The Case of the Gilded Fly (26 page)

‘Good God,' said Nigel, profoundly shocked. ‘But how did you guess?'

‘All that dog-latin, of course. What youth in his senses would bellow out a latin invocation for deliverance while being clubbed to death, even by a ghost? What he really shouted was the name of the man who was killing him. And as he was a church organist and not a classical scholar, I'm willing to bet he used the ecclesiastical pronunciation, and said
ch
for
c
. But I suppose that tale Archer spun, coming from a convinced rationalist, shook them a bit, and as they weren't very bright and he was a highly respectable man, they didn't tumble to it. He must have had some uneasy moments, though. No wonder he turned churchman!'

‘Supernatural, my dear Holmes,' said Nigel, who was in fact genuinely impressed; and added: ‘In more senses than one. What about Wilkes' theory of the ghost operating through the living?'

‘That,' said Fen, firmly and crudely, ‘is all hooey. Anyone
who's not actually demented can prevent himself from committing a murder. Possession by demons is always a convenient way of shelving responsibility. And that reminds me –'

He took from his pocket the envelope he had addressed earlier that evening, tore it into small fragments and threw them on the fire. They watched in silence as the paper caught, flared, and shrank away into ashes.

‘Tomorrow night,' said Gervase Fen, ‘we go hunting.'

No! will it not be yet? if this will not, another shall.

Not yet? I shall fit you anon –
Vengeance!

Ford

By six o'clock, the queue for the unreserved seats already stretched a quarter of a mile down the road. At seven, the commissionaire went out, counted them, compared their number with the seats available, and informed those who would be unable to get in of the uselessness of waiting. The latter part of the queue broke up and dissipated, but a great many of its members continued to wait about, partly in order to see any celebrities who might be recognizable, partly in the hope that some of the reserved seats might not be claimed and that they might still be able to get in. Three policemen inefficiently but self-importantly regulated the increasing flow of people. Even those who had booked seats arrived early to claim them, fearful of not getting in, and having done so, hung about in small knots on the lawns in front, chattering excitedly. From every hotel in Oxford came agents, theatrical managers, actors, actresses, producers, critics, and fellow-playwrights. Some, who had not been able to leave town earlier on account of business, came direct from the station in taxi-cabs. The intelligentsia of the university arrived with habitual expressions of boredom. Dons arrived and made their way in with the practised ease and tranquillity of those in authority. Everywhere there was talk, talk, talk. A group of three eminent critics stood outside, talking spasmodically and glancing nervously over their shoulders. ‘Shakespeare foresaw it,' said Nicholas gloomily as he passed in with the blonde on his arm,' “an agate vilely cut”.' The electrician, Richard Ellis, Sheila McGaw and the stage hands stood in a bemused group in one corner, watching the ever-increasing flow of people as it came from all directions, and consumed with inner excitement. Robert strolled out to greet a group of friends who had come down from London, and was the object
of interested, covert scrutiny. Black and white posters on all hands announced the first performance of
Metromania
with a sobriety somewhat out of keeping with the general furore. Rachel, in her dressing-room, performed the difficult double task of applying mascara to her eyes and running over her part in the book that lay open beside her. Jean conducted a last-minute survey of properties, even in her acute inner un-happiness not wholly unaffected by the prevailing atmosphere. Most of the men in the company were still in the ‘Aston Arms', acquiring dutch courage under the minatory gaze of the parrot. Clive had already torn himself away from the arms of his wife, and was moving towards the theatre at all speed, probably to be in time for the performance. The bar, which had been provided with five extra staff and an emergency counter erected at one end, was packed to overflowing. Helen, entering the stage door with Bruce, looked at the crowds in alarm and spent the next three-quarters of an hour trying to forget them. Robert's publisher made a gloomy mental note to raise the royalties in the contract for
Metromania
. Robert himself remained cool and grave, but inwardly felt more nervous than he had ever been in his life before.

Fen said, as he, Nigel, and Sir Richard walked towards the theatre: ‘The last time I went to this theatre, I swore I'd never go again. Yet here, apparently, I am. I hope, by the way,' he added to Nigel, ‘that my actor friend turns up in good time. I should like to take him round to meet Helen before the show,'

Nigel nodded; he was too excited for words.

‘And,' said Fen in a lower voice to Sir Richard, ‘I suppose all the arrangements are all right?'

The Inspector and his people will be there in plenty of time. There are a number of them now, of course, dealing with the crowds. I'm sorry' – said Sir Richard a little absently – ‘that you had to spoil the evening by making this arrangement.'

‘God knows, I'm sorry too,' said Fen, ‘but you know it couldn't be helped. I don't really see why it need prevent us from enjoying ourselves.'

Sir Richard looked at him curiously. Then he squared his shoulders. ‘It's certainly not going to prevent
me,'
he said resolutely.

‘You might,' said Nigel, ‘tell me what you're up to.'

‘At the end of the show,' Fen replied, ‘we're going to call a little meeting, and an arrest will be made. All very quietly, of course, when the excitement has died down. Only the people chiefly concerned will be there.'

‘Oh.' Nigel was silent. Then he said: ‘It seems a pity.'

‘Throat-cutting and shooting are also a pity,' said Fen drily. They walked on in silence.

‘God, what a crowd!' Nigel exclaimed, as they approached the theatre. ‘I suppose,' he said to Fen, an ugly suspicion rising up inside him, ‘that you've got the tickets?'

Fen felt in his pockets, and an expression of alarm appeared on his face. ‘Oh my ears and whiskers!' he said. ‘I've left them on my desk.' Nigel groaned.

‘So you did,' said Sir Richard equably. ‘So I took them. I trust you no further than I do your opinion of Charles Churchill. Come on, Gervase, for heaven's sake. Don't sulk.'

They forced a passage through the throng, Fen waving cheerfully to friends and acquaintances. He seemed, Nigel thought, to know an extraordinary number of people. After some difficulty he discovered the Eminent Actor, and bore him round to the stage-door to see Helen. Nigel and Sir Richard, thinking discretion the better part of valour, ploughed their way through a sea of mackintoshes, feet and programmes to their seats.

The Eminent Actor was discreet, charming and business-like. ‘It's cruel of us to disturb you,' he said to Helen, ‘at a time like this. I know I'm always terrified out of my wits on these occasions.' He smiled. Helen, somewhat flurried, admitted she was nervous, and said agreeable nothings. Fen wandered about the dressing-room, experimentally smearing his face with sticks of grease-paint.

There was a knock on the door. ‘Five minutes, please!' came the dismal voice of the assistant stage-manager; and further down the corridor, a series of echoes: ‘Five minutes, please!'

‘Good heavens!' said the Eminent Actor, ‘we must go. For heaven's sake take that stuff off your face, Gervase. No, don't rub it with your handkerchief, you ass; you have to put grease on it first. There! Now wipe it off with this towel.'

Fen, somewhat chastened by these proceedings, merely grunted.

‘There's really no need to hurry,' said Helen. ‘With all these people we're sure to go up late, and I'm not on till the second act.'

‘None the less,' said the Eminent Actor, ‘I think we should go. I'll watch the first act for the sake of Robert, and the last two for the sake of you. Good luck!'

In the auditorium, the footlights went up, bathing the lower part of the curtain in a subdued white glow. Fen, after taking leave of the Eminent Actor with the remark: ‘Remember that time you pushed Cumber of the Lower Fourth into the Lake,' joined Nigel and Sir Richard. Nigel, looking about him, saw the Inspector, in plain clothes, and accompanied by two solid-looking companions, sitting some way behind. Sheila McGaw was at the back of the one-and-six-pennies; Nicholas and his blonde two rows ahead; Robert and his party in the front row. Backstage the beginners trooped down from the dressing-rooms. The assistant stage-manager settled down by the prompt copy. Jane gave a last professional glance at the set. ‘Lights!' she said. A series of clicks from the electrician's gallery, and the stage was lit from floods, spots and battens. The beginners settled down in their places. ‘House lights!' The auditorium was darkened; the doors were barred against gate-crashers, late-comers, and other pests; the chattering died. Clive, suddenly beset by the conviction that something was amiss, rushed off the stage, retrieved a newspaper, and returned to his place, where he opened it and gazed at it in an interested manner. ‘Curtain!' The press-button in Jane's hand clicked. And with a soft, insinuating hiss, the curtain went up on the first performance of
Metromania
.

From the first moment there was no question but that it was going to be a success. Nigel, with the inner cautiousness born of his Scotch ancestry, had wondered whether the build-up would not be too much for the play; but he need not have troubled himself. From Robert the audience had expected great things, and in a literal sense, they got them; from the company they had not expected much, and it was the more pleasing to have that
expectation disappointed. Even Sheila grudgingly admitted that they had never worked so well together before. Timing, climaxes, curtain-lines were all perfect. It was a performance no one in the company ever forgot. From the beginning they knew they were working well together, and the audience was as perfect as an audience can be. As the play continued, those who were not on stood in the wings and hardly dared to speak about it, for fear of breaking the spell. Rachel, it goes without saying, was the heroine of the evening. She moved through the play with a fluent, lissom grace, exquisitely controlling and focusing the whole structure about her; the others, though acknowledging their dependence, yet lived and moved in their own right, and when Helen had been on the stage five minutes Nigel could have shouted with excitement. Without question it was performance in a million; the gradual heightening of the tension left everyone, actors and audience alike, in a state of emotional exhaustion at the end of the evening.

But it was the play itself which was responsible. As he watched it, Nigel found himself marvelling at its revelation of a unique and particular genius. In the first act, it might have been nothing more than a particularly witty and eccentric comedy, were it not for the extraordinary ease with which every character insinuated his or herself into the comprehension of the audience. The second act was at once more serious and more impressive. There was less frank laughter, and there was an ever-growing sense of uneasiness, impossible to set aside. The people of the first act, without losing their identity, became less humorous and more openly grotesque. It was not that they personally developed; it was that more and more was shown of their real selves. The last act was played in semi-darkness, under the shadow of an impending physical disaster. Now everyone except Helen and Rachel seemed degenerated into monstrous puppets and automata, mouthing words that were a terrifying parody of their former selves. It was done without expressionistic effects, in the frame of an ostensibly naturalist play. But as they lost their hold on the sympathy, and faded into mere talking shadows, so Helen and Rachel stood out more and more as real persons. At the end it was as if there was a sudden gust, and the shadows were dissipated, leaving these two alone. On a
note of sudden personal tragedy, delicately and movingly hinted at, the play ended.

There were twenty-three curtains. At the fifth Robert appeared, holding the hands of Helen and Rachel. There were flowers by the thousand. At the fifteenth curtain Robert made a speech. He said:

‘I don't expect you'll want to hear another speech by me tonight. But I should just like to say thank you for being such a delightful audience, and to express my very heartfelt thanks to the company and technicians of this theatre for attempting – and achieving so magnificently – the herculean task of putting on a new play in the course of a week. Any applause which there has been this evening should be theirs.'

The riot in the theatre redoubled. They had to take eight more curtains before they were allowed to go. It had been a glorious evening.

And it was then that Nigel remembered, with a cold chill of foreboding, what was still to come.

He read it in the changed look of Fen's eyes, in the glance which Sir Richard threw at the Inspector as they went out. He saw the Inspector move across and say something in a low tone first to Sheila McGaw and then to Nicholas Barclay. The excitement of the evening began too rapidly to ebb, and a feeling of depression took its place. True, there was still a good deal of commotion going on around him. When he reached Helen's dressing-room, for example, he found the Eminent Actor already there and the offer of the London job already made. But although he was sincerely glad, he could not wholeheartedly rejoice with this other thing still on his mind, and he was relieved when the remainder of the company left the theatre, chattering noisily, in search of supper to be followed by a first-night party, when the staff finally cleared up and left, and the theatre was given over to an incongruous and empty silence. He left Helen to finish dressing and went to the bar.