Victoria Clayton - Clouds among the Stars

‘Thank you. Thank you very much,’ I said with what I immediately felt to be excessive warmth. I wondered if an interest in literature was usual in a policeman.

The inspector smiled as though we were making polite conversation over teacups and sandwiches. He was really rather good-looking, with twinkling, sympathetic eyes. I liked the way the tips of his ears bent outwards a little.

‘Mind if I smoke my pipe?’ I shook my head. He took out the pipe and a leather pouch and began to stuff shreds into the bowl. Then he struck a match and applied it to the tobacco between puffs. A sweetish smell floated towards me. The process was strangely enthralling. I stared at the little curls of smoke. ‘You know, don’t you, Miss Byng, that your father has been placed under arrest?’

My temperature seemed to shoot up until my ears were practically in flames while my face grew cold with sudden perspiration. Until that moment I had not believed it.

‘Why – when …?’ I could not finish the sentence.

‘The police were called to the Phoebus Theatre this morning. Sir Basil Wintergreen was found lying on the stage with a fractured skull.’

‘Sir B-Basil Wintergreen? Is he …?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

I wanted to groan. I may even have done so. My father was currently a member of the newly formed Hubert Hat Shakespeare Company. They were to open with King Lear in two weeks. Sir Basil Wintergreen was Lear and Pa was the Duke of Gloucester. Pa had told us many times that the casting was a triumph of mediocrity. Apparently Sir Basil, since his knighthood the previous year, could not get the self-satisfaction out of his voice, however sad, mad or angry he was supposed to be. His Lear sounded like a bank manager delivering an after-dinner speech to a Masonic Lodge. He had grown so fat he could barely do more than fling out an arm or waggle his head. Soon, according to Pa, Sir Basil would have to be brought on and off stage in a cart. With his eyes dwindling to sly gleams in his swollen cheeks, he could express no nobler feeling than the comic posturing of Falstaff or Sir Toby Belch.

The lifelong rivalry between Pa and Sir Basil had been both a spur and a scourge. For many years Pa had been satirical at Basil’s expense, deriding his eagerness to court impresarios, directors, critics and anyone who could help him rise. My father had insisted, in a proud-spirited sort of way, that audiences were the proper arbiters of genius. It had been an unpleasant shock when the laurel crown had been placed on Basil’s receding brow. It was not the knighthood Pa resented but the immediate clamour for Basil’s presence on every stage that stung him. My father’s insults became less jocular and more venomous. It would be true to say that he was in a fair way to hating Basil.

‘This has been a terrible shock for you.’ The inspector’s manner was that of a story-book uncle, genial, reassuring, safe. Probably the pipe and Burberry helped. ‘I’m afraid there are one or two questions I must ask. Your mother – is she at home?’

‘I – she’s in the drawing room. I’m not sure whether … She suffers from, um, neurasthenia.’

I did not know what this was exactly, only that my mother complained of it. The sergeant’s pencil paused and I heard him give a cluck of distress.

‘You needn’t write that down, Tweeter.’ Inspector Foy nodded and hummed thoughtfully to himself. ‘Are you the eldest, Miss Byng?’

‘No. My brother – we call him Bron – is twenty-six and Ophelia’s twenty-four. I’m twenty-two.’

‘Can I have a word with them?’

‘Bron’s gone to the – out. Ophelia’s in bed.’

‘Is she ill?’

‘No. She always goes to bed when she’s upset.’

He squinted down the end of his pipe and hummed some more. ‘Pom – pom – pom,’ up and down the scale. ‘And Portia? How old is she?’

‘She’s twenty. But she isn’t here. I don’t know where she is.’

‘I see.’ The inspector drew thoughtfully on his pipe and blew a cloud, his expression noncommittal. ‘I was hoping that someone would come back to the station with me. Your father’ll need some overnight things, and no doubt a visit from a member of the family will cheer him up. His solicitor’s been with him all day, of course. Your father’ll be moved in the morning. Probably the Shrubs.’

‘The Shrubs?’ I echoed stupidly.

‘Winston Shrubs. The wing for prisoners on remand.’ When he said ‘prisoners’ I wanted to be sick. I must have looked green for the inspector said, ‘You’re rather young for all this. I think I should have a word with your mother.’

‘I – I’ll ask her.’

My mother was alone, pacing the length of the drawing room, the back of one hand pressed to her forehead, the other clutching her left side. ‘Ma.’ I tried to speak calmly but my voice was breathy and unnaturally high. ‘There’s a policeman in the library who wants us to go to the station to see Pa.’

She paused in her pacing and crossed her hands over her chest as though cradling something small and vulnerable. ‘Waldo! Poor wounded name! My bosom as a bed shall lodge thee till thy wound be healed!’

‘ Othello . Are you coming then?’

‘ Two Gentlemen . Why, he is whiter than new snow upon a raven’s back!’

‘Yes, I know . But we ought to go and see him.’

She widened her eyes. ‘This is the very coinage of my brain. It harrows me with fear and wonder.’

I saw the policemen hovering at the door of the drawing room. ‘This is Inspector … um,’ I still could not remember his name.

‘Good evening, Mrs Byng. I’m Chief Inspector Foy.’

My mother looked wildly at me. ‘Alas, how is’t with you that you do bend your eye on vacancy?’

The inspector spoke in a slow, calming sort of way as though announcing the next item of a concert on the radio. ‘ Hamlet , isn’t it? Gertrude’s speech, if I’m not mistaken. This is my sergeant. We’d like you to come with us to the station, if you wouldn’t mind.’

My mother groaned and clasped her throat. ‘This fell sergeant, death, is swift in his arrest.’

The sergeant coughed respectfully. ‘Beg pardon, ma’am, but the name’s Tweeter.’

My mother made a small sound of impatience. Brushing past us, she paused on the threshold and pointed a finger at each of us in turn. ‘Hence, horrible shadow! Unreal mockery, hence!’ She swept into the hall and I heard her walking upstairs with slow majesty.

‘It had better be me,’ I said.

I went into the hall to find my coat.

‘I come with you.’ In the dim light of the stairs Maria-Alba’s complexion, always sallow because of all the nerve-stabilising pills she took, looked yellow enough to be jaundiced.

‘Oh, but Maria-Alba – you can’t. You know it’ll make you – upset. Besides, they need you here.’

‘Cordelia is with the television.’ Maria-Alba was buttoning her cape, a voluminous garment in scratchy tartan, which she wore winter and summer. ‘The others is all right. And Bron, when he return home, è ubriaco fradico, certo .’

I hoped the policemen would not know the Italian for stinking drunk. I had not the presence of mind for argument. I went up to my father’s dressing room to pack a bag. Shirts, pyjamas, pants, socks, washing things, razor, shaving soap. Eau-de-Cologne, two silver hairbrushes and the hairnet he wore in bed. He was extremely particular about his appearance. I folded up his dressing gown carefully. It was made of saffron-coloured marocain and had once belonged to Noel Coward. As an afterthought I took two cigars from his humidor, his cigar cutter, his sleeping pills and the book of sonnets from his bedside table.