“I honestly don’t understand,” Father Jourdain was saying, “how you can put The Duchess of Malfi before Hamlet or Macbeth.”
“Or why,” Miss Abbott barked, “you should think Othello so much better than any of them.”
Mr. Merryman groped in his waistcoat pocket for a sodamint and remarked insufferably that really it was impossible to discuss criteria of taste where the rudiments of taste were demonstrably absent. He treated his restive audience to a comprehensive de-gumming of Hamlet and Macbeth. Hamlet, he said, was an inconsistent, deficient and redundant réchauffé of some absurd German melodrama.
It was not surprising, Mr. Merryman said, that Hamlet was unable to make up his mind since his creator had himself been the victim of a still greater blight of indecision. Macbeth was merely a muddle-headed blunderer. Strip away the language and what remained? A tediously ignorant expression of defeatism. “ ‘What’s the good of anyfink? Wy, nuffink,’ ” Mr. Merryman quoted in pedantic cockney and tossed his sodamint into his mouth.
“I don’t know anything about Shakespeare—” Mr. Cuddy began and was at once talked down.
“It is at least something,” Mr. Merryman said, “that you acknowledge your misfortune.”
“All the same,” Alleyn objected, “there is the language.”
“I am not aware,” Mr. Merryman countered, “that I have suggested that the fellow had no vocabulary.” He went on to praise the classic structure of Othello, the inevitability of Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, and astounding, the admirable directness of Titus Andronicus. As an afterthought he conceded that the final scene of Lear was “respectable.”
Mr. McAngus, who had several times made plaintive little noises, now struck in with unexpected emphasis.
“To me,” he said, “Othello is almost spoilt by that bit near the end when Desdemona revives and speaks and then, you know, after all, dies. A woman who has been properly strangled would not be able to do that. It is quite ridiculous.”
“What’s the medical opinion?” Alleyn asked him.
“Pathological verisimilitude,” Mr. Merryman interjected with more than a touch of Pooh-Bah, “is irrelevant. One accepts the convention. It is artistically proper that she should be strangled and speak again. Therefore, she speaks.”
“All the same,” Alleyn said, “let’s have the expert’s opinion.” He looked at Tim.
“I wouldn’t say it was utterly impossible,” Tim said. “Of course, her physical condition can’t be reproduced by an actress and would be unacceptable if it could. I should think it’s just possible that he might not have killed her instantly and that she might momentarily revive and attempt to speak.”
“But, Doctor,” Mr. McAngus objected diffidently, “I did say properly. Properly strangled, you know.”
“Doesn’t the text,” Miss Abbott pointed out, “say she was smothered?”
“The text!” Mr. Merryman exclaimed and spread out his hands. “What text, pray? Which text?” and launched himself into a general animadversion of Shakespearian editorship. This he followed up with an extremely dogmatic pronouncement upon the presentation of the plays. The only tolerable method, he said, was that followed by the Elizabethans themselves. The bare boards. The boy-players. It appeared that Mr. Merryman himself produced the plays in this manner at his school. He treated them to a lecture upon speechcraft, costume, and make-up. His manner was so insufferably cocksure that it robbed his discourse of any interest it might have had for his extremely mixed audience. Mr. McAngus’s eyes became glazed. Father Jourdain was resigned and Miss Abbott impatient. Brigid looked at the deck and Tim looked at Brigid. Alleyn, conscious of all this, still managed to preserve the semblance of respectful attention.
He was conscious also of Mr. Cuddy, who had the air of a man balked of his legitimate prey. It was evident throughout the discussion that he had some observation to make. He now raised his voice unmelodiously and made it.
“Isn’t it funny,” Mr. Cuddy asked generally, “how the conversation seems to get round to the subject of ladies being throttled? Mrs. Cuddy was remarking on the same thing. Quite a coincidence, she was saying.”
Mr. Merryman opened his mouth, shut it, and reopened it when Brigid cried out with some violence, “I think it’s perfectly beastly. I hate it!”
Tim put his hand over hers. “Well, I’m sorry,” Brigid said, “but it is beastly. It doesn’t matter how Desdemona died. Othello isn’t a clinical example. Shakespeare wasn’t some scruffy existentialist, it’s a tragedy of simplicity and — and greatness of heart being destroyed by a common smarty-smarty little placefinder. Well, anyway,” Brigid mumbled, turning very pink, “that’s what I think and I suppose one can try and say what one thinks, can’t one?”
“I should damn well suppose one can,” Alleyn said warmly, “and how right you are, what’s more.”
Brigid threw him a grateful look.
Mr. Cuddy smiled and smiled. “I’m sure,” he said, “I didn’t mean to upset anyone.”
“Well, you have,” Miss Abbott snapped, “and now you know it, don’t you?”
“Thank you very much,” said Mr. Cuddy.
Father Jourdain stood up. “It’s tea-time,” ‘he said. “Shall we go in? And shall we decide,” he smiled at Brigid, “to take the advice of the youngest and wisest among us and keep off this not very delectable subject? I propose that we do.”
Everybody except Mr. Cuddy made affirmative noises and they went in to tea.
But the curious thing is [Alleyn wrote to his wife that evening,] that however much they may or may not try to avoid the subject of murder, it still crops up. I don’t want to go precious about it, but really one might suppose that the presence of this expert on board generates a sort of effluvia. They are unaware of it and yet it infects them. Tonight, for instance, after the women had gone to bed, which to my great relief was early, the men got cracking again. Cuddy, Jourdain, and Merryman are all avid readers of crime fiction and of the sort of book that calls itself Classic Cases of Detection. As it happens there are two or three of that kind in the ship’s little library, among them The Wainwrights in the admirable Notable Trials series, a very fanciful number on the Yard, and an affair called The Thing He Loves. The latter title derives from “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” of course, and I give you one guess as to the subject matter.
Well, tonight, Merryman being present, there was automatically a row. Without exception he’s the most pugnacious, quarrelsome, arrogant chap I’ve ever met. It seemed that Cuddy had got The Thing He Loves, and was snuffling away at it in the corner of the lounge. Merryman spotted the book and at once said that he himself was already reading it. Cuddy said he’d taken the book from the shelves and that they were free for all. Neither would give in. Finally McAngus announced that he had a copy of The Trial of Neil Cream and actually succeeded in placating Merryman with an offer to lend it to him. It appears that Merryman is one of the fanatics who believe the story of Cream’s unfinished confession. So peace was in a sense restored though once again we were treated to an interminable discussion on what Cuddy will call sex monstrosity. Dale was full of all kinds of second-hand theories. McAngus joined in with a sort of terrified relish. Makepiece talked from the psychiatric angle and Jourdain from the religious one. Merryman contradicted everybody. Of course, I’m all for these discussions. They give one an unexampled chance to listen to the man one may be going to arrest, propounding the sort of crime with which he will ultimately be charged.