The Duke's Agent (23 page)

‘This play is too long, Mr Mulrohney. You must cut it again. The business between that dreadful knight and Peregrine – it gives me a headache it is so tedious.'

A full-face view of Mr Mulrohney revealed him to have the even features and colouring of the best actors. They combined to give him a countenance bland enough to be thought unremarkable or handsome according to the light and character he chose to play. His manner towards his patroness was charming and easy; nevertheless Jarrett discerned a weary glaze in the attentive look he wore as he waited for his chance to speak.

‘But Lady Yarbrook, Mr Nugent is most skilful as Sir Politic and Mr Nesbitt makes a comely Peregrine – you have said so yourself. He would be mortified to have his part cut, you know he worships you.'

She glanced down the table at the handsome profile of Mr Nesbitt, a youth barely out of his teens, and softened. ‘Poor boy!' she exclaimed indulgently. ‘Perhaps you are right, but the scene is most dreadfully dull. Can you not find a way to shorten it while leaving poor Perry some place to shine? Of course you can, Francis, you are a clever, clever man. You will do this for me. And perhaps you may also contrive for Celia to be on stage more,' she added as if tacking on some small, inconsequential request. ‘The play cannot hang
without her and yet she is hardly ever seen! I cannot imagine what Mr Jonson was thinking of.'

Jarrett's sympathy for the unfortunate Mulrohney grew as the dinner wound on its discursive way; it reached a peak when the conversation happened on the topic of the Irish. Mr Price was practically choleric on the subject.

‘Make 'em cower, that's what I say. Why, they would treat with Boney at the first opportunity, the mischievous dogs!'

‘Mr Price! You insult me. I am Irish!' stated his hostess, her cheeks flushed. Lady Yarbrook might not wish to reside in the country of her husband's birth but she had a strong affection for being contrary to strongly held opinions.

‘Dear lady, I do not refer to you, nor to your respected spouse, nor to any of our kind, but to the native paddy. There is a mean spirit about him that cannot be trusted.'

‘What think you, Francis?' Lady Yarbrook turned to the actor by her side. ‘Do you hate the English?'

It was plain to anyone who paid the least attention to his frozen expression that Mr Mulrohney was finding the conversation painful. Jarrett wondered whether his hostess was being mischievous or merely remarkably dull-witted.

‘Ogh, no!' replied Mulrohney in a parody of a pantomime paddy. ‘For to be sure England is a wonderful place – plenty of tai and fine craim for breakfast and all the convaniences. I'm fairly out of Ireland, I'll be tellin' you!'

‘So you are content among us, Francis?' Lady Yarbrook dipped a flirtatious look under long eyelashes, oblivious to the sharp edge concealed in her neighbour's words.

‘'Tis like Heaven himself, lady. I might be in the air with the angels, that I might.'

‘For shame, sir!' protested Mr Price, sensing what his hostess did not.

Lady Yarbrook flicked a puzzled glance in his direction and back to Mulrohney. ‘Is it joking you are, dear joy?' she enquired coyly.

Mulrohney bowed gracefully over her hand. ‘No,' he replied in a low voice, ‘sure enough, ma'am, I am not joking.'

In the loud pause that followed every observer waited for some outburst, but none came. Lady Yarbrook's smile remained pinned up while a bewildered look flickered in her bright eyes. All at once diversionary conversations started up around the table like birds flushed from a covert.

Jarrett found the remainder of the dinner an endurance. His sympathies were with Francis Mulrohney. The Irishman barely contained himself until the company rose to remove to the drawing room. Jarrett watched him drop back and slip away. Unnoticed he strolled out behind him.

Mulrohney was standing by a stone urn at the edge of the lawn, lighting a cigar from a burning taper. The actor greeted him with a rueful face.

‘She will flourish about. All the world praises Will Shakespeare, so my lady critic must discover greater wit in some unknown scribbler. Ben Jonson was better acquainted with the Ancients, says she. That's what comes of teaching your females Greek and Latin! And yet she'll cut him without shame! We'd be better doing a farce, that we would.' He gave a twisted, apologetic smile and held out his case. ‘An evil habit, but will you join me, Mr Jarrett?'

‘Gladly.' Jarrett took a cigarillo and bent towards the Irishman to accept the proffered light. ‘I'll warrant you have an easier time of it in the regular theatre.'

The actor snorted. ‘Aye! To think we playing folk call this resting. Her damned cuts! As if we've not already lost one knight, a eunuch and two lawyers. I swear she'd take Celia's part and Volpone's too but for the difficulty of playing a telling seduction with oneself. Pardon me, saire. I'm as bitter as soot tonight,' he ended with angry self-mockery. Jarrett returned a wry smile and they smoked in companionable silence a moment under the broad night sky.

‘And where might you have travelled from, Mr Jarrett?'

‘I have just come from Woolbridge – do you know it?'

Mulrohney shrugged. ‘And what news from Woolbridge?' he asked lightly, his tone at variance with the discontented look he threw out across the shadowy parkland. ‘None, I'll warrant, for 'tis plaguey dull in the country, that it is.'

‘Oh, it has its native drama, Mr Mulrohney. Why, just before I left there was a tragic death of a young girl in Woolbridge. Some black-haired laundry wench of great beauty, so I was told. It sounded to be a great tragedy – the stuff of ballad singers.'

The twilight robbed his eyes of detail, but Jarrett thought he caught the flicker of a start from the man. The actor straightened up abruptly as he crushed the ember of his cigar under foot.

‘I sing ballads,' he said. Someone came to the window and called Mulrohney's name. ‘And I am engaged to sing one now. The good lady dotes upon me warblin', so she does,' he elaborated, assuming the comic brogue again. ‘It'll not do to keep her waiting.'

‘Mr Mulrohney – if you would care to walk with me to my inn afterwards, may I entertain you with some punch? I'll wager you have a store of amusing tales.'

Mulrohney turned, illuminated by the candlelight streaming from the drawing room. ‘We players are renowned good company, that we are. I'll accept your hospitality gladly, Mr Jarrett. 'Tis a queer play-actor who can bear to turn down an opportunity to talk of himself.'

*

A breeze had got up and the moon hid behind a bank of clouds. The dark path was patchily illuminated by the lantern Mulrohney carried aloft.

‘The gel you spoke of – the one that died in Woolbridge – her name'd not be Sally Grundy, now, would it?'

Mulrohney had stopped and faced him under the insufficient
lamplight. It swung from his raised hand throwing deceptive shadows that made the vegetation around shift and dart as if alive. Jarrett kept watch for movement from the man's concealed hand, as he sketched a nod of assent. Mulrohney held his eyes a moment. Then, with a jerky gesture of his head, he resumed his progress. ‘I knew her. She worked in the laundry up at the house now and then.' There was a plain simplicity in the way he said the words that left Jarrett at a loss how to respond. They walked on in silence. The buildings of Gainford appeared and soon the Blue Boar could be seen across the green, the ruddy light from its windows glowing like a heart beating in the dark emptiness of the night.

Despite the lateness of the hour the dregs of the evening's drinkers still lingered in the tap. The innkeeper settled the two gentlemen in his back parlour. He livened up the small fire in the grate and carried in a tray of ingredients and a bowl. Jarrett occupied himself making punch while his guest stretched himself out in a deep chair by the hearth. He looked up as Jarrett brought him a glass.

‘Well, won't you look at me now! Pardon me, Mr Jarrett, I'm not such good company tonight.' He raised his glass with a flourish. ‘May this soap me tail for me and let me slip through the rest of this performance. To two more weeks!'

Jarrett lifted his own glass and drank the toast.

‘And what after two more weeks?'

‘Two more weeks and, praise God, I'm back to Dublin for a season at a proper playhouse with proper actors!'

‘So you knew the black-haired girl who died in Woolbridge, Mr Mulrohney?'

For a moment Jarrett regretted the question. A wild look flared up in Mulrohney's eyes and then passed.

‘A beautiful creature, so she was,' he said simply. His chin sank down into his neck-tie and he returned to gazing into the fire. ‘Ogh, this land o' craim and honey! Sally Grundy – who would have thought? She had a notion to go on the
stage.' He looked up, defiant. ‘She came to me to teach her. And I did … some few things. A speech or two; the way to stand and move about the boards. She had the makings of a good little actress.' He sat forward and poked a finger in the air to underline his point. ‘She had a voice and the presence for it and she was a worker, so she was.' He slumped back, self-mocking once more. ‘With a pretty ankle on her, too.' He took a long gulp of the brandy punch and threw back his head to gaze at the ceiling. ‘Sally Grundy – dead.' His mouth twisted on the words and he closed his eyes. A bead of moisture seeped from the corner of one lid, catching the light. He sat up, planting his feet with a growl, as if shaking himself awake. ‘I need more punch! Melancholia is but the second stage of an Irishman's inebriation. Help me on me way to the next, Mr Jarrett.'

‘Isn't that oblivion, Mr Mulrohney?' Jarrett asked as he poured him another glass.

‘Hell, no – you'll be forgetting “fighting merry”, Mr Jarrett, that comes well before oblivion.' The Irishman set down his glass and met his host's blue eyes steadily. ‘You've precious little interest in the theatre, Mr Jarrett; this is about Sally Grundy. What is it you're after?'

Jarrett rotated the heavy glass in his hand. The dancing flames beyond fired the liquid into a magical ruby red.

‘A good fire, a warming punch – they call for a good tale. So why not – tell me how you met this sad girl, Mr Mulrohney.'

‘Sad! Sally Grundy was never sad! Not as I knew her, Mr Jarrett. She was the merriest piece!'

‘But talk in Woolbridge was that she might have taken her own life.'

Mulrohney's expressive face was frankly astonished.

‘Take her own life, Sal? Never!' He was emphatic. ‘There are few things certain under God but Sally Grundy would never take her own life. Why, she was on the very eve of
a great adventure. Last I saw of her she was full of plans. Full of plans.' He trailed off, mesmerised by the pictures the flames drew for him. ‘We had plans.'

‘You had plans?'

The actor gave a slight gesture, his hand falling open as if letting go of something.

‘We had plans,' he repeated. ‘She was coming with me to Dublin, Mr Jarrett, to try her luck on the boards.' He raised his head to meet his companion's curiosity full-face. ‘She would have made her mark on the stage. I swear to you, sir, Sally Grundy must have been robbed of her life, for she'd never have thrown it away.'

‘How long had you been acquainted with Miss Grundy, Mr Mulrohney?'

The shifting light from the fire deepened the lines on the actor's face, endowing it with gravity and weight. At that moment Francis Mulrohney might have played King Lear.

‘A few weeks perhaps.' He dismissed the importance of time. ‘But when you are closeted together, as you must be to coin a part or a play, Mr Jarrett, you soon get to know a body. We were of a kind, her and me.'

‘And you had no suspicion that anything troubled her?'

‘No.' He shook his head as if the motion itself was soothing to his troubled spirits.

Jarrett could not help wondering about the scene they played there in that room, coloured by the red glow of the fire. Had Francis Mulrohney been on stage so long that it had become second nature to perform his emotions, or was he playing a part assumed for the occasion?

‘There was an old suitor who'd vexed her,' he was saying. ‘Some booby who'd married another. Taken the easier path, I reckon. Sal was not the wifely kind.'

‘How vexed was she? Might she have made trouble for the man?'

‘How? What could the lass have done? Full sure, she was
affronted, but no more than that. She might have been planning a bit of mischief – she had an impish spirit, my Sal – but she was not the kind to bear grudges. Besides, I tell you, Sally Grundy was about to leave Woolbridge and all its kind behind. Why should she concern herself?'

‘She would not have sworn out a breach of promise against this man then, do you think?'

‘Sal, go to law? The girl I knew would as soon think of flying!'

*

‘I hope Mr Mulrohney made it back to the big house safe and sound, sir. The Irish, they surely know how to put it away!' The innkeeper had just brought in a fresh pot of coffee. Jarrett had woken with a thick head after the heavy drinking of the night before, and he loitered over his breakfast.

‘You are acquainted with Mr Mulrohney, then?'

‘He comes by every now and then. Sometimes I reckon he likes a bit of peace and common sense away from all them fancy folk up at the Hall. He's well-liked these parts, is Mr Mulrohney.'

‘Has he been here long?'

The innkeeper rocked his considerable weight back on to his heels, straightening his back while he thought about it.

‘More than a month it'd be now, I'd say, Mr Jarrett. A week or so back he was coming in pretty regular with a dark-haired lass; pretty as a picture she was. He would hire my back parlour to rehearse.' The big man gave a rumble of belly-laugh. ‘My good wife would have it they were up to all sorts of tricks. She slipped about, hoping to catch them at it, if you get my meaning.' He gave a heavy wink. ‘And blow me down but they
was
play-acting, just like he said!' The innkeeper laughed good and loud at the memory of his wife's discomfiture. ‘He's a good sort of man by my reckoning – for an Irishman.'