“Now what?” Tellman asked when they were outside in the dark again. “Is it enough to arrest him?” He sounded tired and doubtful.
Pitt was doubtful himself. He had no uncertainty that Orlando Antrim had seen the photograph of his mother and reacted with extreme distress. He had searched for the photographs and gone to the house and found Cathcart. He had purchased the rolling pin. But the dressing of the corpse in green velvet, and chaining him on the punt with the flowers strewn around, did not follow so easily.
Could there have been two people there other than Cathcart? If so, then who? He knew coincidences happened, but he did not like them. Most things had a cause, a line of circumstances connected to each other in a way which could be understood, if you knew them all and considered them long enough.
“Can we arrest him?” Tellman pressed.
“I don’t know.” Pitt shook himself a little.
“Well, it had to be him,” Tellman said pointedly. “He was here, we know that. He had plenty of reason to kill Cathcart. He bought the weapon and we’ve got it. What else is there-apart from working out how he knew where to find the dress and the chains?”
“And the boat,” Pitt added.
“Well, somebody did.” Tellman was exasperated. “You can’t argue with that! If it wasn’t him, who could it have been? And why? Why would anybody else do all that with the boat and the flowers? Wouldn’t they want to get away as quickly as possible? Just leave him where he was. Why dress up a dead man. . that somebody else killed. . and risk getting caught?”
“Not a lot of risk,” Pitt argued. “Bottom of a garden by the river in the middle of a foggy night. Still, he must have cared passionately about something to have bothered.”
They crossed the road, still walking slowly, heading back towards the bridge.
“Maybe it was someone he blackmailed, after all?” Tellman suggested. “Or more like, someone who hated that kind of picture and the way it makes people think.”
Pitt thought of Ralph Marchand. It was believable, very easily, but another idea was also forming in his mind, uncertain, perhaps foolish, but becoming clearer with each step.
As soon as he saw a hansom he hailed it, and to Tellman’s sharp stare of astonishment, he gave not the address of the theatre but that of the medical examiner.
“What do you want with him?” Tellman said incredulously. “We know how he died!”
Pitt did not answer.
When they arrived, he told the cab to wait and ran up the steps of the building and in through the door. To his intense relief he found the surgeon still there. He knew the one question he wanted to ask.
“Was there any water in Cathcart’s lungs?” he demanded.
The surgeon looked startled. “Yes, there was a bit. I was going to tell you next time you were by.” His eyes narrowed. “Doesn’t make any difference to your case.”
“But did he actually die of the blow to his head or of drowning?” Pitt insisted, fidgeting with impatience.
Tellman watched with what might have been a dawning comprehension. His eyes were steady, and he stood motionless in the cold room, his nostrils slightly flared with distaste at the pervasive odor, real or imagined.
The surgeon stared at Pitt, shifting his weight. “Clinically, I suppose the drowning got to him before the wound, but it’s academic, Pitt. He would have died of the blow anyway. . or exposure, in his injured state, sodden wet and left out in the river like that. It’s murder any way you look at it at all. What’s your point?”
“I’m not sure,” Pitt said honestly. “Thank you. Come on, Tellman.” He turned on his heel.
“Theatre now?” Tellman asked, racing to catch up with him as he strode down the steps and swung back up into the hansom.
They rattled through the dark, gaslit streets without speaking again, Pitt leaning forward as if by effort of will he could make the horse go faster.
He was out of the door almost before they came to a stop, leaving Tellman to pay the driver and follow behind him. He raced up the steps and into the foyer, brandishing his card and calling out who he was, pushing past the usher and swinging the door wide into the back of the auditorium.
He saw with a flood of relief that the stage was still lit, although it was the very end of the final act. Gertrude and the king were both already dead, and Laertes; Polonius and Ophelia were long since gone, he by accident, she the suicide of drowning. Hamlet, Fortinbras, Horatio and Osric were left amid a sea of corpses.
There was the sound of a shot.
“ ‘What warlike noise is this?’ ” Hamlet asked, swinging to face it. He seemed as taut as a wire, his nerves stretched to breaking.
Osric answered him.
Hamlet turned back towards the audience, his eyes wide with agony, staring straight ahead to where Pitt stood in the center of the aisle.
“ ‘O, I die, Horatio;
The potent poison quite o’er-crows my spirit
I cannot live to hear the news from England;
But I do prophesy the election lights
On Fortinbras; he has my dying voice;
So tell him, with the occurents, more and less,
Which have solicited.’ ”
His voice was hoarse, cutting to the soul. “ ‘The rest is silence.’ ” He crumpled and slid forward.
There was such utter stillness the audience might not have existed, except for the tension in the air like a storm.
“ ‘Now cracks a noble heart,’ ” Horatio said through a throat thick with tears.
“ ‘Goodnight, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!’ ”
Fortinbras and the English ambassadors entered and the last, tragic words were spoken. Finally the soldiers carried off the bodies to the somber familiarity of the Dead March. The curtain descended.
A complete silence filled the auditorium, thick, crackling with emotion, then the applause erupted like a sea breaking. As if impelled by a single force, the entire audience rose to its feet. Above the thunder of clapping, voices could be heard shouting “Bravo!” again and again.
The curtain rose and the full cast lined up to take the call, Orlando in the center, Cecily radiant at his side, and Bellmaine looking ashen, as if Polonius had risen from the grave to acknowledge his praise.
Pitt walked down the aisle and along in front of the orchestra, through the side door towards the back of the stage. Tellman joined him, but still they had to wait. The applause went on and on, drowning out every other sound. It was impossible to speak above it for almost a quarter of an hour.
Finally the curtain fell for the last time and the players turned to leave.
Pitt stepped onto the stage. He could afford to wait no longer. Tellman was on his heels.
Orlando faced him. He looked haggard and utterly exhausted. He took a step forward, but he was shaking.
“You’ve come for me.” His voice was clear and soft. “Thank you for letting me finish.”
“I’m a policeman, not a barbarian,” Pitt replied just as softly.
Orlando walked towards him, his hands held as if ready for manacles. He did not once look at his mother.
“What is going on?” Cecily demanded, looking one way then the other. “Superintendent, what do you want here? This is surely an inappropriate time. Orlando has just performed perhaps the greatest Hamlet there has ever been. If you still think there is anything to ask us, come tomorrow. . about midday.”
“You don’t understand, Mother,” Orlando said, still without turning to her. “You never did.”
She started to say something, but he cut across her.
“Mr. Pitt has come to arrest me for murdering Cathcart. Although I didn’t put him in the river. I don’t know how that happened, I swear.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Cecily moved forward at last. This time she addressed Pitt, not her son. “He’s exhausted. I don’t know why he should say such a thing. It’s absurd. Why should he murder Cathcart? He didn’t even know him!”
