Stagestruck Read online

  She let that sink in before replying, ‘But what for, guv?’

  ‘To distract us. When a dead butterfly is found, so the legend goes, something bad is about to happen.’

  ‘Well, it had already. Clarion was in hospital.’

  ‘This is exactly what I’m getting at, Inge. This wasn’t about Clarion. I don’t think the butterfly was in the dressing room on Monday night. Someone would have noticed. People crowded in there to see if they could help. One of them would have spotted it on the window sill and created more hysteria.’

  ‘You’re saying it was put there later?’

  ‘It was Tuesday lunchtime when I was shown around by Titus O’Driscoll. The room wasn’t locked. Anyone could have gone in there late Monday night or Tuesday morning.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To stoke up superstition. At the time I saw the butterfly and you collected it, we were assuming Denise was still alive.’

  For a moment he thought she’d missed the point. Then she took a sharp breath. ‘The butterfly was supposed to be an omen predicting her death?’

  He nodded.

  She was staring at him. ‘Everyone is meant to think the butterfly curse has struck again – that she was doomed to kill herself.’

  She’d got it. But would she go the extra mile?

  ‘When in fact she didn’t,’ he said. ‘The person who left the butterfly in the number one dressing room murdered her.’

  She flicked her hair back from her face as if in denial. ‘That’s a whopping assumption, guv. It opens up all kinds of questions.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s hear them.’

  ‘Why would anyone want to kill Denise? She wasn’t unpopular, was she? From all I hear, she was difficult to dislike. And how would they do it? I’ve been backstage as you have, and seen the height of the fly tower. They’d have to persuade her to climb I don’t know how many sections of a vertical iron ladder and jump off. It’s all but impossible.’

  ‘Back to the drawing board, then,’ he said, not meaning it.

  The note of irony caused Ingeborg to reconsider. ‘There may be something in it, even so.’

  He watched her face.

  She nodded to give him a shred of credit. ‘If Denise was murdered – and I don’t believe for a moment that she was – it would suit her killer nicely to have everyone assuming she did it because of guilt over Clarion. Case closed. We don’t look at anyone else as a suspect. How convenient for this killer of yours.’

  ‘This hypothetical killer.’

  She smiled. ‘This impossible hypothetical killer.’

  ‘You’re sounding more and more like Fred Dawkins.’

  ‘It’s catching.’

  ‘It’s a peculiar thing,’ he said, ‘Dawkins talks a lot of rubbish but just now he made a remark that for one split-second gave me an idea, and then it was gone. I can’t remember what.’

  ‘He’s added some experience to the team,’ Ingeborg said. ‘He knows a lot about the theatre.’

  ‘And dance.’

  ‘Poetry.’

  ‘Self promotion.’

  She smiled. ‘But not what the well-dressed man is wearing. Maybe I should take him clothes shopping tomorrow.’

  ‘Good thought. I might view him differently as a smart dude.’

  She was enjoying this. ‘And we’ll give the clown suit to a charity shop.’

  ‘Safer to burn it. Are you serious?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Getting him some sensible gear.’

  ‘Well, he’s desperate to get out of the office. The only outings he gets are to the little boys’ room.’

  He snapped his fingers. ‘Got it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What Dawkins said. I asked him where you were and after rabbiting on about himself he said you may have gone to powder your nose. I had a mental picture of you in front of a mirror with an old-fashioned powder puff.’

  ‘And did that inspire you?’

  ‘It put a useful thought in my head. Well, it may be useful. Earlier I was trying to think of a way round one of the main puzzles in this case. How come Clarion wasn’t in pain until she got on stage, at least twenty minutes after she was made up?’

  ‘The pancake?’ she said.

  He frowned. ‘Come again.’

  ‘Theatrical make-up. They apply it thickly for the stage. In this case it acted as insulation. The caustic soda went on last and only began to work when she got under the lights and started to sweat.’

  ‘Twenty minutes is still too long,’ he said.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Caustic soda is highly active. I’ve got a book on toxicology here and it talks of absorbing the moisture from the air, even. I doubt if she’d have left the dressing room before it started destroying the tissue. But I think I know what happened, thanks to Fred Dawkins.’

  ‘And me supposedly powdering my nose?’

  ‘Right. The caustic soda wasn’t in the make-up Denise used in the dressing room. Before the actors go on, when they’re waiting in the wings, isn’t someone there to touch up the make-up to stop them shining under the lights?’

  She blinked in surprise.

  ‘Am I right?’ he said.

  Now she stared as if he’d performed the three-card trick. ‘You are, guv. I saw it going on last night when Keith and I were backstage. A young girl was there with a make-up brush.’

  ‘That’s when Clarion got it.’

  One mystery solved. To give credit where it was due, he’d had help, unwittingly, from Fred Dawkins. But he doubted if he’d tell the man.

  ‘Got anything planned for tonight?’ he asked Ingeborg.

  She gave a slow smile. ‘Depends. I was going to wash my hair.’

  ‘Because I’d like to see this young woman at work and I need – ’

  ‘A sidekick?’

  ‘A guardian angel.’ And he meant it. A visit to the theatre was a test of nerve. Talk about stage fright. He had his own form of it.

  After fortifying himself with a coffee he returned to the privacy of his office and phoned his sister in Liverpool, his only blood relative. Jean was three years older than he and they’d never been close. They each scribbled a short update on Christmas cards and that was their only communication these days. But after Steph’s death she had surprised him by travelling down for the funeral and he’d appreciated her presence there.

  He didn’t spend long over the small talk. A polite enquiry as to her husband’s health (‘Physically, he’s fine. No problems at all.’ Leaving open the matter of Reggie’s fragile mental state) and then he plunged in.

  ‘I’m going to test your memory if you don’t mind. You remember how I hated being taken to the theatre as a child?’

  ‘Do I just?’ Jean said. ‘It ruined a birthday treat for me, as Mum never stopped reminding us. You got over it eventually, I hope?’

  ‘Actually no. I’m better than I was, but I still get uneasy. I wouldn’t visit a show unless I’m really pushed into it. Just now I’m on a case involving theatre people and the same old problem is getting to me.’

  ‘But you’re a tough old cop. You see all sorts of horrible things in your job.’

  ‘This is different. It’s involuntary. I get the shakes each time I enter the theatre. It’s stupid. I’ve got to get over it. Something way back must have started me off, but I seem to have blanked it out. If I knew the cause, I could deal with it.’

  ‘You’re asking me?’ Jean said. ‘You didn’t discuss your peculiarities with me. You wanted me and everyone else to see you as a tough little tyke – and you were, believe me, except for this one chink in the armour. I don’t think Mum and Dad ever worked out why you were like that. In those days nobody bothered with counselling or child psychology.’

  ‘I was hoping you might throw some light.’

  ‘One thing I can tell you is that you weren’t born like it. When you were a little kid you really enjoyed all that stuff, strutting around on a stage. You were Jose
ph in the nativity play and you volunteered to help the conjurer in a magic show. It made me squirm with embarrassment. Proper little show-off, you were.’

  ‘Now you mention it, I remember. I would have been five or six, then.’

  ‘And you did some acting.’

  ‘Me? Get away!’

  ‘In that one-act play at Surbiton.’

  Another memory came back. His art teacher at junior school had recruited him for a costume piece about Richard

  III. He’d played one of the boy princes murdered by the king in the Tower of London. ‘You’re right, except I wouldn’t call it acting. All I had to do was pretend to die. Fancy you remembering that.’

  ‘It got up my nose, that’s why. Mum and Dad had booked that holiday in North Wales, a week on a farm to coincide with my eleventh birthday, and we were supposed to be leaving home on the Friday and driving through the night, but thanks to you and your play we lost two days and finally did the journey on the Sunday.’

  ‘And it rained. I remember that.’

  ‘Did it rain! Every day. The whole holiday was a washout. We didn’t even get much sleep through that cow making pathetic sounds all night because the farmer had separated it from its calf.’

  ‘That’s coming back to me now.’

  ‘And to cap it all, on the day of my birthday for a treat they took us to the Arcadia theatre at Llandudno to see a variety show and that was when you came over all peculiar and absolutely refused to stay in there. The show hadn’t even started. You were fighting with Dad to get out. We had to leave. Oh yes, that was a birthday to remember.’

  ‘I wasn’t allowed to forget it,’ he said. ‘I can only think something upsetting must have happened in the play the weekend before, but I can’t work out what. I remember it as a bit of a laugh. There were two of us. I wish I could recall the other boy’s name. What age would I have been at the time?’

  ‘Easy. It was my eleventh birthday, so you were eight.’

  ‘I wonder if the actor playing the king scared me. They were only amateurs.’

  ‘You wouldn’t know this, Pete, not having had kids of your own,’ she said, ‘but young boys of that age don’t show their fears. They have this shell of bravado or just plain cheek, but under it are all sorts of insecurities.’

  She’d touched a raw nerve, speaking of parenthood. ‘It doesn’t take a parent to know that,’ he said. ‘I was a boy myself.’

  ‘Why have you called me then, if you know it all?’

  ‘Calm down, big sister.’

  ‘I must admit it still irks me,’ Jean said. ‘Llandudno wasn’t the only place it happened.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Julius Caesar at the Old Vic when I was fifteen. I was in real trouble for ducking out of that.’

  ‘And some other shows we might have gone to as a family. It’s a shame, but there’s no point now in making an issue of it.’

  Even so, he’d heard the resentment coming down the phone. ‘We did get to one Christmas show.’

  ‘Treasure Island at the Mermaid Theatre with Bernard Miles as Long John Silver,’ Jean said at once.

  ‘Your memory is phenomenal.’

  ‘It was a rare treat. How did you get up the courage for that?’

  ‘The theatre hadn’t long been opened and we were taken on a tour as part of a school trip, so I knew what to expect, I suppose.’

  ‘We all wondered if you’d make a dash for the exit, but you were fine.’

  ‘I enjoyed it.’

  ‘You see? It’s all in the mind.’

  He didn’t need telling. ‘You’ve been helpful.’

  ‘Ring me again if you ever get to the bottom of this,’ she said. ‘I’m rather curious.’

  Rather curious? It’s not a crossword clue, he thought.

  The call to Jean had stirred some memories, but it made no difference to the mounting tension as he walked from his car to the theatre that evening. The only consolation was that he and Ingeborg were going backstage and not into the auditorium. A notice on the stage door said Autographs Wait Here Please and he would have been happy to do so… indefinitely. He swallowed hard and followed his assistant up the steps. The security man, Charlie Binns, gave Ingeborg’s warrant card a longer look than Diamond’s, and passed no comment. The eyes registered much, however, not least that he wouldn’t, after all, be gracing the Independent colour section this week or in the foreseeable future.

  Inge went first, moving confidently past the theatre notices, down more steps and across the fly floor, the area behind the scenery. Diamond, tense, but trying to appear as comfortable as she was, glanced upwards to make sure the body had been removed from the catwalk, and it had. On the prompt side, they stood in the shadows. The pre-show activity, crew members in black criss-crossing on various duties, brought home to him how many anonymous helpers were involved in the play, apart from the actors. He’d thought there would be a closed circle of suspects backstage. Quite some circle.

  Above them in a precarious cubbyhole reached only by ladder, the deputy stage manager was directing operations from a console. They heard him call the five minutes and then overture and beginners. Preston Barnes, the actor playing Isherwood, appeared from behind them and walked straight on stage, his eyes expressionless as if all his thoughts were turned inwards.

  ‘He’s there when the curtain goes up,’ Ingeborg said in a low voice to Diamond. ‘Now watch.’

  They edged forward for a view of the stage. Barnes had seated himself at the table downstage. And of crucial importance to the investigation, a young woman moved in to dust his face with a make-up brush.

  ‘Who is she?’ Diamond whispered.

  ‘Belinda. Straight out of drama school, I expect. This is how they get experience. This way now.’ Ingeborg tugged at his sleeve.

  ‘No. We must question her.’

  ‘Shortly. Trust me, guv.’ She steered him away and right around the back of the set to the OP side. Everything was dimly lit, even the stage.

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ someone said in a stage whisper that was more of an angry hiss. A large woman in a pinafore, black dress and carpet slippers wanted to pass them. She was carrying a lace tablecloth.

  ‘Fräulein Schneider,’ Ingeborg muttered to Diamond after they’d stepped aside.

  ‘Big star?’

  ‘Just big.’

  The make-up girl came off the stage and checked Schneider with a mere two flicks of the brush – as if to confirm that she was a minor player. Diamond noticed that the powder came in a black cylindrical box.

  Some accordion music was playing. ‘And curtain up,’ a low voice said through the tannoy.

  The mechanism whirred and the curtains parted and the stage came alight. For a moment no words were spoken. Preston Barnes as Christopher Isherwood was in the spotlight at the desk, writing.

  Rather than looking at the stage, Diamond had been watching the young make-up artist. He didn’t want her to vanish as suddenly as she’d arrived. Helpfully, two more actors, a man and a woman, both young, were ready to go on. She was attending to one of them with more than the token flicks of the brush.

  ‘Gisella,’ Ingeborg murmured. ‘Overnight star.’

  His first sight of the understudy, the fledging actress with a clear motive for ousting Clarion. Similar in figure, she was prettier, he thought, and didn’t look at all nervous. She’d been given generous reviews, the first big break of her career. How much would an ambitious young actor dare to do for stardom?

  Barnes spoke his first lines, reading back the words his character was supposed to have written, about Nazis rioting in the streets of Berlin. This opening speech gave some background on Isherwood’s attempt to scrape a living as a writer. He moved seamlessly into the ‘I am a camera’ line and was only interrupted by Fräulein Schneider’s knocking on the double doors.

  ‘Come in, Fräulein,’ Barnes said, and the big woman entered and started tidying in preparation for Sally Bowles and getting a few guarded laughs from the audie
nce as she spoke of her own love life and how sad it was that her bosom only grew large after the death of her partner, ‘a man for bosoms’.

  Diamond continued to watch Gisella in the wings. She was in a black silk dress with a small cape over it and patent leather high heels and was carrying a handbag. A page boy cap at a jaunty angle completed the look. She turned her head and their eyes met and Diamond was the first to look away. Under her gaze he felt reviled, like a Jew in Berlin in the thirties. Either she was in the role already or she wasn’t nice to know.

  He had to remind himself that he’d come to see the girl with the make-up brush now attending to the young male actor playing Fritz. But a problem was emerging. If each of the actors was given the last-minute touch-up from the same powder box, there was an obvious flaw in his theory.

  He was still brooding over this when sound effects rang a doorbell. The make-up girl stepped back and the actor playing Fritz approached the doors.

  From the wings, the flurry of action on the brilliantly lit stage was compelling. The business of the door being opened by Preston Barnes, Fritz entering with hat and cane and Fräulein Schneider coming out with an empty beer bottle, glass and plate, all within touching distance, absorbed Diamond. When he looked away, the make-up girl had gone.

  ‘Where’d she go?’ he asked Ingeborg.

  She, too, had been dazzled by all the action. ‘I’m not sure. Up the stairs, I think.’

  ‘That’s a guess, isn’t it?’

  She nodded, biting her lip. ‘Trust me,’ she’d said earlier. A mistake.

  ‘You go up. I’ll try round the back.’ The urgency of getting this right pushed his own disquiet out of court. He swung right, straight into an avalanche of hot flesh: Fräulein Schneider’s enfolding bosom.

  ‘Do you mind?’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t see you.’

  ‘A likely story.’

  An angry ‘Ssshhh’ came from behind them. Diamond backed off, jigged left and moved as fast as he could across the fly floor towards the prompt side. In the near darkness at the back of the scenery he thought he spotted the pale gleam of the young woman’s face on the far side, turning right. A shout might have halted her. It might also have halted the play. In his haste to follow, he tripped on a cable and just avoided falling face down. As it was, he staggered two or three steps to save his balance and somehow remained on his feet.