Full Dark House(42)

‘What, and have them hanging around all week ogling the chorus girls? You know how I feel about outsiders. Elspeth, put that thing down, love. It weed all over the stage yesterday.’

Elspeth Wynter had been watching from the wings, where she had gone to retrieve Nijinsky. The tortoise refused to stay in its box, and regularly headed for the dim warmth of the backstage areas. ‘Sorry,’ she called, picking up the animal and putting it inside her cardigan. ‘Is that another air-raid warning?’ She cocked her head and listened to the distant rise and fall of the siren.

‘Bugger, does that mean we all have to go down to the understage again?’ Corinne complained. ‘Quelle bore. I’ll have to get another coffin nail from somewhere, I can’t do Woodies, they slaughter my throat. Doesn’t anyone smoke Park Drives or Kensitas these days? Charles, have you got un clope, love?’ Nearly all of the French contingent smoked.

‘I only have roll-ups,’ said Charles. ‘Three Nuns or Dark Empire Shag, take your pick.’

‘God, no thanks, I want some voice left.’

‘Then try the sparks.’

Corinne pushed past Jupiter and the young assistant, crossing to the far side of the stage, where Elspeth stood. Harry looked over and saw her searching for an electrician. As he idly watched, he noticed something was wrong. The stage had been cleared but the spotlights were still on, and the house lights had been dropped. The spots should have been off and the stalls lights raised. He could barely see beyond the edge of the stage.

‘Charles,’ called Corinne, her gravelly voice absorbed by the sound-deadening backcloths of the Hades set, ‘there’s nobody over here—ask someone on that side, would you?’

Harry turned in the direction of the shepherdesses, but they had gone down to the section of the basement that had been designated a shelter. He looked back over at Corinne, who was waiting in the flies, but could barely make her out. He felt Charles brush past him, and saw an unlit cigarette in his hand. Either he had asked someone for Corinne, or had decided to palm her off with one of his homemade specials.

Harry noticed that Charles was halfway across the stage when he heard something rip—later, he recalled the sound as being like someone tearing a sheet, which was also the noise a bomb made as it fell—and glanced up just in time to see the great blue planet break loose of its moorings.

He wanted to call out, but the words were stuck in his throat.

Charles had not noticed. The globe was swinging towards him in a graceful arc. Harry heard the impact that lifted the Frenchman off his feet. The sound was followed by a dull crack as Senechal’s head was slammed into the brick wall at the rear of the set. When Harry looked again he saw that the sphere had come to rest on the floor. It took him a few moments to realize what had happened.

As he lurched towards the giant prop he heard other shouts in the auditorium. Blood the colour of crushed blackberries pumped across the floorboards. A thick dark puddle was soaking into the backcloth. One end of the compasses had speared the baritone through his ribcage, just below his heart. Charles coughed loudly in the sudden silence, and sprayed the stage with blood. His left foot beat a reflexive tattoo on the floorboards before falling still.

He was dead before Harry, or anyone else, could reach his side.





20

SOMETHING IN THE ARCHIVE

‘Two deaths in the same theatre,’ said Bryant, rubbing the chill from his hands as they descended the stalls staircase of the Palace. ‘I’d call that a bit more than coincidence.’

‘You sound sorry you didn’t see it,’ May remarked.

‘Well, I am. Of course I am. From a professional point of view it would have been instructive.’

‘Two talented people just had their lives cut short,’ said May hotly. ‘You might be able to put their relatives at peace as to how and why they died.’ He was growing tired and irritable. The air-raid siren had proven to be a false alarm, and had caused them to miss the real drama. Bryant’s heartlessness bothered him. ‘People are suffering all around us, and there’s nothing one can do except try to keep the lives of their survivors in some kind of order. One must heal wounds by providing answers to questions.’

‘Quite, old chap. Still, two extreme acts of violence in a public auditorium.’ Bryant lightly tapped his partner’s arm. ‘They feel like symbolic rites, don’t you think? Signs that the mad illogic of the war is entering places of sanctuary. After all, British theatre is a bastion of common sense, civilized, safe, middle class, old-fashioned. Theatrical performances are structured on the principles of cause and effect. The auditorium exists outside of time or place, and only comes alive with the rising of the curtain.’