Tom Brown's Body

his part, and then I got suddenly horribly frightened, and I turned my head and there it was! And I ran on to the stage . . .'

'Yes, yes, my boy,' said Mr Wyck, reassuringly. 'We know all about that very stupid joke. Think nothing further about it. I suppose you don't know who it was?'

He sent the child, under escort, to Mr Poundbury's House for his pyjamas and to choose his stable companion, and he also sent for Mr Poundbury, who arrived hot, bothered, and full of disjointed exclamations and vague questions.

'Mr Poundbury,' said Gavin calmly, regarding the witness with suspicion, 'your wife was seriously injured during the presentation of the second play. Can you tell us anything about it?'

'Of course!' Mr Poundbury looked surprised. 'I'm always telling her she ought to wear her glasses. You know what it is. All the steps seem to swim into one. Extremely disconcerting, especially as she will rush about.'

'And that is your explanation of the accident?'

'Of course it is. How soon can I go in to see her?'

'The day after to-morrow, probably,' said Mrs Bradley. 'And now, Mr Poundbury, to your own share in the mystery: describe to us, if you please, the head and mechanics which you devised for the Hindu idol.'

'I did not devise anything. The boys did that themselves. I believe that the head was made in the workshop. The boys themselves could tell you. It was a copy of a Tibetan devil-mask, I believe. It was modelled in clay, then made over with papier-mache and muslin, then they cut out the clay – you know the method, I expect?'

'Yes, I have made puppets that way,' said Mr Wyck, rather to the surprise of his audience. 'But what about this second idol, Poundbury? You know about that, I suppose?'

'I heard a garbled account from some of the boys, but my anxiety, as you will appreciate, was for my wife.'

'But you rang down the curtain,' said Gavin.

'Yes, I operated it myself, as a matter of fact. Issacher was hysterical. I cannot imagine why. Surely a mere practical joke . . .'

'It was this particular practical joke which ruined your play,' said Mr Wyck.

'Suppose,' said Mrs Bradley, gently, observing the effect of this last statement upon the witness, 'that you give us your own version of what happened, Mr Poundbury. Where were you during that first long interval, for instance?'

'Oh, talking to people – the parents like to speak to the producer – and part of the time I would have been behind the scenes, no doubt, making certain that the make-up was as it should be, and hurrying the boys who had been in the first play and were wanted for the second or third one. . . .'

'Ah!' said Gavin, who had been taking notes and who now looked up from his writing. 'And which boys were those, Mr Poundbury?'

'I can't possibly remember. Let me see, now. Yes . . . there would be Issacher, Boltwood, and Skene . . . they were in Campbell of Kilmohr.'

'Elucidate,' demanded Mrs Bradley.

'Issacher was Captain Sandeman in the first play, and Smithers, the nervous Cockney sailor, in the second play. Boltwood was Dugald Stewart in the first play and the master of the house in the third play. Skene was the secretary, Mackenzie, in the first play, and the housemaid in the third play.'

'The third play, surely, need not concern us,' suggested Mr Wyck.

'Well, that brings us back to this boy Issacher,' said Gavin, 'who is, as I can see for myself, an excitable, foreign sort of type;'

'He is Jewish,' explained Mr Poundbury. 'He is an artistic boy – very musical. A gifted boy in many ways. He is often inclined to be hysterical. He is most conscious of his race and very proud of it. Not an easy boy. Not an easy boy at all. But, of course, the best actor in the School. I wish he were in my House.'

'Do you think he would attack people?' demanded Gavin. Mr Poundbury looked at Mr Wyck.

'I don't say he would not, given sufficient provocation,' said Mr Wyck promptly. 'But that could be said of most unbalanced persons, and Issacher is, in some respects, unbalanced.'

'He would not, at any rate, have attacked my wife,' said Mr Poundbury, perceiving the drift of the question. 'The boy was fond of her. She had helped him a great deal over his interpretation of his various parts in the plays, and also with his make-up and costumes. I cannot think that he would so far forget himself, even in his terror, as to attack her. Besides, this suggestion that she was attacked is new to me, and I find it particularly repugnant.'

'Really?' said Mr Wyck.

'It might not have been an attack, of course,' said Gavin slowly. 'A boy half-mad with fright might knock a slight woman down as he rushed past her. Issacher is a stoutly-built boy. He would weigh considerably more, I imagine, than Mrs Poundbury. As soon as we can get her to speak to us, we shall, of course, know more about it. The circumstances seem to have been confused.'

'It seems to me,' said Mr Wyck, 'that we shall get very little further in the matter, either with or without Mrs Poundbury, until we discover who played the practical joke I refer to this second and larger idol, whose existence I should not believe in if the tiny boy Ingpen were not a witness to it. From Issacher's description of the thing he saw, it was so large that it could scarcely have escaped unseen from the building, and, for my own satisfaction, I propose to find out who played such a stupid trick. It is very dangerous to frighten boys so badly. I am not so much concerned about Issacher, since he is older, and has a deeply morbid side to his character, but I am perturbed, and very deeply perturbed, at the thought of the possible effect of such an experience on a tiny boy of the age of Ingpen. It may well leave a permanent impression on such a young child's mind.'

Mrs Bradley agreed, but neither she nor Gavin was inclined to regard the appearance of the second and more horrible idol as a practical joke, for there was no doubt whatever that Mrs Poundbury had been attacked, and there was no doubt that the note had disappeared.

Gavin, in conclave with Mrs Bradley, stated an ugly but obvious fact.

'It's pretty clear,' said he, 'that the second idol, far from being a joke, was the murderer's disguise, and, judging from what has happened, not a bad one. I wonder whether any of the other kids who were in the plays saw anything?'

But it turned out that nobody had set eyes on the second idol except the two boys, Issacher and Ingpen, who had been interviewed already. The other actors in that play were, all but one, on the stage, so that except for young Ingpen, who had had permission to watch from the wings, there were no back-stage or off-stage witnesses, except the boy who had taken the part of the first idol, and he had seen nothing at all.

'What about your stage-hands?' Mrs Bradley enquired. But the stage-hands, all members of Mr Poundbury's House, had nothing to tell.

'When we've set the scene and put the props ready, we go into the body of the hall until we're wanted again,' was the sum of their story. 'Mr Poundbury won't have people hanging about behind the scenes.'

'Who manages the curtain, then?' Mrs Bradley enquired. It appeared that one Billington was responsible for the curtain, but that he went by the script, and returned from the auditorium to his charge at a rehearsed point in the play or scene, ready to lower the curtain when this was necessary. Mr Poundbury himself, of course, had manipulated it during the disturbance.

'What about the prompter?' asked Gavin.

'We don't prompt, sir, from the wings,' replied Billington. 'If anybody fluffs, one of the other people on the stage says the lines. They are all responsible for all the dialogue.'

Mrs Bradley thought this an ideal scheme, and it forged an important little link in the rather slender chain of evidence because it seemed to narrow down the identity of Mrs Poundbury's assailant. There could only be a limited number of people who knew that normally there would be nobody much about whilst a scene was being acted. It narrowed it further to somebody who also knew something about the timing of each play and the order of the programme.

Gavin, at this point, plumped for Mr Poundbury. 'It all hangs together,' he pointed out. 'Nobody meeting him backstage would think twice about it. He had a pretty strong motive for getting rid of Conway, and he may also have intended to kill his wife sooner or later.'

Mrs Bradley admitted the force of this reasoning, and tackled Mr Poundbury again.