Lovers Make Moan

(which, anyway, was covered by applause from the audience) before Puck came on and spoke the last few lines of the play.

When the bouquets to Valerie Yorke, Barbara Bourton, Emma Lynn and Deborah had been presented and, with some difficulty, the mayor had been prevented from making his threatened speech, Marcus Lynn alone saw the notables off as the audience drifted out. There was much revving-up of cars, Lynn’s business friends departed and then an appalled producer had to give the cast the news. The totally unexpected collapse of Donald Bourton which had prevented his return on stage was not due to drink or to natural causes. By some so-far unexplained mischance, he had been given the wrong dagger and, all-unwittingly, had stabbed himself to death with it.

Chapter 7

Bare Bodkin

“Ah, me, for pity!—what a dream was here!”

« ^ »

It was well after midnight before the actors were able to leave, but all was over at last and the body removed to the mortuary. Deborah offered Barbara Bourton a bed, but she, calm and poised as ever, politely declined the offer. Her sister and her sister’s husband, she said, had been in the audience and would still be waiting to drive her home.

“Are they staying with you?” Deborah asked.

“Oh, yes. Please don’t worry. I shall be all right.” So Deborah let her go and walked up to the house with Jonathan. At last they were alone and in their own drawing-room. Jonathan opened one of the bottles of champagne which had been destined for the celebrations and, having poured out two glassfuls, sat down and stared at the electric fire which, finding Deborah shivering, he had switched on.

“But how could the wrong dagger have got into that sword-belt?” she asked.

“Very easily,” he replied. “It almost happened when I was in College, although the circumstances were not quite the same. We were doing Hamlet and some of the chaps were fooling about in the dressing-room and somebody picked up the wrong dagger and went lunging about with it, thinking it was a harmless one. Luckily somebody caught his arm before he could do any damage, otherwise we might have had just the same sort of horrible accident as we’ve had here tonight. People really should be more careful, even with theatrical properties they think are safe to handle.”

“I suppose it was an accident?” said Deborah.

“An accident? What else could it have been?”

“I don’t like accidents which kill people.”

“Who does? But they happen every day.”

“Yes, crashed cars and falls and burns in people’s homes and old people and young children knocked down crossing the street, but this was quite different and it could only have happened to Donald.”

“How do you mean?”

“If Rinkley had not been taken ill, Donald would not have played Pyramus.”

“So?”

“Well, don’t you think that the minute Rinkley drew it out, he would have known it was the wrong dagger? Don’t you remember how nervous he was about the right one until he had convinced himself it was harmless? He had used it at rehearsals, remember. There’s such a thing as the kinaesthetic sense, you know, in all of us. The very first feel of the dagger as he handled it would have warned him. He would never have risked using it on himself. I suppose there will have to be an enquiry to find out what led to the daggers being changed, and we shall have the police and the reporters and goodness knows what number of gaping sightseers. Oh, God! What an ending to the play!”

“Yes. Well, that can’t be helped. Naturally there will have to be an official enquiry, even although the death was accidental.”

“Are you trying to convince yourself that it was? Quite a number of people may not have liked Donald, you know.”

“I was one of them. He was far too forthcoming with you to meet with my approval.”

“And he was a lot more forthcoming with some people than ever he was with me. And, although I wouldn’t say this to anybody but you, his Barbara wasn’t altogether overwhelmed by his sudden death, you know.”

“Suffering from shock, but the whole realisation of what happened hadn’t hit her.”

“That could be so. Very well, I’ll be charitable. Drink up and let’s go to bed. There will be plenty to do tomorrow and the next day. For one thing, Marcus Lynn’s workmen will be here on Monday to dismantle the set-up and take away the amplifiers and the lights and the painted scenery. Oh, and I expect someone will come along tomorrow to collect Ganymede and Lucien. Jeanne-Marie let them sleep on instead of waking them and taking them home.”

This someone turned out to be Dr Jeanne-Marie herself. She did not work on Sundays, she explained, except to answer emergency calls. She accepted a drink and came out with a direct reference to the tragedy of the previous evening.

“That was a very bad thing,” she said. “Is there any chance, do you think, that one of the small children who were in the play—I am thinking of the little boys rather than of the little girls—that one of them could have been playing with the weapons, probably before the performance began?”

“It took a little girl to sneak the bloodhounds away, so children can get at the props,” said Deborah.

“So I am right about the children?”

“Not a chance,” said Jonathan. “At the dress-rehearsal we had a bit of trouble, but of a very different kind.