‘No. I think Denbigh choked her off.’
‘And our friend William Caxton?’
‘Funny you should mention him. I’ve just had a letter from him.’ Laura picked up an opened letter from beside her plate and handed it over. Dame Beatrice perused it.
‘I see he asks whether it would be in order for him to attend the final rehearsal and take photographs,’ she said. ‘It would have been better to ask permission of Dr Denbigh, I should have thought.’
‘I shan’t bother to answer the letter. If he decides to turn up on Monday evening I can leave Denbigh to deal with him. Incidentally, he’s to appear on stage at each performance to boost the pageant. It takes place the week after The Beggar’s Opera. As for Caxton and the photographs he’s after, the press will be there, anyway. Denbigh won’t allow cameras at the actual performances, so one more person clicking away at the dress rehearsal won’t make that much difference.’
‘I see, too, that he requests the pleasure of a few words in private with you.’
‘They’ll have to be precious few. I’m on and off most of the time in the first Act and after that I’m prompting. Incidentally, you’ll enjoy the scenes between Polly Peachum and Lucy Lockit. Sybil Gartner and Melanie Cardew so loathe each other that their passages of arms on the stage are almost too realistic’
‘ “I shall now soon be even with the hypocritical strumpet”,’ quoted Dame Beatrice. ‘I trust that the bottle of ratsbane is large and is well and truly labelled.’
‘It is, and it’s just as well that the stage directions call for Polly to drop her doped glass. I wouldn’t put it past Melanie to add something toxic to the beverage if there was half a chance of Sybil’s drinking it.’
‘What fun you must have at your rehearsals. Do you think I might present myself at this one? If so, we could have George to drive my car and you would not need to drive home alone if the rehearsal does indeed last into the small hours.’
‘Smashing idea,’ said Laura. ‘I’d like you to see the rehearsal. We’re going to set the stage as well as put on the costumes and make-up. Our sets are rather fabulous. Our painters and carpenters have had the run of the college workshops as well as a lot of help from the students. We don’t even end the play at the condemned hold. We’re going to put Macheath on the hangman’s cart and it’s from there that he gets reprieved.’
‘Realism indeed!’
‘There’s another bone of contention between Sybil and Melanie, I ought to tell you,’ said Laura. ‘I really thought Sybil was going to spit – literally, I mean. My own costume, as I’m Polly’s mother and therefore very much a matron, is black and white. Polly was supposed to be dressed in a rather deep pink and Lucy in apple green, but when they tried the things on, Melanie, whose sallowness not even make-up can really disguise, looked so awful in apple green that she told Denbigh she really must have the pink dress plus a gypsy make-up put on really thick. Denbigh and the wardrobe mistress agreed, so it’s going to be an apple-green Polly and a deep pink Lucy. Sybil was so furious that we half-thought she’d throw up her part.’
‘But Dr Denbigh talked her round, I suppose.’
‘Yes. He can be the soul of tact when he likes. I contributed my quota, too, when Sybil backed me into a corner to unload her grievances. Denbigh pointed out that the success of the show depended entirely upon her. I pointed out that she looks pretty in any colour, but that poor old Melanie needed all the help she could get to look even presentable on the stage. Between Denbigh and me we got Sybil soothed, but it wasn’t easy. I just hope, with my fingers crossed, that Sybil won’t rat on me and tell Melanie what I said.’
‘I wonder whether Dr Denbigh has followed Sir Nigel Playfair and given How now, Madam Flirt to two of the ladies of the town, or whether he has put it in its rightful place in the script?’
‘Oh, the latter. He’s given it, as written in the text, to Polly and Lucy. It’s one of their best efforts and I’m sure that, if Denbigh’s production called for them to scratch each other’s eyes out, they’d go to it with a will.’
‘I am looking forward to this rehearsal. I wonder what Caxton has to say to you?’
‘Not knowing, can’t tell. Perhaps he wants to con me into trying to persuade you to let him do some more printing. He was awfully pleased to get that order for the tickets and posters. I expect he can do with a few commissions of that sort. It’s a pretty poor sort of place in which he lives.’
‘He may prefer it to a more palatial residence.’
‘I don’t know so much. He has a lean and hungry look which goes to my motherly heart.’
‘Such men are dangerous,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Do not allow him to lure you into conspiracies.’
‘Conspiracies?’
‘Not the word I really mean.’ She eyed her comely secretary with humour. ‘Exchange the queen of fairies for the Green Man,’ she said, ‘and then repeat after me: “I am sae fair and fu’ o’ flesh, I’m fear’d ’twill be myself.” ’
‘Good Lord!’ said Laura blankly. ‘Whatever would Gavin say?’
PART FOUR
:
Demolition
CHAPTER 16
« ^ »
It’s a wise rabbit that stays in its own burrow.
The Saturday pre-dress rehearsal went as Laura had expected. It lasted until twelve-thirty on Sunday morning and was, in her words, a shambles. Nothing but the utter fatigue and ragged tempers of the players caused Denbigh to abandon it even at that hour. Then, to the cheers of the students, he said that he expected everybody to be back promptly at six-thirty on Monday evening. The rest of the cast groaned.
‘Well,’ said Laura, having, in the car on the way back to the Stone House, voiced her opinion of the company’s efforts, ‘if it goes anything like that on the night, people will be fighting round the box office demanding their money back. As for that wretched hangman’s cart which the students are so proud of, if you ask me it’s going to be far more nuisance than it’s worth and anyway it isn’t in the text. The opera ends in the condemned hold.’
‘I thought the piece of apparatus was very effective. As for Mr Crashaw with the noose around his neck, he seemed to me a right and proper candidate for the gallows. I recognised him, of course, in spite of the beard,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘Recognised him? You mean he really is…?’
‘Yes, indeed. You were absent, if you remember, when he called on me two or three years ago, so you did not see him when he was known as Thaddeus E. Lawrence, but you did tell me of the man who is down in the programme as Rodney Crashaw. That, in my opinion, settles it.’
‘Why? – apart from your recognising him, I mean.’
‘Come, come! Is this the student who harassed her junior English lecturer with enquiries regarding the minor early seventeenth-century poets?’
‘Richard Crashaw, 1613 (perhaps) to 1649? R. Crashaw! So you do mean it’s Lawrence up to his old game of changing his name!’
‘Well, one cannot blame him for not wishing to go down to posterity as a jail-bird.’
‘Then our sumptuous blonde could be as we thought.’
‘If you mean the young woman who was greeted on stage as Molly Brazen, yes, that is the first Mrs Lawrence whom I met in Blackpool as Coralie St Malo.’
‘So, that’s settled, too, is it? Very interesting. Well, it seems that she and Lawrence, alias Crashaw, have teamed up again. I wonder why?’
‘It gives one furiously to think, does it not?’
‘It gives me a headache. Do you think they spotted you at the rehearsal?’
‘I have little doubt of that, but what of it? The truth is obvious.’
‘Coralie murdered the second Mrs Lawrence and Lawrence buried the body. Consequently they now have to keep the tabs on each other. That would account for their getting together again.’
‘This perspicacity is uncanny!’
‘But if they know you’ve seen them not only together but so obviously part of the same set-up
, aren’t they going to ask themselves a few questions?’
‘Again, I say, what of it?’ The car slowed down to turn into the gateway of the drive up to the Stone House as she added, ‘ “He whom the gods love dies young.” I used to think that this referred only to one’s numerical age. I know better now, so let us cast care aside and repair to our beds “weary and content and undishonoured”.’
The car pulled up outside the front door and George saw his passengers out.
‘We shan’t need the car in the morning, George,’ said his employer, ‘so have your full quota of sleep. I am sorry to have kept you up so late.’ She and Laura passed on into the house where they were greeted by a clucking Célestine in her dressing-gown.
‘Henri has placed sandwiches and some wine in the dining-room, madame, and I am to make coffee.’
‘No, no,’ said Dame Beatrice peremptorily, for Célestine was known to be obstinate. ‘You go to bed. As for Mrs Gavin and myself, we shall probably make a night of it.’
Célestine made disapproving Gallic noises and took herself off to join her slumbering spouse. Dame Beatrice and Laura went into the dining-room, where Dame Beatrice took one sandwich and a glass of sherry and Laura drank whisky and wolfed the rest of the provender.
‘One thing,’ she said, ‘I suppose you’re right and that, after all this time, nobody, least of all Lawrence and Coralie, is going to rake up the past.’
‘I have an uneasy feeling,’ said her employer, ‘that the past is going to rake itself up.’
‘What makes you say that? I’m the one who gets these premonitions, not you – and I’m very often, although not always, wrong.’
‘This is not merely a premonition. I am uneasy on account of William Caxton.’
‘Good heavens, why?’
‘You told me that he came to one of the rehearsals with Mrs Blaine.’
‘What of it? – as you would say. It was like her cheek to turn up, considering that she’s done everything she can to sabotage our show.’
‘Do you remember that, some time ago, I queried the name William Caxton?’
‘Yes, but you gave me best over that, when I pointed out that it could be a common enough name.’
‘The murdered Mrs Lawrence had a brother named Bill.’
Laura, a sandwich poised halfway to her mouth, lowered it and stared wide-eyed at her employer.
‘You aren’t suggesting—?’ she said.
‘Mrs Lawrence’s maiden name was Caret,’ Dame Beatrice pointed out.
‘A bit unusual, perhaps, but that’s all.’
‘Unusual, perhaps, as a surname, but not unusual in the printing trade.’
‘In the printing —? Oh, that little upside down V or Y which means something has been left out and is to be inserted? You don’t suppose Caxton is proposing to insert a dagger into Lawrence, do you?’
‘I suppose, going on the evidence of his not infrequent visits to his sister, that Mr Caret was fond of her, and you and I, I recollect, once had a conversation on the relationship between brothers and sisters.’
‘But you think Coralie, not Lawrence, committed the murder. Lawrence only tried to cover it up by burying the body. That’s your theory, isn’t it?’
‘We once mentioned Macbeth. There is no doubt – there was none in the troubled mind of Lady Macbeth – that both husband and wife shared guilt over the murder of King Duncan. In the case under review, just as Duncan’s death was carried out at the instigation of the woman, but by the hand of the man, so the murder of Mrs Lawrence could have been at the instigation of the man, but carried out by the woman.’
‘Well, she’s strong enough, as we’ve said before, but you thought, after you’d met her in Blackpool, that she was one of these large, bonhomous women.’
‘Henry the Eighth, by all accounts, was a large, bonhomous man. It did not prevent him from turning into a monster when monstrous behaviour suited his purpose.’
‘And Coralie’s purpose?’
‘As I believe we have said before, after Sir Anthony’s death Lawrence had become a very wealthy man. I still think Lawrence wanted his wife out of the way because she knew – or he thought she knew – something about that death which, if it were told to the police, might incriminate him, and I think that Coralie wanted her out of the way…’
‘To clear a path to a re-marriage with Lawrence?’
‘If, indeed, they were ever divorced. We have only Coralie’s word that they were.’
‘No wonder, if Lawrence spotted Caxton at that rehearsal to which Clarice brought him, our Macheath refused to shave off his beard for the performances! I must sleep on this. You offer food for thought, dear Mrs Croc.’
Dame Beatrice did not attend the dress rehearsal proper. It went off so well that Denbigh was delighted, Laura filled with forebodings and the cast jubilant and self-congratulatory. There was only one hitch and that was merely temporary. The dressing-rooms at the town hall were at floor-level, not stage level. To reach the stage and its wings, therefore, the actors had to mount a short flight of stairs from the back of the O.P. side and pass the back-drop if their entrance was on the Prompt side.
Before the ingenious erection of carpentry and cardboard which represented the hangman’s cart had been put together, therefore, the width of these stairs had been carefully measured and a wooden ramp made so that the contraption, mounted on perambulator wheels, could be pushed up on to the stage without damage to its flimsy sides. The perambulator wheels were disguised by curtains of hessian on which large, tumbril-like wheels had been painted by the indefatiguable students, and the cart had no back to it, as only its front elevation would be seen from the auditorium. The ‘cart’ was kept off the stage until what should have been the last scene in the opera as John Gay wrote it.
In Denbigh’s production, between this last scene and the preceding one in which, confronted by four more of his wives – ‘Four women more, Captain, with a child apiece’ – Macheath announces that he is prepared to be executed – ‘Here, tell the Sheriff’s officers I am ready’ – the curtain was to come down and to rise again to show Macheath standing on the fatal cart with his arms pinioned, a white cap over his face and head and the rope (a loop without a running noose) already around his neck. At the announcement of the reprieve, white cap and noose were to be whipped off and his arms ceremoniously freed, although there actually would be no knots to untie, as that might hold up the action.
All this had been carefully rehearsed, but, as it was not quite finished, without the cart until the pre-dress rehearsal. As the reprieve marked the end of the opera except for the last song and dance, the final scene came so late in the evening, when the cast were almost blasphemous with exhaustion, that it had been run through ‘just for the sake of the motions’ as Laura put it, and the cart left on the stage, from which the stage-hands removed it during the College dinner-hour on the morning of the dress rehearsal proper. However, when the time came to get it on stage again for the dress rehearsal, there occurred an unseemly and maddening hitch, the more annoying in that, apart from it, the rehearsal went well.
‘Hey!’ said one of the volunteer stage-hands, a student who had helped to construct the cart. ‘Some funny ass has taken the wheels off! How are we going to trundle it on to the stage?’
‘Manhandle it, I suppose,’ said his friends.
‘Not on your life. No room at the sides of those stairs. We’d break it. Except for the actual platform where the bloke stands, the thing’s only made of cardboard, hessian and papier-mâché. Slip the word to the players. The chap will just have to stand at the right spot on the stage and imagine he’s on the cart.’
‘The noose won’t reach his neck and I don’t think we’ve got a longer piece of rope.’
‘He’ll have to do without a noose, then, won’t he? After all, this is only a rehearsal. We must make sure it’s all right on Thursday, though.’
‘He won’t mind about the cart. He’s always jibbed a bit at that rope round his
neck. Think he’d got a guilty conscience or something, wouldn’t you?’
‘Well, let him know. I’ll have a scout round and see what’s been done with those wheels. I’d like to lay hands on the blighter who perpetrated the merry jest, that’s all.’
After the rehearsal Denbigh took the matter philosophically.
‘If we don’t find the wheels – and we’re certainly not going to turn the back of the stage and the dressing-rooms upside-down tonight,’ he said, ‘we’ve got Tuesday and Wednesday to find some more wheels and for you chaps to fix them on. If the worst comes to the worst, I can tip off the cast to go back to the original script and have the reprieve from the condemned hold instead of from the gallows. It isn’t, to my mind, such good theatre, but at least we should be carrying out the author’s intentions, and that, I suppose, is something.’
On the following morning he telephoned the town hall and was answered by the porter on duty. He requested that the missing wheels should be traced if the porter could spare the time. As Denbigh had conducted public concerts in the town hall on previous occasions and was known to be moderately generous with his pourboires, the porter promised to do his best and to ring the College if the missing wheels came to light. They did, and were found on the electricians’ gallery.
‘One of your students having a bit of a game, eh, sir?’ asked the town hall porter.
‘Possibly. Well, now you’ve found them, you might put the wheels in the principal dressing-room and lock the door, would you? The students who will call at about half-past one to put the wheels on again will show you my visiting-card. That will prove their bona fides. All right?’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘And perhaps you’ll just keep an eye on the cart when the students have re-affixed the wheels?’
‘I’ll do that, sir. In fact, I’ll do better than that, sir. If that prop – we call ’em props, sir, these gadgets and things as are needed on stage, sir – if that prop, when the wheels is on, will go up that ramp what covers the steps on to the stage, sir, that prop will go in my cubby ’ole. Suppose I was to wheel it in there when the young gents have put the wheels on it again, sir – it’s no height, so it won’t catch the top of my door – and lock the door on it when I ain’t in there, sir? How would that be?’
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