‘I believe there was only one person who had even the vaguest idea of what happened between the time the lights went out and when they came on again; and that by chance was a friend of mine named Hawkins, who had always been known for his extremely keen sight. He was sitting in the front row of the stalls when the lights went out. He told me he could just catch a faint view of the stage, and it seemed to him that something or somebody seized Littlemore and drew him back by the neck, so that he seemed to lose his balance and totter on his heels. It was just then that he screamed. Then Hawkins lost sight of him. After perhaps ten seconds he heard a crash, and the lights came on just as the falling curtain was half-way down. And just before it shut out the stage from his view he saw Littlemore writhing on the ground with the scaffold lying crashed down beside him. There was some sort of confirmation of this from the assistant stage-manager who was in charge of the curtain, for he swore that just after the theatre became in darkness he was conscious that someone went past him and out on to the stage. There was one other funny little incident. They had just carried Littlemore’s body into his dressing-room when an ambulance dashed up, and the man in charge of it said they had been rung up shortly before and informed that Mr Littlemore urgently required their services at the theatre.’
‘What!’ said Mr Cantelope, ‘could he have done that himself?’
‘Not possibly,’ replied Willoughby, ‘for he had been on the stage for the last half-hour, and, of course, no one in the theatre was responsible, for why on earth should they have done such a thing?’
‘What was the verdict at the inquest?’
‘Well, Littlemore died from a broken neck, but the doctor was unable to suggest how it had been sustained. Possibly the gallows fell on him as they collapsed, but all he would state definitely was that Littlemore’s neck was broken. Verdict — Accidental Death. As I say, I believe Hawkins was the only person who could throw the slightest light on what happened, if you call that light.’
‘What happened to the play?’ asked Mr Cantelope.
‘It had just that one performance, for there was no one to take Littlemore’s place, and anyway the public seemed to have acquired a temporary distaste for the Thespian theatre. Personally, after three months’ rest I was engaged to play the part of a footman in Featherbeds, and had no less than twenty lines of unrecognisable Cockney. After that I never looked back.’
‘I imagine you’ve looked back on the first and only night of The Eleventh Hour,’ said Mr Cantelope.
‘No more than I could help,’ replied Willoughby, ‘for when I do I always see four men carrying something past me clad in Cowboy’s kit.’
A Jolly Surprise for Henri
WHEN, A FORTNIGHT before she became a widow, Marianna sat down at her escritoire (as her pronunciation of French mellowed many familiar articles were Gallicised), she presented a seductive spectacle. She owned what may be somewhat controversially termed the Ideal Female Figure, to which, after many strayings down Schoolboy and other perverted paths, lovely ladies must always, if possible, return. Just thirty-two years of age, just seventy inches high, just under ten stone, she was beautifully firm, strong, rounded, a lovely rippling rhythm of curves. She had made heroic efforts so to defeat the purposes of Providence as to make herself resemble an anaemic and dissolute Etonian, but ‘redoocing’ had made her feel rotten and look worse, so she gave it up, and thereby gained her reward, for it was partly her appearance of plenty in an era of banting which drew all men unto her. She was a little uncertain about her legs, for they seemed rather larger than most women’s, but, as she said unexpectedly, ‘They may be bloody, but they’re at least unbowed,’ and indeed those powerful pillars were perfectly fit columns to support the admirable edifice above them. Certainly Marianna represented good manners in architecture. She looked at herself intensely in the little mirror on the escritoire. She saw reflected there a blonde of blondes, eyes unexpectedly dark, a nice little nose, a skin which always seemed slightly tanned, giving her a look of radiant well-being. She opened her mouth and examined a dentist’s nightmare, a flawless set, and then she put down the glass. Though she had seen all this many times before she still enjoyed the reassuring vision. That the ensemble included no indication of any particular intelligence would not have worried her even if she had detected the omission.
She took up the receiver and demanded a number in Mayfair, and her expression became calculating and concentrated. Students of Human Behaviour would have been prepared to wager their shirts that she was about to enter into conversation with a man in whom she was much interested, and it was so.
When Oliver Painter — ten days before he became a wraith — was proceeding in an impressive automobile towards the City, his face showed no sign of any presentiment of his approaching exit. He seemed quite at his ease as he scanned his papers in a knowing manner. He was a big dominating animal, but in no way gross. The reason for his great Stock Exchange renown was revealed by the look of mingled shrewdness and courage which usually occupied his face. It occupied it now as he absorbed the contents of those miracles of dreariness, the organs of finance, but suddenly he put them down on the seat beside him and an expression of fatuous bliss replaced it. Students of Human Behaviour would have had no hesitation in staking the rest of their attire that his mind had suddenly become occupied by ‘a dear little woman’. Some punters!
The two personalities thus briefly described had first met eleven years before in the city of New York, whither Oliver had gone ostensibly on business and Marianna ostensibly on pleasure — but he meant to enjoy himself and she to put in some spells in the Crow’s Nest.
Oliver was then forty-one, already very rich and in the mood for settling down. Marianna was the daughter of the leading dentist of Tickville, a prosperous and rapidly expanding New Hampshire burg, and in some important respects, perhaps, the dullest hole on the inhabited globe — at least so Marianna thought. Mr Sheldrake did more poking about in affluent cavities, more gold and porcelain mining than any of his competitors, for his technique was modern, he was extremely handsome and the Life and Soul of a Party. His wife had also been a Grade A looker in her day, and Marianna’s face and form were the natural fruits of so pulchritudinous an alliance. She also was in the mood for settling down, or rather settling up. With her looks all things were possible. She found the youth of Tickville intolerable, and so she flirted with them cruelly. Because they boosted Tickville she despised them, and it amused her to torture them. Had Thamar crossed the Atlantic, lived for a number of years in Tickville and drunk nothing but iced water she could only have been distinguished from Marianna by the fact that she was a brunette.
This morbid and complex attitude towards the other sex supplied the only unexpected trait in her character.
So when she came to stay with a school friend in the metropolis she was through with her home town and out for blood. By the time she had known Oliver for half an hour she had begun seriously to consider him. Oliver equally quickly was equally touché. She was physically a marvel, he had never imagined such perfection. He found her slight American accent attractive and she had vitality and vivacity, though he was shrewd enough to know that her smooth and glossy brow would never be marred by lines indicating intellectual contemplation, and that her charming little head was as nearly empty as he could have wished, for this eligible beau realised vaguely but decisively that while a combination of great beauty and large brains would admirably grace his bed and decorate his hearth, it would be unlikely to do either for very long, for he knew himself to be just a ‘nice plain business man’. He decided after a fortnight’s earnest consideration to pop the question.
Marianna coyly did not jump at the proposal, but she never really seriously considered refusing it. Oliver was not so very far from being the incarnation of her girlish dreams — except that he was forty-one. He was rich, he lived in London, he was English, he was not bad-looking, robust and impressive physically, apparently generous, a bit old though; yet Tickville was
no place to linger longer in. Having had propositions put up to her by all the unmarried and not a few of the married males of that city, she felt confident that she was fully equipped to hold her own in arenas of far fiercer feminine competition. She was just reaching her best, a face and form such as hers should stir even London, and anyway they were being shamefully wasted in Small Town Celibacy. So they were married at St George’s three months later. For a year Marianna was chiefly occupied in getting her bearings, picking her friends with great care, and in giving the rooms in her house in Berkeley Square the appearance of lavishly furnished and decorated stage sets, though, like most American women, she had naturally good taste in such matters. After that the arrival of Oliver Junior took up most of her time. But when the heir was howling masterfully and a strong posse of domestics had been engaged to look after him, Marianna started to set about things. Two years of matrimony had not changed her opinion of Oliver Senior very greatly. Still he was rich, English, certainly generous and now he had a house in Berkeley Square. He didn’t seem quite as good looking, but she had few regrets. He had revealed rather a thrilling new trait — he was consumed, ‘literally consumed,’ said Marianna, by jealousy. She recognised that he had some cause for it. Nine men out of ten made love to her at sight with varying degrees of ardour. She encouraged all the more socially eligible with a rather stereotyped and highly deceptive response. She knew all the tricks of the trade, but there was no real business done. Oliver, apparently a feeble judge of female frigidity, made scenes of great sound and fury over these tightly leashed affairs. Marianna quailed inwardly, but retaliated and defended herself with spirit, and was cunning enough to put a good deal of stock-broking in Oliver’s way. Whenever the pursuer’s chase became too hot she pretended to surrender to her lord and master’s will, but while the affair was in an early, safe and interesting condition she defied him with perfect success. Consequently it was not a placid ménage, but Marianna didn’t hanker after placidity if it was to be bought at such a drearily high price. Surely the Terror of Tickville had a right to a run in London. At the same time she had no intention of giving Oliver any real excuse for taking any unpleasant action. He might rage, but there was nothing definite of which he could accuse her. No man was worth the risk of losing an established position as ‘One of London’s most wealthy and beautiful young hostesses’ and that sort of thing. Oliver’s scenes were rather a bore, but they had their reassuring side, implying as they did fanatical devotion to herself and acting as they did as allies of her conscience. However, as time went on it seemed to Marianna that he was calming down. The tornadoes became less frequent and less sustained, almost they seemed the result of habit rather than conviction.
Why did Marianna dally? She was perfectly happy, constitutionally frigid, and she knew dalliance might be dangerous. Partly from that malevolent and morbid delight in torturing men. It gave her a queer and complex thrill to see them ‘aching’ for her. Never having experienced such an urge herself she found it most amusing to watch in others, and men behaved in interestingly different ways when properly adjusted to the rack.
But even without this sadistic stimulus she would have dallied, for she considered that her position demanded it. A member of the Haute Monde — an expression she had mastered perfectly — should, she believed, reveal some apparent moral levity. Her conversation should be knowing, dashing, occasionally brilliantly shocking. Those saucy anecdotes which commercial travellers are alleged to compose in their leisured moments, and which they certainly exchange in office hours, should form a staple conversational ingredient. Well-bred cynicism, careless opulence, a complete lack of anatomical reticence, sartorial and verbal, and a most catholic and indiscreet intimacy with all that was happening in the realm of aristocratic-cum-theatrical depravity — these, Marianna considered, were necessary constituents of the part she had to play. A ‘quick study,’ she made progress rapidly, and when she realized the highest point within her capacity she was a creditably convincing replica of the real thing. But from an examination of the conduct of her friends she saw that something in the way of a lover or two was indicated. Lovers were evidence of admiration and they lent that spice of danger which post-war matrimony demanded. The engagement book of a lady of fashion should include regular entries in code, the planning of her days should necessitate some sub rosa arrangement with her friends, and she should reciprocate by assisting in the easing of their delicate indiscretions. (So she thought.)
Most of Marianna’s friends were British equivalents of herself. Wealthy and aspiring, they worked along the same lines and cultivated the same idiom of conduct, but having the sense of it rather more in their blood more nearly approached the original. However, Marianna was much the richest of them and she forced the tip of her pinnacle level with theirs by the fulcrum of a mighty bank balance. One and all devoted their lives to getting to know just the right people. It was hard and sometimes terribly boring work.
Marianna was very charitable. Blue Crosses, Ivory Crosses, Green Crosses, Red and Purple Crosses were all lavishly supported by her, and she even made an attempt to institute a Lemon Cross, the aim of which would have been to provide soup kitchen facilities for the authors of historical dramas in verse, but it was decided at a meeting of the Provisional Executive Committee that such works were so intrinsically unreadable and unactable that it would be kinder negatively to direct the energies of their authors to more marketable expressions of inspiration. But it wasn’t all energy wasted, for Marianna got to know her first Duchess thereby.
Along this worthy highway Marianna marched to social repute. The Really Right People regarded her with amusement and some irony, but they rather liked her, and her hospitality was overwhelming. By observing the Really Rights with great concentration and watching her step very carefully, Marianna improved her technique and secured a coveted place in contemporary Gossip Columns.
To her selection of lovers she gave considerable thought. She eventually decided on a ‘Stand-By and Casuals’ system. The former to be ardent enough to merit the description, but sufficiently unappetising to make the rejection of his advances — beyond a certain point — no great strain on a robust conscience. But she realised that something more dashing and decorative was also required, and for Casuals she cultivated the middle ranks of diplomacy — Latin diplomacy for choice — for attachés and people of that sort were often attractive and of noble birth, and their response to exceptional charms and the very best food and drink was invariably enthusiastic. These she could exhibit, enslave and exchange for others. It was the Casuals who aroused the ire of Oliver.
With the good luck of the pertinacious she carried out this monstrous programme with perfect success. She found an almost ideal Stand-By in a rubicund individual fifty-four years of age, reasonably connected with the peerage, a widower with £10,000 a year. This personage fell an immediate victim to Marianna in the most photographed bathing suit at Deauville. He pursued her in a ‘never say die’ spirit for five years.
Marianna made elaborate assignations with him, exhibited for his benefit all the wiles she realised were appropriate but secretly despised, and finally drove him to an even larger consumption of alcohol than his appearance suggested. He hoped against hope heroically year after year, and then one day they ‘parted brass rags’ dramatically. It was in Marianna’s pet private room at the Restaurant Verdi, when she was looking more than usually rakish and tempting. Fortified by oysters and a Porterhouse steak, he advanced once more to the charge. Repulsed as ever he mopped his brow, and then poured out a glass of Perrier water and dropped therein two little pellets which friskily dissolved.
‘What’s that, Snookums?’ asked Marianna.
‘A farewell oblation,’ replied Snookums. ‘And the only sensible draught for a man who is a man and has his meals privately with you, a bromide and soda. Farewell!’
And so they parted, and for a time Marianna had to depend on Casuals, but though they usually managed to disguise their exasperation and c
ontrol their disappointment she had one experience which rather alarmed her. A dashing young Italian gave her a very testing afternoon, once again in a private room at the Verdi. As soon as the waiter had brought in the coffee, this hot and ebullient exile came straight to the net. To Marianna’s request that he should try to behave like a gentleman he paid no attention at all. To her indignant assertions that she would never have cultivated his acquaintance if she had known what sort of chap he was he returned blasting and reprehensible replies. In the indecorous and dubious struggle which followed Marianna learned that lunching dangerously has its trying moments, but that her conscience assisted by a hock bottle was equal to them. She left the restaurant with her raiment less intact than her virtue. The thwarted Latin went back to his flat, put on a black shirt and spent the evening cursing his mistress for being a brunette.
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