Alexander must have been infected by the same anxiety. “Do you think they’re going to tell everyone we’re up here?” he asked, staring hard at the carpet as though he might suddenly develop X-ray vision and be able to see what was going on downstairs.
“I doubt it,” Filippa said. “They won’t want anyone sneaking up.” The lines on either side of her mouth were deep and dark, as if she had aged ten years in as many hours. The others were silent, listening uselessly for a sound from downstairs. James sat with his knees pinned tightly together, arms folded over his chest, like he was cold. Wren was listless, limp, her limbs bent into her chair at odd clumsy angles, like those of a dropped doll. Meredith sat on the couch beside her, cross-legged, fists clenched, tension making every elegant line of her body hard and angular.
“What do you think they’ll do about Caesar?” Alexander said, when he couldn’t stand the quiet anymore.
“They’ll call it off,” Filippa said. “It’d be tasteless to just replace him.”
“So much for ‘the show must go on.’”
I tried—for one abortive moment—to imagine someone, anyone, else assuming Richard’s role. The threat Gwendolyn had made to have me learn his lines and take his place echoed from my memory and I balked, recoiled from the idea. “Honestly,” I said, afraid I’d have to scream if I didn’t do something else with my voice, “do you really want to get back onstage without him?”
A few heads shook; nobody spoke. Then—
“Is it just me,” Alexander said, “or is this the longest day of everyone else’s life?”
“Well,” James said. “Certainly not Richard’s.”
Alexander gaped at him, eyes wide and glaring.
“James,” Meredith said. “What the fuck.”
Filippa breathed out in a hiss, rubbing her forehead. “We’re not doing this,” she said, then looked up, from one of them to each of the others. “We are not going to bicker and bitch at each other—not about this. Things without all remedy / Should be without regard: What’s done is done.”
Alexander laughed a thin, humorless laugh I didn’t like at all. “To bed, to bed, to bed!” he said. “God, I need a smoke. I wish they hadn’t stuck the nurse outside.” He clambered to his feet, turned on the spot, moving in the quick, restless way he did when he was upset. He wandered around the room in an aimless zigzag, struck a few random notes on the piano, then started opening cupboards and fumbling around on the bookshelves.
“What are you doing?” Meredith asked.
“Looking for booze,” he said. “There must be something hidden in here. The last guest they had was the guy who wrote the Nietzsche book and I bet my ass he’s an alcoholic.”
“How can you possibly want to drink right now?” I said. “My insides still feel like liquid from last night.”
“Hair of the dog. Aha.” He emerged from a cabinet in the back of the room with a bottle of something amber in one hand. “Anyone for brandy?”
“Go on,” Filippa said. “Maybe it’ll take the edge off.”
Glasses clinked together as he rummaged deeper in the cabinet. “Anyone else?”
Wren didn’t speak, but to my surprise James and Meredith both said, “Yes, please,” at precisely the same time.
Alexander returned with the bottle in one hand, four glasses stacked and tilting in the other. He poured himself enough brandy to burn the Hall down, then passed it to Filippa. “I don’t know how much you want,” he said. “Personally I plan to drink myself to sleep.”
“I’m not sure I’ll ever sleep again,” I said. Richard’s half-smashed face—garish as a carnival mask—leapt at me every time I closed my eyes.
James, staring into the fire, chewing a fingernail, said, “Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more!’”
“Where are we sleeping?” Meredith asked, ignoring him. “There’s only three rooms.”
“Well, Wren and I can share,” Filippa said, with a sidelong look at her. She didn’t acknowledge that she’d heard.
“Who wants to share with me?” Alexander said. He waited for a reply but didn’t get one. “Don’t everyone jump up at once.”
“I’ll stay out here,” I said. “I don’t mind.”
“What time is it?” Meredith said. She lifted her glass to her lips, with a pained expression, as if that simple motion were monumentally taxing.
Filippa squinted at the carriage clock on the table beside her. “Quarter after nine.”
“Is that all?” I said. “It feels like midnight.”
“It feels like Judgment Day.” Alexander threw back an enormous gulp of brandy, gritted his teeth as he swallowed, and reached for the bottle again. He filled his glass almost to the brim and stood clutching it tightly. “I’m going to bed,” he announced. “If someone decides they don’t want to crash in the living room, well, we all know I’m not picky about who I sleep with. Goodnight.”
He left the room, with a small stiff bow. I watched him go and propped my head on one hand, unsurprised by how heavy it felt. Exhaustion pumped sluggishly through my veins, dampening everything else. In the raw dark of the morning I’d felt relief rather than dismay at the spectacle of Richard’s death, and now that it was dark again—after all we’d done and said during the long hypnotic hours in between—I was too tired for sadness or pity. Perhaps it was absent because I didn’t quite believe it. I half expected Richard to burst through the door, wiping stage blood from his face, laughing cruelly at how he’d had us fooled.
Filippa finished her drink, and the sound of her glass touching down on the table made me look up. “I’m going to go to bed, too,” she said, pushing herself to her feet. “I want to just lie down for a while, even if I don’t sleep. Wren? Why don’t you come to bed?”
Wren was still for a moment, then reanimated, unfolded herself from the chair, eyes bleary, out of focus. She accepted Filippa’s proffered hand and followed her out, without protest.
“Are you sleeping here?” Meredith asked, when they’d gone. She spoke to me as if James wasn’t there. He didn’t react or respond, as if he hadn’t heard her.