Thomas considered. ‘Nothing much except Scamnum, sir.’
Another car flashed past and then another. Away to the right, along some ridge of downland, a succession of gliding, swerving lights sped westwards towards Hampshire. ‘Push along,’ said Appleby quietly.
Thomas pushed along, only to draw up abruptly on the crown of a little bridge, the Bentley’s bonnet almost touching the running-board of a dapper coup‚ awkwardly stalled in the middle of the road. Its sole occupant was a man, an opera-cloak on his shoulders, the immortal invention of M Gibus on his head, and a look of uncommon anxiety discernible on his face. He was thrusting angrily at his self-starter.
‘Hullo, Happy!’ The gentleman in the opera-hat jumped at the voice from the darkness. ‘Thomas, this is Mr Happy Hutton; as part of your education – mark him well.’ Appleby leaned across the Bentley and swivelled the spot-light. Mr Happy Hutton’s anxiety was clearly revealed as changed to abject terror; his engine spluttered into life, his clutch engaged, he lifted his opera-hat nervously, and bounced on into the night.
Appleby chuckled. ‘Happy’s always polite, even when scared stiff. Useful information, Thomas, but not our quarry. Push along.’
This time Thomas pushed along unimpeded. The remaining miles melted away. The Bentley pulsed up the south drive of Scamnum Court.
2
Take a revolver down to the far end of the garden for a little target-practice and your neighbours (unless they be timorous folk) will merely complain of your ‘potting away.’ Let fly at someone you dislike in the street and the resulting disturbance will be supposed by nine bystanders out of ten to come from a motor-bicycle. But fire a revolver in a raftered hall and you will produce the equivalent of a thunder-clap.
The unknown – presently to be revealed as death – had irrupted upon the Scamnum theatricals with an effect of astounding violence; and it was because of this, perhaps, that the audience felt everything that followed as pitched incongruously low. The shot brought several people to their feet; brought cries from others. But the audience was quickly still again – waiting and watching. They saw Melville Clay hesitate in front of the curtain towards which he had been advancing with his rapier – hesitate with the actor’s instinct to gain time when something has gone wrong. Then he took a swift step forward and vanished through the curtain. An agitated voice called out ‘My Lord!’ and a moment later the Duchess rose and slipped quietly off stage.
A minute went by and then the Duke of Horton, King Claudius’ wig limp in his hand, appeared from the rear stage and said: ‘There has been a serious misadventure: please all stay where you are.’ A murmur – acquiescence, support, concern – answered him as he disappeared. A few people began to whisper, as if in church; most were silent; but all heads turned sharply when Giles Gott, still in his costume as Dumb-show King, walked rapidly down the hall, spoke to the fireman at the farther door, and returned silently behind the scenes once more. Five minutes later the Duke appeared again. With an ominous slowness he traversed the whole depth of the front stage and it was seen that he intended to speak to his mother. He dropped down from the stage, and taking her hand, spoke earnestly a couple of sentences. Then he climbed back to the stage and faced the audience. The hall was very silent.
‘I have bad news. The pistol-shot you all heard was aimed at Lord Auldearn. He is dead.’ The Duke paused to let the ripple of horror produced by the spare announcement subside. Then he added: ‘For the moment, nobody must leave the hall. And it will be best that none of you should come upon the stage or behind the scenes. I ask you to stay where you are until the police arrive.’
Again there was a docile murmur, this time not a little awed. A guest of consequence – a stray ambassador who had turned up at the last moment – called out: ‘We will do just what you direct.’ And at this the Duke nodded and retreated again.
By this time the crowd in the hall was conscious that it was behaving well in difficult circumstances; that it was helping to handle an appalling situation efficiently. The lighting had not been changed and for the rows of people sitting in shadow there was perhaps something hypnoidal in the empty stage with its sharply focused arc-lamps; everybody continued to sit still as the minutes went by. It was as if that peculiar merging of consciousness which comes upon an audience watching drama had been furthered rather than broken up by the advent of veritable catastrophe: the audience for a long half-hour behaved as a single impassive spectator. Only a judicious murmur of conversation was kept up here and there to minimize the strain.
There was little to observe. The Duke came back to speak for a few minutes to his mother; he was followed by Gervase and then by Dr Biddle, who had succeeded in walking on as an attendant lord and who now brought the Dowager a drink in his everyday capacity as medical attendant to the family. After he had retired old Max Cope made a slightly disconcerting appearance on the upper stage, surveying the hall placidly, palette in hand, as if nothing whatever had happened. Presently he was joined by Melville Clay – clad in a sombre dressing-gown, as if he kept a stock about him for all emergencies – and led off. A minute later Clay emerged below, crossed the front stage and dropped down beside the Dowager. He sat down and talked quietly, the soothing murmur of his musical voice audible in snatches to the people near by. Then he went away again, returned with Max in tow, set the old man safely down beside the old lady, and disappeared once more. Twice a telephone buzzer could just be heard behind the stage; the murmur of voices there occasionally rose into a half distinguishable phrase. Then at eleven thirty-five the door at the rear of the hall opened and a police sergeant and three constables entered, ushered by Bagot.
One constable stopped by the door, the others walked rapidly down the hall, eyes front. They disappeared behind the scenes.
And that was all. That – several people remarked next day, with the changed attitude that the chasm of sleep will bring – was all that the audience got from the violent death of a Lord Chancellor. That and an extra cup of coffee, for at eleven forty-five footmen wheeled in quantities of this decorous refreshment. For fifteen minutes cups were handed and accepted; sandwiches were handed and either declined as frivolous or consumed as a species of funeral baked meat according to the temperament of the individual. At three minutes past midnight the Duke appeared for the last time. He was brief and quiet as before, but in his voice some subtle change – it might have been relief – was distinguishable.
‘It is not necessary that you should stay longer. Will those of you who are stopping with us go back to the house? There will be no need for you to stay up longer than you want to. For the others the cars are coming round now. It will be best that we on this side remain in the hall a little longer.’ Again the Duke descended to speak to his mother; he secured two ladies to look after her and then steered Max Cope behind the scenes. The guests filed out. It was the end of the Tragedy of Hamlet played at Scamnum Court
When the last tail-coat had vanished and the doors were shut once more the players began to percolate by ones and twos into the main body of the hall – foraging. One of the big coffee urns was empty, but the other was full; they fell to. They ate the sandwiches without delicacy; theirs had been the chief shock and they were beyond fancied proprieties. The two footmen in their Tudor liveries, together with. the Duke’s man, handed salvers with something like imperturbability. The two dressers from London sat in a corner and sipped and nibbled, scared and a little indignant. The police sergeant had gone off with one constable – for the orthodox purpose, it was said, of interviewing the servants – and a second was invisible on the rear stage, guarding the body. Macdonald waited on the Duchess, still considerably more like Prospero than a first Grave-digger. Most of the players had felt it seemly to discard as much of their theatrical appearance as possible, but all had not been equally successful. The women had removed the slight make-up from their faces and thrown on cloaks. Gervase had abandoned Osric’s grotesque cap
but not his fantastical doublet. Noel had cast Laertes’ cloak over the Ghost’s nightgown. Dr Crump had hastily taken off his vestments but forgotten his tonsure. Dr Biddle’s white hose were stained with blood. All in all, it was discernibly the ruins of King Claudius’ Court at Elsinore, disrupted by a mine more deadly than any Hamlet had devised, that stood or wandered about Peter Crispin’s folly. A queer sight…and the courtyard clock was tolling one when the door opened and a young man strode rapidly in, swept up the scene at a glance and said: ‘The Duke of Horton, please. I am from Scotland Yard.’
The tone was unaggressive, but it represented all that firm control of a situation which the Duke himself had been sustaining these two hours. And now from the Duke something seemed to fall away.
‘Then surely we can get this cleared up.’ The Duke looked irresolutely round his guests. ‘Well – come, come.’
The Duchess sighed. And everybody had the irrational feeling that after an evening’s madness the normal had reasserted itself.
But presently the Duke, emerging from the rear stage with Appleby and conducting him to the deserted green-room, thought it desirable to concentrate once more.
‘Lord Auldearn was shot during the progress of the play and where you have just seen his body, in the curtained recess, that is, what they call the rear stage. He was playing Polonius and there comes a point’ – the Duke looked speculatively at Appleby: the higher constabulary might be expected to know a little Shakespeare – ‘you will remember there comes a point at which Polonius hides behind a curtain in the Queen’s closet. He calls for help when he supposes Hamlet to be attacking the Queen, and then Hamlet stabs through the curtain, draws it back, and discovers that he has killed Polonius. It was at this point that the thing happened. Auldearn had just called out when his voice was drowned by the report of the revolver.’
‘And why’, said Appleby, ‘should one shoot Lord Auldearn?’ Thirty minutes ago the Duke had been listening to the Prime Minister authenticating this young man with some enthusiasm from a public telephone-box in Guildford. Nevertheless he looked at him warily now. ‘I thought’, he said, ‘that somebody might be after something he might have. That was why I shut up the hall and held on to the whole gathering.’
‘But later you let the audience go?’
The Duke’s wariness modulated imperceptibly into weariness. ‘In the particular aspect I imagined – it was a mare’s nest.’
‘Agents after a document?’
‘Yes. We found it.’
‘Found it?’
‘Just at midnight. On him – in a manner of speaking.’ And the Duke produced a slender roll of paper from the folds of King Claudius’ raiment – produced it and put it away again.
But Appleby in his turn brought out a fountain-pen. ‘I’ll give you a receipt,’ he said briefly.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘May it please your Grace, a receipt.’
There was enough of Macdonald’s technique in this to make the Duke blink. A receipt and the portentous document – Pike and Perch Joint Scheme – changed hands. ‘Please go on, sir,’ said Appleby politely.
‘Not on; back,’ said the Duke a trifle pettishly – and thought for a moment. ‘Auldearn was just calling out when the shot was fired. I made for the sound and came on the rear stage from behind. My kinsman, Gervase Crispin, was kneeling on the floor, with Auldearn’s head on his lap. Clay – Melville Clay, that is, who has been playing Hamlet was standing beyond, his rapier in his hand; I think he had just come through from the front stage. And a Mr Bose was standing a little to one side. Gervase said “Dead, I think”; and at that I hurried behind scenes again and stopped some of the other players who were running up from coming in. Then I called for Dr Biddle – he’s our family doctor, and was in the play – and for Sir Richard Nave; he too is a doctor, but taken to something eccentric, I believe. Then I crossed the rear stage again, passed through the curtain and spoke to the audience of a serious accident, asking them to keep quiet. When I turned back to the rear stage, both Nave and Biddle were beside the body, and both said “Dead.” Auldearn, as you saw, had simply been shot through the heart at close range. He was one of our oldest friends.’
The Duke paused on this and Appleby said nothing. The Prime Minister and his fire-engine, the mysterious Captain Hilfers, the grim talk of documents that might be levers and engines towards war – these things had receded, it seemed, and in front lay plain police-work. And Appleby was relieved; in plain police-work you could usually go straight for the truth, whereas in work with political implications a halt was often mysteriously called when the truth was in sight. But now the Duke continued, edging away from the hinted personal aspect of the catastrophe by way of momentary generalization.
‘When somebody dies in this way – is shot, murdered – one’s first feeling is not of mystery, but of alarm. One looks round for a maniac brandishing a revolver and threatening further lives. There’s a young man upstairs who might bear that in mind when he next writes up that sort of thing.’ The Duke did not stop to elucidate this. ‘But there was no maniac. My second thought was of robbery, robbery of no common sort. I seized the most reliable fellow beside me and sent him to secure the door behind the audience. There is only one other door – behind the green-room here – and I went straight to that and locked it myself. We had had a telephone put in so that we could communicate easily with the house. I went to it and was through to the Prime Minister by eleven o’clock, within five minutes of the shooting. Then I rang up the local police at Horton. Then somebody suggested that Auldearn’s bedroom should be guarded and I agreed; I was for every precaution. I let my cousin Gervase and the man I’d sent to the farther door – a kinsman of my wife’s – out by this door here and locked it after them. The next important thing was to prevent the audience and the players from mingling. Behind the scenes I had a manageable crowd, and a crowd I could take drastic measures with if necessary. But the audience was a mob and it included one or two diplomatic people; one can’t go through an ambassador’s pockets can one?’
Appleby agreed monosyllabically. He was equally fascinated by the efficiency of the proceedings narrated and by some indefinable remoteness in the narrator. The Duke, he was almost inclined to put it to himself, was not interested.
‘If something were gone, you know, and there was a possibility of it having been successfully conveyed to a confederate in the audience, I should have had the responsibility of deciding for or against the scandal of a general search – a thing I can imagine Cabinet debating for a day, can’t you?’
Appleby did not admit to any vision of His Majesty’s ministers in council. Instead, he made a shorthand note.
‘Be that as it may,’ continued the Duke, ‘there was every chance of preventing anything of the sort. We were isolated from the audience and could remain so. I went out upon the front stage again, crossed it and jumped down to break the news gently to my mother; she is a very old lady and was sitting alone in the front row. Then I climbed back and announced straight out that Auldearn had been killed. And nobody, I said, must either leave the hall or attempt to come behind the scenes.’
‘What control had you on that?’ asked Appleby.
‘As it happened – complete control. There are only three avenues of communication: across the open stage in full view of everybody or by the curtained entrances at one or other side of the stage. And by each of these entrances we had a fireman. Players and audience were as cut off from one another as could be.
‘At eleven-twelve my cousin Gervase came back from Auldearn’s room and I let him into the hall. He had startling news. The room had been burgled. Professionally it would seem, for the safe had been cracked.’
‘I see,’ said Appleby.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Please go on. Is a safe, by the way, a regular feature of your bedroom furniture?’
‘He had shown it to you?’
‘No. But he had mentioned it. And mentioned a joke about it: it is endorsed Pike and Perch Conciliation Board, or something of the sort. Well, here in Auldearn’s room was evidence of at least attempted robbery. And this attempt could scarcely have been made by the murderer after the shooting, for nobody could have got out of the hall – nor would there have been time to crack a safe in the seven or eight minutes that elapsed between the shot and Gervase’s reaching the bedroom. I concluded that – unless there was a gang at work – the shooting had taken place because the burglary and safe-breaking had been unsuccessful; that what had been sought for in vain in the bedroom had later been sought for on a person, a person who had been murdered to facilitate the seeking. One sees objections, of course – but that was my first thought.’
If the Duke was rather weary now he was also very lucid. And lucidity is something that one does not often get hard after violent death; now it was saving Appleby hours.
‘There was an obvious thing to do. With Dr Biddle I searched the body. There was nothing there.’
‘I understood you to say–’
‘Wait. There was nothing there. Then it seemed to me that the situation was grave and I knew that I must hang on, continue to hang on to everybody not merely until the local police arrived but until somebody came down who had been in touch with London. I wondered what I could best do in the interval. I thought of the weapon.’
The Duke took a restless turn about the green-room and came to a stand before a long table littered with theatrical debris – wigs, swords, a crown, the Ghost’s helmet. Aimlessly he picked something up and Appleby saw, not without a start that it was a skull – Yorick’s skull.
Hamlet Revenge! Page 10
