Quick Curtain

by Alan Melville

  “The what side?” asked Mr. Ogle.

  “B.F.,” said Mr. Douglas tersely.

  “Quite,” said Mr. Ogle, not quite knowing. “Continue, please.”

  “—And fire at Mr. Baker with a revolver. The gun he used was supposed to be a dummy one; the report was made by someone off-stage. Mr. Baker was supposed to receive only a flesh wound; he had to fall on the stage, raise himself on to his knees, draw his own revolver, and shoot at Mr. Foster as he was escaping.”

  “But this did not actually happen on the night in question?” said Mr. Ogle.

  “Considering—” began Mr. Douglas, and realized the futility of it. “No, it didn’t. Mr. Baker fell on the stage. I realized something was the matter when he didn’t get up right away. Then I saw a little blood ooze out on the stage. I went round to the wings and found he’d been killed. That’s all.”

  “And quite enough, so far as Mr. Baker was concerned, I’m sure,” said Mr. Ogle. “Have you known the deceased long, Mr. Douglas?”

  “Forty-two years,” said Mr. Douglas.

  “Forty-two years,” echoed Mr. Ogle. “I understood that Mr. Baker was what is known as a juvenile lead?”

  “Doesn’t mean a thing,” said Mr. Douglas cruelly.

  “Surely to say that a man of over fifty was juvenile leading was—if I may say so—definitely juvenile misleading?”

  “I’ve a cabaret on at the Troxy,” observed Mr. Douglas chattily. “We need a good low comedian. Care to come along?”

  “Next witness, please,” said Mr. Ogle sternly.

  Next witness, Miss Eve Turner (Coletta, a Native Dancer). Corroborated previous witness’s evidence re shot, fall, scream, oozing blood. Added that she’d never been so cut up in all her life, and that her legs went all wonky when she realized what had happened. Asked by Mr. Ogle to give a demonstration of Native Dancing, replied archly that the witness-stand was hardly a suitable place for same, but hadn’t she heard something about coroners having private rooms away at the back of the court somewhere?

  After Miss Turner, Herbert. Corroborated Mr. Douglas’s and Miss Turner’s evidence. Added that he had personally dropped the curtain, sent for a doctor, cleared the stage, kept the show going, summoned Mr. Douglas, revived the leading lady, got hold of a police inspector, wiped up the mess on the stage, and closed the theatre for the night.

  “A useful man,” said Mr. Ogle. “You should play PoohBah.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Herbert, clicking his heels, turning smartly, and exiting in a military manner.

  Next witness, Mrs. Mary Johnson, née Mary Foster, sister and only living relative of the late J. Hilary Foster. Questioned about her brother’s relations with Brandon Baker, said she knew of no possible reason why Foster should kill Baker. They had worked together for a good many years, and so far as she knew there had never been any quarrel or enmity between them. No, her brother had not behaved in any way out of the ordinary recently, though she had not seen him for some weeks before the happening. He had been rather worried during the past few months, but that was due to purely personal reasons and had nothing to do with his stage career. No, he did not keep a revolver; at least, she had never seen such a thing in his possession. The whole thing was a complete mystery to her; she was quite certain that Hilary had not killed Brandon Baker intentionally.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Johnson,” said the coroner.

  Next and last witness, Sir Basil Bone. Well-known post-mortem expert. Explained, in a few well-chosen but rather too-technical phrases, exactly how Brandon Baker had met his end. During this recitation, Mr. Ogle shut his eyes and stroked his chin thoughtfully, remembering how simply that old doctor in Northumberland used to say exactly the same thing.

  “Quite so, Sir Basil,” said Mr. Ogle. “From your examination of the body, there is no doubt that the bullet which killed Brandon Baker was fired from the position occupied by the man Foster—as described by the previous witnesses?”

  “None whatever,” said Sir Basil.

  “It is impossible that the shot was fired from any other part of the stage or theatre?”

  “Absolutely impossible.”

  “Thank you, Sir Basil. That is all, thank you.”

  “One in the eye for old man Wilson,” said Derek to himself.

  “Pardon?” said his neighbouring journalist.

  “I was wondering whether old Basil’s hair is all, part, or none his own,” said Derek.

  “Part,” said the other reporter. “Down to about square-leg, I should say. I was at a murder trial once when the rest slipped off.”

  “Thanks very much,” said Derek. “So nice to know.”

  Mr. Ogle summed up wittily, bringing in the bit about the Betting Laws without the slightest difficulty.

  “The finding of this Court is that Brandon Baker died as the result of a wound in the heart, caused by a bullet fired by Hilary Foster.”

  The courtroom emptied. From the remarks of two passing members of the Gallery Club, Derek decided that it was a good thing for J. Hilary Foster that he was not in a position to enjoy a lynching. “The brute,” said Gallery Clubber number one. “The great brute! I never liked that man. I saw him years ago at the Empire in Here’s A Howdydoo!—we were in the very front row of the pit, and we couldn’t hear a word he said.”

  “Such a face he had, too,” said Clubber number two. “Evil, that’s what it was. ’Course he only got the villain parts. Killing poor dear Brandon in cold blood, like that. It’s awful. There’ll never be another to take his place. They say that new Hungarian actor at the Metropole’s terribly good-looking. Seen him?”

  The chatter in the court died away. Derek and his reporter colleague stayed behind for a moment, engaged in a slight controversy over the spelling of “indisputably”. Having settled this at last, they turned to leave the court. There was only one other person left in it. A small woman in a dark navy costume. She was crying into a lamentably inadequate handkerchief.

  “There’s a story in that,” said Derek.

  “You talk like the pressmen on the talkies,” said the other reporter.

  “Just a minute. You go on ahead.”

  “Exclusive Scoop by Daily Gazette Cub Reporter. I want my lunch.”

  “God bless you,” said Derek.

  The woman in the navy costume had got up to leave the court, still dabbing at her eyes.

  “Excuse me…” said Derek.

  “Well?”

  “Anything I can do? You look a bit upset.”

  “It’s nothing, thanks. Nothing at all.”

  “Was he…was he a great favourite of yours?” asked Derek, thinking of the business the laundries would have this week, with two hundred thousand weeping Gallery Club members.

  “Not exactly,” said the woman in navy. “He was my husband.”

  Chapter Five

  “The funeral service for the late Brandon Baker,” said Mr. Wilson, setting sail on his promised account for his son’s newspaper, “was one of the most disgusting, repulsive exhibitions of ill-breeding seen in London for many years. At times strongly reminiscent of scenes of the Ypres salient, it—”

  “All right, all right,” said Derek. “That’s enough of that. Please remember there must be about a hundred thousand members of the Gallery Club in our circulation.”

  “They should all be shot at the first convenient dawn,” said Mr. Wilson. “Both for reading your paper and for the way they behaved this morning. Of all the obnoxious exhibitions I’ve ever seen—”

  “All right,” said Derek. “Keep calm. What was Gertie Gibson wearing?”

  “I neither know nor care,” said Mr. Wilson. “What is much more important is that I was wearing a bowler hat that cost every penny of twenty-one shillings when I set out for the church, and was bare-headed when I landed there. And I was also mistaken for Henry Ain
ley.”

  Mr. Wilson, junr., collapsed on a suitable armchair.

  “By an hysterical female,” added his father.

  “Hysterical is right,” said Derek, recovering his power of speech. “I mean, Henry Ainley!…If it had been one of the Four Marx Brothers, I could have understood it. Whoops! I think I’ll put that in our Bubble and Squeak page. ‘A well-known London police inspector was the victim of an amusing case of mistaken identity at yesterday’s fashionable funeral of Brandon Baker. Several autograph-hunters, under the impression that the inspector was Greta Garbo, demanded his signature and presented him with a bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley. The inspector’s feet are thought to be the cause of the girls’ mistake—’”

  “Idiot,” said Mr. Wilson.

  “Did you find out anything at all, then?” asked Derek.

  “Not a thing. I was so scunnered, to use a good Scots word, at the whole blessed proceeding, that I didn’t look for anything. All I wanted was to get outside and meet some normal people again.”

  “Me, for instance.”

  “Oh, there was one thing. I waited in the church until the mob had cleared out. There was a little woman left behind. I think she was praying. I had a word with her, and she said she was Brandon Baker’s wife.”

  “What?” said Derek.

  “Brandon Baker’s wife. I never knew he had such a thing.”

  “Listen, you. I was about the last to clear out of the inquest, and there was a small dame left sitting all on her own in the public seats, and I had a word with her, and she said that she was Brandon Baker’s wife.”

  “Odd,” said Mr. Wilson, senr.

  “Damned odd,” said Mr. Wilson, junr.

  “What was your one like?”

  “Small and thin,” said Derek. “Dressed in a navy-blue costume with a blue hat. And sniffing into the smallest hankie I’ve ever seen. What’s yours?”

  “Double whisk—oh, the woman…no, it couldn’t have been the same. Mine was in black, and she had quite a sensible handkerchief. And needed it.”

  “Added to which, you saw yours at St. Oswald’s not more than half an hour before I saw mine at Craven Street Police Court. Distance from St. Oswald’s to Craven Street, three and three-quarter miles approx. Time taken to traverse same in series of lousy buses, half an hour at the very least. Possibility of your woman getting from St. Oswald’s to Craven Street in half an hour, changing her costume and hat and getting a clean neb-wiper en route, definitely nil. Elementary, my dear Watson.”

  “Thank you,” said Mr. Wilson. “I didn’t suggest for a minute that it was the same woman. I have heard of members of the theatrical profession taking unto themselves more than one soul mate in the course of their lives, haven’t I? Or haven’t I?”

  “You have,” said Derek.

  “Only this morning, in your disgusting Gazette, I read about Miss Polly Vavasour, well-known Hollywood and Broadway beauty, married at Pennsylvania yesterday to Mr. Mortimer Murray, famous star of silent-picture days. It gave a list of Polly’s and Mort’s past conquests—neatly tabulated side by side down the column. Polly was leading by two up and three to play with, if I remember rightly. Brandon Baker may have just been another of the same.”

  “Too true,” said Derek. “Did you get her address?”

  “No,” said Mr. Wilson. “I didn’t, now I come to think of it.”

  “Sap!” said Derek expressively.

  “Did you get yours?”

  “No,” said Derek, “I didn’t, now you mention it.”

  “Sap,” said Mr. Wilson tersely. “Anything else interesting at the inquest?”

  “Not a thing. D.B.D., Herbert, the girl that was on the stage when it happened, and Foster’s sister—rather a nice-looking woman—all gave evidence. Oh, and Sir Basil Bone, the post-mortem lad, knocked all your bright little ideas about the shot being fired from the wings right on the head. He said that the direction in which the bullet entered the heart showed that it could only have been fired from the position taken up by Foster on the mountains.”

  “A pity,” said Mr. Wilson, lighting a cigarette. “A great pity.”

  “Coroner Ogle made a few snappy wise-cracks and refused D.B.D.’s invitation to join the show as a low comedian. The verdict, of course, made out that Brandon Baker was murdered by Hilary Foster.”

  “That,” said Mr. Wilson, “is a lie.”

  “What makes you so damned positive?” asked Derek. “It’ll take a fat lot of proving that that wasn’t what actually did happen. Listen, you. Bloke A shoots Bloke B in full view of two hundred thousand spectators. Bloke B falls dead. Bloke A does a bunk and is found half an hour later swinging on a rope in his dressing-room. As I keep on telling you, the thing’s as plain as your face.”

  “Thank you,” said Mr. Wilson. “Only this afternoon the Commissioner was saying how strongly you resembled your father.”

  “God forbid,” said Derek fervently.

  “I entirely agree,” said Mr. Wilson. “God forbid. And I agree, too, that on the face of it the thing looks pretty straightforward. But just consider what kind of a bloke Bloke A was. He definitely wasn’t the sort of man who would murder a fellow human. Certainly not the way Brandon Baker was murdered. I had a long crack with Herbert at the theatre this afternoon about this man Foster. ‘Quiet, respectable sort of cove, sir,’ said the bold Herbert. ‘Not the sort of gent you’d ever take to be an actor, sir. I can’t think what took him, sir.’ That’s what the bold Herbert said. And the bold Herb is a pretty good judge of character, if I’m any judge of character myself.”

  “Which you’re not,” said Derek. “Remember that time you opened your heart to a most respectable old gentleman in connection with the Masters case, and the most respectable old gentleman turned out to be the dirty swine who’d bumped off old Masters with a poisoned whisky?”

  “There’s no need to go into all that,” said Mr. Wilson hurriedly. “Herbert’s all right. And I’m quite sure, from what he said, that Foster wasn’t the kind of man to commit murder.”

  “May I ask a question?” said Derek.

  “It’s a waste of time,” said Mr. Wilson. “I know all the answers. But go ahead.”

  “Does a man who hasn’t committed murder dash off and commit suicide?”

  “No,” said Mr. Wilson slowly. “But a man might commit suicide if he thought he’d committed murder.”

  “Explain yourself,” said Derek. “In less than one hundred and fifty words, using one side of the paper only.”

  “Suppose Foster and Brandon Baker were known to be enemies. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Foster had been heard by some third party to say, ‘I’d like to kill you for so-and-so, Baker’—the way people are always saying things like that in the detective novels. Suppose that third party, having heard that remark and knowing the relationship between the two men, had taken advantage of the facts to get rid of Brandon Baker. Suppose he had substituted a pukka revolver for the dummy one that Foster was to use in the play, and Foster had been made to murder Brandon Baker. Suppose all that. Wouldn’t a string of events like that, if they all came off, be enough to drive a man to the brink of suicide, if not over the brink?”

  “Good God!” said Derek. “And d’you think that’s what happened?”

  “Not for a moment,” said Mr. Wilson in an aggravating manner. “I’m much too fond of my bullet-in-the-curtain theory to drop it at this stage of the proceedings. But it makes quite a good little story, doesn’t it? Well, Martha?”

  The reason why Martha, cook-general-cum-housekeeper-cum-valet-cum-general-factotum to the Wilson family, has not appeared earlier is due to the fact that Martha was continually having the day off to visit her married sister in Golder’s Green. Martha’s married sister in Golder’s Green had been on the verge of passing away with asthma ever since the Wilsons had taken her into the bosom of t
heir flat. The number of times that Mr. Wilson (senr., or junr.) had arrived home and found cold ham and salad on the table, no Martha, and a note saying: Jessie is took bad again, but hope to manage back to-night, must have been well into the three-figure figures. Mr. Wilson, senr., suspected Martha’s absences of being caused by devotion to the cinema rather than the sister. Mr. Wilson, junr., put it down to gin. But when present Martha was a good soul, a grand hand at an omelette, and very good at putting buttons on the Wilson pants.

  “Well, Martha?” said Mr. Wilson. “How’s Jessie?”

  “Bad,” said Martha. “Right bad. Wheezing awful. I really feel she needs me, sir.”

  “What on earth will you do with your time when she pops off, Martha?” asked Derek callously.

  “I wonder at you saying such things, Mr. Derek,” said Martha. “Retire, I hope. After all the trouble she’s been to me, it’d only be right. It’s all right me having the evening off, is it, sir?”

  “Yes, Martha,” said Mr. Wilson. “Give Jessie my love.”

  “That won’t help her, sir,” said Martha. “She’s too far gone for that kind of thing. Oh, there’s a woman here. I clean forgot.”

  “A woman?” said Derek.

  “Yes, sir. But it’s the master she’s after. A Miss Davis, sir.”

  “What’s she like?” asked Mr. Wilson, who always made a point of getting a pro-forma invoice where women were concerned.

  “Bit loud, for my liking, sir. Lips, you know. About my build.”

  “My God!” said Derek.

  “Show her in, Martha,” said Mr. Wilson.

  “Okay, sir,” said Martha, and disappeared.

  “Okay…” said Mr. Wilson, wincing. “Not only one’s son, but also one’s housekeeper…Oh, Miss Davis?”

  Miss Millicent Davis had, as Martha had mentioned, a figure built on the same lavish lines as that of Martha herself. It was a little better controlled, perhaps, in places where control was necessary, but it had the same general spreading tendencies. She was smartly dressed and over-powdered. Mr. Wilson recognized her at once as the member of the Blue Music company who had kept an eagle eye on the young ladies in Abdul Achmallah’s harem in Act One, and who had put across a number called “Girls Fight at Me, Men Fight for Me”, with a fair amount of zest and abandon.