Half Moon Street

by Anne Perry

  “Yes sir,” the young man said at last. “Now, what may we do for you? Do you wish your photograph taken? Or you are perhaps an enthusiast yourself, and you wish to join us? Bring us some of your work, and we will make our decision. We are very generous, I assure you. We desire only to increase our art, enlarge the boundaries of what may be achieved. Colors will be next, you know.” His voice rose excitedly. “I mean real colors! Reds—blues—greens—everything!”

  “Will they?” For a moment Pitt’s mind was taken with the idea. First he thought of the beauty of it, then hard on its heels he thought of the police use. If photographs could be taken of things shown in the color they really were, then the possibilities were limitless, not just to identify people, but to trace stolen goods—paintings, works of art, all the sort of things in Delbert Cathcart’s home. Verbal descriptions never did justice to them. Police constables were not meant to be poets. “That will be marvelous,” he agreed. “But I came to speak to Mr. Hathaway. He is a member, I believe?”

  “Oh yes, very good, he is; in fact, most talented.” He very nearly asked what Pitt wanted, and curbed his inquisitiveness only just in time. He inclined his head towards a young man with rather long fair hair who was still gazing with rapt attention at the light on the branches. “That’s Hathaway over there.”

  “Thank you,” Pitt acknowledged, and strode off before he could be further drawn into enthusiasm for the photographic inventions of the future.

  Hathaway looked up as Pitt’s shadow fell across his camera.

  “I’m sorry,” Pitt apologized. “Are you Peter Hathaway?”

  “Yes. Is there something I can do for you?”

  “Superintendent Pitt, from the Bow Street station,” Pitt explained, handing him his card.

  “Oh!” Hathaway looked serious. He swallowed hard. “Is it about that report I made to the local police? Look, could we discuss it a little farther off ?” He gestured rather wildly with his free arm. “Would you mind fearfully pretending it is a business matter or something? It is sort of . . . well . . . delicate. I don’t want people to think I’m some kind of busybody who goes around repeating everything he knows. It’s just that . . . well . . . with Cathcart dead, and all that . . . you know?” A flicker of distress crossed his face. “He was a damn decent photographer. Almost the best, I’d say. Can’t let him be killed and do nothing about it . . . not when I saw the quarrel.”

  “Tell me exactly what you did see, Mr. Hathaway,” Pitt encouraged him. “First of all, where did this happen? Set the scene for me, if you like.”

  “Ah . . . yes. Well, it was the Tuesday before he was killed, as I said.” Hathaway thought hard, re-creating it in his mind, his eyes almost closed. “We were by the Serpentine, trying to catch the early light on the water, so we were there about eight o’clock. A bit inconvenient, certainly, but one has to follow nature, you can’t lead it. We did some excellent work, really excellent.” He looked away quickly. “You’ve no idea how blind one can be to the glories of light and shade, the intricacies of form, until you see them through a lens. You really do see the world through a new eye. Pardon the obvious, but it’s true. You should take up photography, sir, you really should! Bit expensive, I suppose, but most pleasures are, and without the artistic merit or the truly spiritual uplift of catching a moment of nature’s glory and immortalizing it to share with all mankind.” His voice increased in enthusiasm. “It’s a window in time, sir. A kind of immortality.”

  Pitt could not help catching a glimpse of what Hathaway meant. It was true, a photograph far more than any painting caught the moment and made it, if not eternal, at least of unimaginable duration. But Delbert Cathcart had been a great photographer, and an ordinary, mortal man, and he was dead. It was Pitt’s duty to find out how and why, and by whose hand. There might be time for thoughts of capturing beauty later on.

  “It is marvelous,” he agreed. “I don’t suppose you took any photographs of Mr. Cathcart and Mr. Antrim while they were there?”

  For a moment Hathaway’s face fell with disappointment that Pitt should think of something so mundane, but he was too much of an enthusiast to miss the point. Interest flared up in his eyes and his face brightened. “Oh, if only I had! What a wonderful thing that would be, wouldn’t it? Unarguable evidence. It will come, sir! It will come. The camera is a witness whose testimony no one can doubt. Oh, the future is full of wonders we can barely imagine. Just think of—”

  “What was Mr. Cathcart doing at the Serpentine?” Pitt interrupted. Speculation on the marvels of the future could go on indefinitely, and fascinating as it was, it was a luxury he could not afford now.

  “Er . . . I don’t know.” Hathaway sounded surprised. “Actually, when I think of it, it was quite odd. As far as I know, he only takes portraits. He wasn’t there to teach us . . . which would have been marvelous, of course. But he didn’t speak to us at all. I imagine he was looking at places to use for backdrop. That’s all that would make sense.”

  “But you did see him?”

  “Oh yes, quite clearly.”

  “Did you speak to him?”

  “No. No, it would have been . . . intrusive. He is a—was a—very great man . . . something of an idol to an amateur like me.” He flushed slightly as he said it. “It is a most awful thing that he should have been killed, an act of barbarism. That’s what makes it so hard to understand. But great artists can be volatile. Perhaps it was over a woman?”

  “Maybe. What was Orlando Antrim doing here? Is he an amateur photographer?”

  “Oh yes, really quite good, you know. Of course he also prefers figures, but one would expect that. After all, drama is his art.”

  “Tell me exactly what you saw, Mr. Hathaway.”

  A couple of young men walked past them carrying their cameras and tripods and talking to each other excitedly, their voices raised, trying to gesticulate with arms weighed down by their equipment. The bowler hat of one of them had been knocked to a rakish angle, but he seemed quite unaware of it. They disappeared into the shade of a tree, propped their tripods and began looking at the area with interest.

  “I saw them arguing,” Hathaway answered, frowning. “Antrim seemed to be pleading with Cathcart, trying to persuade him of something. He appeared very emphatic about it, waving his hands around.”

  “Did you hear what he said?”

  “No.” His eyes widened. “No, that’s the odd thing. Neither of them raised their voices at all. I knew they were quarreling because of the furious gestures and the anger in their faces. Antrim was trying to persuade Cathcart to do something, and Cathcart kept refusing more and more vehemently, until finally Antrim stormed off in a rage.”

  “But Cathcart remained?”

  “Only for a few moments. Then he picked up his camera and snapped his tripod closed and went off as well.”

  “In the same direction?”

  “More or less. But then they would. It was towards the road and the natural way out.”

  “Did anyone else observe this exchange.”

  “I don’t know. One does tend to get rather absorbed in what one is doing. I’m afraid I have lost a few friends because of my obsession. I noticed them because I was at that moment casting my eye around for a particular pattern against which to take a picture of one of my friends, a young lady with fair hair. I imagined clothing her in white and having her stand looking—”

  Pitt smiled, but interrupted his explanation.

  “Yes, I understand. You have been very helpful, Mr. Hathaway. Is there anything else you can tell me about this encounter? Have you seen the two together on any other occasion? Do you know either of them personally—as members of the club, perhaps?”

  Hathaway lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “I’m so sorry. I’ve only been a member a short time. I know perhaps three or four of the other fellows: Crabtree, Worthing, Ullinshaw, Dobbs, that’s about all. Dobbs has the most wonderful knack with light on stones and fences and things, and he’s so good with birds.�
� His voice rose again with excitement. “He’s the first one who showed me film on a roll, rather than plates. It was absolutely marvelous. You have no idea! A Mr. Eastman in America invented it. Twenty feet long.” He gestured with his hands. “All wound up so you can take a hundred pictures one after the other. Imagine it! One after the other . . . just like that. They are round, almost two and a half inches in diameter.”

  “Round?” Pitt said quickly. All the pictures he had seen in Cathcart’s house had been rectangular, as had been the portraits in the houses of his clients.

  “Yes.” Hathaway smiled. “Of course that’s amateurs. I know the professionals use the square ones, but these are pretty good, you know. When they are all done you send the whole camera back to them and they process the film and return you the camera reloaded. It all costs about five guineas.” He looked a trifle uncomfortable. “As I said, it is rather expensive. But I’d rather do that than any other pastime I can think of.” He jutted his chin out defiantly, daring Pitt to say he was wasting money.

  “That is most interesting,” Pitt said quite sincerely. “Thank you for your candor, Mr. Hathaway, and your instruction. If anything else occurs to you, please let me know. Good day.”

  Pitt spoke to every other member of the camera club, but no one else could help. One young man had seen the quarrel but could only describe the participants, he did not know them by name.

  “Oh yes,” he agreed vehemently. “Very heated. I thought at one moment they would come to blows, but the taller young man stalked off, leaving the other very red in the face and mighty uncomfortable.”

  Nothing Pitt asked could elicit anything more, except numerous details on the marvels of photography, the newest technical advances, the miracle of Mr. Eastman’s roll of film—although it could apparently be used only outside and in natural daylight, which explained largely why Delbert Cathcart, who frequently worked in subdued light or inside a room, still worked with the old plates.

  The club members were all male, and it had not occurred to them as worthy of comment that there were no women among them, but they were ardent in their admiration for female photographers, and not the least hesitant in accounting them great artists in their field, and indeed possessing an excellent and comprehensive grasp of the techniques involved as well. Their thoughts did not advance Pitt’s detection in the slightest, but in spite of himself he was interested.

  From Hampstead, Pitt went to seek Orlando Antrim. The next necessary step would be to ask him what the quarrel had been about and where and when he had last seen Cathcart. Pitt was dreading the moment when he might have to accuse him of the murder. But some confrontation was unavoidable.

  He found Orlando at the theatre rehearsing his part in Hamlet , which he was due to play within a week.

  Pitt was required to explain himself to the doorman and prove his identity before he was allowed in.

  “They’re in rehearsal,” the old man said, fixing Pitt with a gimlet eye. “Don’t you go interruptin’ ’em, now! You wait till yer spoke to. Mr. Bellmaine’ll tell you when it’s your turn. Mustn’t upset actors, isn’t fair. Plainer than that, it isn’t right.”

  Pitt acknowledged the stricture and obediently tiptoed along the dusty passages as he had been directed. After a few false starts, he eventually ended up in the wings of the huge stage, bare except for two embroidered screens and a chair. A tall lean man stood towards the front, perhaps a couple of yards from the orchestra pit and a little to the left. His cadaverous face was fired with emotion and he held one arm high as if hailing someone in the distance.

  Then Pitt saw her, coming from the shadows of the wings opposite him into the light of the stage: Cecily Antrim, dressed in very ordinary gray-blue, a simple blouse and skirt with a slight bustle. Her hair was caught up untidily in a few pins, and yet it was extraordinarily flattering. It looked casual and youthful, full of energy.

  “Ah, my dear!” the tall man said warmly. “Ready for Polonius’s death. From the top. Where’s Hamlet? Orlando!”

  Orlando Antrim emerged from the wings behind his mother. He too was dressed in the most ordinary of clothes: trousers, a collarless shirt and a waistcoat which matched nothing. His boots were dusty and scuffed and his hair tousled. A look of fierce concentration darkened his face.

  “Good. Good,” the tall man said. Pitt assumed he was the Mr. Bellmaine the doorman had referred to. “Hamlet, from the right. Gertrude, you and I from the left. This is the arras in question. Let us begin.” He led the way off the stage, his footsteps echoed across the boards, then he turned and walked back beside Cecily.

  “ ‘He will come straight,’ ” he began. “ ‘Look you lay home to him . . .’ ” His voice sounded no more than a conversational level, and yet it filled the stage and the auditorium beyond. “ ‘Pray you, be round with him.’ ”

  “ ‘Mother, Mother, Mother!’ ” Orlando called from the wings.

  Cecily turned to Bellmaine. “ ‘I’ll warrant you: Fear me not— withdraw, I hear him coming.’ ”

  In a single, oddly graceful movement for one aping age, Bellmaine slipped behind the screen.

  Orlando came onto the stage. “ ‘Now, Mother, what’s the matter?’ ”

  “ ‘Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended,’ ” Cecily answered, her voice carrying the same considered music.

  Orlando’s face was strained, his eyes wide and dark. There was a harshness in him of emotion so tightly held in, and yet so tormented, he was at the edge of breaking. “ ‘Mother, you have my father much offended.’ ”

  Pitt watched in fascination as people he had seen in totally different characters took on the roles familiar to every generation for nearly three hundred years. He had studied Hamlet in the schoolroom on Sir Arthur Desmond’s estate. He had read the soliloquy himself with Matthew and pulled it apart to its separate elements. Yet in front of him it now became a story of people with lives as real as his own. He watched the queen’s guilt, Polonius’s death, Hamlet’s torture, all created with voice and gestures on a bare stage and then shattered in an instant as the actors stopped, threw parts aside, and became themselves again.

  “Too quick,” Bellmaine criticized, looking at Orlando. “Your accusation blurs the words. Hamlet is in fury and indignation, but the audience still needs to hear the substance of his charge. You are too realistic.”

  Orlando smiled. “Sorry. Should I hesitate before ‘heaven’s face doth glow’?”

  “Try it,” Bellmaine agreed with enthusiasm. He turned to Cecily. “You are pleading. Guilt is angrier. You are trying too hard to win the audience’s sympathy.”

  She shrugged an apology.

  “Again,” he ordered. “From Hamlet’s entrance.”

  Pitt watched them go through it a second time, and a third, and a fourth. He marveled at their patience, and even more at the emotional energy that invested them with passion each time, picking up halfway through a scene, with its changing moods, and throwing themselves into it. Only twice did anyone need prompting, and then continuance was immediate. They seemed able to create the illusion of an entire world by the power of their own belief, and yet to remember someone else’s words and speak them as if they were their own.

  Finally Bellmaine allowed them some respite, and for the first time Pitt noticed that several other actors and actresses had appeared, ready to rehearse their parts. He tried to imagine them in the costumes of a far earlier period, and see them as they would be in character. A young woman with fair hair and a high forehead he thought to be Ophelia, and as soon as the recognition came to him, he saw Delbert Cathcart obscenely splayed out in the punt, dressed in the green velvet gown in parody of ecstasy and death.

  He rose to his feet from where he had been sitting on a pine box.

  “Excuse me . . .”

  “My dear fellow,” Bellmaine said straightaway. “I can’t be doing auditioning now. Go and see Mr. Jackson. He’ll talk with you. If you can be prompt, come and go exactly as you are told, stay sober and onl
y speak when you are spoken to, a guinea a week and you have begun your career on the stage.” He smiled, and his whole countenance was illuminated with sudden charm. “You never know where it will lead. Tour with us in the provinces, get a small part and we’ll pay you up to twenty-five shillings . . . thirty-five in time. Now be a good chap and go and look for Jackson. He’s probably around at the back somewhere, scenery and lighting, don’t you know.”

  Pitt smiled in spite of himself. “I’m not looking for a career on the stage, Mr. Bellmaine. I am from the Bow Street police station . . . Superintendent Pitt . . .”

  Cecily looked up from the edge of the stage where she was sitting. “My goodness, it’s the policeman friend of Joshua’s. Polonius is alive and well, I assure you!” Since Bellmaine was standing between them, that was incontestable.

  “I should hardly arrest Hamlet, ma’am,” Pitt promised. “The nation would never forgive me.”

  “The world would not, Mr. Pitt,” she answered. “But I am delighted you have such an excellent sense of priorities. We fluffed a few lines but our performance was hardly a crime.” She sat back a little, hugging one knee. “What brings you here? Not my protest against the Lord Chamberlain, surely? Now, if you read my mind as to what I would like to do to the wretch, that may well be arrestable.”

  “I cannot arrest you until after you have done it, Miss Antrim,” he pointed out, trying to hide his amusement. It was not a time for it, and yet it rose unbidden within him.

  She understood far too quickly. Her face broke into a lovely smile. “How very kind of you. Thank you so much!”

  Bellmaine stepped between them. “You have come for something, sir. Pray what is it? We cannot afford to stop for long. This may not appear much to you, but it is our living, and far harder than it seems.”

  Pitt turned to him. “It seems extremely hard, Mr. Bellmaine,” he said honestly. “I have to speak to Mr. Antrim. I shall keep it as brief as possible. Is there a scene you can rehearse without him?”