Fault in the Structure

CHAPTER 19

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We have drawn the curtain across an empty stage

‘But you don’t go along with the verdict at the inquest, do you?’ said Laura.

‘Death by Misadventure? It is an interesting choice of words,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘Wouldn’t Accidental Death have done as well? Not that I believe it, any more than you do.’

‘In the present case, Accidental Death may be ruled out, I think. There were far too many coincidences for this to have been an accident, and the coroner’s jury seem to have shown an intelligent grasp of the niceties of language in phrasing their verdict.’

‘In other words, they suspected it was murder, and we know it was murder, but where’s the proof?’

‘I shall find it. I am not in favour of punishment – none of us should be authorised to punish any other of us…’

‘All miserable sinners, you think?’

‘Well, the casting of stones is, perhaps, a hazardous operation, for it is undeniable that we all live in glass houses.’

‘So what?’

‘Society, we are told, must be protected. Why, I hardly know.’

‘Protected from Clarice Blaine?’

‘Why Clarice Blaine?’

‘Well, she was the only person who would have wanted to muck up our show.’

‘With her son taking part in it? Have you no conception of a mother’s love?’

‘Well, I’ve two children of my own, but is that germane to the issue?’

‘No, it is not, but if Clarice Blaine had decided to muck up our show, as you term it, why should she wait until the very end of the opera? The press had attended, had scribbled down their opinions and had left in order to get their copy into the local papers in time for next week’s editions. The “mucking up” came too late to be effective. If I read Mrs Blaine aright, she is not a woman to waste her sweetness on the desert air.’

‘Very true. Besides, although I wouldn’t put much past her, I don’t see her going as far as murder but, of course, to be fair, murder may have been the last thing anybody intended.’

‘Let us look at the facts.’

‘Well, the basic fact is that Lawrence was hanged.’

‘It seems to me that the other facts are these: as we are certain that this unfortunate man was murdered…’

‘You call him unfortunate? He got away with murdering poor old Sir Anthony.’

‘There is not, and there never will be, any proof that he murdered Sir Anthony.’

‘But look at what he gained by that old man’s death! Anyway, what do you think happened on the last night of The Beggar’s Opera?’

‘Ah, there we are on less controversial ground.’

‘I wouldn’t agree. Everybody seems able to produce a watertight alibi. In fact, they can all alibi one another.’

‘There is one possible exception, I think, but first let us look at those whom we might suspect of wanting Lawrence out of the way.’

‘Hamilton Haynings, for one. He badly wanted to play Macheath. James Hunty did, too, but he’s the easy-going type and Peachum is a pretty fat part, anyway. I can’t think of anybody else and, besides, the argument about Mrs Blaine applies to everybody else in the cast. The time to have got Lawrence out of the way so that someone could pinch his part would have been at the dress rehearsal, not at the very end of the last performance.’

‘There was a reason why the murder could not have been committed at the dress rehearsal. If you care to cast your mind back, I think you will see what that reason was.’

Laura wrinkled her nose in thought.

‘I don’t get it,’ she said.

‘Then, as the patient schoolmaster said to the ill-behaved boy, I fear we do not see you at your best.’

‘Ah!’ exclaimed Laura. ‘The deed couldn’t have been done at the dress rehearsal because the wheels were off the cart. Anyway, the rope which carried the noose should have slipped off the girder as soon as the cart began to move.’

‘As it demonstrated when it slipped off the girder of its own accord after the pre-dress rehearsal was over. I wonder how many of the cast and, of course, the stage-hands, knew that the porter had secured the rope to the girder?’

‘All the stage-hands were students. We can discount them. The point is that we come back again to Hamilton Haynings. We know he knew about the rope because he was the one who told the porter to fix it. On the other hand, he’s ruled out, you think, because of the time the deed was done and, of course, unless there was some private difference between the two men of which we know nothing, the comparative weakness of the motive.’

‘I am wondering whether the murder may have had nothing to do with the opera itself at all. You are going on the assumption that this was a man’s crime. I think we might do well to take a look at some of the women in the cast.’

Laura looked troubled.

‘If you’re thinking of Melanie,’ she said, ‘I can assure you that once we’d dragged her off the stage she was too far gone to have climbed back on again. She smacked Crashaw’s – Lawrence’s – face and then, to all intents and purposes, was a spent force.’

‘Yes,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘and there’s another thing. I looked at the tilt of the stage – the rake, do they not call it? It is obvious, but slight. Too slight, in any case, to account for the velocity with which that comparatively light vehicle careered towards the curtain.’

‘Somebody gave it a pretty hefty shove, you think, and that couldn’t have been Melanie for the reason given. There were plenty of people milling about behind the backdrop, though. There’s a passage-way through from the O.P. to the Prompt side because there’s only one flight of steps from the dressing-rooms on to the stage.’

‘The dressing-rooms, yes,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘How many were in use that night?’

‘Four. Hamilton, James and Lawrence shared one; Melanie, Sybil and I had another, and Marigold was in and out of it most of the time when she wasn’t in the wings. The other two were used by the chorus.’

‘Miss Tench took over Miss Cardew’s part.’

‘When Melanie got too sozzled to go on, yes.’

‘Well, I cannot allow matters to rest. The first person I want to see is the porter who secured the rope to the girder. Please put me in touch with Councillor Haynings. He will know which porter it was.’

‘I wonder whether he has found those wedges? They would have saved the situation.’

‘That is one of the things I shall speak to him about.’

An unhelpful bit of information, but one which cleared up a very minor mystery, came through on the telephone call to Hamilton Haynings. He gave the porter’s name and then said, ‘I’ve just had Denbigh on the ’phone. Two of his students – he’s been grilling them mercilessly, he tells me, because of the seriousness we all attach to the disappearance of those wedges – two of the youngsters have confessed to removing the wheels from the cart. Wanted to put them on a contraption of their own so that they could take part in some fancy race on the College sports ground. Said they put them back in plenty of time for the Thursday performance and, of course, they did.’

‘And the wedges?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘They swear they know nothing about the wedges and Denbigh believes them. He points out that to borrow the wheels put us only to temporary inconvenience – hardly that – but to take away and hide the wedges could have been dangerous, and it was. I blame Farrow. He was stage manager and should have provided substitutes for the wedges.’

‘He would hardly have had time or opportunity for that. He appears to have relied upon the fact that the cart was secured to the back of the stage.’

‘Yes, by a method which, although secure enough in itself, can be untied in a twinkling.’

‘But not by accident, Mr Haynings.’

The porter’s information was a little more helpful, but not much. On the morning of the dress rehearsal quite a number of the cast had turned up at the town hall for various reasons. Mr Farrow was there, fussing about and picking up bits and pieces here and putting them down there and then going back to what he’d first thought of; then there was Mrs Blaine. She had brought young Tom in the car because he had finished his school examinations and she wanted him to help her check something or other in the Council Members’ room to which, of course, she had a key. There was also one of the ladies who spent about an hour sorting over the costumes which were all laid out or hung up in the dressing-rooms and two other ladies were helping her. Mrs Blaine popped on to the stage while he was up the ladder fixing the rope because she had heard somebody trying to play pop music on the harpsichord which, as it was only hired and did not belong to the College or the society, she thought ought to be stopped.

‘No, there’s no reason why any or all of ’em shouldn’t have knowed I was up the ladder, ma’am, and as some on ’em must have seen the rope a-laying on the stage where it had dropped and, what is more, heard me ’phoning Councillor Haynings, my office door being open, the weather being warm and my room small, they could have knowed what I was a-doing of and why I was a-doing of it.’

The harpsichordist? He ‘reckoned as it was the young chap as was with the fellow as was doing the lights’. He had already ‘told ’em both off for misusing of the town hall electricity. Ought to have been at work, and was doing a mike on account they both still worked for Mr Haynings what had also employed ’em in the building trade afore he retired.’

‘What does Miss Cardew do for a living?’ Dame Beatrice asked. ‘Do you happen to know?’

‘Ah, I do. Got her own ladies’ hairdresser’s business in the high street. My missus and my daughter both goes there. She knows how to charge, too!’

‘Do you want me to make a hair appointment for you?’ asked Laura, as they left the town hall.

‘That can wait, and may not be necessary. What do we know of Miss Marigold Tench?’

‘Marigold? She’s on the staff at Cyril Wincott’s school. Teaches French, I believe. Shows off a bit by introducing French phrases into her conversation.’

‘Can you contact the school by telephone?’

‘Yes. They used not to be in the book so that parents and tradespeople couldn’t waste the head’s time by ringing up at inconvenient moments, but now that heads have secretaries to answer the ’phone, the schools are all in the yellow pages. What shall I say?’

‘Are you sufficiently well acquainted with Miss Tench to invite her to tea?’

‘After helping her cope with Melanie and the demon rum, I think I may be.’

In the words of Wodehouse, Marigold turned out to be ‘an upstanding light-heavyweight.’ She had a defiant chin, a compelling eye and a facility for speaking in the French tongue which apparently delighted Célestine who, with beaming face, introduced her into the drawing-room as ‘Mademoiselle Souci Tanche’.

Dame Beatrice cackled greetings in French while Laura stood grinning. Mademoiselle Souci Tanche said that she had spotted that Célestine was a Frenchwoman and that she herself preserved the entente cordiale whenever possible.

‘I suppose,’ said Marigold, at a pause in the tea-time conversation, ‘you’ve asked me here for some reason apart from mes beaux yeux.’

‘Not to beat about the bush,’ replied Laura, ‘they are rather a secondary consideration at the moment.’ She caught her employer’s eye and Dame Beatrice took up the running.

‘I remember you as Lucy Lockit, do I not? she said. ‘A most enjoyable performance until its unfortunate ending.’

‘I had to take on the part at a moment’s notice, so I don’t think I did too badly.’

‘I would have supposed you to have rehearsed for weeks.’

‘Thanks, but no. The girl who had the part – I expect Laura has told you – wasn’t fit to go on.’

‘Dear me!’

‘Yes, got herself plastered. Personally, I don’t think any man’s worth it.’

‘Any man?’

‘Oh, yes. She was immersed enough to confide in me. She was expecting to marry that man who was strangled. Crashaw, you know. They’d had a pretty hectic affair, I gathered, and she confidently expected marriage to come of it before the baby arrived. Lucky for her, as it turned out, that she did get tight, or I might have thought that she’d done Crashaw a mischief. He’d just turned her down, you see. That’s why she got sloshed and smacked his face. His was a very funny accident, though, if you ask me.’

‘Did you leave Miss Cardew in the dressing-room when you went on stage?’

‘Yes, fast asleep and with two of the students who had been in the “ladies of the town” scene to keep an eye on her. I didn’t like the wild way she’d been talking before she fait dormir.’

‘Threats?’

‘Yes, to kill herself. She’s the type to do it, too. I’ll tell you one funny thing, though, which it’s hard to believe, but is perfectly true: Crashaw has left her all his money.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Laura.

‘Ma Blaine and I witnessed the will. It was quite short. He invited us to read it. He said,

“Melanie is going to have my kid. I’ve had two wives, but no kid. I can’t do the obvious thing by her, so, if anything happens to me, this may do something to put me right with her.” ’

‘Did Melanie herself know about the will?’

‘She must have done. She was shouting the odds loudly enough about it just before she passed out under the influence. I should think half the cast must have heard her.’

‘Including the wardrobe mistress?’

‘La bombe blonde? Oh, yes, definitely. She was flitting about from dressing-room to dressing-room all the performance, putting in a stitch here and chasing up a shoe there and touching up somebody’s make-up with a dab of powder. You know the kind of thing. The only part she herself had was that of one of the chorus ladies, you see, so most of her time she was off-stage.’

‘And I see,’ said Laura, when the bi-lingual guest had gone, ‘what you meant when you said there was one person who couldn’t be said to have an alibi. There was nobody who could vouch for the wardrobe mistress the whole of the time, and she could have heard what Melanie was shouting about the money.’

‘I wonder what she had planned, if anything, before she heard Miss Cardew’s drunken ravings? She must have known about the affair between Miss Cardew and Lawrence, since she herself lived with him. The knowledge that she could expect nothing at his death, except what an appeal to the courts might bring her, probably precipitated an act which, up to that point, could have petered out in mere wishful thinking. Melanie’s baby and the loss of the money clinched matters, I think. Besides, Lawrence may have threatened to inform upon her for the murder of his wife. Well, I think we have enough to take to the police.’

‘Do we want to avenge Lawrence’s death? He was a rotten type, you know.’

‘A tainted wether of the flock, meetest for death? Maybe so. I was thinking of Mrs Lawrence’s death, not his. I feel sure that Coralie killed her.’

‘We can’t bring that murder up, can we?’

‘No, but the police may. That case is not closed.’

‘How about William Caxton? Of course we don’t know he’s Mrs Lawrence’s brother, do we?’

‘Yes, we do. He told me so when he occupied your seat during the first Act. I asked him whether William Caxton was a trade name and he agreed that it was and confessed to being Caret.’

‘Well, he must have been the person that Lawrence went to prison for – to get away from, I mean. He must have threatened Lawrence in some way, and, as you’ve just pointed out, he was in the town hall that night.’

‘I think young Tom Blaine’s evidence absolves him. He was playing backgammon with Tom until Mrs Blaine collected him from the porters’ room to run him home. He was not in the town hall when that cart received the push which hanged Lawrence.’

The police, having listened to Dame Beatrice, paid a surprise visit to Lawrence’s house. They held a search warrant. The missing wedges were found at the bottom of Coralie’s wardrobe. She did not attempt to explain how they had come to be there. She was formally charged with Lawrence’s murder.

‘He had it coming to him,’ she said, ‘the heel! I meant to have his money, but he double-crossed and done me out of it. Born crooked, I reckon. Well, I’ve been give bracelets in me time. Don’t I get a couple from you blokes?’ She grinned amiably at the officer arresting her, patted her hair and went quietly.

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[A 3S Release— v1, html]

[April 06, 2007]