The Complete Father Brown Mysteries [Annotated, With Introduction, Rare Additional Material] (95 page)

“
I
don’t understand,” answered Boyle, “what she can have to do with it.”

“
Jameson
did not expect the doors to be barred,” said Father Brown. “He knew that a lot of
men, especially careless men like you and your employer, could go on saying for
days that something ought to be done, or might as well be done. But if you convey
to a woman that something ought to be done, there is always a dreadful danger
that she will suddenly do it.”

MR.
MUNDON MANDEVILLE, the theatrical manager, walked briskly through the passages behind
the scenes, or rather below the scenes. His attire was smart and festive,
perhaps a little too festive; the flower in his buttonhole was festive; the
very varnish on his boots was festive; but his face was not at all festive. He
was a big, bull-necked, black-browed man, and at the moment his brow was
blacker than usual. He had in any case, of course, the hundred botherations
that besiege a man in such a position; and they ranged from large to small and
from new to old. It annoyed him to pass through the passages where the old
pantomime scenery was stacked; because he had successfully begun his career at
that theatre with very popular pantomimes, and had since been induced to gamble
in more serious and classical drama over which he had dropped a good deal of
money. Hence, to see the sapphire Gates of Bluebeard’s Blue Palace, or portions
of the Enchanted Grove of Golden Orange Trees, leaning up against the wall to
be festooned with cobwebs or nibbled by mice, did not give him that soothing
sense of a return to simplicity which we all ought to have when given a glimpse
of that wonderland of our childhood. Nor had he any time to drop a tear where
he had dropped the money, or to dream of this Paradise of Peter Pan; for he had
been summoned hurriedly to settle a practical problem, not of the past but of
the moment. It was the sort of thing that does sometimes happen in that strange
world behind the scenes; but it was big enough to be serious. Miss Maroni, the
talented young actress of Italian parentage, who had undertaken to act an
important part in the play that was to be rehearsed that afternoon and performed
that evening, had abruptly and even violently refused at the last moment to do
anything of the kind. He had not even seen the exasperating lady yet; and as
she had locked herself up in her dressing-room and defied the world through the
door, it seemed unlikely, for the present, that he would. Mr. Mundon Mandeville
was sufficiently British to explain it by murmuring that all foreigners were
mad; but the thought of his good fortune in inhabiting the only sane island of
the planet did not suffice to soothe him any more than the memory of the
Enchanted Grove. All these things, and many more, were annoying; and yet a very
intimate observer might have suspected that something was wrong with Mr.
Mandeville that went beyond annoyance.

If
it be possible for a heavy and healthy man to look haggard, he looked haggard. His
face was full, but his eye-sockets were hollow; his mouth twitched as if it were
always trying to bite the black strip of moustache that was just too short to
be bitten. He might have been a man who had begun to take drugs; but even on that
assumption there was something that suggested that he had a reason for doing
it; that the drug was not the cause of the tragedy, but the tragedy the cause
of the drug. Whatever was his deeper secret, it seemed to inhabit that dark end
of the long passage where was the entrance to his own little study; and as he
went along the empty corridor, he threw back a nervous glance now and then.

However,
business is business; and he made his way to the opposite end of the passage where
the blank green door of Miss Maroni defied the world. A group of actors and
other people involved were already standing in front of it, conferring and considering,
one might almost fancy, the advisability of a battering-ram. The group
contained one figure, at least, who was already well enough known; whose photograph
was on many mantelpieces and his autograph in many albums. For though Norman
Knight was playing the hero in a theatre that was still a little provincial and
old-fashioned and capable of calling him the first walking gentleman, he, at
least, was certainly on the way to wider triumphs. He was a good-looking man
with a long cleft chin and fair hair low on his forehead, giving him a rather
Neronian look that did not altogether correspond to his impulsive and plunging
movements. The group also contained Ralph Randall, who generally acted elderly
character parts, and had a humorous hatchet face, blue with shaving, and
discoloured with grease paint. It contained Mandeville’s second walking
gentleman, carrying on the not yet wholly vanished tradition of Charles’s
Friend, a dark, curly-haired youth of somewhat Semitic profile bearing the name
of Aubrey Vernon.

It
included Mr. Mundon Mandeville’s wife’s maid or dresser, a very powerful-looking
person with tight red hair and a hard wooden face. It also, incidentally,
included Mandeville’s wife, a quiet woman in the background, with a pale,
patient face, the lines of which had not lost a classical symmetry and severity,
but which looked all the paler because her very eyes were pale, and her pale
yellow hair lay in two plain bands like some very archaic Madonna. Not everybody
knew that she had once been a serious and successful actress in Ibsen and the
intellectual drama. But her husband did not think much of problem plays; and
certainly at the moment was more interested in the problem of getting a foreign
actress out of a locked room; a new version of the conjuring trick of the
Vanishing Lady.

“
Hasn’t
she come out yet?” he demanded, speaking to his wife’s business-like attendant rather
than to his wife.

“
No,
sir,” answered the woman — who was known as Mrs. Sands — in a sombre manner.

“
We
are beginning to get a little alarmed,” said old Randall. “She seemed quite unbalanced,
and we’re afraid she might even do herself some mischief.”

“
Hell!”
said Mandeville in his simple and artless way. “Advertisement’s very good, but we
don’t want that sort of advertisement. Hasn’t she any friends here? Has nobody
any influence with her?”

“
Jarvis
thinks the only man who might manage her is her own priest round the corner,” said
Randall; “and in case she does start hanging herself on a hat peg, I really
thought perhaps he’d better be here. Jarvis has gone to fetch him … and, as a
matter of fact, here he comes.”

Two
more figures appeared in that subterranean passage under the stage: the first was
Ashton Jarvis, a jolly fellow who generally acted villains, but who had surrendered
that high vocation for the moment to the curly-headed youth with the nose. The
other figure was short and square and clad all in black; it was Father Brown
from the church round the corner.

Father
Brown seemed to take it quite naturally and even casually, that he should be called
in to consider the queer conduct of one of his flock, whether she was to be
regarded as a black sheep or only as a lost lamb. But he did not seem to think
much of the suggestion of suicide.

“
I
suppose there was some reason for her flying off the handle like that,” he said.
“Does anybody know what it was?”

“
Dissatisfied
with her part, I believe,” said the older actor.

“
They
always are,” growled Mr. Mundon Mandeville. “And I thought my wife would look after
those arrangements.”

“
I
can only say,” said Mrs. Mundon Mandeville rather wearily, “that I gave her what
ought to be the best part. It’s supposed to be what stage-struck young women
want, isn’t it — to act the beautiful young heroine and marry the beautiful
young hero in a shower of bouquets and cheers from the gallery? Women of my age
naturally have to fall back on acting respectable matrons, and I was careful to
confine myself to that.”

“
It
would be devilish awkward to alter the parts now, anyhow,” said Randall.

“
It’s
not to be thought of,” declared Norman Knight firmly. “Why, I could hardly act —
but anyhow it’s much too late.”

Father
Brown had slipped forward and was standing outside the locked door listening.

“
Is
there no sound?” asked the manager anxiously; and then added in a lower voice: “Do
you think she can have done herself in?”

“
There
is a certain sound,” replied Father Brown calmly. “I should be inclined to deduce
from the sound that she is engaged in breaking windows or looking-glasses, probably
with her feet. No; I do not think there is much danger of her going on to
destroy herself. Breaking looking-glasses with your feet is a very unusual
prelude to suicide. If she had been a German, gone away to think quietly about
metaphysics and weltschmerz, I should be all for breaking the door down. These
Italians don’t really die so easily; and are not liable to kill themselves in a
rage. Somebody else, perhaps — yes, possibly — it might be well to take
ordinary precautions if she comes out with a leap.”

“
So
you’re not in favour of forcing the door?” asked Mandeville.

“
Not
if you want her to act in your play,” replied Father Brown. “If you do that, she’ll
raise the roof and refuse to stay in the place; if you leave her alone — she’ll
probably come out from mere curiosity. If I were you, I should just leave
somebody to guard the door, more or less, and trust to time for an hour or
two.”

“
In
that case,” said Mandeville, “we can only get on with rehearsing the scenes where
she doesn’t appear. My wife will arrange all that is necessary for scenery just
now. After all, the fourth act is the main business. You had better get on with
that.”

“
Not
a dress rehearsal,” said Mandeville’s wife to the others.

“
Very
well,” said Knight, “not a dress rehearsal, of course. I wish the dresses of the
infernal period weren’t so elaborate.”

“
What
is the play?” asked the priest with a touch of curiosity.

“
The
School for Scandal,” said Mandeville. “It may be literature, but I want plays. My
wife likes what she calls classical comedies. A long sight more classic than comic.”

At
this moment, the old doorkeeper known as Sam, and the solitary inhabitant of the
theatre during off-hours, came waddling up to the manager with a card, to say
that Lady Miriam Marden wished to see him. He turned away, but Father Brown continued
to blink steadily for a few seconds in the direction of the manager’s wife, and
saw that her wan face wore a faint smile; not altogether a cheerful smile.

Father
Brown moved off in company with the man who had brought him in, who happened, indeed,
to be a friend and person of a similar persuasion, which is not uncommon among
actors. As he moved off, however, he heard Mrs. Mandeville give quiet
directions to Mrs. Sands that she should take up the post of watcher beside the
closed door.

“
Mrs.
Mandeville seems to be an intelligent woman,” said the priest to his companion,
“though she keeps so much in the background.”

“
She
was once a highly intellectual woman,” said Jarvis sadly; “rather washed-out and
wasted, some would say, by marrying a bounder like Mandeville. She has the very
highest ideals of the drama, you know; but, of course, it isn’t often she can
get her lord and master to look at anything in that light. Do you know, he actually
wanted a woman like that to act as a pantomime boy? Admitted that she was a
fine actress, but said pantomimes paid better. That will give you about a measure
of his psychological insight and sensibility. But she never complained. As she
said to me once: ‘Complaint always comes back in an echo from the ends of the
world; but silence strengthens us.’ If only she were married to somebody who
understood her ideas she might have been one of the great actresses of the age;
indeed, the highbrow critics still think a lot of her. As it is, she is married
to that.”

And
he pointed to where the big black bulk of Mandeville stood with his back to them,
talking to the ladies who had summoned him forth into the vestibule. Lady Miriam
was a very long and languid and elegant lady, handsome in a recent fashion
largely modelled on Egyptian mummies; her dark hair cut low and square, like a
sort of helmet, and her lips very painted and prominent and giving her a permanent
expression of contempt. Her companion was a very vivacious lady with an ugly
attractive face and hair powdered with grey. She was a Miss Theresa Talbot and
she talked a great deal, while her companion seemed too tired to talk at all.
Only, just as the two men passed. Lady Miriam summoned up the energy to say:

“
Plays
are a bore; but I’ve never seen a rehearsal in ordinary clothes. Might be a bit
funny. Somehow, nowadays, one can never find a thing one’s never seen.”

“
Now,
Mr. Mandeville,” said Miss Talbot, tapping him on the arm with animated persistence,
“you simply must let us see that rehearsal. We can’t come to-night, and we
don’t want to. We want to see all the funny people in the wrong clothes.”

“
Of
course I can give you a box if you wish it,” said Mandeville hastily. “Perhaps your
ladyship would come this way.” And he led them off down another corridor.

“
I
wonder,” said Jarvis in a meditative manner, “whether even Mandeville prefers that
sort of woman.”

“
Well,”
asked his clerical companion, “have you any reason to suppose that Mandeville does
prefer her?”

Jarvis
looked at him steadily for an instant before answering.

“
Mandeville
is a mystery,” he said gravely. “Oh, yes, I know that he looks about as commonplace
a cad as ever walked down Piccadilly. But he really is a mystery for all that.
There’s something on his conscience. There’s a shadow in his life. And I doubt
whether it has anything more to do with a few fashionable flirtations than it
has with his poor neglected wife. If it has, there’s something more in them
than meets the eye. As a matter of fact, I happen to know rather more about it
than anyone else does, merely by accident. But even I can’t make anything of
what I know, except a mystery.”