Lovers Make Moan

Chapter 12

Six Characters in Search of a Psychiatrist

“Helen, to you our minds we will unfold.”

« ^ »

The first visitor Dame Beatrice received was Barbara Bourton. Her big show, she said, opened in the autumn. Meanwhile there was all this wretched business about Donald.

“I am mobbed, Dame Beatrice, positively mobbed. One might as well be Royalty or the Pope. Everybody wants my opinion as to what happened. As though I should know any more than anybody else! Usually I court publicity because of my art, but this is more like persecution than publicity.”

“Could you leave the neighbourhood for a few weeks? This kind of excitement soon dies down when there is nothing for it to feed on.”

“There are reasons why I can’t go into hiding. There has been a great deal of speculation about my married life and I don’t want to look as though I’m running away from gossipping tongues. Then there is the adjourned inquest. Goodness knows when the police will want to resume it and goodness knows why they wanted it adjourned, but I suppose they know their own business. When it is resumed I suppose I shall be wanted. Another thing is that there is a lot of business to be cleared up in connection with Donald’s turf interests and, of course, his will has to be proved and probate granted.”

“I am interested to hear that you saw no need for the inquest to be adjourned.”

“I was amazed when the police stepped in like that. I am sure the coroner was only too ready to give a verdict of accidental death, because that is all it was.”

“How, then, do you account for the changeover of the daggers?”

“Donald was hasty and careless. It seems to me obvious what happened. The theatrical dagger fell out of the belt when the props were dumped on the trestle tables before the show started and it got kicked under the table when people came milling around to pick up their bits for that last scene. When Donald had to change out of Oberon’s things and get into the white tunic and armour as Pyramus, I suppose he realised there was no dagger in the belt. He saw this extra one on the table and concluded it was the retractable dagger. It wouldn’t occur to him to test it, of course. He always did take things for granted.”

“But there is no evidence that this extra dagger was among the properties. Mr Lynn has declared that it formed no part of his collection.”

“Oh, of course Marcus Lynn will say that now, but at the dress rehearsal he had a whole armoury on show. Why shouldn’t one or two of the things have been gathered up with the rest of the props?”

“Mr Yorke helped to carry the things down from the house to the wings, you know. Would not he or Marcus Lynn have noticed an extra dagger?”

“Oh, Brian Yorke would back up anything Marcus said. He was in the seventh heaven over the money Marcus spilt out on the production, although the play was only meant as a vehicle for poor Emma, the very last woman to want to be in the public eye.”

“Did you feel surprise at being offered the less attractive part of Helena?”

“Oh, that soon put itself right, anyway. No, I didn’t mind accepting Helena. When Marcus first offered it I said that, as a professional, I would have to be paid. He told me to name my own price, which I did, never thinking he would meet it, but he agreed without a quiver. I’d have done him Puss in Boots or the Hunchback of Notre Dame for even half the money, if he’d asked me.”

“I wonder he took the risk of offering you a part which was bound to put his wife in the shade.”

“Oh, I expect he has the most inflated ideas of poor Emma’s capabilities. Dame Beatrice, we are only skating round the reason I asked to come and see you.”

“You used the word ‘persecution’. Was that, perhaps, an exaggerated way of expressing yourself?”

“No, it wasn’t. Apart from being terrified of going outside my own front door because of gaping sightseers, I’ve begun receiving some very personal and unpleasant anonymous letters.”

“Dear me! I sympathise, but that sort of thing is a matter for the police. Turn the letters over to them.”

“I don’t believe they would be interested. The letters contain innuendoes, but not threats. Couldn’t you find out who is sending them and get them stopped?”

“Do they all come from the same person?”

“If I knew that, I could deal with them myself, I suppose. I don’t know whether they all come from the same person, but I don’t suppose they do. I could give you some likely names, but I wouldn’t know which of them to pick out. Donald was quite promiscuous, and there might be people who think they have a right to some of his money. The letters all harp on the way I gain by his death.”

“Forgive my asking, but is there any substance in what the letters suggest?”

Barbara Bourton shrugged shoulders which had been admired in Restoration comedy. She spread her hands in a gesture which belonged wholly to the stage.

“People will believe anything about an actress,” she said. “The idea that we’re no better than we should be dies hard.”

“I do not think you have answered my question. I am in much the same position as a defending counsel, you know. Unless the client is prepared to tell me the whole truth, my hands are tied.”

“I thought a psychiatrist could deduce the whole truth, whether she were told it or not.”

“If that is a challenge, my dear Mrs Bourton, I do not accept it. Your gage lies on the ground and I shall not pick it up.”

Barbara Bourton shrugged her shoulders again.

“Well, perhaps I’m relieved that you won’t joust with me,” she said. “There is this much truth in the letters. I do inherit everything which Donald had to leave. Who had a better right to it than I? We didn’t see as much of one another as most married people do, as our interests were widely different and often kept us apart. I knew all about his ‘little friends’ and I never made a fuss about what he did or with whom, and he never questioned what I was up to, either. What’s more, he always sent flowers to the theatre on my first and last nights. I appreciated that, and it stopped a lot of tongues wagging, I expect.”

“I cannot understand why the anonymous letters upset you. You say they are not scurrilous and you have given me no reason to suppose that you are being blackmailed.”

“They are hurtful and I want them stopped.”

“Have you kept the letters?”

“Good heavens, no! They disturbed me very much. All I wanted was to get rid of them.”

“If you get any more, you had better let the police see them, as I said. That is the best advice I can give you.”

“I suppose you can’t give me the name of a handwriting expert?”

“Yes, of course I can, but all he would be able to tell you is whether all the letters were written by the same hand. You would have to produce far more written evidence than the letters themselves if a name is to be put to the sender.”

“The letters are typewritten but are all signed in my husband’s name and, if I didn’t know he was dead, I could swear that I recognise his signature. It’s the one he used before we were married and when I suppose we thought we cared for one another. The letters must come from a woman who thinks she was in love with him and expected him to cut me out of his will in her favour. The letters rather harp on the theme that Donald died before he had time to change his will.”

“Have you asked his solicitor whether any such change was under contemplation?”

“No, I never thought of that. It’s a bit two-edged, though, isn’t it?”

“You mean it is just possible that your husband had had some such project in mind?”

“I think it’s as well that I don’t know whether he had or not, but, honestly, I don’t think he would have done the dirty on me. He was a decent sort in his way.”

“How do you regard your husband’s death, Mrs Bourton?”

“How do you mean?”

“You have given me the impression that you think it was accidental, the result of his haste to change his costume at very short notice.”

“What could it have been but accidental? Of course it was! Donald wouldn’t have committed suicide and who on earth would want to murder him? He was a philanderer, but the only person who had any right to object to that was myself, and I certainly never did. So long as he didn’t attempt to interfere in my career, that was all that I cared about. Will you give me the name of the handwriting expert?”

“Yes, but I warn you that he has no official standing. He is, in fact, a retired forger who now makes a living as a not too scrupulous ‘private eye’.”

“Oh, really, Dame Beatrice! I did not come here for you to make a monkey out of me!”

“Nothing is further from my thoughts. Forget all about a handwriting expert. Take my advice and go to the police.”

The next caller was Rinkley. Jonathan was at the front of the house cutting some roses and laying them in the trug which Deborah was holding when the visitor arrived.

“You want to see Dame Beatrice? Is she expecting you?” Jonathan enquired. “Anyway, come in and have a drink. Glad to see you up and about again. When did they discharge you from hospital?”

“Oh, days ago. I didn’t ask for an appointment with Dame Beatrice because I didn’t know until this morning that she was staying with you. Did she see the show, by any chance?”

“Yes, the Thursday performance.”

“Oh, not on the Saturday? I say, Bradley, what a frightful thing! Poor old Bourton! How do you think it happened, for God’s sake?”

“I have no idea. I suppose you know the police have asked for an adjournment of the inquest?”

“I’m not in the least surprised. What happened definitely ought not to have happened. I’m an interested party, of course, because if it hadn’t been Donald, it would have been me.”

“Surely not? The minute you drew it out you would have known you’d got hold of the wrong dagger.”

“I doubt it, you know. I really do. After all, I had struck myself shrewd blows with it on the Thursday and Friday and I think I would have followed suit on the Saturday without a thought. I’ve seen the pictures the police and the media are putting out, and the dagger looks so like the retractable one that anybody would be deceived.”

“No,” said Jonathan, as they went into the house, “the blade was much shorter. Sit down and make yourself comfortable. Scotch?”

“Thanks very much.”

“I’ll go and find out whether Aunt Adela is busy,” said Deborah. “She is probably writing up her notes on Barbara Bourton.”

“Barbara? Has she been here?” asked Rinkley.

“Yesterday and stayed to tea, but not until the two of them had had a prolonged tête-à-tête.”

“Good heavens! I wonder what it was about? I haven’t been to see Barbara. Didn’t like to butt in. I expect she’s pretty sore with me because I suppose that if I hadn’t eaten those damned mussels she would still have a husband.”

“Ah, yes, the mussels,” said Deborah. “Do you usually eat them between meals?”

Rinkley, who was about to raise his glass, lowered it again.

“Eat them between meals?” he said.

“I was told that you speared those mussels out of a jar with a pickle-fork while you were waiting to go on stage.”

“Oh, that! As a matter of fact, I was advised to eat the damn things. I caught some kind of throat infection and on Saturday morning I was so thick in the clear, as my old nanny used to call it, that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to take the stage. Well, I went for a gargle to my local and confided in the landlord. He told me I needed either half-a-dozen raw eggs or some oysters just before the performance. I couldn’t face the raw eggs, and I couldn’t locate any oysters, so I stopped at the delicatessen counter in the supermarket and settled for the mussels, with the dire results we all know.”

“Ah, here is Aunt Adela,” said Deborah, on her way to the door just as it opened and Dame Beatrice came in.

“Mr Rinkley, Aunt Adela,” said Jonathan. “Aunt, dear, ‘this man is Pyramus, if you would know’.”

“Whereas this far from beauteous lady is certainly not Thisbe,” said Dame Beatrice, leering hideously at the visitor. “So am I to hear of more anonymous letters?”

Rinkley, who had risen at her entrance, took advantage of the example she set and seated himself as Jonathan and Deborah left them alone together.

“Anonymous letters?” he said. “How did you know I had them?”

“I expect most of the cast have had them by now,” she replied. “It would be the normal thing to expect under the circumstances. Of what do yours accuse you?”

“Well, not of anything in particular.”

“You mean they consist of what the aspiring journalist told the editor that he was good at?”

“Sorry. I don’t get you.”

“I have contracted a bad habit from my secretary, who is apt to quote from readings sacred, profane, popular and esoteric, and I have caught the virus. The journalist told the editor that he was good at what he called ‘general invective’. I wondered whether ‘general invective’ would describe the contents of the anonymous letters you have received.”

“Oh, well, actually, no. I mean, so far as the wording is concerned, there’s nothing I couldn’t show my maiden aunt.”

“Oh, have you a maiden aunt? I thought they went out of fashion in about the year 1947. Well, if the wording of the letters was not objectionable in itself, of what did the letters complain?”

“They didn’t. They simply asked a lot of impertinent questions. Now, Dame Beatrice, I don’t claim to be a saint—”

“I doubt whether you could sustain the rôle if you did make such a claim. Did you owe money to Mr Bourton?”

“Oh, look here, now! I came in the hope that with my knowing Jon and the lovely Deborah and all that, you would grant me a serious interview. I didn’t owe Bourton anything. I didn’t even know he was to be my understudy. Look here, now, if I sent you the letters, could you trace the writer? It must be somebody who knows me pretty well, and that means I probably know her pretty well. I could give you a list of possible people.”

“Give it to the police. It is not my province to trace the writers of anonymous letters.”

“Oh, well, that’s that, then. One thing everybody knows is that I had nothing against Bourton or anyone else. I haven’t spoken to any of the cast since I came out of hospital, so I know nothing about the inquest except what I read in the papers. Were you present?”

“I was.”

“Do you know why the police asked to have it adjourned?”

“For the usual reasons, I suppose.”

“You mean—you don’t mean they think there was something fishy about Bourton’s death?”

“The fact that the cast are beginning to receive anonymous letters indicates that the police are not the only people who think that a more detailed enquiry into the death is called for—more detailed, I mean, than has been the case so far.”

“But surely what happened to Bourton must have been the sheerest accident? Nobody could have foreseen that there would be that mix-up of daggers.”

“And, of course, Mr Bourton could not have foreseen that you would be taken ill and that he would be called upon to take over your part. You are being disingenuous, Mr Rinkley. Do you or do you not believe that Mr Bourton’s death was deliberately planned?”

Rinkley stood up.

“If it was, it must have been planned for me, not him,” he said. “Well, Dame Beatrice, I am sorry to have wasted your time. When I read in the papers that you were in residence here and learned of your official position, I’m afraid I took it for granted that you were here to assist the members of the cast.”

“But not to look for anonymous letter-writers, Mr Rinkley.”

“I’m sorry. I’m afraid I rather put my foot in it there. I thought, well, psychiatry and all that, you know. Did you notice, by the way, that I spoke of her!”

“The writers of anonymous letters are more often women than men. You indicated, I think, that the letters asked questions, but did not utter threats. Was there a hint of blackmail in any of the questions?”

“Blackmail? Good gracious, if there was, I did not recognise it as such. How could anybody attempt to blackmail me?”

“If you do not know, you can hardly expect me to put forward any suggestions. Did I not hear that your wife has an antiques business?”

“She isn’t my wife any longer, and if you think there is any tie-up between her shop and that stupid business of the substitute dagger—Oh, hey, now! Wait a minute! That must be what one of the letters was hinting at. Oh, well, it’s quite a ridiculous surmise on somebody’s part. I’ll show the police that particular letter and they can go to the shop and turn darling Veda inside out. That ought to settle matters. The very last thing she would do is to aid and abet me in getting rid of Bourton. Besides, I thought Jonathan was to be my stand-in, so owing money to Bourton wouldn’t enter into it.”

The next contact which Dame Beatrice had with members of the cast did not take place at Jonathan’s temporary home, but at the house of Brian and Valerie Yorke. After dinner, for which Yolanda, in primrose-coloured silk and a simple gold pendant belonging to her mother, had been allowed a seat at table, the child was packed off and the adults settled down to coffee, brandy and gossip.

The talk turned inevitably to Bourton’s death and Yorke remarked that Barbara had had a bad time of it, what with police and reporters and the morbid curiosity of everybody who knew her, whether intimately or only by sight.

“I’ve had a fairly sticky time myself since they adjourned the inquest,” went on Brian. “That’s why Val and I are glad of a word with Dame Beatrice.”

“We’ve had our share, too,” said Jonathan. “You wouldn’t think people would have the nerve to infiltrate our garden and look for the spot marked X, but they have. I’m thinking of asking for a policeman with a dog. Aunt Adela has had problems, too.”

“Not problems,” said Dame Beatrice. “I have merely been faced with the necessity for practising a certain amount of Pontius Pilatery.”

“Washing your hands?” said Valerie Yorke, trying not to look disapproving of this reference to Holy Writ. “But of what?”

“Anonymous letters. Some of your acquaintances seem to confuse psychiatry with necromancy and imagine that I can summon spirits from the vasty deep and find out from them who writes the letters.”

“I expect Barbara has had some,” said Valerie. “She gets all the money, you know. May I ask—?”

“Certainly. I also had a visit from Mr Rinkley.”

“He came here,” said Brian, “and did everything except actually sob on my neck. Mind you, to be fair to the chap, I’m sure he is genuinely upset by Bourton’s death. The very last thing he would have anticipated, he said, and the dagger which did all the damage could have been intended for him. The awkward part of it is that, disentangling what he said from what I’m sure he meant, there’s a certain amount of backing for his opinion.”

This opinion, carefully repeated by Brian while Valerie, Dame Beatrice noticed, sat forward in her chair with her hands twisting together, was that the exchange of daggers had been affected by Susan Hythe and Caroline Frome acting in collusion. Both had had good and legitimate reason for approaching the tables which held the properties, both had a grievance against Rinkley for his sharp comments on their acting and against Bourton for his embarrassing advances to them off-stage during the earlier rehearsals. “So they could have plotted against him, I suppose,” Yorke said in conclusion.

“I don’t believe it,” said Deborah. “Two young office girls? The most they would have plotted was to make Rinkley look a fool when he drew out the wrong dagger and realised he dared not use it on himself the way he had rehearsed. I don’t believe they would have thought even of that, as a matter of fact.”

“Brian had to speak to Bourton about his conduct off-stage. The girls complained,” said Valerie.

“They also complained about Rinkley’s comments on their acting,” said Brian. “Mind you, he was justified, in a way. They made very inferior stooges for a man with his dramatic ability. The fellow ought to be a professional. I don’t believe those girls really had anything against Donald. Girls may get scared and rear up a bit when an older man makes a determined pass at them (although I should hardly think it would worry them nowadays), but they must feel a bit flattered, all the same. The sort of reaction they would have when their reading of the script was unkindly knocked by a chap who, after all, was neither the director nor the producer, would be a very different matter and might go very deep indeed. Don’t you think so, Dame Beatrice? I am referring to Rinkley’s comments on their acting.”

“It might settle the matter if Dame Beatrice would have a word with the girls,” said Valerie. “She may disclaim an ability (which I am sure, all the same, she possesses) to track down the writer of anonymous letters, but I am sure a psychiatrist of her eminence can turn two gormless girls inside out in the space of a single interview.”

“You flatter me, Mrs Yorke,” said Dame Beatrice, “but now that the police have co-opted me officially—I was informed of this a day or two ago—I have my own reasons for finding a talk with Miss Hythe and Miss Frome desirable. I wonder, Mr Yorke, whether you will assist me in a small matter? First, were the properties arranged on the trestle tables in exactly the same way at all three performances?”

Brian assured her that they were. He had tried to have no halts between scenes except for what he called ‘the children’s interval’ during which the fairies were taken out of their costumes, dressed in their own clothes and returned by Signora Moretti and her helpers to their mothers, either to sit out the remainder of the performance or to be taken home.

“So after Bottom returns to Quince’s house (a bit we had to leave out on the last night), the workmen had to snatch up their bits of gear, Pyramus had to make a change of tunic and get his armour on, Thisbe had to get into her skirt and mantle, and the whole set of them had to cross behind the backdrop and get themselves on to the prompt side so that the court party could enter from the O.P. side. Of the court party, only Valerie, as Hippolyta, had to make a complete change of costume out of Diana’s tunic and buskins back to her former Elizabethan trappings, but Emma, Barbara and Deborah were all on hand to help her, and I had done my best to make sure that everything needed was to hand to save delay.”

Rinkley’s props had been given a table to themselves. There was the ass’s head, as well as the gear for Pyramus. Valerie also had her own table in her woodland tent so that her Tudor garments could be exchanged as expeditiously as possible for the things she wore in the hunting scene and back again for the last scene. The only other articles on her table were the dashing boots which Brian, as Theseus, wore in the same scene. The tables in the wings held the rest of the clutter for the workmen’s play.

“I had forgotten the donkey’s head,” said Dame Beatrice.

“Is it important?” enquired Valerie Yorke nervously.

“Not in the least, although, as the child said of a gas mask in the last war, ‘it kind of suits some people, don’t it?’ ” Dame Beatrice replied.

When Jonathan opened the front door for his party on their arrival home that evening, he picked up an envelope which had been pushed through the letter-box. It was typewritten and was addressed to Dame Beatrice. She read the letter inside and observed that it was a cry from the heart. It came from Susan Hythe, and the substance of it was that she and Caroline Frome had read all about Dame Beatrice in the newspapers and would be very grateful indeed if they might come and see her. They were extremely worried by ‘things which are being said about us and the inquest being adjourned and all that, so do please let us come’.

The girls were left in the hall by Emma Lynn, who had brought them along.

“They have been given time off from work to come and see you. So kind of you,” said Emma, her plain face flushing and the colour enhancing her looks. “They are extremely worried, poor things, and no wonder.”

“Anonymous letters?” Dame Beatrice enquired.

“No, telephone calls put through to my husband’s local office where they work as typists. The calls are dealt with now by the supervisor, but the girls are still apprehensive. Their lives have been threatened. Marcus dismisses the threats as coming from what he calls ‘some screwball’, and I expect he’s right, but girls of their age are very impressionable and their alarm is very real. We are all still suffering from the shock of Donald’s death and unfortunately the girls had been heard to say that they wished he would drop dead. Not that they meant it, of course. It is just an expression, but people remember these things.”

“I do not know that I can help them. I have already been approached by Mrs Bourton and Mr Rinkley and have spoken with Mr and Mrs Yorke. There have been some unpleasant anonymous letters, but those are a commonplace under circumstances of this sort. Do the telephone calls come from a man or a woman?”

“It is difficult to say. The supervisor, who has taken two of the calls, thinks that the voice is disguised.”

“What do the girls think?”

“I have not asked them. If the supervisor is right, it means that the girls would recognise the voice if it were not disguised, don’t you think?”

“One of their workmates playing a cruel practical joke on them?”

“I hardly think so. Instant dismissal would be the penalty for that, once the joker was unmasked. I think it must be some member of the cast.”

“It is obviously somebody who knows where the girls are employed, but no doubt a good many people would know that. Cases of murder always throw up these ‘screwballs’, as your husband calls them. They soon give up their fun, but it is very uncomfortable for their victims while it lasts, and young girls are especially vulnerable. I shall be interested to hear what they have to say.”

So Deborah entertained Emma in the drawing-room while Dame Beatrice interviewed Susan and Caroline in the library.