“Show me, show me,” slavered the greedy Wendy.
Rangi’s hand in his bag was stilled. He himself was still. Frozen. And then he suddenly opened the bag and peered inside. He withdrew his clenched hand.
“Here I have a pilot’s thumb
Wrack’d as homeward he did come,”
said Rangi. He opened his hand very slightly.
“What’s wrong?” Peregrine asked. “Haven’t they given you something for the thumb?”
Rangi opened his hand. It was empty.
“I’ll speak to Props. On you go.”
“A drum! a drum!” said Wendy. “Macbeth doth come.”
And now their dance, about, about, turn and twist, bow, raise their joined hands. All very quick.
“Peace! The charm’s wound up.”
“Yes,” Peregrine said. “That speech has improved enormously. It’s really alarming now. One feels the wretched sailor in his doomed ship, tossing and turning, not dying and not living. Good. We’ll go on. Banquo and Macbeth. One moment, though. Banquo, the whole scene has been very carefully ordered so that Macbeth, the convention of the soliloquy having changed over four centuries, will not seem to be within hearing distance of his brother officers. You and Ross and Angus are talking together. Way upstage. But very quietly and with virtually no movement. Shakespeare himself seems to have felt the usual convention not really good enough. His I thank you, gentlemen is a dismissal. They bow and move as far away as they can get. The soliloquy, I needn’t tell you, is of great importance. So no loud laughter, if you please. Okay?”
“I took the point the first time you made it,” said Banquo.
“Good. That will save me the fatigue of making it a third time. Are you ready? The earth hath bubbles.”
The scene went forward. The messages of favors to come were delivered. The golden future opened out. Everything was lovely, and yet… and yet…
Presently they embarked on the cauldron scene. Peregrine developed the background of whispering. “Double, double toil and trouble —” Would it be heard? He tried a murmur; not good. “We’ll try it whispered when the whole company is here,” Peregrine said. “Six groups, each beginning after trouble. I think that’ll work.”
The witches were splendid. Clear and baleful. Their movements were explicit. They were real. But Peregrine was conscious that Rangi was troubled by something. He did not fumble a cue or muddle a movement or need a prompt, but he was unhappy. Unwell? Sickening for something? Oh, God, please not, thought Peregrine. Why is he looking at me? Am I missing something?
“And points at them for his.” Thunder and fog. Blackout, the door shut, and Lennox knocking on it. The scene ends.
“All right,” said Peregrine. “I’ve no notes specifically for you. It will need adjustments, no doubt, when we get the background noise settled. Thank you all very much.”
They all left the rehearsal room, except Rangi.
“Is something amiss? What’s the matter?”
He held out his market bag. “Will you look in it, sir?” Peregrine took the bag and opened it.
Out of it a malignant head stared up at him. Mouth open, eyes open, teeth bared. Pinkish paws stretched upward.
“Oh, God!” said Peregrine. “Here we go again. Where was this bag?”
“With the other two on the props table. Since yesterday.”
“Anyone look in it?”
“I shouldn’t think so. Only to put the rat in. There was no means of telling which bag belonged to whom. It might have been Blondie’s. She’d have fainted or gone into high-powered hysterics,” said Rangi.
“She wouldn’t have looked in. Nor would Wendy. Their bags are filled with newspaper and fastened with thongs, tightly knotted. Yours isn’t because you are meant to open it and produce the pilot’s thumb.”
“So I was meant to find it,” said Rangi.
“It wouldn’t have worked with the other two.”
“There’s an obvious man to have played all these silly tricks.”
“Props?” said Peregrine.
“Ask yourself.”
“I do and I don’t believe it. Did you hear his outcries and threats to appeal to his union over the Banquo’s head business? Was that all my eye? We’d have to say we’ve got a bloody star-actor on the books. No. We’ve had him as Props for years. I simply cannot wear him for the job.”
“Can’t you narrow down the field? Where everyone was at the different times? Who could have gone up to Duncan’s room with the head, for instance? As a matter of fact, I ran into him with it. Props. Coming down the ladder from Duncan’s chamber. Now I think of it,” said Rangi, “his manner was odd. I said: ‘What are you doing with that thing?’ and he said he was putting it where it ought to be. I’m sorry, Perry. I really think he’s your man, you know. He must have put it under the dish-cover, mustn’t he?”
“He was taking the one back to the other heads in the walking men’s room. I told him to.”
“Did you see him do it?”
“No.”
“Ask him if he did it.”
“Of course I will. But I’m sure he didn’t put it in the dish. I admit he doesn’t look too good but I’m sure of it.”
“This blasted rat. Where did it come from? Have we been using traps?”
“And who sets them? All right. Props. He put one up in a narrow passage where Henry couldn’t squeeze in.” (Henry was the theatre cat.) “Props told me so himself. He was proud of his cunning.”
Rangi said: “We’ll have to look at it.”
He opened the bag and turned it upside down. The rat’s forequarters fell with a soft plop on the floor.
“There’s the mark of the bar across its neck. It’s deep. And wet. Its neck is broken. It’s bled,” said Rangi. “It doesn’t smell. It’s been recently killed.”
“We’ll have to keep it.”
“Why?”
Peregrine was taken aback. “Why?” he said. “Upon my word I don’t know. I’m treating it like evidence for a crime and there’s no crime of that sort. Nor any sort, really. All the same… wait a bit.”
Peregrine went to a rubbish bin, found a discarded brown-paper bag, and turned it inside out. He brought it back and held it open. Rangi picked the rat up by the ear and dropped it in. Peregrine screwed up the neck of the bag tightly.
“Horrible beast,” he said.
“We’d better — ssh.”
A padded footfall and the swish of a broom sounded in the passage.
“Ernie!” Peregrine called. “Props!”
The door opened and he came in. How many years, Peregrine asked himself, had Ernie been Props at the Dolphin. Ten? Twenty? Dependable always. A cockney with an odd, quirky sense of the ridiculous and an oversensitive reaction to an imagined slight. Thin, sharp face. Quick. Sidelong grin.
“Hullo, guv,” he said. “Fought you’d of gawn by now.”
“Just going. Caught any rats?”
“I never looked. ’Old on.”
He went to the back of the room behind a packing case. A pause and then Props’s voice. “ ’Ullo! What’s this, then?” A scuffling and he appeared with a rattrap on a long string.
“Look at this,” he said. “I don’t get it. The bait’s gone. So’s the rat’s head. There’s been a rat. Fur and gore and hindquarters all over it. Killed. Somebody’s been and taken it. Must of.”
“Henry?” asked Peregrine.
“Nah! Cats don’t eat rats. Just kill ’em. And ’Enery couldn’t get up that narrer passage. Nah! It’s been a man. ’E’s pulled out the trap, lifted the bar, and taken the rat’s forequarters.”