The Case of the Gilded Fly (3 page)

Nigel Blake was contented, and he thought of a great many things as the train crawled on its way: of the pleasure it would be to see Fen again; of his hard-won first in English three years ago; of his laborious, but quite interesting life as a journalist since then; of his belated fortnight's holiday, at least a week of which he would spend in Oxford; of seeing Robert Warner's new play, which was sure to be good; and above all, of Helen Haskell. Don't get excited, he told himself, you haven't met her
yet. Go easy. It's dangerous to fall in love with people just from seeing them on the stage. She's probably conceited and horrible; or else engaged; or married. And anyway she's certainly surrounded with young men, and it's ridiculous to suppose that you're going to induce her to take any notice of you in the space of a week, when you don't even know her yet …

None the less, he added grimly to himself, you're going to have a damned good try.

The destinations of these people in Oxford were various: Fen and Donald Fellowes returned to St Christopher's; Sheila McGaw to her rooms in Walton Street; Sir Richard Freeman to his house on Boar's Hill; Jean Whitelegge to her college; Helen and Yseut to the theatre and subsequently to their rooms in Beaumont Street; Robert, Rachel, Nigel and Nicholas to the ‘Mace and Sceptre' in the centre of the town. By Thursday, 11 October, they were all in Oxford.

And within the week that followed three of these eleven died by violence.

Ahi! Yseut, fille de roi,

Franche, cortoise, bone foi …

Beroul

Nigel Blake arrived in Oxford at 5.20 in the afternoon, and went straight to the ‘Mace and Sceptre', where he had booked a room. The hotel, he reflected sadly as his taxi drove up to it, was not one of the architectural glories of Oxford. It was built in a curious amalgam of styles which reminded him of nothing so much as an enormously large and horribly depressing night-club-cum-restaurant he had once visited near the Brandenburger Tor in Berlin, where every room impersonated some different national style in an aggressive, romantic, and improbable way. His own room appeared to him like a grotesque parody of the Baptistry in Pisa. He unpacked, washed off the dirt and discomfort which a rail journey always involves, and wandered downstairs in search of a drink.

By now it was half past six. In the bar and lounge, the civilized prolegomena to sex operated a restrained, objectionable puppet-show; a corpse of painted gothic overlooked these proceedings. In general, the place was much the same as Nigel remembered it, though the undergraduate population had dropped, and the military risen, considerably. A few belated theological students of the arty type, who had remained presumably to work during the vacation or who had come up a few days early, whined and gibbered in a discussion of the poetic beauty of the conception of the Virgin Birth. A group of R.A.F. officers by the bar swallowed their beer with noisy, jejune enthusiasm. There were one or two very old men, and a miscellaneous riff-raff of art students, schoolmasters, and visiting celebrities, who sat about hoping to be noticed, and without whom Oxford is never complete. A motley collection of women attached to the younger men and for the most part engaged in manipulating and focusing their attention upon themselves,
completed the gathering. One or two Indian students idled rather aggressively about, ostentatiously bearing volumes of the better-known contemporary poets.

Nigel found himself a drink and an empty chair and settled down with a little sigh of relief. Decidedly the place had not altered. In Oxford, he thought, the faces change, but the types persist, doing and saying identical things from one generation to the next. He lit a cigarette, stared about him, and wondered whether to go and see Fen that evening or not.

At twenty to seven Robert Warner and Rachel came in. Nigel knew Robert slightly – a tenuous acquaintance based on a series of literary luncheons, theatrical parties and first nights – and gave him a cheerful little wave.

‘May we join you?' said Robert, ‘or are you meditating?'

‘Not at all,' replied Nigel ambiguously. ‘Let me get you a drink.' And thanking heaven that Robert was not the kind of man immediately to clamour ‘No, let
me
get
you
one', he found out what they wanted and went off to the bar.

On his return he found them talking to Nicholas Barclay. Introductions were performed, and Nigel trailed off again to the bar. Eventually they all got settled, and sat for a moment in silence, gazing expectantly at one another, and sipping their drinks.

‘I'm looking forward enormously to seeing your play next week,' said Nigel to Robert. ‘Though I must admit I'm a bit surprised that you're putting it on here.'

Robert gestured vaguely. ‘It's a case of needs must,' he said. ‘My last thing was such a miserable flop in the West End that I had to go to the provinces. The only consolation is that I shall be able to produce it myself, a thing I haven't been allowed to do for years.'

‘Only a week's rehearsal on a new play?' said Nicholas. ‘That's going to be a sweat.'

‘It's a try-out really. Various agents and managers are coming down from London to confirm their belief that I am, in fact, a dandelion seed in the wind, and that I've lost all my mind. I hope to disappoint them. Though God knows what sort of a production it will be; this place has become a repository for callow children from the dramatic schools, with a substratum
of old crocks and one or two of the most notorious hams in Europe. Whether I shall be able to beat them into a proper use of timing, gesture and intonation in a week I really can't imagine. But Rachel's going to be in it, and she'll help.'

‘Frankly, I doubt it,' said Rachel. ‘An outsider starring in repertory for box-office purposes creates more bad feeling than anything else. You know, muttering in corners.'

‘What's the theatre like?' Nigel asked. ‘I hardly went near the place while I was up here.'

‘You worked!' put in Nicholas incredulously, who always pretended that he had not.

‘It's not bad,' said Robert. ‘An old place, put up somewhere in the eighteen-sixties, but modernized just before the war. I was working there about ten years ago, and my God, it was awful then: squeaky dimmers, erratic tabs, and flats that fell over at a touch. All that's been done away with now though. Some good soul with money and ambitions crammed the place with every technical device he could lay hands on, including a revolve –'

‘A revolve?' said Nigel vaguely.

‘Revolving stage. Like a circular turntable, divided across the middle. You set the next scene on the side hidden from the audience and then, when the time comes, just twiddle it round. It means you can't have flats projecting on to it from the wings, and that rather limits you in the composition of your sets. As a matter of fact, I don't think they use it much here – it's a sort of white elephant; certainly I shan't. But it's a nuisance, because you lose an enormous depth of stage you could very well do with.'

‘And what,' said Nicholas, settling back more comfortably in his chair, ‘is the play about? Or is that giving away trade secrets?'

‘The play?' Robert seemed surprised at the question. ‘It's a re-write of a thing of the same name by a very minor French dramatist called Piron. You probably know the story. About 1730, I think it was, Voltaire began to receive verses from a Mlle Malcrais de la Vigne, to which he gallantly responded, and a huge correspondence sprang up between them, all very amorous and literary. Later on, however, Mlle de la Vigne
came to Paris, and turned out to Voltaire's fury and everyone else's delight to be a great fat youth called Desforgues-Maillard. Piron used this situation as the basis of his play, and I've taken it over and modified it, reversing the sexes though and making the chief character a woman novelist and her correspondent a mischievous woman journalist. I know it doesn't sound up to much,' he concluded apologetically, ‘but that's really only the bare bones of the thing.'

‘Who's playing the woman novelist?'

‘Oh, Rachel of course,' said Robert cheerfully. ‘Lovely part for her.'

‘And the journalist?'

‘Frankly, I'm still uncertain: I think Helen. Yseut's quite incapable of playing comedy, and anyway I dislike her so much I simply couldn't bear it. There's one other girl, apart from the older women, but I'm told she does such extraordinary things on the stage that I simply mustn't give her anything more than a bit part. I'm giving Yseut a bit part too – only on in the first act. But,' he added maliciously, a little smile creasing the corners of his mouth, ‘I shall insist on her taking a curtain every night, so that she can't take off her make-up and go home.'

Nicholas whistled, took out a cigarette case, opened it, and balanced it on the table with a gesture of invitation. ‘Yseut is really very unpopular,' he said. ‘I've never met anyone who had a good word to say for her.'

Nigel, as he took a cigarette, flicked his lighter, and handed it round the little group, thought he saw a gleam of interest appear in Robert's eye.

‘Who in particular dislikes her?' Robert queried.

Nicholas shrugged. ‘Myself, for one, on more or less irrational grounds; though I have a friend who's making a bloody fool of himself over her. “I am as true as truth's simplicity, and simpler than the infancy of truth” – you know. Helen, for another – what a sister to have to drag about with one! Jean – oh, you don't know her of course; girl called Jean Whitelegge, because she's in love with the Troilus aforementioned – the humble village maiden waiting for her knight to stop fooling about with the wicked princess. Everyone in the company,
because she's an intolerable little bitch. Sheila McGaw, because – Oh, God!'

He broke off abruptly. Looking up to see what had caused the interruption, Nigel saw Yseut come into the bar.

‘Talk of the devil,' said Nicholas gloomily.

Nigel studied Yseut curiously as, with Donald Fellowes, she came into the bar, and was struck by her total lack of ret semblance to Helen. The brief interchange he had just heard interested him, though for the moment he was inclined to be no more than superciliously amused at the antagonism which the girl seemed to arouse. She looked a compound of negative qualities – conceit, selfishness, coquetry – and little more besides (later he was to appreciate malice as a positive quality). She was dressed very simply, in a blue sweater and blue slacks which set off the red of her hair. Nigel noticed the almost imperceptible traces of disagreeableness in her features, and sighed: but for that, a model whom Rubens, or Renoir, would have delighted to paint. Certainly, Nigel admitted to himself with perhaps a little more than mere scientific interest, she had a magnificent body.

By comparison, Donald Fellowes seemed uninteresting; he moved awkwardly, and with little address. Nigel thought he recognized him; but where on earth had he come across him before? He made a futile, indefinite attempt to summon up the memory of his acquaintance during his years at Oxford, and as always happens on these occasions, could not remember a single one – only a phantom pantomime of blank, indistinguishable masks. Fortunately the problem was solved for him by a gleam of recognition which appeared in Donald's eye. Nigel smiled feebly, foreseeing a certain amount of gaucherie and embarrassment in the near future; he never had the courage simply to tell people that he didn't remember them.

There followed the ceremony of mumblings, apologies and recognitions which always occurs when a group of people only partially acquainted are brought together, and a great and complicated manoeuvring of chairs. Nigel, about to go off once again to the bar, was forestalled by Nicholas, who as he ordered pink gins contemplated with unconcealed glee the extremely uncomfortable relationships which were likely to be established within the next few minutes.

Yseut, after a perfunctory and apparently pejorative survey of Nigel, attached herself firmly to Robert; Rachel talked to Donald; and Nigel and Nicholas sat listening in comparative silence.

Yseut began by being solemnly reproachful. ‘I wish you'd allowed me to play the journalist,' she said to Robert. ‘I know it's silly to argue about casting, but frankly, I've had much more experience of that sort of thing than Helen. And I thought perhaps in view of the fact that we knew each other so well –'

‘Did we know each so well?'

A trace of asperity appeared in Yseut's voice. ‘I didn't think you'd have forgotten so quickly.'

‘My dear child, it's not a question of forgetting.' Instinctively they both lowered their voices. ‘You know damn well we never got on together. And as for bringing that up over a question of casting –'

‘It's not just the casting, Robert, and you know that as well as I do.' She paused. ‘You behaved damned badly to me, and I haven't had as much as a line from you since. In anyone else, it would have been intolerable.'

‘Are you thinking of suing me for breach of promise? I assure you you'll have a job.'

‘Oh, don't be such a bloody fool. No – I shouldn't have said that.' She was dramatizing freely with voice and gesture. ‘I suppose in a way it was my fault that I couldn't keep you, even as your mistress.'

‘I already had a mistress.' This conversation, thought Robert, is getting damned awkward: much worse than I expected. Aloud he said: ‘And anyway, Yseut, I thought we agreed about all this long ago. It's had no influence on the casting, if that's what you mean.' (A lie, he thought, but if people will be so intolerable …!)

‘I've missed you, Robert.'

‘My dear, I've missed you too, in a way.' The conventions of polite behaviour were beginning to sap Robert's firmness.

Yseut looked at him with wide, innocent eyes in which there was a hint of tears; he half expected her to lisp when she spoke.