Cool Repentance

by Antonia Fraser

  'Something to report to Jemima Shore Investigator,' he said jovially. 'Blagge, you know, the butler fellow from Lark Manor, the father of the late unlamented pop star, I believe, the one the good lady ran off with. We have a witness who saw him leaving the Watchtower Theatre.'

  'To get Christabel Cartwright's shawl—' began Jemima, still rather confused by the way the telephone call had broken right into her own thoughts on the subject.

  'No, no a second visit about an hour later,' Detective Inspector Harwood sounded increasingly jolly. 'More like eleven o'clock. While the Cartwright party were still carousing at the hotel. Now why, I wonder, did Mr James Blagge not mention that little fact in his statement to the police?'

  Jim Blagge: a real killer? Jemima put the telephone quietly down and awaited the visit of Detective Inspector Harwood with something much closer to melancholy than the policeman's own cheerful mood.

  11

  Arrested Rehearsal

  Everyone was in a very tense mood at the rehearsal of The Seagull which took place two days later. It was doubly unfortunate that Megalith's tight camera schedule demanded that this particular rehearsal be filmed. Jemima agreed to reason with Cy Fredericks on behalf of Boy Greville but without much hope of success: she was well aware that further postponement would be financially disastrous for Megalith on top of the delays already incurred by what Cy Fredericks termed rather crossly down the telephone 'these wretched deaths'.

  It could never be said that the services of Spike Thompson and the rest of the crew all installed - more or less contentedly - at the Royal Stag were to be secured at light cost. Moreover the profits of Flora's Kitchen would, Jemima felt, bear some close relation to the losses incurred by Megalith Television, since none of the crew condescended to eat anywhere else once it was discovered that Flora's Kitchen was listed in the Good Food Guide as 'expensive but worth it - if you have the money and decide to lavish it on lavish Bridset food given pseudo-Florentine names and served in pseudo-Florentine surroundings'. Spike Thompson and the rest of the crew found it, on behalf of Megalith, a decision easy to make: so after a bit Moll and Poll, with fine appreciation of the workings of the market, thoughtfully put up their prices.

  At least Spike Thompson proved a tower of strength during the filming of the rehearsal. Guthrie and Jemima felt deeply grateful to him for the usual mixture of unflappability and ferocious energy which he displayed -and he cut a reassuringly urban and flamboyant figure as he darted behind the camera and then away, in his scarlet polo-necked jersey beneath the black leather jacket. The sound engineer on the other hand was in a highly neurotic mood - possibly induced by a prolonged diet of over-rich food - causing him to groan over tragic noises of interference from the Larminster traffic, inaudible to anyone else; he also grumbled perversely about the isolation of the theatre and its proximity to the shore. At one point he even complained that he was picking up the cry of a seagull.

  'Isn't he rather overdoing it in his appreciation of Emily Jones's performance as Nina?' murmured Guthrie to Jemima. 'Every time she declaims, "I'm a seagull", I suppose he mistakes it for the real thing.'

  Everyone - except possibly Spike - was in a tense mood, and everyone had their problems. The Megalith lighting crew, for example, had not formed a notably high opinion of the lighting system at the Watchtower, nor had they exactly sworn brotherhood with the theatre's stagehands. Guthrie Carlyle reminded himself that his problems lighting the Parthenon for his non-controversial programme, The Elgin Marbles -Ours or Theirs? had been worse, the Greek crew getting thoroughly excited over something; possibly the non-controversial subject matter, possibly the length of the lunch-hour, he never dared enquire.

  'On the other hand at least the Parthenon itself stayed put,' he reflected gloomily. It was fair to say that within the Watchtower theatre no one very much stayed put, even someone like Old Nicola, who had no part to play in the rehearsal itself. Lacking a role in The Seagull, she had nevertheless infiltrated rehearsals early on, accompanied by her ancient grey plastic bag full of knitting. Even Nat Fitzwilliam had lacked the requisite energy to stop her; and under the new regime of Boy Greville, any threat of removal was met by: 'Oh that poor sweet Nat! What a little genius, wasn't he just? He didn't mind Old Nicola being here, but if you feel differently dear, if you don't quite feel the confidence yet dear, never you mind, you just tell Old Nicola first thing and she'll go quietly.'

  So Old Nicola knitted on, regaling listeners with anecdotes of bygone Seagulls, mainly featuring her own performances. She claimed to have played Nina and Masha on alternate nights in one season at Stratford.

  'And I bet she got the two parts mixed up half the time,' Christabel had been heard to comment. 'Fiendish to play with. She always was, even when she just had one part to remember.' She spoke just within earshot of the older woman, whose hearing, where her own interests were concerned, remained quite acute.

  Now the presence of the television crew galvanized Old Nicola into fresh activity. Somehow she always managed to be sitting knitting in exactly the path of the camera and had to be moved at the last minute. In moving, she showed an infallible instinct for selecting a seat which would prove to be in the direct path of the next shot.

  'Off you go, my old darling. On your way again,' Spike would shout blithely. Guthrie felt less tolerance.

  'Can't we lose her?' he muttered desperately. 'Like forever?'

  'By putting her head in her own grey plastic bag?' suggested some other member of the crew enthusiastically. Jemima heartily agreed with the sentiments: she was being personally badgered by Old Nicola to interview her for television on My Wonderful Long Years in the British Theatre: 'You could just let the cameras roll and Old Nicola would give it to you; no need for any of your cutting and editing, I can assure you; Old Nicola knows by this time just what interests an audience.' But she declined to join in the jolly discussions about Old Nicola's possible fate; supersti-tiously, she remembered wishing some dreadful doom to overtake Nat Fitzwilliam. Old Nicola, for all her cunning and trouble making, looked quite physically frail: another 'wretched death', even the natural death of an old lady, was the last thing that Megalith needed.

  Boy Greville clearly felt that he had problems enough as director today, without tackling Old Nicola. The extreme agitation which he displayed in private life on matters such as his health, gave way to such a violent nervosity in public when he was working, that Jemima wondered at first how any of his productions ever succeeded in opening. Yet Boy Greville had an excellent reputation as a director over a number of years, and actors were said to like working with him. Jemima could only suppose that they exerted themselves extra frantically on his behalf, in order to try and alleviate at least some of the worst of his sufferings.

  'I can't go on with this sort of thing much longer,' he had been heard to groan to Tobs, who at his tender age was having undeniable problems with the character of Dr Dorn: 'The strain on me, personally: you can't imagine—' Tobs straightened up the painful hunched back with which he was attempting to convey Dr Dorn's burden of years, and tried to comfort his director.

  Today however the strain was universal. Emily Jones wept a little, and her voice, always a little too high when she was nervous, did take on a kind of bird-like screech in Nina's speech with its reiterated phrase 'I'm a seagull' which gave all too much point to Guthrie's aside.

  No doubt the television cameras were adding to the production's troubles by making everyone additionally nervous but it was difficult to believe that anything by Boy Greville, adapted at the last minute from a production by Nat Fitzwilliam, could ever have gone very smoothly. Nat's 'underwater' conception still haunted the production in the shape of certain costumes, as well of course as the set itself, with its unlikely-looking plaster rocks and realistic-looking - because it was real -fisherman's netting. At least Boy had got rid of the sand from the set, which was driving everybody mad, including Mrs Nixon and Joan who were in charge of cleaning the theatre.

  There we
re a number of good reasons why the set could not be replaced. There was the time element: the Larminster Festival was due to open with the production of The Seagull at the Watchtower in under a week's time. There was the expense element: the finances of the

  Watchtower were shaky enough already, despite contributions from friendly local magnates such as the Cartwrights and the work of the Festival Committee, without the expense of scrapping one whole set and building a new one.

  'Committee wouldn't stand for it. Nor would the Chairman,' Major Cartwright, who was the Chairman, told Cherry. He had taken a marked fancy to her, choosing to use her as his conduit of information to Megalith as a whole. His passion was expressed in a series of invitations to meals at expensive restaurants rather further afield than Flora's Kitchen. To the Royal Harbour Hotel at Lar Bay, the Queen Mar)' at Bridchester, Giovanni e Giovanna, improbably to be found just outside the tiny rustic village of Deep Larkin, Major Cartwright drove Cherry at high speed in his Bentley without speaking. The food was always delicious. All this atoned to Cherry, in some measure at least, for the failure of Julian Cartwright to cast any glances at all in her direction.

  'Just have to grin and bear it. That's what 1 always say anyway about a night at the theatre.' So the Major closed the subject of any possible further expense on the Larminster production of The Seagull.

  Leaving aside the humorous properties of the play itself - and Nat Fitzwilliam had given the company several interesting lectures on 'Chekhov and the Harmonious Laughter of the Future' - Cherry thought the Major would probably find a good deal to grin about in The Seagull production, if that was what he wanted. There might have been even more, if Boy Greville had not insisted on altering at least some of the more ludicrous 'underwater' costumes, where it could be done cheaply.

  Thus Emily as Nina was no longer dressed as a mermaid and Vic Marcovich as Trigorin had thankfully got rid of his Neptune's trident, as well as adding extra garments of a rather more conventional nature to the brief golden loincloth required by Nat. No one had ever discovered why Trigorin was to be played as a sea-god: and now it was too late to find out. Ollie Summertown, however, still wore Konstantin's original white sailor-suit, although with the short trousers lengthened (he rather fancied himself in it, he told Cherry, what with his new Bridset tan, and was sorry that his knees were not after all to make their debut on television). And Tobs clung to his sou'wester and oilskins which he had decided lent to Dr Dorn what he described as 'an old tar's dignity - I'm a kind of ship's doctor I think'.

  Christabel too still wore her original costume. Since this was made of becoming white muslin, over a large hoop skirt, it did give her a suitably nineteenth-century air, especially once the festoons of dark-green seaweed were ripped off the skirt and bodice. Christabel therefore looked appropriately Chekhovian and even elegant, at a distance: the special grace which she brought to every stage movement was underlined by the sway of her huge skirt.

  In herself, however, Christabel was not nearly so poised. Her face, seen close-up through the camera lens, looked drawn. She was more nervous than usual on stage and inclined to dry. In such an experienced actress -at any rate in terms of the past - it was difficult to believe that this was the effect of the television cameras. Besides it was odd that Christabel should falter now: Megalith had already filmed two other rehearsals, and Jemima had noticed that Christabel had been one of the few to be virtually word-perfect from the start - 'off the book already', Nat had said proudly, as though he had learnt Christabel's part for her.

  It was more plausible to seek the cause of Christabel's strain in the renewed police questioning of Mr Blagge, underway at the present time. It was true that if Mr Blagge had indeed been the hidden element of fear in Christabel's household, she should by rights have been relieved at his disappearance, at any rate as far as Beauport Police Station. Perhaps it was the uncertainty which was responsible for her anxiety: when they broke for lunch, Jemima was among those who wandered over to the Royal Stag with Christabel, and among those - not a few - who noticed the alarming amount of vodka she consumed. It was left to Old Nicola, who had managed to wander along too, to make some loaded remarks about actresses who drank during rehearsal in her young days and what had become of them - 'Not still acting in their eightieth year like Old Nicola, dear, that I can tell you; they lost their looks first of course...'

  The Blagge developments had been outlined to Jemima the day before by Detective Inspector Harwood, over the tea-cups in her tiny chintzy-hotel sitting-room. There he told her that Jim Blagge was well known locally to have conceived a violent hatred of the theatre, and of all things theatrical, as a result of the career of his son Barry. That this career had actually ended with Barry's death in a road accident was hardly the fault of the theatre; and Iron Boy had been a pop star not an actor. However this was not a distinction that had bothered Mr Blagge among his Bridset cronies. Neither of the Blagge parents had had any real contact with Iron Boy after his elopement with (or abduction by) Christabel; she belonged unarguably to the theatre - so it was the theatre which had led to Barry's death. If not logic, there was a certain natural justice in his resentment.

  Mr Blagge's paranoid dislike of the theatre had found a new focus in the person of Nat Fitzwilliam. Had not Nat been a school friend of Barry's? Nat had gone to university and with his superior education should have somehow saved Barry from his fate instead of corrupting him (this was Mr Blagge's version of events). Worse still was the emergence of Nat as Director of the Larminster Festival - the local boy made good when their own Barry was lying in his California grave. Worst of all was the return of Christabel to the stage, directed by Nat himself. Mr Blagge had ascribed the actual responsibility for that return to Nat. He had told his friends, with a knowledge born of his intimate position in the Cartwright family, that without Nat, 'she'd never have had the cheek to do it - not even Her'.

  All of this, as Detective Inspector Harwood judiciously acknowledged, added up to no more than current Larminster gossip. He had not come to tea, he assured Jemima, merely to regale her with a lot of old tabbies' talk. The threats of violence made by Blagge against Fitzwilliam were more serious, the evidence of Blagge's second visit to the Watchtower Theatre more serious still. The visit had been witnessed by two strangers to Larminster with no personal knowledge of Blagge or his situation. Their timing was also unshakeable, based on a particular news bulletins on the car radio: so there was no question of their confusing Blagge's innocent first visit with this alleged second sortie.

  'Threats of violence?' Jemima queried. She cast her mind back to the only two occasions when she had been aware of Mr Blagge and Nat being in close proximity. One was the original Easter Sunday lunch at Lark when the Blagges had handed round the food: the other was the occasion of the fatal picnic at Larmouth beach. In both cases Mr Blagge had, as far as she was concerned, concentrated entirely on serving food and drink. She had certainly noticed nothing untoward or threatening in his attitude to Nat Fitzwilliam.

  But then, thought Jemima wrily, did one ever notice very much about the reactions of the various serving figures at a party, if one was a guest oneself? It was as though one expected their function somehow to dehumanize them, rob them of natural feelings of disgust and envy. Whereas the exact reverse was much more psychologically probable. Her mind went back to Gregory's recent revelations of Julian Cartwright's insensitivity. Mr Blagge no doubt felt even more violently towards Nat Fitzwilliam for having to hand him dishes, and pour him wine at Sunday lunch at Lark Manor. While Nat had sat there, his eager cherub's face pressed forward, utterly unconcerned about the emotions of his erstwhile friend's father dispensing claret over his left shoulder.

  Detective Inspector Harwood was able to confirm these vague suppositions in a surprisingly accurate way. By instructing Jim Blagge to get the key of the theatre to fetch Christabel's shawl, Julian Cartwright had obliged Blagge to seek out Nat at the table where he was dining in Flora's Kitchen. This mission had turned into a hi
ghly unpleasant encounter when Nat had refused, apparently wilfully, to interrupt his conversation with Anna Maria and find out what Mr Blagge wanted. The older man's pale face had flushed visibly.

  'Mr Marcovich who was the third party present was very particular about this detail,' Detective Inspector Harwood told Jemima. 'No mere figure of speech, he assured me. The colour of fine old port was how Mr Marcovich expressed it. And he gobbled like a turkey. After that it became a case of What The Butler Shouted. Mr Blagge actually threatened to thrash Nat, adding for good measure, "if not something worse".'

  'We have several witnesses to the fact that he lost all control,' pursued the Detective Inspector. 'But then he does have these fits of sudden explosive rage, they tell me; has done, ever since the war. Terrible thing, uncontrollable rage. Rage and strength. Jim Blagge had both.'

  At this moment, as the Megalith cameras focused on the Watchtower stage, Mr Blagge was being questioned at Beauport Police Station. Jemima knew that in the first place he would merely be asked for a further explanation of his movements. Matt Harwood and his team of detectives would be bearing in mind that famous police catchphrase: 'Method: Opportunity: Motive'. So far Mr Blagge had proved to have both Opportunity and Motive. The Method by which Nat had been killed was also obvious - strangulation by his own scarf. It remained to connect Mr Blagge, with his Opportunity and Motive, to the Method. Matt Harwood had assured her that the Bridset police would be quite as rigorous as those in London in applying the Locard exchange principle:

  'I daresay that our friend Pompey has made you familiar with it,' he conceded kindly. 'And I hope young Gary bears it in mind as well. A criminal always leaves something at the scene that was not there before—'

  'And carries away something that was not there when he arrived,' finished Jemima. Pompey had indeed made her familiar with the phrase. He was particularly fond of it. So, according to the aforesaid exchange principle, Mr Blagge's clothing on the night of the murder would be tested by a kind of giant hoover - for particles from Nat's clothing, and particularly Nat's long white silk scarf. While fibres of Nat's scarf and other clothes would be similarly 'hoovered' for tiny but tell-tale traces of Mr Blagge's garments.