Hamlet Revenge!

by Michael Innes

  ‘It seemed unlikely that anyone should have ventured to retain a revolver about him and it could not have been got right away. So I cast round. But I found no trace…dear me!’

  The exclamation was a mild one. For with a little clatter there had fallen from skull to table a tiny revolver. ‘Dear me,’ said the Duke, ‘Giles would like that. Well, so much for the weapon. Might it have fingerprints, do you think?’

  Appleby stared – not at the weapon but at the man. In this moment he discovered what Scamnum had now known for some time: the Duke of Horton was a born actor. No man could be other than startled at so queer a coincidence of word and event. But the Duke – for no conceivable reason, surely, save the pleasure of the thing – had given a bizarre display of impassivity. And now in a moment he was proceeding with his narrative. It would be easy, Appleby decided, to become too interested in the Duke – for here was a man with some suppressed instinct to hold the centre of the stage.

  ‘Nothing more happened – barring a little subdued and uneasy discussion and moving about on this side, and a little uneasy shifting on hard seats on the other – until just after half past eleven. Then your local colleagues arrived. I have some faith in specialists; so I immobolized them.’

  To immobilize country policemen is no-doubt one of the privileges of a master of Scamnum. But Appleby, who had as yet seen only a stolid constable guarding the body and a nervous constable who had met him under Scamnum’s porte cochère, felt that he might himself come in for some species of recoil. ‘Immobilized them,’ he echoed courteously.

  ‘To be precise, I told them of the burglary and they have gone after that. There is a sergeant. and he said something about questioning the servants. You know, he’ll find a devilish lot of them.’

  Appleby doubted if his rural colleagues were as simple as they were pictured; the picture seemed to merge with a discernible ducal taste for conventional sub-humorous effects. But he said nothing.

  ‘So again we marked time, though I got down on paper as complete a list as I could of people’s whereabouts behind stage for the relevant period.’ The Duke smiled tenuously as he thus jerked Appleby back to the fact of Crispin efficiency. ‘And then I thought of our unfortunate audience. I consulted my wife and she said “Feed them” and telephoned to the house for coffee and sandwiches. Her organization is always remarkable; the stuff was thrust through the bars, so to speak, within ten minutes. And then Mr Bose discovered the document.’

  ‘You mentioned Mr Bose as on the rear stage when you first entered it. He was a player?’

  ‘Prompter. An intelligent Hindu. My wife, you know. And he found the document.’ The implication was plainly that intelligent Hindus – even Hindus intelligent enough to find vital documents – were more in the Duchess’ line than the Duke’s. But in the tone of the final sentence Appleby thought that he detected something more. The words rang with a curious finality. The safety of this document once established, they seemed to say, Scamnum’s special responsibilities ended; blood hunting was for others.

  ‘Mr Bose found the document by accident. Just on midnight I became aware of him standing beside me – one never notices him approach – and looking miserable. It occurred to me he wanted to be helpful; he’s a friendly little person enough. So I asked him to find my daughter Elizabeth; I meant to send her forward to my mother, about whom I was a little anxious. He went through the species of curtained corridor you will find behind the rear stage, and in doing so he nearly slipped on something that had apparently rolled off the rear stage itself. It was a little parchment scroll which Polonius was designed to carry throughout the play; part of his stage business was that of referring to it from time to time in a slightly fussy manner. Well, Mr Bose picked it up – and noticed a different coloured paper inside. He is an alert and subtle creature and he brought it to me at once. That is what I meant by saying that it had, in a manner of speaking, been on Auldearn all the time. And at that I let the audience go. If there had been an attempt on the document Auldearn had outwitted it. Perhaps he knew there was to be an attempt. Perhaps the inexplicable messages had warned him.’

  ‘Messages?’

  ‘Hamlet, revenge!’ said the Duke mildly – and explained.

  It was now twenty to two and the hall was still a sort of discreet gaol. The prisoners had by this time some right, perhaps, to murmur – but Appleby would make no move with them until he had a stronger grip of the case. The spy-story seemed to be fading fast into the realm of fantasy; emissaries of foreign powers do not commonly advertise themselves by clamours for revenge, and of the burglary in Lord Auldearn’s bedroom Appleby had his own opinion. But there seemed to be one further crucial test: the time-element which the Duke had already hinted at as a difficulty in the spy theory. No calculating criminal would shoot in order to steal unless there would be reasonable time for the stealing. Had there been this? Almost certainly not; the shooting itself had been an extraordinary hazardous action and only the peculiar construction of the rear stage had given the criminal even a fifty-fifty chance of escape.

  The rear stage was simply a large rectangular curtained recess into which one could slip through a parting on any of its sides. But because the single curtain had been found insufficient to deaden green-room noises, further curtains had been hung on the three backstage sides, giving the effect of a corridor with two right-angled turns. This multiplicity of thick and in places overlapping drapery would have given a bold man a chance to slip into hiding unobserved at some favourable moment, and a less substantial chance of so manoeuvring after the shot as to escape discovery. And it seemed that this must, indeed, have happened. Suspicions might yet be reported, but had anything damning been observed there would surely have been denunciations long ago. Diligent ferreting, such as the Duke claimed to have begun, lay ahead if the movements or whereabouts of some thirty people were to be pinned down for the fatal minutes round ten fifty-five.

  But Appleby’s preliminary problem was simpler. Who first got to the rear stage after the shot, and how long after it? On how many seconds could the assailant reckon for an attempted theft, and for escape? Appleby picked up the weapon that had so dramatically revealed itself, dropped it – wrapped in a handkerchief – into his pocket, and together with the Duke made his way to the other part of the hall. He was now to confront more at leisure the main body of players whom he had glimpsed on coming in.

  The scene was reminiscent of a species of abrupted revelry with which he was professionally familiar – of one of those dismal occasions on which, in the midst of frolic, certain stalwart and hitherto most frolicsome gentlemen disentangle themselves from false noses, paper caps, balloons, and streamers, bar the available exits and admit a bevy of uniformed colleagues to count the bottles, sniff at the glasses, and take down the names and addresses. Three more constables had been sent into the hall by that sergeant who was still obstinately engaged elsewhere: one was standing shyly in a corner, apparently scanning the rafters for concealed gunmen; one was grudgingly permitting Bagot to replace an exhausted coffee-urn by a full one; and the third, being the fortunate possessor of a tape-measure, was solemnly taking the dimensions of the front stage. The company sat huddled in groups, half-heartedly consuming further coffee and beginning, Appleby surmised, to regard one another with some dislike. Several he recognized at once. Gervase Crispin, that high-priest of the Golden Calf, was covertly playing noughts and crosses with a young man of vaguely Crispin appearance. Melville Clay, still in Hamlet’s black beneath an enveloping dressing-gown, was unmistakable. The Duchess of Horton, very pale, was plainly engaged in looking after the young women; one of the young women, evidently her daughter, was equally plainly engaged in looking after her. Lord Traherne was wandering about with a plate of sandwiches, as if at one of his ‘homely’ colonial parties – but was failing to offer them to anyone. The black man had withdrawn into a corner and seemed engaged in meditation, or perhaps purification a
nd penance. Everybody looked up as Appleby appeared.

  ‘I want to know, please, who was first on the scene of Lord Auldearn’s death, and how soon after the shot.’

  At this the black man called out very softly, but so as to be clearly heard from the corner from which he now advanced: ‘It was I.’

  ‘A moment before I got through the front rear stage curtain,’ said Clay.

  ‘Mr Bose? Will you come up, please?’

  Appleby turned back towards the rear stage and after a few paces halted under the impression that Mr Bose had failed to follow. Whereupon Mr Bose, who had been just behind, bumped into him and there were apologies. It was Appleby’s introduction to the movement which the Duchess had described as ‘not earthly’.

  ‘He is…quite dead?’ asked Mr Bose gently.

  ‘He died instantly.’

  Mr Bose made a gesture of resignation – a queer, expressive gesture which Appleby could not afterwards fix – and said: ‘And now… I must tell you?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘My place was here.’ Mr Bose led the way off the rear stage and into the curtained corridor behind. At the extreme end of one of its shorter sides was a stool. ‘My place was here, because from here I could see both the front stage and the rear stage.’

  ‘You could see the rear stage?’

  Mr Bose looked obscurely troubled, but answered readily. ‘Why, yes. It is most necessary sometimes. Here is a slit through which I see the front stage and here is one by which I see the rear stage too.’

  Appleby considered for a moment in some perplexity. ‘But you saw nothing strange?’

  ‘Remember, please, I was prompter. The eye must be on the text – though I know the text very well. Occasionally I look through the curtain – but to where the suffering is.’

  ‘The suffering?’

  ‘The drama – action. And at this time I glance perhaps at the front stage where there are Hamlet and the Queen and much action; but on the rear stage is only Polonius alone, waiting.’

  Mr Bose appeared somewhat obliquely inclined, but what he meant to say seemed clear. And here was remarkable information. Anyone slipping through the rear-stage curtain with intent to murder and steal did so under the known and substantial risk of being observed by the prompter through his spy-hole. The possibility seemed to Appleby to double again the already remarkable hazardousness of the deed.

  ‘And after the shot, Mr Bose – did you not at once look then?’

  ‘I started to my feet in alarm. For a moment I stood still. Then I caught at the curtain to pull it aside and enter. But I was confused and pulled the wrong way. When I broke through to the rear stage it was – save for the body and gunpowder smoke – empty. But a moment later Mr Clay came from the front stage.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I ran out, in great fear for the life of Lord Auldearn, and called for the Duke. Mr Gervase came first and then the Duke. Then the physicians came.’

  Before Mr Bose Appleby felt curiously baffled. He had a sense of subterraneous processes beneath these answers – processes perhaps profoundly deceitful, perhaps merely profoundly strange. But then it might be that this was a stock response; that one confronted the Oriental mind with such a sense ready-made.

  ‘Mr Bose, this now is the important question. Between the shot and your breaking in upon the rear stage – how many seconds?’

  The black man considered. ‘With very great accuracy?’

  ‘Please.’

  The black man produced a watch. Then he meditated. Then he looked at the watch and at the same time began to murmur some fragmentary text. Then he looked at his watch again. ‘Five seconds.’

  Appleby rather supposed the procedure employed to be intelligent and reliable; Mr Bose’s sense of time was bound up, no doubt, with ritual recitation. ‘And then Mr Clay–?’

  This time Mr Bose simply studied the second hand of his watch with concentration. ‘Two seconds.’

  ‘Thank you. And can you give me any further information?’ Mr Bose looked at Appleby in discernible perturbation; made an equally perturbed gesture. ‘It is a very evil thing!’ he said

  Perhaps the Western world still seemed to Mr Bose – despite an advancing familiarity with the works of Mr James Juice – a morally unaccountable place; perhaps he felt that he was really giving Appleby information. Or perhaps the odd answer represented evasion. At the moment Appleby was held less by the words than by the glance that accompanied them. It is easy, looking at a dark face, to speak of a flashing eye; but Mr Bose’s eye held at this moment more than a common fire. He was, indeed, an almost unearthly creature, the youthful raw material, surely, of a character wholly contemplative, wholly spiritual. But Appleby, if he saw the saint, suspected too the tiger. He felt it would be useful to know something of Mr Bose’s way and rule of life. ‘You are a Brahmin, Mr Bose?’

  ‘I am a Warrior!’

  The reply, given with a sudden lift of the head, was more than a simple statement of caste. It acknowledged the implications of the question it answered, was perhaps a threat – or a promise or a challenge. And a second later it might have been none of these things – and here merely a scared expatriated Oriental.

  Appleby resolved that his next questions should be public, so he proceeded to the front stage, strode down it like a player about to deliver a soliloquy, and surveyed the company at large. ‘Mr Clay, what interval elapsed between your hearing the shot and entering the rear stage?’

  Clay answered promptly. ‘Seven seconds.’

  This tallied remarkably with Mr Bose’s estimate. But Appleby expressed surprise. ‘You are sure it was not less? It seems a long time.’

  ‘A second’s pause on the shot. Something under four seconds across the stage; I was making time until it was clear the scene must be broken. Something under two seconds in front of the curtain, making time still. Then a fraction of a second getting through.’

  ‘Mr Clay,’ said the Duchess, as if anxious to substantiate her guest’s credit, ‘has an uncanny sense of time on the stage. I believe the interval was just as he says.’

  The Duchess’ impression, for what it was worth, was the only substantiation that could be got from the players; all the others had been behind the scenes. But now a severe person, sitting hand to forehead beside the Duchess, made a suggestion. ‘What of Dr Bunney’s contrivance? Was it not making some sort of record?’

  ‘Sir Richard Nave – Mr Appleby,’ said the Duke, apparently feeling an introduction desirable.

  Appleby pounced on this. ‘The machine that gave one of the messages? It was here recording?’ Whereupon Bunney, with an incongruous mingling of pride and alarm, produced the black box. ‘Science’, he began ponderously, ‘never knows to what uses–’

  Nave interrupted brusquely. ‘What may be useful is the recorded interval between the shot and the next succeeding audible words: Mr Bose’s calling out “My Lord!” No doubt he was summoning the Duke.’

  Mr Bose nodded vigorously. He had been summoning the Duke. Appleby promptly took charge of the black box – though without much faith in its detective qualities. Then he considered.

  Anyone entering the rear stage to shoot Auldearn had bad five seconds to make good the first part of his get-away – behind the curtains. But all the time he might have been under the fatal observation of Mr Bose. Would any man wishing to steal a document adopt such a method? He thought not – or not in the case of a document of the kind involved. It was possible to conceive of a document – an unopened letter, for example, giving information on a grave crime – which might be worth securing on such bloody and dangerous terms. But a state document is stolen neither in passion nor as a last desperate act of self-preservation; it is stolen, almost certainly, for mere gain – a little, perhaps, for excitement. And – as the Prime Minister had observed – the sort of
person involved in such things does not kill; certainly not when the chances are heavily in favour of instant detection. Auldearn’s murder, with its dramatic locale and theatrical preliminary warnings, represented – Appleby was persuaded – an altogether different kind of affair. And the spy story was fantasy, fantasy evoked by the mere fact that the dead man was known to have possessed an important document and to have safeguarded it in a somewhat eccentric yet rational way.

  And looking round the shocked and jaded people in the hall Appleby doubted if an attempt to grapple with such a large company in the remaining small hours would be useful. Common sense and the facts of the case as they stood counselled him to send them all off to bed without more ado. But there still remained a doubt, a doubt that the thread before him might not be single. And he knew well enough that his whole reputation was going to stand or fall on his handling of an affair with which, in a few hours, all England would be ringing. And he determined to be utterly cautious – which meant being uncommonly bold. He spoke briefly to the Duke and then turned to the company.

  ‘I am going to require something which some of you may judge unnecessary. Please remember that Lord Auldearn’s death is inevitably going to cause a tremendous sensation. Everything that has happened tonight – everything concerning the preliminary handling of the situation by the Duke of Horton and myself – may be debated and criticized by thousands of people with no very marked ability to see their way through a complicated set of facts. They will ask certain stock questions; there are newspapers that take up such things with clamour. Because of this – and for other reasons – I believe that it is in the general interest here that each one of you should submit to a search before leaving the hall – as I hope you may shortly do – for the night. There are several magistrates here to whom I could go, but I think perhaps you will not stand on any form.’