Death on the Air

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘I’ve got a Thing about it. After all, he’s your husband.’

  ‘No, Cann, no.’

  ‘Suppose he turns up. It’d be like him to turn up.’

  ‘He won’t turn up.’

  She heard him laugh. ‘I’m sick of all this,’ she thought suddenly. ‘I’ve had it once too often. I can’t stand any more…Cann,’ she said into the telephone. But he had hung up.

  At twenty to seven, Barry George looked at himself in his bathroom mirror. ‘I’ve got a better appearance,’ he thought, ‘than Cann Cumberland. My head’s a good shape, my eyes are bigger and my jaw line’s cleaner. I never let a show down. I don’t drink. I’m a better actor.’ He turned his head a little, slewing his eyes to watch the effect. ‘In the big scene,’ he thought, ‘I’m the star. He’s the feed. That’s the way it’s been produced and that’s what the author wants. I ought to get the notices.’

  Past notices came up in his memory. He saw the print, the size of the paragraphs; a long paragraph about Canning Cumberland, a line tacked on the end of it. ‘Is it unkind to add that Mr Barry George trotted in the wake of Mr Cumberland’s virtuosity with an air of breathless dependability?’ And again: ‘It is a little hard on Mr Barry George that he should be obliged to act as foil to this brilliant performance.’ Worst of all: ‘Mr Barry George succeeded in looking tolerably unlike a stooge, an achievement that evidently exhausted his resources.’

  ‘Monstrous!’ he said loudly to his own image, watching the fine glow of indignation in the eyes. Alcohol, he told himself, did two things to Cann Cumberland. He raised his finger. Nice, expressive hand. An actor’s hand. Alcohol destroyed Cumberland’s artistic integrity. It also invested him with devilish cunning. Drunk, he would burst the seams of a play, destroy its balance, ruin its form and himself emerge blazing with a showmanship that the audience mistook for genius. ‘While I,’ he said aloud, ‘merely pay my author the compliment of faithful interpretation. Psha!’

  He returned to his bedroom, completed his dressing and pulled his hat to the right angle. Once more he thrust his face close to the mirror and looked searchingly at its image. ‘By God!’ he told himself, ‘he’s done it once too often, old boy. Tonight we’ll even the score, won’t we? By God, we will.’

  Partly satisfied, and partly ashamed, for the scene, after all, had smacked a little of ham, he took his stick in one hand and a case holding his costume for the Arts Ball in the other, and went down to the theatre.

  At ten minutes to seven, H J Bannington passed through the gallery queue on his way to the stage door alley, raising his hat and saying: ‘Thanks so much,’ to the gratified ladies who let him through. He heard them murmur his name. He walked briskly along the alley, greeted the stage-doorkeeper, passed under a dingy lamp, through an entry and so to the stage. Only working lights were up. The walls of an interior set rose dimly into shadow. Bob Reynolds, the stage manager, came out through the prompt entrance. ‘Hello, old boy,’ he said, ‘I’ve changed the dressing rooms. You’re third on the right: they’ve moved your things in. Suit you?’

  ‘Better, at least, than a black-hole the size of a WC but – without its appointments,’ HJ said acidly. ‘I suppose the great Mr Cumberland still has the star room?’

  ‘Well, yes, old boy.’

  ‘And who pray, is next to him? In the room with the other gas fire?’

  ‘We’ve put Barry George there, old boy. You know what he’s like.’

  ‘Only too well, old boy, and the public, I fear, is beginning to find out.’ HJ turned into the dressing room passage.

  The stage manager returned to the set where he encountered his assistant. ‘What’s biting him?’ asked the assistant.

  ‘He wanted a dressing room with a fire.’

  ‘Only natural,’ said the ASM nastily. ‘He started life reading gas meters.’

  On the right and left of the passage, nearest the stage end, were two doors, each with its star in tarnished paint. The door on the left was open. HJ looked in and was greeted with the smell of greasepaint, powder, wet white, and flowers. A gas fire droned comfortably. Coralie Bourne’s dresser was spreading out towels. ‘Good evening, Katie, my jewel,’ said HJ. ‘La Belle not down yet?’

  ‘We’re on our way,’ she said.

  HJ hummed stylishly: ‘Bella filia del amore,’ and returned to the passage. The star room on the right was closed but he could hear Cumberland’s dresser moving about inside. He went on to the next door, paused, read the card, ‘Mr Barry George,’ warbled a high derisive note, turned in at the third door and switched on the light.

  Definitely not a second lead’s room. No fire. A washbasin, however, and opposite mirrors. A stack of telegrams had been placed on the dressing table. Still singing he reached for them, disclosing a number of bills that had been tactfully laid underneath and a letter, addressed in a flamboyant script.

  His voice might have been mechanically produced and arbitrarily switched off, so abruptly did his song end in the middle of a roulade. He let the telegrams fall on the table, took up the letter and tore it open. His face, wretchedly pale, was reflected and endlessly re-reflected in the mirrors.

  At nine o’clock the telephone rang. Roderick Alleyn answered it. ‘This is Sloane 84405. No, you’re on the wrong number. No.’ He hung up and returned to his wife and guest. ‘That’s the fifth time in two hours.’

  ‘Do let’s ask for a new number.’

  ‘We might get next door to something worse.’

  The telephone rang again. ‘This is not 84406,’ Alleyn warned it. ‘No, I cannot take three large trunks to Victoria Station. No, I am not the Instant All Night Delivery. No.’

  ‘They’re 84406,’ Mrs Alleyn explained to Lord Michael Lamprey. ‘I suppose it’s just faulty dialling, but you can’t imagine how angry everyone gets. Why do you want to be a policeman?’

  ‘It’s a dull hard job, you know—’ Alleyn began.

  ‘Oh,’ Lord Mike said, stretching his legs and looking critically at his shoes, ‘I don’t for a moment imagine I’ll leap immediately into false whiskers and plainclothes. No, no. But I’m revoltingly healthy, sir. Strong as a horse. And I don’t think I’m as stupid as you might feel inclined to imagine—’

  The telephone rang.

  ‘I say, do let me answer it,’ Mike suggested and did so.

  ‘Hullo?’ he said winningly. He listened, smiling at his hostess. ‘I’m afraid—’ he began. ‘Here, wait a bit – Yes, but—’ His expression became blank and complacent. ‘May I,’ he said presently, ‘repeat your order, sir? Can’t be too sure, can we? Call at 11 Harrow Gardens, Sloane Square, for one suitcase to be delivered immediately at the Jupiter Theatre to Mr Anthony Gill. Very good, sir. Thank you, sir. Collect. Quite.’

  He replaced the receiver and beamed at the Alleyns.

  ‘What the devil have you been up to?’ Alleyn said.

  ‘He just simply wouldn’t listen to reason. I tried to tell him.’

  ‘But it may be urgent,’ Mrs Alleyn ejaculated.

  ‘It couldn’t be more urgent, really. It’s a suitcase for Tony Gill at the Jupiter.’

  ‘Well, then—’

  ‘I was at Eton with the chap,’ said Mike reminiscently. ‘He’s four years older than I am so of course he was madly important while I was less than the dust. This’ll larn him.’

  ‘I think you’d better put that order through at once,’ said Alleyn firmly.

  ‘I rather thought of executing it myself, do you know, sir. It’d be a frightfully neat way of gate-crashing the show, wouldn’t it? I did try to get a ticket but the house was sold out.’

  ‘If you’re going to deliver this case you’d better get a bend on.’

  ‘It’s clearly an occasion for dressing up though, isn’t it? I say,’ said Mike modestly, ‘would you think it most frightful cheek if I – well I’d promise to come back and return everything. I mean—’

  ‘Are you suggesting that my clothes look more like a vanman’s than yours?’

/>   ‘I thought you’d have things—’

  ‘For Heaven’s sake, Rory,’ said Mrs Alleyn, ‘dress him up and let him go. The great thing is to get that wretched man’s suitcase to him.’

  ‘I know,’ said Mike earnestly. ‘It’s most frightfully sweet of you. That’s how I feel about it.’

  Alleyn took him away and shoved him into an old and begrimed raincoat, a cloth cap and a muffler. ‘You wouldn’t deceive a village idiot in a total eclipse,’ he said, ‘but out you go.’

  He watched Mike drive away and returned to his wife.

  ‘What’11 happen?’ she asked.

  ‘Knowing Mike, I should say he will end up in the front stalls and go on to supper with the leading lady. She, by the way, is Goralie Bourne. Very lovely and twenty years his senior so he’ll probably fall in love with her.’ Alleyn reached for his tobacco jar and paused. ‘I wonder what’s happened to her husband,’ he said.

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘An extraordinary chap. Benjamin Vlasnoff. Violent temper. Looked like a bandit. Wrote two very good plays and got run in three times for common assault. She tried to divorce him but it didn’t go through. I think he afterwards lit off to Russia.’ Alleyn yawned. ‘I believe she had a hell of a time with him,’ he said.

  ‘All Night Delivery,’ said Mike in a hoarse voice, touching his cap. ‘Suitcase. One.’

  ‘Here you are,’ said the woman who had answered the door. ‘Carry it carefully, now, it’s not locked and the catch springs out.’

  ‘Fanks,’ said Mike. ‘Much obliged. Chilly, ain’t it?’

  He took the suitcase out to the car.

  It was a fresh spring night. Sloane Square was threaded with mist and all the lamps had halos round them. It was the kind of night when individual sounds separate themselves from the conglomerate voice of London; hollow sirens spoke imperatively down on the river and a bugle rang out over in Chelsea Barracks; a night, Mike thought, for adventure.

  He opened the rear door of the car and heaved the case in. The catch flew open, the lid dropped back and the contents fell out. ‘Damn!’ said Mike and switched on the inside light.

  Lying on the floor of the car was a false beard.

  It was flaming red and bushy and was mounted on a chinpiece. With it was incorporated a stiffened moustache. There were wire hooks to attach the whole thing behind the ears. Mike laid it carefully on the seat. Next he picked up a wide black hat, then a vast overcoat with a fur collar, finally a pair of black gloves.

  Mike whistled meditatively and thrust his hands into the pockets of Alleyn’s mackintosh. His right hand fingers closed on a card. He pulled it out. ‘Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn,’ he read, ‘CID. New Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Honestly,’ thought Mike exultantly, ‘this is a gift.’

  Ten minutes later a car pulled into the kerb at the nearest parking place to the Jupiter Theatre. From it emerged a figure carrying a suitcase. It strode rapidly along Hawke Street and turned into the stage door alley. As it passed under the dirty lamp it paused, and thus murkily lit, resembled an illustration from some Edwardian spy story. The face was completely shadowed, a black cavern from which there projected a square of scarlet beard, which was the only note of colour.

  The doorkeeper who was taking the air with a member of stage staff, moved forward, peering at the stranger.

  ‘Was you wanting something?’

  ‘I’m taking this case in for Mr Gill.’

  ‘He’s in front. You can leave it with me.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said the voice behind the beard, ‘but I promised I’d leave it backstage myself’

  ‘So you will be leaving it. Sorry, sir, but no one’s admitted be’ind without a card.’

  ‘A card? Very well. Here is a card.’

  He held it out in his black-gloved hand. The stage door-keeper, unwillingly removing his gaze from the beard, took the card and examined it under the light. ‘Coo!’ he said, ‘what’s up, governor?’

  ‘No matter. Say nothing of this.’

  The figure waved its hand and passed through the door.

  ‘’Ere!’ said the doorkeeper excitedly to the stage hand, ‘take a slant at this. That’s a plainclothes flattie, that was.’

  ‘Plain clothes!’ said the stage hand. ‘Them!’

  ‘’E’s disguised,’ said the doorkeeper. ‘That’s what it is. ’E’s disguised ’isself.’

  ‘’E’s bloody well lorst ’isself be’ind them whiskers if you arst me.’

  Out on the stage someone was saying in a pitched and beautifully articulate voice: ‘I’ve always loathed the view from these windows. However if that’s the sort of thing you admire. Turn off the lights, damn you. Look at it.’

  ‘Watch it, now, watch it,’ whispered a voice so close to Mike that he jumped.

  ‘OK,’ said a second voice somewhere above his head. The lights on the set turned blue.

  ‘Kill that working light.’

  ‘Working light gone.’

  Curtains in the set were wrenched aside and a window flung open. An actor appeared, leaning out quite close to Mike, seeming to look into his face and saying very distinctly: ‘God: it’s frightful!’ Mike backed away towards a passage, lit only from an open door. A great volume of sound broke out beyond the stage. ‘House lights,’ said the sharp voice. Mike turned into the passage. As he did so, someone came through the door. He found himself face to face with Coralie Bourne, beautifully dressed and heavily painted.

  For a moment she stood quite still; then she made a curious gesture with her right hand, gave a small breathy sound and fell forward at his feet.

  Anthony was tearing his programme into long strips and dropping them on the floor of the OP box. On his right hand, above and below, was the audience; sometimes laughing, sometimes still, sometimes as one corporate being, raising its hands and striking them together. As now; when down on the stage, Canning Cumberland, using a strange voice, and inspired by some inward devil, flung back the window and said: ‘God: it’s frightful!’

  ‘Wrong! Wrong!’ Anthony cried inwardly, hating Cumberland, hating Barry George because he let one speech of three words override him, hating the audience because they liked it. The curtain descended with a long sigh on the second act and a sound like heavy rain filled the theatre, swelled prodigiously and continued after the house lights welled up.

  ‘They seem,’ said a voice behind him, ‘to be liking your play.’

  It was Gosset, who owned the Jupiter and had backed the show. Anthony turned on him stammering: ‘He’s destroying it. It should be the other man’s scene. He’s stealing.’

  ‘My boy,’ said Gosset, ‘he’s an actor.’

  ‘He’s drunk. It’s intolerable.’

  He felt Gosset’s hand on his shoulder.

  ‘People are watching us. You’re on show. This is a big thing for you; a first play, and going enormously. Come and have a drink, old boy. I want to introduce you—’

  Anthony got up and Gosset, with his arm across his shoulders, flashing smiles, patting him, led him to the back of the box.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Anthony said. ‘I can’t. Please let me off. I’m going backstage.’

  ‘Much better not, old son.’ The hand tightened on his shoulder. ‘Listen, old son—’ But Anthony had freed himself and slipped through the pass door from the box to the stage.

  At the foot of the breakneck stairs Dendra Gay stood waiting. ‘I thought you’d come,’ she said.

  Anthony said: ‘He’s drunk. He’s murdering the play.’

  ‘It’s only one scene, Tony. He finishes early in the next act. It’s going colossally.’

  ‘But don’t you understand—’

  ‘I do. You know I do. But you’re a success, Tony darling! You can hear it and smell it and feel it in your bones.’

  ‘Dendra—’ he said uncertainly.

  Someone came up and shook his hand and went on shaking it. Flats were being laced together with a slap of rope on canvas. A chandeli
er ascended into darkness. ‘Lights,’ said the stage manager, and the set was flooded with them. A distant voice began chanting. ‘Last act, please. Last act.’

  ‘Miss Bourne all right?’ the stage manager suddenly demanded.

  ‘She’ll be all right. She’s not on for ten minutes,’ said a woman’s voice.

  ‘What’s the matter with Miss Bourne?’ Anthony asked.

  ‘Tony, I must go and so must you. Tony, it’s going to be grand. Please think so. Please.’

  ‘Dendra—’ Tony began, but she had gone.

  Beyond the curtain, horns and flutes announced the last act.

  ‘Clear please.’

  The stage hands came off.

  ‘House lights.’

  ‘House lights gone.’

  ‘Stand by.’

  And while Anthony still hesitated in the OP corner, the curtain rose. Canning Cumberland and H J Bannington opened the last act.

  As Mike knelt by Coralie Bourne he heard someone enter the passage behind him. He turned and saw, silhouetted against the lighted stage, the actor who had looked at him through a window in the set. The silhouette seemed to repeat the gesture Coralie Bourne had used, and to flatten itself against the wall.

  A woman in an apron came out of the open door.

  ‘I say – here!’ Mike said.

  Three things happened almost simultaneously. The woman cried out and knelt beside him. The man disappeared through a door on the right.

  The woman, holding Coralie Bourne in her arms, said violently: ‘Why have you come back?’ Then the passage lights came on.

  Mike said: ‘Look here, I’m most frightfully sorry,’ and took off the broad black hat. The dresser gaped at him, Coralie Bourne made a crescendo sound in her throat and opened her eyes.

  ‘Katie?’ she said.

  ‘It’s all right, my lamb. It’s not him, dear. You’re all right.’ The dresser jerked her head at Mike: ‘Get out of it,’ she said.