Dandy Gilver and a Spot of Toil and Trouble

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘Maybe it’ll come back tomorrow in the same scene.’ His eyes were dancing.

  ‘Which I shall watch from out front,’ I said firmly.

  ‘Dandy,’ said Alec. ‘Am I imagining it or are there more of those little wisps this time than ever before?’

  ‘Wisps?’ I said. ‘Little threads that don’t weave in properly?’

  ‘But can’t quite be caught? It’s worse this time than usual, isn’t it?’ I thought for a moment and then nodded. ‘And why is that, would you say?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, we are distracted by being actors as well as detectives. I’m going to go right now to Francis and tell him I am no longer willing to be his understudy.’

  Francis was where I had left him but looking a little perkier, with a hot toddy in his hand and his feet still in the basin of mustard water. Mrs Porteous was stirring cocoa on the range, with a cup warming.

  ‘How did he do?’ said Angus. ‘Alec, I mean. Walking on for the porter. It’s an entertaining scene if you’re willing to surrender to it. I’m sorry to have missed it tonight.’

  ‘It went past,’ I said. ‘And the play carried on. That’s the main thing.’ He would hear the worst soon enough and I was in no mood to be laughed at again, nor to shock Mrs Porteous. ‘Once you’ve finished your toddy, had your cocoa and dried your feet you’ll be fit for Act V, will you?’

  ‘This isn’t for him,’ Mrs Porteous said. ‘This is for Mrs Bewer. Gilly fetches a cup of cocoa up to her at bedtime.’

  ‘I’ll take it tonight,’ I said. I wanted very much to see if Otto had surfaced and to hear where she had been.

  She was in her room, tucked up in bed. Gilly was still there too, banging about as though not quite recovered from the scolding over last night’s soot.

  ‘Here’s your cocoa, Ottoline,’ I said. ‘With Mrs Porteous’s compliments. I happened to be in the kitchens and thought I’d save Gilly some steps.’

  ‘Thank you, Dandy,’ Otto said, reaching out a hand that trembled a little. ‘I find myself in need of comfort tonight.’

  ‘Oh?’ I said. ‘I noticed that you had left the rehearsal. Were you cold? Or is it the seats? Perhaps we could bring a comfortable chair for you to sit in tomorrow. It would be a shame for the play to be on right here in your own house and for you not to enjoy it.’

  Otto’s face twisted into a bitter little frown, most unlike her usual expression.

  ‘You could watch the first half one night and the second the next if it’s too much all at once,’ I went on. ‘Or a matinee perhaps. It’s jolly good. I just … watched … the scene when the murder is discovered and I was riveted. Sarah Byrne was quite breathtaking in it.’

  ‘Well, well, we shall see,’ Ottoline said. ‘I do so wish it was A Midsummer Night’s Dream, though. I do so worry about it all.’ She bent her head and took a tiny sip from her cup. I debated whether to reassure her how thrilling it was all going to be, for if she had fled the rehearsal before the murdering began, nothing about the rest of the play was likely to comfort her.

  ‘What was it that made you leave tonight?’ I said. ‘The witches?’

  There was that little twisted frown again. ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘nothing like that. I was just tired suddenly and came up to bed early.’ She gave me a wan smile. Behind me, I heard a particularly loud bang from Gilly as she shut a deep drawer.

  ‘Then I shall leave you,’ I said. ‘And I hope you sleep well.’

  ‘That’s me too, madam,’ Gilly said in a loud voice. ‘Unless there’s anything else?’

  Ottoline waved us both off and we left together.

  ‘She did not,’ said Gilly when we were a few feet along the corridor.

  ‘Who did not what?’ I asked, frostily. Of course, I knew but there should be a little decorum.

  ‘Mrs Bewer did not come straight up to bed from the courtyard. That’s another of her wee fairy tales, like being deaf.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘Look at the state of her frock and stockings.’ Gilly displayed the clothes she held folded over her arm – a tea gown, since today was so disordered that we had not changed – and the stockings tucked discreetly under it. ‘She’s been somewhere she shouldn’t have been, hasn’t she?’

  ‘They do look a little dusty,’ I agreed. ‘But then the castle has a great many nooks and crannies.’

  ‘Excuse me!’ Gilly said. ‘But we keep this place spick and span, never mind that it nearly kills us between the cobbled floors and the high ceilings and those windows up top that are just grills over them and no glass at all, like an invitation to spiders to come in and take their rest.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Yes, of course you do. I didn’t mean a thing by it.’

  ‘And how I’m supposed to deal with clarty frocks and stockings tonight – or even tomorrow – on the biggest day the castle’s ever seen!’ she went on. ‘But if I don’t, it’ll be the soot all over again. I get wrong like a bad bairn even when I’ve done nothing, so be sure I’ll get wrong if I don’t stay up all night sponging and rinsing.’

  ‘Give them to me,’ I said, before she could work herself up into a complete blue fit. ‘Grant can take care of them for you. She won’t mind.’

  Gilly was reluctant to let go of her excuse to be in a foul temper but she was very keen to ditch the actual task and in the end the scales tipped that way. She shoved the clothes at me – it was my evening for having others’ linens thrust into my arms – and took herself off at the next branch in the corridor.

  ‘Tell her to iron the stockings straight, mind,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Mrs Bewer won’t wear a stocking with the press line not on the seam.’

  I daydreamed briefly about what would happen if I tried to tell Grant how to press a stocking; whether she would hunt Gilly down and box her ears or take the quick way and simply box mine, then I went to my room to wait for her arrival. I was missing the rest of the rehearsal but, I told myself, it was unfair to the actors to distract people from their efforts by reminders of mine.

  By eleven o’clock, Grant had not shown her face and I was irritated anew by the lack of bells anywhere in the castle. How one was supposed to summon one’s maid was beyond me. Then a thought struck me that softened the irritation: surely they were not still rehearsing? Surely nothing could have gone so badly wrong that a run through of Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy had taken over four hours and counting? I had been resting on top of my bed, but I leapt up, put my outdoor shoes on again and went to look out of the nearest inner window.

  The courtyard was in darkness and there was a silence that told me no one was there in the wings or backstage. Clearly the rehearsal had been over for some time. I checked the drawing room but there was no one there either and the fire was banked, although the lamps were still lit. The great hall was empty and set for the teas to be sold tomorrow, with little card menus propped up against pots of daisies and columbine and with a great array of very solid plain white china which Minnie had procured from heaven only knew where.

  I was beginning to suspect that everyone but me was abed and that Grant had simply forgotten about her mistress in the face of such excitement as the play had brought her, when I heard the murmur of voices from above me and ducked into the nearest stairway to investigate. It led to the long gallery, which was also empty with only candles enough lit to show the way safely along its length, but around the edge of the book-room door there was a line of light and from inside there came a steady hubbub and the smell of tobacco. I had, at last, found someone, even if only the American guests. I hurried over and entered.

  The four ladies were indeed there, in their war room, in their shirtsleeves again, but with them were the Bewers, Grant – who was absolutely resplendent in a Tudor costume more elaborate than many a leading lady had worn upon the West End stage, I am sure – and Alec, now crumpled and pale as well as made-up as an apparition, and looking simply ghastly. Leonard, Penny and most of the players were there, wrapped in rob
es or wearing jerseys and trousers, some with their hair still pushed back behind bands and faces still shining from the cold cream they had used to remove their make-up. Only Moray Dunstane, Sarah Byrne and Max Moore – the Macbeths and King Duncan – were missing. All who were there had been there for an age, to judge by the pall of smoke that rolled towards me as I let in a draught to suck it out.

  ‘Has someone found the Cut Throat?’ I said.

  ‘No but someone’s asking to have his throat cut!’ said Leonard, shoving a heap of scribbled-upon papers away from him and putting his head in his hands. His voice was ragged with tobacco and exhaustion.

  ‘Francis collapsed,’ said Alec. ‘He made it through his lines and then sank down on the stage and had to be carried off.’

  ‘Oh well,’ I said. ‘Lots of people get carried off, dead and alive, towards the end, don’t they?’ There was a frozen silence and I gathered that I had dropped a bit of a brick.

  ‘It’s the curse,’ said Tansy Bell, sepulchrally.

  ‘Which one?’ I asked, which did not raise my stock. ‘The Scottish play or the Cut Throat. Because the curse of the Cut Throat only springs to life when it leaves the castle and the curse of Macbeth—’

  ‘—is a lot of Victorian twaddle,’ said Penny. ‘We don’t have time for either. If we concentrate on the job at hand, however, we do have time to save the production.’

  ‘Won’t he be better by tomorrow?’ I said. ‘Another mustard scald perhaps? A couple more toddies?’

  ‘He’s gone,’ Penny said. ‘He left a note and walked to the high road to catch the late bus to town and the train home to Glasgow.’

  ‘Did he find the Cut Throat?’ I said. ‘Was it in the kitchen?’

  ‘Dandy, for heaven’s sake,’ said Alec. ‘Could you forget about the Cut Throat for a minute. Francis Mowatt, who plays Angus, a doctor, the porter and a king has left and we open tomorrow.’

  His defection from the role of my partner to being one of Leonard’s players was, it seemed, complete.

  ‘But how did he manage to walk to the high road if his chill was bad enough that he fainted on the stage?’ I said. ‘I don’t understand. What did the note say?’

  Minnie, who had been standing off to the side clutching it and therefore looking rather like Lady Macbeth in Act I with the battleground bulletin in her hand, now stalked forward and thrust it at me.

  ‘I have seen my death foretold and I must fly,’ it said, a declamation worthy of any bard. ‘Help yourself to the rest of my beer,’ it went on, with a considerable lurch towards the prosaic. ‘I can’t fit it in my knapsack.’

  ‘We wondered if he was delirious,’ said Tansy Bell. ‘George and Bob went after him, checking in the hedgerows in case he was lying there, but they saw nothing and there’s a little row of cottages just at the bus stop and one of the cottagers came out and … What was it she said, George?’

  ‘Told us that a young man with a haversack had come along the lane at a fair clip and just caught the bus. She’d paid particular attention because he was in such a hurry she wondered if he had found the jewel and was rushing away with it.’

  ‘So there we are,’ said Leonard. ‘Short four parts and there’s no way to square it.’

  A groan went up from several quarters at his words but it was Penny who sat down, took his hands in hers and spoke to him pleadingly. ‘Leonard, please. The answer is there. Julian takes on Angus as well as Malcolm. Alec goes up to second murderer and Bob takes third murderer and porter.’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Leonard, ‘but that solves nothing.’

  ‘I hadn’t finished!’ said Penny. She took a deep breath. ‘We make the English doctor a nurse—’

  ‘No,’ said Leonard. ‘Never.’

  Another groan rang out around the room.

  ‘Leonard, dearest, there’s no need to—’

  ‘Couldn’t the English doctor and the Scottish doctor just be rolled into one?’ I said. ‘Even if they’re onstage together, if they’re both doctors, aren’t they saying much the same sort of thing—’

  ‘They’re not onstage together,’ said Leonard with a sort of dreadful patience that should have warned me to shut up and yet did not.

  ‘Well, then there you are!’ I said.

  ‘They’re not onstage together,’ Leonard said in the same low menacing tone like a growling guard dog, always so much more effective than a barking one, ‘because one is in Scotland and one is in England! How can it be the same doctor?’

  ‘So,’ said Penny with infinite patience, ‘Miles takes the English doctor, George the Scottish doctor and we’ – she was trying to sound gay and light but the fact that she had to pause for a breath before the next words ruined the effect completely – ‘we cut Hecate out, which frees up me and the other witches to be servants and messengers.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ said one of the girls. Hecate herself, I guessed.

  ‘The servants can’t all be women!’ said Leonard. ‘And if any of the battlefield messengers are women the play will be a travesty.’

  ‘Oh, for love of God above,’ said Minnie. ‘Leonard, I am not part of your theatrical world, but when was the last time you heard an actress say she was willing to have you cut her part – not cut it down but cut it out completely! – to save your production? Your production, which is in this muddle because you pared your cast back to the very rind to save money on wages? Hmm?’

  ‘The servants in Macbeth’s castle would be men apart from—’

  ‘But who’s going to know that?’ said Bluey. ‘Come on, old chap. Most audiences in the West End wouldn’t put their chips down on it and none of the trippers who’re coming along here to have a jolly night out and a poke around a castle will either know or care.’

  ‘And I am not cutting out a whole character written by the greatest playwright of all time, just because Francis Mowatt has caught the last bus and gone home,’ said Leonard. ‘I might as well put on a nativity with two kings, one shepherd and twins in the manger because that’s who I happened to have to hand!’

  If he hoped to shock someone with his blasphemy, he was disappointed. Perhaps they were too tired, or perhaps the thought had simply loomed too large in the minds of all that, in less than twenty-four hours’ time, buses and carts and motorcars were going to be parked in rows all over the field between Pugh’s flags, and those wooden benches were going to be filled with paying customers waiting to see, amongst others, a porter who was not wearing her country tweeds and reading from a script.

  ‘He didn’t write Hecate,’ one of the young men murmured.

  ‘It was added in later,’ another chipped in.

  ‘Along with all the songs.’

  ‘And you’re not doing the songs.’

  We all waited, with bated breath, still enough for the wraiths of tobacco smoke to stop shifting and just hang in the air. Alec was scribbling busily and Minnie was wringing her hands; actually wringing her hands, as though applying cream to them, or perhaps, I thought, as though trying to cleanse them with all the perfumes of Araby.

  At last Leonard cleared his throat. ‘No,’ he said. This time the chorus of groans was more like shrieks: of frustration and despair.

  ‘We could just sack you, you know,’ Bluey said. ‘What’s a director for, once the play’s up and running anyway? In fact, yes, I think that’s the answer. Leonard, old boy, you’re sacked. Get your things and be ready to leave before breakfast and be thankful I don’t just take you by the scruff of your neck and the seat of your pants and heave you out the window right now. I’ve never seen such silliness in a so-called grown man.’

  ‘Daddy,’ said Penny. ‘I know you’re angry but there’s no need to rant at poor Leonard like that.’

  ‘I’m not ranting, Penny,’ Bluey said. ‘I mean every word of it. I’m sick of him and he’s sacked. Out you go, Leonard, cousin or no. Fiancé or no. You’ve tried my patience too far.’

  Leonard looked about as rattled as a sloth hanging from a branch.
‘Do you really think my company would stay without me?’ he said.

  ‘Of course, I do,’ Bluey said. ‘We’ll pay them and they’ll get to perform and, and, – we’ll knock a bit off their room and board in thanks for their loyalty.’

  Leonard nodded as though taking it all in very calmly. He cast his eye around the players who had sat up and started paying close attention. ‘Who’s staying?’ he said.

  They looked at one another but no one spoke until Roger cleared his throat and said, genially, ‘The play’s the thing, I suppose.’

  ‘The show must go on,’ agreed Paddy Ramekin.

  ‘Indeed it must,’ said Leonard smoothly. ‘Very well, you all stay down here and put on Macbeth for trippers and curious locals and I’ll go back to Edinburgh and start thinking about casting all the plays for the winter season.’

  Roger froze and Paddy Ramekin looked as though he would like to stuff his words back into his mouth and swallow them. He actually reached forward and gobbled at the air like a goldfish.

  ‘Of all the sly, creeping, unwholesome creatures who soil this earth,’ said Bluey, ‘a blackmailer is the worst of them.’ He stood up. ‘Be off before I pick you up and throw you out and don’t look at me like that. I might be an old man but I was a soldier. And a boxer. In fact, yes! Let’s settle this like men.’

  To my astonishment he tore off his jacket and with shaking fingers began to work at his cufflinks as though to roll up his sleeves for fighting.

  ‘Daddy!’ said Penny. ‘Please, don’t. This won’t get us anywhere.’

  ‘Bluey, don’t be an oaf,’ said Minnie.

  ‘Leonard?’ It was Alec. He had not spoken for some time but now he looked up from his scribbles and addressed the man in a clear, calm voice. ‘How about this? Two doctors, no nurse. All the messengers are men. The servants, I’m afraid, are women, but Hecate stays? Could you live with that?’

  ‘It can’t be done,’ said Leonard.

  ‘It could be done,’ Alec countered.

  ‘If it could be done,’ said Leonard, and for the first time there was a hint of him softening.