What Dread Hand?

by Christianna Brand

  ‘Well, they were rehearsing the strangling scene,’ the doorkeeper repeated, reasonably.

  ‘Now, however, you realise that she really was being strangled?’

  ‘Well, yes.’ He looked troubled. The Dragon family in their affluence were good to old theatricals like himself.

  ‘Very well. Can you now say that you know it was Mr. Dragon?’

  ‘I thought it was. You see, he was speaking the lines.’

  ‘You mean, you heard his voice? You heard what he was saying?’

  ‘A word here and there. He raised his voice—just as he does on those lines in the production: the death lines, you know…’ He looked hopeful. ‘So it was just a run-through.’

  ‘They were all sitting in what, I suppose, would be the Green-room: James Dragon himself, his father who, besides producing, played the small part of Othello’s servant, the Clown; his mother who was wardrobe mistress, etcetera and had some little walking-on part, Leila Dragon who played Emilia, and three actors (who, for a wonder, weren’t members of the family), playing respectively, Iago, Cassio and Cassio’s mistress, Bianca. I think,’ said the Great Detective, beaming round the circle of eagerly listening faces, ‘that it will be less muddling to refer to them by their stage names.’

  ‘Do you really?’ asked Inspector Cockrill: incredulous.

  ‘Do I really what?’

  ‘Think it will be less muddling?’ said Cockie: and twiddled his thumbs again.

  The great man ignored him. ‘They were in stage make-up, still, and in stage costume: and they sat about or stood, in attitudes of horror, grief, dismay or despair, which seemed to me very much like stage attitudes too.

  ‘They gave me their story—I use the expression advisedly as you will see—of the past half-hour.

  ‘The leading-lady’s dressing-room at the Dragon Theatre juts out from the main building, so angled, as it happens, that the windows can be seen from the Green-room, as they can from the doorkeeper’s cubby. As I talked, I myself could see my men moving about in there, silhouettes against the drawn blinds.

  ‘They had been gathered, they said, the seven of them, here in the Green-room, for twenty minutes after the curtain came down—Othello, Othello’s servant the Clown, Emilia and Mrs. Dragon (the family) plus Iago, Cassio and a young girl playing Bianca; all discussing “something”. During the time, they said, nobody had left the room. Their eyes shifted to James Dragon and shifted away again.

  ‘He seemed to feel the need to say something, anything to distract attention from that involuntary, shifting glance. He blurted out: “And if you want to know what we were discussing, we were discussing my wife.”

  ‘“She had been Carrying On,” said Mrs. Dragon in a voice of theatrical doom.

  ‘“She had for some time been carrying on a love affair, as my mother says. We were afraid the affair would develop, would get out of hand, that she wouldn’t want to come away on our American tour and it would upset our arrangements. We were taking out As You Like It. She was to have played Rosalind.”

  ‘“And then?”

  ‘“We heard footsteps along the corridor. Someone knocked at her door. We thought nothing of it till one of us glanced up and saw the shadows on her blind. There was a man with her in there. We supposed it was the lover.”

  ‘“Who was this lover?” I asked. If such a man existed, I had better send out after him, on the offchance.

  ‘But none of them, they said, knew who he was. “She was too clever for that,” said Mrs. Dragon in her tragedy voice.

  ‘“How could he have got into the theatre? The stage doorman didn’t see him.”

  ‘They did not know. No doubt there might have been some earlier arrangement between them…

  ‘And not the only “arrangement” that had been come to that night. They began a sort of point counterpoint recital which I could have sworn had been rehearsed. Iago (or it may have been Cassio): “Then we saw that they were quarrelling…” Emilia: “To our great satisfaction!” Clown: “That would have solved all our problems, you see.” Othello: “Not all our problems. It would not have solved mine.” Emilia, quoting: “Was this fair paper, this most goodly book, Made to write ‘whore’ upon…?” Mrs. Dragon: “Leila, James, be careful” (sotto voce, and glancing at me). Clown, hastily as though to cover up: “And then, sir, he seemed to pounce down upon her as far as, from the distorted shadows, we could see. A moment later he moved across the room and then suddenly the lights went out and we heard the sound of a window violently thrown up. My son, James, came to his senses first. He rushed out and we saw the lights come on again. We followed him. He was bending over her…”

  ‘“She was dead,” said James; and struck an attitude against the Green-room mantelpiece, his dark-stained face heavy with grief, resting his forehead on his dark-stained hand. People said later, as I’ve told you, that he aged twenty years in as many days; I remember thinking at the time in fact he had aged twenty years in as many minutes: and that that was not an act.

  ‘A window had been found swinging open, giving on to a narrow lane behind the theatre. I did not need to ask how the lover was supposed to have made his get-away. “And all this time,” I said, “none of you left the Green-room?”

  ‘“No one,” they repeated: and this time were careful not to glance at James.

  ‘You must appreciate,’ said the Great Detective, pouring himself another glass of port, ‘that I did not then know all I have explained to you. If I was to believe what I was told, I knew only this: that the door-keeper had seen a man strangling the woman, repeating the words of the Othello death-scene—which, however, amount largely to calling the lady a strumpet; that apparently the lady was a strumpet, in as far as she had been entertaining a lover; and that six people, of whom three were merely members of his company, agreed that they had seen the murder committed while James Dragon was sitting innocently in the room with them. I had to take the story of the lover at its face value: I could not then know, as I knew later, that Glenda Croy had avoided such entanglements. But it raised, nevertheless, certain questions in my mind.’ It was his custom to pause at this moment, smiling benignly round on his audience, and invite them to guess what those questions had been.

  No one seemed very ready with suggestions. He was relaxing complacently in his chair, as also was his custom for no one ever did offer suggestions, when, having civilly waited for the laymen to speak first, Inspector Cockrill raised his unwelcome voice. ‘You reflected no doubt that the lover was really rather too good to be true. A “murderer”, seen by seven highly interested parties and by nobody else: whose existence, however, could never be disproved; and who was so designed as to throw no shadow of guilt on to any real man.’

  ‘It is always easy to be wise after the event,’ said the old man huffily. Even that, however, Inspector Cockrill audibly took leave to doubt. Their host asked somewhat hastily what the great man had done next. The great man replied gloomily that since his fellow guest, Inspector Cockrill, seemed so full of ideas, perhaps he had better say what he would have done.

  ‘Sent for the door-keeper and checked the stories together,’ said Cockie promptly.

  This was (to his present chagrin) precisely what the Great Detective had done. The stories, however, had proved to coincide pretty exactly, to the moment when the light had gone out. ‘Then I heard footsteps from the direction of the Green-room, sir. About twenty minutes later, you arrived. That’s the first I knew she was dead.’

  So: what to do next?

  ‘To ask oneself,’ said Inspector Cockrill, though the question had been clearly rhetorical, ‘why there had been fifteen minutes’ delay in sending for the police.’

  ‘Why should you think there had been fifteen minutes’ delay?’

  ‘The man said it was twenty minutes before you arrived. But you told us earlier, you were just across the street.’

  ‘No doubt,’ said the old man, crossly, ‘as you have guessed my question, you would like to—’

 
; ‘Answer it,’ finished Inspector Cockrill. ‘Yes, certainly. The answer is: because the cast wanted time to change back into stage costume. We know they had changed out of it, or at least begun to change…’

  ‘I knew it: the ladies were not properly laced up, Iago had on an everyday shirt under his doublet—they had all obviously hurriedly redressed and as hurriedly re-made up. But how could you…?’

  ‘We could deduce it. Glenda Croy had had time to get back into her underclothes. The rest of them said they had been in the Green-room discussing the threat of her “affair”. But the affair had been going on for some time, it couldn’t have been suddenly so pressing that they need discuss it before they even got out of their stage-costume—which is, I take it, by instinct and training the first thing an actor does after curtain-fall. And besides, you knew that Othello, at least, had changed and changed back.’

  ‘I knew?’

  ‘You believed it was Othello—that’s to say James Dragon—who had been in the room with her. And the door-man had virtually told you that at that time he was not wearing his stage costume.’

  ‘I fear then that till this moment,’ said the great man, heavily sarcastic, ‘the door-man’s statement to that effect has escaped me.’

  ‘Well, but…’ Cockie was astonished. ‘You asked him how, having seen his silhouette on the window-blinds, he had “known” it was James Dragon. And he answered, after reflection, that he knew by his voice and by what he was saying. He did not say,’ said Cockie, sweetly reasonable, ‘what otherwise, surely, he would have said before all else: “I knew by the shape on the window-blind of the raised arms in those huge, padded, cantaloupe-melon sleeves.”’

  There was a horrid little silence. The host started the port on its round again with a positive whizz, the guests pressed walnuts upon one another with abandon (hoarding the nut-crackers, however, to themselves); and, after all, it was a shame to be pulling the white rabbits all at once out of the conjurer’s top hat, before he had come to them—if he ever got there! Inspector Cockrill tuned his voice to a winning respect. ‘So then, do tell us, sir—what next did you do?’

  What the great man had done, standing there in the Green-room muttering to himself, had been to conduct a hurried review of the relevant times, in his own mind. ‘Ten-thirty, the curtain falls. Ten-fifty, having changed from their stage dress, they do or do not meet in here for a council of war. At any rate, by eleven o’clock the woman is dead: and then there is a council of war indeed… Ten minutes, perhaps, for frantic discussion, five or ten minutes’ grace before they must all be in costume again, ready to receive the police…’ But why? His eyes roved over them: the silks and velvets, the rounded bosoms thrust up by laced bodices, low cut: the tight-stretched hose, the jewelled doublets, the melon sleeves…

  The sleeves. He remembered the laxly curved hands hanging over the head of the divan, the pointed nails. There had been no evidence of a struggle, but one never knew. He said slowly: ‘May I ask now why all of you have replaced your stage dress and make-up?’

  Was there, somewhere in the room, a sharp intake of breath? Perhaps: but for the most part they retained their stagey calm. Emilia and Iago, point counterpoint, again explained. They had all been halfway, as it were, between stage dress and day dress; it had been somehow simpler to scramble back into costume when the alarm arose… Apart from the effect of an act rehearsed, it rang with casual truth. ‘Except that you told me that “when the alarm arose” you were all here in the Green-room, having a discussion.’

  ‘Yes, but only half-changed, changing as we talked,’ said Cassio, quickly. Stage people, he added, were not frightfully fussy about the conventional modesties.

  ‘Very well. You will, however, oblige me by reverting to day dress now. But before you all do so…’ He put his head out into the corridor and a couple of men moved in unobtrusively and stood just inside the door. ‘Mr. James Dragon—would you please remove those sleeves and let me see your wrists?’

  It was the girl, Bianca, who cried out—on a note of terror: ‘No!’

  ‘Hush, be quiet,’ said James Dragon: commandingly but soothingly.

  ‘But James… But James, he thinks… It isn’t true,’ she cried out frantically, ‘it was the other man, we saw him in there, Mr. Dragon was in here with us…’

  ‘Then Mr. Dragon will have no objection to showing me his arms.’

  ‘But why?’ she cried out, violently. ‘How could his arms be…? He had that costume on, he did have it on, he was wearing it at the very moment he…’ There was a sharp hiss from someone in the room and she stopped, appalled, her hand across her mouth. But she rushed on. ‘He hasn’t changed, he’s had on that costume, those sleeves, all the time: nothing could have happened to his wrists. Haven’t you, James?—hasn’t he, everyone?—we know, we all saw him, he was wearing it when he came back…’

  There was that hiss of thrilled horror again: but Leila Dragon said, quickly, ‘When he came back from finding the body, she means,’ and went across and took the girl roughly by the arm. The girl opened her mouth and gave one piercing scream like the whistle of a train; and suddenly, losing control of herself, Leila Dragon slapped her once and once again across the face.

  The effect was extraordinary. The scream broke short, petered out into a sort of yelp of terrified astonishment. Mrs. Dragon cried out sharply, ‘Oh, no!’ and James Dragon said, ‘Leila, you fool!’ They all stood staring, utterly in dismay. And Leila Dragon blurted out: ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. It was because she screamed. It was—a sort of reaction, instinctive, a sort of reaction to hysteria…’ She seemed to plead with them. It was curious that she seemed to plead with them, and not with the girl.

  James Dragon broke through the ice-wall of their dismay. He said uncertainly: ‘It’s just that…We don’t want to make—well, enemies of people,’ and the girl broke out wildly: ‘How dare you touch me? How dare you?’

  It was as though an act which for a moment had broken down, reduced the cast to gagging, now received a cue from prompt corner and got going again. Leila Dragon said, ‘You were hysterical, you were losing control.’

  ‘How dare you?’ screamed the girl. Her pretty face was waspish with spiteful rage. ‘All I’ve done is to try to protect him, like the rest of you…’

  ‘Be quiet,’ said Mrs. Dragon, in The Voice.

  ‘Let her say what she has to say,’ the detective said. She was silent. ‘Come now. “He was wearing it when he came back”—the Othello costume. “When he came back.” From finding the body, Miss Leila Dragon now says. But he didn’t “come back”. You all followed him to the dressing-room—you said so.’

  She remained silent, however; and he could deal with her later—time was passing, clues were growing cold. ‘Very well then, Mr. Dragon, let us get on with it. I want to see your wrists and arms.’

  ‘But why me?’ said James Dragon, almost petulantly; and once again there was that strange effect of an unreal act being staged for some set purpose: and once again the stark reality of a face grown all in a moment haggard and old beneath the dark stain of the Moor.

  ‘It’s not only you. I may come to the rest, in good time.’

  ‘But me first?’

  ‘Get on with it, please,’ he said impatiently.

  But when at last, fighting every inch of the way, with an ill grace he slowly divested himself of the great sleeves—there was nothing to be seen: nothing but a brown-stained hand whose colour ended abruptly at the wrist, giving place to forearms startlingly white against the brown—but innocent of scratches or marks of any kind.

  ‘Nor did Iago, I may add in passing, nor did Cassio nor the Clown nor anyone else in the room, have marks of any kind on wrists or arms. So there I was—five minutes wasted and nothing to show for it.’

  ‘Well hardly,’ said Inspector Cockrill, passing walnuts to his neighbour.

  ‘I beg your pardon? Did Mr. Cockrill say something again?’

  ‘I just murmured that there was after all
, something to show for it—for the five minutes wasted.’

  ‘?’

  ‘Five minutes wasted,’ said Inspector Cockrill.

  Five minutes wasted. Yes. They had been working for it, they were playing for time. Waiting for something. Or postponing something? ‘And of course, meanwhile, there had been the scene with the girl,’ said Cockie. ‘That wasn’t a waste of time. That told you a lot. I mean—losing control and screaming out that he had been wearing Othello’s costume “at the very moment…” and, “when he came back”. “Losing control”—and yet what she screamed out contained at least one careful lie. Because he hadn’t been wearing the costume—that we know for certain.’ And he added inconsequently that they had to remember all the time that these were acting folk.

  But that had not been the end of the scene with the girl. As he perfunctorily examined her arms—for surely no woman had had any part in the murder—she had whispered to him that she wanted to speak to him: outside. And, darting looks of poison at them, holding her hand to her slapped face, she had gone out with him to the corridor. ‘I stood with her there while she talked,’ said the old man. ‘Her face, of course, was heavily made up; and yet under the make-up I could see the weal where Leila Dragon had slapped her. She was not hysterical now, she was cool and clear; but she was afraid and for the first time it seemed to be not at all an act, she seemed to be genuinely afraid, and afraid at what she was about to say to me. But she said it. It was a—solution: a suggestion of how the crime had been done; though she unsaid nothing that she had already said. I went back into the Green-room. They were all standing about, white-faced, looking at her as she followed me in; and with them, also, there seemed to be an air of genuine horror, genuine dread, as though the need for histrionics had passed. Leila Dragon was holding the wrist of her right hand in her left. I said to James Dragon: “I think at this stage it would be best if you would come down to the station with me, for further questioning…”

  ‘I expected an uproar and there was an uproar. More waste of time. But now, you see,’ said the old man, looking cunningly round the table, ‘I knew—didn’t I? Waiting for something? Or postponing something? Now, you see, I knew.’