Anne Perry - Half Moon Street

“What do you want with him?” Tellman said incredulously. “We know how he died!”

Pitt did not answer.

When they arrived, he told the cab to wait and ran up the steps of the building and in through the door. To his intense relief he found the surgeon still there. He knew the one question he wanted to ask.

“Was there any water in Cathcart’s lungs?” he demanded.

The surgeon looked startled. “Yes, there was a bit. I was going to tell you next time you were by.” His eyes narrowed. “Doesn’t make any difference to your case.”

“But did he actually die of the blow to his head or of drowning?” Pitt insisted, fidgeting with impatience.

Tellman watched with what might have been a dawning comprehension. His eyes were steady, and he stood motionless in the cold room, his nostrils slightly flared with distaste at the pervasive odor, real or imagined.

The surgeon stared at Pitt, shifting his weight. “Clinically, I suppose the drowning got to him before the wound, but it’s academic, Pitt. He would have died of the blow anyway. . or exposure, in his injured state, sodden wet and left out in the river like that. It’s murder any way you look at it at all. What’s your point?”

“I’m not sure,” Pitt said honestly. “Thank you. Come on, Tellman.” He turned on his heel.

“Theatre now?” Tellman asked, racing to catch up with him as he strode down the steps and swung back up into the hansom.

They rattled through the dark, gaslit streets without speaking again, Pitt leaning forward as if by effort of will he could make the horse go faster.

He was out of the door almost before they came to a stop, leaving Tellman to pay the driver and follow behind him. He raced up the steps and into the foyer, brandishing his card and calling out who he was, pushing past the usher and swinging the door wide into the back of the auditorium.

He saw with a flood of relief that the stage was still lit, although it was the very end of the final act. Gertrude and the king were both already dead, and Laertes; Polonius and Ophelia were long since gone, he by accident, she the suicide of drowning. Hamlet, Fortinbras, Horatio and Osric were left amid a sea of corpses.

There was the sound of a shot.

“ ‘What warlike noise is this?’ ” Hamlet asked, swinging to face it. He seemed as taut as a wire, his nerves stretched to breaking.

Osric answered him.

Hamlet turned back towards the audience, his eyes wide with agony, staring straight ahead to where Pitt stood in the center of the aisle.

“ ‘O, I die, Horatio;

The potent poison quite o’er-crows my spirit

I cannot live to hear the news from England;

But I do prophesy the election lights

On Fortinbras; he has my dying voice;

So tell him, with the occurents, more and less,

Which have solicited.’ ”

His voice was hoarse, cutting to the soul. “ ‘The rest is silence.’ ” He crumpled and slid forward.

There was such utter stillness the audience might not have existed, except for the tension in the air like a storm.

“ ‘Now cracks a noble heart,’ ” Horatio said through a throat thick with tears.

“ ‘Goodnight, sweet prince,

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!’ ”

Fortinbras and the English ambassadors entered and the last, tragic words were spoken. Finally the soldiers carried off the bodies to the somber familiarity of the Dead March. The curtain descended.

A complete silence filled the auditorium, thick, crackling with emotion, then the applause erupted like a sea breaking. As if impelled by a single force, the entire audience rose to its feet. Above the thunder of clapping, voices could be heard shouting “Bravo!” again and again.

The curtain rose and the full cast lined up to take the call, Orlando in the center, Cecily radiant at his side, and Bellmaine looking ashen, as if Polonius had risen from the grave to acknowledge his praise.

Pitt walked down the aisle and along in front of the orchestra, through the side door towards the back of the stage. Tellman joined him, but still they had to wait. The applause went on and on, drowning out every other sound. It was impossible to speak above it for almost a quarter of an hour.

Finally the curtain fell for the last time and the players turned to leave.

Pitt stepped onto the stage. He could afford to wait no longer. Tellman was on his heels.

Orlando faced him. He looked haggard and utterly exhausted. He took a step forward, but he was shaking.

“You’ve come for me.” His voice was clear and soft. “Thank you for letting me finish.”

“I’m a policeman, not a barbarian,” Pitt replied just as softly.

Orlando walked towards him, his hands held as if ready for manacles. He did not once look at his mother.

“What is going on?” Cecily demanded, looking one way then the other. “Superintendent, what do you want here? This is surely an inappropriate time. Orlando has just performed perhaps the greatest Hamlet there has ever been. If you still think there is anything to ask us, come tomorrow. . about midday.”

“You don’t understand, Mother,” Orlando said, still without turning to her. “You never did.”

She started to say something, but he cut across her.

“Mr. Pitt has come to arrest me for murdering Cathcart. Although I didn’t put him in the river. I don’t know how that happened, I swear.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Cecily moved forward at last. This time she addressed Pitt, not her son. “He’s exhausted. I don’t know why he should say such a thing. It’s absurd. Why should he murder Cathcart? He didn’t even know him!”

Orlando turned slowly towards her. His face was bloodless, his eyes dark ringed as if he had come to the end of a terrible journey.

“I killed him because I hated him for what he had made you into. You are my mother! And when you debase yourself, you debase me also. .”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she protested. And to judge from her wide, frank eyes, Pitt believed she still did not perceive what she had done.

It was Bellmaine who told her. He moved past Orlando, close to Pitt but turned to her. “You made your crusade without thinking what it would do to those who loved you, Cecily,” he said in a low, painful voice. “You had pictures taken of yourself that would shock people into thinking what you wanted them to. You woke new and powerful emotions, hurling them out of their safety of heart into the ways you wished them to be, because you thought it was good for them. You didn’t stop to think, or to care, that in doing it you were destroying what they might have held too dear to lose without tearing them apart, breaking them inside.” There were tears in his throat, and a terrible grief. “You broke your son, Cecily. The mind might tell him pornography is all right if it breaks down old prejudices, but the heart can’t accept.” His voice cracked. “The heart only says, ‘That’s my mother! The source of who I am!’ ”

At last the horror reached her. Understanding spread through her with unspeakable pain. As if she had been crippled inside, she turned her eyes to Orlando.

He did not answer. His face was eloquent enough; all the anger, and the loss and the pain, were there in his haggard features. He swiveled away from her and held out his wrists to Pitt.

“No.” Bellmaine touched him with intense gentleness. “You struck him, but you did not kill him. I did that.”

“You?” Cecily demanded “Why?” But there was already the beginning of a terrible realization in her.

“Because I hated him for blackmailing me,” Bellmaine said wearily, “over a photograph I posed for years ago. . when I needed the money. Shown now, it would have ruined me. An actor counts on image. But mostly to protect my son. .”