Vintage Murder

‘Quite,’ said Mr Meyer again.

There was an uncomfortable pause.

‘You seem to be in funds,’ remarked Mr Meyer suddenly.

Liversidge laughed melodiously. ‘I’ve been saving a bit lately. We had a long run in Town with the show, didn’t we? A windfall this morning, too.’ He gave Meyer a quick sidelong glance. ‘Courtney paid up his poker debts. I didn’t expect to see that again, I must say. Last night he was all down-stage and tragic.’

‘Shut that door,’ said Mr Meyer. ‘I want to talk to you.’

VII

Carolyn and Hambledon faced each other across the murky half-light of the star dressing-room. Already, most of the wicker baskets had been unpacked, and the grease-paints laid out on their trays. The room had a grey, cellar-like look about it and smelt of cosmetics. Hambledon switched on the light and it instantly became warm and intimate.

‘Now, listen to me,’ he said.

Carolyn sat on one of the wicker crates and gazed at him. He took a deep breath.

‘You’re as much in love with me as you ever will be with anyone. You don’t love Alfred. Why you married him I don’t believe even God knows, and I’m damn’ certain you don’t. I don’t ask you to live with me on the quiet, with everyone knowing perfectly well what’s happening. That sort of arrangement would be intolerable to both of us. I do ask you to come away with me at the end of this tour and let Alfred divorce you. Either that, or tell him how things are between us and give him the chance of arranging it the other way.’

‘Darling, we’ve had this out so often before.’

‘I know we have but I’m at the end of my tether. I can’t go on seeing you every day, working with you, being treated as though I was – what? A cross between a tame cat and a schoolboy. I’m forty-nine, Carol, and I – I’m starved. Why won’t you do this for both of us?’

‘Because I’m a Catholic.’

‘You’re not a good Catholic. I sometimes think you don’t care tuppence about your religion. How long is it since you’ve been to church or confession or whatever it is? Ages. Then why stick at this?’

‘It’s my Church sticking to me. Bits of it always stick. I’d feel I was wallowing in sin, darling, truthfully I would.’

‘Well, wallow. You’d get used to it.’

‘Oh, Hailey!’ She broke out into soft laughter, but warm soft laughter that ran like gold through every part she played.

‘Don’t!’ said Hambledon. ‘Don’t!’

‘I’m so sorry, Hailey. I am a pig. I do adore you, but, darling, I can’t – simply can’t live in sin with you. Living in sin. Living in sin,’ chanted Carolyn dreamily.

‘You’re hopeless,’ said Hambledon. ‘Hopeless!’

‘Miss Dacres, please,’ called a voice in the passage.

‘Here!’

‘We’re just coming to your entrance, please, Mr Gascoigne says.’

‘I’ll be there,’ said Carolyn. ‘Thank you.’

She got up at once.

‘You’re on in a minute, darling,’ she said to Hambledon.

‘I suppose,’ said Hambledon with a violence that in spite of himself was half whimsically-rueful, ‘I suppose I’ll have to wait for Alf to die of a fatty heart. Would you marry me then, Carol?’

‘What is it they all say in this country? “Too right.” Too right I would, darling. But, poor Pooh! A fatty heart! Too unkind.’ She slipped through the door.

A moment or two later he heard her voice, pitched and telling, as she spoke her opening line.

‘“Darling, what do you think! He’s asked me to marry him!”’ And then those peals of soft warm laughter.

CHAPTER 4 First Appearance of the Tiki (#ulink_85ddec77-eb49-57be-9204-2e9776462d9f)

The curtain rose for the fourth time. Carolyn Dacres, standing in the centre of the players, bowed to the stalls, to the circle and, with the friendly special smile, to the gallery. One thousand pairs of hands were struck together over and over again, making a sound like hail on an iron roof. New Zealand audiences are not given to cheering. If they are pleased they sit still and clap exhaustively. They did so now, on the third and final performance of Ladies of Leisure. Carolyn bowed and bowed with an air of enchanted deprecation. She turned to Hailey Hambledon, smiling. He stepped out of the arc and came down to the footlights. He assumed the solemnly earnest expression of all leading actors who are about to make a speech. The thousand pairs of hands redoubled their activities. Hambledon smiled warningly. The clapping died away.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ began Hambledon reverently, ‘Miss Dacres has asked me to try and express something of our’ – he looked up to the gallery – ‘our gratitude, for the wonderful reception you have given the first play of our short’ – he looked into the stalls – ‘our all too short season in your beautiful city.’ He paused. Another tentative outbreak from the audience. ‘This is our first visit to New Zealand, and Middleton is the first town we have played. Our season in this lovely country of yours is, of necessity, a brief one. We go on to – to–’ he paused and turned helplessly to his company. ‘Wellington,’ said Carolyn. ‘To Wellington, on Friday. Tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday we play The Jack Pot, a comedy which we had the honour of presenting at the Criterion Theatre in London. Most of the original cast is still with us, and, in addition, three well-known Australian artists have joined us for this piece. May I also say that we have among us a New Zealand actress who returns to her native country after a distinguished career on the London stage – Miss Susan Max.’ He turned to old Susan, who gave him a startled look of gratitude. The audience applauded vociferously. Old Susan, with shining eyes, bowed to the house and then, charmingly, to Hambledon.

‘Miss Dacres, the company, and I, are greatly moved by the marvellous welcome you have given us. I – I may be giving away a secret, but I am going to tell you that today is her birthday.’ He held up his hand. ‘This is her first visit to Middleton; I feel we cannot do better than wish her many happy returns. Thank you all very much.’

Another storm of hail, a deep curtsy from Carolyn. Hambledon glanced up into the OP corner, and the curtain came down.

‘And God forbid that I should ever come back,’ muttered little Ackroyd disagreeably.

Susan Max, who was next to him, ruffled like an indignant hen.

‘You’d rather have the provinces, I suppose, Mr Ackroyd,’ she said briskly.

Old Brandon Vernon chuckled deeply. Ackroyd raised his comic eyebrows and inclined his head several times. ‘Ho-ho. Ho-ho!’ he sneered. ‘We’re all touchy and upstage about our native land, are we!’

Susan plodded off to her dressing-room. In the passage she ran into Hailey Hambledon.

‘Thank you, dear,’ said Susan. ‘I didn’t expect it, but it meant a lot.’

‘That’s all right, Susie,’ said Hambledon. ‘Go and make yourself lovely for the party.’

Carolyn’s birthday was to be celebrated. Out on the stage the hands put up a trestle-table and covered it with a white cloth. Flowers were massed down the centre. Glasses, plates, and quantities of food were arrayed on lines that followed some impossible standard set by a Hollywood super-spectacle, tempered by the facilities offered by the Middleton Hotel, which had undertaken the catering. Mr Meyer had spent a good deal of thought and more money on this party. It was, he said, to be a party suitable to his wife’s position as the foremost English comedienne, and it had been planned with one eye on the Press and half the other on the box office. The pièce de résistance was to be in the nature of a surprise for Carolyn and the guests, though one by one, he had taken the members of his company into his confidence. He had brought from England a jeroboam of champagne – a fabulous, a monstrous bottle of a famous vintage. All the afternoon, Ted Gascoigne and the stage hands had laboured under Mr Meyer’s guidance and with excited suggestions from George Mason. The giant bottle was suspended in the flies with a counterweight across the pulley. A crimson cord from the counterweight came down to the stage and was anchored to the table. At the climax of her party, Carolyn was to cut this cord. The counterweight would then rise and the jeroboam slowly descend into a nest of maiden-hair fern and exotic flowers, that was to be held, by Mr Meyer himself, in the centre of the table. He had made them rehearse it twelve times that day and was in a fever of excitement that the performance should go without a hitch. Now he kept darting on to the stage and gazing anxiously up into the flies, where the jeroboam hung, invisible, awaiting its big entrance. The shaded lamps used on the stage were switched on. With the heavy curtain for the fourth wall, the carpet and the hangings on the set, it was intimate and pleasant.

A little group of guests came in from the stage-door. A large vermilion-faced, pleasant-looking man, who was a station-holder twenty miles out in the country. His wife, broad, a little weather-beaten, well dressed, but not very smart. Their daughter, who was extremely smart, and their son, an early print of his father. They had called on Carolyn, who had instantly asked them to her party, forgotten she had done so, and neglected to warn anybody of their arrival. Gascoigne, who received them, looked nonplussed for a moment, and then, knowing his Carolyn, guessed what had happened. They were followed by Gordon Palmer, registering familiarity with backstage, and his cousin, Geoffrey Weston.

‘Hullo, George,’ said Gordon. ‘Perfectly marvellous. Great fun. Carolyn was too thrilling, wasn’t she? I must see her. Where is she?’

‘Miss Dacres is changing,’ said Ted Gascoigne, who had dealt with generations of Gordon Palmers.

‘But I simply can’t wait another second,’ protested Gordon in a high-pitched voice.

‘Afraid you’ll have to,’ said Gascoigne. ‘May I introduce Mr Gordon Palmer, Mr Weston, Mrs – mumble-mumble.’

‘Forrest,’ said the broad lady cheerfully. With the pathetic faith of most colonial ladies in the essential niceness of all young Englishmen, she instantly made friendly advances. Her husband and son looked guarded and her daughter alert.

More guests arrived, among them a big brown man with a very beautiful voice – Dr Rangi Te Pokiha, a Maori physician, who was staying at the Middleton.