Ngaio Marsh - Light Thickens

“Haven’t I?”

“Not a wink.”

She went upstairs. He heard the bath running and smelled the stuff she used in it. If I sit down, he thought, I won’t get up.

He wandered to the window. There was the Dolphin across the river, shining in the late-afternoon sun. Tomorrow they’ll put up the big poster. MACBETH! OPENING 23 APRIL! I’ll see it from here.

Emily came down. “Come on,” she said.

She helped him undress. The bath was heaven. Emily scrubbed his back. His head nodded and his mouth filled with foam.

“Blow!”

He blew and the foam floated about, a mass of iridescent bubbles.

“Stay awake for three minutes longer,” said her voice. She had evidently pulled out the plug. “Come on. Out.”

He was dried. The sensation was laughable. He woke sufficiently to fumble himself into his pajamas and then into bed.

“ Sleep ,” he murmured, “ that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care .”

“That’s right,” said Emily, a thousand miles away.

He slept.

Across the river, not very far away as the crow flies, the theatre trembled with the rebirth of the play. The actors were gone but business manager Winter Meyer and his staff worked away in the front-of-house. Telephones rang. Bookings were made. Royalty were coming and someone from Buck House would appear the day before they opened to settle the arrangements. The police and Security people would make decisions. Chief Superintendent Alleyn and his wife were coming. The Security pundits thought it a good idea if he were to be put in the box next to the Royalty. Chief Superintendent Alleyn received the order philosophically if not jubilantly and asked for a seat later in the season when he could watch the play rather than the house.

“Of course, of course, my dear chap,” Winty gushed. “Anytime. Anywhere. Management seat. Our pleasure.”

Flower shop. Cleaners. Press. Programmes. Biographical notes. Notes on the play. Nothing about superstitions.

Winter Meyer read through the proofs and could find nothing to crack the eggshell sensitivity of any of the actors. Until he came to the piece on Banquo.

“Mr. Bruce Barrabell, too long an absentee from the West End.” He won’t relish that, thought Winty, and changed it to “… makes a welcome return to…”

He went through the whole thing again and then rang up the printers and asked if the Royal Programme was ready and when he could see a copy.

Winter Meyer’s black curls were now iron gray. He had been business manager at the Dolphin ever since it was restored and remembered the play about Shakespeare by Peregrine Jay that twenty years ago had been accompanied by a murder.

Seems a long time ago now, thought Winty. Things have gone rather smoothly since then. He touched wood with his plump white finger. Of course we’re in a nice financial position, permanently endowed by the late Mr. Conducis. Almost too secure, you might think. I don’t, he thought with a fat chuckle. He lit a cigar and returned to his work.

He had dealt with his “In” tray. There was only an advertisement left from a wine merchant. He picked it up and dropped it in his wastebasket, exposing a folded paper at the bottom of his tray.

Winty was an extremely tidy man and liked to say he knew exactly where everything lay on or in his desk and what it was about. He did not recognize this folded sheet. It was, he noted, a follow-up sheet of office letter paper. He frowned and opened it.

The typed message read: “murderers son in your co.”

Winter Meyer sat perfectly still, his cigar in his left hand and in his right this outrageous statement.

Presently he turned and observed, on a small table, the typewriter sometimes used by his secretary for taking down dictated letters. He inserted a sheet of paper and typed the statement.

This, he decided, corresponds exactly. The monstrous truth declared itself. It had been executed in his office. Somebody had come in, sat down, and infamously typed it. No apostrophe or full stop and no capital letter. Because the writer was in a hurry? Or ignorant? And the motive?

Winty put both typed messages into an envelope and wrote the date on it. He unlocked his private drawer, dropped the envelope in, and relocked it.

The son of a murderer?

Winty consulted his neatly arranged fabulous memory. Since the casting list was completed he mentally ticked off each player until he came to William Smith. He remembered his mother, her nervous manner, her hesitation, her obvious relief. And diving backward, at last he remembered the Harcourt-Smith case and its outcome. Three years ago, wasn’t it? Five victims, and all of them girls! Mutilated, beheaded. Broadmoor for life.

If that’s the answer, Winty thought, I’ve pretty well forgotten the case. But, by God, I’ll find out who wrote this message and I won’t rest till I’ve faced him with it. Now then!

He thought very carefully for some time and then rang his secretary’s room.

“Mr. Meyer?” said her voice.

“Still here, are you, Mrs. Abrams? Will you come in, please?”

“Certainly.”

Seconds later the inner door opened and a middle-aged lady came in, carrying her notebook.

“You just caught me,” she said.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. I’m in no hurry.”

“Sit down. I want to test your memory, Mrs. Abrams.”

She sat down.

“When,” he asked, “did you last see the bottom of my ‘In’ tray?”

“Yesterday morning, Mr. Meyer. Ten-fifteen. Tea-time. I checked through the contents and added the morning’s mail.”

“You saw the bottom ?”

“Certainly. I took everything out. There was a brochure from the wine people. I thought you might like to see it.”

“Quite. And nothing else?”

“Nothing.” She waited for a moment and then said incredulously: “There’s nothing lost ?”

“No. There’s something found. A typed message. It’s on our follow-up paper and it’s typed on that machine over there. No envelope.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Yes. Where was I? While you were in here?”

“On the phone. Security people. First-night arrangements.”

“Ah yes. Mrs. Abrams, was this room unoccupied at any time, and unlocked, between then and now? I lunched at my club.”

“It was locked. You locked it.”

“Before that?”

“Er. I think you went out for a few minutes. At eleven.”

“I did?”

“The toilet,” she modestly said. “I heard the door open and close.”

“Oh yes. And later?”

“Let me think. No, apart from that it was never unoccupied and unlocked. Wait!”

“Yes, Mrs. Abrams?”

“I had put a sheet of our follow-up paper in the little machine here in case you should require a memo.”

“Yes?”

“You did not. It is not there now. How peculiar.”

“Yes, very.” He thought things over for a moment and then said: “Your memory, Mrs. Abrams, is exceptional. Do I understand that the only time it could have been done was when I left the room for — for at least five minutes — more? Would you not have heard the typewriter?”

“I was using my own machine in my own room, Mr. Meyer. No.”

“And the time?”

“I heard Big Ben.”

“Thank you. Thank you very much.” He hesitated. He contemplated Mrs. Abrams doubtfully. “I’m very much obliged. I — thank you, Mrs. Abrams.”

“Thank you , Mr. Meyer,” she said and withdrew.

She closed the door. I wonder, she thought, why he doesn’t tell me what was in the message.

On the other side of the door he thought: I would have liked to tell her but — no. The fewer the better.

He sat before his desk and thought carefully and calmly about this disruptive event. He was unaware of the previous occurrences: Peregrine’s accident; the head in the King’s room; the head in the meat dish; the rat in Rangi’s bag. They were not in his department. So he had nothing to relate the message to. A murderer’s son in the cast! he thought. Preposterous! What murderer? What son?