Cool Repentance (16 page)

In herself, however, Christabel was not nearly so poised. Her face, seen close-up through the camera lens, looked drawn. She was more nervous than usual on stage and inclined to dry. In such an experienced actress -at any rate in terms of the past - it was difficult to believe that this was the effect of the television cameras. Besides it was odd that Christabel should falter now: Megalith had already filmed two other rehearsals, and Jemima had noticed that Christabel had been one of the few to be virtually word-perfect from the start - 'off the book already', Nat had said proudly, as though he had learnt Christabel's part for her.

It was more plausible to seek the cause of Christabel's strain in the renewed police questioning of Mr Blagge, underway at the present time. It was true that if Mr Blagge had indeed been the hidden element of fear in Christabel's household, she should by rights have been relieved at his disappearance, at any rate as far as Beauport Police Station. Perhaps it was the uncertainty which was responsible for her anxiety: when they broke for lunch, Jemima was among those who wandered over to the Royal Stag with Christabel, and among those - not a few - who noticed the alarming amount of vodka she consumed. It was left to Old Nicola, who had managed to wander along too, to make some loaded remarks about actresses who drank during rehearsal in her young days and what had become of them - 'Not still acting in their eightieth year like Old Nicola, dear, that I can tell you; they lost their looks first of course
...'

The Blagge developments had been outlined to Jemima the day before by Detective Inspector Harwood, over the tea-cups in her tiny chintzy-hotel sitting-room. There he told her that
Jim
Blagge was well known locally to have conceived a violent hatred of the theatre, and of all things theatrical, as a result of the career of his son Barry. That this career had actually ended with Barry's death in a road accident was hardly the fault of the theatre; and Iron Boy had been a pop star not an actor. However this was not a distinction that had bothered Mr Blagge among his Bridset cronies. Neither of the Blagge parents had had any real contact with Iron Boy after his elopement with (or abduction by) Christabel; she belonged unarguably to the theatre - so it was the theatre which had led to Barry's death. If not logic, there was a certain natural justice in his resentment.

Mr Blagge's paranoid dislike of the theatre had found a new focus in the person of Nat Fitzwilliam. Had not Nat been a school friend of Barry's? Nat had gone to university and with his superior education should have somehow saved Barry from his fate instead of corrupting him (this was Mr Blagge's version of events). Worse still was the emergence of Nat as Director of the Larminster Festival - the local boy made good when their own Barry was lying in his California grave. Worst of all was the return of Christabel to the stage, directed by Nat himself. Mr Blagge had ascribed the actual responsibility for that return to Nat. He had told his friends, with a knowledge born of his intimate position in the Cartwright family, that without Nat, 'she'd never have had the cheek to do it - not even Her'.

All of this, as Detective Inspector Harwood judiciously acknowledged, added up to no more than current Larminster gossip. He had not come to tea, he assured Jemima, merely to regale her with a lot of old tabbies' talk. The threats of violence made by Blagge against Fitzwilliam were more serious, the evidence of Blagge's second visit to the Watchtower Theatre more serious still. The visit had been witnessed by two strangers to Larminster with no personal knowledge of Blagge or his situation. Their timing was also unshakeable, based on a particular news bulletins on the car radio: so there was no question of their confusing Blagge's innocent first visit with this alleged second sortie.

'Threats of violence?' Jemima queried. She cast her mind back to the only two occasions when she had been aware of Mr Blagge and Nat being in close proximity. One was the original Easter Sunday lunch at Lark when the Blagges had handed round the food: the other was the occasion of the fatal picnic at Larmouth beach. In both cases Mr Blagge had, as far as she was concerned, concentrated entirely on serving food and drink. She had certainly noticed nothing untoward or threatening in his attitude to Nat Fitzwilliam.

But then, thought Jemima wrily, did one ever notice very much about the reactions of the various serving figures at a party, if one was a guest oneself? It was as though one expected their function somehow to dehumanize them, rob them of natural feelings of disgust and envy. Whereas the exact reverse was much more psychologically probable. Her mind went back to Gregory's recent revelations of Julian Cartwright's insensitivity. Mr Blagge no doubt felt even more violently towards Nat Fitzwilliam for having to hand him dishes, and pour him wine at Sunday lunch at Lark Manor. While Nat had sat there, his eager cherub's face pressed forward, utterly unconcerned about the emotions of his erstwhile friend's father dispensing claret over his left shoulder.

Detective Inspector Harwood was able to confirm these vague suppositions in a surprisingly accurate way. By instructing Jim Blagge to get the key of the theatre to fetch Christabel's shawl, Julian Cartwright had obliged Blagge to seek out Nat at the table where he was dining in Flora's Kitchen. This mission had turned into a highly unpleasant encounter when Nat had refused, apparently wilfully, to interrupt his conversation with Anna Maria and find out what Mr Blagge wanted. The older man's pale face had flushed visibly.

'Mr Marcovich who was the third party present was very particular about this detail,' Detective Inspector Harwood told Jemima. 'No mere figure of speech, he assured me. The colour of fine old port was how Mr Marcovich expressed it. And he gobbled like a turkey. After that it became a case of What The Butler Shouted. Mr Blagge actually threatened to thrash Nat, adding for good measure, "if not something worse".'

'We have several witnesses to the fact that he lost all control,' pursued the Detective Inspector. 'But then he does have these fits of sudden explosive rage, they tell me; has done, ever since the war. Terrible thing, uncontrollable rage. Rage and strength. Jim Blagge had both.'

At this moment, as the Megalith cameras focused on the Watchtower stage, Mr Blagge was being questioned at Beauport Police Station. Jemima knew that in the first place he would merely be asked for a further explanation of his movements. Matt Harwood and his team of detectives would be bearing in mind that famous police catchphrase: 'Method: Opportunity: Motive'. So far Mr Blagge had proved to have both Opportunity and Motive. The Method by which Nat had been killed was also obvious - strangulation by his own scarf. It remained to connect Mr Blagge, with his Opportunity and Motive, to the Method. Matt Harwood had assured her that the Bridset police would be quite as rigorous as those in London in applying the Locard exchange principle:

'I daresay that our friend Pompey has made you familiar with it,' he conceded kindly. 'And I hope young Gary bears it in mind as well. A criminal always leaves something at the scene that was not there before—'

'And carries away something that was not there when he arrived,' finished Jemima. Pompey had indeed made her familiar with the phrase. He was particularly fond of it. So, according to the aforesaid exchange principle, Mr Blagge's clothing on the night of the murder would be tested by a kind of giant hoover - for particles from Nat's clothing, and particularly Nat's long white silk scarf. While fibres of Nat's scarf and other clothes would be similarly 'hoovered' for tiny but tell-tale traces of Mr Blagge's garments.

The quiet remorsele
ss police process going on at Be
auport was certainly in marked contrast to the furore which had by now developed inside the Watchtower. Jim Blagge too was doubtless meeting with the traditional guarded politeness of the police, whereas there was precious little politeness left inside the cinnamon-coloured auditorium of the theatre.

The costume parade which had begun the morning gave way to a short rehearsal of the last act and then a run-through of the play. In the third act of
The Seagull
Christabel dried twice. Boy Greville ran his hands through his long greying hair in despair, like some ageing wizard whose spell was failing to work. Emily Jones's voice, when it was not trembling, rose higher and higher. Tobs's impersonation of a hunchback Dr Dorn failed to please despite his protests: 'But I spent the day at an old folks' home
studying
them,' he exclaimed indignantly. Finally Vic Marcovich decided off his own bat to deliver all his lines in a completely new manner reminiscent of George Sanders in
All About Eve.
It gave a very odd twist to Trigorin's famous speech about the creative process of a writer and made it sound as if he was talking about a gossip column.

The last phenomenon reduced Boy to the verge of collapse, and he had to be helped from his seat to take some special herbal remedy for when things went really wrong.

Megalith, in the shape of Guthrie as director and Jemima as presenter, had agreed in advance that at least one day would be spent in filming 'work in progress' - in order to contrast the unfinished rehearsal with the final achievement of the First Night. The trouble was, as Guthrie groaned to Jemima, there was altogether too much work and too little progress about this particular rehearsal. Boy's official attitude to the run-through of the last act was that since the first three had gone so abysmally, by the law of averages, the fourth act must go better.

It went much worse. The famous scene between Emily Jones as the fallen Nina and Ollie Summertown as the despairing Konstantin shortly preceding his suicide had about as much tension in it - as Vic Marcovich whispered to Anna Maria - as the reunion of a rice pudding and a treacle tart. Vic was still smarting at the rejection of his George Sanders turn and in no mood for generosity; all the same the comment elicited an embarrassed snigger from those members of the company who overheard it.

'All this should make a wonderful contrast with the First Night,' Cherry observed brightly to Jemima, who wondered not for the first time whether Cherry's gift for stating the obvious was all good.

Just as Vic Marcovich was getting into his stride, his George Sanders manner forgotten or at any rate held over, Boy Greville got a sudden frightful new kind of headache - possibly the onset of his first migraine, but who could be sure? Anyway, he said it was quite different from the nagging low-grade headache he generally endured. His anguished cry and the startling way in which he clapped his hands to his head was, Guthrie and Jemima decided, the most effective bit of acting they had seen all day. They had
it
on camera, of course. They might even decide to leave it in. Anna Maria cut an interesting figure too, tripping over Old Nicola's knitting as she rushed wildly into the auditorium with a sachet and a glass of water.

The television crew, who had elected to behave angelically all day -
even the sound engineer ceased to hear both buses and seagulls through his head-set - suddenly chose the last act to turn into the proverbial work-to-rule demons. Guthrie had been contrasting their behaviour most favourably with that of his disaffected Greek crew: now this fit of patriotic fervour gave way to something more like nostalgia for the vanished glories of the Parthenon programme. The crew would not agree, for example, to run over their supper break by even one minute. Thus it was by no means sure that Megalith would be able to complete the filming of the final scene, the vital moment at which Christabel would react to the noise of Konstantin shooting himself off-stage. For this a dramatic close-up was planned.

It was a case of the whole crew agreeing to this extension or none. Spike raised Mephistophelean black eyebrows to Jemima across the auditorium, smiled ruefully, and put his thumbs down. Jemima suspected the lighting-men of obduracy, as part of their enjoyable guerrilla warfare with the Watchtower stagehands. However there was never any point in suffering additional frustration over these matters; it was all part of the interesting tapestry of English television and had to be accepted as such, along with weather which washed out summer harvest filming in Constable country or played gentle sunshine on the Brontes' moors just when you wanted a Heathcliffian thunderstorm. The actors, most of whom had worked in television and were used to the phenomenon, were equally philosophic.

'We'll just have to take a chance.' Whatever his private thoughts, Guthrie sounded equally resigned.

Emily successfully — well, more or less - declaimed Nina's last speech: 'When you see Trigorin don't tell him anything
...
I love him. I love him even more than before . . .' Her voice did evince its unfortunate little wailing note from time to time, but at least she looked suitably wan and very pretty, still wearing the navy-blue dress with a sailor collar which Boy Greville had substituted for her mermaid's outfit.

Now Christabel was seated on her plastic rock; she had changed from her white muslin into her own clothes - a pale-blue shirt and navy-blue pleated skirt which showed her excellent legs in their narrow-thonged white sandals. Jemima thought that she had the legs at least of a young girl (although Emily Jones, who was a young girl, had rather thick legs, not entirely hidden by her long skirt).

Trigorin gazed at the stuffed seagull before him. Just as planned, a loud noise was heard off-stage. Jemima just had time to think that it did not sound very like a shot, when two things happened.

The supper break was officially reached, so the plugs were pulled and the crew stopped filming. And Blanche Cartwright rushed on to the stage. It was, in its way, a splendidly timed entrance, except for the fact that the camera was no longer turning.