Half Moon Street - Anne Perry [69]
“That is most interesting,” Pitt said quite sincerely. “Thank you for your candor, Mr. Hathaway, and your instruction. If anything else occurs to you, please let me know. Good day.”
Pitt spoke to every other member of the camera club, but no one else could help. One young man had seen the quarrel but could only describe the participants, he did not know them by name.
“Oh yes,” he agreed vehemently. “Very heated. I thought at one moment they would come to blows, but the taller young man stalked off, leaving the other very red in the face and mighty uncomfortable.”
Nothing Pitt asked could elicit anything more, except numerous details on the marvels of photography, the newest technical advances, the miracle of Mr. Eastman’s roll of film—although it could apparently be used only outside and in natural daylight, which explained largely why Delbert Cathcart, who frequently worked in subdued light or inside a room, still worked with the old plates.
The club members were all male, and it had not occurred to them as worthy of comment that there were no women among them, but they were ardent in their admiration for female photographers, and not the least hesitant in accounting them great artists in their field, and indeed possessing an excellent and comprehensive grasp of the techniques involved as well. Their thoughts did not advance Pitt’s detection in the slightest, but in spite of himself he was interested.
From Hampstead, Pitt went to seek Orlando Antrim. The next necessary step would be to ask him what the quarrel had been about and where and when he had last seen Cathcart. Pitt was dreading the moment when he might have to accuse him of the murder. But some confrontation was unavoidable.
He found Orlando at the theatre rehearsing his part in Hamlet , which he was due to play within a week.
Pitt was required to explain himself to the doorman and prove his identity before he was allowed in.
“They’re in rehearsal,” the old man said, fixing Pitt with a gimlet eye. “Don’t you go interruptin’ ’em, now! You wait till yer spoke to. Mr. Bellmaine’ll tell you when it’s your turn. Mustn’t upset actors, isn’t fair. Plainer than that, it isn’t right.”
Pitt acknowledged the stricture and obediently tiptoed along the dusty passages as he had been directed. After a few false starts, he eventually ended up in the wings of the huge stage, bare except for two embroidered screens and a chair. A tall lean man stood towards the front, perhaps a couple of yards from the orchestra pit and a little to the left. His cadaverous face was fired with emotion and he held one arm high as if hailing someone in the distance.
Then Pitt saw her, coming from the shadows of the wings opposite him into the light of the stage: Cecily Antrim, dressed in very ordinary gray-blue, a simple blouse and skirt with a slight bustle. Her hair was caught up untidily in a few pins, and yet it was extraordinarily flattering. It looked casual and youthful, full of energy.
“Ah, my dear!” the tall man said warmly. “Ready for Polonius’s death. From the top. Where’s Hamlet? Orlando!”
Orlando Antrim emerged from the wings behind his mother. He too was dressed in the most ordinary of clothes: trousers, a collarless shirt and a waistcoat which matched nothing. His boots were dusty and scuffed and his hair tousled. A look of fierce concentration darkened his face.
“Good. Good,” the tall man said. Pitt assumed he was the Mr. Bellmaine the doorman had referred to. “Hamlet, from the right. Gertrude, you and I from the left. This is the arras in question. Let us begin.” He led the way off the stage, his footsteps echoed across the boards, then he turned and walked back beside Cecily.
“ ‘He will come straight,’ ” he began. “ ‘Look you lay home to him . . .’ ” His voice sounded no more than a conversational level, and yet it filled the stage and the auditorium beyond. “ ‘Pray you, be round with him.’ ”