A noise of mingled instruments heralded the approach of George, in an Oriental costume of surpassing magnificence and a head-dress made of a gilt waste-paper basket. Attended by a train of Oriental followers, he approached Bob, and indicated, with gestures of distress, some livid patches of flour on his face and arms. Bob examined him carefully, clapped him cordially on the shoulder and indicated the tin bath, going through a pantomime of washing. George seemed to be overcome with indignation and contempt. He kicked the bath scornfully and spat vulgarly into the aspidistras. Then, shaking his fist at Bob, he stalked away in high dudgeon in the direction of the piano.
‘Hi!’ shouted Tony Withers, ‘where’s your chariot, old man?’
‘Shut up!’ returned George, disconcerted, ‘we can’t do that horse business over again.’
Lavinia, modestly attired in a kind of yashmak, now took the stage. Kneeling at George’s feet, she gently expostulated with him. The other Oriental followers joined their petitions to hers, and presently his frown relaxed. Returning to the tin bath, and being solemnly supplied with a piece of soap and a loofah, he scrubbed the flour from his face. On observing the effect in a shaving-mirror, he was transported with joy, prostrated himself before Bob, and offered him a handsome collection of cushion-covers and drawing-room ornaments. These being refused, he went away rejoicing, followed, surreptitiously, by Paul Barnaby. Bob appeared gratified by this result, and was just sitting down to read the
Evening News
in his tent when he observed Paul slinking back through the door with an armful of cushion-covers. Overcome with righteous anger he rose to his feet and, dexterously drawing from behind the newspaper a bag of flour, flung it over Paul’s face, thus closing the episode.
Markham vaguely heard the applause, but his eyes were fixed on the purple curtains. He knew them so well. They were heavy and swung into thick, rich folds. Jane had adored those curtains. He had always said they were dark and gloomy, but she would hear nothing against them. Nowadays people lived so publicly, behind thin casement cloth and stuff like that; but that old-fashioned damask was made for concealment. Curtains like those kept their secrets for ever.
Bice Taylor spoke almost in his ear.
‘I don’t believe it’s either Naaman or Elisha. I think it’s Abigail, don’t you? The little maid, you know. Not so obvious. It might be J, E, A, something. Jean somebody. Or the French Jean.’
J for Jezebel, A for Adam, N for Naaman the leper. J, A, N, Jane, Janitor, January. This was November. Jane died in June.
‘What nonsense – Abigail was somebody quite different. It’s Gehazi, of course.’
‘Gehazi? My dear child – there’s no name in four letters beginning JEG or JAG.’
‘Yes, there is. There’s JAGO.’
‘Who’s Jago?’
‘I don’t know. Somebody wrote a book called
John Jago’s Ghost
. I do know that.’
‘It isn’t a book. It’s a short story by Wilkie Collins.’
‘Oh! is it? I only remember the title.’
‘But who was Jago, anyway?’
‘I don’t know, except that he had a ghost. And what was the point of bringing Gehazi in if it isn’t Gehazi?’
‘Oh, that’s just to make it more difficult.’
Gehazi – Naaman – He went out from before him a leper as white as snow. One felt like a leper among all these people who hated one. Leper. See the leopard-dog-thing something at his side, a leer and a lie in every eye. It was so queer that nobody would look at him. They looked round and over him at each other. That was because he was a leper – but they need never know that unless he told them. He had never noticed the pattern on the curtains before, but now the strong light showed it up – damask, damascened like a sword, damn the lot of them. How hot it was, and what a stupid oaf Bob Lester looked, playing childish games. But it was really horrible, the way these people pretended not to know that it was J, A, N, Jane. They did know, really, all the time and were wondering how long he would stick it. Let them wonder! All the same, he must think out what to do when it came to the complete word. J, A, N. Of course, if the last letter wasn’t E . . . but it was bound to be E.
Well, it would be a relief in a way, because then he would know that they knew.
The fourth scene was, for a change, mediaeval and brief. Betty in white robes, her long hair loosed, oared on the spare room mattress across the parquet to where Arthur’s Court stood grouped by the piano. Bob, simply but effectively armed in corrugated cardboard, weeping fat tears out of a sponge.
‘Well,
that’s
obvious,’ said Mrs Lester. ‘The Lady of Shallott. Now, dear me, what can the word be?’
‘Oh,
dear
Mrs Lester. Not Shallot. It’s Lancelot and Thingummy.’
‘Oh, Lancelot, is it?’
‘Or, of course, Thingummy.’
‘Especially Thingummy,’ said Deering.
‘Have you guessed it, Tom?’
‘Yes, of course. Haven’t you?’
‘Well, I
think
so, but I’m not absolutely certain.’
‘You mustn’t say until the end.’
‘No, all right.’
Oh, yes, thought Markham. Deering would have guessed it, of course. Lancelot and Elaine. Elaine the lovable. Jane, Elaine. J, A, N, E, Jane. But it was all wrong, because Elaine was pure and faithful and died of love. Died. That was the point. Elaine was dead. Jane was dead. Jane, Elaine as Jane had lain.
He fixed his eyes on the damask curtains. There was one point where they did not quite meet, and the light from the stage showed through. Somebody called ‘Are you ready?’ and turned off the switch on the side of the spectators. Markham could not see them any longer, but he could hear them breathing and rustling about him, packed close like wolves, pressing in upon him. The point of light still shone between the curtains. It grew larger, and glowed more intensely, yet as though from an enormous distance.
Then, very slowly this time, and in absolute silence, the curtains parted. The whole word at last.
They had done a wonderful piece of staging this time. He recognised every object, though the blaze of the electric globe had been somehow subdued. There was the bed and the dressing-table and the wardrobe with its tall glass door, and the low casement on the right. It was hot, and the scent of the syringa – philadelphus, the books said, but Jane called it syringa – came billowing in from the garden in thick puffs. The girl on the bed was asleep. Her face was hidden, turned to the wall. Dying people always turned to the wall. Too bad to have to die in June, with the scent of the syringa coming in through the window and the nightingale singing so loudly. Did they do that with a bird-whistle, or was it a gramophone record?
Somebody was moving in the shadows. He had opened the door very gently. There was a glass of lemonade on the table by the bed. It chinked against the bottle as he picked it up, but the girl did not move. He walked right forward till he stood directly beneath the light. His head was bent down as he shot the white powder into the glass and stirred it with a spoon. He went back to the bedside, walking like Agag, delicately. A, G, A, G, Adam and Gehazi. Jezebel, Adam, Naaman, Elaine, J, A, N, E. He touched the girl on the shoulder and she stirred a little. He put one arm behind her shoulders and held the glass to her lips. It clinked again as he set it down empty. Then he kissed her. He went out, shutting the door.
He had never known such silence. He could not even hear the wolf-pack breathing. He was alone in the room with the girl who lay on the bed. And now she was moving. The sheet slipped from her shoulders to her breast, from her breast to her waist. She was rising to her knees, lifting herself up to face him over the footboard of the bed – gold hair, sweat-streaked forehead, eyes dark with fear and pain, black hollow of the mouth, and the glittering line of white teeth in the fallen jaw.
JANE!
Had he cried out, or had they? The room was full of light and noise, but his voice rose above it.
‘Jane, Jezebel! I killed her. I poisoned her. Jane, jade, Jezebel. The doctor never knew, but she knew, and he knew, and now you all know. Get out! damn you! curse you! Let me go!’
Chairs were falling, people were shouting, clutching at him. He smashed a fist into a silly, gaping face. He was on the balcony. He was fighting for the balustrade. The lights on the Surrey side were like tall Japanese lanterns. He was over. The black water leapt to meet him. Cataracts, roaring.
It had all happened so quickly that the actors knew nothing about it. As Tom Deering pulled off his coat to dive after Markham and Mrs Lester rushed to telephone the river police, George’s voice announced ‘The Whole Word,’ and the curtains were flung open to display the tent of JAEL.
THE INSPIRATION OF MR BUDD
‘£500 REWARD
‘The “Evening Messenger”, ever anxious to further the ends of justice, has decided to offer the above reward to any person who shall give information leading to the arrest of the man, William Strickland, alias Bolton, who is wanted by the police in connection with the murder of the late Emma Strickland at 59 Acacia Crescent, Manchester.
‘DESCRIPTION OF THE WANTED MAN
.
‘The following is the official description of William Strickland: Age 43; height 6 ft 1 or 2 in.; complexion rather dark; hair silver-grey and abundant, may dye same; full grey moustache and beard, may now be clean-shaven; eyes light grey, rather close-set; hawk nose; teeth strong and white, displays them somewhat prominently when laughing, left upper eye-tooth stopped with gold; left thumb-nail disfigured by a recent blow.
‘Speaks in rather loud voice; quick, decisive manner. Good address.
‘May be dressed in a grey or dark blue lounge suit, with stand-up collar (size 15) and soft felt hat.
‘Absconded 5th inst, and may have left, or will endeavour to leave, the country.’
Mr Budd read the description through carefully once again and sighed. It was in the highest degree unlikely that William Strickland should choose his small and unsuccessful saloon, out of all the barbers’ shops in London, for a haircut or a shave, still less for ‘dyeing same’; even if he was in London, which Mr Budd saw no reason to suppose.
Three weeks had gone by since the murder, and the odds were a hundred to one that William Strickland had already left a country too eager with its offer of free hospitality. Nevertheless, Mr Budd committed the description, as well as he could, to memory. It was a chance – just as the Great Crossword Tournament had been a chance, just as the Ninth Rainbow Ballot had been a chance, and the Bunko Poster Ballot, and the Monster Treasure Hunt organised by the
Evening Clarion
. Any headline with money in it could attract Mr Budd’s fascinated eye in these lean days, whether it offered a choice between fifty thousand pounds down and ten pounds a week for life, or merely a modest hundred or so.
It may seem strange, in an age of shingling and bingling, Mr Budd should look enviously at Complete Lists of Prizewinners. Had not the hairdresser across the way, who only last year had eked out his mean ninepences with the yet meaner profits on cheap cigarettes and comic papers, lately bought out the greengrocer next door, and engaged a staff of exquisitely coiffed assistants to adorn his new ‘Ladies’ Hairdressing Department’ with its purple and orange curtains, its two rows of gleaming marble basins, and an apparatus like a Victorian chandelier for permanent waving?
Had he not installed a large electric sign surrounded by a scarlet border that ran round and round perpetually, like a kitten chasing its own cometary tail? Was it not his sandwichman even now patrolling the pavement with a luminous announcement of Treatment and Prices? And was there not at this moment an endless stream of young ladies hastening into those heavily-perfumed parlours in the desperate hope of somehow getting a shampoo and a wave ‘squeezed in’ before closing-time?
If the reception clerk shook a regretful head, they did not think of crossing the road to Mr Budd’s dimly-lighted window. They made an appointment for days ahead and waited patiently, anxiously fingering the bristly growth at the back of the neck and the straggly bits behind the ears that so soon got out of hand.
Day after day Mr Budd watched them flit in and out of the rival establishment, willing, praying even, in a vague, ill-directed manner, that some of them would come over to him; but they never did.
And yet Mr Budd knew himself to be the finer artist. He had seen shingles turned out from over the way that he would never have countenanced, let alone charged three shillings and sixpence for. Shingles with an ugly hard line at the nape, shingles which were a slander on the shape of a good head or brutally emphasised the weak points of an ugly one; hurried, conscienceless shingles, botched work, handed over on a crowded afternoon to a girl who had only served a three years’ apprenticeship and to whom the final mysteries of ‘tapering’ were a sealed book.
And then there was the ‘tinting’ – his own pet subject, which he had studied
con amore
– if only those too-sprightly matrons would come to him! He would gently dissuade them from that dreadful mahogany dye that made them look like metallic Robots – he would warn them against that widely advertised preparation which was so incalculable in its effects; he would use the cunning skill which long experience had matured in him – tint them with the infinitely delicate art which conceals itself.