Quick Curtain

by Alan Melville

  Mercifully, Herbert never seems to suffer from either influenza or the sulks, and so the show is a success. He left the theatre this afternoon at five-fifteen, after putting right the forty-seven things that Mr. Douglas B. Douglas saw wrong with the final dress rehearsal. He was back at six, to make everything ship-shape for the opening. Already he has lulled Miss Astle back to normal from a fit of temperament; already he has provided a flask from his hip-pocket to give Mr. Baker the necessary lightness for his tap-dance in Act One; already he has seen the chorus safely out of their beach pyjamas and safely into their brassières and slips in the schedule time of fifty seconds.

  Herbert will not appear at the end of the show any more than he appears on the programme or in the Press notices; no applause, no speeches, no bouquets for Herbert. He couldn’t, anyway, wearing that greasy overall and with his shirt-sleeves up almost to his shoulders. Whereas Mr. Douglas, who has Personally Supervised the Entire Production (and Herbert doesn’t even see anything funny in that) is immaculate in white shirt-front, tails, red carnation and maidenhair fern buttonhole, and will be there in the spotlight to say that all the labour and work and worry he has put into the show has been indeed well worth while when it has resulted in this magnificent, terribly kind reception.

  “Come along, girls,” said Herbert, standing in the wings and holding back the front curtain to allow fifty-five of the chorus to disappear from the stage at the end of their opening number in Act Two, “get a move on, now. Only a minute and a half to get changed, you know.” The chorus bounced off to their dressing-rooms; Herbert kept a keen eye on the stage. The view of a stage from the wings is a far more interesting affair than that obtained from the stalls or the circle: you get only a slice, it is true, but it is a very discriminating slice, revealing the most important and leaving the rest mercifully screened behind canvas and curtains.

  From where he was standing, Herbert was able to see the point where Mr. Baker’s toupet joined his own hair. He noticed that Miss Turner’s shoulder-strap had slipped with that last bit of passionate embracing, and hoped that things would be all right until the end of the scene. He could just see Mr. Foster, as Phillipo the Rebel Leader, climbing laboriously up the ladder and on to the little platform from where he would appear striding over the mountain-tops.

  Mr. Foster was getting on; it was rather a shame to send a man with chronic rheumatism up a ladder like that. He could see, high in the opposite wings, the two men on the spotlights quietly arguing about Sheffield Wednesday, and immediately below them the front pair of the Twenty-four Ballet Whos flouncing out their ballet skirts and getting ready for the next scene. He saw, too, M. Gasnier’s hand come forward to bring in Mr. Baker on the right bar of “Tell Me Something with your Eyes”…it was funny that a man who had been singing juvenile lead songs for the past twenty-nine years should still require to be brought in on the right note. Herbert also saw the dark blot of blood when Mr. Baker fell.

  “What the—curtain!” said Herbert.

  He ran along the stage with the curtain, holding its two halves in position when they met in the centre of the stage. He heard the audience’s applause. Rather more applause than Manchester had ever given for that scene.

  “Bert, for God’s sake!” said Miss Turner. “He’s shot.”

  Stage directors of musical comedies are like pursers of ships. They get the brunt of things banged at them one after another: crises, hitches, sensations. And all the time the show or the ship must go ahead smoothly and uninterrupted, if possible without anyone being aware of the presence of a hitch. Herbert’s first thought, being a good stage director, was not of Brandon Baker’s body, nor of Miss Turner’s near-hysterics, nor even of the figure of Mr. Foster, still standing on the mountains in his gay Rebel Leader costume. It was of the audience on the other side of the curtain. They might wait sixty seconds, but no longer. Sixty seconds was a long time for a change of scene in a Douglas B. Douglas production, and the audience in front was the kind that knew that. Herbert ran back to the wings and picked up the telephone connecting with M. Gasnier’s desk in the orchestra pit.

  “Play the introduction to Act Two again,” he said, “and the Scene Two opening number right after that.”

  “Why?” said M. Gasnier. “Anything wrong?”

  “Nothing. Do as you’re told. John, pull your grey tabs along. Now, girls. Carry on, and for God’s sake get an encore. And smile.”

  The grey tabs trailed along. For an unpleasant half-minute Herbert thought that they were going to fall behind, instead of in front, of the dark smudge of Mr. Baker’s blood. Mercifully they hid it—just. The pale-grey fringe at the bottom of the tabs swept over the dark mark and smeared it further along the stage.

  “Get a cloth,” said Herbert.

  “Oh, God!…” said Miss Turner. “What’s happened to him? What’s happened? Is he…is he dead?”

  “I don’t know. Off the stage, everyone. Off the stage. Phillipo—come down here. Boy!…get Mr. Douglas on-stage at once. Box A. Sprint like hell. John—round to the box-office and see if there’s a doctor left the number of his seat there. If there is, get hold of him and bring him here. Off the stage, everyone, will you?…Oh, there you are, sir.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Douglas. “I saw it. Didn’t like the look of it, either. Is he living? Have you sent for a doctor? What the hell happened, man?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I just saw him fall when I was standing over there in the wings. Didn’t realize anything was wrong. Then I saw this blood…there’s the girls’ number finishing now, sir. What d’you want put on? We can put Serge and Mimi on in front of the tabs until we get the—”

  “Don’t talk bunk!” said Mr. Douglas. “You can’t carry on with the show with a man dying on the stage. Drop the curtain. Tell René to play something. There’s a doctor I know in the house—Armitage, Harley Street man—about six rows back in the stalls…send out for him.”

  “What about the police, sir?”

  “I suppose so. Wait a minute…that fellow Wilson’s in the theatre as well. A little further back than Armitage. You’d better call for them both. No good trying to hush anything up.”

  “We’d better move him, sir.”

  “Yes. No…if the police are coming in right away leave him where he is. Until the doctor sees him, anyway. Where’s Phillipo?”

  “Phillipo!…boy—find Mr. Foster. Quick.”

  “What’s happened?” asked Miss Astle, appearing suddenly in négligé. “What’s the matter? Oh…my God!”

  “Better clear off the stage, Gwen. Go to your dressing-room. There’s been an accident. I’ll come and see you in a minute.”

  “Brandon!…Is he—dead? Tell me—is he?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good God! Brandon…oh, my God!”

  Miss Astle started to laugh. Not a pleasant laugh. “Shut up, for God’s sake!” said Mr. Douglas. “Don’t let them hear you making a din like that. Shut up!” Miss Astle did not shut up. She laughed and laughed hysterically, madly…flopping at last into Mr. Douglas’s arms.

  “Take her to her dressing-room. Give her some brandy. Don’t let her on the stage until everything’s cleared up.”

  Miss Astle was led away limply.

  “That’s interesting,” said Mr. Douglas. “Were they…she and Baker, I mean…?”

  “I’ve no idea,” said Herbert. “Here’s the doctor, sir, I think.”

  Dr. Armitage had seen most first nights, but very few in their entirety. To-night he had come fully expecting to be summoned to the arrival of an heir to a peerage half-way through Blue Music. When the attendant had called his name along row F of the stalls, Dr. Armitage had risen with an air of Christian martyrdom, and expressed the hope that it would be twins—and both of them girls—for taking him out of the theatre at such an interesting stage of the play. He had not expected to be summoned backstage. A tall, quiet
Scot, Dr. Armitage, with a methodical, funereal way of setting about his duties that exasperated Mr. Douglas tremendously.

  “There’s been an accident here, doctor,” said Mr. Douglas. “Mr. Baker.…Will you see what’s the matter?”

  Dr. Armitage dusted the floorcloth on the stage carefully and knelt beside Mr. Baker’s body. He unloosened his Arabesque costume and leaned over his chest. Mr. Douglas played a little tune on his teeth with a nail of his thumb—a habit of his when impatient. On the other side of the curtain the orchestra rallied for the finale of their overture. There would be silence in the theatre in a minute now.

  “Well?” said Mr. Douglas.

  “Far from it,” said Dr. Armitage. “In fact, he’s dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “Shot through the heart. Must have been instantaneous.”

  News travels fast backstage. The call-boys spread it out of the wings and along the dressing-rooms corridors. The babble in the chorus dressing-rooms hushed suddenly. “Brandon Baker’s dead.” The man on duty at the stage door heard it within a minute. “He’s dead…Brandon Baker’s dead.” Little groups of oddly clad members of the company spread on to the edge of the stage and stared fascinated at the figure lying still at Mr. Douglas’s feet. The men on the spotlights craned down over their gallery to see it, casting huge shadows of themselves on to the stage. “He’s dead. Hilary Foster shot him. Brandon Baker’s dead.…” The orchestra finished their overture with a spirited attack on the percussion.

  “Well…” said Mr. Douglas. “I’ll have to go out and say something, I suppose. Herbert, I leave you in charge. See that nothing’s moved. If Wilson doesn’t turn up in a minute or so send out for the first bobby you can lay your hands on. Get all this bunch off the stage. And get hold of Phillipo, for God’s sake.”

  Mr. Douglas parted the curtains and blinked at the sudden glare from the footlights.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said Mr. Douglas, “I…I am very sorry to have to tell you that there has been an…an unfortunate accident on the stage. It…it is, I am afraid, impossible to continue the performance under the circumstances. Er…Mr. Brandon Baker…Mr. Baker has been shot. I would ask you to leave the theatre, please. I can only express my great regret that such an unfortunate…I will arrange for the holders of reserved seats to have their money refunded or their tickets exchanged…the ladies and gentlemen in the gallery will have the price of admission refunded to them as they leave at the gallery box-office.…I can only say how very sorry indeed…”

  It was unfortunate for Mr. Douglas that eighteen months before he had produced the thriller Persons Unknown. In that play a fairly satisfactory murder was committed as the curtain to the first act. The shot, it was believed, had been fired from the auditorium by a revolver fitted with a silencer. Mr. Douglas staged the situation well. He made a speech from the stage himself. He introduced M. André Proinet, the celebrated French detective, who happened to be occupying a stage box. He refused to allow any of the audience to leave the theatre, even for a drink in the bars, and had each exit guarded by actors clad in the blue of the Metropolitan police.

  Acts Two and Three were taken up with the solving of the crime, which turned out to have been committed by an elderly spinster in the front row of the dress circle. The show was a great success and ran for over a year, mainly because Mr. Douglas shifted his murderer at each performance and none of the audience could say definitely that the person sitting next to them had not fired the fatal shot. (Mr. Amethyst, in fact, was charged with doing the dirty deed by a middle-aged woman in a tiara who sat next to him during the show and accused him of behaving in a highly suspicious manner all through Act One.)

  The annoying thing was that the public had not forgotten Persons Unknown. They listened to Mr. Douglas’s announcement in a polite silence and then realized, of course, that this was another typical Douglas B. Douglas stunt. They laughed. And then they applauded. Mr. Douglas had never been quite so staggered in his life.

  “Ladies and gentlemen…” said Mr. Douglas. “Please…please!…I assure you this is no part of the performance…I wish it were.…Please!…”

  The audience enjoyed the situation. It was good, original. In another minute the detective would arrive, and the “police” would come snooping down the gangways in the auditorium, searching for clues. Then somebody would be arrested, and there would be a court scene, probably. Very good fun. Quite a number of people in the stalls searched their programmes to find the name of the actor who was going to impersonate the detective and, failing to find it, decided that that was just another Douglas B. Douglas touch to keep up the air of mystery. They applauded rather more vigorously. On the stage, Mr. Douglas looked completely blank.

  “Stop!” said Mr. Douglas. “Silence, please.…Apparently, ladies and gentlemen, you refuse to believe that what I have said is not part of the play. There is, I am afraid, only one way to convince you of what has happened. Curtain, please.…”

  The dress and upper circles and the gallery hushed at once. They could see the unpleasant, growing mark beside Brandon Baker’s body. The stalls had to stand up to see it; in a minute the theatre was completely silent.

  “Now, ladies and gentlemen, will you please leave the theatre as quickly as possible?…Er…you will find a statement issued to the Press in time for to-morrow’s papers.…Thank you.…Curtain!”

  The audience trooped out of the theatre in a dazed fashion. High in the gods, a member of the Brandon Baker Gallery Club began to sob hysterically. The pressmen present sprinted round to the stage-door in a mob. The one and only taxi outside the Grosvenor main entrance received a surprise and bumper patronage an hour and a half before it had expected the theatre to empty.

  Mr. Wilson from Scotland Yard had arrived on the stage while Mr. Douglas was making his announcement. You would never have suspected Mr. Wilson of being connected with anything so worldly as the Police Force: he was tall, grey-haired, immaculately dressed in full evening dress, and the possessor of that brand of features that goes down in novelettes as “rugged”. A barrister, perhaps, or a specialist in the disorders of the stomach—but never a policeman.

  “Mr. Douglas?” said Mr. Wilson in his quiet voice. “How d’you do? Wilson, Scotland Yard. Oh, this is my son Derek. I’m afraid I shouldn’t have brought him on the stage, but he would probably have come in any case in his own right. He’s a reporter on the Gazette. A very unpleasant business, Mr. Douglas. This, I mean, not reporting.”

  “Damned unpleasant,” said Mr. Douglas.

  “Anything been moved?”

  “Nothing, sir,” said Herbert. “I saw to that.”

  “Excellent,” said Mr. Wilson. “Usually, after an affair of this sort, everybody seems to think it necessary to indulge in an orgy of spring-cleaning and general upheaval. You’ve had a doctor round, I suppose?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Douglas. “Here he is. Dr. Armitage—Inspector Wilson of Scotland Yard.”

  “How d’you do?” asked Mr. Wilson. “Aren’t you the fellow who’s always killing rabbits and then bringing them back to life with a funny sort of glandular injection thing?”

  “Yes,” said Dr. Armitage. “That hasn’t anything to do with the present case, though, Inspector.”

  “No, of course not,” said Mr. Wilson. “Of course not. I wasn’t suggesting for a minute that Mr. Baker was…Is he dead?”

  “Yes. Shot through the heart. The bullet entered almost exactly in the centre of the heart and went right through the body.”

  “Very unpleasant. Derek…you might go out and get a couple of bobbies roped in, will you? I’m afraid we’ll have to arrest Mr.…What was his name?—the fellow who played the Rebel Leader?”

  “Foster,” said Mr. Douglas. “Hilary Foster. He’s vanished.”

  “Vanished?”

  “I’ve had a couple of men looking for him ever since the curtain dropped. No
t a sign.”

  “Dear me,” said Mr. Wilson. “Well…would you ask all these ladies and gentlemen to leave the stage, please? Thank you. And I think we might take the body to somewhere a little less public. A dressing-room, or somewhere like that. Oh, just a minute, before we do that. Has anyone such a thing as a stick of chalk?”

  “Chalk!” said Mr. Douglas. “Chalk. Come on, somebody. Quick of—chick of—stick of chalk, quickly!”

  “Here you are, sir,” said Herbert—the man who would have such a thing in his overall pocket. “Chalk, sir.”

  “Thank you,” said Mr. Wilson. “Derek, you might just draw a line round Mr. Baker’s body, will you? I know…it’s not a very nice job, but it’s often rather helpful to know exactly where and how the body fell. I’d do it myself, only this waistcoat…Thanks, that’s fine. Now we can take him away, I think. Oh, just a minute. This is one of those revolving stage things, isn’t it? I mean, where Mr. Baker’s lying just now—is that on part of the revolving bit?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Douglas. “Just on the rim of it.”

  “I see,” said Mr. Wilson. “Draw a straight line out from Mr. Baker’s head, will you, Derek? On to the other part of the stage—the fixed part, I mean. It’s not much use marking the spot where the body fell if the whole stage behaves like the planetary system and spoils everything, is it? Right, that’s about all, I think, thank you.”

  “No need to lift him from there, sir,” said Herbert. “Just a minute and I’ll send the stage right round. Then we can carry him into his dressing-room.”

  Mr. Wilson planted his feet firmly on the stage as it swung smoothly round from the glare of the footlights into the half-light upstage.

  “Very ingenious,” he said. “Rather like the flying-boats at the fair, isn’t it? Now I want to find Mr. Foster. How many exits are there from the stage to the street, Mr. Douglas?”

  “One,” said Mr. Douglas. “The stage-door only. Unless he went through one of the two doors at each side of the proscenium. They lead to the staircase and corridors opening on to the boxes at each side of the stage. Once he was there he could get out by any of the main theatre entrances, of course.”