Unexpected Night (21 page)

“Bell-buoy,” said Mitchell. “Mournful, ain't it? It sounds different when there ain't any fog.”

It came once more—a faint, distant boom. Mrs. Atwood spoke as it ceased.

“Atwood wanted that boy to live. He was crazy to get him up here and get hold of some of his money. That's all he did want, but he wouldn't have done anything to risk losing it. He wouldn't have hurt Amberley Cowden; he wouldn't have let anybody else hurt him. He'd have seen all the rest of us dead first.”

This testament delivered, she turned back to the group, where Susie Baker's small face, also darkened and transformed, peered over Rogers' bronze shoulder. Mitchell stopped her.

“Was he working this afternoon, Mrs. Atwood?”

“No. He took time off. He was asleep in his tent.”

“You know that for a fact?”

She looked at him, frowning. “Why?”

“There was some mention of his being down Ford's Beach way.”

“If he was, that state policeman will know it. He was all over the place, all day.”

“You wouldn't back your husband to get off this place if he wanted to, police or no police?”

“I never thought about it.” She reflected, and then suddenly cast a strange, shocked look at Mitchell. “What is all this? Are you trying to make me say something that would get him in trouble?”

“I'm just trying to find out if he could have been off the place. I can't
get
him in trouble, Mrs. Atwood; if I can get answers to my questions, they may keep him out of it.”

“I don't know anything about it.”

She rejoined the others. Mitchell and Gamadge walked along the runway to the door of the theatre, where Gamadge insisted on purchasing two tickets.

“I regard this as my party,” he said, and enquired of the young man in the béret who stood inside the entrance, “Are we very late?”

“‘Cathleen' is almost over.” He handed them two programmes. They went around a partition, and stood for a moment getting their bearings. The pier was in semi-darkness, the only light coming from the stage. They found their way to seats on one of the benches halfway up the aisle, and sat down.

The old fish-house turned into a theatre by the simplest and most economical process imaginable. Windows had been cut along its sides, and shutters fitted to them; lights were strung from beam to beam; and one end of the floor space—about a fifth of it—had been covered by a platform three feet high. This was divided from the auditorium by a curtain which met in the middle when closed, and could be opened as far as the operator pleased. It was widely open now, disclosing a dim interior.

“Cottage of Killala,” muttered Mitchell, reading his programme by the aid of a lighted match. “Where's that?”

“Ireland. Not bad, is it? I'll have to hand it to Callaghan.”

There was an ingenious arrangement of shadowy screens, a red glow to one side that might well have come from a peat fire, a candle on a rough table, and a group of four persons.

“‘A Poor Old Woman, Miss Adrienne Lake,'” whispered Mitchell. “I suppose they hadn't time to change it, but it's spooky. That must be her, over to the right.”

“Yes. I'd take her for Miss Lake, if I didn't know better.”

“Small woman, acting old, kind of whining voice. That ain't hard to do.”

“Especially as the part calls for elflocks and a head shawl. It's practically all make-up, so far; the crucial moment comes later.”

“What is it all about?”

“Ssh. Allegory.”

The crucial moment had arrived. Gamadge leaned forward, listening for the big line; it came, and with it the old magic, the old, authentic thrill:

“Some call me the Poor Old Woman, and there are some that call me Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.”

Senility fell away; the voice rose, swelled, touched and held a keening note, indescribably elfin. The ancient crone changed under their eyes to something ambiguous and unearthly. She floated away, singing; her voice came back to them faintly from behind the screens.

“By Jove!” said Gamadge, aloud. “There's a new reading for you!”

Five minutes later Michael had renounced all earthly ties, and followed her; the peasants had rushed in; the singing had drifted in once more; and the curtains were beginning to tremble violently on their wires. The last two lines of the play were being spoken, and a pattering of applause had begun. It was interrupted by a loud, hollow-sounding clap or shot, which seemed to come from under their feet.

There was a moment of absolute stillness, and then Mitchell sprang up, and somebody bawled for lights. They went on, showing half the men in the audience already jamming the doorway, and the women clutching children, and one another, among the benches. Mitchell, forcibly restrained by Gamadge's grasp on his coat, shouted: “Let go. That was a shot.”

“The other way, I tell you,” urged Gamadge.

“What's the matter with you? There's only one door.”

Actors were pouring down the aisle. Gamadge insisted: “Up there, I tell you; back of the stage.”

His tone carried such absolute conviction that Mitchell was persuaded, almost against his senses, to follow him at a run up to the platform. They got on the stage, crossed it, and dodged through screens to a large dim empty space beyond. Mitchell, avoiding scenery and properties, and staring blindly about him, rounded a beam and joined Gamadge, who stood in a big double doorway, apparently contemplating infinity. There was nothing beyond but a grey void.

“What did I tell you?” panted Mitchell. “You can see from the shore that there's no ladder, and the sea comes right up to the floor timbers at high tide.”

“Oh, yes; there's a ladder, flat against the side; but I don't think it goes more than halfway down. This was a landing stage, once. Got a torch?” Gamadge had turned, let himself down, and begun to disappear. When his chin was level with the door sill Mitchell had produced a torch. It showed a dim expanse of sand, to which Gamadge dropped. Mitchell tossed the flashlight gently down to him, and followed.

They went into the velvety blackness under the pier, with the torch lighting up a foot or two of brown sand ahead of them, or shining to this side and that on a forest of piles; a dead forest, with angular branches that dripped wetly, and a murky sky above it. When Gamadge swung the light in a low half circle they could see the debris left by the last tide; kelp, clam shells, pebbles, bits of iridescent bottle glass, a stranded jellyfish. Mitchell slipped on one of these, staggered, and bumped against a slippery pile.

“You think somebody went out by that back door?” he asked.

“I know he did. Never thought of it until I grabbed you. There was water all around the place to-day, and I didn't realise that it would be dry land to-night before the tide came.”

“How do you know he did?”

“Because he didn't come down the aisle.”

“Who was it?”

“Atwood, of course. Didn't you see him on the stage?”

“There was half a dozen men on the stage. I didn't notice him. You sure he was there?”

“Of course I am.”

“Funny I didn't recognise him.”

“I shouldn't have, if I hadn't been watching for him.”

Lights appeared ahead of them, like shrouded fireflies; and suddenly a torch swung upward and blinded them.

“Oh, hello, Mr. Mitchell,” said a voice, and the light dropped.

“Hello, Cal. Find anything?”

The torch came to rest on what looked like a bundle of old clothes, huddled on the sand. “I don't know what it's all about,” complained the state policeman. “I was at the trailer, and I heard the shot.” He shifted the light, and Gamadge saw a hand, with a pistol lying near it. “Who is this woman? Did she kill herself?”

“Dead, is she?” Mitchell bent and lifted the slight, bony wrist.

“Yes. The bullet hole's under her hair, right between the eyes.”

“Well, you ride up, fast as you can, and tell Trainor not to pass anybody out unless he positively knows 'em for summer folks that came through to the show; and he's to take their names and addresses before they go home. Tell him not to pass anybody at all, riding alone. The line here is fixed; get through to Cogswell.”

The officer faded into mist, and a crowd of staring faces pressed up about the body on the sand. Some of them were painted, some surmounted by outlandish headdresses. Mrs. Atwood's barbaric crown moved into the circle, and her anklets jingled as she slipped on a great strand of kelp. Callaghan was beside her.

“Holy angels,” he said, in a flat voice. He stood looking down at the dead face, glistening with grease paint, that seemed to gaze back at him from sunken eyes half-hidden under a fringe of straggling grey hair.

“Keep back, you folks.” Mitchell jabbed vaguely towards the circle with his torch. “Who is this woman, Callaghan?”

Callaghan did not seem to hear the question. “Holy angels,” he repeated, and then, turning to Mrs. Atwood, admonished her gently: “Go away, now, Floss; this is no place for you.”

“I'm all right.” She raised her eyes from the staring eyes to meet Gamadge's. “He was right about you, wasn't he?” she said.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

M
ITCHELL, CONFUSED
and impatient, repeated sharply: “Why can't some of you say who it is?”

Gamadge glanced at him as if in surprise. “It's Atwood.”

“Atwood!”

“Yes. He gave a fine performance, Mrs. Atwood. It was a new reading of the part, though, wasn't it? Did he get it from Adrienne Lake?”

Far from resenting this unemotional question, Mrs. Atwood seemed to welcome the chance thus given to discuss her husband impersonally. “It was his,” she said. “He was always trying to get her to do it that way.”

Mitchell, after a stupefied look at Gamadge, knelt down on one knee, removed the scarlet head shawl, and stripped off the grey wig. Atwood's reptilian head sprang into view, unmistakable in spite of a mask of paint and wrinkles. He looked at the hands, and at the pistol. Both were greasy with paint.

“He wanted me to come up and see him in this part,” he reflected, aloud. “Why?”

“Because he knew you'd find out that he'd been rehearsing it for hours yesterday. That right, Callaghan?”

“He was at it all evening, and up to ten o'clock. He volunteered when she gave up, about six; and he gave me a sample of what he could do. I ditched her regular understudy, and let him do it. She went out to the pier with him, and started him off; the rest of us left them at it. We were dead-beat—we've pretty well rebuilt this place, since the beginning of the week, you know.”

“And Miss Lake turned in herself, leaving him at work?”

“Yes. I went out and gave him a look-in at about eight—that's when the telephone message came for him from Tucon. We were going to make a stunt of it, and feature him after he'd fooled a couple of audiences. It ought to have gone big.”

Gamadge said: “Somebody must have done that last singing for him, behind the scenes.”

“I did.” A tall girl in a plaid shawl pushed forward. “He came behind, and he said: ‘Can you give them the last of it, Mab? I've got to go and change.' He was in the Synge play with me, the next one.”

“So he went down the ladder?”

“Yes. I didn't know where he'd got to, till I looked. I never knew there was a ladder there at all.”

“This is Miss Mabel Burke,” said Callaghan, “one of our most talented ladies. She could have played Cathleen, but her part in ‘The Shadow' is a tough one, enough for one evening. Sure, you gave them time to kill him and get away with it, Mab. It's a nice favour you did him.”

For the moment, Mitchell ignored this. “Isn't his tent right beside the shore? It wouldn't be but a few yards from the end of the pier; yet he's way under it.” He gently turned the body on its side. “I don't see any torch.”

“Then they got him under, or carried him under.”

“This is supposed to be a suicide, Callaghan.” Mitchell rose, and slapped at the damp sand on his trouser leg.

“If it is, then I'm a Chinaman. Did you ever see him in better spirits, Floss?”

Mrs. Atwood was standing, half-turned from the body, her arms folded. She answered: “He wouldn't kill himself, no matter what happened.”

“Perhaps you'll tell us who shot him, then,” said Mitchell, politely.

“It's a mystery to me,” answered Callaghan. “Nobody here would think of it. What do you say, Floss?”

“Nobody,” she replied.

Gamadge had for some time been conscious that his heels were sinking into the sand. He now said, “You'll have to move him, Mitchell; the tide's coming in.”

“I've moved him already, you'll notice. Here, you two fellows, Rogers, and the boy in the leopard skins, there; you go get some kind of a stretcher. Callaghan, I want you to round up all your people, and send the ticket-seller over to Jones, the trooper, so he can check up on the audience. If we can sort out the ones that were on the pier when it happened, we can send them home. Off with you, now, you folks.” He added: “Why don't some of you women take Mrs. Atwood up there and give her a rug to put on her, and a drink of something hot? She's shivering with a chill, and no wonder.”