Winty put both typed messages into an envelope and wrote the date on it. He unlocked his private drawer, dropped the envelope in, and relocked it.
The son of a murderer?
Winty consulted his neatly arranged fabulous memory. Since the casting list was completed he mentally ticked off each player until he came to William Smith. He remembered his mother, her nervous manner, her hesitation, her obvious relief. And diving backward, at last he remembered the Harcourt-Smith case and its outcome. Three years ago, wasn’t it? Five victims, and all of them girls! Mutilated, beheaded. Broadmoor for life.
If that’s the answer, Winty thought, I’ve pretty well forgotten the case. But, by God, I’ll find out who wrote this message and I won’t rest till I’ve faced him with it. Now then!
He thought very carefully for some time and then rang his secretary’s room.
“Mr. Meyer?” said her voice.
“Still here, are you, Mrs. Abrams? Will you come in, please?”
“Certainly.”
Seconds later the inner door opened and a middle-aged lady came in, carrying her notebook.
“You just caught me,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. I’m in no hurry.”
“Sit down. I want to test your memory, Mrs. Abrams.”
She sat down.
“When,” he asked, “did you last see the bottom of my ‘In’ tray?”
“Yesterday morning, Mr. Meyer. Ten-fifteen. Tea-time. I checked through the contents and added the morning’s mail.”
“You saw the bottom?”
“Certainly. I took everything out. There was a brochure from the wine people. I thought you might like to see it.”
“Quite. And nothing else?”
“Nothing.” She waited for a moment and then said incredulously: “There’s nothing lost?”
“No. There’s something found. A typed message. It’s on our follow-up paper and it’s typed on that machine over there. No envelope.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Yes. Where was I? While you were in here?”
“On the phone. Security people. First-night arrangements.”
“Ah yes. Mrs. Abrams, was this room unoccupied at any time, and unlocked, between then and now? I lunched at my club.”
“It was locked. You locked it.”
“Before that?”
“Er. I think you went out for a few minutes. At eleven.”
“I did?”
“The toilet,” she modestly said. “I heard the door open and close.”
“Oh yes. And later?”
“Let me think. No, apart from that it was never unoccupied and unlocked. Wait!”
“Yes, Mrs. Abrams?”
“I had put a sheet of our follow-up paper in the little machine here in case you should require a memo.”
“Yes?”
“You did not. It is not there now. How peculiar.”
“Yes, very.” He thought things over for a moment and then said: “Your memory, Mrs. Abrams, is exceptional. Do I understand that the only time it could have been done was when I left the room for — for at least five minutes — more? Would you not have heard the typewriter?”
“I was using my own machine in my own room, Mr. Meyer. No.”
“And the time?”
“I heard Big Ben.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much.” He hesitated. He contemplated Mrs. Abrams doubtfully. “I’m very much obliged. I — thank you, Mrs. Abrams.”
“Thank you, Mr. Meyer,” she said and withdrew.
She closed the door. I wonder, she thought, why he doesn’t tell me what was in the message.
On the other side of the door he thought: I would have liked to tell her but — no. The fewer the better.
He sat before his desk and thought carefully and calmly about this disruptive event. He was unaware of the previous occurrences: Peregrine’s accident; the head in the King’s room; the head in the meat dish; the rat in Rangi’s bag. They were not in his department. So he had nothing to relate the message to. A murderer’s son in the cast! he thought. Preposterous! What murderer? What son?
He thought again of the Harcourt-Smith case. He remembered that the sensational papers had made a great thing of the wife’s having no inkling of Harcourt-Smith’s second “personality” and, yes, of his little son, who was six years old.
It is our William, he thought. Blow me down flat but it’s our William that’s being got at. And after a further agitation: I’ll do nothing. It’s awkward, of course, but until the show’s been running for some time it’s better not to meddle. If then. I don’t know who’s typed it and I don’t want to know. Yet.
He looked at his day-to-day calendar. A red ring neatly encircled April 23. Shakespeare’s birthday. Opening night. Less than a week left, he thought.
He was not a pious man, but he caught himself wondering for the moment about the protective comfort of a phylactery and wishing he could experience it.
Chapter 5
DRESS REHEARSALS AND FIRST NIGHT
The days before the opening night seemed to hurry and to darken. There were no disasters and no untoward happenings, only a rushing immediacy. The actors arrived early for rehearsals. Some who were not called came to the last of the piecemeal sessions and watched closely and with a painful intensity.
The first of the dress rehearsals, really a technical rehearsal, lasted all day with constant stoppages for lights and effects. The management had a meal sent in. It was set up in the rehearsal room: soup, cold meat, potatoes in their skins, salad, coffee. Some members of the cast helped themselves when they had an opportunity. Others, Maggie for one, had nothing.
The props for the banquet were all there: a boar’s head with a lemon in its jaws and glass eyes. Plastic chickens. A soup tureen that would exude steam when a servingman removed the lid. Peregrine looked under the covers but the contents were all right: glued down. Loose: wine jugs; goblets; a huge candelabrum in the center of the table.
The pauses for lights were continual. Dialogue. Stop. “Catch them going up. Refocus it. Is it fixed? This mustn’t happen again.”
The witches each had a tiny blue torch concealed in their clothes. They switched these on when Macbeth spoken to them. They had to be firmly sewn and accurately pointed at their faces.
Plain sailing for a bit but still the feeling of pressure and anxiety. But that, after all, was normal. The actors played “within themselves.” Or almost. They got an interrupted run. The tension was extreme. The theatre was full of marvelous but ominous sounds. The air was thick with menace.
The arrival at Macbeth’s castle in the evening was the last seen of daylight for a long time. Exquisite lighting: a mellow and tranquil scene. Banquo’s beautiful voice saying “the air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses.” The sudden change when the doors rolled back and the piper skirled wildly and Lady Macbeth drew the King into the castle.
From now on it is night, for dawn, after the murder, was delayed and hardly declared itself, and before the murder of Banquo it is dusk: “The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day,” says the watchful assassin.
Banquo is murdered.
After the banquet the Macbeths are alone together, the last time the audience sees them so, and the night is “almost at odds with morning, which is which.” Otherwise, torchlight, lamplight, witchlight right on until the English scene, out-of-doors and sunny with a good King on the throne.
When Macbeth reappears he is aged, disheveled, half-demented, deserted by all but a few who cannot escape. Dougal Macdougal would be wonderful. He played these last abysmal scenes now well under their final pitch, but with every wayward change indicated. He was a wounded animal with a snarl or two left in him. “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow …” The speech tolled its way to the end like a death knell.