"Please do as the Inspector says," he told the audience. "He's in charge here now."
Dr. Darby, I noticed, was already shoving his way up the crowded side aisle towards the stage.
Nialla, when I caught a glimpse of her, seemed rooted to the spot; she had not moved a muscle. Her tall Mother Goose hat was askew and, had the situation not been what it was, I might have laughed out loud at the sight of her.
My first reaction, of course, was to go to her, but I found I was being restrained by one of Father's hands, heavy on my arm.
As Rupert's body crashed to the stage, both Daffy and Feely had leapt to their feet. Father was still motioning them to sit down, but they were too excited to pay him any attention.
The Inspector reappeared in the doorway at the left of the stage. There were two of these hallways — one on either side — each leading to an exit and a short set of steps up to the stage. It was in these pens that choirs of giggling angels were usually marshaled for St. Tancred's annual Christmas Pageant.
"Constable Linnet, may I have your flashlight, please?"
PC Linnet handed over his five-cell Ever Ready, which looked like one of the sort that you see being used to search the foggy moors in the cinema. He had probably brought it along to illuminate his way home through the lanes after the show, never thinking it would come in so handy.
"May I have your attention, please," Inspector Hewitt said. "We are making every attempt to restore the lights, but it may be some time before we're able to turn them back on permanently. It may be necessary, for safety's sake, to switch the current on and off several times. I would ask you to resume your seats, and to remain there until such time as I am able to give you further instructions. There is absolutely no cause for alarm, so please remain calm."
I heard him say quietly to Constable Linnet, "Cover the stage. That banner on the balcony will do." He pointed to a wide swath of canvas that stretched across the front of the balcony, above the main door: St. Tancred's Women's Institute, it said, with a red and white Cross of St. George, One Hundred Years of Service 1850-1950.
"And when you've done that," the Inspector added, "ring up Graves and Woolmer. Give them my compliments, and ask them to come as quickly as possible."
"It's their evening for cricket, sir," said PC Linnet.
"So it is. In that case, give them my compliments and my regrets. I'm sure the vicar will permit you the use of the telephone?"
"Dear me!" said the vicar, looking round the hall in puzzlement. "We do have one, of course ... for the use of the Ladies' Auxiliary and the Women's Institute, you know ... but I fear we've been forced to keep it in a locked cupboard in the kitchen ... so many people making long-distance calls to their friends in Devon — or even Scotland, in one instance."
"And the key?" asked Inspector Hewitt.
"I handed it to a gentleman from London, just before the performance — from the BBC, he said he was — needed to make an urgent call ... said he'd reimburse me from his own pocket as soon as the central operator rang back with the charges. How odd, I don't see him here now.
"Still, there's always the vicarage telephone," he added.
My first impulse was to offer to pick the lock, but before I could say a word, Inspector Hewitt shook his head.
"I'm sure we can have the hinges off with no damage."
He crooked a finger at George Carew, the village carpenter, who was out of his chair like a shot.
Aside from the occasional dull glow from the backstage flashlight, we sat in darkness for what seemed like an eternity.
And then suddenly, the lights came back on, causing us all to blink and rub our eyes, and to look round at one another rather foolishly.
And there was Rupert, his dead face, frozen in a look of surprise, still occupying center stage. They would soon be covering his body with the banner, and I realized that if I were to remember the scene for future reference, I needed to make a series of indelible mental snapshots. I wouldn't have long to work.
Click!
The eyes: The pupils were hugely dilated, so much so that if I had been able to get a bit closer, I was quite sure I should have been able to see myself reflected in their convex surfaces as clearly as Jan van Eyck was reflected in the bedroom mirror in his painting of the Arnolfinis' wedding day.
Not for long, though: Rupert's corneas had already begun to film over and the whites to lose their luster.
Click!
The body was no longer twitching. The skin had taken on a milky bluish tinge. The corner of the mouth seemed to have stopped bleeding, and what little blood was still visible now appeared very slightly darker and thicker, although the red, green, and amber bulbs of the footlights might be influencing my color perception.
Click!
On the forehead, just below the scalp, was a dark discoloration the size and shape of a sixpence. Although the hair was still smoldering, filling the hall with the acrid odor one would expect whenever the sulfur-rich amino acid keratin is burnt, it was not enough to account for the smoke that was still gathering — still hanging heavily — about the lights. I could see that the curtains and the scenery were quite intact, so it must be something else that was still combusting backstage. Judging by the smell of burning grass, I guessed that it was linen — probably seersucker.
Click!
When Rupert first came crashing down, Nialla had leapt to her feet and moved towards the stage, but she then had stopped, hovering in her tracks. Oddly, no one, including me, had gone to her, and now that minutes had passed, she was walking slowly towards the kitchen with both hands cupped over her face. Was it a delayed reaction? I wondered. Or something more?
PC Linnet came clomping to the front of the auditorium, the rolled-up banner under his arm and the large jackknife with which he had cut its cords still clutched in his hand. He and the vicar made quick work of draping the canvas between two coat trees, and in so doing, blocked our view of the deceased.
Well, I was assuming that Rupert was deceased. Although Inspector Hewitt must surely have checked for signs of life when he first went backstage, I hadn't heard him call for an ambulance. No one, as far as I knew, had yet attempted resuscitation. No one, in fact, had seemed anxious to touch the body. Even Dr. Darby had not exactly galloped to the rescue.
All of this happened, of course, in much less time than it takes to tell about it: In actual fact, it couldn't have taken more than five minutes.
Then, as the Inspector had said they might, the lights went out again.
At first there was that sense of being plunged into what Daffy describes as "Stygian blackness," and Mrs. Mullet calls "a blind man's holiday." Mrs. Mullet, by the way, was still sitting as she had been since the show began, like a waxwork figure with a half smile on her face. I could only assume that she was still smiling zanily into the darkness.
It was that kind of darkness that seems, at first, to paralyze all of the senses.
But then one realizes that things are not quite so black as they look, nor are they as silent as they seem. Pinpoints of light, for instance, penetrated the shabby blackout curtains that had been used to cover the windows since before the war, and although there was little daylight left outside, it was enough to create a faint impression of the hall's larger features.
From behind the curtains came the sound of deliberate footsteps, and the banner, which had been draped in front of the puppet stage, was suddenly illuminated from behind by a slash of yellow light from a powerful torch.