Death Of A Hollow Man

by Caroline Graham

  Now, the other man’s hand, knuckledustered with silver spikes and hard, violating stones, reached for Nicholas’s throat. And Nicholas, cutting the rest of the scene, yelled Kitty’s cue: “Oragna figata fa! Marina gamina fa!” He heard her footsteps on the other side of the cloth and her first line, “Wolfie?” Esslyn withdrew his hand, his arm, his shoulders, and, finally, his vile grimace. By the time Nicholas crawled out, Salieri had retreated once more to the shadows.

  “Stanzerl …” Nicholas clung to Kitty. She supported him, helping him to climb onto the table, arranging his pillows. His death scene (his marvelous death scene on which he had worked so hard) went for nothing. He gabbled the lines, his eyes constantly straying over Kitty’s shoulder to the figure, furled all in gray, waiting in the dark. When Nicholas had died and been thrown without ceremony into his pauper’s grave (a mattress concealed behind the fireplace) he lay there for a few moments, then crawled off into the wings. He found his way to the chair by the props table and fell into it, resting his head against the wall.

  Expecting instant attention and sympathy, he was surprised when no one paid him any mind, then realized that they could hardly have known what was going on beneath a covered table. Time enough to tell them afterward. He became aware that his other hand, or at least the thumb, was hurting like hell. He held it up, but the light was so dim that he could see only the outline. He hurried downstairs, on the way up passing Deidre, who cried, “Watch out!” and held a kettle of steaming water out of his way.

  In the bright lights of the men’s dressing room, he discovered a great splinter rammed down the side of his nail. The surrounding flesh already had a gathered, angry look. He held it under the hot tap for a few moments, then looked around for a pair of tweezers. Occasionally an actor would have some for applying wisps of false hair or eyebrows. But he had no success. He tried next door, knocking first.

  “Oh,” Rosa exuded kind concern. “You poor lamb. I’ve got some twizzies. Hang on.” She riffled in her box. “Have you put anything on it?”

  “No. Just given it a rinse.”

  “Here we are.” Rosa picked up some tweezers smeared with greasepaint. “Let’s have a look, then.”

  Nicholas handed over his thumb while eyeing the surgical appliance with some disquiet. “Shouldn’t we sterilize them or something?”

  “Good Lord, Nicholas. You want to enter the profession, you’ll have to learn to take something like this in your stride.”

  Nicholas, who had never seen the willingness to embrace septicemia as one of the more obvious qualities a young actor might find useful, jibbed at this robust assertion.

  “There.” Rosa extracted the splinter with surprising gentleness, then rummaged in her handbag, produced a grubby Band-Aid, and peeled off the shiny backing. “How did you come to pick it up, anyway?” Nicholas told her. “Oh, how you exaggerate.”

  “I do not. He went straight for the jugular.” But even as he spoke, Nicholas was aware of a watering down of his conviction. The cozy air of normalcy in the dressing room and the fact that no one in the wings had noticed anything untoward were encouraging a slight feeling of unreality about his recollections. But there was one thing that was true and very real. Nicholas said, “And he shook the living daylights out of Kitty.”

  “Did he?” Rosa smiled and wrapped the Band-Aid extra tenderly around her companion’s thumb. “Naughty boy.” Nicholas rightly assumed that this reproof was intended for Esslyn rather than himself, although it seemed astonishingly mild under the circumstances. “I expect he discovered,” continued Rosa creamily, “that she was having an affair.”

  “Bloody hell! How did you know that?”

  “Common knowledge, darling.”

  Nicholas, swamped by guilt, sat contemplating his throbbing hand. This was all his fault. If he hadn’t told Avery and Tim, it would never have got out. So much for Avery’s promises. And for all he knew, Tim had blabbed as well. They were both as bad as the other. “Pair of gossipy old queens,” he muttered.

  “Sorry?”

  “Tim and Avery.”

  “Well, really, darling,” continued Rosa, “if you feel like that about homosexuals, you may just be entering the wrong profession. I understand there’s at least one in every company.”

  Nicholas stared at her severely, no longer grateful for the Band-Aid. How would she know what there was in every company? Swathed in her nylon wrapper with its collar of molting cerise ostrich feathers. Playing the leading lady, regurgitating chunks of past performances, trailing shreds of ersatz glamor as false and tawdry as last year’s tinsel. The Latimer, thought Nicholas savagely, was the perfect place for her, along with the other poseurs and has-beens and never-would-be’s and deadweights. Conveniently he forgot past kindnesses. The patience and encouragement shown to a neophyte who hadn’t known a claw hammer from a codpiece. The support and refuge offered when he had suddenly left home. He only knew that he was sick of the whole narcissistic bunch. He jumped up, startling Rosa.

  “I’m going to watch the end. Coming?”

  “I don’t think so, angel,” replied Rosa, batting her false lashes, gluey with mascara. “I have seen it all before.” In the wings actors were gathering for the call. Nicholas, last in the queue (Esslyn being already in situ), lined up by Emperor Joseph and said, “What a night.”

  “Carry on up the Schonbrunn, lover.”

  David Smy passed them carrying his valet’s tray with the razor, wooden dish of soap, folded towel, and china bowl complete with rising steam. One of the ASMs pushed Salieri’s wheelchair on, and David followed. He put his tray down on a little round table, took his master’s will as instructed, and retired to the back of the stage to amend his signature. Salieri picked up the razor, stepped down to the footlights, and spoke, directly and passionately, to the audience.

  “Amici cari. I was born a pair of ears. It is only through hearing music that I know God exists. Only through writing music that I could worship …”

  In the wings Joyce prepared to step forward. Behind her the Venticelli hovered ready for their final entrance.

  “… To be owned … ordered … exhausted by an Absolute … And with it all meaning …”

  Maureen Troy, although not actually sorry the end was nigh, found herself experiencing a shade of disappointment. Because she definitely fancied that bloke playing the wop. Just her mark. Tall, dark, and handsome, and old enough to have a grown-up daughter in the cast if Maureen’s program was anything to go by. Maybe the evening wasn’t going to be a total bust after all. Her husband’s shifty glances in Cully Barnaby’s direction had not gone unnoticed, and two could play at that game. Maybe she could wangle an invite round the back and introduce herself.

  “…now I go to become a ghost myself. I will stand in the shadows, when you come to this earth in your turn …”

  Cully, on the other hand, had been impressed by Mozart. Obviously inexperienced and somewhat all over the place, he had still given an energetic and very sensitive performance, with touches of real pathos. She found herself wondering about the actor. How old he was. How serious about the theater.

  “And when you feel the dreadful bite of your failures— and hear the taunting of unachievable uncaring God—I will whisper my name to you. Salieri: Patron Saint of Mediocrities!”

  Tim in his box said, “Truth will out.” Avery smiled, and Harold ran over his first-night speech. Tom Barnaby still sensed a slide toward misrule and sat upright and unrelaxed. In the back row Mr. Tibbs had lost the theater entirely, and wandered in a dark wood pursued by demons and the howling of wolves.

  “And in the depths of your downcastness you can pray to me. And I will forgive you. Vi saluto. ”

  Esslyn lifted the razor and, with one dramatic sweep, drew it across his throat. It left a bright red line. He stood for a moment frowning down at the blade, unexpectedly scarlet. He swayed forward, then jerked himself upright as if with great effort. The keeper of the cakes bustled cheerfully on with the breakfast tr
ay. Salieri took a step to meet her. She stared at him, her mouth shaped in a silent O, then she dropped the tray and caught him as he fell. Then she screamed. Shrieks of pure terror. Over and over again. While the bright blood flowed over her snowy fichu and dove-gray skirt onto the boards beneath.

  Enter the Broker’s Men

  Barnaby was out of his seat and onto the stage within seconds. Troy followed hard on his heels.

  “Get the curtain down!” Deidre looked blindly at and through him. “Get it down.”

  There was a sweep of velvet plush as Colin released the holding mechanism cutting off the grisly tableau from the audience’s startled and excited gaze. Barnaby looked to his wife. She was standing absolutely rigid, her face blank, her eyes tightly closed. Esslyn, his life ebbing, hung around her neck with almost balletic grace, like a dying swan.

  Troy slipped his hands under the man’s armpits and lowered him with infinite pointless care to the floor. Barnaby stepped outside the curtain. No need to say, “Could I have your attention please?” The conversation ceased as if by magic.

  “I’m afraid there’s been an accident,” he said calmly. “If you’d remain in your seats for a few moments, please. Do we have a doctor present?”

  No one spoke. Tim had put up the house lights, and Barnaby noticed Harold’s empty space and the swinging door by row A. Cully’s seat was also unoccupied. He stepped back onto the stage where Sergeant Troy, knife-creased trousers stained crimson, was kneeling, his head turned to one side, his ear almost touching Esslyn’s lips. The sergeant’s mouth was pursed, and his brow pleated with the effort of concentration. He felt an exhalation; cold, infinitely frail, and heard one exhausted sound. The narrow red line was now a gaping incision, and Esslyn’s eyes were glazed. A moment later his life was over. A great crack of thunder, ludicrously apt, was heard, then the patter of rain on the roof. Troy stood up.

  “Hear anything?”

  “ ‘Bungled,’ sir. As near as I could get.”

  “Right. Take the stage door, would you? Colin—over there in the check shirt—will show you where it is. No one in or out.”

  The sergeant disappeared. Barnaby looked round. In the wings, next to a clutch of fifth-formers huddled together for comfort in a suddenly alien landscape, Rosa’s husband held her hand. The chief inspector crossed to them.

  “Earnest, I need some temporary help. Would you go to the foyer, please? Notify the station what’s happened on the pay phone. Don’t let anyone leave. Won’t be for long.”

  “I would, Tom, but I feel I should stay with Rosa.”

  “No, no. Do as Tom says.” Rosa wore a clown face, makeup crudely drawn on a chalky background. “I’ll be all right, really.”

  “Shall I ask them to send help?”

  “They’ll know what to do.”

  Earnest, still looking rather uncertain, left them both. By now the wings were full of actors, and the stage deserted. Barnaby noticed with some relief that his wife had lost her terrible frozen stillness and was weeping in their daughter’s arms. Colin returned, and Barnaby asked him for a box or carrier bag and something to cover the body. Colin tipped some flexible cord and electrical connections out of a shoe box and gave it to Barnaby, who placed it over the razor, which was lying near Esslyn’s right hand. A curtain was found, and Barnaby covered the corpse, stepping carefully around the blood, which was still seeping outward. It had made a large stain, pear-shaped with an extra bulge on one side, like an inverted map of Africa.

  The curtain was hideously inappropriate, being covered with rainbows and balloons and teddy bears having a grand time. Barnaby took the key to the men’s dressing room from the board, ran downstairs (closely shadowed by Harold), locked it, and returned the key to Colin.

  “You seem to be taking a lot upon yourself,” said Harold. Alone among the shocked and haggard faces, his shone with lively indignation.

  “What’s it all for, Tom … all this … ?” said Colin, gesturing with the key. “I mean, a terrible thing has happened, but it was an accident. …”

  “You’re probably right,” answered Barnaby. “But until I get a clearer picture, there are certain precautions it’s only sensible to take.”

  “I must say, I don’t see why,” retorted Harold. “All this showing off. Ordering people about, barging here and there, locking the place up. Who the hell do you think you are?”

  “I’m just going to have a word with the audience,” continued Barnaby. “Explain what is going on. We shouldn’t have to keep them too long.”

  “You most certainly will not have a word with the audience!” cried Harold. “Any words to be had will be had by me. This is my theater. I’m in charge here.”

  “On the contrary, Harold,” replied Barnaby, and his voice made him a stranger to them all. “Until further notice, I shall be in charge here.”

  Half an hour had passed. Reinforcements had arrived. The audience had their names and telephone numbers taken and, with a single exception, had gone off to spread the news to family and friends considerably more excited than when they arrived, which, as one elderly gentleman said while buttoning up his overcoat, made the evening a first in more ways than one.

  One of the half-dozen worried parents waiting outside to take the fifth-formers home had been allowed to enter and was now acting as chaperon in the women’s dressing room while they were being gently questioned. Registration numbers in the parking garage and adjacent streets had been noted, and a constable was positioned in the pouring rain outside the main door. Another sat onstage on the Emperor Joseph’s throne with the humped gay curtain.

  In the clubroom Deidre was trying to persuade her father to drink some coffee. When she had first fled up the aisle to him just after the curtain fell, she had been horrified to see his staring eyes and wildly gesturing hands. His legs, too, had been shaking and twisting, and he drummed his feet like a runaway horse. People sitting nearby were either ignoring him, looking sympathetic, or, in the case of the teenagers in the same row, laughing hysterically. Deidre, tears of pity pouring down cheeks still pale with shock, gradually managed to soothe him into some sort of quiescence. Now, he jiggled and joggled his mug and splashed coffee all over the settee. Deidre spoke softly, reassuringly, to him while he stared over her shoulder. He had just started to make a toneless droning sound when the door opened and a young man with bristly red hair and a sharp, narrow face entered. He wore a sports jacket, and his trousers were marked with dreadful stains. “You Miss Tibbs? The DCI would like a word.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Deidre. “I don’t think I can leave my father.”

  “I’m not offering you a choice, miss.”

  “Oh.” Deidre got hesitantly to her feet. She wondered if she could be talked to in the clubroom, then quickly realized what a stupid idea that was. The last thing she wanted now that her father was calming down a little were questions that might recall the climax of the play.

  “Could you … perhaps stay with him?”

  “Sorry.” Troy held the door open, adding glibly, “He’ll be okay. Right as rain.” He closed the door and led her firmly downstairs.

  Deidre felt a little better when she entered the ladies’ dressing room and realized the detective chief inspector was going to be Tom. She asked if he’d be very long, as she was anxious to get her father safely home.

  “No longer than I can help, Deidre. But the quicker we can sort this business out, the better. I’m sure you’ll want to help us all you can.”

  “Of course I do, Tom. But I just don’t understand how anything like this could have happened. It worked perfectly well at rehearsals.”

  “When did you actually check the props this evening?”

  “Just before the half. About twenty past seven, I suppose.”

  “And the tape was in place then?”

  “Of course. Otherwise I would have—” She broke off then, her eyes widening. “Oh my God, you don’t mean …” Her stare was a mixture of horror and disbelief. “You can’t!�
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  “What did you think had happened?”

  “I assumed it had rubbed thin. Or got torn.”

  “I’m afraid not. Completely removed.”

  Deidre said “My God!” again, and buried her head in her hands. After a few moments she looked up and said, “Who on earth could have done such a terrible thing?” Barnaby gave her a moment more, then said, “Where was the tray with the razor kept?”

  “On the props table. At the back, out of the way. It only goes on once, you see. Right at the end.”

  “And it’s fairly dark in the wings?”

  “Yes. A certain amount of light spills out from the stage, of course, although the flats cut off a lot. And I’ve got an anglepoise in my corner. For tape and lighting cues. Not that I needed to give any of those. Tim was doing his own thing. He’s been threatening to for years, but no one thought he ever would.”

  “Did you see anyone touch the tray or anything on it during the evening?” Deidre shook her head. “Or anyone hovering about in that area who shouldn’t have been?”

  “No. But then I wouldn’t, Tom. Amadeus has got nearly thirty scenes. We don’t have a second to think. Oh, there was Kitty, of course. And Nicholas. He sat down there for a minute after his last exit.”

  “Tell me about Kitty first.”

  “Well, you must have seen what happened in Act Two. I don’t know what it looked like from die front …”

  “Pretty savage.”

  “I wanted to stop the whole thing, but Colin disagreed. When Kitty came off, she could hardly stand. I sat her down next to the table.” Noticing an intensification of watchfulness in Barnaby’s expression, Deidre added quickly, “But she didn’t stay. I went down to the dressing room to get her a drink and an aspirin.”

  “How long do you think you were away?”

  “Several minutes. First I couldn’t find the aspirin, then I couldn’t get the top off, then I had to wash a mug. Then I panicked. You can imagine.” Barnaby nodded, imagining very well. “When I got back, Kitty had gone, and I found her in the toilet.”