The thin veil of latex came away, and his true
physiognomy was exposed for the world to see. Diane tried to back away, but his hand was in her hair. All she could do was look up into that all-but fleshless face. A few withered strands of muscle curled here and there, and a hint of a beard hung from a leathery flap at his throat, but all living tissue had long since decayed. Most of his face was simply bone: stained and worn.
‘I was not,’ said the skull, ‘embalmed. Unlike Constantia.’
The explanation escaped Diane. She made no sound of protest, which the scene would surely have justified. All she could summon was a whimper as his hand-hold tightened, and he hauled her head back.
‘We must make a choice, sooner or later,’ said Lichfield, his breath smelling less like chocolate than profound putrescence, ‘between serving ourselves and serving our art.’
She didn’t quite understand.
‘The dead must choose more carefully than the living. We cannot waste our breath, if you’ll excuse the phrase, on less than the purest delights. You don’t want art, I think. Do you?’
She shook her head, hoping to God that was the expected response.
‘You want the life of the body, not the life of the imagination. And you may have it.’
‘Thank… you.’
‘If you want it enough, you may have it.’
Suddenly his hand, which had been pulling on her hair so painfully, was cupped behind her head, and bringing her lips up to meet his. She would have screamed then, as his rotting mouth fastened itself on to hers, but his greeting was so insistent it quite took her breath away.
Ryan found Diane on the floor of her dressing-room a few
minutes before two. It was difficult to work out what had happened. There was no sign of a wound of any kind on her head or body, nor was she quite dead. She seemed to be in a coma of some kind. She had perhaps slipped, and struck her head as she fell. Whatever the cause, she was out for the count.
They were hours away from a Final Dress Rehearsal and Viola was in an ambulance, being taken into Intensive Care.
‘The sooner they knock this place down, the better,’ said Hammersmith. He’d been drinking during office hours, something Galloway had never seen him do before. The whisky bottle stood on his desk beside a half-full glass. There were glass-marks ringing his accounts, and his hand had a bad dose of the shakes.
‘What’s the news from the hospital?’
‘She’s a beautiful woman,’ he said, staring at the glass. Galloway could have sworn he was on the verge of tears.
‘Hammersmith? How is she?’
‘She’s in a coma. But her condition is stable.’
‘That’s something, I suppose.’
Hammersmith stared up at Galloway, his erupting brows knitted in anger.
‘You runt,’ he said, ‘you were screwing her, weren’t you? Fancy yourself like that, don’t you? Well, let me tell you something, Diane Duvall is worth a dozen of you. A dozen!’
‘Is that why you let this last production go on, Hammersmith? Because you’d seen her, and you wanted to get your hot little hands on her?’
‘You wouldn’t understand. You’ve got your brain in your pants.’ He seemed genuinely offended by the interpretation Galloway had put on his admiration for Miss Duvall.
‘All right, have it your way. We still have no Viola.’
‘That’s why I’m cancelling,’ said Hammersmith, slowing down to savour the moment.
It had to come. Without Diane Duvall, there would be no Twelfth Night; and maybe it was better that way.
A knock on the door.
‘Who the fuck’s that?’ said Hammersmith softly. ‘Come.’
It was Lichfield. Galloway was almost glad to see that strange, scarred face. Though he had a lot of questions to ask of Lichfield, about the state he’d left Diane in, about their conversation together, it wasn’t an interview he was willing to conduct in front of Hammersmith. Besides, any half-formed accusations he might have had were countered by the man’s presence here. If Lichfield had attempted violence on Diane, for whatever reason, was it likely that he would come back so soon, so smilingly?