The studio was large and high ceilinged, with a big north window. Since Russell had leased it from a friend who had gone to Maine for the summer, it was furnished with a sofa, several low tables and comfortable chairs. A stack of paintings leaned against the wall in one corner of the room, and on a shelf above the wainscot that ran around the room were plaster casts of Greek and Roman heads.
Russell showed them the small bedroom and the kitchen and then, when they returned to the studio, he looked closely at Verna for the first time and broke off in the middle of a sentence. After her discussion with Sara and Andrew, Verna had decided that, since the portrait that Russell was doing was to be used in the theatre lobby and in advertisements, she should wear one of the costumes she wore in the play. The one she had picked was the one she wore when she first met Mr. Rochester on the road near Thornfield Hall; a black bombazine dress, black merino cloak and a black beaver bonnet, the only touch of color a cameo brooch that she wore at her throat.
“We never discussed what I should wear,” Verna began, a little tentatively.
“No, we didn’t, but we didn’t have to,” said Russell. “What you’re wearing is perfect, exactly right! The black will bring out your coloring, which is wonderful, and the cameo brooch will give us just the note of contrast we need. I couldn’t have done better if I’d thought about it for weeks. And now, if the rest of you will excuse us, can we get started?”
“Of course,” said Verna.
He led her to the low platform in front of the window, sat her in a rather shabby armchair and then stepped back behind the easel he had set up to the side of the platform.
“Would you turn your head just a little to the left?” he said. “Just a little more. There. That’s fine. Hold it for just a minute and then you can relax, talk, do. anything you like.”
He had a prepared canvas on the easel. Picking up a stick of charcoal, he began roughing in her face with sure, quick strokes. Sara, Andrew and Wyatt had seated themselves on the other side of the studio. They watched for a few minutes, admiring Russell’s skill and assurance. Then Andrew took out the note that the man in the checked shirt had given him and unfolded it. While not exactly Spencerian, the handwriting was better than that in Benny the Monk’s note to Wyatt. Andrew had a feeling—perhaps because of the unevenness of the letters—that it had been written in the hansom while the man in the checked shirt was following them.
“If you want to know what I think you do,” it said, “write down where and when we can meet on the back of this and leave it for me. I’ll be waiting to pick it up when you leave.”
Sara glanced sideways at him. “What’s that?” she asked.
Leaning close to her, Andrew told her and gave her the note. She read it, looked at him, then at Wyatt, mutely asking Andrew if she could give the note to the Inspector. Andrew nodded, and Sara touched Wyatt on the arm, whispered in his ear and gave him the note.
Wyatt read it, then looked thoughtfully across the studio. Andrew was fairly sure he knew what he was thinking. Decker had apologized to Verna for what had happened the night before in Washington Square—not that it was his fault that Sara and Andrew had gone out there—and Wyatt was trying to decide whether this note concerned that case or something else. Perhaps the case, whatever it was, that had brought him from England. More important, there was the question of whether there was any danger involved, not for himself, but for Sara and Andrew. Finally he made up his mind.
“What time is your dress rehearsal tomorrow?” he asked Verna.
“Two o’clock.”
“How long will it last?”
“Probably until about five. Why?”
“I want to make an appointment and I wasn’t sure what time to make it.”
“Five thirty would be safe.”
Nodding, Wyatt took out a pencil, wrote something on the back of the note, folded it up again and gave it to Andrew, who put it back in his pocket.
“You’re going to the rehearsal?” said Russell.
“Yes. We’re all going,” said Wyatt.
“Would you like to come too?” said Verna. “Or would you rather wait till we come back from the Boston try-out and open officially?”
“I already have tickets for the opening,” said Russell. “But I’d like very much to come to the dress rehearsal too. It would give me a chance to make some sketches, which I won’t be able to do on opening night.”
“I’ll leave your name at the door,” said Verna.
“That would be very nice,” he said somewhat abstractedly. He had put down the charcoal, picked up his palette and was studying Verna, then looking down as he mixed his colors. When he had what he wanted, he began laying the pigment on the canvas, starting with her face and painting as surely and quickly as he had when he was doing the rough charcoal drawing.
It was the first time Sara and Andrew had ever seen an artist at work, and they watched with great interest. After about ten minutes, Wyatt got up and walked to the corner of the studio where the canvases leaned against the wall.
“Are these yours?” he asked.
“Some of them,” said Russell, continuing with his painting. “The ones on the outside. The rest are Thompson’s, the chap I rented the studio from.”
“May we look at them?”
“If you like.”
“I’d like to see them, too,” said Verna. “Bring them over here.”
One by one, Wyatt brought the paintings over and set them up so that Verna could look at them at the same time that he, Sara and Andrew did. They were quite different from the kind of paintings that Andrew was used to; they were vivid in color and very strong. Yet with all their vividness and strength, much was left to the imagination. It was as if Russell was giving his impression of what he was painting rather than trying to reproduce it as a camera might. For instance, there was one painting of the Thames on a foggy day in which it was almost impossible to tell where the fog ended and the water began. And still it caught the essence of the river at such a time perfectly.
“Do you like them?” Andrew asked Sara quietly.
“Yes. Very much.”
“So do I.”
They stayed at the studio until a little after five. About four thirty, Russell looked at Verna and, though he himself seemed as full of energy as ever, decided that she’d had enough and made her get up and stretch. He made tea for them, which he served with some cakes from a local bakery, and talked very straightforwardly about his painting, what he’d done that he liked and where he thought he had not been completely successful.
Russell told Verna that he felt he’d made a good start on the portrait and would work on the background until she got back from Boston. He told Wyatt, Sara and Andrew that he’d see them at the dress rehearsal the next day, and then they left.
Verna had dismissed the carriage, and it took Wyatt a few minutes to flag a hack. While they waited, Andrew saw the man in the checked shirt standing in a doorway across the street. When they had come out of Russell’s building, Andrew had lagged behind and, holding the door open, had ostentatiously pushed one corner of the note that Wyatt had returned to him into the slot of Russell’s letter box, leaving the rest of it sticking out. As they got into the hack, Andrew saw the man with the checked shirt start across the street toward Russell’s house.
5
Manion
Workmen were busy in the theatre lobby when Sara, Andrew and Wyatt arrived, touching up the gilt in the ceiling decorations and polishing the pendants of the chandeliers. Mr. Moss, the manager (whom Andrew and Sara had learned the Americans call “the producer”), was there watching and talking to Frank Talbot, the playwright. Andrew and Sara had met them both before and introduced Wyatt to them. Mark Russell got there a few minutes after they did, and they introduced him also. Moss told Russell how much he had liked the sketch Verna had shown him, asked how the portrait was coming along and then, looking at his watch, suggested that they go in.
The rehearsal started promptly, j
ust a few minutes after two. Verna had told them that, on the whole, the Americans mounted their plays more lavishly than the British, feeling that an elaborate production made the play seem better than it was. But even then they were surprised by the number of sets, the detail in them and the quality of the lighting.
What Talbot had done in his dramatization of the novel was to drop all the scenes of Jane Eyre’s childhood and begin the action with her arrival at Thornfield. Thus Verna made her entrance just a moment or two after the rise of the curtain, and, as always, Andrew marvelled at her magic, her ability to become the character she was playing; in this case, the quiet but courageous governess. Sara stiffened a little when Jane Eyre met Adele, the young girl she was to take care of, and Andrew knew that it was because she wished she were up there on the stage playing the part. He squeezed her hand, and she smiled at him and relaxed.
Verna had originally become interested in the play because of the way the playwright had handled Rochester’s mad wife, not using her for pure Gothic horror, but showing a certain amount of sympathy for her. She pointed out that while in this case the madwoman in the attic was real, it was still a symbol of much that went on in middle and upper class society. For if a woman was not free to develop and exercise her talents—and how many were?—then she, like Rochester’s wife, was a prisoner in her own, home. She made some suggestions as to how one section of the play could be rewritten—the scene in the attic in which Jane meets the wife—and the result was not just dramatic, but very moving.
There was no way that the book’s famous line—Reader, I married him!—could be used in the play, but it did end very much as the book did, with that strong and difficult man, Rochester—now blind—breaking down when he discovers that Jane, whom he thought he had lost, has come back, and she takes him in her arms to comfort him as earlier she had comforted Adele.
The audience sat in silence for a moment after the curtain came down. Then, though there were only a handful of them—Sara, Andrew, Wyatt, Russell, Mr. Moss, the director, the playwright and a few others—they broke into a storm of applause and clapped even louder when the curtain went up and first the entire cast came forward to the footlights, and then Verna alone.
“Now, now,” she said. “That’s enough. You know you’re all prejudiced.”
“Of course we are, my dear,” said Mr. Moss. “That’s why we’re stopping now and coming backstage. But I can assure you that the audience, which will not be prejudiced, will continue clapping until you’re tired of taking curtain calls.”
He rose and led them all backstage to the green room where Verna and the leading members of the cast were waiting. Verna had exacted a promise from Andrew a long time ago that he would always be honest with her about her performances. “Praise is easy to come by,” she had said. “Honesty isn’t. And if I can’t get it from my own son, where can I get it?” It was a great responsibility for someone his age, but he tried to discharge it faithfully. And so Verna’s eyes went to him first. And when he nodded, she relaxed a little. And when Sara and Wyatt nodded also, she smiled, embraced the two young people and was able to accept the congratulations of the manager, the director and the playwright.
They talked for several minutes, the other players coming in for their share of compliments, then Moss said he had some things to say to the cast about the performance and about the Boston trip. The director too had some directions for the cast and asked the visitors to excuse them. So the four left together, standing outside in front of the theatre and continuing to talk about the play and what they liked about it. Then, after reminding them that they were invited to the private viewing of the Etruscan statues at the Metropolitan Museum the next day, Russell went off to his studio, leaving the three of them alone.
“Ten of five,” said Wyatt, taking out his watch and glancing at it. “Your mother’s guess as to how long the rehearsal would take was a good one,” he said to Andrew.
“You made the appointment for five thirty?”
“Yes.”
“Where?” asked Sara.
“My room at the hotel. And since we’ve plenty of time, let’s walk.”
Their friend, Jim McCann, was at the desk when they got to the hotel. He greeted them, gave them their keys and gave Andrew some letters that had arrived for his mother.
“Who do you suppose the man is?” Sara asked when they were in Wyatt’s room. “And what do you suppose he’s going to tell us?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Wyatt.
“You must have some idea.”
“I haven’t. Why should I speculate about it when I have quite a few other things on my mind? When he comes here—if he comes—he’ll tell us, and that will be that.”
“But …” began Sara, then broke off when Andrew nudged her. He didn’t want too much discussion because he was afraid Wyatt might make them leave, even though it was he that the man had given the note to.
At about twenty of six there was a knock on the door and the man came in. He was not dressed quite the way he had been the day before. For though he was still wearing corduroy trousers, probably as a concession to this visit, he now had on a suit jacket and a proper shirt and tie instead of the checked shirt.
“My name’s Manion,” he said in a rather hoarse voice. “Al Manion.”
“How do you do, Mr. Manion,” said Wyatt. “Since you wanted to see us, I gather you know who we are.”
“I know who you are. Your name’s Wyatt and you’re English, from Scotland Yard. But I don’t know who the youngsters are—except that they’re friends of yours.”
“Yes, they are. This is Sara Wiggins. And this is Andrew Tillett.”
Manion nodded to them, then turned back to Wyatt. “Seeing how you’re a ’tec and the British ones are supposed to be the best, you’ve probably figured out who I am and why I’m here.”
Wyatt sighed. “I was asked to do that, guess who you were and what this was about, just before you got here. And I refused. But if you insist.…” He studied Manion’s ruddy face, rough hands and the shoes that went with the trousers, for they were heavy and rather scuffed workshoes. “You do physical, outdoor work of some kind,” he said. “I suspect something to do with ships.”
Manion blinked. “Hey, that’s pretty good! I’m a longshoreman, run a donkey engine for a stevedoring firm. But how’d you figure that out?”
“Your general appearance, but particularly your shoes. The white on the sides and soles looks like salt. You must have stepped in or been splashed with seawater and it dried there. But besides that, there are some tar stains on the bottoms of your trousers.”
Manion glanced down. “Seems simple when you tell me, but it’s still pretty good. And since you got that much, do you want to guess the rest—why I’m here?”
“Does it have anything to do with what happened the other day when I landed here on the Britannic and that cargo sling came down and almost hit me?”
“You got it. I was on the forward donkey engine at the time.”
“And it was an accident?” asked Andrew.
“No.”
“No?” said Sara. “You mean you did it on purpose?”
“Yes.”
“But why?”
“Because I was paid to do it.”
“By whom?”
“Before I get to that, I want to tell you that I never saw the two of you. I got kids of my own, and if I had seen you, thought there was even a chance of hurting you, I’d never have done it.”
“I believe you,” said Wyatt. “Now who paid you to do it?”
“You don’t want to try to guess that?”
“No.”
“All right. It was Dandy Dan Cady. He’s not the one who made the arrangements and slipped me the dough. His buddy, Biggsy, did that. But it was for Dandy Dan.”
“I see,” said Wyatt. “I rather suspected that from some things my young friends here told me. Did Biggs give you any reason for it, say why he wanted you to do it?”
“Yes.
He said you were coming here to stick your nose into something that was none of your business and Dandy Dan wanted to warn you to butt out. So he’d give me a signal when you came down the gangplank, and I was to drop a load of cargo as close to you as I could without really smashing you.”
“I suspected that, too. But why are you telling us that now?”
“Why?” said Manion, his face darkening. “Because they crossed me up, that’s why! I told Biggsy that doing something like that could get me into trouble, and he told me not to worry. That Dandy Dan would take care of it for me. Well, the stevedore boss not only fired me—he put out the word so that no one else’ll hire me. And when I went to see Biggsy about it, he said he didn’t know what I was talking about and that if I said anything about it to anyone, he’d really put the boots to me!”
“‘Don’t tread on me,’” said Wyatt, nodding.
“What?”
“Wasn’t that the motto on one of your early flags—that and a rattlesnake?”
“I don’t know. But that’s the idea. I don’t take pushing around for anyone!”
“But still, you were rather careful about the way you got in touch with us,” said Andrew. “The way you gave me that note for instance.”
“Because whether I like it or not—whether I’m mad at him or not—Dandy Dan is one of the biggest men in this town. And while I want to get back at him, I’m not exactly anxious to have him know it.”
“And you think the way to get back at him is through me, is that it?” said Wyatt.
“That’s right. If you’ve come over here to dig into something that he doesn’t want you to—”
“I don’t know how many people are laboring under that misapprehension,” said Wyatt. “More than I like to think of. But I hope you’re the last.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t come over here to dig into anything that concerns Dandy Dan Cady. As a matter of fact, I never even heard of him until I got here. So if you’re counting on me to even your score with him, I’m afraid you’re in for a disappointment.”
The Case of the Etruscan Treasure (Andrew Tillet, Sara Wiggins & Inspector Wyatt Book 5) Page 5
