Final Curtain (19 page)

‘Darlings,' he said, ‘
Allez-houp
! The great moment. I am to bid you to the little theatre. Dearest Mrs Alleyn, you and the Old Person should be jointly feted. A cloud of little doves with gilded wings should be lowered by an ingenious device from the flies, and, with pretty gestures, crown you with laurels. Uncle Thomas could have arranged it. I should so adore to see Panty as an aerial coryphée. Will you all come?'

They found the men assembled in the little theatre. It was brilliantly lit, and had an air of hopefully waiting for a much larger audience. Soft music rumbled synthetically behind the front curtain, which (an inevitable detail) was emblazoned with the arms of Ancred. Troy found herself suddenly projected into a star role. Sir Henry led her up the aisle to a seat beside himself. The rest of the party settled behind them. Cedric, with a kind of consequential flutter, hurried backstage.

Sir Henry was smoking a cigar. When he inclined gallantly towards Troy she perceived that he had taken brandy. This circumstance was accompanied by a formidable internal rumbling.

‘I shall,' he murmured gustily, ‘just say a few words.'

They were actually few, but as usual they were intensely embarrassing. Her reluctance to undertake the portrait was playfully outlined. His own pleasure in the sittings was remorselessly sketched.

Some rather naïve quotations on art from
Timon of Athens
were introduced, and then: ‘But I must not tantalize my audience any longer,' said Sir Henry richly. ‘Curtain, my boy. Curtain!'

The house lights went down: the front drop slid upwards. Simultaneously four powerful floodlamps poured down their beams from the flies. The scarlet tabs were drawn apart, and there, in a blaze of highly unsuitable light, the portrait was revealed.

Above the sombre head and flying against a clear patch of night sky, somebody had painted an emerald green cow with vermilion wings. It was in the act of secreting an object that might or might not have been a black bomb.

T
HIS TIME TROY FELT
only a momentary sensation of panic. That particular area of background was hard-dry, and almost at once she remembered this circumstance. She did, however, feel overwhelmingly irritated. Above the automatic burst of applause that greeted the unveiling and only petered out when the detail of the flying cow was observed, she heard her own voice saying loudly: ‘No, really, this is too much.'

At the same moment Cedric, who had evidently operated the curtains, stuck his head round the proscenium, stared blindly into the front of the house, turned, saw the portrait, clapped his hand over his mouth and ejaculated: ‘Oh, God! Oh, Dynamite!'

‘
Darling!
' said his mother from the back row ‘Ceddie,
dear
! What's the matter?'

Sir Henry, on Troy's left, breathed stertorously, and contrived to let out a sort of hoarse roaring noise.

‘It's all right,' said Troy. ‘Please don't say anything. Wait.'

She strode furiously down the aisle and up the steps. Sacrificing her best evening handkerchief, she reduced the cow to a green smear. ‘I think there's a bottle of turpentine somewhere,' she said loudly. ‘Please give it to me.'

Paul ran up with it, offering his own handkerchief. Cedric flew out with a handful of rag. The blemish was removed. Meantime the auditorium rang with Miss Orrincourt's hysterical laughter and buzzed with the sound of bewildered Ancreds. Troy threw the handkerchief and rag into the wings, and, with hot cheeks, returned to her seat. ‘I wouldn't have been so cross,' she thought grimly, ‘if the damn thing hadn't looked so funny.'

‘I
demand
,' Sir Henry was shouting, ‘I
demand
to know the author of this outrage.'

He was answered by a minor uproar topped by Pauline: ‘It was
not
Panty. I tell you, Millamant, once and for all, that Panty is in bed, and has been there since five o'clock. Papa, I protest. It was
not
Panty.'

‘Nuts!' said Miss Orrincourt. ‘She's been painting green cows for days. I've seen them. Come off it, dear.'

‘Papa, I give you my solemn word—'

‘Mother, wait a minute—'

‘I shall not wait a second. Papa, I have reason to believe—'

‘Look here,
do
wait,' Troy shouted, and at once they were silent. ‘It's gone,' she said. ‘No harm's been done. But there's one thing I must tell you. Just before dinner I came in here. I was worrying about the red curtains. I thought they might touch the canvas where it's still wet. It was all right then. If Panty's been in bed and is known to have been there since ten to nine, she didn't do it.'

Pauline instantly began to babble. ‘Thank you, thank you, Mrs Alleyn. You hear that, Papa. Send for Miss Able. I insist that Miss Able be sent for. My child shall be vindicated.'

‘I'll go and ask Caroline,' said Thomas unexpectedly. ‘One doesn't send for Caroline, you know. I'll go and ask.'

He went out. The Ancreds were silent. Suddenly Millamant remarked: ‘I thought perhaps it was just the modern style. What do they call it? Surrealism?'

‘Milly!' screamed her son.

Jenetta Ancred said: ‘What particular symbolism, Milly, did you read into the introduction of a flying cow behaving like a rude seagull over Papa's head?'

‘You never know,' Millamant said, ‘in these days,' and laughed uncertainly.

‘Papa,' said Desdemona, who had been bending over him, ‘is dreadfully upset. Papa, dearest, may I suggest—'

‘I'm going to bed,' said Sir Henry. ‘I am indeed upset. I am unwell. I am going to bed.'

They all rose. He checked them with a gesture. ‘I am going alone,' he said, ‘to bed.'

Cedric ran to the door. Sir Henry, without a backward glance, walked down the aisle, a shadowy figure looking larger than life against the glowing stage, and passing magnificently from the theatre.

The Ancreds at once began to chatter. Troy felt that she couldn't endure the inevitable revival of Panty's former misdemeanours, Pauline's indignant denials, Cedric's giggles, Millamant's stolid recital of the obvious. She was profoundly relieved when Thomas, slightly ruffled, returned with Caroline Able.

‘I've asked Caroline to come,' he said, ‘because I thought you mightn't exactly believe me. Panty's been in the sick-bay with all the other ringworms. Dr Withers wanted them to be kept under observation because of the medicine he's given them, so Caroline has been sitting there reading since half-past seven. So Panty, you see, didn't do it.'

‘Certainly she didn't do it,' said Miss Able brightly. ‘How could she? It's quite impossible.'

‘So you see,' Thomas added mildly.

Troy stayed behind in the little theatre with Paul and Fenella. Paul switched on the working lights, and together they examined Troy's painting gear, which had been stacked away behind the wings.

The paint-box had been opened. A dollop of Emerald Oxide of Chromium and one of Ivory Black had been squeezed out on the protective under-lid that separated the paints from a compartment designed to hold sketching-boards. A large brush had been used, and had been dipped first in the green and then in the black.

‘You know,' said Paul, ‘this brush ought to have finger-prints on it.' He looked rather shyly at Troy. ‘Oughtn't it?' he added.

‘Well, I suppose Roderick would say so,' she agreed.

‘I mean, if it has and if we could get everybody's to compare, that would be pretty conclusive, wouldn't it? What's more, it'd be damned interesting.'

‘Yes, but I've a notion fingerprints are not as easy as all that.'

‘I know. The hand would move about and so on. But look! There is some green paint smeared up the handle. I've read about it. Suppose we asked them to let us take their prints. They couldn't very well refuse.'

‘Oh, Paul,
let's
!' cried Fenella.

‘What do you think, Mrs Alleyn?'

‘My dear chap, you mustn't imagine I know anything about it. But I agree it would be interesting. I
do
know more or less how they take official prints.'

‘I've read it up quite a bit,' said Paul. ‘I say. Suppose we did get them to do it, and suppose we kept the brush and the box intact—well—well, would—do you think—?'

‘I'd show them to him like a shot,' said Troy.

‘I say, that's perfectly splendid,' said Paul. ‘Look here, I'll damn well put it to them in the morning. It ought to be cleared up. It's all bloody rum, the whole show, isn't it? What d'you say, Mrs Alleyn?'

‘I'm on,' said Troy.

‘Glory!' said Fenella. ‘So'm I. Let's.'

‘OK,' said Paul, gingerly wrapping the brush in rag. ‘We'll lock up the brush and box.'

‘I'll take them up with me.'

‘Will you? That's grand.'

They locked the portrait in the property-room, and said goodnight conspiratorially. Troy felt she could not face another session with the Ancreds, and sending her excuses, went upstairs to her room.

She could not sleep. Outside, in the night, rain drove solidly against the wall of her tower. The wind seemed to have got into the chimney and be trying uneasily to find its way out again. A bucket had replaced the basin on the landing, and a maddening and irregular progression of taps compelled her attention and played like castanets on her nerves. Only one more night here, she thought, and then the comfort of her familiar things in the London flat and the sharing of them with her husband. Illogically she felt a kind of regret for the tower-room, and in this mood fell to revising in their order the eccentricities of her days and nights at Ancreton. The paint on the banister. The spectacles on the portrait. The legend in grease-paint on Sir Henry's looking-glass. The incident of the inflated bladder. The flying cow.

If Panty was not the authoress of these inane facetiae, who was? If one person only was responsible for them all, then Panty was exonerated. But might not Panty have instituted them with the smearing of paint on the banister and somebody else have carried them on? Undoubtedly Panty's legend and past record included many such antics. Troy wished that she knew something of modern views on child psychology. Was such behaviour characteristic of a child who wished to become a dominant figure and who felt herself to be obstructed and repressed? But Troy was positive that Panty had spoken the truth when she denied having any hand in the tricks with paint. And unless Miss Able had told a lie, Panty, quite definitely, had not been the authoress of the flying cow, though she undoubtedly had a predilection for cows and bombs. Troy turned uneasily in her bed, and fancied that beyond the sound of wind and rain she heard the voice of the Great Clock. Was there any significance in the fact that in each instance the additions to her canvas had been made on a dry area and so had done no harm? Which of the adults in the house would realize this? Cedric. Cedric painted, though probably in water-colours. She fancied his aesthetic fervour was, in its antic way, authentic. He would, she thought, instinctively recoil from this particular kind of vandalism. But suppose he knew that no harm would be done? And where was a motive for Cedric? He appeared to have a kind of liking for her; why should he disfigure her work? Bleakly Troy surveyed the rest of the field, and one by one dismissed them until she came to Miss Orrincourt.

The robust vulgarity of these goings-on was not out of character if Miss Orrincourt was considered. Was it, Troy wondered with an uneasy grin, remotely possible that Miss Orrincourt resented the somewhat florid attentions Sir Henry had lavished upon his guest? Could she have imagined that the sittings had been made occasions for even more marked advances, more ardent pattings of the hand, closer pilotings by the elbow? ‘Crikey,' Troy muttered, writhing uncomfortably, ‘
what
an idea to get in the middle of the night!' No, it was too far-fetched. Perhaps one of the elderly maids had lost her wits and taken to this nonsense. ‘Or Barker,' thought the now sleepy Troy. In the drumming of rain and wind about her room she began to hear fantastical things. Presently she dreamed of flying bombs that came out of the night, converging on her tower. When they were almost upon her they changed into green cows, that winked broadly, and with a Cedric-like flirt dropped soft bombs, at the same time saying very distinctly: ‘Plop, plop,
dearest
Mrs Alleyn.'