’

‘I know, I do apologize.’ Percival turned ingratiatingly, and the strong light caught his face sideways. Martyn saw with astonishment that under the thin film of greasepaint there was a system of incipient lines, and she realized that he was not, after all, a young man. ‘I know,’ he repeated, ‘I’m being naughty.’

Poole said, ‘We open on Thursday. The whole thing was thrashed out weeks ago. Any discussion now is completely fruitless.’

‘That,’ said Miss Hamilton, ‘is what I have been trying to tell the doctor.’

‘John? I heard him bellowing in here,’ Poole said. ‘Where’s he gone? I want a word with him. And with you, Parry, by the way. It’s about that scene at the window in the second act. You’re not making your exit line. You must top Ben there. It’s most important.’

‘Look, old boy,’ Mr Percival said with agonized intensity, ‘I know. It’s just another of those things. Have you seen what Ben does? Have you seen that business with my handkerchief? He won’t take his hands off me. The whole exit gets messed up.’

‘I’ll see what can be done.’

‘John,’ said Miss Hamilton, ‘is worried about it too, Adam.’

Poole said: ‘Then he should talk to me.’

‘You know what the doctor is.’

‘We all do,’ said Parry Percival, ‘and the public, I fear, is beginning to find out. God, there I go again.’

Poole looked at him. ‘You’ll get along better, I think, Parry, if you deny yourself these cracks against the rest of the company. Rutherford has written a serious play. It’d be a pity if any of us should lose faith in it.’

Percival reddened and made towards the door. ‘I’m just being a nuisance,’ he said. ‘I’ll take myself off and be photographed like a good boy.’ He made an insinuating movement of his shoulders towards Miss Hamilton, and fluttered his hand at her dress. ‘Marvellous,’ he said, ‘a triumph, if the bit-part actor may be allowed to say so.’

The door shut crisply behind him, and Miss Hamilton said: ‘Darling, aren’t you rather high and grand with poor Parry?’

‘I don’t think so. He’s behaving like an ass. He couldn’t play the part. He was born to be a feed.’

‘He’d look it.’

‘If all goes well Ben will be it.’

‘If all goes well! Adam, I’m terrified. He’s –’

‘Are you dressed, Ella? The cameras are ready.’

‘Shoes, please, Martyn,’ said Miss Hamilton. ‘Yes, darling. I’m right.’

Martyn fastened her shoes and then opened the door. Miss Hamilton swept out, lifting her skirts with great elegance. Martyn waited for Poole to follow, but he said: ‘You’re meant to be on-stage. Take make-up and a glass and whatever Miss Hamilton may need for her hair.’

She thanked him and in a flurry gathered the things together. Poole took the Persian lamb coat and stood by the door. She hesitated, expecting him to precede her, but found that he was looking at the cheval-glass. When she followed his gaze it was to be confronted by their images, side by side in the glass.

‘Extraordinary,’ he said abruptly, ‘isn’t it?’ and motioned her to go out.

III

When Martyn went out on the stage she was able for the first time to see the company assembled together, and found it consisted, as far as the players were concerned, of no more than the six persons she had already encountered: first in their fixed professional poses in the show-frame at the front of the house, and later in their dressing-rooms. She had attached mental tags to them and found herself thinking of Helen Hamilton as the Leading Lady, of Gay Gainsford as the Ingénue, of J. G. Darcey as the Character Actor, of Parry Percival as the Juvenile, of Clark Bennington regrettably, perhaps unjustly, as the Drunken Actor, and of Adam Poole – but as yet she had found no label for Poole, unless it was the old-fashioned one of ‘Governor’, which pleased her by its vicarious association with the days of the Victorian actor-managers.

To this actual cast of six she must add a number of satellite figures – the author, Dr John Rutherford, whose eccentricities seemed to surpass those of his legend, with which she was already acquainted, the man in the red sweater who was the stage-manager, and was called Clem Smith, his assistant, a morose lurking figure, and the crew of stage-hands who went about their business or contemplated the actors with equal detachment.

The actors were forming themselves now into a stage ‘picture’, moving in a workmanlike manner, under the direction of Adam Poole, and watched with restless attentiveness by an elderly, slack-jointed man, carrying a paint pot and brushes. This man, the last of all the figures to appear upon the stage that morning, seemed to have no recognizable job but to be concerned in all of them. He was dressed in overalls and a tartan shirt, from which his long neck emerged, birdlike and crapulous, to terminate in a head that wobbled slightly as if its articulation with the top of the spine had loosened with age. He was constantly addressed with exasperated affection as Jacko. Under his direction, bunches of lights were wheeled into position, cameramen peered and muttered, and at his given signal the players, by an easy transition in behaviour and appearance, became larger than life. A gap was left in the middle of the group, and into this when all was ready floated Helena Hamilton, ruffling her plumage, and becoming at once the focal point of the picture.

‘Darling,’ she said, it’s not going to be a flash, is it, with all of you looking like village idiots, and me like the Third Witch on the morning after the cauldron scene?’

‘If you can hold it for three seconds,’ Adam Poole said, ‘it needn’t be a flash.’

‘I can hold anything, if you come in and help me.’

He moved in beside her. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘let’s try it. The end of the first act,’ and at once she turned upon him a look of tragic and burning intensity. The elderly man wandered across and tweaked at her skirts. Without changing pose or expression, she said, ‘Isn’t it shameful the way Jacko can’t keep his hands off me.’ He grinned and ambled away. Adam Poole said ‘Right,’ the group froze in postures of urgency that led the eye towards the two central figures and the cameras clicked.