“It all began,” Appleby said, “with a Professor writing a learned article called Shakespeare’s Stage Blood. He wasn’t starting a theory that the Bard came of a long line of actors. He was simply showing from a study of the old texts that the Elizabethan theatre was a thoroughly gory place.”
The Vicar nodded. “Carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,” he quoted cheerfully. “Accidental judgements, casual slaughters, death put on by cunning and forced cause–”
“Quite so. But the relevant point was this: when X drew his dagger or rapier on the stage of the Globe and appeared to stab Y, what in fact he did stab was a concealed bladder, full of some sort of red paint. The stuff spurted out all over the place, and gave an engaging impression of a neatly severed artery.”
“Messy. One hopes it came out in the wash.”
“No doubt it did. But the immediate effect was terrific. All concerned simply wallowed in this bogus blood, and the audience got no end of a thrill. Now, no sooner had the Professor published his discovery than it greatly took the fancy of a chap called Cherry, who was the moving spirit of a group of amateur players at Nessfield. Most of his company belonged to the staff of the University there, and this blood-bath business apparently gave very general pleasure to all. It was felt that something should be done to put this discovery about Shakespeare’s stage into practice. So Cherry decided that the next play should be Julius Caesar.”
The Vicar chuckled. “‘Stoop, Romans, stoop, and let us bathe our hands in Caesar’s blood.’”
“Precisely. ‘Up to the elbows, and besmear our swords.’ Contemplating that scene, Cherry, you may say, simply saw red. As it happened, I was visiting a friend of some consequence in those parts, and he took me along to the performance. For some reason that I didn’t gather, it was quite an occasion, and we sat among a whole gaggle of the local nobs, all doing Cherry and his friends proud.
“They played uncommonly well. The scene in the Senate House built up some first-rate suspense, and when at length the conspirators had edged round Caesar and isolated him beside Pompey’s statue, the audience was as keyed up as ever I’ve seen it at a professional production. Then Casca gave his signal, and that dignified group of noble Romans closed in like a rugger scrum, and had a high old time stabbing and hacking for all they were worth. You wouldn’t have believed, Vicar, that most of them were Doctors of Philosophy and Readers in Ancient Hebrew and such like. And the gore! It exceeded all expectations. Every one of the conspirators – Brutus, Cassius, Casca, Decius, Cinna, and the rest–”
“Ligarius, Trebonius, and Metellus.” The Vicar rubbed his hands in mild self-congratulation. “Once learnt, one doesn’t forget these things.”
“They were all dripping some beastly stuff supplied, I imagine, by the Department of Chemistry. And the rest of the scene went with a swing – Mark Antony’s ‘Cry Havoc’ speech and all. It was only when Antony and the servant of Octavius started to bear away the body that things went wrong. You see, it was a body. Caesar had been stabbed through the heart.”
The Vicar looked serious, but his memory did not fail him. “‘Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay’ – eh? What an uncommonly disconcerting business.”
Appleby nodded. “It was clearly my business, whether disconcerting or not. Scotland Yard was in the stalls, and Scotland Yard had to step into the limelight. So I got my august friend to announce my presence in due form, and there and then I took charge. Within half an hour I felt like concluding myself to be at grips with the perfect murder.
“Caesar – I needn’t drag up those people’s real names – had been an unpopular figure about the place. He was a mathematician with a boring habit of pestering his colleagues with insoluble problems. He and Cassius had had a tremendous row over something entirely technical; Brutus was believed to be his bitter rival for the next Fellowship of some important scientific society; and Casca was convinced that he had done him out of a job.”
“Ah!” The Vicar was impressed. “There looks to have been quite a field. But I put my money on Casca. ‘See what a rent the envious Casca made.’”
“These things might be far from very substantial motives for murder. But they hinted an atmosphere which might nurse really bad blood – real blood, you may say. And now think of the actual melée. There’s nothing like a crowd of amateurs for doing that sort of thing in a really whole-hearted way, and for a conspirator meaning actual homicide this bit of stage assassination was ideal cover.
“And all I had to go on was a bunch of confused statements by these people – that, and eight daggers; seven of them trick daggers of the sort that disappear up the sheath, and one of an authentic and deadly kind. The seven were dripping this beastly red muck; the eighth–”
“A nasty contrast, indeed.” The Vicar was sober. “‘And as he plucked his cursed steel away, mark how the blood of Caesar followed it.’ Would there be fingerprints?”
“I hadn’t much hope from them – and so I was the more pleased when I suddenly had an idea. I gathered the cast together; told them I believed I knew who was responsible; and announced that I was going to have them enact the scene over again, with myself as Caesar.”
“My dear fellow, wasn’t that rather risky? If the crime had been the work, say, of a homicidal maniac, this second chance–”
“There were to be no daggers this time, and no disgusting red paint. Even so, I got well thumped, for those people’s zest for violence wasn’t to be exhausted by the mere spectacle of a murdered colleague. They found the re-enacting thoroughly enjoyable. And I don’t doubt that, at the end of it, they were extremely disappointed when I simply told them to go home.”
“To go home!”
“Certainly. For all I’d wanted to do, you see, was to count – to count the conspirators. And my memory proved right. Eight daggers made one too many.
“It’s true that there are eight conspirators, and you completed my own list quite correctly. But Trebonius’ job, you may recall, is to get Antony out of the way; and so he isn’t concerned in the killing. Caesar, in fact, had killed himself. For distressing reasons into which I needn’t enter, his life was no longer of any use to him; and it had pleased him to exploit the occasion of his own suicide to set his colleagues, and the world in general, a final little problem.”
“My dear Appleby, this is a very shocking story. Suppose that one of those unfortunate conspirators had actually been suspected of murder.”
“Nothing would have pleased Caesar more. He was a thoroughly malicious fellow – and, like the real Caesar, a good deal of an exhibitionist. He liked staging that sensation for all the important citizens of Nessfield. And had Casca or Cassius been brought to trial, he would have been delighted. He had even left with a crony a letter addressed to the Home Secretary and telling the whole story. It was to be posted–”
“Only in the event of a criminal trial?”
“Only in the event of somebody having been hanged.”