Stagestruck

12

‘She definitely broke her neck,’ Keith Halliwell reported on his phone from the mortuary.

‘We know that,’ Diamond said. ‘I saw for myself, but was that the cause of death?’

Halliwell took a moment for thought, a moment that didn’t yield much. ‘Must have been.’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘Are you kidding me, boss?’

‘She could have been dead already.’

This didn’t persuade Halliwell. ‘What – and somebody pushed her off the loading bridge? Difficult. How would he have got her up there?’

‘There are pulleys and lines for hoisting things.’

‘He’d need help.’

‘Possibly.’ Unknown to Halliwell, the word that had first sprung to Diamond’s mind was “definitely”. His confidence was shrinking. Now that he’d spoken, his theory did sound far-fetched, if not totally off the wall.

‘If she died by some other method it would have shown up in the post-mortem,’ Halliwell pointed out. ‘You mean a bullet through the head or a dagger in the heart? There are more subtle ways of misleading a pathologist, Keith.’

‘I was impressed by Dr Sealy. He said because of the position she was found in, she must have been falling backwards. Therefore she climbed over the rail and held onto it with both hands before letting go. Suicides often do it that way, not wanting to look down. He said that’s why she didn’t end up on the floor. She didn’t see the battens that broke her fall.’

‘Pretty conclusive, then?’ he said without pressing his doubts. ‘No other marks or injuries?’

‘None that he noticed, and he’s thorough. He did add that he’d wait for the lab test on the samples he’d sent. There was some suspicion she’d taken alcohol shortly before she died. Even I could smell it.’

‘Dutch courage.’

‘I reckon.’

‘Whisky? Gin?’

‘He calls it ethanol. Same thing.’

Diamond was unimpressed. ‘Typical bloody Sealy. Alcohol to you and me. Ethanol to him.’

‘He couldn’t tell what drink it was. You get the same sharp, sweet smell whether it was cheap beer or vintage bubbly. When you’re alive, alcohol metabolises, but after death it gets trapped in the blood.’

The science didn’t interest Diamond so much as the how, when and where. ‘And what did he say about the time of death?’

‘Not much more than he said before. Probably between eight and twenty-four hours before she was found.’

‘No use to us. But thanks, Keith. How’s the stomach?’

‘Mine?’

Diamond smiled at that. ‘I’m asking if you could manage a sandwich after the post-mortem.’

‘I don’t see why not.’

Which is why you always get the job, he thought. ‘If you fancy a bite to eat, John Leaman and I are about to call at the Garrick’s Head. There was a punch-up at the theatre this morning. Tell you about it then.’

He was trying to be realistic. The theory he’d flirted with had withered away. Dr Sealy would surely have picked up some indications of murder. Post-mortems rarely add much to what is already obvious. True, Sealy cared more about covering his back than giving pointers to the police, but he was good at his job, and Keith Halliwell was a sharp-eyed observer. An unexpected discovery had never been likely. The case was moving to a conclusion. All it wanted was confirmation that Denise took responsibility for the Clarion incident. If her powder box contained traces of caustic soda, the suicide would be hard to deny. Paul Gilbert should soon report on the lab result.

‘Do I need a drink!’ he said to Leaman.

They were greeted in the pub by the barmaid announcing, ‘Here’s your friend, Titus. I told you he’d be back.’

The dramaturge, Titus O’Driscoll, at a table by the fireplace, looked up from the book he was reading. ‘My cup overfloweth. Well, it would have, if he hadn’t arrived with someone else.’

Diamond, trying to be tolerant, raised a grin. ‘John Leaman works with me.’ He turned to the barmaid. ‘We’d each like a pint of your best.’

‘Are you off duty, then?’ Titus asked.

‘At this minute, yes. And how are you, Titus? Fully recovered, I hope.’

‘The head, yes,’ he said, ‘but the heart remains in intensive care. I’m not used to being in the arms of strange policemen.’

Leaman’s eyes gleamed like the brass fittings on the bar.

‘Titus fainted and I caught him before he fell,’ Diamond explained, as if catching gay men was as commonplace as tying shoelaces.

‘And the reason I fainted is one of the great unsolved mysteries,’ Titus said. ‘I have a theory of my own too embarrassing to mention in present company. Well, I will.’

This had gone far enough. ‘No, you won’t,’ Diamond said at once, ‘because it wouldn’t be right.’ With the case just about to be put to bed there was no need to hold back. ‘You passed out because you saw a dead butterfly in Clarion’s dressing room.’

For a moment Titus was speechless. Then: ‘Oh my word!’ He had lost so much colour that there was danger of another fainting episode.

‘You still don’t remember?’

‘Now tell me it was a tortoiseshell. It was? No wonder I collapsed.’ His blue eyes widened and he said in a doom-laden voice, ‘The curse strikes again.’

‘Nobody ever mentioned a curse that I’m aware of.’

Titus was in Hammer Horror mode. ‘The death of Reg Maddox all those years ago after the dead butterfly was found on the stage. If that doesn’t have the force of a curse, I don’t know what does.’

‘But Clarion didn’t die.’

‘Denise did, the day we discovered it. Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I know what theatre people are like about superstitions. It could have caused a panic.’

‘Really.’ Titus rolled his eyes and made an expansive gesture with his arms. ‘As if we’re the sort of people who panic. Where is the butterfly now?’

‘In a drawer in my office,’ Diamond said. ‘It’s been there since Tuesday, and I’m still breathing.’

‘Mock the dark forces at your peril. I’m in urgent need of a drink.’

Diamond nodded to the barmaid, who said, ‘Water, Titus?’

He pursed his lips and turned away, so she poured him a glass of wine. She was enjoying every second of this.

‘It’s summer,’ Diamond said. ‘Butterflies get trapped all the time in places like this.’

‘That’s not the issue,’ Titus said after taking a sip. ‘They become an omen when they die.’

‘They’re short-lived anyway. I dare say there are others lying around the theatre.’ He turned to Leaman for support. ‘When you were doing your search, did you notice any?’

Leaman shook his head. ‘I wasn’t looking for butterflies.’ A simple statement and a reminder how single-minded he was.

‘What did you hope to find?’ Titus asked Leaman.

‘A handbag.’

‘Any particular handbag?’

‘The one belonging to Denise Pearsall.’

Diamond said, ‘I suppose you wouldn’t know where it is?’

Titus cocked an eyebrow. ‘Are you implying that I picked it up? No, I did not.’

‘What would Titus want with a handbag?’ the barmaid said and shrieked with laughter. She could get away with stuff like that.

Diamond wasn’t amused and didn’t smile. His thoughts hadn’t moved on since the remark about butterflies. Painstaking as John Leaman was in tracking anything down, he could have missed other items of importance. Tunnel vision, they called it in CID. ‘Titus,’ he said.

‘Yes?’

‘Our tour backstage was cut short. Would you mind showing me the rest?’ An inner voice shrieked that he must be crazy, volunteering to go back into the theatre, but he’d been steeling himself for this. Backstage was less of a problem for him than the auditorium itself.

‘As I recall it,’ Titus said without enthusiasm, ‘we weren’t on a tour. We were ghost-hunting.’

‘So we were.’

Titus softened a little. ‘True, we didn’t look at all the dressing rooms. Number eight is renowned for psychic phenomena.’ He sighed. ‘But I don’t believe you’re interested in the occult.’

The barmaid said, ‘He could be interested in you, Titus.’ She was making mischief and Diamond let it pass. She was an unlikely ally.

Titus drank most of the wine at a gulp. ‘What about your colleague?’ he asked Diamond.

‘He’ll wait here.’

‘Just the two of us?’

‘That’s it.’

‘If you insist, then.’ He drained his glass and left it on the bar.

On their way through the foyer, Titus said, ‘I’m under no illusions, Peter. You’re a detective on a case. What I don’t understand is why you need me to show you around the building.’

‘There’s a double incentive,’ Diamond said. ‘It’s a warren backstage. I’d soon be lost on my own. And I get a man-toman talk with you.’

‘Really?’ Titus pressed the combination on the digital lock and they passed into the red-carpeted corridor behind the royal circle.

Diamond’s nerve came under immediate test. The auditorium was visible through several entrances. He looked away, avoiding even a glimpse of the curtains. ‘Shall we start with that haunted dressing room you mentioned?’

‘We can’t go in. It’s in use,’ Titus said.

‘Who by?’

‘Gisella, the young woman who understudied Clarion.’

‘She gets the spooky room?’

‘It’s comfortable and close to the stage and I don’t suppose she knows about the manifestations,’ Titus said. ‘After the accident she was offered the number one and turned it down.’

‘Everyone was called for a meeting this morning, so she may be in,’ Diamond said, refusing to be put off. ‘She’ll invite us inside, won’t she? How well do you know her?’

‘We’ve spoken.’

‘Cordially, I hope?’

‘Of course. Unlike some I could mention, I’m not a prickly personality.’

‘Which way, then?’

They had reached the pass door to backstage. Titus worked the digital lock again.

‘Is there one combination for all the doors?’ Diamond asked.

‘No, they’re different. Newcomers are given a plastic card with the numbers. I long ago committed them to memory.’ He pushed the door open and they went through. ‘Dressing room eight is on the OP side. We have to cross behind the stage.’

A passing stagehand smiled at Titus and winked.

‘People are obviously used to seeing you here,’ Diamond said. ‘I expect they’d notice a stranger.’

‘You’re being a detective again,’ Titus said. ‘This is supposed to be a ghost hunt.’

‘A stranger could turn out to be a ghost.’

‘Or an evil person who maims famous pop singers. If you really want to know, it would be almost impossible for a stranger to pass through here unnoticed.’

‘They’d get lost as well.’

‘Very likely.’ In the passageway close to the stage, Titus stopped and pointed ahead. ‘Dressing rooms eight and nine, usually occupied by some of the principal actors, but not the leads.’

‘Let’s see if she’s in.’ Diamond knocked on number eight.

‘It’s open,’ a childish voice came from inside.

He raised a thumb at Titus and turned the handle.

‘Oh,’ Gisella said from her chair in front of the dressing table. ‘I thought you were the boy bringing more flowers.’ She was looking at them through everyone’s idea of a theatrical mirror, fringed with light bulbs. All they could see of her was the permed nineteen-thirties haircut above a slender, white neck. ‘If you’re press,’ she said, ‘it isn’t convenient now. I’ve done so many interviews already that I need a break.’

‘Now come on, Gisella,’ Titus said. ‘You know me, the dramaturge. And this is my friend Peter.’

‘I’m sorry, guys, but I don’t have time to socialise.’

‘That goes without saying,’ Titus said. ‘We’re only here to look at the room.’

This unflattering comment seemed to intrigue her. She swivelled in her chair to look at Diamond. ‘Peter who?’

He told her his name.

‘Are you an actor?’ Before he could answer she added, ‘Do you have a stage name?’

He realised what this was about. She thought he was being shown the room because he’d be using it when the next production got under way.

He was about to deny it, but Titus got in first. ‘One could easily mistake him for Timmy Spall. Is that who you’re thinking of?’

‘No.’

‘Kenny Branagh? Martin Shaw?’

‘I’m a policeman,’ Diamond said to get realistic. ‘Do you mind if I look round?’

Gisella was definitely surprised, but she had the wit to make a melodramatic gesture out of it, pressing a hand to her brow. ‘The police! I am undone.’

‘Don’t be like that,’ Titus said. ‘He’s a nice policeman.’

She said in a more serious voice, ‘If you think I had anything to do with Clarion’s accident, you’re mistaken. Just because I was understudying doesn’t mean I wished her any harm.’

‘Have you noticed how cool it is in here?’ Titus said with a look at Diamond heavy with significance. ‘Unnaturally cool, I mean.’

‘I haven’t complained,’ Gisella said. ‘I like it.’

‘It’s always cool, even in a heatwave,’ Titus said. ‘No one has ever explained why.’

More supernatural hokum, Diamond decided. Ghost-hunters were always going on about drops in temperature.

‘Do you see the handbag?’ Titus said.

‘Where?’ Diamond said, all attention.

‘Behind you on the wall.’

He swung around, and was disappointed. Framed in a glass case were a bag and a pair of gloves.

‘They belonged to one of the most exquisite beauties ever to grace the stage,’ Titus said. ‘Vivien Leigh. The room is named in her honour. I don’t think there’s any suggestion that she is the visitor here.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Gisella said. ‘She died at least forty years ago.’

‘Precisely.’ Titus gave Diamond another piercing glance.

The room’s spectral possibilities didn’t impress Diamond at all. He was more interested in Gisella’s unease at having a policeman in her room. ‘You said you wished Clarion no harm. Was she a friend?’

‘In the sense that we’re all in the same company,’ she said. ‘We got along well. Most people here are friendly, some over-friendly.’

‘A certain theatre director?’ Titus said.

She gave a shrug that seemed to answer the question.

‘He was with you when you spotted Denise’s body,’ Diamond said, wanting to hear her account.

‘Yes, I knew what was going on. He was cosying up to me on the strength of some nice reviews I’d got. Men of his sort aren’t subtle. He offered to show me the theatre mascot, that butterfly in the wings, and I could feel him pressing against me as I looked up. He was taking advantage for sure. The old, old story of a man thinking he has power over a woman.’

‘Has he tried it on since?’

‘Not yet, but I’m sure he will. I watched him trying to hit on Clarion last week when we were in rehearsal. She brushed him off like some ugly little insect. It creased me up.’

‘Did you know Clarion before you were picked for this play?’

‘I knew of her. Doesn’t everyone? But we’d never met.’

‘You must have met her in rehearsals.’

‘Sure. She shared all the director’s notes with me and showed me the moves, as you do with an understudy. And we practised lines together.’

‘Was she nervous?’

‘A bit. Well, a lot, actually, even though she wouldn’t admit it. You see, it was years since she’d done any acting. Our director, Sandy, kept telling her she was marvellous and heading for a huge success, but then he left us all to it after a far-from-smooth dress rehearsal and flew out to Hollywood.’

‘He couldn’t be bothered?’

‘I wasn’t going to say so, but yes.’

‘That was my impression, too,’ Titus said. ‘Sandy came with a reputation for looking after number one.’

‘You’re the beneficiary,’ Diamond said to Gisella. ‘You stepped up, grabbed the opportunity and got rave reviews. Just about everyone else came off worse: Clarion, Denise, the rest of the cast, looking forward to a long run, the management, facing a possible lawsuit.’

‘So I got lucky,’ she said with a defiant stare. ‘In this job, sweetie, you take whatever chance comes your way.’

There was a simmering resolve to this young woman. Four days had turned her from a bit-part actor into a leading lady

– with attitude. ‘Have you heard from Clarion since you took over?’ Dia

mond asked.

‘Clarion has bigger things to worry about than me.’

‘Why don’t you move to the number one dressing room?

It’s better than this.’

‘It was offered, but I still think of that as hers. This is perfectly serviceable.’

‘Cold,’ Titus said.

‘It’s not midwinter. I told you it doesn’t bother me.’

The reason didn’t ring true to Diamond. Here was a deeply ambitious actress turning down the star dressing room. Was there something about this less salubrious room she was reluctant to leave behind? It was furnished for two, with a second mirror and dressing table almost hidden behind enough bouquets and sprays to fill a florist’s.

He pointed. ‘Is there anything of yours in the drawers?’

‘Not those, no.’

‘Mind if I take a look?’

‘What for?’

He opened the top drawer and found it empty. So was the other. He crossed the room to inspect the hand basin. ‘Does this ever get blocked?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The plughole. Make-up. Hair and stuff.’

‘Not while I’ve been here.’

He opened the cupboard underneath. No caustic soda. Not so much as a dead butterfly. ‘We’ll leave you in peace, then. Are you performing tonight?’

‘Every night.’

‘Break a leg.’

In the corridor outside, Titus said, ‘Peter, that was a fearful old cliché, if I may say so.’

‘Break a leg? I thought it was what you say to actors instead of wishing them good luck.’

‘It went out with kitchen sink drama, about nineteen sixty.’

‘We’d better get through before I embarrass you some more. Something is puzzling me. This was dressing room eight. One, two and three are on the prompt side. What happened to four, five, six and seven?’

‘Upstairs on the prompt side. And ten and eleven are above us.’

‘Who uses them?’

‘In a small-cast play like I Am a Camera, scarcely anyone. There’s no need.’

‘Above us, you say. I haven’t been upstairs. Some of my team have.’

‘There isn’t much to see.’

‘But I’ll see it.’

They climbed the narrow staircase to dressing room ten, distinctly less glitzy than the ground-floor rooms. The mustiness testified that it hadn’t been used for some time. Titus informed him it was supposed to take up to four actors and was probably home to more when big-scale productions like musicals and pantomimes were put on. Diamond opened some cupboards and drawers and then asked if there were more rooms on this floor.

Titus shook his head. ‘It’s the only one this side. You don’t want to bother with eleven. It’s up another flight of stairs and hasn’t been used in weeks.’

‘Take me to it.’

‘No one has ever seen a ghost there.’

‘There’s a first time for everything.’

Dressing room eleven, when they got up there, short of breath, turned out to be a barn of a place, with nine mirrors and dressing tables, bare of anything else except chairs and a clothes rail. ‘Fit for the corps de ballet or the chorus,’ Titus said with disdain. ‘I don’t come up here.’

After a cursory check that included a glance into the WC and shower, Diamond had to admit that Titus had been right – any self-respecting theatre ghost would shun this one.

‘Down all those stairs again?’ Titus said in a superior tone when they stood in the passageway.

‘You said this was the only room?’

‘On this floor? Yes.’

He pointed across the passage. ‘What’s that, then? The cleaners’ store?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

Whatever the door was for, it needed redecoration.

Numerous scrapes and dents could well have been made by buckets and vacuum cleaners.

Diamond pushed the door open and got a shock. He was looking straight across the dark chasm that was the fly tower. This was the loading bridge, the same catwalk cluttered with counterweights that he’d reached previously by climbing vertically hand over fist from floor level. Why hadn’t he noticed the door then? Because after the white-knuckle experience scaling the ladder he’d given all his attention to Denise’s broken corpse.

‘Should have thought of this,’ he complained more to himself than Titus. ‘The scene shifters need to get access.’ He leaned over the metal railing and reminded himself what a long way down the floor was, but vertigo wasn’t his problem in this theatre. Already his mind was working on new scenarios. A major objection to his murder theory had been the difficulty of getting the body up to this level without assistance. Now he knew how it might have been done.

Equally – to be less fanciful – Denise could have used the back stairs herself in her suicide plan. As an experienced dresser, she would have known all about room eleven and the door across the passage.

‘Peter, I’m lost in admiration,’ Titus said from behind him. ‘I thought I knew this theatre like the back of my hand. I wouldn’t have looked behind that door unless you had.’

Diamond didn’t answer. He was still weighing the possibilities this had opened up.

Finally he turned away. ‘I’ll take another look at that dressing room.’

‘There was nothing in there,’ Titus said.

‘Nothing obvious.’

They returned to number eleven and its nine dressing tables and it still gave the impression of long disuse. Diamond stood in the centre with the air of a prospective buyer trying to visualise the place fully up and running. ‘Do the cleaners come in here most days?’

‘How should I know?’ Titus said, his voice piping in protest. ‘I’m not the caretaker.’

Diamond answered his own question. ‘Likely they wouldn’t when the room isn’t in use.’ He moved closer to the line of tables and crouched like a bowls referee judging a closely contested end.

‘Have you found something?’ Titus asked.

‘No.’

‘What are you doing, then?’

‘Looking at the table tops.’ He took two steps to his left and assumed the same position, eyes level with the surface.

Consumed with curiosity, Titus came closer and tried to ape Diamond’s stance. ‘There’s nothing I can see. Are you a sensitive?’

‘A what?’

‘Certain people have extra sensory perception.’

The man never let up. Diamond straightened up. ‘Be honest with me, Titus. Have you ever seen a ghost?’

‘Up to the present time, no. But I’m sensitive to emanations like the grey lady’s jasmine.’

So tempting to shoot him down in flames, but in a mysterious way Diamond didn’t care to dwell on, he had formed a liking for Titus. Back to reality. ‘I was right. The place hasn’t seen a duster for some time.’

‘It’s a dressing room, not an army hut.’

Unfazed, he moved on again to the next table, the last along that side. ‘When we came in just now we didn’t touch the tops of these, did we?’

‘I certainly didn’t,’ Titus said. ‘I watched you from the doorway. You looked into the shower room. You didn’t open any cupboards.’

‘Because there aren’t any,’ Diamond said. ‘It’s built for economy.’ He completed his examination of each of the surfaces on the facing side. Then he stood back. ‘What we have here are nine dusty tables and one over there’ – he pointed to the one farthest from the door – ‘has a distinct curved shape in the dust at the front edge. You’ve heard of fingerprints? That looks to me like a bum print.’