Vintage Murder

Chapter IV FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE TIKI

The curtain rose for the fourth time. Carolyn Dacres, standing in the centre of the players, bowed to the stalls, to the circle and, with that friendly special smile, to the gallery. One thousand pairs of hands were struck together over and over again, making a sound like hail on an iron roof. New Zealand audiences are not given to cheering. If they are pleased they sit still and clap exhaustively. They did so now, on the third and final performance of Ladies of Leisure. Carolyn bowed and bowed with an air of enchanted deprecation. She turned to Hailey Hambledon, smiling. He stepped out of the arc and came down to the footlights. He assumed the solemnly earnest expression of all leading actors who are about to make a speech. The thousand pairs of hands redoubled their activities. Hambledon smiled warningly. The clapping died away.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” began Hambledon reverently, “Miss Dacres has asked me to try and express something of our—” he looked up to the gallery— “our gratitude, for the wonderful reception you have given the first play of our short”—he looked into the stalls—“our all too short season in your beautiful city.” He paused. Another tentative outbreak from the audience. “This is our first visit to New Zealand, and Middleton is the first town we have played. Our season in this lovely country of yours is, of necessity, a brief one. We go on to — to—” he paused and turned helplessly to his company. “Wellington,” said Carolyn. “To Wellington,” said Hambledon, smiling apologetically. The audience laughed uproariously. “To Wellington, on Friday. To-morrow, Wednesday, and Thursday we play The Jack Pot, a comedy which we had the honour of presenting at the Criterion Theatre in London. Most of the original cast is still with us, and, in addition, three well-known Australian artists have joined us for this piece. May I also say that we have among us a New Zealand actress who returns to her native country after a distinguished career on the London stage — Miss Susan Max.” He turned to old Susan, who gave him a startled look of gratitude. The audience applauded vociferously. Old Susan, with shining eyes, bowed to the house and then, charmingly, to Hambledon.

“Miss Dacres, the company, and I, are greatly moved by the marvellous welcome you have given us. I–I may be giving away a secret, but I am going to tell you that to-day is her birthday.” He held up his hand. “This is her first visit to Middleton; I feel we cannot do better than wish her many happy returns. Thank you all very much.”

Another storm of hail, a deep curtsy from Carolyn. Hambledon glanced up into the O.P. corner, and the curtain came down.

“And God forbid that I should ever come back,” muttered little Ackroyd disagreeably.

Susan Max, who was next to him, ruffled like an indignant hen.

“You’d rather have the provinces, I suppose, Mr. Ackroyd,” she said briskly.

Old Brandon Vernon chuckled deeply. Ackroyd raised his comic eyebrows and inclined his head several times. “Ho-ho. Ho-ho!” he sneered. “We’re all touchy and upstage about our native land, are we!”

Susan plodded off to her dressing-room. In the passage she ran into Hailey Hambledon.

“Thank you, dear,” said Susan. “I didn’t expect it, but it meant a lot.”

“That’s all right, Susie,” said Hambledon. “Go and make yourself lovely for the party.”

Carolyn’s birthday was to be celebrated. Out on the stage the hands put up a trestle-table and covered it with a white cloth. Flowers were massed down the centre. Glasses, plates, and quantities of food were arrayed on. lines that followed some impossible standard set by a Hollywood super-spectacle, tempered by the facilities offered by the Middleton Hotel, which had undertaken the catering. Mr. Meyer had spent a good deal of thought and more money on this party. It was, he said, to be a party suitable to his wife’s position as the foremost English comedienne, and it had been planned with one eye on the Press and half the other on the box-office. The pièce de résistance was to be in the nature of a surprise for Carolyn and the guests, though, one by one, he had taken the members of his company into his confidence. He had brought from England a Jeroboam of champagne — a fabulous, a monstrous bottle of a famous vintage. All the afternoon, Ted Gascoigne and the stage-hands had laboured under Mr. Meyer’s guidance and with excited suggestions from George Mason. The giant bottle was suspended in the flies with a counterweight across a pulley. A crimson cord from the counterweight came down to the stage and was anchored to the table. At the climax of her party, Carolyn was to cut this cord. The counterweight would then rise and the jeroboam slowly descend into a nest of maidenhair fern and exotic flowers, that was to be held, by Mr. Meyer himself, in the centre of the table. He had made them rehearse it twelve times that afternoon and was in a fever of excitement that the performance should go without a hitch. Now he kept darting on to the stage and gazing anxiously up into the flies, where the jeroboam hung, invisible, awaiting its big entrance. The shaded lamps used on the stage were switched on. With the heavy curtain for the fourth wall, the carpet and the hangings on the set, it was intimate and pleasant.

A little group of guests came in from the stage-door. A large vermilion-faced, pleasant-looking man, who was a station-holder twenty miles out in the country. His wife, broad, a little weather-beaten, well dressed, but not very smart. Their daughter, who was extremely smart, and their son, an early print of his father. They had called on Carolyn, who had instantly asked them to her party, forgotten she had done so, and neglected to warn anybody of their arrival. Gascoigne, who received them, looked nonplussed for a moment, and then, knowing his Carolyn, guessed what had happened. They were followed by Gordon Palmer, registering familiarity with back-stage, and his cousin, Geoffrey Weston.

“Hullo, George,” said Gordon. “Perfectly marvellous. Great fun. Carolyn was too thrilling, wasn’t she? I must see her. Where is she?”

“Miss Dacres is changing,” said Ted Gascoigne, who had dealt with generations of Gordon Palmers.

“But I simply can’t wait another second,” protested Gordon in a high-pitched voice.

“Afraid you’ll have to,” said Gascoigne. “May I introduce Mr. Gordon Palmer, Mr. Weston, Mrs. — mumble-mumble.”

“Forrest,” said the broad lady cheerfully. With the pathetic faith of most colonial ladies in the essential niceness of all young Englishmen, she instantly made friendly advances. Her husband and son looked guarded and her daughter alert.

More guests arrived, among them a big brown man with a very beautiful voice — Dr. Rangi Te Pokiha, a Maori physician, who was staying at the Middleton.

Alleyn came in with Mason and Alfred Meyer, who had given him a box, and greeted him, after a final glance at the supper-table. They made a curious contrast. The famous Mr. Meyer, short, pasty, plump, exuded box-office and front-of-the-house from every pearl button in his white waistcoat. The famous policeman, six inches taller, might have been a diplomat. “Magnificent appearance,” Meyer had said to Carolyn. “He’d have done damn’ well if he’d taken to ‘the business.’ ”

One by one the members of the company came out from their dressing-rooms. Most actors have an entirely separate manner for occasions when they mix with outsiders. This separate manner is not so much an affectation as a persona, a mask used for this particular appearance. They wish to show how like other people they are. It is an innocent form of snobbishness. You have only to see them when the last guest has gone to realise how complete a disguise the persona may be.

To-night they were all being very grown up. Alfred Meyer introduced everybody, carefully. He introduced the New Zealanders to each other, the proprietor and proprietress of the Middleton to the station-holder and his family, who of course knew them perfectly well de haut en bas.

Carolyn was the last to appear.

“Where’s my wife?” asked Meyer of everybody at large. “It’s ten to. Time she was making an entrance.”

“Where’s Carolyn?” complained Gordon Palmer loudly.

“Where’s Madame?” shouted George Mason jovially.

Led by Meyer, they went to find out. Alleyn, who, with Mason, had joined Hambledon, wondered if she was instinctively or intentionally delaying her entrance. His previous experience of leading ladies had been a solitary professional one, and he had very nearly lost his heart. He wondered if by any chance he was going to do so again.

At last a terrific rumpus broke out in the passage that led to the dressing-rooms. Carolyn’s golden laugh, Carolyn saying “O-o-oh!” like a sort of musical train whistle, Carolyn sweeping along with three men in her wake. The double doors of the stage-set were thrown open by little Ackroyd, who announced like a serio-comic butler:

“Enter Madame!”

Carolyn curtsying to the floor and rising like a moth to greet guest after guest. She had indeed made an entrance, but she had done it so terrifically, so deliberately, with a kind of twinkle in her eye, that Alleyn found himself uncritical and caught up in the warmth of her famous “personality.” When at last she saw him, and he awaited that moment impatiently, she came towards him with both hands outstretched and eyes like stars. Alleyn rose to the occasion, bent his long back, and kissed each of the hands. The Forrest family goggled at this performance, and Miss Forrest looked more alert than ever.

“A-a-ah!” said Carolyn with another of her melodious hoots. “My distinguished friend. The famous—”

“No, no!” exclaimed Alleyn hastily.

“Why not! I insist on everybody knowing I’ve got a lion at my party.”

She spoke in her most ringing stage voice. Everybody turned to listen to her. In desperation Alleyn hurriedly lugged a small packet out of his pocket and, with another bow, put it into her hands. “I’m making a walloping great fool of myself,” he thought.

“A birthday card,” he said. “I hope you’ll allow me—

Carolyn who had already received an enormous number of expensive presents, instantly gazed about her with an air of flabbergasted delight that suggested the joy of a street waif receiving a five-pound note.

“It’s for me!” she cried. “For me, for me, for me.” She looked brilliantly at Alleyn and at her guests. “You’ll all have to wait. It must be opened now. Quick! Quick!” She wriggled her fingers and tore at the paper with excited squeaks.

“Good Lord,” thought Alleyn, “how does she get away with it? In any other woman it would be nauseating.”

His gift was at last freed from its wrappings. A small green object appeared. The surface was rounded and graven into the semblance of a squat figure with an enormous lolling head and curved arms and legs. The face was much formalised, but it had a certain expression of grinning malevolence. Carolyn gazed at it in delighted bewilderment.

“But what is it? It’s jade. It’s wonderful— but—?”

“It’s greenstone,” said Alleyn.

“It is a tiki, Miss Dacres,” said a deep voice. The Maori, Dr. Rangi Te Pokiha, came forward, smiling.

Carolyn turned to him.

“A tiki?”

“Yes. And a very beautiful one, if I may say so.” He glanced at Alleyn.

“Dr. Te Pokiha was good enough to find it for me,” explained Alleyn.

“I want to know about it — all about it,” insisted Carolyn.

Te Pokiha began to explain. He was gravely explicit, and the Forrests looked embarrassed. The tiki is a Maori symbol. It brings good fortune to its possessor. It represents a human embryo and is the symbol of fecundity. In the course of a conversation with Te Pokiha at the hotel Alleyn had learned that he had this tiki to dispose of for a pakeha a white man— who was hard up. Te Pokiha had said that if it had been his own possession he would never have parted with it, but the pakeha was very hard up. The tiki was deposited at the museum where the curator would vouch for its authenticity. Alleyn, on an impulse, had gone to look at it and had bought it. On another impulse he had decided to give it to Carolyn. She was enthralled by this story, and swept about showing the tiki to everybody. Gordon Palmer, who had sent up half a florist’s shop, glowered sulkily at Alleyn out of the corners of his eyes. Meyer, obviously delighted with Alleyn’s gift to his wife, took the tiki to a lamp to examine it more closely.

“It’s lucky, is it?” he asked eagerly.

“Well you heard that he said, governor,” said old Brandon Vernon. “A symbol of fertility, wasn’t it? If you call that luck!”

Meyer hastily put the tiki down, crossed his thumbs and began to bow to it.

“O tiki-tiki be good to little Alfie,” he chanted. “No funny business, now, no funny business.”

Ackroyd said something in an undertone. There was a guffaw from one or two of the men. Ackroyd, with a smirk, took the tiki from Meyer, Old Vernon and Mason joined the group.

Their faces coarsened into half-smiles. The tiki went from hand to hand, and there were many loud gusts of laughter. Alleyn looked at Te Pokiha who walked across to him.

“I half regret my impulse,” said Alleyn quietly.

“Oh,” said Te Pokiha pleasantly, “it seems amusing to them naturally.” He paused and then added: “So may my great grandparents have laughed over the first crucifix they saw.”

Carolyn began to relate the story of Meyer’s adventure on the train. Everybody turned to listen to her. The laughter changed its quality and became gay and then helpless. Meyer allowed himself to be her foil, protesting comically.

She suddenly commanded everyone to supper. There were place-cards on the table. Alleyn found himself on Carolyn’s right with Mrs. Forrest, for whom a place had been hurriedly made, on his other side.

Carolyn and Meyer sat opposite each other, halfway down the long trestle-table. The nest of maidenhair fern and exotic flowers was between them, and the long red cord ran down to Carolyn’s right and was fastened under the ledge of the table. She instantly asked what it was there for and little Meyer’s fat white face became pink with conspiracy and excitement.

It was really a very large party. Twelve members of the company, as many more guests, and the stage staff, whom Carolyn had insisted on having and who sat at a separate table, dressed in their best suits and staring self-consciously at each other. Candles had been lit all down the length of the tables and the lamps turned out. It was all very gay and festive.

When they were settled Meyer, beaming complacently, rose and looked round the table.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” shouted little Ackroyd, “pray silence for His Royal Highness, Alfredo de Meyer.”

Much laughter from the guests who expected a comedian to be a comedian.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” said Meyer. “I suppose this is quite the wrong place for a speech but we can’t have anything to drink till I’ve made it, so I don’t need to apologise.”

“Certainly not”—from Mason.

“In a minute or two I shall ask you to drink the health of the loveliest woman and the greatest actress of the century — my wife.”

“Golly!” thought Alleyn. Cheers from everybody.

“But before you do this we’ve got to find something for you to drink it in. There doesn’t appear to be anything on the table,” said Meyer, with elaborate nonchalance, “but we are told that the gods will provide so I propose to leave it to them. Our stage-manager tells me that something may happen if this red cord here is cut. I shall therefore ask my wife to cut it. She will find a pair of shears by her plate.”

“Darling!” said Carolyn. “What is all this? Too exciting. I shan’t cause it to rain fizz, shall I? Like Moses. Or was it Moses?”

She picked up the enormous scissors. Alfred Meyer bent his fat form over the table and stretched out his short arms to the nest of fern. A fraction of a second before Carolyn closed the blades of the scissors over the cord, her husband touched a hidden switch. Tiny red and green lights sprang up beneath the fern and flowers, into which the jeroboam was to fall and over which Meyer was bending.

Everyone had stopped talking. Alleyn, in the sudden silence, received a curious impression of eager dimly-lit faces that peered, of a beautiful woman standing with one arm raised, holding the scissors as a lovely Atropos might hold aloft her shears, of a fat white waistcoated man like a Blampied caricature, bent over the table, and of a red cord that vanished upwards into the dark. Suddenly he felt intolerably oppressed, aware of a suspense out of all proportion to the moment. So strong was this impression that he half rose from his chair.

But at that moment Carolyn cut through the cord.

Something enormous that flashed down among them, jolting the table, Valerie Gaynes screaming. Broken glass and the smell of champagne. Champagne flowing over the white cloth. A thing like an enormous billiard ball embedded in the fern. Red in the champagne. And Valerie Gaynes, screaming, screaming. Carolyn, her arm still raised, looking down. Himself, his voice, telling them to go away, telling Hambledon to take Carolyn away.

“Take her away, take her away.”

And Hambledon: “Come away. Carolyn, come away.”