Half Moon Street Read online

  “It isn’t quite . . . like that.” He bit his lip. “He would never have given it a license,” he admitted. “Because it would raise questions, make some people uncomfortable.” He shrugged very slightly. “There are ways around that—submit the script late and hope he’ll not read it carefully . . . that seldom works because he’s clever enough to suspect anything presented that way and read it extra carefully. The other is to perform a new play under the title of an old one that already has a license. That’s what they did this time. . . .”

  “But they’d all have to know!” she protested. “The theatre manager in particular!”

  “They do. Bellmaine is as keen as Cecily. He’s prepared to take the chance, pay the fine if he has to. It’s worth it to say the things you really believe in, to ask the questions, shake the damnable complacency! If we could stir public opinion, we could reform all manner of laws that are antiquated, unjust.” He leaned forward a little, the flush in his cheeks deepening. “More than that, alter the attitudes that are beyond the law, the prejudices that wound . . . and cripple. Can’t you see how . . . how terrible this is? Some censorship is absurd. Did you know we aren’t even allowed to represent a clergyman onstage—at all. Not even sympathetically! How can we question anything?”

  “Will it change Lord Warriner’s bill?” she asked quietly.

  “Ever the practical,” he said with a rueful little smile. “Do you want women to be able to institute divorce for neglect or unhappiness?” His face was unreadable, wry, humorous, sad, uncertain.

  “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I never even thought about it until I saw the play. But surely that’s the point. I should have.”

  He stretched across the table and laid his hand lightly over hers, barely touching her. “Yes, it is the point. And yes, it probably will affect it. Warriner may well lose his nerve. Too many of his friends will lose theirs. They will have felt which way the wind blows, and retreat.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly, raising her head and closing her fingers over his. She remained like that for a moment, then withdrew and picked up the newspaper from where he had left it.

  Farther down on the page from the article on the closure of the play was a letter from Oscar Wilde, eloquent, witty and informed, with the same outrage Joshua felt. He wrote of censorship as an act of oppression of the mind, performed by cowards who were as much afraid of what was within themselves as anything others might say.

  “The thing I resent most of all,” Joshua said, his eyes still on her, “is not the restriction in what I may or may not say, but what I may or may not listen to! What monumental arrogance makes the Lord Chamberlain believe he has the right to dictate whether I shall listen to this or that man’s views on faith and religion? I may find I agree with him! Where does the whole concept of blasphemy come from?”

  “From the Bible,” she replied quietly. “There are many people to whom it is a very real offense to speak mockingly or vulgarly of God.”

  “Whose God?” he asked, searching her eyes.

  For a moment she was at a loss.

  “Whose God?” he repeated. “Yours? Mine? The vicar’s? The man next door? Anybody’s?”

  She drew in her breath to reply, thinking she knew exactly what she was going to say, then realized like a shaft of light in darkness that she did not. There were probably as many ideas of God as there were people who gave the matter a thought. It had never occurred to her before.

  “Isn’t there . . . some sort of consensus . . . at least . . .” She tailed off. They had never discussed religion before. She knew his morality but not his faith, not the deep, unspoken part that governed his heart. They had never even discussed his heritage of Judaism, even though he made little outwardly of it now. But perhaps it was still part of him if you touched a nerve?

  As if reading her thoughts, he looked at her with a twisted smile. “Didn’t they crucify Christ for blasphemy?” he said softly. “I would have thought as a Christian you would have a certain tolerance towards blasphemers.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” she contradicted him, a little catch in her voice. Suddenly they were speaking of such fierce reality. “You know better than that; we have almost no tolerance at all. We are perfectly happy to burn one another for a difference of opinion, let alone outsiders of a different religion altogether.”

  “You are more likely to burn each other than outsiders,” he pointed out. “But new ideas do find their way in every now and then, through the bloodshed, the smoke and the fury. It used to be a sin unto death for ordinary people to read the Bible; now we are encouraged to. Somebody had to be the first to challenge that monumental piece of censorship. Now we all accept that the whole concept of denying God’s word was monstrous.”

  “Well . . . perhaps I don’t mind about blasphemy,” she said reluctantly, thinking of the Marchands again. “But what about obscenity? As well as the good that new ideas can do, what about the harm?”

  Before he could answer her the door flew open and the old lady stumped in, banging her cane on the floor.

  Joshua rose to his feet automatically. “Good morning, Mrs. Ellison. How are you?”

  She drew in her breath deeply. “As well as can be expected,” she replied.

  He pulled out her chair and assisted her to be seated before returning to his own place.

  Caroline offered her tea and toast, which she accepted.

  “What harm are you talking about?” She reached for the butter and black cherry preserve. Her appetite was excellent, although this morning she did look a little paler than usual.

  Joshua’s eyes barely flickered to Caroline before he answered. “There is an article about censorship in the newspapers—” he began.

  “Good!” she interrupted, swallowing her toast half eaten in order to speak. “Far too much is said without regard to decency these days. It never was when I was young. The world today is filled with vulgarity. It degrades all of us. I am glad I am at the end of my life.” She reached for the butter and helped herself. “At least someone cares enough to fight for standards of a sort.”

  “It is a protest against censorship,” Caroline corrected her, and then instantly wondered if it would not have been a great deal wiser to have allowed the subject to drop.

  “Some actress, I suppose.” Mrs. Ellison raised her eyebrows. “There seems to be nothing women will not say or do these days, and in public for all to see.” She looked at Caroline meaningfully. “Morality is on the decline everywhere—even where one would least expect.”

  “You agree with censorship?” If Joshua was angry he masked it so well no one would have guessed it. But then acting was his profession, and he was very good at it. Caroline reminded herself of that quite often.

  The old lady stared at him as if he had questioned her sanity.

  “Of course I do!” she responded indignantly. “Any sane and civilized person knows there are some things you cannot say without corrupting our entire way of life. Where there is no reverence for things which are sacred, for the home and all it embodies, no safety for the mind, then the entire nation begins to crumble. Did they not teach you history wherever you come from? You must have heard of Rome?”

  Joshua kept his temper superbly. There was even a shadow of amusement in his eyes.

  “London,” he replied. “I come from London, the other side of the river, five miles away from here. And certainly I have heard of Rome, and of Egypt, and Babylon, and Greece and Inquisitorial Spain. So far as I know, Greece had the best theatre, although Egypt had some excellent poetry.”

  “They were heathens.” The old lady dismissed them with a flick of her hand, perilously close to the milk jug. “The Greeks had all sorts of gods who behaved appallingly, if the stories we hear are to be believed. And the Egyptians were worse. They worshipped animals. If you can imagine such a thing!”

  “There was one pharaoh who set up his own new religion believing in and worshipping only one God,” Joshua told her with a smile.


  She looked startled. “Oh . . . well, I daresay that is a step forward. It didn’t last, though, did it?”

  “No,” he agreed. “They accused him of blasphemy and obliterated everything he had done.”

  She glared at him. It was a moment before she recovered her thought. “You weren’t talking about blasphemy. You said ‘obscene.’ ”

  “That’s a matter of view as well,” he argued. “What is beautiful to one may be obscene to another.”

  “Nonsense!” Her face was flushed pink. “Every decent person knows what is obscene, intrusive into other people’s private lives and feelings, and where it is unforgivable to trespass, and only the most vulgar and depraved would wish to.”

  “Of course there are—” he began.

  “Good!” The word was like a trap closing. “Then that is the end of the subject. My tea is cold. Will you be good enough to send for some more.” It was a command, not a request.

  Caroline rang the bell. She could see the anger inside Joshua, barely suppressed by a thin veneer of courtesy because of the old lady’s age, and because she had been Caroline’s mother-in-law and she was a guest in their home, however unwillingly.

  Caroline found herself saying what she knew Joshua wished to. “Everybody agrees there are things which should not be said, the disagreement is as to which things they are.”

  “All things that flout morality and disregard the decent sensibilities of men and women,” Mariah Ellison said flatly. “You may have lost sight of what they are, but most of us have not. Ask any of those who used to be your friends. Thank God the Lord Chamberlain knows.”

  Caroline held her tongue with difficulty, and only because she knew the pointlessness of arguing any further.

  The maid came and was sent for fresh tea. Joshua rose and excused himself, kissing Caroline on the cheek and wishing the old lady a pleasant day.

  Caroline picked up the newspaper again and looked at an article about Cecily Antrim. Above it, there was a sketch of her from a play-bill, looking beautiful and intense. It was that which first caught her attention.

  Yesterday Miss Cecily Antrim protested vigorously against the Lord Chamberlain’s censorship of her new play, The Lady’s Love, which is not now to be performed, because of its indecency and the tendency to degrade public morality and cause distress and outrage.

  Miss Antrim marched up and down the Strand carrying a placard and causing a nuisance, until the police were called to oblige her to desist. She claimed afterwards that the play was a valid work of art questioning misconceptions about women’s feelings and beliefs. She said that refusing to allow it to be performed was to deny women the freedom granted men to explore a far better understanding of those sides of their nature which are profound, and often the wellspring of controversial acts.

  Mr. Wallace Albright, for the Lord Chamberlain’s office, said the play would be likely to undermine the values upon which our society is founded, and it would not be in the public good for it to be performed.

  Miss Antrim has not been charged with affray, and was permitted to return to her home.

  Caroline sat staring at the page. She was filled with an unreasonable anger, but it was confused, veering one way and then the other. Why should one man be able to decide what people may see or not see? Who was he? What manner of man? What were his prejudices and secrets, his fears or dreams? Did he see threat where there was simply intelligent enquiry, a challenge to bigotry and to one person’s dominion over another’s thoughts and beliefs?

  Or was he protecting the young or vulnerable against the assaults of pornography and violence, the coarsening effects upon sensibility of seeing abuse of others portrayed as acceptable, the eroding of values because they were mocked and made fun of, until it took more courage to espouse gentleness and reverence than it did to deny it?

  She looked across the table at the old lady’s face, set in lines of bitterness, and saw also something she thought for a moment was fear. It was profoundly disturbing; it aroused in her fears of her own, and something far too like pity.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The constable stood in front of Pitt in his office, very much to attention.

  “Yes sir, that’s wot ’e said.”

  It was early morning, the sun hazy gold outside, warm on the walls and the stones of the street, only a little dimmed by the smoke of countless chimneys. The air was dry and mild, pungent with the smells of the city.

  “He saw Orlando Antrim and Delbert Cathcart quarreling the day of Cathcart’s death,” Pitt repeated. “You are sure?”

  “Yes sir, I am. That’s wot ’e said, an’ seems there were no shaking ’im from it.”

  “Presumably he is acquainted with both men, this . . . what’s his name?”

  “Hathaway, sir. Peter Hathaway. I dunno, sir, ’cept I reckon ’e must be, or ’ow would ’e know ’oo they are? Two gents quarrelin’ could be anybody.”

  “Precisely. Where do I find this Mr. Hathaway?”

  “Arkwright Road, sir, ’Ampstead. Number twenty-six.”

  “And he reported this to Bow Street?” Pitt was surprised.

  “No sir, ’Ampstead. They told us . . . by telephone.” The constable lifted his head a little higher. He was proud of new technology and had great hopes of its use in catching criminals—even in preventing crime before it occurred.

  “I see.” Pitt rose to his feet. “Well, I suppose I had better go and talk to Mr. Hathaway.”

  “Yes sir. Maybe this Mr. Antrim is our man, sir, seein’ as ’ow they was quarrelin’ real violent, like.” He looked hopeful, his eyes wide and bright.

  “Perhaps,” Pitt agreed with a sharp sense of disappointment. He had admired Orlando Antrim; there was something likable about him, a sensitivity, an acuteness of perception. But it would not be the first time Pitt had liked someone who was capable of killing another person. “Inform Sergeant Tellman where I’ve gone, will you?” he said from the door.

  When Pitt reached Arkwright Road he was told by the housemaid that young Mr. Hathaway was not at home. It was a fine day, and he had gone out with his camera, no doubt to his club, and if the gentlemen were on a field trip, that could be anywhere at all. However, after a little probing, she gave him the address of the place where they met, and the doorman there in turn told him that today the members of the club had taken a trip to the nearby heath in order to practice photographing natural scenery.

  “Very big on natural scenery, they are,” he added approvingly. “Take some lovely pictures. Fair lifts yer spirits to see them.”

  Pitt thanked him and walked back towards Hampstead Heath to begin the search for the camera club and Mr. Peter Hathaway. Of course, whatever Hathaway had seen was only indicative. People could quarrel without its leading to violence of any sort, let alone to murder. But Cathcart’s death was a melodramatic crime, one perpetrated by a person of high emotion and a great deal of imagination, and presumably a familiarity with art, to mimic Millais’s painting of Ophelia so closely. Unless that had been accidental, not a copying so much as another person with the same passion expressing it in the same, fairly elemental way.

  It was pleasant walking in the sun over the dry, springy grass, the wind barely rustling the leaves, the smell of earth in the air instead of smoke and manure and dusty stone. There were birds singing, not the ever-present sparrows but what sounded like blackbirds, their song high, persistent and sweet.

  He saw a young man and woman half lying on the ground, her skirts billowing around her, a picnic basket near them, as yet unopened. They had been laughing together, she flirting, he showing off a little. They stopped and looked up as Pitt approached them.

  “Excuse me,” Pitt apologized. He would far rather have been doing as they were, savoring the last echoes of summer, enjoying the moment with no thought of yesterday or tomorrow, than caring who killed Delbert Cathcart, or why.

  When Charlotte came home from Paris he would take a day off, and the two of them would go out into the countr
y sunshine, just wander around doing nothing in particular. It would not be difficult, and trains were cheap if you did not go too far.

  “Yes?” the young man asked, politely enough.

  “Have you seen a group of men go past carrying cameras?” Pitt enquired.

  It was the girl who answered. “About half an hour ago. Ever so serious they was, all talking together.”

  “Which way did they go?”

  She looked at him to see if he was carrying a camera as well, and was puzzled when there was none visible.

  “I’m looking for a friend,” Pitt said somewhat lamely. “Which way did they go?”

  She was not sufficiently interested to pursue her curiosity. “That way.” She pointed across the swell of grass towards a clump of trees, gnarled roots writhing above the earth in intricate and beautiful form.

  “Thank you.” He nodded briefly and set off as directed.

  It took him twenty minutes longer, and he was hot and out of breath when he saw the group of a dozen young men dressed in jackets, waistcoats, trousers, and all but two in bowler hats as well. Every one of them had his share of equipment, including a variety of leather cases and boxes from less than a cubic foot in size to ones large enough to have carried clothes for a weekend, and boots to go with them. Tripods straddled the grass with a strange, angular kind of elegance. Cameras balanced on top of them with lenses pointing intently at a bough or a branch, or some interesting formation of wood and leaf.

  “Good morning,” Pitt interrupted their concentration.

  No one answered.

  “Excuse me!” he tried a little more loudly.

  The nearest young man turned, startled by the intrusion. “Sir!” he said, holding up his hand as if to stop traffic. “Unless you are in urgent need of assistance, pray do not interrupt this moment. The light is just so.”

  Pitt looked to where they all seemed to be staring, and indeed the rays of the sun shone through the leaves of a great oak with a remarkable luminescence, but he doubted it would translate into anything so spectacular without the green and gold of reality. How could mere sepia tint be worth anything after what the eye had seen? Nevertheless he waited while twelve cameras clicked and squeaked and generally recorded the instant.