There was a long silence.
“No,” said Alleyn at last. “There’s only one answer.”
“I suppose so,” said Fox heavily.
The auditions were nearly over and the play almost fully cast from the present company. In the office, announcements for the press were being telephoned and Peregrine actually felt better. Whatever the outcome and whoever was arrested, they were doing their own thing. In their own theatre. They were doing what they were meant to do: getting on with a new piece.
The discordant note was sounded, needless to say, by Gaston. He had not, of course, auditioned but there he was at the theatre. No sooner had an audition finished than he began. He buttonholed one nervous actor after another and his subject was the claidheamh-mor. He wanted it back. Urgently. They tried to shut him up, but he kept recurring like a decimal and complaining in an audible rumble that he would not be held responsible for anything that happened to anyone into whose care it had been consigned.
He asked to see Alleyn and was told he and Fox were not at the theatre. Where had they gone? Nobody knew.
At last Peregrine stopped Rangi’s audition and said he could not allow Gaston into the auditorium while they were working. What did he want?
“My claidheamh-mor,” he roared. “How often must I say it! Are you an idiot, have you not been given sufficient evidence of what it can do if a desecrating hand is laid upon it? It is my fault,” he shouted. “I allowed it to become involved in this sanguinary play. I released its power. You have only to study its history to realize —”
“Gaston! Stop! We are busy and it is no affair of ours. We have no time to listen to your diatribe and it is not within my sphere of activities to demand the thing’s return. In any case I wouldn’t get it. Do pipe down like a good chap. The weapon is perfectly safe in police custody and will be returned in due course.”
“Safe!” he cried swinging his arms about alarmingly. “Safe! You will drive me demented.”
“Not far to go,” remarked a splendid voice in the back stalls.
“Who made that repulsive observation?”
“I did,” said Barrabell. “In my opinion you’re certifiable. In any correctly ordered state —”
“Shut up, both of you,” Peregrine cried. “Good Lord! Haven’t we had enough to put up with! If you can’t pipe down both of you go out of earshot and get on with it in the yard.”
“I shall bring this up with Equity. It is not the first time I have been insulted in this theatre —”
“— my claidheamh-mor. I implore you to consider —”
“Gaston! Answer me. Are you here to audition? Yes or no.”
“I am here… no.”
“Barrabell, are you here to audition?”
“I was. I now see that it would be useless.”
“In that case neither of you has any right to stay. I must ask you both to go. Go, for pity’s sake, both of you.”
The doors into the foyer opened. Winty Meyer’s voice said: “Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize —”
“Mr. Meyer, wait! I must speak with you. My claidheamh-mor! Mr. Meyer! Please!”
Gaston hurried down the aisle and out into the foyer. The doors swung to behind him and he became a distant rumpus.
Peregrine said: “I’m extremely sorry, Rangi. We’ll go on when I’ve settled this idiotic affair. Now then, Bruce.”
He took Barrabell’s elbow and led him aside. “My dear chap,” he said and forced his voice into a warmth he did not feel. “Alleyn has told me of your tragedy. I couldn’t be sorrier for you. But I must ask you this. Don’t you feel that with young William in the company you would be most unhappy? I do. I —”
Barrabell turned deadly white. He stared at Peregrine.
“You little rat,” he said. He turned on his heel and left the theatre.
“Whew!” said Peregrine. “Okay, Rangi. We’ll have an audition.”
Chapter 9
FINIS
And now the theatre was almost rid of Macbeth. The units that from the audience had seemed solid but had silently revolved, showing different aspects of the scenery, had been taken apart and stacked against the walls.
The stage, every inch of it, was scrubbed and smelled of disinfectant. In front-of-house, advertisements for the new play replaced the old Macbeth posters and in the foyer the giant photograph frames were empty. The life-size photograph of Sir Dougal was rolled up and slid into a cardboard cylinder. It disappeared into the basement.
The bookstall had its display for the most part taken down and stacked in cartons; the programmes had been cleared out and stuffed into rubbish bags that awaited the collectors.
Going, going, gone, thought Winter Meyer. It was a lovely show.
The dressing-rooms were empty and scrubbed. All except the star room, which was locked and untouched, except by the police, since Sir Dougal Macdougal had walked out of it for the last time. His solicitors had given notice of sending persons in to collect his possessions. His name had been removed from the door.
Nina in her diminutive flat told herself that the malign influence of Macbeth was now satisfied and made a solemn promise to herself that she would not talk about it inside the theatre. She was greatly distressed, of course, and she wondered avidly who had done the murder, but she was sustained and even excited by being so overwhelmingly right in all her pronouncements.
They’ve not got a leg to stand on, she thought triumphantly.
Simon Morten rang up Maggie Mannering and asked her to lunch with him at the Wig and Piglet. She said she would and invited him to come early for her so that they could have a good talk in private. He arrived at noon.
“Maggie,” he said holding her hands. “I wanted to ask you last night but you’ve been so remote, darling. I thought perhaps — I didn’t know how you felt or — well, I even thought you might have your doubts about me. And I thought that I’d better find out, one way or another. And so — here I am.”
Maggie stared at him. “Do you mean,” she said, “that you thought I wondered if you decapitated Dougal? Is that it?”
“Well — I know it’s idiotic but — well, yes. Don’t laugh at me, Maggie, please. I’ve been in hell.”
“I’ll try not to,” she said. “I’m sure you have. But why? Why would I think you’d done it? What motive could you have had for it?”
“I was still so horribly jealous,” he muttered, turning dark red. “And you did the sex thing with him so awfully well. Just looking at you and listening — I — well, I’m sorry.”
“Now, just you look here, Simon,” said Maggie vigorously. “We’re both going to play in The Glove. You’re going to be tormented by me and it is not going to be all muddled up with the real thing: that way it’ll go wrong. The audience will sense there’s another reality intruding on the dramatic reality and they’ll feel uncomfortable. Won’t they?”
“I know how you feel about the mask an actor wears,” he said.
“Yes, I do. And you take yours off at your peril. Right?”
“All right.”
“Shake?” she said holding out her hand.
“All right, shake,” he said and took it.
“Now we can go and have our blameless luncheon,” said Maggie. “Come on. For the first time since it happened, I’m nervous. Let’s talk about The Bard in love.”
So they went to the Wig and Piglet.
To everyone’s relief Gaston retired to his own premises, presumably to lick his incomprehensible wounds. But he renewed his assault on the Yard. Mr. Fox was called to the telephone, which was switched through to Alleyn’s room. “Hullo?” he said.