Trial and Error Read online

  “I can’t seem to get down to it somehow,” Farroway lamented. “I hate the job anyhow, turning out slushy tripe for suburban library subscribers. Always did hate it. But in those days I could do it. Had the knack somehow. Now I don’t believe I could, not since I came up against the real thing.”

  “The real thing?” queried Mr Todhunter.

  “Jean,” replied Farroway solemnly, “has opened up a new emotional world to me. I had never lived until I met her. I must have been half dead all my life: stifled, numbed, blanketed, any metaphor you like. Now that I know what love really is, I can’t go on writing about what it isn’t.”

  Mr Todhunter, half repelled and half fascinated by Farroway’s confidences, now definitely maudlin, did his best to encourage his guest by remarking:

  “I’ve never been in love.”

  “You’re lucky, Todhunter. You’re lucky, ole man. Love—love’s just plain hell. I wish to God I’d never met Jean. Don’t you ever meet a woman you’ll fall in love with, Todhunter, ole boy. Love’s hell. Yes. Interesting, extremely. But hell.”

  With this final frankness Farroway staggered to his feet, wiped the beads from his chalk-white face and demanded in a loud voice:

  “Where’s the lavatory?”

  Three acolytes, assisted by the high priest in person, led him hastily out of the now almost empty room.

  Mr Todhunter occupied his absence by thoughtfully jotting down such of the names and addresses and other material facts as he could remember.

  When Farroway returned, twelve minutes later, he appeared completely sobered, but wished to get away at once.

  “About those majolica plaques we were mentioning,” he said as they retrieved his own smart grey hat and wash-leather gloves and the appalling, shapeless, grease-ridden object which Mr Todhunter was content to wear on his head and which the superior young man behind the counter handled as if he wished the management supplied a pair of tongs for such emergencies. “About those plaques, the man you want to see is Herder, of Vigo Street. He knows more about majolica than anyone in London. He’ll tell you all you want to know, and considering that his guarantee of genuineness is absolutely cast iron, his prices are very reasonable. Look here, I’ve just jotted down your name on my card as an introduction. He’ll do his very best for you if he knows you’re a friend of mine.”

  “Thank you,” said Mr Todhunter, perfunctorily glancing at the card. On it Farroway had written: “To introduce Mr Lawrence Todhunter. Please tell him anything he wants to know. N.F.”

  Mr Todhunter put the card into his pocket.

  3

  During these days Mr Todhunter knew quite well that he was playing a game with himself. He was not going to interfere in Farroway’s affairs; he knew that for certain. Farroway was nothing to him, nothing at all; and Farroway’s family was still less. But it was amusing to pretend to oneself that one was going to interfere. It was amusing to pretend that one was a kind of deus ex machina with the power of solving all petty mortal problems with the final argument of the thunderbolt; the thunderbolt in this case being, of course, a bullet from the revolver which was still reposing idly in a drawer of Mr Todhunter’s dressing table. Besides, it took the mind off one’s aneurism.

  So although he knew with such conviction that it was all going to lead nowhere, Mr Todhunter set about his enquiries and his careful analysis of Farroway’s situation just as if he had never put the fantastic idea of altruistic murder away from him once and for all after the Fischmann fiasco.

  Carefully, therefore, Mr Todhunter worked through the list of names and addresses in his possession, taking taxis everywhere on account of his aneurism and spending money with a recklessness which a year ago would have burst every artery in his body with horror. The lunch for Farroway alone had set Mr Todhunter back more than six pounds, and he just did not care a couple of fried kippers.

  There were three people in particular with whom Mr Todhunter wanted to talk: Farroway’s two daughters and the manager of the Sovereign Theatre. Arguing cunningly, Mr Todhunter decided that his best move would be to interview the married daughter in Bromley at once after the Farroway lunch, for her husband would certainly not be at home that afternoon but probably would be during the next two days. He therefore caused himself to be driven straight from the restaurant to Victoria Station and there took a train for Bromley.

  The address given him indicated a house in the Grove Park district, and his taxi driver at Bromley Station told Mr Todhunter, in the pitying yet scornful way of those in possession of information to those without it, that he ought to have taken a train to Bromley North Station from Charing Cross, which would have cost him a much smaller taxi fare; on the other hand, opined the driver, it was doubtful whether there would be a taxi at Bromley North Station at all at this time of the day.

  “Yes, well, step on the gas,” observed Mr Todhunter, cutting short this interesting discussion of alternatives as he crept, carefully crouched, into the cab.

  “Eh?” said the driver, startled.

  Mr Todhunter thrust his head out of the window like a baleful old bird peeping out of its nest in some mountain crag. “I said, step on the gas.”

  “O.K.,” responded the driver, and stepped.

  The Vincent Palmers proved to live in one of the new roads which are rapidly linking up Bromley with its neighbours to the north. The taxi stopped outside a small, semidetached villa which did not look as if it had been built more than five years, and as he paid the driver Mr Todhunter conscientiously noted the trimness of the privet hedge along the front wall and the raggedness of the clematis clambering over the porch. As these two appeared to cancel out as evidence, Mr Todhunter was not quite certain what conclusion to draw.

  Luck, however, was with him. The maid, correct in black and white, who answered his ring, informed him that Mrs Palmer was in and showed him straight into the sitting room, where Mrs Palmer was indulging in a nap on a big overstuffed couch.

  She sprang up in mingled annoyance and embarrassment, a short, pretty girl of twenty-four or five, her brown hair rather charmingly disarrayed. Mr Todhunter’s embarrassment, however, was so much greater than her own that the latter was swamped and, with it, her annoyance.

  “How absurd of Elsie!” she laughed. “She came to me quite untrained two years ago, when we first came here, and it’s useless to pretend I’ve trained her yet. However she did announce you. Mr Todhunter, I think she said?”

  “Er—Todhunter, yes,” mumbled Mr Todhunter, crimson to his rather naked, winglike ears, and already half regretting his impulsive visit. “Must apologise. . . unhappy intrusion. . . friend of y’ father’s. . . passing house. . . call. . .”

  “Oh, you’re a friend of Father’s? How interesting. Do sit down, Mr Todhunter.”

  With great deliberation, to hide his shame, Mr Todhunter extracted Farroway’s card from his pocketbook and handed it to Viola Palmer, who interrupted her hair-patting to peruse it.

  “I see, yes. Well, what can I tell you, Mr Todhunter?”

  Mr Todhunter extended a desiccated hand for the card and tucked it away in his pocketbook again. It was going to be very useful, that card.

  “Errrm-hem!” Mr Todhunter cleared his throat, adjusted his glasses, put a hand on each bony knee and leaned forward in a way that he hoped was impressive. “Mrs Palmer, I’m exceedingly worried about your father.”

  Viola Palmer looked startled. “About Father.”

  “Yes,” nodded Mr Todhunter. “Jean Norwood!”

  “Oh!” The girl stared at him.

  Mr Todhunter watched her anxiously. It had been hit or miss, thus to burst into his main theme without introduction, but if (thought Mr Todhunter) Bach could get away with it, why not he?

  “My goodness, so are all of us!” exclaimed the girl. “It’s—there’s something really horrible in it. That woman’s just a devil.”

  Mr Todhunter clapped his bony shanks with satisfaction. It had been hit, not miss. The girl had accepted him without que
stion as an old friend of her father’s, was going to ask no difficult questions and looked as if she might talk without reserve. As Mr Todhunter was anxious to find out whether she knew anything about her own husband’s little antics, all this was very fortunate.

  “A devil,” he repeated. “Precisely. Exactly. That describes her very justly.”

  “And everyone says she is so sweet.”

  “They don’t know her.”

  “Indeed they don’t.”

  “What,” propounded Mr Todhunter, “can be done about it?”

  The girl shrugged her shoulders, “Goodness knows. It’s no good talking to him of course. He always has an answer for everything, or else he just looks pathetic and helpless. I’ve tried, and so has Mother, but if anything I should think we’ve only made things worse. Poor Mother! It’s dreadful for her.”

  “Yes indeed.” Mr Todhunter, nodding violently, remembered himself and nodded gently. “It must be. She’s still in the north?”

  “Oh yes. It wouldn’t be any good her coming down. She’s got the sense to see that. Besides, I doubt if she’s got the fare now.”

  ‘’The fare?”

  “Well, since Father cut off supplies, she’s hardly a penny, you know. I send her what I can from time to time, but. . .”

  “Good gracious, I didn’t know it was as bad as that,” exclaimed Mr Todhunter. “I knew he’d left her of course,” he added with half truth, “but I didn’t know he’d cut off supplies.”

  “Well, not formally. He just hasn’t sent her anything, not a farthing since he left. And when she asks for some, he goes all pathetic and says he hasn’t got any money himself. And all the time he’s keeping that woman and paying the rent of that flat and squandering pounds and pounds on her. I think,” said Farroway’s daughter calmly, “that he’s gone mad.”

  “In a way,” agreed Mr Todhunter, “that is so. I’m sorry to say that in this respect your father seems to be really not quite sane. Great Infatuations,” he added vaguely, “are often like that.”

  “Well, certainly there’s no arguing with them,” said the girl.

  The peculiar bitterness in her voice caught Mr Todhunter’s attention and he looked at her sharply.

  “Ah!” he agreed as meaningly as he could. “Yes. You mean, of course . . . yes. I wondered if you knew.”

  “Of course I know,” she replied in a voice between scorn and tears.

  “And what are you going to do about that?”

  “About Vincent? I don’t know—yet”

  “Do nothing for the time being,” Mr Todhunter advised with earnestness.

  She looked at him. “Nothing?”

  “Nothing. I—er—it’s true that I know very little about these things, but I understand that at this stage intervention on the part of a wife, or open opposition, is often fatal. Things may adjust themselves, Mrs Palmer, or they may not. But please do nothing for a week or so. Does he know that you know?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Excellent. Then you will leave matters as they are for the time being?”

  The girl thought. “Very well,” she said a little wonderingly.

  Soon afterwards Mr Todhunter took his leave. He carried away the impression of a personality much more forceful than that of Mrs Palmer’s father. When she had said that she did not know what she was going to do—yet, Mr Todhunter had received the idea that when she did make up her mind, it would be to something drastic. Certainly young Mrs Palmer did not appear the kind of person to sit supinely by and let things drift.

  Before he left Mr Todhunter asked and obtained the address of Farroway’s other daughter.

  Reviewing the interview on his way back to London, Mr Todhunter decided that it had been interesting but had added little to his knowledge of the situation.

  4

  This, however, was not the case with the two interviews which followed.

  On that same evening Mr Todhunter sought out the manager of the Sovereign Theatre. His name was Budd, and he was a depressed-looking man of about fifty, with black hair and the kind of jowls which contrive to look always unshaven. It took Mr Todhunter some time and a great deal of tact to gain his confidence; but when that had been done the revelations which ensued would have startled Miss Norwood’s worshippers.

  “She’s a bitch, Mr Todhunter,” pronounced Mr Budd with a kind of gloomy zest. “You get her kind in the theatre often enough, but she’s the worst specimen I’ve ever met. How I manage to stick her, I don’t know. Well, a job’s a job in these days, and even if she thinks she owns me body and soul in her theatre, I’m my own man at home.” He swallowed quickly what was left of his double whiskey and rapped on the table for another. A very young waiter arrived at a run.

  “Indeed?” said Mr Todhunter with interest. “Tell me about the type.”

  Mr Budd obliged, with details.

  The two were sitting in the Foyer Club, whither Mr Budd had piloted Mr Todhunter “for a couple of quick ones” after the fall of the curtain at the Sovereign. Mr Todhunter, displaying Farroway’s card, had pretended that he was collecting information to incorporate in an article which he was writing on the theatre in the London Review, and had implored Mr Budd’s help. Mr Budd had been perfectly willing, if Mr Todhunter would wait till the curtain was down and everything fixed for the night. Mr Todhunter had waited and now, against all doctors’ rules and in some agitation, was sitting well past midnight imbibing barley water in the small and shabby Foyer Club and listening to Mr Budd’s growing indiscretions.

  “It’s genuine in a way. She really believes she’s a great actress—the greatest since Bernhardt at least. And I expect in her heart of hearts she believes she could give Bernhardt a few tips. She’s all wrong of course. She isn’t a great actress. She just has the knack of getting hold of an audience. Not that she’s a bad actress. In fact,” conceded Mr Budd handsomely, “she’s a pretty good one. But not great, no. . . Boy, get me another of the same. Here, Mr Todhunter, your glass is empty. Have a bit of a stiffener in it this time, for heaven’s sake.”

  Mr Todhunter refused the stiffener with some difficulty, since Mr Budd seemed inclined to make a personal matter of it, and returned to the subject in hand.

  “Yes, but as a woman, what is she like? She appears to have considerable professional charm. Does it extend into her ordinary relations with other people?”

  “It does not,” replied Mr Budd with firmness. “Jean’s a devastating woman. I can tell you, every producer in London had a couple of quick ones in relief when he heard that she’d gone into management and he wouldn’t be bothered with her tantrums any more.”

  “Tantrums?”

  “Yes. They say she never let a single play that she was in run smoothly in rehearsal, ever since she got into the top line. Always had to be throwing her weight about: quarrelling with the producer, wanting her lines altered, objecting to this, that and the other person in the cast, making life hell for everyone.”

  “Then why,” said Mr Todhunter wonderingly, “did anyone ever engage her?” It was a question that laymen have often asked before concerning the Jean Norwood type of actress, and never has a satisfactory answer been received.

  “Oh well,” said Mr Budd vaguely, “she’s a pull, you know; she’s got a public. They had to have her.” “But surely not at such a cost in time and trouble?”

  “I remember,” said Mr Budd, “I was with her once in The Silver Penny, in 1925. It was just after she’d made her name, and the public were eating her. She knew dam’ well we couldn’t do without her. Well, there was a kid playing the part of the maid. (You remember the show? No? It ran nearly a year.) Well, it was this kid’s first West End part, and she was a bit nervous at rehearsal. Jean had it in for her for some reason or other. Well, one morning the kid gave Jean the wrong cue. Put in a line out of the second act or something when we were rehearsing the first. Jean swept-down to the front and said to old George Furness (he was producing) : ‘Mr Furness, dismiss this girl and ge
t a competent actress for the part or I’ll walk out.’ Well, there was no help for it. They argued with her, and the kid cried, but it was no use. The kid had to go.”

  “But it’s outrageous,” cried Mr Todhunter in great indignation.

  “That’s Jean though, all over,” replied Mr Budd with gloomy relish. “Now poor old Alfred Gordon, who did manager for her before me . . .” Mr Budd related how Miss Norwood had made Mr Gordon’s life unbearable, until the old man, faced with ruin and the prospect of never finding another job, had gassed himself in his little flat in Notting Hill Gate.

  “He left a note, I happen to know, saying just what he thought of her, but they suppressed it at the inquest. That give her a jolt for a time. But it didn’t last. Pretty soon she was taking hell out of us all again in the same old way.”

  “But why does anyone work for her?”

  Mr Budd looked at his companion with a faint smile. “It’s pretty plain you don’t know much about the theatre, Mr Todhunter. Jobs aren’t exactly easy to get, you know. Besides,” added Mr Budd cynically, “anyone who can say they were in Jean Norwood’s company for a couple of years has a pull. Any producer knows that someone trained by Jean will be pretty easy to handle. Besides, Jean only employs people who really can act. I’ll say that for her. She’s keen, and she will have the best. Though of course anyone who looks like being as good as she is doesn’t last long. Well, after all,” said Mr Budd frankly, “you couldn’t expect her to let another girl act her off her own stage, could you? Like your friend Farroway’s girl for instance.”

  Mr Todhunter sat up. “Felicity Farroway? She could act then?”

  “You bet your life she could. Finest little natural actress I’ve ever seen. Wanted polishing, of course, and had to learn a bit of technique, but the stuff was right there. But Jean finished her, like she’s finished dozens of others. Nobody’ll dare to give her another chance now.”

  “Dare?” Mr Todhunter’s indignation was rising again. “But surely other managers aren’t afraid of Miss Norwood?”

  Mr Budd stroked his blue jowls. “Well, I’m not so sure they’re not, if you put it like that. But we’re sheep in this profession, you know. Once the word gets around that Miss Dash can’t really act for toffee and had to be sacked out of Jean Norword’s last show for being too downright rotten, Miss Dash can go on calling on the agents for the rest of her natural, but no one’s ever going to offer her a part again. And you can bet Jean did put it round, all right. And after all, the kid’s got no pull.”