Pyramus usually stands up to make his farewell speech before stabbing himself and falling to the ground, and Rinkley had played it this way. He did a particularly good theatrical fall and liked to show it off to the audience. Bourton changed this. He lay down with great care and a meticulous arrangement of his tunic after Quince had helped him to get out of his body-armour, and then, having declaimed that he was dead, fled and that his soul was in the sky, he raised himself slightly on one elbow, gave an unexpected hiccup, raised the dagger and plunged it into his body. Picking up her cue, Susan Hythe, as Thisbe, capered on to the centre of the stage and gazed concernedly down on him.
“ ‘What, dead, my dove?’ ” she enquired, and continued: “ ‘O Pyramus, arise! Speak, speak. Quite dumb? Dead, dead? A tomb must cover thy sweet eyes.’ ”
This was almost the cue for Quince and Lion to come in with their stretcher (which had been returned) and convey Pyramus into the wings, but before this happened Thisbe was supposed to pull out the dagger so that at the end of her speech she could commit suicide with it.
This she failed to do because the dagger remained stuck fast. The audience thought that this was all part of the fun, but Susan signalled to the pall-bearers to come on, and the rigid body of Pyramus was carried off with the dagger still fixed in position. Susan turned her back on the audience and mouthed at Yorke, who was looking truly ducal as Theseus, “No dagger! It won’t come unstuck. What shall I do?”
“Drop dead,” he said, in a voice the audience could hear. There was a roar of appreciative laughter at this unscripted addendum, and Thisbe, clutching her heart, dropped slowly, gracefully and without hurting herself, on to the turf. Quince, without Lion, came galloping back. He went up to Theseus and muttered, “Something’s happened. He can’t come on again. Passed out.”
“Oh, damn! We must play on, though. Do the dance,” said Yorke, “and we’ll finish.”
“Right,” said Marcus Lynn. “ ‘Will it please you to see the epilogue?’ ” he demanded loudly, “ ‘or to hear a burgomask dance between two of our company?’ ”
“ ‘No epilogue, but come, your burgomask,’ ” shouted Yorke, hoping that this truncated speech would indicate to the ladies of the orchestra that he had decided to cut the play short at this point. To make certain, however, that they would get the message, he murmured a word to Jonathan, who, as Demetrius, was standing behind him, and Jonathan slipped out. The orchestra produced some music from Capriole Suite, Quince and Lion performed their clodhoppers’ dance and, when this was over, they and the rest of the workmen retired into the wings. Theseus spoke the lines which took the court party off the stage and there was only a short pause (which, anyway, was covered by applause from the audience) before Puck came on and spoke the last few lines of the play.
When the bouquets to Valerie Yorke, Barbara Bourton, Emma Lynn and Deborah had been presented and, with some difficulty, the mayor had been prevented from making his threatened speech, Marcus Lynn alone saw the notables off as the audience drifted out. There was much revving-up of cars, Lynn’s business friends departed and then an appalled producer had to give the cast the news. The totally unexpected collapse of Donald Bourton which had prevented his return on stage was not due to drink or to natural causes. By some so-far unexplained mischance, he had been given the wrong dagger and, all-unwittingly, had stabbed himself to death with it.
Chapter 7
Bare Bodkin
“Ah, me, for pity!—what a dream was here!”
« ^ »
It was well after midnight before the actors were able to leave, but all was over at last and the body removed to the mortuary. Deborah offered Barbara Bourton a bed, but she, calm and poised as ever, politely declined the offer. Her sister and her sister’s husband, she said, had been in the audience and would still be waiting to drive her home.
“Are they staying with you?” Deborah asked.
“Oh, yes. Please don’t worry. I shall be all right.” So Deborah let her go and walked up to the house with Jonathan. At last they were alone and in their own drawing-room. Jonathan opened one of the bottles of champagne which had been destined for the celebrations and, having poured out two glassfuls, sat down and stared at the electric fire which, finding Deborah shivering, he had switched on.
“But how could the wrong dagger have got into that sword-belt?” she asked.
“Very easily,” he replied. “It almost happened when I was in College, although the circumstances were not quite the same. We were doing Hamlet and some of the chaps were fooling about in the dressing-room and somebody picked up the wrong dagger and went lunging about with it, thinking it was a harmless one. Luckily somebody caught his arm before he could do any damage, otherwise we might have had just the same sort of horrible accident as we’ve had here tonight. People really should be more careful, even with theatrical properties they think are safe to handle.”
“I suppose it was an accident?” said Deborah.
“An accident? What else could it have been?”
“I don’t like accidents which kill people.”
“Who does? But they happen every day.”
“Yes, crashed cars and falls and burns in people’s homes and old people and young children knocked down crossing the street, but this was quite different and it could only have happened to Donald.”
“How do you mean?”
“If Rinkley had not been taken ill, Donald would not have played Pyramus.”
“So?”
“Well, don’t you think that the minute Rinkley drew it out, he would have known it was the wrong dagger? Don’t you remember how nervous he was about the right one until he had convinced himself it was harmless? He had used it at rehearsals, remember. There’s such a thing as the kinaesthetic sense, you know, in all of us. The very first feel of the dagger as he handled it would have warned him. He would never have risked using it on himself. I suppose there will have to be an enquiry to find out what led to the daggers being changed, and we shall have the police and the reporters and goodness knows what number of gaping sightseers. Oh, God! What an ending to the play!”
“Yes. Well, that can’t be helped. Naturally there will have to be an official enquiry, even although the death was accidental.”
“Are you trying to convince yourself that it was? Quite a number of people may not have liked Donald, you know.”
“I was one of them. He was far too forthcoming with you to meet with my approval.”
“And he was a lot more forthcoming with some people than ever he was with me. And, although I wouldn’t say this to anybody but you, his Barbara wasn’t altogether overwhelmed by his sudden death, you know.”
“Suffering from shock, but the whole realisation of what happened hadn’t hit her.”
“That could be so. Very well, I’ll be charitable. Drink up and let’s go to bed. There will be plenty to do tomorrow and the next day. For one thing, Marcus Lynn’s workmen will be here on Monday to dismantle the set-up and take away the amplifiers and the lights and the painted scenery. Oh, and I expect someone will come along tomorrow to collect Ganymede and Lucien. Jeanne-Marie let them sleep on instead of waking them and taking them home.”
This someone turned out to be Dr Jeanne-Marie herself. She did not work on Sundays, she explained, except to answer emergency calls. She accepted a drink and came out with a direct reference to the tragedy of the previous evening.