Curtain Call Read online

  ‘Ah, and how is the sainted Mrs Land?’ asked Stephen, as though he knew her.

  ‘Same as ever,’ Nina said, ‘only more so.’

  As she stood at the window, irresolute, Stephen sidled up and reached out to pull her close. But she withdrew from him and instead went to pick up the Standard, with its unwelcome freight of significance. She sat down to read through the report again, then looked in anxious appeal to Stephen.

  ‘It’s him – the man I saw in the room. It has to be him.’

  Stephen narrowed his eyes a little. ‘You can’t be certain. Look, there’s a lot of men out there mistreating women, all the time. But very few of them are murderers. Hardly any! The man you saw – well, no doubt he’s a brute, but it doesn’t follow that he’s –’

  ‘Stephen, listen to me,’ she cut in abruptly. She patted the sofa, inviting him to sit next to her, and took a deep breath. ‘There’s something I didn’t tell you – something I’d forgotten myself, I was in such a state, you remember? The girl – the girl he was hurting – when she ran into me –’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I saw . . . marks.’

  ‘What d’you mean, marks?’

  ‘On her neck – bruises, the sort you would get from someone’s hands trying to . . . throttle you.’

  His frown had turned quizzical. ‘You didn’t say that at the time. I mean, how could you forget something like that –’

  ‘I know, I know. But I did see them! It happened so quickly, I didn’t take them in. Or, I don’t know, probably I wanted to put them out of my mind. It just seems to me too great a coincidence that there would be another maniac lurking around the hotel ready to strangle a girl.’

  He said nothing. He only stared at her, frowning slightly, as though he were making a decision about her. Then it dawned on her, with a chill.

  ‘You think I’m making it up, don’t you?’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

  He shook his head, and waited a beat before replying. ‘No, I don’t think that. On the contrary, you should probably go to the police. If you’ve seen the killer, they’ll want to know about it.’

  Nina bit her lip, pondering the implications. The responsibility of it had loomed in her vision, disconcerting her. After some hesitation she said, ‘I’m not sure, really, how much help I can be . . .’

  ‘But you did see him,’ he said gravely.

  ‘Yes – though only for a matter of seconds.’

  ‘Would you be able to pick him out again?’ asked Stephen, sounding to his own ears like an investigating officer.

  ‘Yes. No. I don’t know,’ she said with a helpless shrug.

  They held each other’s gaze for a few moments. Then, with a decisive air, Stephen stood up and went over to his long work desk. He returned to the sofa carrying one of his larger sketch pads and a charcoal stick. He sat down at an angle to her, and, readying himself, brushed back a lock of hair from his forehead.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said.

  ‘You’re going to describe his face to me. And I’m going to sketch it.’

  ‘Really?’ she said uncertainly.

  ‘Why not? The police use artists all the time for this. They work with the eyewitness to make an approximate study of the suspect. Well, then – that’s in my line, and I can’t imagine I’d be any worse at it than they are.’ He saw the doubt in her gaze. ‘Just think of it as a “wanted” poster, like in the Wild West.’

  He flourished his charcoal stick like a conductor with his baton, and she laughed. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s start with an outline of his face. Was it round, or long, or squarish?’

  ‘Long, I suppose,’ she said, and watched as his expression focused, his hand quick and assured as it moved the charcoal around the paper. In a coaxing tone he invited her to describe the features, and, not wanting to let him down, she found herself recalling the contours and creases of the face with greater precision than she had expected. Principally it was the man’s eyes – narrow, with very dark irises – that came back to her, and as she directed Stephen’s marks and shadings she began to feel a strange empowerment, as if she were a spy, furnishing the vital coordinates of a secret location. And she loved to watch Stephen work, his faraway look of concentration, the tip of his tongue absently hovering between his teeth – the everyday oddity of his left-handedness.

  After ten minutes of this concerted effort Stephen, finishing with a few darting flurries, stood up and held the drawing a little distance from her.

  ‘Well?’

  Nina squinted at it for some moments, then gave a slow nod. ‘That’s really rather good.’

  ‘Don’t sound so surprised!’ He laughed.

  ‘Yes, but you usually draw from life, not from someone describing it.’ She leaned forward to scrutinise his handiwork. ‘I couldn’t swear it, but there might have been something fleshier about the lips . . .’

  He returned to the sketch and worked it over a little – erasing, adding, refining – before he handed it back to her. The mouth had been plumped, as required. It briefly amazed her that something in her mind’s eye should take on this vivid material form.

  ‘That’s him,’ she said. ‘Or as close to him as I can remember.’

  Stephen opened his cigarette case, from which she plucked one and lit it. They smoked for a meditative minute, the sketch lying on the coffee table between them. Nina felt an inward shudder as the stranger’s eyes, sump-black, seemed to fix on her. She stood up, and wandered over to the mirror at the fireplace. She addressed Stephen’s reflection in it.

  ‘May I ask you something – does my face look “gaunt” or “hard” to you?’ She couldn’t even bear to mention ‘horse-faced’.

  Stephen blinked at the question. ‘Er, no. Neither. Why do you ask?’

  She hesitated, then said, ‘Oh, just something a critic wrote about me when I was doing Fire in the Hole.’

  ‘Tsss. What rot. Should like to aim some fire up his hole, the blighter.’

  Nina laughed. ‘Ah, my defender!’

  He felt pleased at having said the right thing, and made a mental note to avoid any reference to the words ‘gaunt’ and ‘hard’ in her presence. Nina had returned her attention to the drawing. ‘So – when do we take it to the police?’

  Stephen paused now, looking shifty. ‘I’ve been thinking about that . . .’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I can’t go to the police. They’ll ask me why we had a room at the hotel . . . If that comes out, it’s all over with Cora.’

  Nina’s brow closed into a frown. ‘But it’s important – it might help them to catch him!’

  ‘I know. But my marriage is important, too,’ he said, realising how hypocritical that would sound. He looked away, embarrassed, and felt grateful that she didn’t challenge him.

  At length she said, in a measured tone, ‘I suppose we could send it anonymously. With a note?’

  He shook his head. ‘Wouldn’t work. It needs a credible witness – context – to back it up. Otherwise it’s merely a drawing of a man’s face, and who cares?’

  ‘Then what was the point of doing it?’

  ‘I don’t know. The problem only occurred to me as I was drawing the thing.’ She leaned back on the sofa, and blew out her cheeks. What a lot of fuss for nothing. Stephen had been gazing off, abstracted; then he turned his head towards her, his expression intent. ‘Wait – I have an idea.’

  She looked at him, raising her eyebrows in mute enquiry.

  ‘You should take it to the police,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You present it as your own – why should they doubt it? And you are the one who saw him.’

  Nina pointed to the sketch. ‘I couldn’t draw that – I’m not capable of it.’

  ‘But who’s to know? The important thing, as you said, is to let the police have it. You tell them it’s the man you saw, they get it to the newspapers, maybe someone will recognise him.’

  Her expression remained dubious.
‘I don’t know. What if they rumble me?’

  ‘They won’t. They’ll simply think you’re a decent citizen who wants to help – which is what you are!’ He sensed her teetering towards consent, and gave her a final push. ‘Look, if it is him, he’s done in two girls already. You could save someone else’s life.’

  She looked at him still. The case was unarguable, she saw that. Lying through her teeth, pretending the drawing was her own – hardly something that would test her skill as an actress. And she could lie in good conscience, she supposed, given this likeness in front of her might be instrumental in catching a killer. The end would justify the means. And yet something about the business unsettled her profoundly.

  She picked up the sketch. ‘Well, then,’ she said, in a resigned voice, wishing once again that she had never clapped eyes on him.

  3

  JIMMY SHIFTED IN his seat and sneaked another look at his pocket watch. Half past eight. What?! He had last checked about three hours ago and it was ten past. Had his trusty timepiece given out at last? It had been with him since the summer of 1914, just before he went to France. Bought in a little shop on the Strand, he remembered. ‘It’ll work for sentries, that will,’ the man had said. Jimmy, in uniform at the time, was offended to have been mistaken for a mere sentry – then realised that it was the fellow’s sales patter. Centuries. It’ll work for centuries. Well, twenty-two years so far without mishap . . .

  No, he knew there was nothing wrong with his watch. It only felt like three hours ago. Time was proceeding as normal. It was the play – his fourth this week – that was dragging. He looked along the row (he always sat at the end, to make a quick getaway) and found every other face dutifully still, slightly uptilted, aglow in the footlights. What was it about this domestic drama – he rummaged for the title, without success – that kept them so entranced? Oh, it was averagely competent, averagely performed, averagely staged and lit. It positively shimmered with averageness. That seemed to be enough for them. For the critic, though, it was a killer. He, too, had a duty to entertain, on the page as opposed to the stage, and nothing choked inspiration more effectively than the play that was neither good nor bad. Give him something uproariously great, or loutishly inept, just so long as it was something he could get his teeth into!

  He willed himself back into the action of the play. The character in the tweed suit who had entered the scene a few minutes ago had just revealed a noticeable lisp. Perhaps he could make something of that, a racy paragraph on the telltale signs of a – no, much too dangerous. Nine out of ten readers wouldn’t even know what he was talking about . . . That tweed suit, now. It was very like one he had had made, years ago, by Huntsman, was it? – he could picture it, the long bolt of cloth on the cutter’s table . . . a sort of marmalade colour with a windowpane check in purple, no, more like heather than purple . . .

  A rasping, catarrhal cggghhhuh snapped his chin up suddenly from his chest, where it had been lolling. My God, that snore – that was him. The man in the next seat had turned an enquiring face. He had just fallen asleep – narcolepsia dramatica – and not for the first time lately. Quite an irony that he should be restless in his own bed at night only to drop off while on duty in the stalls! He found that the older he got the less well he slept, he wasn’t sure why. Eating and drinking late perhaps had something to do with it; but then he had always eaten and drunk late. Somehow he had lost the knack for sleep. What did Macbeth call it? ‘Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care,/The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,/Balm of hurt minds . . .’ tee-tum, tee-tum, tee-tum. He was getting old – sixty next year. Back in the long ago he could have recited that speech entire. He would quote long runs of Shakespeare to amuse his dinner companions, who listened and smiled at one another as if to say, ‘Jimmy’s at it again.’

  His body was starting to fail, too. Corpulence had crept up on him, stealing away his once-compact figure. At night when he rolled over in bed he felt certain parts of him slower to turn than others. The manoeuvre now had to be executed, as it were, in stages. In the morning he struggled to crane himself forward to reach his feet, and had to lie in a foetal position just to put his socks on. His belt took an ever longer circuit around the rotunda of his stomach. He seemed to be going to the doctor more often, though Harley Street’s finest could discover nothing very wrong with him, aside from the usual wear and tear. (The last fellow, a Scot named McAlister, had suggested he cut his daily wine consumption from two bottles to one – Jimmy had privately dismissed him as a Presbyterian.) Morbid thoughts oppressed him; his vague fear of death had metamorphosed into a black butterfly of neurotic terror. The other day he had been browsing through the week’s letters from readers when he opened one from a correspondent named Philip D’Eath. He had dropped it as though he might a plague victim’s handkerchief. When his secretary later picked the letter off the floor and asked him how he wished to reply, Jimmy had refused to have anything to do with it.

  He peeked at his watch again. Quarter to nine. Though his attention had wandered he could sniff the interval approaching, like a gun dog picking up a scent. And here it came, a seemly diminuendo; the sense of a hiatus; the curtain’s slow descent. Applause. For this relief, much thanks . . . Jimmy was out of his seat and hurrying up the aisle before the lights had come on. The prospect of a drink always quickened his step. The white-jacketed barman fixed him a large whisky and soda, which he took to a corner table and set to work. He had a little notepad in which he’d jotted down his first paragraph, always the trickiest – that, and the last paragraph. He now had the play’s title in front of him: Change of the Guard. Even that was average.

  A good drama is as solidly constructed as a good house. The foundations should be hewn from realism, the ground floor from character and action, the upper floor from pattern and symbol. Within, its staircases and doorways should allow smooth passage from one part to another. Laurence Markwick’s Change of the Guard at the Duke of York’s follows these precepts with a rigorous competence. The materials are first-rate, the workmanship is sound. But is it a house one wishes to inhabit for longer than ten minutes? This story of a cuckoo in the marital nest offers careful observation of human frailty but nothing that resembles spontaneous feeling. There is not a line in it that surprises, nor a gesture that intrigues. The view from its windows is perfectly transparent – and perfectly trite.

  Jimmy read it through again. He loved the way his prose fell into place. He was also rather sick of it. Forty-odd years of theatre-going, at least thirty of them spent writing about it, was bound to blunt your edges. True, with experience had come a certain godlike assurance: it was impossible to avoid the feeling that his critical verdicts were consistently and remarkably right. What use in being a critic otherwise? The problem was in finding different ways of saying the same thing over and over again. He had played variations on the ‘good house’ analogy at least, oh, half a dozen times in the last ten years. Reading through the proofs of his latest collection of reviews he had been aghast at the way the same phrases – jokes – aperçus – infested his paragraphs like bothersome weeds. His secretary had spotted them too, and had entered polite notes in the margin: Perhaps change this? A list of repetitions was appended. Change? He would if he had the time. But he was too busy attending the plays, or reading the books, or writing half a dozen other articles at once to finesse every last word. Deadlines massed overhead each week, like ravens pecking on the roof. His memory, capacious as it was, couldn’t always identify the same amusing jeu d’esprit he had essayed six months before.

  He would tot up his aggregate of words published each year and note it in his diary. His total for the previous twelve months had come to 432,000, either written by his own hand or dictated to his secretary. Nearly half a million words . . . He sometimes had the sense of being a stoker, shovelling his words into a furnace whose white-hot maw kept consuming, demanding, consuming. As fast as he wrote them they vanished into the flames. No amount would ever sati
sfy it. The only escape he could conceive, his only respite from feeding the fire, was death. And he didn’t want to think about that.

  A shadow had fallen across his table. He looked up to find a large lady favouring him with a shy but hopeful simper. Her floral dress was straining across her voluminous bust and backside. Jimmy was already writing a Punch caption in his head: ‘A steatopygous matron from the provinces, excited by her night out in London’s fashionable West End, encounters a Renowned Theatrical Personage’ . . . He sighed, and put down his pen.

  ‘Madam, you’re standing in my light,’ he said, his expression unsmiling.

  The lady took an apologetic step sideways. ‘Ooh, I am sorry. I just wanted to ask . . . if you were enjoying the play?’ Ply, she pronounced it. Her accent carried the unmistakable flat drone of Brum, sharpening his irritation.

  He took a deep breath. ‘In the theatre I never allow myself to succumb in the smallest degree to the arbitrary and unreliable sensation you are pleased to call “enjoyment”. That is a word to be used strictly in relation to such pleasures as pâté de foie gras, vanilla ices or Scotch whisky – the last of which I had been lately enjoying.’

  She blinked her bewilderment at him. ‘So . . . you don’t like it then?’ Loik eet.

  ‘For the sake of argument, let us say: it is giving me the pip.’

  She nodded, brightening at the colloquialism. Somewhat emboldened, she leaned towards him again and said, sotto voce, ‘Are you who I think you are?’

  Jimmy capped his pen, pocketed his notebook, and stood up. ‘I most certainly am not,’ he said curtly, and turned on his heel. Behind him he heard her gasp, and felt exhilarated by his rudeness. What a pest, barging in on him without so much as a by-your-leave. The look on her silly face as he crushed her! That would keep him going through the second half. He strolled back into the auditorium, nodding at this or that fellow scribbler – it was press night, so they were all in. He was about to return to his seat when a hearty hand clapped him on the back.