The Strangling on the Stage

EIGHTEEN

Because the character of Mrs Dudgeon only appeared in Act One of The Devil’s Disciple, Jude was not required for all the play’s rehearsals. But Carole, now indispensable as prompter, had to be there every time. And the following day, the Tuesday, was one of those for which her neighbour wasn’t called, so Carole drove to Smalting on her own.

Jude had told her about the phone calls from Inspector Tull and Gwenda Good. Though not much information had come out of the first one, Carole was intrigued by what Jude might find out when she visited Ritchie Good’s widow. She was also, not to put too fine a point on it, rather jealous. Now she was embedded in the Devil’s Disciple company as prompter, she wanted to be fully part of any investigating they managed to achieve there.

So she was determined to use her evening at St Mary’s Hall without Jude to good effect. To Davina’s annoyance, there was a poor turnout that evening, because of a gastric flu bug which was working its way through the Devil’s Disciple company. Still, Carole found the evening rather enjoyable. She managed to rap most of the surviving cast over the knuckles for paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw’s text, and when the cry of ‘Anyone for the Cricketers?’ went up, Carole conceded that she would join the throng.

She got a strange satisfaction from making that breakthrough on an evening when Jude wasn’t there. Next time they were both present, Carole could go to the pub after rehearsal as if she’d been doing it all her life.

Because of the driving, she had been intending to drink something soft. But when Davina Vere Smith said, ‘Let me buy you a drink. No prompter should have to work as hard as you had to this evening’, her resolve melted away. She asked for a small Chilean Chardonnay, and Davina bought her a large one.

Carole lingered on the periphery of a group in the centre of which Olly Pinto was doing his Ritchie Good ‘Life and Soul of the Party’ impression, until Neville Prideaux came and joined her. ‘Sorry, Carole, we haven’t really had a chance to have a proper chat, have we?’ he said.

She was glad to have the chance to talk to Neville, though she put herself on her guard. Jude had brought her up to date with everything she knew about the retired teacher, so Carole was wary of appearing to know too much.

‘You were certainly kept busy today,’ Neville went on.

‘I suppose that’s the prompter’s role.’

‘To be busy? Yes. But not that busy.’

‘Well, I didn’t have to prompt you once.’

‘No,’ he responded rather smugly. ‘I felt, since I’m the one who suggested the play, I have to set an example as General Burgoyne.’ A complacent smile, then: ‘Olly was absolutely hopeless this afternoon, wasn’t he?’

‘Hopeless on the lines, do you mean, or as an actor?’

‘Let’s just stick to the lines for the moment, shall we? He was all over the place. You were having to prompt him on virtually every speech.’

‘Yes, but of course he has taken the part over at very short notice.’ Carole was not just being defensive for the young man; she had spotted an opportunity to steer the conversation back to Ritchie Good’s death.

‘He’s had a couple of weeks. He ought to be more advanced than he is. Olly’s always been a bit iffy on lines. I directed him as Algy in The Importance, when Elizaveta gave her Lady Bracknell. Oscar Wilde’s lines are so beautifully written, you wouldn’t think anyone could cock them up. Well, Olly Pinto managed it. He was paraphrasing everything. He’s actually not a very good actor either.’

Neville spoke as if sounding the death knell on Olly Pinto’s theatrical career.

‘Then why does he get big parts in the SADOS?’

‘Oh, a couple of reasons. One, the eternal problem of all amateur dramatic societies: not enough men. The gender imbalance is so skewed that a young man with a very small talent can go a long way. And someone with a bit more talent – even a glib, meretricious talent like that possessed by Ritchie Good – can cherry-pick any part he wants.’ Even though his rival was no longer on the scene, Neville Prideaux still spoke of Ritchie with considerable venom.

‘You said there were two reasons why Olly got good parts …’

‘Oh, yes. Well, the other one, of course, is because he’s a creature. And I use the word in the Shakespearean sense of someone created by a more powerful person to whom they are totally subservient.’

‘So who fits that role for Olly Pinto?’

‘Elizaveta, of course. Elizaveta Dalrymple, undisputed queen of SADOS.’

‘I gathered that her right to that title had been disputed.’

‘What do you mean, Carole? Oh, that business of her walking out of this production. That won’t be forever, I can guarantee you that. SADOS is far too precious to Elizaveta for her really to cut her ties with it.’

‘But with regard to Olly, you’re saying he owes his success in the society to Elizaveta backing him?’

‘Exactly. As I said, he’s her creature.’

‘Or poodle?’

‘“Creature”’s better,’ said Neville definitively. Carole got the feeling that anything he thought of would always be better than anything anyone else thought of. That was why he’d so enjoyed being a schoolteacher, pontificating to small boys who never dared to question his opinions.

‘Oh yes,’ he went on, ‘Olly is very much Elizaveta’s creature. Part of the inner circle who spend all their time going for “drinkies” round at her place. She’s got a nice house on the seafront at Smalting, and I gather she’s been having these little parties for years. She used to co-host them with Freddie and didn’t let his death stop her.’

‘When did he die, actually?’

‘Oh, I suppose about three years ago.’

‘What of?’

‘Heart attack, I think it was. He had a flat in Worthing where he used to “prepare his productions”. He was found there, I believe. Still, he left Elizaveta very well provided for.’

‘Oh?’

‘Freddie made a lot of money. That’s why he could afford an expensive hobby like SADOS.’

‘Doing what?’

‘You mean how did he make his money? He was a pensions consultant.’ Neville loaded the words with contempt. ‘Nothing even mildly to do with the arts.’ Strange, Carole reflected, how Neville seemed to recognize a hierarchy amongst day jobs. To her mind being a schoolteacher wasn’t that much more interesting than being a pensions consultant, but to Neville there was evidently a big difference.

‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘Freddie had sorted out his own pension provisions very carefully indeed. Elizaveta is extremely well-heeled.’ He spoke with a degree of resentment. ‘It’s why she can always afford to be giving her “drinkies things”.’

‘I’ve heard about those, but I don’t know much detail.’

‘Oh, they’re part of her power base, those “drinkies” parties. Elizaveta has a level of deviousness in her that makes Machiavelli look like a rank amateur. She’s always been one of those manipulators who likes to “colonize” people. If you’re not for me, you’re against me, that’s her approach to life.’

‘Have you ever been to one of her “drinkies things”?’

‘Good Lord, no. I can’t be bought by a free glass of champagne.’ The statement, intended to sound rather magnificent, succeeded in sounding petty.

‘But if Olly Pinto is part of this charmed inner circle, then why didn’t he join in Elizaveta’s boycott of the production?’

‘Interesting point, Carole. I wondered that a bit myself. Then I decided it was for one of two reasons.’ He clearly liked dividing things into numbered sections, another schoolmasterly trait perhaps. ‘Either it was just sheer greed. He saw a socking great part being offered to him, and he thought, “Yes, I’m going to grab that.”

‘The other possibility – and I think the one I favour – is that Elizaveta encouraged him to take the part.’

‘Why would she do that?’

‘Because she knows he’s not a very good actor. I think what she hoped for first didn’t happen – that her walkout would stop the production stone dead in its tracks. Elizaveta’s not used to playing small parts, you see. Most productions she’s been in for SADOS, if she’d walked out, it really would have been the end. She didn’t realize how easy it would be to find another Mrs Dudgeon.’

‘I’m sure Jude would be very flattered to hear you say that,’ Carole observed drily.

‘Sorry, that didn’t come out right.’ He was quick to come back with a smooth response. ‘I mean how easy it would be to find another and vastly superior Mrs Dudgeon.’

‘Ha-ha. But, Neville, are you saying Elizaveta encouraged Olly to take the part of Dick Dudgeon because she thought he would ruin the production?’

‘I wouldn’t put it past her. Another reason she might have done it is so that she has a spy in the enemy camp.’

‘So that he reports back to her everything that happens during rehearsals for The Devil’s Disciple?’

‘Once again, I wouldn’t put it past her. Elizaveta Dalrymple is a woman of remarkable deviousness. She deeply loathed Ritchie Good for what he said to her about her past – particularly because he did it so publicly. She’d want to get her own back.’

‘Enough to arrange his hanging?’ asked Carole, making the question sound more frivolous than it was.

‘Ah. Do I detect I’m with that contingent of the Devil’s Disciple company who believes we have a murder on our hands?’

‘I’d never rule out any possibility.’

‘Hm.’

‘Do I gather, Neville, that you do rule out that possibility?’

‘I think an accident is the more likely scenario. As to murder …’ He acted as though he were contemplating the possibility for the first time. ‘Well, if it was, we wouldn’t lack for suspects, would we? Was there anyone in SADOS whose back Ritchie Good hadn’t put up?’

‘I don’t really know,’ Carole lied. Jude had kept her up to date with everything. ‘I haven’t been with the group for long.’

‘No, of course not. Well, someone with an ego the size of Ritchie’s doesn’t really notice whose sensibilities he’s trampling over. I mean, did you hear what he said to cause the big bust-up with Elizaveta?’

‘Yes, I got reports of that from Jude.’

‘Ah, your pretty friend, yes.’ He said this as though he were a great connoisseur of the feminine gender, and Carole felt an atavistic pang from her childhood, the inescapable fact that she would never be known as ‘the pretty one’.

Putting such thoughts firmly to one side, she asked, ‘And did Ritchie insult you in the same kind of way?’

‘No, he laid off me pretty much.’ The smug smile re-appeared. ‘He recognized that I was a lot more intelligent than he was. And at least as good an actor. So he tended to avoid direct confrontation with me.’

‘There was no rivalry between you?’

‘Good Lord, no. Well, certainly not on my side. I had no reason to be jealous of Ritchie. I suppose he might well have been jealous of me, though.’ Again it seemed that this monstrously egotistical thought was a new one to him. ‘Yes, he probably was jealous of me.’

‘I wondered if there was ever any rivalry between you over women …?’

‘Women?’

‘Women in the company.’

‘How do you mean?’ He spoke innocently, but there was a kind of roguishness in his manner too.

‘I just wondered whether there might have been any conflict between the two of you over some woman you both fancied …?’

‘Unlikely.’

‘I mean, Ritchie Good apparently had a habit of coming on to every woman he met. He even came on to me,’ confided Carole, blushing slightly.

‘I don’t think that meant much with him. Just a knee-jerk reaction,’ said Neville, unaware of how offensive his remark might be. ‘Ritchie was all mouth and no trousers. Glib with the chat, but he didn’t follow through.’

‘Unlike you …?’ Carole suggested rather boldly.

Neville Prideaux smiled a wolfish smile. ‘I generally get what I want. And besides, Ritchie was in a different position from me. He was married.’

‘And you are not?’

A thin smile answered the question. ‘I got divorced when I retired. A wife who is excellent as a house mistress at a boy’s public school did not fulfil the requirements I had for the rest of my life. Now I am more of an emotional freelance.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I am not looking for anything long term in a relationship. As long as it’s still fun, I will keep on with it. Once it ceases to be fun, I end it.’

Carole found that Neville Prideaux’s charm was diminishing by the minute. Otherwise she might not have pushed ahead with her next line of questioning. ‘I heard someone chatting at rehearsals and saying that you’d had a fling with my predecessor …’

‘Sorry?’

‘Hester Winstone.’

‘Huh.’ He looked displeased. ‘You can’t have any secrets with this lot.’ Then he looked defiantly at Carole. ‘So what if I did? We’re both grown-ups.’

‘But I’d heard that Ritchie Good came on to her too.’

‘I thought we’d already established that Ritchie came on to anything in a skirt. Why, are you suggesting that Ritchie and I were rivals for Hester’s affections, and I murdered him so I could have uncontested access to her?’

This was so close to what Carole had actually been thinking that she had some difficulty making her denial sound convincing.

‘Well, I can assure you that wasn’t the case. Hester and I shared one night of what could hardly be described as bliss and decided mutually that ours was not going to be la grande affaire.’

‘Mutually?’

‘I decided and told her. She didn’t complain. Hester’s a very unstable woman.’

Carole didn’t disagree. Nor did she think it was the moment to ask Neville whether he thought his behaviour might have contributed to her instability.

‘So,’ he went on, ‘if you’re looking for someone who might have murdered Ritchie, I’m afraid you’re very much barking up the wrong tree with me.’

‘And who do you think might be the right tree?’ No harm in asking.

‘Well, I actually think you’re stuck in a whole forest full of wrong trees. Because I firmly believe that Ritchie’s death was an accident. That probably Gordon Blaine was playing about with his precious mechanism and left the wrong noose in place. But, if I were going to waste my time playing amateur detectives … I think the question I would ask is: Who has benefited from his death? Who is more relaxed, as if with his decease a huge weight has been lifted off their shoulders?’

‘And what would your answer be?’

‘Davina Vere Smith.’