Tom Brown's Body

16. 'A Night at an Inn'

*

The Muses, contrary to all other Ladies, pay no Distinction to Dress.

IBID. (Introduction)

AT the School Concert the Housemasters' wives had almost nothing to do. For the most part they sat among the parents and were not easily distinguishable, for several were parents themselves, chiefly, oddly enough, of girls. Mr Wyck, himself the father of two daughters, maintained that this was due to a compensatory clause in the otherwise tooth and nail contract between Nature and Humanity.

The Housemasters' wives, therefore, at School functions, were rather less in stature than the boys' parents, and were scarcely in evidence.

Mrs Kay and Mrs Poundbury were not in evidence at all. Mrs Kay was helping to superintend the preparations for the visitors' teas, and Mrs Poundbury, in the role of assistant stage manager, was behind the scenes helping her husband with the make-up.

There was the usual loud hum of conversation from the audience, and then, just as Mr Wyck was looking at his watch – for the time was ten minutes past four – the curtain rose on what was to be the most talked-of entertainment which had ever been given at Spey.

The first of the three one-act plays which formed the bill on this particular occasion was Campbell of Kilmhor with a Scottish boy named Innes in the name part and Skene in the small part of his secretary. This magnificent play was a great success. The women's parts were played by the Headmaster's daughters. The idea of following it with a long interval was a good one, for the other two plays chosen by Mr Poundbury were of very different type. One was Lord Dunsany's A Night at an Inn – the murder play referred to by Mr Poundbury and greatly liked by the boys; the other was Pinero's domestic farce Playgoers, not less popular because all the women's parts were played by boys.

'Well, how goes the silly old coconut?' asked Mrs Pound-bury, smearing make-up all over Ingpen's face in preparation for his appearance as the kitchen maid in the last of these three plays. 'No, open up, Bill! Don't screw your eyes and nose up like that! You'll come out looking like the clown in a circus if you do! Now, when I've done you, you can watch the Might at an Inn from the wings. You'd like that, wouldn't you?' This, she thought, would be the best way of keeping him quiet.

The curtain went up for the second play on an eerie effect of black and white trellis-work lighted with sickly lime-colour. The play began well. All the actors were well cast, and the part of Smithers, the terrified Cockney, was noticeably well taken by a mightily-disguised Issacher, the best actor in the School. Three-quarters of the way through, indeed, the audience were leaning forward in their seats, as the almost incoherent Smithers came back to the stage after he had been sent to the back of the inn to get some water. He was supposed, during his absence from the stage, to have seen something which filled him with fear. The audience was strangely stirred; they were half-way in atavistic worship between wild applause and complete silence, as the boy spoke his lines.

Mrs Bradley leaned forward, too, for in Issacher's shrill accents she heard something which the audience did not hear. She heard the boyish squeak of definite and hysterical terror. This was not acting; this was genuine, unreasoning panic crouched behind the screen of the script.

She had chosen a seat at the end of a row. She got up and made her way quietly through a doorway and so to the back of the stage. Suddenly she heard from the stage, as the curtain suddenly came down, a yell of enlightening horror.

'But I did see it, you silly fool! I saw it! I saw it! I saw it, I tell you!'

At the side of the stage she found a half-fainting Issacher, supported by Mr Poundbury, and a very little boy in tears, for Ingpen had seen something else. Mrs Bradley hustled him into the dressing-room and closed the door.

'Now,' she said, 'what did you see?'

But before the sobbing child could get out a word, there was a tremendous commotion at the door, and Mr Pound-bury burst in, dragging Issacher, very green about the gills, and followed by several Sixth-Form boys from his own House.

'Not in here!' he said to these followers, pushing Issacher into a chair. 'Sit down, boy. Away, boys, away!'

'What has happened, Mr Poundbury?' Mrs Bradley enquired.

'I don't know,' answered Mr Poundbury, beginning to recover himself. 'It's something to do with this lad, but I can get nothing much out of him.'

'An accident?' Mrs Bradley enquired.

'I don't really know. Anyway, the curtain's been rung down, and Mr Wyck is out in front telling lies to the audience. Now, boy, now! Pull yourself together!'

Mrs Bradley was entertained by the crude statement describing Mr Wyck's activities.

'You had better leave Mr Issacher to me,' she said. 'Haven't you another play to put on?'

'Yes, yes! But the boys can manage,' said Mr Poundbury, giving Issacher an unnecessary thump on the chest. 'Up, boy, up! The paper must go to bed to-day, you know, and the show must go on!'

Mrs Bradley seized him in a scientific grip and propelled him towards the door.

'Get the Playgoers on,' she said, 'and then you can come back here.'

Mr Poundbury wandered stagewards once more. Mrs Bradley returned to the dressing-room and seated herself in front of the two boys.

Little Ingpen glanced fearfully at the door; then, at a nod from Issacher, whose colour was beginning to come back, he went over to the door and turned the key.

'Gosh!' said Issacher, wiping grease-paint from his face with the sleeve of his shirt and then regarding the resulting stains with detachment. 'Don't give me side, but what did you make of it, sprat?'

Ingpen was about to tell him when the handle of the door was vigorously rattled and the voice of the call-boy was heard.

'Third play, Ingpen wanted! Third play, Ingpen wanted!' he chanted loudly and continuously. Ingpen rushed to the door and flung it open. Outside with the call-boy was a grim-faced Mr Poundbury.

'Come along, come along, boy!' he said. 'You can't keep the whole stage waiting!'

Ingpen gulped, and then ran past him. Gratefully he joined a huddle of boys in the wings.

'Good heavens! You look as if you'd seen a ghost!' said Scrupe, who lived near Ingpen at home.

'I've seen a murder, Francis,' said Ingpen.

'Then for God's sake forget it,' said Scrupe. 'And mind you give me the proper cue this time, or I'll murder you!'

'And now, Mr Issacher,' said Mrs Bradley, 'what will the harvest be?'

*

The third play, acted by thoroughly excited boys, brought the house down. A ponderous Fourth-form boy named, happily for himself, Cooke, was particularly outstanding as the cook, Scrupe, as a simpering parlourmaid, was also excellent. The young Ingpen, as the kitchenmaid, brought tears to his mother's eyes, and the Captain of Football, as the lachrymose useful-maid, astonished even the Headmaster.

The last-named sought out Mrs Bradley directly the entertainment was over.

'Mrs Poundbury is badly hurt. We do not know yet what occurred. I have sent for Issacher,' he said. 'Do you think, by any chance, that the lad could have attacked Mrs-Poundbury whilst he was off-stage during the second play? All the circumstances were so extraordinary that . . .'

'I think there can be little doubt that Mr Conway's murderer attacked Mrs Poundbury,' said Mrs Bradley composedly, 'and I do not suspect Issacher of having killed Mr Conway. I wonder whether Mrs Poundbury was foolish enough to tell someone about the missing note that turned up so unexpectedly to-day? I should hardly think she would mention it, though. Perhaps the little boy Ingpen told somebody about it. And yet . . .' She looked perplexed. The Headmaster looked thoroughly worried.

'Is there likely to be another attempt?' he asked. Mrs Bradley shook her head.

'Who can tell? It depends upon how much nerve the murderer has, and whether Mrs Poundbury recognized him,' she said.

Mrs Poundbury had been found at the foot of a short flight of stone steps leading from the east end of the dressing-room corridor to the open air. Her skull was fractured, but she had a reasonable chance of recovery.

However, the nature of her accident or the details of the murderous attack – whichever it should turn out 'to be – could not be gathered until she recovered consciousness. Mrs Bradley had made her own views clear. The note had gone, and Mrs Poundbury, in Mrs Bradley's experienced view, was far too intelligent to have destroyed it. It had not been shown to Detective-Inspector Gavin, for Mrs Bradley had asked him point-blank about it as soon as she knew of Mrs Poundbury's injuries.

'I've seen no note,' he said. 'Pity she didn't hand it over to you. It would have saved her this knock on the head. She never got that from falling down steps, did she?'

'No, she did not,' Mrs Bradley replied; for she had made a point of examining Mrs Poundbury. 'The contusions from the fall are clear enough, and the knock on the head was not one of them.'

'I wonder how soon we'll be able to get her to talk to us?'

'Not for two or three days.'

'Too bad. Still, it can't be helped. I wonder what the youngsters can tell us?'

'A good deal that is strange, but not much that's helpful,' prophesied Mrs Bradley. 'We must let them get over the shock before we question them further, I fancy.'

'A bit garbled, arc they?'

'Their stories are curious and interesting. You are having Mrs Poundbury closely guarded, I presume?'

'Yes. Nobody will get at her now. But I doubt whether she'll be able to name her assailant, and, if the note has gone, and the attacker has got what he wants, she's probably safe enough, as long as the thug can be sure she didn't recognize him.'

'Whom do you suspect?' enquired Gavin.

'Mr Pearson is the obvious suspect, of course. It leaps to the eye,' said Mrs Bradley. 'However, there are other possibilities. We must investigate them one by one. All the same, I have made cautious enquiries, and Mr Pearson left his seat at the concert before the performance began, and did not return until the second interval.'

'Rather a long time to be out. I should think he'd have an alibi, you know.'

'Well, we shall see,' said Mrs Bradley.