Full Dark House

∨ Full Dark House ∧

27

THE MASK OF TRAGEDY

“I’ve never seen anyone die before,” said Corinne Betts distantly, twisting a curl of hair at her ear, “not actually go from living and talking to suddenly lying on the ground covered in blood, like a stage prop. You’d think you’d see something leave, a wisp of air.” The little performer was being interviewed by John May. They were seated in the tiny white-tiled dressing room that Mercury had been sharing with Jupiter.

“We have someone who can talk to you about the psychological aspects of witnessing death, if you’d like,” May offered. “It’s something they’ve set up for people who’ve been bombed out. It hasn’t proven very popular so far, but it’s supposed to help.”

Corinne dug out a bottle of Scotch and a pair of enamel mugs. “I’m not bothered. Call me cynical, but I suspect institutional comforting is designed to give nosy people something to do. My sister was killed during the first week of the Blitz. She was working in a maternity hospital near the Guildhall. We weren’t close; she didn’t approve of the way I live. Even so…I feel all right now, a little strange, like I did when I heard about Maisie. As though something has shifted. At least they found her body, and I know why she died. Everyone is much more upset than they’re letting on, you know. There’s talk of spies, all sorts of rubbish. There’s a theory that Tanya was just picked out at random and murdered. Was she?”

“It’s certainly possible.”

“And Charlie? That wasn’t an accident either?”

May shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Someone aimed at Mr Senechal and cut the wire attached to the globe.”

“Blimey. You think it’s an inside job, someone trying to stop the production?”

“I don’t see how anyone could have entered the theatre unseen.”

“I suppose you’re waiting to be handed names. We’re all meant to turn informer and blame the people we don’t get along with.”

“Do you want to nominate someone?”

“Me? I’ve no axe to grind with anyone here, except perhaps Little Miss Perfect, and that’s only because she gets on my nerves for being so gifted.”

“Who do you mean?”

“Eve Noriac. You only have to look at her. Haven’t you met her yet? She’s young, she’s beautiful, she’s rich and she’s French so of course all the men adore her. She has the starring role and she deserves it. It’s just that it all seems to come so easily to her. She’s been rehearsing in splendid isolation with her own tutor, away from us commoners. She turned up late for this afternoon’s rehearsal, and hardly concentrated at all while the rest of us were floundering around. She’s touched by the muses. And I’ve heard she’s set her sights on Miles Stone, our Orpheus, so they’d rather be living out their roles in the play.”

“What about Tanya Capistrania? Did she have talent?”

“She worked hard, but was never more than proficient. The parts you take on have to sit comfortably with you, otherwise your awkwardness transmits itself to the house. The audience is always aware that it’s watching ‘acting’. Real stars make you believe in them because they believe in themselves. The audience is on their side from the moment they arrive on stage.” Corinne leaned forward conspiratorially. “I’ll let you in on a secret. Acting is a confidence trick. You don’t attract good roles without exuding confidence, and you only have that if you already know you have talent. The two go hand in hand, and without one, the other spirals out of control.”

She knocked back her Scotch and grimaced. “Tanya wasn’t seeing just Geoffrey Whittaker. She was also having an affair with John Styx.”

“Someone from outside the production?” asked May. “No, that’s his Orpheus role. His real name’s David Cumberland – you know, like the sausages. He doesn’t get going until act three, basically gets one decent number to himself and joins in with the others for some melodramatic dialogue. But perfect for Tanya.”

“Why?”

“Darling, you can’t have an affair with someone if they’re always on stage the same time as you.”

“You say an ‘affair’.”

“Yes, he’s got a civilian wife tucked away somewhere. It was probably a matter of mutual convenience. There’s nothing like a good tension-releasing fuck after you’ve been singing at the top of your lungs all day, pardon my French.”

“Any link between her and Charles Senechal that you can think of? Did they spend much time together offstage?”

“I don’t think they even knew each other. In the early stages of a production you can address the most intimate dialogue lines to a stranger and not get to have a real conversation with them at all. Particularly if there’s a celebrity performer among you. They make the less experienced members of the cast nervous. The stars have to break the ice first. Protocol, my dear. I’m not from a stage background like the rest of them, so it doesn’t wash with me.”

“How did you get the part, then?”

“Mercury is a pretty physical role.” Corinne topped up their mugs. “Lots of charging about on winged feet. I saw someone do it on roller skates at the Blackpool Tower Ballroom. Helena came to one of my humorous monologues and asked me to attend a casting session. They were seeing lots of other short fat people. Comedy women, you know the sort of thing. If they’re fat they must be funny.”

“Will you do me a favour, Miss Betts?”

“Corinne, please. Theatres are intimate places. We should be on first-name terms.”

“You seem to have a fairly objective outlook. Would you tell me if you hear anything unusual?” He looked up at the posters of demonic heads lining the walls, different productions of Orpheus around the world. “I mean, unusual by theatrical standards.”

“You can’t ask me to spy for you, Mr May. They’re my friends.”

“I appreciate that. But Mr Bryant thinks something is happening here that goes beyond the scope of normal criminal investigation.”

“And what do you think?”

“I’m not sure. This is my first actual case.”

“They’ve sent a boy to do a man’s job.” She gave a dark chuckle. “Isn’t that the war all over.”

“We don’t have the facilities to protect everyone. We don’t even have the means of finding out who else might be at risk.”

“I see your problem,” said Corinne. “It’s like acting. You don’t get very far with a role until you’ve established your motivation. If you can’t find anything to relate to, you never get a grip on the piece.”

“Then perhaps we understand each other,” said May, smiling gently.

“You’re a nice man, John.” Corinne brushed his jaw with the back of her hand. “Don’t let anything happen to the rest of us.”

♦

Corinne Betts waited twenty minutes for a 134 bus, but it was raining and the first two were completely full, so she decided to start walking. She liked John May a lot. She had always been drawn to younger men. They had a sense of innocence that she no longer had the strength to muster.

She wondered if there was a link between Tanya and Charles that she had missed. It was fun in a Conan Doyle–ish way: an old, dark theatre, a murderer on the loose. Except that Conan Doyle had been dead for a decade. His Strand magazine stories now belonged on the bookshelves of elderly aunts, and the war had stolen away the vicarious pleasures of murder.

It set her wondering about motives again. You’d have to be pretty angry with someone to plan their death, particularly at the moment when there was every chance that they might disappear under a bit of falling masonry. And to be annoyed with two people as different as Charles and Tanya made no sense at all. If someone was trying to stop the production, why not just set fire to the theatre? It wasn’t as if there were any likely suspects. In fact, the more she thought about it, the stranger everything became – an air of Greek tragedy, the severing of limbs, the compass falling from the sky. Something began to prick at her skin. She resolved to take a long bath and have a smoke before going to bed.

She had reached the top of Tottenham Court Road before another 134 came along, and although she waved at it, the damned thing refused to stop. The rainswept corner of Euston Road had become one of the bleakest and most exposed points in central London, now that so many craters of brick and stone had transformed tarmac into the surface of the moon. They said an old woman had been blown out of her house in her iron bedstead, and had not woken up until the rescue squad reached her. ‘They’ said a lot of things. It was becoming impossible to know who to believe.

The few people she passed were carrying bags and suitcases, heading to stations, or to houses that had roofs. A hearse passed her with perhaps a dozen children in it, their faces pressed against the windows, evacuees being taken to their train. The distant plane trees of Euston Road were just visible in the downpour, the tops of their branches rustling and twisting in the rain-laden wind. Here the street was preternaturally empty, the boarded-over shop fronts as dull as the terraced houses set back from the road. She hated the blackout, the dead carapaces of buildings, their rooftops darker than the sky.

Corinne was about to cross the road beside the tiled wall of Warren Street tube station when she became aware of someone else moving on the street. Grey veils of rain fell ahead of her, blurring the view, but a figure appeared to be waiting on the opposite pavement. It was dressed in a black rubber raincoat, with the hood raised. There was something wrong with its face, she thought: too white, too still. The figure twisted back and forth, clasping itself, its head bouncing from side to side, as though it was laughing, or in terrible pain.

Corinne walked to the striped traffic island in the centre of the road. From the corner of her eye she saw the figure shift again, passing across the dimmed lights from the station ticket hall. She watched as it reached the edge of the pavement, and found herself staring into a distorted face as pale as porcelain, the crying tragedy mask of traditional theatre. A passing truck churned its way through a lake of rainwater. When she looked up once more, the figure had vanished.

It had seen her alarm, she was sure. Angered and frightened, she ran across the road, moving past the taped crosses of shop windows, until she realized that she was running in a hard panic, and forced her pace to a walk.

She could not understand where the fear had come from. She was only aware that she had felt it, a chill prickling between her shoulder blades, a primal warning that someone or something meant her harm or, worse still, wanted her.