Of course, Alistair had no idea.
‘“I’m sad about the baby but you know me. I follow the money.” Follow the money. I watched the bastard join the woman calling herself his wife in the back of a motor car, driver at the wheel. A Rolls Royce, colour of blood.’
Alistair offered no comment, except to add, ‘He abandoned his wife in turn, a few years later.’
Billy had spat in disgust. ‘I never understood why Eva took him back or why Wilton Bovary gave him more work . . . until I met Mrs Kingcourt. You know as well as I, she’s not Johnny Quinnell’s girl.
Alistair had walked away then to find Vanessa, his mind turning over Billy’s revelations. If Ruth Quinnell had fetched Johnny back home, the blood-red Rolls Royce had to be Lord Stanshurst’s. How else would Ruth have got the use of such a car? And if Vanessa was neither Johnny nor Ruth’s child, then Lord Stanshurst had to have had some role in the business.
In the flat, Alistair made food, insisting that Vanessa eat, but the steamed carrots and tinned ham he put in front of her was too much. She said, ‘I feel I don’t really exist. I died at birth, and was buried.’
‘No, you weren’t. Another child was.’
‘I’ve had a life-long nightmare about being buried alive. Now I know why!’
‘You exist. I’ll prove it.’ Taking her to the lounge, he turned the fire to its highest setting and pulled cushions from the sofa to make a nest on the floor. He made her lie down with him and unbuttoned her blouse and her waistband, then slowly peeled her clothes off. When she was down to her underwear, he took off his own clothes.
When their flesh met he proved to her that she was as alive as he was. Stroking her hair from her forehead, he told her that her brow was white and smooth as a letter unwritten. Her eyes potent as the last inch of whisky in a glass. Her brows jinked in the middle, asking perpetual questions. Her mouth – with his tongue he traced its shape – turned up each side like a double-ended canoe. Except when she was angry, when it went the other way. ‘Capsized.’
Her eyelids fluttered. Reluctantly, she smiled. ‘You want me to grin like the Cheshire cat? Didn’t he disappear, leaving only his teeth shining in the air?’
‘You aren’t disappearing, Vanessa. If anything, you’re growing more vibrant by the day.’
Entering Vanessa now, as hard as he’d been at eighteen, but with the control and patience of a man in his thirties, he briefly pitied the Alistair who’d pushed her away. As her lips raided his mouth, his throat, demanding more from him, the hurt, confused girl changed into the arrow-straight woman who knew how to please herself and her man.
She slept afterwards, and he laid a rug over her. He needed to retrieve Macduff from Doyle’s patient care.
In the comfortable chair in his niche, Doyle snoozed. Macduff snoozed. As it was Sunday, the theatre itself dozed. Outside, the temperature was dropping. A dense fog was taking hold.
Macduff growled.
‘Easy boy,’ Doyle mumbled. ‘There ain’t nobody here but us chickens.’
But Macduff kept growling and Doyle, imbued with naval discipline, eventually went to see why. In the pitch-black auditorium, he heard whispering high above and the blood shunted in his veins. He wasn’t superstitious, but he wasn’t deaf either. He hurried back to his office and telephoned Alistair.
‘Something mighty odd is going on here, Sir. Reinforcements would be appreciated.’
Chapter 33
Fog bore down between the buildings. Alistair would have preferred to drive himself and Vanessa to The Farren, but in the slippery dark it was safer to walk.
At the stage door, they were greeted by Macduff and Doyle who looked relieved to see them. ‘Something’s creeping around in the upper circle.’
‘You’re on duty all night?’ Alistair asked, then remembered that Kidd’s bronchitis, having abated earlier in the week, had made a crippling return. Doyle was holding the fort day and night. ‘We’d better hire you a helper. Wait, Vanessa.’
She’d stridden ahead, with Macduff. ‘Follow me,’ Alistair told Doyle grimly. ‘Let’s find out what’s disturbing the peace.’
Vanessa hadn’t turned on the auditorium lights, and Alistair shone his torch up at the chandeliers whose sparkling tiers made him think of starlit nights at sea. He raced the beam as far as the upper circle rail and captured a movement. Macduff growled, sensing his master’s rising tension. Doyle was right. There was something up there.
Vanessa came to stand by him. ‘I’d rather ghosts than rats.’
‘You can stay behind if you wish.’
‘Not on your life!’
They took the lift to the management corridor, then up to the topmost landing. They listened at the door to the upper circle, unwilling to acknowledge that the supposedly empty space beyond was pregnant with whispers. The dog had no doubts. As Alistair pulled open the door, Macduff flew past. He grabbed the dog’s collar while his torch beam revealed, as well as the usual raked seats, a table laid with glass tumblers, four chairs around it. And white faces above black bodies, a slash of scarlet, a gold brooch, the fleshy gleam of hands. Alistair instantly knew Miss Bovary by her mushroom-stem throat. It took him a moment to recognise Sylvia Rolf behind a veil.
Employing all the strength of one hand, Alistair held Macduff who was straining on his hind legs. His torch beam jerked, showing two males cowering like cornered quarry. In a flash of understanding, he shouted, ‘The dog will pin you down unless you take off that cloak, Edwin,’
Edwin broke the ties at the neck and hurled the garment. Alistair caught it. Macduff fought him for it, though the moment Alistair let him have it, he subsided. Alistair summed up the scene. Absorbed the furtive atmosphere. ‘Were you conducting a séance?’
Miss Bovary spoke. ‘What if we were? We disturb no one. Bursting in when one of our number is in a trance-state is highly irresponsible.’
‘I beg your pardon. Who were you trying to reach? Flo? Elizabeth Farren?’
‘Our brother.’ Sylvia Rolf’s defiance shivered. ‘He is close.’
‘What’s your game, Redenhall?’ Edwin Bovary demanded.
‘Same as yours. To bring the dead back to life, only I won’t rely on ectoplasm and etheric vibrations.’ He’d been holding back too long, Alistair acknowledged, to spare one person’s feelings. He agreed with Billy Chalker that Vanessa was not Johnny Quinnell’s daughter and this was as good a time as any to let the truth fly.
He ordered them all down to his office, the pitch of his voice eradicating argument. On the stairs, he asked Doyle to fetch Chalker from Wild Street.
‘Why him, sir?’
‘I have my reasons. Bring him to the wardroom. No, leave the dog with us.’
In his office, Alistair checked the dog’s water bowl, put a match to the ready-laid fire and unlocked the top drawer of his desk, removing a typed document.
‘What are you up to, darling?’ Vanessa asked nervously.
‘Did you know, the last time Chalker played the role of a manservant, it was here, in The Importance of Being Earnest? He was Bo’s understudy.’
‘He was here the night Bo and Dad died?’
‘Undoubtedly. Billy wasn’t a part of The Farren the way Eva was, but he appeared here in a dozen plays.’
‘Perhaps he’ll tell me what happened after Dad and I separated outside the White Hart.’ Vanessa flung the cloak, which she’d prised off Macduff, around her shoulders. ‘Bitter, it was that night. “The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold”.’
‘Vanessa –’
A harsh cry from the doorway cut Alistair off. Miss Bovary stormed in and dragged the cloak off Vanessa’s shoulders. ‘You have no right to touch that!’ Macduff showed his teeth, but Miss Bovary raged back at him, ‘If you were my dog, you’d know some discipline.’
Alistair took the cloak and draped it over the desk where its vivid lining reflected firelight.
Sylvia and Terence Rolf arrived. She looked unwell, her colour high. Alistair invited th
em to sit, then asked if Edwin were joining them.
‘He’s stepped down to the green room for a sherry.’ Terence Rolf made a show of helping his wife to sit down. ‘You bursting in on our gathering may have caused irreparable damage.’
When Edwin eventually joined them, he sank weakly on to a chair though his eyes were bright and alert. Meanwhile, Alistair extended his hand to Miss Bovary. ‘Your keys, Barbara.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I want them. You’ve exceeded your rights in this place.’
‘By conducting an innocent séance?’
‘By diverting Farren money. When Eva St Clair died last August, instead of stopping her pension payments, you instructed the bank to pay them into your brother-in-law’s account. It’s theft.’
‘It’s legitimate expenses.’
‘A chat with my accountant will confirm that. I have his home number.’
With a hiss, Barbara Bovary threw her keys at Alistair’s feet.
Sylvia Rolf asked plaintively, ‘Why is Mrs Kingcourt involved in this meeting. It is a meeting, I suppose?’ She’d kept on her coat, and sitting nearest the fire, she sweated.
‘Our Wardrobe Mistress is the reason for our gathering.’ Alistair picked up the typed document. It was the coroner’s report into Bo’s death, which had lain in his desk since he took up the reins at The Farren. He’d asked for a copy before his godfather’s funeral and had studied it on the train journey to Brookwood, at the time unwilling to accept that his beloved friend had collapsed without pre-warning. In the end, he’d found nothing to contradict the medical opinion that Wilton Bovary had suffered a heart attack, brought on by the freezing temperatures of the night. He still questioned the co-incidence of Bo and Johnny dying in unison, however. Gut instinct said that the deaths were linked and he feared he was looking at the link.
Vanessa.
‘You aren’t planning to re-run the inquest?’ Edwin demanded. ‘This is distressing to my mother and aunt.’
‘Alistair likes tying up loose ends.’ Vanessa was frowning at her key, stroking its ribbon.
‘There are no loose ends,’ Terence Rolf said sharply. ‘A coroner’s inquest is a final verdict.’
Alistair suggested they go back in time to the 9th of February, 1945, the night tragedy had struck. The Importance of Being Earnest had been running for three weeks to good houses. ‘On Friday the 9th, curtain-up was at seven-thirty, yes?’
He repeated the question until he got a response – from Miss Bovary as the others were scowling at the floor. Curtain-up was always seven-thirty, she said, and by ten o’clock, the play was over. ‘Actors in their dressing rooms, removing their makeup.’
‘And by eleven, the safety iron was down, stage lights off, the theatre all but deserted,’ Alistair concluded. ‘Then what?’
‘I cashed up,’ Miss Bovary answered impatiently. ‘Every night the same.’
‘You collected takings from the box office and bar, counted and bagged them while Bo took Macduff out to stretch his legs.’
‘You appear to know the routine remarkably well, Commander.’
‘A routine night, yet dawn rose on two corpses.’
‘Two?’ Mrs Rolf demanded.
‘The fellow the doorman was forced to eject,’ her husband reminded her. ‘Quinnell, remember him? He died from alcohol poisoning in his digs.’ Terence Rolf addressed Alistair. ‘After the show, Quinnell took root in the green room until everyone had had enough of him. I was sorry for the man, sorry for how it ended, but what can you expect when a depressive type steals a bottle of best Haig whisky from the cabinet to drink alone?’
‘Quinnell invariably lived down to expectations,’ Miss Bovary agreed, ‘and I never could fathom Bo’s soft spot for him. Unreliable, adulterous with our wardrobe woman.’ She sent Vanessa a pointed glance.
‘He and I were due to meet.’ Vanessa got to her feet. She was within a hair’s breadth of quitting the room, Alistair could see. ‘We hadn’t seen each other for twenty years. I was sick with nerves, and he’d have been in a state too.’
Miss Bovary sniffed contemptuously. ‘No backbone.’
Alistair intervened. ‘Johnny wasn’t so drunk or depressed in the hours before he died that he couldn’t write to Vanessa.’ They’d come across the beginnings of a letter the day she moved out of the room on Long Acre. Alistair was relieved to see Vanessa sit down again. Evidently, she meant hear this out. He continued, ‘What drove Johnny Quinnell? What lay behind his ties to Wilton Bovary? You could hardly meet two men less alike, yet whenever Johnny needed a part in a play, he only had to knock at Bo’s door. Why?’
‘It wasn’t his towering talent, for sure.’
It was Billy Chalker, declaiming from the doorway, Doyle behind him. Chalker wore a thick overcoat and muffler and to Alistair’s eye, he seemed a mite unsteady but perhaps that was down to being brought out on a foggy Sunday night.
Pausing beside Vanessa, Chalker said, ‘I wish I could spare your feelings, Mrs Kingcourt, but Johnny was a ham actor. A hearty ladle-full from the stock pot who got better parts than he deserved. But whereas Miss Bovary flounders in confusion, I know precisely what Bo had on Johnny, and what Johnny had on Bo.’
‘Keep it to yourself.’ Alistair asked Doyle to fetch another chair. When Chalker was seated, he said, ‘You never mentioned, Billy, that you were here the night Bo and Quinnell died.’
‘You never asked and I admit, I’m not proud that I was forced to understudy in order to pay my rent.’
Vanessa burst out, ‘They’re saying my Dad was drunk when he arrived at the theatre, but I know he wasn’t.’
Chalker removed his muffler and angled himself to face to Vanessa. ‘Have I ever said he was? I loathed the man but I won’t deny, Johnny was sober when he came and sober when he left.’
‘That’s what Miss Eddrich said!’
Chalker reached across and patted her hand. ‘After news of his death reached us, a story emerged of him drinking himself to the floor in self-destructive frenzy. But that entirely misses the point of Johnny Quinnell. He was destructive to others, but loved himself too well to ever jeopardise his own life. Yes, yes, Terence, go on, glare at me,’ Chalker said wearily. ‘I’m not so grateful for a spit-and-a-cough part that I’ll perjure myself. Sack me, and I’ll go back north and be Widow Twankey for the rest of the season.’
Barbara Bovary said through clenched teeth, ‘An empty spirit bottle was found in Quinnell’s room. That is a fact.’
‘Let’s pass on.’ Alistair smoothed out the coroner’s report. ‘Bo suffered his heart attack some time after eleven p.m. as he returned from taking Macduff for his final trot around the block. The dog was found at first light, lying by his master’s body, am I right, Miss Bovary?’
Perhaps Chalker misheard and thought the question was for him. At any rate, he answered it before Miss Bovary could. ‘The doorman, a chap called Jenkins, found them outside the stage door. He gave the dog warm milk. Nothing to be done for Bovary.’
‘Why did it take the doorman so long? Doyle –’ Alistair threw his voice towards the corridor, ‘how far is your chair from the stage door?’
There came a return shout; ‘Nine feet, sir.’
‘Was Jenkins deaf, then?’ Alistair asked Chalker. ‘Because, surely, Bo would have tried to knock, or have made some sound.’
‘I’ve no idea if Jenkins was deaf, but he was certainly very old and another of Bo’s charity cases. He’d lock up, retire to his niche and push cotton wool into his ears. We knew his foibles, Miss Bovary, didn’t we?’
‘I’ve no memory,’ Miss Bovary said icily, ‘of anything but my brother’s tragic death.’
‘That’s a shame, Barbara,’ Alistair said gently. ‘I was hoping you’d answer a riddle. I’ll ask it anyway. The night Bo died, you counted the takings in your office, as per routine. Did you, at any point, ask yourself why Bo hadn’t returned from walking the dog? On a night so deadly-cold, you’d surely want to check?’
‘We didn’t realise he hadn’t returned.’
‘We?’
Miss Bovary closed her eyes. She’d blundered.
Alistair concluded for her. ‘You, your sister and Terence?’
‘And young Edwin,’ Chalker butted in. ‘He was on the premises. He covered the role of Algernon Moncrieff that night, due to Carnford being ill.’ Chalker’s wide smile shifted between Edwin and Alistair, giving the impression of a man nourishing long-standing ill will. ‘You knew that, Commander. You know everything.’
Alistair shrugged. ‘I’ve studied the books. I came across Edwin’s fee in the payroll ledger.’ He asked Miss Bovary, ‘What of the dog?’
‘What of him?’ Miss Bovary demanded, tight with suspicion.
‘I won’t believe Macduff hunkered on icy cobbles as his master died without making a sound. That dog is vocal. Didn’t you hear anything amiss as you totted up the money?’
‘No.’
‘No. Because you didn’t count it that night, did you?’ Studying The Farren’s ledgers, Alistair had discovered that February 9th, 1945, had been an aberration. A night when routines lapsed. A blank page in a cash-book speaks volumes. As did a separate entry in the petty cash book showing that two taxis had been ordered on the theatre account for three a.m. on February 10th; one to go to Bloomsbury, the other to a Mayfair address. ‘You didn’t sit down in your office all that night, Miss Bovary,’ Alistair suggested. ‘You and Mr and Mrs Rolf were up in the Gods, holding one of your damnable séances.’ He didn’t try to keep the disgust from his voice. ‘While your brother perished outside, you were bothering Back Row Flo. Had you left by the stage door, you’d have found him, but of course, you prefer to come and go by the front.’
The Wardrobe Mistress Page 34