The Strangling on the Stage

TWENTY-TWO

‘You mean,’ asked Jude, ‘you feel under pressure to keep up with those standards?’

‘I suppose so, yes. Mike likes things done a certain way. Not unreasonably,’ she hastened to add, lest her words might sound like criticism. ‘But he and the boys, well … they’re a lot more efficient and organized about things than I am.’

Her words confirmed the impression of the Winstones’ marriage that had been forming for some time in Jude’s mind: Hester cast in the role of the slightly daffy woman in a chauvinist household of practical men, her fragile confidence being worn away by the constant drip-drip of implied criticism. But again Jude didn’t say anything about that.

‘You once told me that you joined the SADOS because you had time on your hands.’

‘Yes, well, with the boys both boarding at Charterhouse, there was so much less ferrying around to be done. I seem to have spent most of the last twelve years driving them somewhere or other, so yes, it did feel as if I had time on my hands.’

‘And also it was doing something for you, rather than for somebody else,’ Jude observed shrewdly.

‘I suppose that was part of the attraction.’

‘And was Mike positively against the idea?’

‘No, he wouldn’t come out strongly against something like that. Not his style. But he’d sort of dismiss it as something silly that women do.’

And so the process of undermining would continue.

Jude wondered whether she should ask whether Hester minded the kind of gentle interrogation she was undergoing, but thought that might be unwise. The healing had created an intimacy between the two women that was too precious to break.

‘And helping out with front of house on the pantomime was the first thing you’d done for SADOS?’

‘Yes. I got in touch when Mike went off to New Zealand. In a rather pathetic fit of pique, I suppose.’

‘Sounds to me like a fairly justifiable fit of pique.’

‘I don’t know about that. Anyway, I said I’d help out with the panto.’

‘Did you actually become a member of SADOS?’

‘You bet. I had Mimi Lassiter on to me straight away, demanding a subscription. She’s like a terrier about ensuring everyone in SADOS is fully paid up. I think she regards it as her mission in life.’

Jude smiled. ‘And it was then that you met Ritchie Good …?’ She spoke the name gently, worried that it might once again set off the hysterics.

But Hester was calmer this time. The healing had done its work. ‘Yes,’ she replied.

‘And you got the full chat-up routine from him?’ She nodded. ‘And were flattered by the attention?’ Another slightly shamefaced nod. ‘How far did he go?’

‘What, in terms of what he wanted us to do?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, he …’ This was embarrassing too. ‘He sort of implied he wanted us to go to bed together.’

‘And were you shocked by that, or what?’

‘Well, I was … I don’t know. I suppose I was attracted by the idea … a bit. I mean, I was in a strange state, sort of vulnerable and … And then Mike had just gone off to New Zealand – virtually without saying goodbye to me and … I don’t know,’ she said again.

‘And when Ritchie had virtually got you to agree to go to bed with him, he then went cold on the idea, saying that he couldn’t cheat on his wife?’

Hester Winstone’s eyes widened. ‘Jude, how on earth do you know that? You weren’t there in the Cricketers, were you?’

‘No. Let’s just say there seems to be a pattern in Ritchie Good’s chatting-up technique.’

‘Oh.’ Hester still looked bewildered.

‘And I dare say that left you feeling pretty bad?’

‘Well, yes. I mean, the fact that I’d even gone along with the idea, that I’d even contemplated betraying Mike, it was … It made me feel even worse about myself. It made me feel stupid and unattractive.’

‘And weak when Neville Prideaux came on to you?’

‘Yes.’ Hester looked vague again. ‘I told you about that, did I?’ Jude nodded. ‘Yes, Neville was much more practical about the whole business than Ritchie.’

‘He really wanted you to succumb to his charms?’

‘Mm.’ She spoke with slight distaste. ‘Though I don’t know whether it was me he wanted, or just a woman. A conquest.’

‘But you allowed him to … conquer you?’

A quick nod. ‘Really, once I’d agreed to let him in … well, he seemed to take it for granted that I’d agreed to everything else. And he kept saying he’d really fallen for me, and that I was beautiful and … I suppose I behaved like a classic inexperienced teenager.’

‘And Neville behaved like a classic experienced seducer?’

‘Yes. I felt terrible afterwards. I mean, while I could convince myself there was some love involved, well, it was … sort of all right. But when it had happened, and I realized he’d just taken advantage of me, and I’d done God knows how much harm to my marriage and … Neville didn’t want to see me again. He didn’t want to have any more to do with me, and at the read-through for The Devil’s Disciple he behaved like nothing had happened between us.’

‘And that’s what made you feel so miserable that, in the car park, you took the nail scissors out of your bag and …?’

Hester nodded again. She looked very crumpled, very downcast. Jude let the silence last. Then she said, ‘Can we talk now about the Sunday rehearsal when Gordon Blaine and Ritchie Good demonstrated the gallows?’

A shudder ran through the woman’s body. ‘That … I don’t … That was what pushed me over the edge. I can’t talk about it.’

‘Don’t you think talking about it might help?’

‘No, it could only make things worse.’

‘You must have talked to the police about it, Hester.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘The fact that they released you.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘When I saw you that afternoon, you said that it was your fault, that you were the reason he was dead. By the way, I didn’t tell the police you’d said that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because, heard by the wrong people, it could sound as though you were confessing to having killed him.’

‘What do you mean by “the wrong people”?’

‘I mean people who thought Ritchie had been murdered, And, at least at first, the police must be included in that number. But you must have told them something which stopped them being suspicious of you, something that let you off the hook.’

‘Yes, I suppose I did.’

‘Are you happy to tell me what you told the police?’

There was a long silence. Then Hester said, ‘I’ve tried to blank it out of my mind.’

‘I’m sure you have.’

‘I don’t like going back there.’

‘But you must know that your mind’s going to have to come to terms with it at some point.’

‘Mm.’

‘And I think you’ll feel better when you face it, face what actually happened.’

‘Maybe.’ But she didn’t sound convinced.

Jude waited. She sensed that to push further at this point might break the confidential atmosphere between them.

The silence became threateningly long. Jude was just reconciling herself to having reached the end of any revelations she was going to get, when Hester said, in a thin, distracted voice, ‘What I said to you was true. I was the reason why Ritchie was dead.’

‘In what way?’

‘If I hadn’t been there, he still would have been alive.’ Jude didn’t prompt, just waited. ‘I wasn’t in the hall when Gordon and Ritchie did their demonstration of the gallows for everyone. I’d gone to the loo. I was finding it increasingly awkward just hanging out with people during rehearsals. Because of Neville. He seemed so cold and unaffected by what had happened between us … and also by then he seemed to be coming on to Janie Trotman. It was painful for me. So, as soon as the rehearsals finished, I tended to rush off to the loo, to avoid socializing. And I stopped going on to the Cricketers.

‘But that Sunday afternoon I stayed in the loo until I thought everyone would have gone, but when I came out I found Ritchie was still there in the hall. And I was, kind of, a bit awkward with him – not as bad as with Neville – but not relaxed, anyway.

‘He asked me what I’d thought of his escaping death by inches on the gallows. I had to confess that I hadn’t seen the demonstration, and so he insisted that I must have a private showing of it. Ritchie was just a show-off, really. Like a little boy who won’t allow anyone to miss the new conjuring trick he’s just learnt.

‘I thought it was a bit silly, but it couldn’t do any harm to humour him. So Ritchie got himself up on stage and climbed on to the wooden cart underneath the gallows. And he put the noose round his neck – and told me to pull the cart away.

‘He was being all silly and melodramatic, saying, “You can be the one, Hester! You can be the person who sends me to my death!” But I’m sure he didn’t mean it, he was just joking, just playing the scene for all it was worth, “showing off” again, I suppose I mean.

‘So, anyway, I did as he told me to – I pulled away the cart. And there was quite a thump as he fell and the noose tightened around his neck. He was kicking out and gasping – and I thought that was just Ritchie playing up the drama and about to free himself. And his hands were up at his neck, trying to get a purchase on the rope, but it was too tight.

‘Then finally I realized he wasn’t play-acting, that he was being strangled for real. And I put the cart back and tried to get his feet on to it, but they were just hanging loose, with no strength in them. And I got up on the cart and tried to loosen the noose around his neck. But I couldn’t, it was too tight.

‘And then I realized that Ritchie was dead.’