A few more details checked, then down to the pub about twelve-thirty for a quick one. Just one; mustn’t risk slurring. Vernon was quiet and reassuring, a good companion for last-minute anxieties. Yes, he would hold the last fade. Yes, he would anticipate the slide of The Last Man sitting on the gallows. No, he didn’t think there was too much serious stuff in the programme. No, he didn’t think the dark suit was too anonymous.
Back at the hall Brian Cassells was in charge as Front of House Manager. Apparently he felt that evening dress was obligatory for this role, though he looked a little out of place penguined up at lunch time. He admitted to Charles that advance sales were not that good (three seats), but he had great hopes for casual trade during the next twenty minutes.
Sharp on one fifteen the show started. Charles had felt on the edge of nausea as he waited to enter in the blackout, but as usual actually being onstage gave him a sense of calm and control.
The imperfect masking of the hall’s windows meant that the audience was visible, but he did not dare to look until he had received some reaction. The watershed was Faithless Nellie Gray; nothing expected on I Remember, I Remember and the rest of the preamble. But the first Pathetic Ballad should get something.
Ben Battle was a soldier bold,
And used to war’s alarms;
But a cannon-ball took off his legs,
So he laid down his arms.
Yes, a distinct laugh. And the laughs built through the ensuing stanzas. Not a big sound, but warming.
Emboldened, he inspected the audience as he recited. About twenty, which, on the first day of the Festival, with negative publicity, was not bad. On a second glance he realised that a lot of it was paper, members of D.U.D.S. who had been allowed in free. There was a little knot of revue cast, dark figures grouped around Anna’s shining head. James Milne leant forward in his seat with intense concentration. There were only about eight faces Charles did not recognise. And some of those might be complimentaries for the critics. Maurice Skellern was not going to be over-impressed by ten per cent of fifty per cent of that lot.
But it was an audience. And they were responding. Charles enjoyed himself.
The Laird insisted on taking him out to lunch. They went to an Indian restaurant on Forrest Place and managed to persuade the waiter it was still early enough for them to have a bottle of wine. After a couple of glasses Charles felt better. The immediate reaction after a show was always emptiness, even depression, and the ability to remember only the things that went wrong. Gradually it passed; alcohol always speeded the process.
So did enthusiastic response to the show. And James Milne was very enthusiastic. He had only known the familiar poems of Hood, the ones which have become cliches by repetition, November, A Retrospective Review, The Song of the Shirt and the inevitable I Remember, I Remember. The broadening of the picture which Charles’ show had given obviously excited him. The punning and other verbal tricks appealed to his crossword mind. ‘I had no idea there was so much variety, Charles. I really must get hold of a Complete Works. Is there a good edition?’
‘There’s an Oxford one, but I don’t know if it’s in print.’ You might be able to pick up a second-hand one somewhere. Or there are some fairly good selections. But look, if you want to borrow mine, do. I should know my words by now.’ He held the copy across the table.
The Laird was touched. By his values, lending a book was the highest form of friendship. ‘That’s very kind. I’ll look after it.’
‘I know you will.’
‘And I’ll make it a priority to find one for myself. Oh, you know I envy that kind of facility with words. Not just the facility-we all happen on puns occasionally-but the ability to create something out of it. It must be wonderful to be a writer.’
‘I don’t know. It was hard graft for Hood. If he hadn’t had to work so hard, he might have lived longer.’
‘Yes, but at least it’s congenial graft. I mean, writing, you’re on your own, you get on with it, you don’t have to keep getting involved with other people. You just write and send your stuff off and that’s it. A sort of remote control way of making a living.’
Charles laughed out loud. ‘James, you’ve got it all wrong. Hood would disagree with you totally. He didn’t just sit at a desk toying with his muse and packing the products off in envelopes to editors. All his life was spent scurrying round, selling his own work, sub-editing other people’s, setting up magazines. No question of remote control, his Liveli-Hood, as he kept calling it, was very much involved with other people.’
‘But some writers don’t have to do all that, Charles.’
‘Very few. In my own experience of writing plays, about ten per cent of the time is spent actually writing; ninety per cent is traipsing round like a peddler, hawking the results to managements or television companies.’
‘Oh dear. So what you are saying is that a writer’s life is just as sordid and ordinary as everyone else’s?’
‘If not more so. Hood himself, in his Copyright and Copywrong, said of writers, “We are on a par with quack doctors, street preachers, strollers, ballad-singers, hawkers of last dying speeches, Punch and Judies, conjurers, tumblers and other diverting vagabonds.”’
‘How very disappointing. I think I’d rather forget you told me that and keep my illusions of ivory towers and groves of Academe.’
They talked further about writing. James Milne admitted that he would have liked to produce something himself, but never got around to it. ‘Which means perhaps that I haven’t really got anything to say.’
‘Maybe. Though writing doesn’t have to say anything. It can just be there to entertain,’ said Charles, reflecting on his own few plays.
‘Hmm. Perhaps, but even then the writer must get a bit involved. Begin to identify with his characters.’
‘Oh, inevitably that happens.’
The Laird paused for a moment, piecing his thoughts together. ‘I was wondering if there could be anything of that behind this murder.’
‘What do you mean? Anything of what?’
‘Identification. I mean, if there’s anything in the actual situation of the killing, the way it happened.’
‘I’m still not with you.’
‘Willy Mariello was playing David Rizzio in a play based on the life of Mary, Queen of Scots. Now there are certain obvious parallels between Willy and Rizzio. There’s the Italian name, for a start. I know there are lots of Scots with Italian names, but it’s a coincidence. Then they both played the guitar.’
‘So what you’re suggesting,’ Charles said slowly, ‘is that someone got obsessed with the whole Mary, Queen of Scots story and identified with Rizzio s murder and… Incidentally, who did kill Rizzio?’
‘A lot of people, I seem to recall. I think Darnley was the prime mover. Who’s playing Darnley in the show?’
‘I don’t know. I could check. And you think when we’ve got that name we’ve got our murderer?’ He could not keep a note of scepticism out of his voice.
‘It’s just another possible line of enquiry. Something that struck me.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Well, we’re not getting far on any other tack, are we?’
Charles hesitated. ‘No.’
‘You haven’t found out anything else, have you?’
‘No,’ he lied. For some reason he did not want to tell anyone about Pam Northcliffe’s story of Willy and Lesley. Not yet.
The Laird was going to browse round some book shops, but Charles did not feel like it. He was still wound up after the performance, and, since licensing hours did not permit his usual method of unwinding, he decided an aimless stroll round Edinburgh might do the trick.
The stroll soon ceased to be aimless. He had only gone a few hundred yards and was turning off George IV bridge into Chambers Street when he saw Martin Warburton. Striding along on the opposite side of the road with the same expression of blinkered concentration that he had had the day before. And again heading for Nicholson Street.