still the sort of thing young men did, even if largely out of curiosity and a certain bravado.
Was that what he and Orlando Antrim had quarreled about? Orlando had been trying to persuade him to go? It seemed finally he had acquiesced.
Pitt finished the last of his tea, grimacing at its coldness-he liked his tea as hot as he could bear it-and stood up, forgetting that Archie was on his lap.
“Sorry,” he apologized absently. “Here, Archie, have some more breakfast. I hope you realize you’ll go back to rations when your mistress comes home? There’ll be no extras then. And you’ll have to go back to your own bed as well. . you and Angus!”
Archie wound around his legs, purring, leaving white and ginger hairs on his trousers.
Pitt had no alternative but to confront Cecily Antrim with the photographs. He would have liked to avoid it so he could keep his illusions about her and imagine in his mind that she could produce an explanation which would make it understandable and somehow not her fault. She had been blackmailed into it to save someone else, anything that would not mean she was a willing participant. That was not a great leap of the imagination. Some of the other photographs had certainly been blackmail material, had any of the people in them gone on to a more respectable position or career. And the money so obtained would explain Cathcart’s style of life, and Lily Monderell’s.
But he could not so easily imagine Cecily Antrim as anyone’s victim. She was too vibrant, too courageous, too willing to follow her own beliefs even to destruction.
He found her in the early afternoon in the theatre rehearsing for
“Shakespeare!” he said between set teeth. He made no further remark, but the expression on his face was eloquent.
As before they were allowed in grudgingly and had to wait in the wings until a suitable break came when the person they wished to see was not necessary to the performance. Today they were rehearsing Act V, in the churchyard. Two men were digging a grave and speaking of the suicide who was to be buried in it, even though it was hallowed ground. After a little joking, one departed, leaving the other alone, singing to himself.
Hamlet and Horatio entered, this time in costume. It was not long until the first night, and Pitt noticed immediately how much more polished they were. There was an air of certainty about them as if they were absorbed in the passions of the story and no longer aware of direction, let alone of the world beyond.
Pitt glanced at Tellman and saw the light reflected in his face as he listened, the words washing over him, not in familiar cadence as they did for so many, for Pitt himself, but heard for the first time.
“ ‘Alas poor Yorick! — I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. .’ ”
Tellman’s eyes were wide. He was unaware of Pitt. He stared at the plaster skull in Orlando Antrim’s hand, and saw the emotions within him.
“ ‘Now get you to my lady’s chamber,’ ” Orlando said with irony hard-edged in his voice, harsh with pain, “ ‘. . and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor must she come; make her laugh at that, — Pr’ythee, Horatio, tell me one thing.’ ”
“ ‘What’s that, my lord?’ ” the other actor enquired.
Tellman leaned forward a little. His face was like a mask, not a muscle moved, nor did his eyes ever leave the small pool of light on the stage. The words poured around him.
“ ‘To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till he find it stopping a bung-hole?’ ”
Someone moved in the wings. A look of annoyance crossed Tellman’s face but he did not turn to see who it was.
“ ‘Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay.’ ” Orlando spoke the words softly, filled with centuries of wonder and music, as if they wove a magic for him.
“ ‘. . Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:
O, that that earth which kept the world in awe
should patch a wall to expel the winter’s flaw!
But soft! But soft! aside-Here comes the king.’ ”
And from the wing moved a slow, sad procession in somber, magnificent garments. Priests, the coffin of Ophelia followed by her brother, then the king, and Cecily Antrim, beautiful as Gertrude. It was extraordinary how she could hold one’s attention, even when the scene was not about her at all. There was a light in her face, a force of emotion in her that could not be ignored.
The drama played itself out, and neither Pitt nor Tellman moved until it was over. Then Pitt stepped forward.
Tellman was still transfixed. In a space of less than fifteen minutes he had glimpsed a new world which had thrown aside the old. The still water of his preconceptions had been disturbed by a wave whose ripples were going to reach to the very outer edges, and already he felt it.
Pitt walked alone across the stage to Cecily Antrim.
“I apologize for interrupting you, but there is a matter I need to discuss which will not wait.”
“For God’s sake, man!” Bellmaine shouted in outrage, his voice raw-edged with tension. “Have you no soul, no sensibilities at all? The curtain goes up in two days! Whatever you want, it can wait!”
Pitt stood quite still. “No, Mr. Bellmaine, it cannot wait. It will not take a great deal of Miss Antrim’s time, but it will be even less if you permit me to begin straightaway, rather than stand here and argue about it.”
Bellmaine swore colorfully and without repeating himself, but he also waved his hands in dismissal, indicating the general direction of the dressing rooms. Tellman remained rooted to the spot, spellbound for the next scene.
Cecily Antrim’s room was filled with rails hung with velvets and embroidered satins. A second wig rested on a stand on the long table beneath the mirror amid a clutter of pots, brushes, bowls, powders and rouges.
“Well?” she asked with a wry smile. “What is it that is so urgent that you dare to defy Anton Bellmaine? I am consumed with curiosity. Even a live audience would not have kept me from coming with you to find out. I assure you, I still do not know who killed poor Delbert Cathcart, or why.”
“Nor do I, Miss Antrim,” he replied, digging his hands into his coat pockets. “But I know that whoever it was saw a particular photograph of you which is not available to most people, and it mattered to him very much.”
She was intrigued, and the smile on her mouth was too filled with amusement for him to believe she had any idea what he was going to show her. The laughter went all the way to her clear, sky-blue eyes.
“There are scores of photographs of me, Superintendent. My career is longer than I wish to admit. I couldn’t begin to tell you who has seen which.” She did not say he was naive, but her voice carried the implication quite plainly, and it entertained her.
He did not like what he had to do next. He pulled out the postcard with the Ophelia travesty and held it out.
Her eyes widened. “Good God! Where did you get that?” She looked up at him. “You are quite right. . that is one of Delbert’s. You are never going to say he was killed for that. That’s preposterous. You can probably buy them from half a dozen back street shops. I certainly hope so. It will have been a lot of discomfort for nothing if you can’t. The wet velvet was revolting on the skin, and abysmally cold.”
Pitt was stunned. For a moment he could think of nothing to say.
“But it is effective, don’t you think?”
“Effective.” He repeated the word as if it was in an unfamiliar language. He looked at her vivid face with its fine, delicate mouth and wonderful bones. “Yes, Miss Antrim, I have never known a picture to have more effect.”
She heard the emotion in his voice.
“You disapprove, Superintendent. That may be just as well. At least you will remember it, and it might make you think. The image that has no power to disturb probably has no power to change either.”
“To change?” he asked, his voice a little hoarse. “To change what, Miss Antrim?”
She looked at him very steadily. “To change the way people think, Superintendent. What else is worth changing?” Her expression filled with disgust. “If the Lord Chamberlain had not taken off the play you came to, then Freddie Warriner might not have lost his nerve, and we would have started a bill to make the divorce laws more equal. We wouldn’t have succeeded this time, but maybe the next, or the one after. You must begin by making
