Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 24, No. 3, March 1979

Rock’s Last Role by William Bankier

The Prepington Repertory Theatre was not immune to the afflictions of its time. Audiences were declining as costs were escalating. But the actor-manager of the Prepington had something else to worry about. He had to find a way to persuade Aubrey Rock to retire.

“Did you speak to him?” asked Sybil Simon in her domineering voice. She played all the Noel Coward upper-class ladies and was never out of character.

“Till I began to bore myself,” said Lance Haldane. “He just won’t take the hint. Old Aubrey feels he is at the peak of his powers. He thanks me for being concerned but insists he can carry on for many more seasons.”

“Then you must be more direct, Lance darling. Tell him the company is exhausted and fed up and completely sick and tired of his mannerisms on stage. He must be gone at the end of the current production.”

“Sybil, love. I can hardly put it like that.”

“Put it any way you like, Lance darling. But make him understand.” Sybil’s paint-and-powder face twisted itself into a gruesome expression. “The old fool can’t remember his lines. If once more I hear him say ‘or words to that effect,’ I shall scream and run off the stage.”

In his flat a few streets from the theater, Aubrey Rock sat alone trying to succeed with an English telephone. After three wrong numbers and a couple of echoing silences, he managed to achieve a connection with his young friend and protégé, Lewis Nunford. London was only thirty miles from Prepington but the line performed as if it was stretched between planets. “I can hear you when you speak slowly,” said Lewis in the manner of someone learning to read.

Rock imitated his friend’s stilted delivery. “I ring you with bad news,” he said. “Menacing events on the horizon out here.”

“They aren’t converting the theater into a bingo hall?”

“Worse. They want to get rid of me. The whole pack of them are in league. Lance Haldane keeps drawing me into ornate conversations. So far I’ve pretended not to understand.”

“But they can’t dump you, Aubrey. Why, you are the Prepington Rep. You were acting when the rest of them were sticking chewing gum under cinema seats.”

“That’s the point. They say I’m too old. But I must admit I feel as you do — I can’t imagine the Rep without me.”

The call ended with the aspiring young actor in London agreeing to stand by with any assistance that might be needed. Rock had only the vaguest idea of how Nunford might help him, but he felt less alone when he put down the telephone and began dressing to go first to the pub and then to the theater.

The current production was a contemporary farce with plenty of comings and goings through various doors and the trousers of one of the actors being thrown out of a window. Aubrey Rock’s part was that of the grandfather who is struck on the head and as a result confuses the identity of everyone else thereafter. The role suited Aubrey because it allowed him to do a certain amount of stumbling and fluffing of his lines. His memory was deteriorating in his late fifties and although he was experienced enough never to “dry” — forget his part entirely — he did have trouble getting his cues exactly right. So he tended to approximate.

He was finishing a scene alone on stage with Sybil Simon. She had been hanging on desperately, listening intently to Rock’s speeches for any resemblance to the ones they had rehearsed. The trouble was, the local audience knew and loved Aubrey Rock. They watched his huge figure shambling about the stage, bald head gleaming, plump mouth drawn down in a droll pout, words exploding from him in machine-gun fashion, and they laughed.

Well, damn it, Aubrey Rock was funny. Even Sybil had to admit that. It was simply a pain working with him. And he would never change, because he thought he was doing fine.

“So I’ll leave you to sort out the lot of them,” Aubrey said. He was doing one of his lurching exits that always worked. “Tell them they’ll have to ship up or shape out. Or words to that effect.”

He was gone and Sybil was left alone on stage surrounded by his applause. She enjoyed it about as much as wading through a tide of dead fish. No question about it, no more fooling around, Lance was going to have to think of something.

Lance did. Or rather, he was quick to adopt an idea brought forward in a joking manner by Beverly Fragment, the thirty-year-old who was still able to play pretty-young-thing roles. Beverly, Sybil, and Lance were having a post-performance drink with Ken Lavender, the stage manager. They were sitting on the black wooden pews rescued from a deserted church now used as furniture in the pub around the corner.

“You saw him,” Sybil was saying. “You heard him. He was shuffling around like a trained bear and talking like an auctioneer. He’s crucifying me out there and I won’t have it.” She frowned into her mug of beer, causing the dark liquid to bubble and boil.

“They were laughing though,” Lavender said. The stage manager was a compact, carpenterish figure among these effete stage people.

“They’d laugh if he blew his nose without a handkerchief,” Sybil snapped. “But I’d rather he did the play.”

“I’ve tried to make him understand,” Lance said. “But it’s difficult. He’s been around so long.”

Beverly Fragment was writing on a scrap of paper. She sat up now and handed the paper to Lance Haldane. “Just dreaming,” she said. “But wouldn’t it be loverly—”

Haldane blinked at the ragged printing, then his expression cleared. “Fraggie darling,” he said, “I don’t know if you’re joking, but this could be the answer.”

“Of course I’m joking. It isn’t happening, is it?”

“But we can make it happen.”

“Tell everybody,” Lavender suggested.

Haldane displayed the paper. “This is Beverly’s little fantasy,” he said and went on to read it aloud. “ ‘The Prepington Repertory Theatre announces a special gala farewell performance marking the retirement of Aubrey Rock.’ ”

“As I said, just a dream,” Beverly said.

“It might work,” Haldane said.

Sybil snorted. “You’d never get Aubrey to hold still for it.”

“But what if we treated it as an honor and hit him with a fait accompli? Print up a hundred posters, arrange advertising in the paper, set up special interviews, invite the Mayor to attend.” Haldane made checkmarks in beer on the tabletop. “By the time Aubrey sees what’s happening, the bandwagon is rolling and can’t be stopped. He’ll have to smile and go along with it.”

“I like it,” Sybil said. “It has style.”

“Not bad,” Beverly Fragment said, “if I say so myself.”

Only the stage manager was doubtful. He was a practical man who dealt less with dreams than he did with scenery that would fall unless properly braced and nailed. “It sounds risky,” Ken Lavender said. “All kinds of room for the unexpected.”

A week later, Aubrey Rock drifted backstage on the way to his dressing room and surprised Lance and Sybil and Beverly huddled around a table. They made a production of dispersing and trying to hide a large sheet of yellow paper with black lettering on it. This only aroused Rock’s curiosity, which was what was intended all along.

“Oh, dear, the surprise is ruined,” Sybil said.

“What surprise?”

“Don’t tell him,” Beverly said. “Hide the poster.” Cleverly, she thus drew Aubrey’s attention to the poster in the manner of the circus clown who cries, “Don’t throw the water!”

“Well,” Lance said, “he has to find out eventually.” And he held up the brilliant poster announcing Aubrey Rock’s farewell performance at the Prepington Rep and the gala evening in his honor.

The old actor was speechless, but the others filled in with carefully rehearsed enthusiasm.

“Just think, the Mayor will be here! He’ll come on stage and present you with a scroll.”

“And other gifts too. I understand the merchants are getting up a fund.”

“No more than you deserve, Aubrey.”

Rock found his voice. “But I’m not sure—”

“Never you mind.” Haldane spoke with authority. “We’ve printed a hundred posters. They’re going up even as we speak.”

The cast did such a good job of enthusing that Aubrey Rock put on his makeup and did the performance on a wave of induced euphoria. It was not until he went home and sat over a few bottles of warm stout and did some thinking that he realized they had done him. Haldane and Sybil and the rest wanted him gone and had orchestrated his departure simply by the introduction of a fanfare of cheap trumpets.

Well, if they thought Aubrey Rock was going to leave quietly he would disabuse them of that misapprehension. Fortunately, since the gala farewell was still a couple of weeks in the future, he had time to think and plan. And that is just what Aubrey Rock did. Swallowing glass after glass of murky stout, he thought. Later, lying in bed with his Falstaff stomach awash, he planned.

The idea came to him in the morning, crisp and packaged like a laundered shirt after hours of processing in his subconscious. Rock fried himself an egg, two sausages, and a small tomato, breakfasted with his mind elsewhere, then put through a call to his friend Lewis Nunford in London. Nunford was intrigued and promised to cooperate.

In the fortnight that followed, Aubrey Rock went about his acting with more efficiency than he had shown in years. His cues were delivered accurately and on time. His mannerisms almost vanished as he submerged his own personality in that of the character he was playing. Haldane exhibited second thoughts.

“He’s so much better now. It seems a shame to unload him.”

Sybil Simon was quick to hold the ship on course. “A rush of blood to the head,” she said. “That’s all it is. He’ll be bumbling and shambling again in a month if we let him stay.”

Interest in the town of Prepington was high on the day of the Aubrey Rock farewell. He was the nearest thing to a famous actor ever produced in that community. He had never made it to London’s West End but he had done a few bit parts in old films that appeared occasionally on the box late at night. With a bit of luck, people said, their Aubrey might have been famous. So they bought their tickets and made their plans to fill the theater that night, never realizing that, with a bit of luck, Aubrey Rock was going to be a lot more famous than any of them ever imagined.

The play to be performed was called The Butler’s Revenge. It was an old warhorse not seen on stage in that town for decades. But Rock had requested that it be done as his farewell performance. The part of the butler was a meaty role that gave him the freedom to pull out all the stops. The rest of the cast hated the play, but since it was Rock’s last role they went along with him.

There were plenty of butterflies backstage that evening. Even though the gala was a trumped-up affair, the conspirators found themselves inspired to believe their sentiments were genuine. The tension was increased when the attempted hold-up took place.

It happened less than an hour before curtain. The cast were prowling about, drinking coffee, staring without comprehension at newspapers, enjoying that delicious sensation of impending execution which is always reprieved by the rising curtain.

The bandit let himself in by the stage door. He was a black man in his twenties, roughly dressed in leather and denim, hair an extreme Afro, eyes shaded by dark glasses. He kept his hand in his jacket pocket until he confronted the actors. Aubrey Rock included. Then he whipped out a revolver. “I tell you, mon, this is a robbery,” he said. “I must ask you, don’t make me nervous, mon.”

The accent was perfect West Indian. Rock was very pleased with his friend Lewis Nunford. His neat appearance and his Academy-trained voice were perfectly disguised. The cast froze and fell silent.

“One at a time,” the intruder said. “Hand over your money.” He approached Rock first. “I start with you, mon.”

The actor moved forward casually. “Certainly. We are only poor players, you won’t get much from us.” Suddenly he moved with surprising speed, tangled with the young man, and, before the others knew what was happening, the gun was in Rock’s hand. He forced the muzzle into the crust of the Afro. “I should blow your brains out,” he said, “only I’m afraid I’d miss.”

“Well done, Aubrey,” Lance said. The others chorused approval.

“Hey mon, don’t do this to me. I got no father. Just a mother and nine sisters and brothers back in Notting Hill. We got nothing. I can’t get no job. I been on the dole for two years. I hate that, mon. I rather do anything.” He went ahead with a tale of hardship delivered so convincingly that the whole group was moved. Aubrey Rock was most impressed. Given the creation of a few more good black parts on the professional stage, there was no telling how far Lewis Nunford might go.

Rock backed off. Still aiming the gun at his friend, he said, “How do the rest of you feel? I think we should let him go.”

There was a babble of approval. Only Ken Lavender, the stage manager, took the practical view. “This is not the way to support the police,” he said. “Letting him go won’t solve his problems. He’ll be off robbing somebody else later tonight.”

“Oh no, mon. Hey, you let me off and I’m going straight. I learned my lesson.”

“All right,” Rock said. “Come on.” He led the boy to the stage door, fishing in his pocket for a pound note. “I’m giving you taxi fare and I want to see you use it.” They stepped through the doorway into the alley and the door banged shut behind them. Rock put the gun in his pocket. “Lewis, that was beautiful. You even convinced me.”

“My pleasure, Aubrey,” Nunford said, taking off the Afro wig. “Now about the gun — you’ll be careful, won’t you? It’s real, and it’s loaded.”

“That’s the whole point,” Rock said. “Where did you get it?”

“Through a friend. In — would you believe — Notting Hill? He’s one of those blokes who dream of revolution. Don’t worry, it can’t be traced to anybody.”

“Right,” the older actor said. “Now you’d better get back to London.” As his friend hurried away Rock added, “I may be joining you there soon.”

The Butler’s Revenge started on time and was a great success. The pre-curtain shot of adrenalin had put the performers on the bit. The audience laughed in all the right places. The Mayor’s chain of office glittered in light reflected from the stage.

The climax of the play — and Aubrey Rock’s reason for choosing it — happens in the final scene when the butler, who has been harshly treated by the domineering family, confronts them at last, delivers an angry speech, and then shoots them all in the sitting room.

Backstage, in a short break before the final scene, Ken Lavender approached Rock and showed him the prop gun loaded with blank cartridges ready for the mass assassination. “Where do you want this, Aubrey?”

Rock, in shirtsleeves, said, “Would you put it in my jacket pocket, Ken? In my dressing room.”

Later, when it was almost time for his entrance, Rock went to the dressing room, ignored his own tuxedo jacket hanging most obviously on a hook by the mirror, and took the costume tux from where he had, concealed it behind the door. He slipped into it, feeling the weight of Nunford’s gun in the pocket. Glancing at the other jacket, he could see the bulk of the prop gun. Patting the lethal load at his side, he said to himself, “Thank you very much, Ken.”

The audience loved the butler’s final speech. Rock made the most of it as he delivered a scathing tongue-lashing to the assembled family played by Lance Haldane, Sybil Simon, and Beverly Fragment. “You ungrateful swine,” he fumed. “I’ve served you faithfully all these years and now you try to cast me adrift. We’ll see who has the last laugh. I’m quite sure you never anticipated this!”

As Rock drew the gun from his pocket, his fellow performers were blinking thoughtfully. That last bit was not in the script, was it? Never mind, the performance was over anyway.

And it was over for them, because Aubrey Rock now took careful aim and fired three deadly shots, one each into the hearts of Lance, Sybil, and Beverly.

The curtain fell to thunderous applause. The audience laughed and cheered as the curtains opened again and Rock took his farewell bow alone, the others pretending to be dead on the stage behind him.

A minute later the mood changed to hysteria. The police were summoned, and, of course, the presentations were cancelled.

It all came out at the inquest a week later. The holdup was described, the tragic mistake which saw the real gun end up in Rock’s costume jacket while Lavender had put the prop gun in the pocket of its near twin — the actor s personal garment, brought along to be worn during the formal activities later. Aubrey took full blame for having let the bandit go and for retaining the weapon. He had intended to turn the gun in that night, explaining he had found it in a rubbish bin. He saw now that it was wrong to try to circumvent the law even in the smallest way and with the best of intentions. He would never do it again. All his friends dead — and on the occasion of their generous recognition of his career. He wept.

The officials were touched and lost no time in returning a verdict of accidental death in all three cases. Aubrey left the courtroom a tragic hero and announced that he would act no more. Rock’s last role had been played not at Prepington Repertory Theatre as his fellow actors had intended, but in front of a coroner’s court of inquiry.

Well-wishers outside pleaded with him to reconsider, to continue delighting audiences with his presence.

“No, I’m sorry,” he said. “I will never set foot upon a stage again.” And as he walked away, he said to himself, “And neither will those three sons of mischief” — or words to that effect.