‘Still, we had to act quickly yesterday afternoon. When I returned to the theatre to become Shorton once more, I was still in a state of confusion after my wrestling match with that clapping idiot, so Susan declared that the revolver was also missing, which allowed me to regain some sort of composure and get you out of our hair for a diversionary time, sergeant. No one was any the wiser. Tonight, though, well, you saw how well it went.’
The longer Shorton had spoken, the more Slevin realised how much the man had been affected by what he had done. He had no doubt that, before the idea of revenge was planted inside his head by his lover, he had been a man of normal sensibilities, a man who would baulk at any suggestion of wrongdoing the way a non-swimmer would shy away from the water’s edge. But once he had been thrown in, once he had become a part of this gruesome undertaking, his feelings had gradually become numbed until the distinction between justice and revenge became completely blurred. He had allowed the rôle to take over.
‘Why did you break into the Public Hall and daub the place with threats?’
Susan Coupe spoke, her voice low and tremulous. ‘We needed to find the slides. Destroy them. That was my idea. But when James found it impossible to get into the safe, he came up with the idea of daubing the walls. If the police thought Throstle had been killed for a crazed religious purpose, it would divert attention from the real motive for his death. And of course lay blame on others when his witch of a wife met her end.’
Shorton held up his hands in an attitude of surrender. ‘I suppose we will now be taken into custody?’
Slevin nodded.
Before he could move, Shorton had reached into his coat pocket and extracted a revolver, which he levelled at Slevin’s head. Constable Bowery, who was standing in the wings, made a move towards him, but Shorton gave a warning yell. ‘Stay where you are, constable!’
Jonathan Keele stepped forward. ‘James. This is foolish. The gun is a prop. It’s a futile gesture.’
Shorton smiled and raised the revolver. He pointed it at one of the painted skittles on the backdrop and fired. There was a loud report and the scenery swayed as the bullet tore through the skittle, leaving a gaping hole and the stench of cordite in the air.
‘You damned fool!’ Slevin shouted. ‘Give me the bloody thing before someone is hurt.’
But Shorton, a look of manic confidence now spread across his face, moved quickly towards Susan Coupe. ‘The presence of police made me nervous,’ he said. ‘Better to have some form of insurance, is it not?’ He waved the gun before them. ‘Come on, Susan!’
She gave Slevin a look before allowing Shorton to lead her slowly through the disrupted scenery that had represented the Wheatsheaf.
‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ Shorton added. ‘Will Denver runs away even though he is innocent. Whereas we . . .’
Jonathan Keele walked towards them, his right hand extended. ‘If you don’t know what to do with that,’ he said, ‘I’ll take care of it for you.’
Slevin recognised it as one of the lines from the play. A line delivered by the detective, Samuel Baxter. Morgan-Drew moved to restrain the ageing actor.
‘Jonathan! Please!’
Shorton laughed. ‘Thank you, Jonathan, but I do know what to do with it, much obliged for your advice.’
He kept a wary eye on Keele as he and Susan backed away towards the far wings. But Keele kept moving forward.
‘Oh Master Will!’ he said, adopting now the rural accents of the faithful Jaikes. ‘I can’t tell you what she’s had to go through! It’s been a terrible hard fight for her, but she’s borne up like an angel.’
Shorton blinked, as if he had misheard what the old actor had said. ‘Jonathan? Are you mad? This is no play and this is no prop. Please do not make the mistake of thinking that we can all take our bows at the end and share a convivial drink together.’
Susan Coupe stood silent, like an obedient child, her head bowed low.
Slevin moved slowly to stand alongside Keele. ‘Leave this to me, sir,’ he whispered. ‘He’s killed three times. He may have a taste for it now.’
Jonathan Keele shook his head. ‘I will be faithful to him to the end. It’s what Jaikes would have done.’
Slevin thought at first he was talking about Shorton, for the character Jaikes was indeed the epitome of fidelity, never wavering in his loyalty to Wilfred Denver. But he saw the old man glance across at Morgan-Drew, who was watching with a barely concealed sense of horror.
‘Jonathan! It’s not what I want! Herbert is gone! He’s gone the way everyone goes. Sacrificing yourself for some ideal of fidelity – it’s futile.’
Shorton held the gun steady, aiming at Keele but keeping a wary eye on Slevin and Bowery. But the old actor inched forward once more, in small, measured steps that took him closer and closer to the fugitive lovers.
‘Jonathan! That is close enough!’ There was a wavering in Shorton’s voice now. ‘Please. You don’t want to die!’
‘He that cuts off twenty years of life cuts off so many years of fearing death.’
‘The philosophy of the fatalist, old man! And a false philosophy at that. Cassius didn’t mean those words. He was overwrought after killing Caesar, that’s all.’
Slevin saw Susan Coupe reach up to touch Keele’s face in a tender gesture of affection which distracted Shorton, who turned to her briefly. This was all Slevin needed.
‘Bowery!’ he screamed as he launched himself towards Shorton.
A startled look flashed across the actor’s face as he frantically raised the gun and fired in the direction of the detective, who ducked. The bullet tore through his left ear, sending blood splashing wildly into the face of Jonathan Keele, whom Constable Bowery was even now dragging backwards by the stiff collar he was wearing. A woman’s scream ripped through the theatre as the full weight of Slevin’s body slammed into Shorton, sending him crashing through the stage set, the gun falling to the floor and sliding along the wooden boards. Shorton lay on his back, blood streaming from a gash on his forehead. His eyes flickered, and as he tried to raise his head from the mess of shattered scenery all around them, something drew him back and he gave a long, slow exhalation, turning his head to one side, where Slevin saw the thick wooden splinter from one of the shattered frames planted deep in the back of his neck. His eyes were screwed shut in an agony caused not merely by the pain of the injury.
Quickly, Slevin removed his coat, and with a show of making the man more comfortable, spread it over the terrible wound, so that it was now hidden from view.
Susan Coupe rushed towards her lover and dropped to her knees beside him. She touched his head wound carefully and looked around frantically for something to wipe away the blood. Finally she reached down to tear a strip from her own dress, the dress Nelly Denver wore in the play’s opening scene, and began to clean the blood from his face.
Slevin stood up and reached a hand to his left ear. Only now was it beginning to sting.
Behind him, Bowery was helping Jonathan Keele to his feet, the old man wheezing and fighting hard to catch his breath, his hands pressed hard against his stomach.
Suddenly he heard James Shorton begin to speak. His voice was hoarse and faint, and the words came out haltingly, with none of the bravado Slevin had heard earlier.
‘Ah Nell! My bonnie, bonnie girl . . .’
Susan Coupe threw herself onto his heaving chest, clutching at him with a desperate longing. It was as if she were trying to claw her way into his body.
‘I love you!’ she said. ‘I love you still.’
Morgan-Drew whispered in Slevin’s unwounded ear, ‘They are now Wilfred and Nelly Denver. These are lines from the play.’
Her voice was muffled, but there was no mistaking what she was saying.
‘Never mind the past, dear. Come home and make a fresh start tomorrow!’
Shorton coughed, and blood dribbled from his mouth. His eyes began to turn in on themselves and he laid a hand on Susan’s head. ‘The sweetest and trues
t wife a man ever had . . . I can’t stop, I’m going down, down as fast as I can go . . .’
His breathing grew even more laboured, and he seemed to make a Herculean effort to refocus his gaze on Susan Coupe for the last time. She raised her head and gazed down at him with her eyes filled with tears. He licked his crusted lips and spoke haltingly, and she brought her ear close to his mouth so that only she could hear what he was saying. Then his lips suddenly parted and remained thus, and his hand slid from his lover’s head. James Shorton lay still and silent in death.
Susan Coupe did not throw herself on his lifeless body. Instead, she forced herself to her feet and turned to her audience.
‘He was my Sir Galahad, you know. His last words will act as his epitaph – I will make sure of that.’
Then she took a deep breath and recited the passage from Tennyson that Shorton had uttered before every performance:
‘How sweet are looks that ladies bend
On whom their favours fall!
For them I battle till the end,
To save from shame and thrall.’
She lowered her head and waited for the applause, but none came.
EPILOGUE
‘Why did you put yourself in such danger, Jonathan?’
As the train pulled out of the station, the two actors sat back in their first-class compartment and looked out at the snow-covered scene. Farther down the train, in third class, the remaining members of the Morgan-Drew Touring Company were giving their own views on the drama that had unfolded before their eyes only a few days earlier. They had all agreed that the tour should continue, in the best traditions of the profession, and so now they were en route for Liverpool, where they would transform the stage of the aptly named Shakespeare Theatre into Ancient Rome.
Jonathan Keele allowed the rattle of the train to fill the silence before answering.
‘I am dying, Benjamin. Soon I will be with my dearest Catherine again. I failed her so badly, you know.’
‘Jonathan. We have been over this so many times. The doctors diagnosed melancholia of puberty. There was nothing you could have done while she was being cared for in that place.’
‘I could have visited more often.’
‘You were in America, as I recall.’
‘Yes. When she took her life. I should have been here! If I had, then she would have confided in me.’ His voice began to crack, and tears were beginning to glisten in his eyes. ‘And I thought, now that I know my own end is near, why not take this opportunity to hasten the exit? I so dearly wanted Shorton to fire that gun.’
Benjamin shook his head and gazed through the window. Far off, he could see the stark winding-heads of the coalmines, black skeletal frames against the pure white of the snow that covered the fields and the endless rows of houses. He thought of Herbert, and how he had once more been completely taken in by what he thought was something precious and dear. Then he thought of the one Herbert had tried to blackmail.
‘Poor Susan,’ he said softly. ‘I wonder what will happen to her?’
The old actor shook his head. ‘I fear she will follow my dearest Catherine.’
‘Surely not?’
‘The girl isn’t strong enough. She will face trial for conspiracy to murder, but given the evidence so ably gathered by Sergeant Slevin, a strong defence should ensure she will escape the clutches of the hangman.’ He gave a long and heavy sigh. ‘But she will doubtless face a prolonged period of incarceration. And she has already been incarcerated for so very long, has she not? Those places are diabolical.’
Both men remained silent for many minutes. Soon they would be in Liverpool, where they would recreate the might and the turmoil of Ancient Rome. But there was nothing grand, nothing spectacular, about the scene both of them brought creatively to mind.
The stage was bare, and the darkness was almost complete, save for the thick iron bars of a noisome, silent cell backlit by a flickering flame. A young woman was lying on the chill, damp floor, rearranging the hair on a child’s doll and humming a lullaby to herself. She stopped as the shadows cast by the flames seemed to creep upon the doll until its tiny face was shrouded in black.
Then she looked out into the auditorium, and screamed.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Seán Costello for his sterling editorial work in helping to prepare the novel for publication.
I would also like to thank the University of Dundee, the City of Discovery Campaign and Birlinn Ltd for establishing the Dundee International Book Prize and providing encouragement for writers everywhere.
Dundee International Book Prize 2010
Act of Murder by Alan Wright is the winner of the Dundee International Book Prize 2010. The prize is the richest in the UK for new authors. For more details on the annual competition email [email protected].
The Dundee International Book Prize is a joint venture between the City of Discovery Campaign, the University of Dundee and Polygon, the fiction imprint of Birlinn Ltd. It is supported by the Apex Hotel, Dundee.
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