Helen had not spoken since the journey began. She was reading Cymbeline, with a little frown of concentration, and was not sure that she was enjoying it very much. Occasionally, when the train halted for a particularly long time, she gave a little sigh and gazed out of the window; then returned to her book. ‘A mortal mineral,’ she thought: what on earth does that mean? And who is who’s son, and why?
Sir Richard Freeman, Chief Constable of Oxford, was returning from a police conference at Scotland Yard. He sat back comfortably in the corner of his first-class compartment, his iron-grey hair carefully brushed back and a light of battle in his eye. He was holding a copy of Fen’s Minor Satirists of the XVIIIth Century and was in process of registering emphatic disagreement with the opinions of that expert on the work of Charles Churchill. On hearing this criticism later, Fen was not impressed, since publicly at any rate he manifested nothing but a superb indifference for his subject. And in fact, the relation between the two men was a peculiar one, Sir Richard’s chief interest being English literature, and Fen’s police work. They would sit for hours expounding fantastic theories about each other’s work, and developing a fine scorn for each other’s competence, and where detective stories, of which Fen was an avid reader, were concerned, they frequently nearly came to blows since Fen would insist, maliciously but with some truth, that they were the only form of literature which carried on the true tradition of the English novel, while Sir Richard poured out his fury on the ridiculous methods used in solving them. Their relationship was further complicated by the fact that Fen had solved several cases in which the police had come to a dead end, while Sir Richard had published three books of literary criticism (on Shakespeare, Blake, and Chaucer) which were regarded by the more-enthusiastic weekly papers as entirely outmoding conventional academic criticism of the sort which Fen produced. It was, however, the status of each as an amateur which accounted for their remarkable success; if they had ever changed places, as a mischievous old don in Fen’s college once suggested, Fen would have found the routine police work as intolerable as Sir Richard the niggling niceties of textual criticism; there was a gracious and rather vague sweep about their hobbies which ignored such tedious details. Their friendship was a longstanding one, and they enjoyed each other’s company enormously.
Sir Richard, absorbed in the author of the Rosciad, failed altogether to notice the erratic behaviour of the train. He alighted at Oxford with dignity, and acquired a porter and a taxi without difficulty. As he climbed in, Johnson’s dictum on Churchill occurred to him. ‘ “A huge and fertile crab-tree”,’ he murmured, to the great surprise of the driver, ‘ “A huge and fertile crab-tree”.’ Then more abruptly: ‘Don’t sit there gaping man! Ramsden House.’ The taxi swept away.
Donald Fellowes was on his way back from a happy weekend in London, which he had spent listening to services from organ lofts, and taking part in those endless discussions of music, organs, choir-boys, lay clerks and the peccadilloes and eccentricities of other organists which occur whenever church musicians come together. As the train moved out of Didcot he closed his eyes thoughtfully and wondered whether it would be a good thing to alter the pointing of the Benedictus and how long he would be able to go on taking the end of the Te Deum pianissimo without someone complaining. Donald was a quiet dark little person, addicted to bow ties and gin, and very inoffensive in manner (if anything, a little too unemphatic), and he was organist at Fen’s college, which I shall call St Christopher’s. As an undergraduate he had been so much occupied with his music that his tutors (he was reading history) had despaired, and as it turned out with reason, of ever getting him through anything; and after the fourth attempt both he and they had given it up with mutual feelings of relief. At the moment he was merely hanging about, carrying on with his organist’s job, vaguely preparing for groups or sections, writing his B.Mus. exercise, and waiting for call-up. His remote contemplation of the canticles was frequently interrupted by a much less remote contemplation of Yseut, with whom he was, as Nicholas Barclay was later to put it, ‘very gravely in love’. Abstractly, he was aware of all her shortcomings, but when he was with her they made no difference; he was completely and utterly enslaved and infatuated. As he thought of her, he felt suddenly acutely miserable, and the dallying of the train added irritation to his misery. ‘Damn the girl!’ he said to himself. ‘And damn this train .… I wonder if Ward is going to be able to get through that solo on Sunday. Damn all composers for writing top A’s in solo parts.’
Nicholas Barclay and Jean Whitelegge left London together, after a morose and silent luncheon at Victor’s. Both of them were interested in Donald Fellowes, Nicholas because he considered him a brilliant musician who was letting himself go to pieces over a girl, Jean because she was herself in love with him (and so, incidentally, had every reason to dislike Yseut). It is true that Nicholas was hardly qualified to criticize others for letting themselves go to pieces. As an undergraduate reading English a brilliant academic career had been prophesied for him, and he had bought, and read, all those immense annotated editions of the classics in which the greater part of every page is occupied with commentary (with a slight gesture to the author in the form of a thin trickle of text up at the top, towards the page number), and the study of which is considered essential to all those so audacious as to aim at a Fellowship. Unfortunately, several days before his final examination, it occurred to him to question the ultimate aims of academic scholarship. As book superseded book, and investigation investigation, would there ever come a time when the last word had been said on any one subject? And if not, then what was it all about? All very well, he had reasoned, if one derived personal pleasure from it; but personally, he did not. Then why continue? Finding these arguments unanswerable, he had taken the logical step of abandoning his work completely, and had taken to drinking, quite amiably, but persistently. Upon his failing to appear at his examination, and proving quite deaf to all remonstrances, he had been sent down, but as he had comfortable private means this did not perturb him in the least, and he moved between the bars of Oxford and London, cultivating a mildly sardonic sense of humour, making many friends, and confining his reading exclusively to Shakespeare, huge tracts of which he now knew by heart; in these circumstances even a book had become unnecessary, and he could simply sit and think Shakespeare, to the annoyance of his friends, who regarded this as the limit of idleness. As the train proceeded towards what he had once with an eye to its plethora of music described as the City of Screaming Choirs, Nicholas sipped cheerfully at a flask of whisky, and ran over whole scenes of Macbeth in his mind. ‘Present fears are less than horrible imaginings: my thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical …’
Of Jean there is less to be said. Tall, dark, spectacled and rather plain, she had only two interests in life, Donald Fellowes and the Oxford University Theatre Club, an undergraduate body which produced uninterestingly experimental plays (as these bodies generally do), and of which she was secretary. Where the first of these two interests was concerned, she was frankly in the grip of an obsession. Donald, Donald, Donald, she thought, clutching tightly to the arm of her seat: Donald Fellowes. Oh hell! This must stop. He’s in love with Yseut, anyway, not you … the bitch. The conceited, selfish bitch. If only she weren’t … if only someone …
Nigel Blake was contented, and he thought of a great many things as the train crawled on its way: of the pleasure it would be to see Fen again; of his hard-won first in English three years ago; of his laborious, but quite interesting life as a journalist since then; of his belated fortnight’s holiday, at least a week of which he would spend in Oxford; of seeing Robert Warner’s new play, which was sure to be good; and above all, of Helen Haskell. Don’t get excited, he told himself, you haven’t met her yet. Go easy. It’s dangerous to fall in love with people just from seeing them on the stage. She’s probably conceited and horrible; or else engaged; or married. And anyway she’s certainly surrounded with young men, and it’s ridiculous to suppose that yo
u’re going to induce her to take any notice of you in the space of a week, when you don’t even know her yet …
None the less, he added grimly to himself, you’re going to have a damned good try.
The destinations of these people in Oxford were various: Fen and Donald Fellowes returned to St Christopher’s; Sheila McGaw to her rooms in Walton Street; Sir Richard Freeman to his house on Boar’s Hill; Jean Whitelegge to her college; Helen and Yseut to the theatre and subsequently to their rooms in Beaumont Street; Robert, Rachel, Nigel and Nicholas to the ‘Mace and Sceptre’ in the centre of the town. By Thursday, 11 October, they were all in Oxford.
And within the week that followed three of these eleven died by violence.
2. Yseut
Ahi! Yseut, fille de roi,
Franche, cortoise, bone foi …
Beroul
Nigel Blake arrived in Oxford at 5.20 in the afternoon, and went straight to the ‘Mace and Sceptre’, where he had booked a room. The hotel, he reflected sadly as his taxi drove up to it, was not one of the architectural glories of Oxford. It was built in a curious amalgam of styles which reminded him of nothing so much as an enormously large and horribly depressing night-club-cum-restaurant he had once visited near the Brandenburger Tor in Berlin, where every room impersonated some different national style in an aggressive, romantic, and improbable way. His own room appeared to him like a grotesque parody of the Baptistry in Pisa. He unpacked, washed off the dirt and discomfort which a rail journey always involves, and wandered downstairs in search of a drink.
By now it was half past six. In the bar and lounge, the civilized prolegomena to sex operated a restrained, objectionable puppet-show; a corpse of painted gothic overlooked these proceedings. In general, the place was much the same as Nigel remembered it, though the undergraduate population had dropped, and the military risen, considerably. A few belated theological students of the arty type, who had remained presumably to work during the vacation or who had come up a few days early, whined and gibbered in a discussion of the poetic beauty of the conception of the Virgin Birth. A group of R.A.F. officers by the bar swallowed their beer with noisy, jejune enthusiasm. There were one or two very old men, and a miscellaneous riff-raff of art students, schoolmasters, and visiting celebrities, who sat about hoping to be noticed, and without whom Oxford is never complete. A motley collection of women attached to the younger men and for the most part engaged in manipulating and focusing their attention upon themselves, completed the gathering. One or two Indian students idled rather aggressively about, ostentatiously bearing volumes of the better-known contemporary poets.
Nigel found himself a drink and an empty chair and settled down with a little sigh of relief. Decidedly the place had not altered. In Oxford, he thought, the faces change, but the types persist, doing and saying identical things from one generation to the next. He lit a cigarette, stared about him, and wondered whether to go and see Fen that evening or not.
At twenty to seven Robert Warner and Rachel came in. Nigel knew Robert slightly – a tenuous acquaintance based on a series of literary luncheons, theatrical parties and first nights – and gave him a cheerful little wave.
‘May we join you?’ said Robert, ‘or are you meditating?’
‘Not at all,’ replied Nigel ambiguously. ‘Let me get you a drink.’ And thanking heaven that Robert was not the kind of man immediately to clamour ‘No, let me get you one’, he found out what they wanted and went off to the bar.
On his return he found them talking to Nicholas Barclay. Introductions were performed, and Nigel trailed off again to the bar. Eventually they all got settled, and sat for a moment in silence, gazing expectantly at one another, and sipping their drinks.
‘I’m looking forward enormously to seeing your play next week,’ said Nigel to Robert. ‘Though I must admit I’m a bit surprised that you’re putting it on here.’
Robert gestured vaguely. ‘It’s a case of needs must,’ he said. ‘My last thing was such a miserable flop in the West End that I had to go to the provinces. The only consolation is that I shall be able to produce it myself, a thing I haven’t been allowed to do for years.’
‘Only a week’s rehearsal on a new play?’ said Nicholas. ‘That’s going to be a sweat.’
‘It’s a try-out really. Various agents and managers are coming down from London to confirm their belief that I am, in fact, a dandelion seed in the wind, and that I’ve lost all my mind. I hope to disappoint them. Though God knows what sort of a production it will be; this place has become a repository for callow children from the dramatic schools, with a substratum of old crocks and one or two of the most notorious hams in Europe. Whether I shall be able to beat them into a proper use of timing, gesture and intonation in a week I really can’t imagine. But Rachel’s going to be in it, and she’ll help.’
‘Frankly, I doubt it,’ said Rachel. ‘An outsider starring in repertory for box-office purposes creates more bad feeling than anything else. You know, muttering in corners.’
‘What’s the theatre like?’ Nigel asked. ‘I hardly went near the place while I was up here.’
‘You worked!’ put in Nicholas incredulously, who always pretended that he had not.
‘It’s not bad,’ said Robert. ‘An old place, put up somewhere in the eighteen-sixties, but modernized just before the war. I was working there about ten years ago, and my God, it was awful then: squeaky dimmers, erratic tabs, and flats that fell over at a touch. All that’s been done away with now though. Some good soul with money and ambitions crammed the place with every technical device he could lay hands on, including a revolve –’
‘A revolve?’ said Nigel vaguely.
‘Revolving stage. Like a circular turntable, divided across the middle. You set the next scene on the side hidden from the audience and then, when the time comes, just twiddle it round. It means you can’t have flats projecting on to it from the wings, and that rather limits you in the composition of your sets. As a matter of fact, I don’t think they use it much here – it’s a sort of white elephant; certainly I shan’t. But it’s a nuisance, because you lose an enormous depth of stage you could very well do with.’
‘And what,’ said Nicholas, settling back more comfortably in his chair, ‘is the play about? Or is that giving away trade secrets?’
‘The play?’ Robert seemed surprised at the question. ‘It’s a re-write of a thing of the same name by a very minor French dramatist called Piron. You probably know the story. About 1730, I think it was, Voltaire began to receive verses from a Mlle Malcrais de la Vigne, to which he gallantly responded, and a huge correspondence sprang up between them, all very amorous and literary. Later on, however, Mlle de la Vigne came to Paris, and turned out to Voltaire’s fury and everyone else’s delight to be a great fat youth called Desforgues-Maillard. Piron used this situation as the basis of his play, and I’ve taken it over and modified it, reversing the sexes though and making the chief character a woman novelist and her correspondent a mischievous woman journalist. I know it doesn’t sound up to much,’ he concluded apologetically, ‘but that’s really only the bare bones of the thing.’
‘Who’s playing the woman novelist?’
‘Oh, Rachel of course,’ said Robert cheerfully. ‘Lovely part for her.’
‘And the journalist?’
‘Frankly, I’m still uncertain: I think Helen. Yseut’s quite incapable of playing comedy, and anyway I dislike her so much I simply couldn’t bear it. There’s one other girl, apart from the older women, but I’m told she does such extraordinary things on the stage that I simply mustn’t give her anything more than a bit part. I’m giving Yseut a bit part too – only on in the first act. But,’ he added maliciously, a little smile creasing the corners of his mouth, ‘I shall insist on her taking a curtain every night, so that she can’t take off her make-up and go home.’
Nicholas whistled, took out a cigarette case, opened it, and balanced it on the table with a gesture of invitation. ‘Yseut is really
very unpopular,’ he said. ‘I’ve never met anyone who had a good word to say for her.’
Nigel, as he took a cigarette, flicked his lighter, and handed it round the little group, thought he saw a gleam of interest appear in Robert’s eye.
‘Who in particular dislikes her?’ Robert queried.
Nicholas shrugged. ‘Myself, for one, on more or less irrational grounds; though I have a friend who’s making a bloody fool of himself over her. “I am as true as truth’s simplicity, and simpler than the infancy of truth” – you know. Helen, for another – what a sister to have to drag about with one! Jean – oh, you don’t know her of course; girl called Jean Whitelegge, because she’s in love with the Troilus aforementioned – the humble village maiden waiting for her knight to stop fooling about with the wicked princess. Everyone in the company, because she’s an intolerable little bitch. Sheila McGaw, because – Oh, God!’
He broke off abruptly. Looking up to see what had caused the interruption, Nigel saw Yseut come into the bar.
‘Talk of the devil,’ said Nicholas gloomily.
The Case of the Gilded Fly Page 2