Quick Curtain

by Alan Melville

  “That’s so,” said Mr. Wilson, senr. “Damn this tie!”

  “Here—I’ll fix it. You’ll have it into mince in a minute. No, the best thing he could do was to carry on as though nothing had happened. In a way, I admire the man. It must take a bit of doing—sitting about looking unconcerned when everyone’s talking about the Astle-Baker murders.”

  “If a man’s got the nerve to plan a murder like Brandon Baker’s, he’s got nerve for anything.…Steady with my Pomans Adami, if you don’t mind.”

  “Your what?”

  “Adam’s apple. You’re very nearly suffocating me.”

  “Sorry. You’re quite definite that Ivor Watcyns did that Brandon Baker business as well?”

  “Positive. It’s funny how a man who plans a murder as carefully as he did should forget one thing. And yet they always do. In this case it was the direction of the bullet. That settled the fact that the murderer had stood in the wings. There’s a door not more than four feet away from where he stood, connecting into the auditorium via the boxes. If we’d detained all the people in the boxes that night, we might have saved ourselves a lot of trouble. Watcyns was in B, the left-hand stage-box. It would take him less than a minute to nip out, do his stuff at the exact moment when Foster had his revolver levelled at Brandon Baker down on the stage, and nip back through the door and into his box in the confusion that took place.”

  “A hell of a risk, though.”

  “A risk, certainly. Anybody who commits murder has to take a certain amount of risk. But not a hell of a risk, Derek. I don’t know if you noticed that the curtain—the big stage-curtain I mean—goes quite a long way along inside the proscenium frame—almost as far as the door which connects up to the corridors leading to the boxes. Our friend could quite easily open the door, step quickly in behind the curtains—that is, between the curtains and the proscenium wall—and do what he wanted to do. Where’s Martha put my waistcoat?”

  “Over there. Still, he’d have to be damned quick on his pins not to be seen by someone. The wings are usually about as crowded as the Black Hole of Calcutta on Cup Final night.”

  “As a matter of fact, at this particular time they weren’t. You remember the big number at the beginning of the act had just finished? The whole company was off the stage altogether, changing their undies in the dressing-rooms. And I asked Herbert about the stage-hands and electricians and people—it seems they were all away at the back of the stage getting ready for the next big set.”

  “But isn’t there a control-switch or something down in that corner? Or the laddie at the spotlights—wouldn’t he see anyone standing down there beside the curtain?”

  “No—I don’t think so. The revolving stage-controls are in that corner—but no one would be near them at the time. The lighting controls are at the other side of the stage. The man operating the spotlight above where Ivor Watcyns stood couldn’t see him, of course. The fellow who might have seen him was the man at the other spot—on the opposite wings. I got hold of him and asked him if he noticed anything, but he didn’t. He’d be too busy fixing his beam on poor Brandon’s profile, I suppose—and, in any case, our murderer could conceal himself pretty well in the folds of the curtain.”

  “He must have—seeing the shot was fired through the curtain and not clear of it.”

  “True, O King,” said Mr. Wilson, senr., inside his tails at last and surveying the finished article in the mirror of his wardrobe. “How do I look?”

  “A thing of beauty and a joy for ever,” said Derek, “apart from the dab of cotton-wool where you mis-shaved.”

  “Right,” said Mr. Wilson. “On with the motley. Ring up the curtain. To-night we dare to beard the lion in his den, then Douglas in his hall.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Sir Walter Scott,” explained Mr. Wilson. “Marmion, to be more exact—somewhere about the middle of the sixth canto.”

  “What’s D. B. D. done to get bearded in his den?” asked Derek.

  “Not our Mr. Douglas, nitwit. An earlier member of the clan. I just gave you the whole quotation to show I didn’t only know the bit everyone knows. Substitute Watcyns for Douglas and stage-box for hall, or den, or whatever it was—and there you have the rough lay-out of the evening’s performance.”

  “Thanks. It’s all just about as clear as the Manchester Ship Canal. D’you mind telling me exactly what you’re going to do to-night?”

  “I’m going to be very theatrical,” said Mr. Wilson, senr., putting a stray hair back into its fit and proper place. “Since we’ve sunk so low as to get mixed up with the show business, let’s carry the thing out in the proper tradition. When in Rome, do as Mussolini tells you. Ivor Watcyns will be at the show to-night—I’ve arranged with old man Douglas that he’ll occupy the same box as he did on the night Brandon Baker was murdered.”

  “So what?”

  “So this. You, I’m afraid, won’t see very much of the actual performance. Because you’re going to sit tight in Box D—the one next door to Watcyns’. There was a loose panel in the wall separating the two boxes—we’ve made it a little looser specially for your convenience. I want you to keep an eagle eye on your neighbour. If he does anything peculiar—get in touch with me. If he tries to slip out silently in the middle of the show—stop him and ask him to show you to the lavatory.”

  “Sounds a very delightful way of putting in an evening.”

  “You needn’t grumble. It’s the only time you’ll ever get a seat in a stage-box. And it’s the only time you’ll have the pleasure of being less than three feet away from a murderer—unless I get tired of you some day.”

  “Well—and then what?” asked Derek.

  “After the interval at the end of Act One, I’m having the lights extinguished in the corridor outside the boxes. In the applause—if any—after that dreadful song at the start of Act Two, I’m going to open the door of Ivor Watcyns’ box and insinuate myself into his company with a light and airy tread—”

  “Joke over,” said Derek. “And then?”

  “Then I’m going to charge him—quietly, politely, and with all the charm and tact I can muster for the occasion—with the murder of Brandon Baker and Gwen Astle. And as I’m going to do it the exact moment when the shot is fired on the stage and this new actor bloke falls with a dull thud up against the footlights, just as poor Brandon did that other night, I think it’s bound to have some little effect on Mr. Watcyns. In fact, if it doesn’t bring the said Mr. Watcyns down on his knees on the floor of the box with a full and free confession pouring forth from his lips, then I’m a Nazi.”

  “It’s too dramatic,” said Derek. “It’s the kind of thing that happens in the cinema.”

  “In this case, it’s happening in the theatre. What’s the difference? And what’s the time?”

  “Ten to seven.”

  “Right. Come on and eat. I want to be at the theatre before eight to fix up one or two little details.”

  And the Wilsons gave a last tug at their white bow-ties, without in the least disarranging them, and hailed a taxi and a head waiter in that order, and sat down to some extremely sad caviar at a corner table in a West End restaurant. And all over London the same kind of thing was being done by the fortunate thousand or so ladies and gentlemen who managed to obtain seats for the first first night of Mr. Douglas’s new musical comedy, and who consequently had had those seats transferred for the second performance. In the one sex, tugging of ties, brushing of hair, filling of cigarettes-cases, clean handkerchiefs pushed up sleeves and down breast-pockets. And donning of wraps, patting of hair, powdering of noses, and much smaller clean handkerchiefs pushed—well, concealed somewhere in the case of the opposite sex.

  And are you sure you have those tickets, John?—from the one sex. And no, damn you, I saw you put them on the mantelpiece last Wednesday—from the other. And a whirring of taxis and private c
ars from various homes to various restaurants, and instructions to taxi-drivers and chauffeurs to be at the theatre at say eleven-forty-five, and tables at all sorts of places, from the Dorchester to a Corner House, rapidly filled up with parties of lucky people going on to Blue Music. And, “No, you haven’t time for tournedos, John—it starts at eight-thirty, and the Douglas shows are always prompt in starting.” And grumbles, and coffee, and liqueurs, and paying of bills, and tips, and a few more taxis, and at last into the squash at the stalls entrance of the Grosvenor Theatre.

  And very few of the squash ever thought that this was going to be anything other than just another first night. One or two, it is true, said, “I wonder if anything awful will happen to-night—like the last time, I mean,” and were told gruffly by their husbands not to be such damned fools, and did they expect a murder every time they went to a show? The theatre filled up.…

  Herbert, shirt-sleeved behind the scenes, didn’t like it a bit. There was something in the wind, and he couldn’t quite make out what. The way D. B. D. was fluffing around, for one thing; because usually D. B. D. was a model of serenity on a first night. When everyone else was suffering from hysteria and abnormal blood-pressure, D. B. D. was the kind of man who sailed in immaculate in full evening regalia and red-carnation buttonhole, and said, “Everything all right? That’s fine. No need to worry, now. Just go on and do your damnedest. Herbert, see that your front batten in Act Two, Scene Four is kept up all the time—it wasn’t quite right at the dress rehearsal. And, girls, remember to stay absolutely still in the duel scene. That’s fine. Now don’t worry. Cheerio.” And disappeared, leaving behind him a chaos and confusion to come right somehow of its own accord and with the help of Herbert. Tonight D. B. D. had been hopping on and off the stage like a tomcat on the tiles. With that Scotland Yard bloke, and his son, too—the pair that had been called in over the Brandon Baker business. No—there was something up, and Herbert didn’t like it.

  In his dressing-room, M. Paul Miltonne, direct from the Folies Bergère (late Peter Milton direct from a repertory company touring the Number Three towns in Scotland), didn’t like it either. To be plucked like that from the second back row of the chorus into the star part…and all that publicity, too. M. Miltonne was unique in knowing that as an actor, as a singer, and as a dancer he was something fairly near a wash-out. Oh, hell, what’s it matter, thought M. Miltonne, having another gin-and-ginger to help him. Wasn’t Brandon Baker a wash-out too? Yes, but he had a profile, hadn’t he? Well, hadn’t he a profile every bit as good as the Baker profile? M. Miltonne surveyed his profile worriedly in his dressing-room mirror, and emptied the gin-and-ginger at a gulp. And this murder business. Dead man’s shoes, that’s what it was. Once that scene at the beginning of the second act was over, he would be okay. It was the way everyone had said, when they were playing up in Glasgow, “Yes, this is the scene where he was shot dead”—it was that that gave M. Miltonne the jimjams. Once he got that bit over…But Act Two, Scene One was a hell of a way off. He might get the bird long before then. Anyway, it was the first time he had ever had a dressing-room to himself. M. Miltonne had another gin-and-ginger.

  Deeper in the bowels of the theatre, in Number eighteen dressing-room to be exact, Miss Eve Turner was another member of the company who was feeling none too good. Miss Turner, it seemed, just couldn’t go on. “But you’ve got to go on,” said various others of the cast in the true Singing Fool manner. “You’ve simply got to, dear.” “It’s all very well saying you’ve got to,” Miss Turner kept saying in a high-pitched wail. “You didn’t go through what I went through. I was right up next to him when it happened. He fell down, and the look on his face and the blood…It was all right up in Glasgow, but here in the theatre, where it actually happened…” Miss Turner, too, had another gin-and-ginger.

  And on the other side of the curtain voices buzzed, programmes rustled, chocolates were unpacked from their cellulose coverings, feet were trampled on as part of the audience made their way through the other part to get to their seats. High in the gods, the members of the Brandon Baker Gallery Club (now under process of reorganization under the title of the Brandon Baker Circle of Remembrance) conversed with one another over several rows of seats, and came unanimously to the conclusion that, however good this bloke Miltonne might be, it could Never Be the Same without Brandon.

  Well-known resting actresses registered delighted surprise or infuriated venom according to whether the gods recognized them as they came into the stalls. The Cabinet was back en bloc, not being the sort of men who would waste their tickets, and being more or less free from the cares of the nations—Second Reading of the Government’s Unemployment Bill, it was, and that would get through all right without them. Mr. Ivor Watcyns, author and composer of the show, arrived alone as usual and smiled sadly to the reception accorded him. His programme, opera glasses, and large box of chocolates were arranged neatly on the front of his box, and then the great man disappeared from the public view behind the curtains at the side of the box. Opposite, Mr. Douglas B. Douglas and party arrived with a flourish, and exhibited a surprised amount of gold teeth when acknowledging the applause on their entry…Mr. Douglas, Mrs. Douglas, an American film magnate, and a tall, distinguished-looking man whom no one knew but whom everyone put down at once as being the new Belgian Ambassador. (It was, in fact, Mr. Wilson, senr.) The box next to Mr. Watcyns’ was unoccupied—the only blot on an otherwise packed house. It was noised throughout the dress circle that a Royal Personage was Coming On from a function at the Guildhall, and no doubt the empty box would be for Him. (Mr. Wilson, junr., sat in the back corner of the empty box and chewed butterscotch vigorously.) Eight thirty-two.…

  M. René Gasnier’s bald pate loomed suddenly over the rail of the orchestra pit. M. Gasnier smiled to his usual round of complete strangers in the stalls, pulled down his cuffs, opened his score, tapped his desk, advised the wind on no account to behave as they had behaved last Saturday night in Glasgow, and launched the orchestra forth on the Overture and Introduction to Act One.

  Mr. Amethyst, the Morning Herald’s dramatic critic, arrived late. The One Hundred and Ten Ladies and Gentlemen of the Chorus had traversed the globe, tap-danced in the Blue Music Café in Budapest, paraded in near-nudity around the Swimming Pool of the Whittaker’s Country House in Florida, scoffed cold tea cocktails on the floor of the Palm Beach Lounge in the Grand Hotel, London, donned flowing robes and executed various versions of the shimmy in A Street in Algiers, and finally appeared in tennis-shorts and white berets and worked themselves into a frenzy in the finale of Act One, before Mr. Amethyst arrived at the theatre.

  The pearls of the plot had already changed hands thrice, and M. Miltonne had been wrongly accused of theft as the curtain fell on a rousing bit of uproar by the Entire Company. Mr. Amethyst was having a hard night of it; there was a rival first night at the Aldwych, and Mr. Amethyst’s editor had suggested that he might very well cover both shows for the paper. After a slight wrangle about salaries, Mr. Amethyst had agreed. After all, he had seen the first act of Blue Music once already, and it was so painfully obvious what was going to happen in the Aldwych play after he left it that he had no qualms whatever in writing complete notices for two shows he had not completely seen. He timed his arrival neatly, getting his nose in front of the surge from the stalls at the end of Blue Music’s first act, led the field to the bar, and ordered a double whisky from Ruth the barmaid. Mr. Duncan, his prototype on the Daily Observer, arrived just in time to pay for it.

  “How’s it going?” asked Mr. Amethyst. “Anyone murdered yet?”

  “Up to the time of going to press, no,” said Mr. Duncan.

  “Pity. I wish that man Foster hadn’t committed suicide. His presence was much needed at the Aldwych show this evening. What’s the new French fellow like?”

  “Pretty good,” said Mr. Duncan.

  “Not if I can help it,” said Mr. Amethyst, accepting another of the
same. “I’ve a marvellous epigram about the Necessity for Increased Tariffs on Foreign Imports that I mean to work in on him in my notice.”

  “Mildred’s marvellous,” said Mr. Duncan, referring to the lady playing the late Miss Astle’s part.

  “Age cannot wither her,” said Mr. Amethyst. “Nor custom stale her infinite variety. I remember saying that about her when The Belle of New York was put on for the first time, and it’s just as true to-day. I see her grandson’s got his blue at Cambridge.”

  “There’s the bell,” said Mr. Duncan. “Mustn’t miss this scene—it’s the bit where they went all Chicago last time, remember. Come on—your Import’s probably dead by now.…”

  The stalls crushed back to their seats. M. Gasnier reappeared and invoked his percussion. He was looking a little pale…remembering very vividly at this moment the last time he had conducted the orchestra in the particular bit of the score when poor Mr. Baker had fallen in front of his eyes and that unpleasant dark mark had begun oozing towards him over the footlights. The audience, too, were remembering. There was little applause at the end of the Riff Ruffian Rag number, and the encore that was taken if not given merely served to make the atmosphere a little more tense.

  “Oh, dear,” said the elderly lady on Mr. Amethyst’s right, “I can’t help thinking something dreadful’s going to happen again.”

  “Don’t worry, madame,” said Mr. Amethyst. “I’m afraid there’s no hope. Providence doesn’t bestow its blessings quite as liberally as that.”

  M. Miltonne launched into his number, “Say My Heart is in Your Hands”.

  M. Miltonne was shaky. He got no encore, but a good deal of careful assistance from the brass in the orchestra over his sustained notes. But it was over at last, and out of the corner of his eye M. Miltonne could see the fellow who had taken over the part of the Rebel Leader from the murderous Mr. Foster slowly climb up the ladder in the wings before launching forth on the mountain-tops. He had the revolver stuck in his girdle, and a particularly unpleasant expression on his face. All imagination, of course; it was that beard and his makeup that did it. All the same, M. Miltonne’s throat went dry and his stomach gave a peculiar little somersault of its own accord, and he had to be prompted before he could remember his line at the end of the song.