Vintage Murder

He went into the bedroom she shared with Meyer. It looked exactly like all their other bedrooms on tour. There was the wardrobe trunk, the brilliant drape on the bed, Carolyn’s photos of Meyer, of herself, and of her father, the parson in Bucks. And there, on the dressing-table, was her complexion in its scarlet case. She was putting the final touches to her lovely face and nodded to him in the looking-glass.

‘Good morning, Mrs Meyer,’ said Hambledon and kissed her fingers with the same light gesture he had so often used on the stage.

‘Good morning, Mr Hambledon.’ They spoke with that unnatural and half-ironical gaiety that actors so often assume when greeting each other outside the theatre.

Carolyn turned back to her mirror.

‘I’m getting very set-looking, Hailey. Older and older.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Don’t you? I expect you do, really. You think to yourself sometimes: “It won’t be long before she is too old for such-and-such a part.”’

‘No. I love you. To me you do not change.’

‘Darling! So sweet! Still, we do grow older.’

‘Then why, why, why not make the most of what’s left? Carol – do you really believe you love me?’

‘You’re going to have another attack. Don’t.’

She got up and put on her hat, giving him a comically apprehensive look from under the brim. ‘Come along now,’ she said.

He shrugged his shoulders and opened the door for her. They went out, moving beautifully, with years of training behind their smallest gestures. It is this unconscious professionalism in the everyday actions of actors that so often seems unreal to outsiders. When they are very young actors, it often is unreal, when they are older it is merely habit. They are indeed ‘always acting’, but not in the sense that their critics suggest.

Carolyn and Hambledon went down in the lift and through the lounge towards the street door. Here they ran into Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn, who was also staying at the Middleton.

‘Hullo!’ said Carolyn. ‘Have you been out already? You are an early one.’

‘I’ve been for a tram ride up to the top of those hills. Do you know, the town ends quite suddenly about four miles out, and you are on grassy hills with little bits of bush and the most enchanting view.’

‘It sounds delicious,’ said Carolyn vaguely.

‘No,’ said Alleyn, ‘it’s more exciting than that. How is your husband this morning?’

‘Still very cross, poor sweet. And black and blue, actually, just as he prophesied. It must have been a footballer. Are you coming to the show tonight?’

‘I want to, but, do you know, I can’t get a seat.’

‘Oh, nonsense. Alfie-Pooh will fix you up. Remind me to ask him, Hailey darling.’

‘Right,’ said Hambledon. ‘We ought to get along, Carol.’

‘Work, work, work,’ said Carolyn, suddenly looking tragic. ‘Goodbye, Mr Alleyn. Come round to my dressing-room after the show.’

‘And to mine,’ said Hambledon. ‘I want to know what you think of the piece. So long.’

‘Thank you so much. Goodbye,’ said Alleyn.

‘Nice man,’ said Carolyn when they had gone a little way.

‘Very nice indeed. Carol, you’ve got to listen to me, please. I’ve loved you with shameless constancy for – how long? Five years?’

‘Surely a little longer than that, darling. I fancy it’s six. It was during the run of Scissors to Grind at the Criterion. Don’t you remember—’

‘Very well – six. You say you’re fond of me – love me –’

‘Oughtn’t we to cross over here?’ interrupted Carolyn. ‘Pooh said the theatre was down that street, surely. Oh, do be careful!’ She gave a little scream. Hambledon, exasperated, had grasped her by the elbow and was hurrying her across a busy intersection.

‘I’m coming to your dressing-room as soon as we get there,’ he said angrily, ‘and I’m going to have it out with you.’

‘It would certainly be a better spot than the footpath,’ agreed Carolyn. ‘As my poor Pooh would say, there is a right and wrong kind of publicity.’

‘For God’s sake,’ said Hambledon, between clenched teeth, ‘stop talking to me about your husband.’

V

Before going to the theatre young Courtney Broadhead called in at the Middleton and asked for Mr Gordon Palmer. He was sent up to Mr Palmer’s rooms, where he found that young man still in bed and rather white about the gills. His cousin and mentor, Geoffrey West, sat in an arm-chair by the window, and Mr Francis Liversidge lolled across the end of the bed smoking a cigarette. He, too, had dropped in to see Gordon on his way to rehearsal it seemed.

The cub, as Hambledon had called Gordon Palmer, was seventeen years old, dreadfully sophisticated, and entirely ignorant of everything outside the sphere of his sophistication. He had none of the awkwardness of youth and very little of its vitality, being restless rather than energetic, acquisitive rather than ambitious. He was good-looking in a raffish, tarnished sort of fashion. It was entirely in keeping with his character that he should have attached himself to the Dacres Comedy Company and, more particularly, to Carolyn Dacres herself. That Carolyn paid not the smallest attention to him made little difference. With Liversidge and Valerie he was a great success.

‘Hullo, Court, my boy,’ said Gordon. ‘Treat me gently. I’m a wreck this morning. Met some ghastly people on that train last night. What a night! We played poker till – when was it, Geoffrey?’

‘Until far too late,’ said Weston calmly. ‘You were a young fool.’

‘He thinks he has to talk like that to me,’ explained Gordon. ‘He does it rather well, really. What’s your news, Court?’

‘I’ve come to pay my poker debts,’ said Courtney. He drew out his wallet and took some notes from it. ‘Yours is here too, Frankie.’ He laughed unhappily. ‘Take it while you can.’

‘That’s all fine and handy,’ said Gordon carelessly. ‘I’d forgotten all about it.’

VI

Mr Liversidge poked his head in at the open office door. He did not come on until the second act, and had grown tired of hanging round the wings while Gascoigne thrashed out a scene between Valerie Gaynes, Ackroyd, and Hambledon. Mr Meyer was alone in the office.

‘Good morning, sir,’ said Liversidge.

‘’Morning, Mr Liversidge,’ said Meyer, swinging round in his chair and staring owlishly at his first juvenile. ‘Want to see me?’

‘I’ve just heard of your experience on the train last night,’ began Liversidge, ‘and looked in to ask how you were. It’s an outrageous business. I mean to say—!’

‘Quite,’ said Meyer shortly. ‘Thanks very much.’

Liversidge airily advanced a little farther into the room.

‘And poor Val, losing all her money. Quite a chapter of calamities.’

‘It was,’ said Mr Meyer.

‘Quite a decent pub, the Middleton, isn’t it, sir?’

‘Quite,’ said Mr Meyer again.

There was an uncomfortable pause.

‘You seem to be in funds,’ remarked Mr Meyer suddenly.

Liversidge laughed melodiously. ‘I’ve been saving a bit lately. We had a long run in Town with the show, didn’t we? A windfall this morning, too.’ He gave Meyer a quick sidelong glance. ‘Courtney paid up his poker debts. I didn’t expect to see that again, I must say. Last night he was all down-stage and tragic.’

‘Shut that door,’ said Mr Meyer. ‘I want to talk to you.’

VII

Carolyn and Hambledon faced each other across the murky half-light of the star dressing-room. Already, most of the wicker baskets had been unpacked, and the grease-paints laid out on their trays. The room had a grey, cellar-like look about it and smelt of cosmetics. Hambledon switched on the light and it instantly became warm and intimate.

‘Now, listen to me,’ he said.

Carolyn sat on one of the wicker crates and gazed at him. He took a deep breath.

‘You’re as much in love with me as you ever will be with anyone. You don’t love Alfred. Why you married him I don’t believe even God knows, and I’m damn’ certain you don’t. I don’t ask you to live with me on the quiet, with everyone knowing perfectly well what’s happening. That sort of arrangement would be intolerable to both of us. I do ask you to come away with me at the end of this tour and let Alfred divorce you. Either that, or tell him how things are between us and give him the chance of arranging it the other way.’

‘Darling, we’ve had this out so often before.’

‘I know we have but I’m at the end of my tether. I can’t go on seeing you every day, working with you, being treated as though I was – what? A cross between a tame cat and a schoolboy. I’m forty-nine, Carol, and I – I’m starved. Why won’t you do this for both of us?’

‘Because I’m a Catholic.’

‘You’re not a good Catholic. I sometimes think you don’t care tuppence about your religion. How long is it since you’ve been to church or confession or whatever it is? Ages. Then why stick at this?’

‘It’s my Church sticking to me. Bits of it always stick. I’d feel I was wallowing in sin, darling, truthfully I would.’

‘Well, wallow. You’d get used to it.’

‘Oh, Hailey!’ She broke out into soft laughter, but warm soft laughter that ran like gold through every part she played.

‘Don’t!’ said Hambledon. ‘Don’t!’

‘I’m so sorry, Hailey. I am a pig. I do adore you, but, darling, I can’t – simply can’t live in sin with you. Living in sin. Living in sin,’ chanted Carolyn dreamily.

‘You’re hopeless,’ said Hambledon. ‘Hopeless!’

‘Miss Dacres, please,’ called a voice in the passage.

‘Here!’

‘We’re just coming to your entrance, please, Mr Gascoigne says.’

‘I’ll be there,’ said Carolyn. ‘Thank you.’

She got up at once.

‘You’re on in a minute, darling,’ she said to Hambledon.

‘I suppose,’ said Hambledon with a violence that in spite of himself was half whimsically-rueful, ‘I suppose I’ll have to wait for Alf to die of a fatty heart. Would you marry me then, Carol?’

‘What is it they all say in this country? “Too right.” Too right I would, darling. But, poor Pooh! A fatty heart! Too unkind.’ She slipped through the door.

A moment or two later he heard her voice, pitched and telling, as she spoke her opening line.

‘“Darling, what do you think! He’s asked me to marry him!”’ And then those peals of soft warm laughter.

CHAPTER 4 First Appearance of the Tiki

The curtain rose for the fourth time. Carolyn Dacres, standing in the centre of the players, bowed to the stalls, to the circle and, with the friendly special smile, to the gallery. One thousand pairs of hands were struck together over and over again, making a sound like hail on an iron roof. New Zealand audiences are not given to cheering. If they are pleased they sit still and clap exhaustively. They did so now, on the third and final performance of Ladies of Leisure. Carolyn bowed and bowed with an air of enchanted deprecation. She turned to Hailey Hambledon, smiling. He stepped out of the arc and came down to the footlights. He assumed the solemnly earnest expression of all leading actors who are about to make a speech. The thousand pairs of hands redoubled their activities. Hambledon smiled warningly. The clapping died away.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ began Hambledon reverently, ‘Miss Dacres has asked me to try and express something of our’ – he looked up to the gallery – ‘our gratitude, for the wonderful reception you have given the first play of our short’ – he looked into the stalls – ‘our all too short season in your beautiful city.’ He paused. Another tentative outbreak from the audience. ‘This is our first visit to New Zealand, and Middleton is the first town we have played. Our season in this lovely country of yours is, of necessity, a brief one. We go on to – to–’ he paused and turned helplessly to his company. ‘Wellington,’ said Carolyn. ‘To Wellington, on Friday. Tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday we play The Jack Pot, a comedy which we had the honour of presenting at the Criterion Theatre in London. Most of the original cast is still with us, and, in addition, three well-known Australian artists have joined us for this piece. May I also say that we have among us a New Zealand actress who returns to her native country after a distinguished career on the London stage – Miss Susan Max.’ He turned to old Susan, who gave him a startled look of gratitude. The audience applauded vociferously. Old Susan, with shining eyes, bowed to the house and then, charmingly, to Hambledon.

‘Miss Dacres, the company, and I, are greatly moved by the marvellous welcome you have given us. I – I may be giving away a secret, but I am going to tell you that today is her birthday.’ He held up his hand. ‘This is her first visit to Middleton; I feel we cannot do better than wish her many happy returns. Thank you all very much.’

Another storm of hail, a deep curtsy from Carolyn. Hambledon glanced up into the OP corner, and the curtain came down.

‘And God forbid that I should ever come back,’ muttered little Ackroyd disagreeably.

Susan Max, who was next to him, ruffled like an indignant hen.

‘You’d rather have the provinces, I suppose, Mr Ackroyd,’ she said briskly.

Old Brandon Vernon chuckled deeply. Ackroyd raised his comic eyebrows and inclined his head several times. ‘Ho-ho. Ho-ho!’ he sneered. ‘We’re all touchy and upstage about our native land, are we!’

Susan plodded off to her dressing-room. In the passage she ran into Hailey Hambledon.

‘Thank you, dear,’ said Susan. ‘I didn’t expect it, but it meant a lot.’

‘That’s all right, Susie,’ said Hambledon. ‘Go and make yourself lovely for the party.’

Carolyn’s birthday was to be celebrated. Out on the stage the hands put up a trestle-table and covered it with a white cloth. Flowers were massed down the centre. Glasses, plates, and quantities of food were arrayed on lines that followed some impossible standard set by a Hollywood super-spectacle, tempered by the facilities offered by the Middleton Hotel, which had undertaken the catering. Mr Meyer had spent a good deal of thought and more money on this party. It was, he said, to be a party suitable to his wife’s position as the foremost English comedienne, and it had been planned with one eye on the Press and half the other on the box office. The pièce de résistance was to be in the nature of a surprise for Carolyn and the guests, though one by one, he had taken the members of his company into his confidence. He had brought from England a jeroboam of champagne – a fabulous, a monstrous bottle of a famous vintage. All the afternoon, Ted Gascoigne and the stage hands had laboured under Mr Meyer’s guidance and with excited suggestions from George Mason. The giant bottle was suspended in the flies with a counterweight across the pulley. A crimson cord from the counterweight came down to the stage and was anchored to the table. At the climax of her party, Carolyn was to cut this cord. The counterweight would then rise and the jeroboam slowly descend into a nest of maiden-hair fern and exotic flowers, that was to be held, by Mr Meyer himself, in the centre of the table. He had made them rehearse it twelve times that day and was in a fever of excitement that the performance should go without a hitch. Now he kept darting on to the stage and gazing anxiously up into the flies, where the jeroboam hung, invisible, awaiting its big entrance. The shaded lamps used on the stage were switched on. With the heavy curtain for the fourth wall, the carpet and the hangings on the set, it was intimate and pleasant.

A little group of guests came in from the stage-door. A large vermilion-faced, pleasant-looking man, who was a station-holder twenty miles out in the country. His wife, broad, a little weather-beaten, well dressed, but not very smart. Their daughter, who was extremely smart, and their son, an early print of his father. They had called on Carolyn, who had instantly asked them to her party, forgotten she had done so, and neglected to warn anybody of their arrival. Gascoigne, who received them, looked nonplussed for a moment, and then, knowing his Carolyn, guessed what had happened. They were followed by Gordon Palmer, registering familiarity with backstage, and his cousin, Geoffrey Weston.

‘Hullo, George,’ said Gordon. ‘Perfectly marvellous. Great fun. Carolyn was too thrilling, wasn’t she? I must see her. Where is she?’

‘Miss Dacres is changing,’ said Ted Gascoigne, who had dealt with generations of Gordon Palmers.

‘But I simply can’t wait another second,’ protested Gordon in a high-pitched voice.

‘Afraid you’ll have to,’ said Gascoigne. ‘May I introduce Mr Gordon Palmer, Mr Weston, Mrs – mumble-mumble.’

‘Forrest,’ said the broad lady cheerfully. With the pathetic faith of most colonial ladies in the essential niceness of all young Englishmen, she instantly made friendly advances. Her husband and son looked guarded and her daughter alert.

More guests arrived, among them a big brown man with a very beautiful voice – Dr Rangi Te Pokiha, a Maori physician, who was staying at the Middleton.

Alleyn came in with Mason and Alfred Meyer, who had given him a box, and greeted him, after a final glance at the supper-table. They made a curious contrast. The famous Mr Meyer, short, pasty, plump, exuded box-office and front-of-the-house from every pearl button in his white waistcoat. The famous policeman, six inches taller, might have been a diplomat. ‘Magnificent appearance,’ Meyer had said to Carolyn. ‘He’d have done damn’ well if he’d taken to “the business”.’

One by one the members of the company came out from their dressing-rooms. Most actors have an entirely separate manner for occasions when they mix with outsiders. This separate manner is not so much an affectation as a persona, a mask used for this particular appearance. They wish to show how like other people they are. It is an innocent form of snobbishness. You have only to see them when the last guest has gone to realise how complete a disguise the persona may be.

Tonight they were all being very grown-up. Alfred Meyer introduced everybody, carefully. He introduced the New Zealanders to each other, the proprietor and proprietress of the Middleton to the station-holder and his family, who of course knew them perfectly well de haut en bas.

Carolyn was the last to appear.

‘Where’s my wife?’ asked Meyer of everybody at large. ‘It’s ten to. Time she was making an entrance.’

‘Where’s Carolyn?’ complained Gordon Palmer loudly.

‘Where’s Madame?’ shouted George Mason jovially.

Led by Meyer, they went to find out.

Alleyn, who, with Mason, had joined Hambledon, wondered if she was instinctively or intentionally delaying her entrance. His previous experience of leading ladies had been a solitary professional one, and he had very nearly lost his heart. He wondered if by any chance he was going to do so again.

At last a terrific rumpus broke out in the passage that led to the dressing-rooms. Carolyn’s golden laugh. Carolyn saying ‘O-o-oh!’ like a sort of musical train whistle. Carolyn sweeping along with three men in her wake. The double doors of the stage-set were thrown open by little Ackroyd, who announced like a serio-comic butler:

‘Enter Madame!’

Carolyn curtsying to the floor and rising like a moth to greet guest after guest. She had indeed made an entrance, but she had done it so terrifically, so deliberately, with a kind of twinkle in her eye, that Alleyn found himself uncritical and caught up in the warmth of her famous ‘personality’. When at last she saw him, and he awaited that moment impatiently, she came towards him with both hands outstretched and eyes like stars. Alleyn rose to the occasion, bent his long back, and kissed each of the hands. The Forrest family goggled at this performance, and Miss Forrest looked more alert than ever.

‘A-a-ah!’ said Carolyn with another of her melodious hoots. ‘My distinguished friend. The famous—’

‘No, no!’ exclaimed Alleyn hastily.

‘Why not! I insist on everybody knowing I’ve got a lion at my party.’

She spoke in her most ringing stage voice. Everybody turned to listen to her. In desperation Alleyn hurriedly lugged a small packet out of of his pocket and, with another bow, put it into her hands. ‘I’m making a walloping great fool of myself,’ he thought.

‘A birthday card,’ he said. ‘I hope you’ll allow me—’

Carolyn, who had already received an enormous number of expensive presents, instantly gazed about her with an air of flabbergasted delight that suggested the joy of a street waif receiving a five-pound note.

‘It’s for me!’ she cried. ‘For me, for me, for me.’ She looked brilliantly at Alleyn and at her guests. ‘You’ll all have to wait. It must be opened now. Quick! Quick!’ She wriggled her fingers and tore at the paper with excited squeaks.

‘Good lord,’ thought Alleyn, ‘how does she get away with it? In any other woman it would be nauseating.’

His gift was at last freed from its wrappings. A small green object appeared. The surface was rounded and graven into the semblance of a squat figure with an enormous lolling head and curved arms and legs. The face was much formalised, but it had a certain expression of grinning malevolence. Carolyn gazed at it in delighted bewilderment.

‘But what is it? It’s jade. It’s wonderful – but—?’

‘It’s greenstone,’ said Alleyn.

‘It is a tiki, Miss Dacres,’ said a deep voice. The Maori, Dr Rangi Te Pokiha, came forward, smiling.

Carolyn turned to him.

‘A tiki?’

‘Yes. And a very beautiful one, if I may say so.’ He glanced at Alleyn.

‘Dr Te Pokiha was good enough to find it for me,’ explained Alleyn.

‘I want to know about – all about it,’ insisted Carolyn.

Te Pokiha began to explain. He was gravely explicit, and the Forrests looked embarrassed. The tiki is a Maori symbol. It brings good fortune to its possessor. It represents a human embryo and is the symbol of fecundity. In the course of a conversation with Te Pokiha at the hotel Alleyn had learned that he had this tiki to dispose of for a pakeha— a white man – who was hard-up. Te Pokiha had said that if it had been his own possession he would never have parted with it, but the pakeha was very hard-up. The tiki was deposited at the museum where the curator would vouch for its authenticity. Alleyn, on an impulse, had gone to look at it and had bought it. On another impulse he had decided to give it to Carolyn. She was enthralled by this story, and swept about showing the tiki to everybody. Gordon Palmer, who had sent up half a florist’s shop, glowered sulkily at Alleyn out of the corners of his eyes. Meyer, obviously delighted with Alleyn’s gift to his wife, took the tiki to a lamp to examine it more closely.

‘It’s lucky, is it?’ he asked eagerly.

‘Well you heard what he said, governor,’ said old Brandon Vernon. ‘A symbol of fertility, wasn’t it? If you call that luck!’

Meyer hastily put the tiki down, crossed his thumbs and began to bow to it.

‘O tiki-tiki be good to little Alfie,’ he chanted. ‘No funny business, now, no funny business.’

Ackroyd said something in an undertone. There was a guffaw from one or two of the men. Ackroyd, with a smirk, took the tiki from Meyer. Old Vernon and Mason joined the group.

Their faces coarsened into half-smiles. The tiki went from hand to hand, and there were many loud gusts of laughter. Alleyn looked at Te Pokiha who walked across to him.

‘I half regret my impulse,’ said Alleyn quietly.

‘Oh,’ said Te Pokiha pleasantly, ‘it seems amusing to them naturally.’ He paused and then added: ‘So may my great grandparents have laughed over the first crucifix they saw.’