Appleby Talking (10 page)

“At line 83 Desdemona was alive.” Appleby glanced up from the text which had been handed to him. “And at line 117 she was dead. Throughout this interval she was invisible, since at first she was lying within heavy shadow, and subsequently the bed-hangings were drawn to by Othello. It is clear that Othello himself may simply have smothered her when the action required that he should appear to do so. But there are other possibilities.

“The bed is set in a recess which is accessible not from the main stage alone. Behind the bed-head there is only a light curtain, and it would thus be accessible to anybody behind the scenes who was passing forward towards the wings. Othello ceased to have Desdemona under his observation at about line 85. There are then nearly twenty lines before Emilia enters. These lines are taken up partly by Othello in desperate soliloquy and partly by Emilia calling from ‘without’. When Emilia does enter it is by the door close by the bed-head. And it follows from this that Emilia could have smothered Desdemona during these twenty lines, some five or six of which she had to speak herself. It would be a procedure requiring considerable nerve, but that is no argument against it.

“A third possibility, however, remains. After Emilia has entered, and until the moment that Desdemona cries out that she has been murdered, there are some twelve broken lines, with a certain amount of time-consuming mime increasing the suspense. During this period yet another actor, standing near the wings, might have slipped to the bed-head and committed the murder. So the position, so far, is this: Othello and Emilia are definitely suspects, so far as opportunity goes. And so is anybody else who could have approached the bed-head unobserved during the twelve lines after Emilia’s entry.”

“Which rules me out.” Cassio spoke without any apparent relief, and it was clear that with him the disaster which had befallen his company overshadowed everything else. “I was on the prompt side with the electrician when we heard the cue for Emilia’s going on. I just couldn’t have made it.”

“But your wife could.” And Emilia, who had broken in, turned with venom on Bianca. “For I saw you not far behind me when I stepped on stage.”

“No doubt you did. And I saw your husband.” Bianca, still perfectly calm, turned a brief glance of what was surely cold hatred on Iago. “I saw him standing in the wings there and wondered what he was about.”

Iago’s lip twitched more violently than before. Then he laughed harshly. “This will get the police nowhere. And what about all the other conventional questions, like who last saw the victim alive?”

Suddenly Othello exclaimed. “My God!” he cried, and whirled upon Emilia. “
You
know whether I smothered her. Everyone knows what your habit is.”

“What do you mean?” Emilia’s hand had flown to her bosom, and beneath the greasepaint she was very pale.

“When waiting to come on you have always parted the curtain at the bed-head and had a look at her and perhaps whispered a word. I can’t tell why, for you weren’t all that friendly. But that’s what you did, and you must have done it tonight. Well, how was it? Was she alive or dead?”

“She was alive.” It was after a moment’s hesitation that Emilia spoke. “She didn’t say anything. And of course it was almost dark. But I could see that she – that she was weeping.”

“As she very well might be, considering that her husband had actually struck her on the open stage.” The police sergeant spoke for the first time. “Now, if you’ll–”

But Appleby brusquely interrupted. “Weeping?” he said. “Had she a handkerchief?”

Emilia looked at him with dilated eyes. “But of course.”

Appleby strode to the body on the bed, and in a moment was back holding a small square of cambric, wringing wet. “Quite true,” he said. “And it was right under the body. But this can’t be her ordinary handkerchief, which was blood-stained as a result of the blow, and will be in her dressing-room now. So perhaps this is–”

Cassio took a stride forward. “Yes!” he said, “it’s the love-token – Othello’s magic handkerchief which Desdemona loses.”

And Appleby nodded sombrely. “
Sure
,” he said slowly, “
there’s some
wonder in this
handkerchief
.”

Remorselessly the investigation went on. Cassio is the last person in whose hand the handkerchief is seen – but on going off-stage Cassio had tossed it on a chair from which anyone might have taken it up. And it seemed not unlikely that a Desdemona overcome with grief had done so.

Emilia’s story, then, was plausible, and if believed it exonerated both Othello and herself. What followed from this? It appeared that of the rest of the company only Iago and Bianca had possessed a reasonable opportunity of slipping from the wings to the bed-head and there smothering Desdemona in that twelve-line interval between Emilia’s going on-stage and the play’s coming to its abrupt and disastrous end. But farther than this it was hard to press. And Appleby turned back from opportunity to motive.

Othello and his wife Desdemona, Iago and his wife Emilia, Cassio and his wife Bianca: these were the people concerned. Desdemona had been murdered. Cassio was not the murderer. And upon the stage, just before the fatality, there had been perceptible an obscure interplay of passion and resentment. What situation did these facts suggest?

Not, Appleby thought, a situation which had been common property for long. For it was unlikely that the company had been playing night after night in this fashion; either matters would have come to a head or private passions would have been brought under control at least during the three hours’ traffic of the stage. Some more or less abrupt revelation, therefore, must be the background of what had happened tonight.

Three married couples living in a substantially closed group and with the standards of theatrical folk of the seedier sort. The picture was not hard to see. Adultery, or some particularly exacerbating drift taken by a customary promiscuity, was the likely background to this Desdemona’s death. And Appleby felt momentarily depressed. About the last thing that a man planning some petty fornication would think to do would be to witness – or take his proposed mistress to witness – Shakespeare’s
Othello
. Before such cataclysmic poetry and passion human amorousness shrivels and dies. And yet these actors…

Appleby turned abruptly back to them. Detective investigation requires more than the technique of reading fingerprints and cigarette-ends. It requires the art of reading minds and hearts. How, then, did these people’s emotions stand now?

Othello was horrified and broken; with him as with Cassio – but more obscurely – things had come to an end. Well, his wife had been horribly killed, and that shortly after he had struck her brutally in the face. In a sense then, Othello’s immediate emotions were accounted for.

What of Iago? Iago was on the defensive still – and defensiveness means a sense of guilt. He was like a man, Appleby thought, before whom there has opened more evil than he intended or knew. And, in whatever desperation he stood, he seemed likely to receive small succour or comfort from his wife. Emilia hated him. Was it a settled hate? Appleby judged that it had not that quality. It was a hatred, then, born of shock. Born of whatever abrupt revelation had preluded the catastrophe.

There remained Bianca, Cassio’s wife. She, perhaps, was the enigma in the case, for her emotions ran deep. And her husband was out of it. Cassio was the type of chronically worried man; he expended his anxieties upon the business of keeping his company financially afloat, and emerged from this only to play subsidiary roles. As a husband he would not be very exciting. And Bianca required excitement. That hidden sort did.

The analysis was complete. Appleby thought a little longer, and then spoke. “I am going to tell you,” he said quietly, “what happened. But only the principal actors need remain.”

There was a sigh from the people gathered round. Like shadows they melted into the wings – some with the alacrity of relief, others with the shuffle of fatigue. It had grown very cold. The curtain stirred and swayed, like a great shroud waiting to envelop those who remained.

“It began with Desdemona’s seduction, or with the revelation of this. Is that not so?” Appleby looked gravely round. There was absolute silence. “Is that not so?” he repeated gently. But the silence prolonged itself. And Appleby turned to Othello. “You struck her because of that?”

And abruptly Othello wept. His blotched black face crumpled. “Yes,” he said, “I struck her because I had discovered that.”

Appleby turned to Iago. “You seduced this man’s wife. And the result has been wilful murder. But did you know the truth was out? Or was it you yourself who smothered her to prevent confession and disclosure?”

Iago stepped back snarling. “You’ve got nothing on me,” he said. “And I won’t say a word.”

From this time forth I never will speak word…
But Appleby was now facing Emilia. “Your husband had betrayed you. You had discovered he was sleeping with this man’s wife. Did you, in the frenzy of your jealousy, smother her?”

Emilia’s face had hardened. “These accusations mean nothing. Nobody knows who smothered her. And you will never find out.”

There was a pause. Appleby turned slowly to Bianca. “And you?” he asked. “For how long had you been Iago’s mistress? And what did you do when you found that he had cast you off?”

“Nothing! I did nothing! And she’s right. Nobody saw. Nobody can tell anything.”

“And so the mystery will be unsolved?” Appleby nodded seriously. “It is not impossible that you are right. But we shall know in the morning.” He turned to Cassio. “Did Desdemona have a dressing-room of her own? I’ll just look in there before I go.”

“They probably won’t hang her,” Appleby said next day to the police sergeant. “It was a crime of sudden impulse, after all. And of course there was provocation in the adultery she had discovered.” He paused. “Will it be any consolation to her in prison to know that she has made history in forensic medicine? I suppose not.”

The sergeant sighed. “It’s been neat enough,” he said, “–and something quite beyond our range, I must admit. But how did you first tumble to it’s being Emilia?”

“It was because she changed her mind about whom to blame. At first she had resolved to plant it on Othello simply as the likeliest person. ‘
And why did you murder her, too?
’ she had asked him. But later on she told a story that pointed to either Bianca or her own husband, Iago. Desdemona, she said, had been alive and weeping when she looked through the curtain at the bed-head. And that, of course, let Othello out, as he had no subsequent opportunity for the murder.

“I asked myself what this change of front meant. Was it simply that Emilia had no grudge against Othello, and altered her story in order to implicate her unfaithful husband whom she now hated? Somehow, I didn’t think it was that. And then I recalled a gesture she had made. Do you remember? It was when Othello revealed that she was accustomed to draw back the curtain behind the bed and speak to Desdemona before going on-stage.”

The sergeant considered. “I seem to remember her hand going to her bodice. I thought it a bit theatrical – the conventional gesture of an agitated woman.”

Appleby shook his head. “It wasn’t quite that. What you saw was a hand flying up to where something should be – something that was now lost. And that something was a handkerchief. I saw the truth in a flash. She had lost a handkerchief – a tear-soaked handkerchief – while smothering Desdemona. And my guess was confirmed seconds later when she made her change of front and declared that she had seen Desdemona alive and weeping. For of course her story came from a sudden feeling that she must account for the presence of the handkerchief beside the corpse.”

“I see.” The sergeant shook his head. “It was clever enough. But dangerous, as being an unnecessary lie.”

“It was fatal, as it turned out. But first I saw several things come together. A man may weep, but he won’t weep into a small cambric handkerchief. Emilia showed signs of weeping, whereas another suspect, Bianca, was entirely self-controlled. So what had happened was pretty clear. Emilia had discovered her husband’s infidelity and had been under strong stress of emotion. She had snatched up the handkerchief – Othello’s magic handkerchief – while perhaps running to her dressing-room, and there she had wept into it. When her call came she thrust it into her bodice. Later, when she yielded to an overwhelming impulse and smothered Desdemona, the handkerchief was lost in the struggle, and the body rolled on top of it.

“But how could all this be proved? Perhaps, as those people said, it couldn’t be, and we should never get further than suspicion. But there was one chance – one chance of proving that Emilia had lied.

“A substantial proportion of people are what physiologists call secretors. And this means, among other things, that there is something special about their tears. From their tears, just as well as from their blood, you can determine their blood-group. Well, I had Desdemona’s blood on one handkerchief and I had tears on another. I went straight to your local Institute of Medical Research. And they told me what I hoped to learn.
From a person of Desdemona’s blood-group those tears could not have come
.”

The sergeant sighed again. “Yes,” he said, “it’s neat – very neat indeed.”

“And we shall certainly learn, as soon as the law allows us to make a test, that the tears could have been Emilia’s. And as Bianca, who has allowed herself to be blood-grouped, is ruled out equally with Desdemona, the case is clear.”

And Appleby rose. “Incidentally, there is a moral attached to all this.”

“A moral?”

“The moral that one savage old critic declared to be all there is to learn from Shakespeare’s play. Housewives, he said, should look to their linen. In other words, it’s dangerous to drop a magic handkerchief – and particularly in the neighbourhood of a dead body.”

“This year’s fête,” said the Vicar, “seems to have been even more devastating than usual. There was everything from a grand historical pageant of Sheercliff history down to a jumble sale. The first distracted the schoolchildren from their work for a month, and the second has induced my wife to make the most outrageous raid upon my scanty personal possessions and habiliments. Don’t you detest the fête?”