The Case of the Gilded Fly (6 page)

He said more or less composedly: ‘I'm Nigel Blake.'

‘Oh, yes, of course! Robert has told me about you – and Gervase.'

Nigel's face assumed an expression of sedate alarm. ‘I didn't know you knew Fen,' he said. ‘Anyway, don't take any notice of anything he's told you about me. He just says the first thing that comes into his head.'

‘Oh dear, what a pity! He was rather complimentary.' She put her head a little on one side. ‘Still, when I know you better I shall be able to tell for myself.'

Nigel felt ridiculously elated. ‘Will you have lunch with me?' he said.

‘I'd love to, but I doubt if we shall finish much before half past two, and that's awfully late, isn't it?'

‘Dinner, then.'

‘Well, we go up at 7.45, and I have to be in fairly early to change and make up. I should have to rush madly away. Tea?' she added hopefully.

They both laughed.

‘Supper,' said Nigel firmly, ‘after the show. Tea's such a dull meal. Perhaps I can persuade the hotel to let us have it in my sitting-room.'

‘La, sir, what a suggestion!'

‘Oh, well, it doesn't matter where. I'll pick you up after the show. What time?'

‘About half past ten.'

‘Lovely.'

Robert came in, and, after a brief nod to Nigel, began talking to Helen about her part. So he wandered off on his own, precariously balancing his coffee-cup in his left hand. Donald, Yseut, and Jean Whitelegge were in a little group by one of the windows, and the atmosphere looked far from intimate. With a vague idea of pouring oil on troubled waters, Nigel walked over to join them.

‘Hello, Nigel,' drawled Yseut as she saw him approaching. ‘Have you been enjoying the masterpiece?'

‘I like it,' said Nigel.

‘How curious. So does little Jean here.' Jean began to speak, but Yseut interrupted. ‘It's all appallingly superficial, of course, and no opportunities for real acting. But no doubt dear Rachel's name will bring them in, like wasps round a jampot.'

Mentally, Nigel added himself to the already over-burdened list of those who disliked Yseut Haskell.

To his own surprise, he found himself remarking dogmatically: ‘Comedy is necessarily superficial. And the technique of comedy acting, even if it is different from the technique of acting in serious plays, isn't any less difficult.'

‘Why Nigel!' said Yseut with exaggerated surprise, ‘how
clever you are! And we all thought you knew nothing about the theatre!'

He flushed. ‘I know very little about the theatre. But I've seen enough of actors and actresses to resent their assumption that they are the only people who know anything about it.'

Yseut, feeling that the possibilities of unpleasantness in this topic had been too rapidly exhausted, changed the subject. ‘I see you've introduced yourself to my sister. Don't you think she's attractive?'

‘I think she's very attractive.'

‘So does Richard,' said Yseut. ‘I think they're quite serious about one another, don't you?'

Nigel's heart sank. He knew Yseut was being malicious, but there must be some foundation for what she said.… He replied, as casually as he could:

‘They're attached to one another, are they?'

‘Oh, but of course. I thought everyone knew. But you've been here such a short time, why should you? And anyway, I'm sure it's a matter of complete indifference to you.'

Nigel, who was about to say ‘It is', stopped himself in time. If he did, there was every possibility that Yseut would tell Helen at the earliest possible opportunity. Childish intriguing and hypocrisy! But Yseut's game was one which, temporarily at least, she compelled those with whom she came in contact to play. He said:

‘On the contrary. As I said, I find your sister very attractive.'

He was relieved to hear a cool, sensible voice behind him. It was Rachel.

‘Hello, Nigel,' she said. ‘Are you enjoying this chaotic rehearsal? Silly question,' she added with a smile before he could reply. ‘I expect everyone has asked you that and you're tired of answering it.'

‘I've got quite used to saying “Yes, I am”, and watching the polite incredulity on people's faces.'

‘Oh, well, it'll brighten up towards the end of the week.' She took his arm and piloted him a little way away from the others. ‘I don't think you like Yseut,' she said.

‘Frankly, I don't. And you?'

‘Nasty little creature.'

They both laughed, and the conversation drifted to other subjects. Robert's voice was suddenly heard saying:

‘Jane, dear, go over to the “Aston” and bring the men back, will you? We're going to begin Act 2 almost immediately.'

Yseut stretched and yawned. ‘Thank God I've finished. I shall have quite a pleasant week of doing next to nothing,' she said.

‘Yseut,' said Jean Whitelegge abruptly, ‘I want to talk to you about Donald.'

‘Oh?' said Yseut with a slight sneer. ‘And what is there to talk about, may I ask? Donald darling, you'd better go away; you'll get insufferably vain if you listen to two women fighting over you.'

‘Oh, for God's sake, Jean – ' muttered Donald.

‘Why don't you leave him alone?' Jean burst out suddenly. ‘You know you're not interested in him, except when there's nothing else in trousers to go about with. Now you've got your precious Robert, stop playing about and leave him alone. Leave him alone, I say! You don't love him, and you never have. You don't love anything but your own vanity and conceit!'

‘Jean, dear, don't,' said Donald uncomfortably.

She turned on him in a fury. ‘Oh, don't be such a gutless little swine!' she cried. ‘Can't you see it's for your own good – your own good, damn you!'

‘Why, Jean dear,' said Yseut smoothly, ‘I really believe you're jealous! But surely a pretty, intelligent girl like you has no need to worry about rivals; why, you've only got to lift a finger and Donald will do anything you say –'

Jean's face became convulsed. ‘I hate you!' she sobbed. ‘I hate you, you bloody little –' She broke down and cried uncontrollably.

Rachel came over and grasped her tightly by the arm. ‘Jean,' she said firmly, ‘you know I'm going to want a big modern picture to bring on in the first act. Well, it's just occurred to me that you can get one from that little shop in the Turl which will do admirably – a reproduction of a Wyndham Lewis. I think it would be a good thing if you went and got it now.'

Jean nodded, and ran out of the room, still crying. In the
doorway she almost cannoned into Jane, who put her head in to say:

‘Act 2 straight away, dear hearts!' Then
sotto voce
to Richard: ‘Oh, Lord, what's happened now?' And disappeared.

‘I think you might be more careful, Yseut,' said Rachel coldly. ‘One or two more scenes like that and you'll have the whole company at loggerheads.'

‘I've no intention of having my affairs criticized in public by a child like that,' said Yseut, ‘and certainly it's no business of yours, in any case. Come on, Donald. Let's get out of this damned place. Apparently it's one of the latest rules of repertory that the producer's mistress can talk to the company anyhow she pleases.'

‘What that child needs,' Rachel said to Nigel when she had gone, ‘is a darned good spanking.'

The company reassembled on the stage, but a mood of depression had descended on the rehearsal. The news of Yseut's little scene with Jean had passed with lightning rapidity from mouth to mouth, and the always mercurial spirits of the company sank to the bottom. Nigel watched for some time longer, but he slipped away shortly before one o'clock and returned very thoughtfully to the ‘Mace and Sceptre' for his lunch.

It was nearly a week later that he realized he had heard something that morning which would enable him to identify a murderer.

Pray for me, O my friends, a visitant

Is knocking his dire summons at my door,

The like of which, to scare me and to daunt,

Has never, never come to me before …

Newman

Nigel passed the rest of the day in various and not very interesting ways. His holiday was proving rather flat, largely owing to the fact that there were now so few people in Oxford whom he knew, while those he had met since his arrival were not only occupied with their job for most of the day, but got on so badly with one another that their company was generally anything but agreeable. If it hadn't been for Helen, he would probably have packed up and gone back to London straight away. He anticipated seeing Nicholas at lunch, but he had unexpectedly left Oxford and did not return until the next day. A walk round his old haunts, taken in the hope of its producing a few pleasant
frissons
of reminiscence, proved barren of amusement. And when the sky became overcast, and a thin, persistent drizzle set in, he gave it up in disgust and went to the pictures. After a late dinner, he sat gloomily reading in the lounge of the hotel until it was time to go and meet Helen.

Their supper-party succeeded in cheering him up a good deal. The rumour of her affair with Richard, to which Nigel led up with elephantine tact, Helen dismissed as quite baseless, and accused Nigel of being an innocent if he imagined that that sort of remark, coming from Yseut, had any relation to the facts. As they strolled back together to Helen's rooms, Nigel waxed sentimental, in terms which it is not necessary to speak of here; and went home so happy that we must suppose they were not ill received.

The next day, the day of Peter Graham's eventful party, brought with it a belated intimation of summer warmth which lasted until the end of the week. Peter Graham, who had spent Tuesday in dancing incessant and thoroughly inconvenient attendance on Rachel, devoted almost the whole of it to agitated
preparations. In the morning, Nigel found him in the bar, laden with flowers and trying to cadge a couple of extra bottles of gin out of the barman. ‘Cherries!' he was saying excitedly, ‘I must have some cherries! And olives!' He greeted Nigel with delight, and rushed him away to the shops to buy a great quantity of unnecessary and expensive things for the party.

Within its limits, as Nigel afterwards admitted, it was a good party. There were unpleasantnesses, but he observed them through an agreeable alcoholic mist, and in any case he had become so used to unpleasantness during the past few days that he would have felt uneasy if none had occurred. The final incident, however – if something could be called an incident which passed completely unnoticed – did in fact disturb him.

He spent the earlier part of the evening at the theatre, watching a play in which a number of men and women committed a complex series of adulteries without any evident relish, to an accompaniment of jejune comment and cocktail glasses. He took some pleasure, however, in watching Yseut, and rather more, of a different kind, in watching Helen; and was somewhat irritated to find that he felt extremely possessive and proud whenever she came on to the stage, and had to suppress a desire to nudge his neighbours and win from them a similar approval. But the trivialities of the plot so wearied him that he slipped out before the end, and went home with hardly more than a thought as to how it would end. Doubtless they all succumbed to nervous diseases.

In consequence he arrived a little early at Peter Graham's room, to find that only Nicholas was there before him, comfortably settled in a corner and showing little inclination to move before the end of the party. Peter had certainly contrived an extraordinary display of bottles and glasses, and stood with a proprietorial air in the middle of them all, urging Nicholas, rather unnecessarily, to drink as much as he could before the others arrived. Nigel was astonished, though, how sober Nicholas remained throughout the evening; on reflection, he could not remember ever having seen anyone drink so much with so little effect.

After he had been there about ten minutes, Robert and
Rachel came in, to be greeted by Peter Graham with enthusiastic cries. A little later, two army officers, acquaintances of Peter's, also arrived, and later still, a considerable contingent from the theatre, in twos and threes.

‘You asked us to invite a lot of people,' said Robert deprecatingly, ‘and I think most of the company's coming. Except Clive,' he added gloomily, ‘who's gone up to town to see his wife.' The marital preoccupations of Clive were beginning to prey on his mind.

Jean, Yseut, Helen, and Donald Fellowes all arrived together, with a motley collection of hangers-on from the theatre. A semblance at any rate of good feeling existed between them, though as the evening wore on Nigel noticed no real change in the situation at all; if anything, matters seemed to be worse, Richard, a tall, fair-haired young man in the late twenties, was there, and so was Jane, the stage manager. Nigel observed with some amusement a tendency on the part of Peter to gravitate away from Rachel towards Jane, a manoeuvre he accomplished rather clumsily; but Rachel was certainly more relieved than annoyed. The stage of polite conversation soon passed, and a horrible gaiety set in; fragments of speech were lifted high above the communal babble.

‘Oh, Jane dear, you are a
slut
.'

‘Tchekov, I assure you, began the disintegration of the drama by
disintegrating the hero
…'

‘So I said that in my opinion you should play the whole of
Othello
in just one green spot …'

‘… wanted to do Wycherly in modern dress, but the Lord Chamberlain stepped in …'

‘Diana? Where's Diana?'

‘You see that awful boy over there.… Well, my dear, don't let it go any further, but he's –'

‘I feel sick.'

‘… no possibility of reviving the drama now that
the hero's been disintegrated
…'