Light Thickens

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘Blow!’

  He blew and the foam floated about, a mass of iridescent bubbles.

  ‘Stay awake for three minutes longer,’ said her voice. She had evidently pulled out the plug. ‘Come on. Out.’

  He was dried. The sensation was laughable. He woke sufficiently to fumble himself into his pyjamas and then into bed.

  ‘“Sleep,”’ he said, ‘“that knits up the ravelled sleave of care.”’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Emily, a thousand miles away.

  He slept.

  IV

  Across the river, not very far away as the crow flies, the theatre trembled with the rebirth of the play. The actors were gone but Winter Morris and his staff worked away in the front-of-house. Telephones rang. Bookings were made. Royalty were coming and someone from Buck House would soon appear to settle the arrangements. The police and Security people would make decisions. Chief Superintendent Alleyn was coming. The Security pundits thought it a good idea if he were to be put in the next box to Royalty. Chief Superintendent Alleyn received the order philosophically if not jubilantly and asked for a second seat later in the season when he could watch the play rather than the house.

  ‘Of course, of course, my dear chap,’ Winty gushed. ‘Any time. Anywhere. Management seat. Our pleasure.’

  Flower shop. Cleaners. Press. Programmes. Biographical notes. Notes on the play. Nothing about superstitions.

  Winter Morris read through the proofs and could find nothing to crack the eggshell sensitivity of any of the actors. Until he came to the piece on Banquo.

  ‘Mr Bruce Barrabell, too long an absentee from the West End.’ He won’t relish that, thought Winty, and changed it to ‘…makes a welcome return to…’

  He went through the whole thing again and then rang up the printers and asked if the Royal Programme was ready and when he could see a copy.

  Winter Morris’s black curls were now iron-grey. He had been Business Manager at the Dolphin ever since it was restored and he remembered the play about Shakespeare by Peregrine Jay that twenty years ago was accompanied by a murder.

  Seems a long time ago now, thought Winty. Things have gone rather smoothly since then. He touched wood with his plump white finger. Of course we’re in a nice financial position, permanently endowed by the late Mr Conducis. Almost too secure, you might think. I don’t, he added with a fat chuckle. He lit a cigar and returned to his work.

  He had dealt with his in-tray. There was only an advertisement left from a wine merchant. He picked it up and dropped it in his WPB, exposing a folded paper at the bottom of his tray.

  Winty was an extremely tidy man and liked to say he knew exactly where everything lay on or in his desk and what it was about. He did not recognize this folded sheet. It was, he noted, a follow-up sheet of his office letter-paper. He frowned and opened it.

  The typed message read: ‘murderers sons in your co.’

  Winter Morris sat perfectly still, his cigar in his left hand and in his right this outrageous statement.

  Presently he turned and observed on a small table the typewriter sometimes used by his secretary for taking down dictated letters. He inserted a sheet of paper and typed the statement.

  This, he decided, corresponds exactly. The monstrous truth declared itself. It had been executed in his office. Somebody had come in, sat down and infamously typed it. No apostrophes or full stop and no capital letter. Because the writer was in a hurry? Or ignorant? And the motive?

  Winty put both typed messages into an envelope and wrote the date on it. He unlocked his private drawer, dropped the envelope in and re-locked it.

  The son of a murderer?

  Winty consulted his neatly arranged, fabulous memory. Since the casting-list was completed he mentally ticked off each player until he came to William Smith. He remembered his mother, her nervous manner, her hesitation, her obvious relief. And diving backwards, at last he remembered the Harcourt-Smith case and its outcome. Three years ago, was it? Six victims, and all of them girls! Mutilated, beheaded. Broadmoor for life.

  If that’s the answer, Winty thought, I’ve forgotten the case. But, by God, I’ll find out who wrote this message and I won’t rest till I’ve faced him with it. Now then!

  He thought very carefully for some time and then rang his secretary’s room.

  ‘Mr Morris?’ said her voice.

  ‘Still here, are you, Mrs Abrams? Will you come in, please?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  Seconds later the inner door opened and a middle-aged lady came in, carrying her notebook.

  ‘You just caught me,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right. I’m in no hurry.’

  ‘Sit down. I want to test your memory, Mrs Abrams.’

  She sat down.

  ‘When,’ he asked, ‘did you last see the bottom of my in-tray?’

  ‘Yesterday morning, Mr Morris. Ten-fifteen. Teatime. I checked through the contents and added the morning’s mail.’

  ‘You saw the bottom?’

  ‘Certainly. I took everything out. There was a brochure from the wine people. I thought you might like to see it.’

  ‘Quite. And nothing else?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She waited for a moment and then said incredulously: ‘There’s nothing lost?’

  ‘No. There’s something found. A typed message. It’s on our follow-up paper and it’s typed on that machine over there. No envelope.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. Where was I? While you were in here?’

  ‘On the phone. Security people. First night arrangements.’

  ‘Ah yes. Mrs Abrams, was this room unoccupied at any time, and unlocked, between then and now? I lunched at my club.’

  ‘It was locked. You locked it.’

  ‘Before that?’

  ‘Er – I think you went out for a few minutes. At eleven.’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘The toilet,’ she said modestly. ‘I heard the door open and close.’

  ‘Oh yes. And later?’

  ‘Let me think. No, apart from that it was never unoccupied and unlocked. Wait!’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Abrams.’

  ‘I had put a sheet of our follow-up paper in the little machine here in case you should require a memo.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You did not. It is not there now. How peculiar.’

  ‘Yes, very.’ He thought things over for a moment and then said: ‘Your memory, Mrs Abrams, is exceptional. Do I understand that the only time it could have been done was when I left the room for – for at least five minutes? Would you not have heard the typewriter?’

  ‘I was using my own machine in my own room, Mr Morris. No.’

  ‘And the time?’

  ‘I heard Big Ben.’

  ‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’ He hesitated. He contemplated Mrs Abrams doubtfully. ‘I’m very much obliged. I – thank you, Mrs Abrams.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Morris.’

  She closed the door behind her. I wonder, she thought, why he doesn’t tell me what was in the message.

  On the other side of the door he thought: I would have liked to tell her but – no. The fewer the better.

  He sat before his desk and thought carefully and calmly about this disruptive event. He was unaware of the previous occurrences: Peregrine’s accident; the head in the King’s room; the head in the meat-dish; the rat in Rangi’s bag. They were not in his department. So that he had nothing to relate the message to. A murderer’s son in the cast! he thought. Preposterous! What murderer? What son?

  He thought of the Harcourt-Smith case. He remembered that the sensational papers made a great thing of the wife’s having no inkling of Harcourt-Smith’s second ‘personality’ and, yes, of his little son, who was six years old.

  It’s our William, he thought. Blow me down flat but it’s our William that’s being got at. And after a further agitation: I’ll do nothing. It’s awkward, of course, but until the show
’s been running for some time it’s better not to meddle. If then. I don’t know who’s typed it and I don’t want to know. Yet.

  He looked at his day-to-day calendar. A red ring neatly encircled April 23. Shakespeare’s birthday. Opening night. Only a week left, he thought.

  He was not a pious man but he caught himself wondering for the moment about the protective comfort of a phylactery and wishing he could experience it.

  CHAPTER 5

  Fifth Week.

  Dress Rehearsals and First Night

  The days before the opening night seemed to hurry and to darken. There were no disasters and no untoward happenings, only a rushing immediacy. The actors arrived early for rehearsals. Some who were not called came to the last of the piecemeal sessions and watched closely and with a painful intensity.

  The first of the dress rehearsals, really a technical rehearsal, lasted all day with constant stoppages for lights and effects. The management had a meal sent in. It was set up in the rehearsal room: soup, cold meat, potatoes in their jackets, salad and coffee. Some members of the cast helped themselves when they had an opportunity. Others, Maggie for one, had nothing.

  The props for the banquet were all there: a boar’s head with an apple in its jaws and glass eyes. Plastic chickens. A soup tureen that would exude steam when a serving-man removed the lid. Peregrine looked under the covers but the contents were all right: glued down. Loose: wine jugs; goblets; a huge candelabrum in the centre of the table.

  The stoppages for lights were continual. Dialogue. Stop. ‘Catch them going up. Re-focus it. Is it fixed? This mustn’t happen again.’

  The witches had each a tiny blue torch concealed in her clothes. They switched these on when Macbeth spoke to them. They had to be firmly sewn and accurately pointed at their faces.

  Plain sailing for a bit but still the feeling of pressure and anxiety. But that, after all, was normal. The actors played ‘within themselves’. Or almost. They got an interrupted run. The tension was extreme. The theatre was full of marvellous but ominous sounds. The air was thick with menace.

  The arrival at Macbeth’s castle in the evening was the last seen of daylight for a long time. Exquisite lighting: a mellow and tranquil scene. Banquo’s beautiful voice saying ‘the air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses.’ The sudden change when the doors rolled back and the piper skirled wildly and Lady Macbeth drew the King into the castle.

  From now on it is night, for the dawn, after the murder, was delayed and hardly declared itself and before the murder of Banquo it is dusk: ‘The West yet glimmers with some streaks of day,’ says the watchful assassin.

  Banquo is murdered.

  After the banquet the Macbeths are alone together, the last time the audience sees them so, and the night is ‘almost at odds with morning, which is which’. Otherwise, torchlight, lamplight, witchlight, right on until the English scene, out-of-doors and sunny with a good King on the throne.

  When Macbeth reappears he is aged, dishevelled, half-demented, deserted by all but a few who cannot escape. Dougal Macdougal would be wonderful. He played these last abysmal scenes now well under their final pitch, but with every wayward change indicated. He was a wounded animal with a snarl or two left in him. ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…’ The speech tolled its way to the end like a death knell. Macduff and Malcolm, the lairds and their troops arrived. Now, at last, Macbeth and Macduff met. The challenge. The fight. The exit and the scream cut short.

  The brief scene in which Old Siward speaks the final conventional merciless word on his son’s death, and then Macduff enters, downstage, and behind him, Seyton with Macbeth’s head on his claidheamh-mor.

  Malcolm, up on the stairway among his soldiers, is caught by the setting sun. They turn their heads and see The Head.

  ‘Hail gobbledy-gook,’ shout the soldiers, avoiding the tag. Superstitious, thought Peregrine.

  ‘Curtain,’ he said. ‘But don’t bring it down. Hold it. Thank you. Lights. I think they’re a little too juicy at the end. Too pink. Can you give us something a bit less obvious? Straw perhaps. It’s too much: “Exit into sunset.” You know? Right. Settle down, everybody. Bring some chairs on. I won’t keep the actors very long. Settle down.’

  He went through the play. ‘Witches, all raise your arms when you jump.

  ‘Details. Nothing of great importance except on the Banquo’s ghost exit. You were too close to Lennox. Your cloak moved in the draught.’

  ‘Can they leave a wider gap?’ Banquo asked.

  ‘I can,’ said Lennox. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Right. Any more questions?’ Predictably, Banquo had. His scene with Fleance and Macbeth. The lighting. ‘It feels false. I have to move into it.’

  ‘Come on a bit further on your entrance. Nothing to stop you, is there?’

  ‘It feels false.’

  ‘It doesn’t give that impression,’ said Peregrine very firmly. ‘Any other questions?’

  William piped up. ‘When I’m stabbed,’ he said. ‘I kind of hold the wound and then collapse. Could the murderer catch me before I fall?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Peregrine. ‘He’s meant to.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said the murderer. ‘I missed it. I was too late.’

  They ploughed on. Attention to details. Getting everything right, down to the smallest move, the fractional pause. Changes of pace building towards a line of climax. Peregrine spent three-quarters of an hour over the cauldron scene. The entire cast were required to whisper the repeated rhythmic chant as in a round. ‘Double, double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble.’

  At last they moved on. There were no more questions. Peregrine thanked them. ‘Same time tomorrow,’ he said, ‘and I hope no stops. You’ve been very patient. Bless you all. Good night.’

  II

  But again next day there were stops. A number of technical hitches occurred during the final dress rehearsal, mostly to do with the lights. They were all cleared up. Peregrine had said to the cast: ‘Keep something in the larder. Don’t reach the absolute tops. Play within yourselves. Conserve your energy. Save the consummate thing for the performance. We know you can do it, my dears. Don’t exhaust yourselves.’

  They obeyed him but there were one or two horrors.

  Lennox missed an entrance and arrived looking as if the Devil himself was after him.

  Duncan lost his lines, had to be prompted and was slow to recover. Nina Gaythorne dried completely and looked terrorstricken. William went straight on with his own lines. ‘And must they all be hanged that swear and lie?’ and she answered like an automaton.

  ‘It was a dose of stage fright,’ she said when they came off. ‘I didn’t know where I was or what I said. Oh, this play. This play.’

  ‘Never mind, Miss Gaythorne,’ said William, taking her hand. ‘It won’t happen again. I’ll be with you.’

  ‘That’s something,’ she said, half-laughing and half-crying.

  At the end they rehearsed the curtain call. The ‘dead’ characters on the OP side and the live ones on the Prompt. Then the Macbeths alone and finally the man himself. Alone.

  Peregrine took his notes and thanked his cast. ‘Change but don’t go,’ he said. ‘Bad dress. Good show,’ quoted the stage director cheerfully. Are we getting them down tomorrow?’

  ‘No. They’ll be right. We’ll make it a technical rehearsal now,’ said Peregrine. ‘We’ll run through the lighting and effects without the actors tomorrow.’

  He put this to the company.

  ‘If we get it rotten-perfect now, you can sleep in tomorrow morning. It’s just a matter of working straight on from cue to cue with nothing between. All right? Any objections? Banquo?’

  ‘I?’ said Banquo who had been ready to make one. ‘Objections? Oh no. No.’

  They finished at five to two in the morning. The management had provided beer, whisky and sherry. Some of them left without taking anything. William was dispatched in a taxi with Angus and Menteith who lived mor
e or less in the same direction. Maggie slipped away as soon as her sleepwalking scene was over and she had seen Peregrine. Fleance went after the murder, Banquo after the cauldron scene and Duncan on his arrival at the castle. There were not many hold-ups. A slight re-arrangement of the company-fights at the end. Macbeth and Macduff went like clockwork.

  Peregrine waited till they were all gone and the nightwatchman was on his rounds. The theatre was dark except for the dim working light. Dark, coldly stuffy. Waiting.

  He stood for a moment in front of the curtain and saw the caretaker’s torch moving about the circle. He felt empty and deadly tired. Nothing untoward had happened.

  ‘Good night,’ he called.

  ‘Good night, guv’nor.’

  He went through the curtain into backstage and past the menacing shapes of scenery, ill-defined by the faraway working light. Where was his torch? Never mind, he’d got all his papers under his arm fastened to a clapperboard and he would go home. Past the masking pieces, cautiously along the Prompt side.

  Something caught hold of his foot.

  He fell forward and a jolt wrenched at his former injury and made him cry out.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked the scarcely audible voice in the circle.

  He was all right. He still had hold of his clapperboard. He’d caught his foot in one of the light cables. Up he got, cautiously. ‘All serene,’ he shouted.

  ‘Are you quite sure?’ asked an anxious voice close at hand.

  ‘God! Who the hell are you?’

  ‘It’s me, guv.’

  ‘Props! What the blazes are you doing? Where are you?’

  ‘I’m ‘ere. Thought I’d ‘ang abaht and make sure no one was up to no tricks. I must of dozed off. Wait a tick.’

  A scrabbling noise and he came fuzzily into view round the corner of a dark object. A strong smell of whisky accompanied him. ‘It’s the murdered lady’s chair,’ he said. ‘I must have dropped off in it. Fancy.’

  ‘Fancy.’

  Props moved forward and a glassy object rolled from under his feet.

  ‘Bottle,’ he said coyly. ‘Empty.’