‘Ken, you will keep me in touch with developments?’
He gave a lop-sided grin and said, ‘Drive carefully, Mel.’ He closed the car door, waved and strode away, leaving her to drive home in a state of mingled frustration and perplexity.
The following evening Melissa cooked a farewell supper for Iris, who was leaving in the morning for France. She looked peaky and harassed, and got up to leave soon after nine o’clock, saying she needed an early night. ‘Haven’t been sleeping too well lately,’ she admitted.
‘You’ve been overdoing it,’ Melissa chided her, remembering the trips to London and the painting course she had been preparing.
‘Tell me something I don’t know. Everything’s come at once the last fortnight.’
‘Aren’t you drinking your camomile tea?’
‘Hasn’t been doing the trick lately.’
‘Dittany’s got some herbal capsules she swears by. Shall I ring and ask her what they’re called – you could get some tomorrow.’
‘No, thanks. Not into drugs, even herbal ones.’
‘That’s what …’ Just in time, Melissa bit back the words that might have led to a betrayal of confidence.
Iris frowned. ‘What’s what?’
‘Nothing – just a thought.’ It was too mild a term to express the notion that had erupted in her brain but she managed to conceal her agitation. ‘I’ll pop round in the morning to see you off,’ she said as Iris put on her coat.
The minute the door closed behind her, Melissa flew to the telephone to call Ken Harris.
‘What is it, Mel? You sound excited.’
‘Ken, I think I know how Will Foley was killed … and I’m terribly afraid, unless we do something about it, there’ll be another death.’
Twenty-Two
The night of the thirty-first of October was clear, frosty and still, the sky a moonless dome on which numberless stars glittered like chips of ice. In the darkness, the lights of Heyshill Manor Hotel shone out with more than their usual brilliance.
Ken Harris parked the Rover and switched off the engine.
‘Wait here a minute,’ he said and strolled over to the exit. He stood for a moment, his hands in his pockets, apparently watching the passing traffic. Melissa saw the driver’s window of a nearby car roll down and a hand holding a cigarette briefly appear, as if tapping ash on to the ground. Then the window was closed and Harris came striding back, his feet crunching on the gravel. He opened the passenger door of the Rover for Melissa to get out.
‘Right, let’s get this show on the road,’ he said. ‘I hope to God we pull it off – if it goes wrong, the powers that be will feed me to the lions.’ He took her arm and ushered her towards the door.
Her head was full of questions but she knew better than to ask them. He had given her a few terse instructions and made it clear that he had told her all she needed to know. She would have to wait for the rest.
Other cars were arriving, bringing Mitch’s birthday guests – sleek and prosperous-looking men with cashmere overcoats over their dinner suits and expensively clothed and bejewelled women at their side. Among them, she recognised some of the so-called ‘captains of industry’ with whom Mitch had become acquainted in the course of building his business empire. She wondered what they really thought of the ‘barrow-boy millionaire’.
Until that moment she had been reasonably confident in her off-the-peg designer outfit; now, seeing the fur wraps, model gowns and general air of opulence, she felt outclassed. She glanced at Harris, unfamiliar but surprisingly distinguished in evening dress. He seemed to read her thoughts.
‘You look great,’ he assured her.
As they approached the front door, it was opened with a flourish by a sinister, cloaked figure with a deathly white face and a livid scar on one cheek, its shirt-front liberally bedaubed with ‘Kensington Gore’.
‘Welcome to the Haunted Manor!’ it intoned, rubbing its hands together and emitting a spine-chilling laugh. ‘Your host and hostess await you in the Blue Room.’
‘Whoever’s that?’ whispered Melissa as they moved in the direction the apparition was pointing.
‘DC Baxter,’ he whispered back. ‘Plays the Demon King every year in his village pantomime.’
They found themselves in a low-beamed room, illuminated by bluish lamps which cast an unearthly glow on the faces of the guests. Across one wall was stretched a banner bearing a flight of witches on broomsticks, surrounded by bats and assorted demons.
‘The art department at the Tech must have been busy,’ commented Melissa. ‘It’s quite effective, don’t you think?’
Mitch came forward to greet them, a shade flamboyant in his frilled evening shirt and satin cummerbund. At his side was the Honourable Penelope, a picture of elegance in a sheath of satin with a double rope of pearls glistening round her neck. There was no doubt, thought Melissa as he planted a hearty kiss on her cheek, that even in the unflattering light they made a handsome, if oddly assorted couple.
‘Mitch, Penelope, I’d like you to meet Ken Harris,’ she said. ‘Ken, may I introduce Richard Mitchell, our host, and Penelope de Lavier.’
‘It’s a great pleasure to meet you both,’ said Harris. ‘And so kind of you to invite me to your birthday celebrations, Mr Mitchell.’ He allowed his gaze to rest admiringly on Penelope for a moment before bending over her hand and kissing it. ‘I’m looking forward to Mel’s début as a playwright.’
‘No need to be formal,’ said Mitch cordially, playing his part to perfection. ‘I’m Mitch, and this is Pen … and we’ll call you Ken, won’t we, Pen?’ He guffawed. ‘Pen and Ken … could be a pair of cartoon characters!’ It was plain he was in high spirits. ‘Go and grab yourselves a glass of champers.’
‘I thought you’d be busy backstage,’ said Melissa, as she and Penelope pecked the air in the general direction of one another’s faces.
‘Charlie’s taken over the props, leaving me free to act as hostess for Mitch,’ explained Penelope, her smile a glow of self-satisfaction. ‘It’s something I’ve recently begun doing, and he does so appreciate it.’ And I intend to carry on doing it, said the smile, as its owner turned to greet the next arrivals.
‘You don’t have to overdo the charm,’ Melissa hissed, as she and Harris moved out of earshot.
He grinned. ‘It’s all part of the act – I’m supposed to be a Eurocrat, remember? We have to know all the social graces.’
They collected their glasses of champagne from a young waiter wearing plastic horns on his temples and a forked tail coiled round one arm. He said something in a low voice to Harris, who nodded imperceptibly before turning away.
The room was crowded with chattering guests, many of whom appeared to be acquainted. Melissa caught sight of a stout man in dangerously tight trousers talking to Lady Charlotte, who was wearing a plain but doubtless inordinately expensive black dress with voluminous sleeves. Evidently she had already discharged her preliminary duties as props manager for the evening’s entertainment.
Melissa and Harris found themselves buttonholed by an eager young man with a pale wisp of a wife. With little or no encouragement, he launched into an account of how he had pulled off a complex deal with a company in Tennessee. Melissa responded by saying that her son worked for a company in Texas, whereupon there ensued a somewhat aimless conversation about motels, fast food joints and driving on interstate highways. The young man was so impressed with his own achievements and experience of America that it did not occur to him to enquire what Harris did for a living, which Melissa felt was just as well, although she was confident he had done his homework.
It was a relief when Detective Constable Baxter, the ghoulish effect of his disguise enhanced by the eerie lighting, appeared in the doorway, struck a resounding note on a large brass gong and in sepulchral tones summoned the guests to dinner. To much laughter and cries of simulated disgust, he recited a menu – devised, no doubt, by their host – consisting of toad’s tongue soup, roasted viper with
bat sauce and devilled kidneys, washed down with vintage hemlock. It was plain he was thoroughly enjoying himself.
The actual food – served by waitresses in conical black hats, their features disguised with hooked noses and blackened teeth – was excellent. The champagne flowed, the conversation was unflagging. Mitch sat at the head of the table between the Honourable Penelope de Lavier and the Lady Charlotte Heighton, the two aristocratic women whose comparatively modest business had leapt into prominence on the news of his investment in it. Their smiles were silent shouts of triumph; they chatted to him, chatted across him, laughed and joked with their other neighbours. They might have been competition entrants who had won a night out with a celebrity. For these winners, however, this was no once-in-a-lifetime experience. They had a proprietorial air towards their prize, as if confident that one of them would soon be staking her permanent claim. Melissa thought of Dittany, eating supper with the rest of the cast of Innocent Blood Avenged in another room, and despite Chris’s confident assertion, her misgivings returned.
The coffee was served, curls of smoke from expensive cigars began drifting overhead, someone banged on the table for silence and Mitch rose to his feet. He gave a brief and witty speech of welcome, delivered in a racy Cockney manner with the occasional risqué aside which brought appreciative guffaws from some members of the audience but a touch of frost to the smiles of the ladies at his side.
He then announced that the curtain would go up on the entertainment in fifteen minutes and people began discarding their napkins and pushing back their chairs. The women reached for their handbags; Charlotte said something to Penelope behind Mitch’s back and left the table. Melissa, seated opposite Harris, noticed one of the waitresses lean across his shoulder as if to refill his wine-glass. He put a hand over it and glanced up at her with a barely detectable movement of the head. She put down the bottle and left the room. Melissa’s pulse began to accelerate as she and Harris joined in the move from the dining-room to the Priory Suite. The drama was about to begin.
Like the room they had first entered, the Conference Room had been given a Hallowe’en atmosphere, with subdued lighting and some rather grisly pictures featuring skulls, gibbets and corpses. The guests, by now in the mellowest of humours and prepared to laugh, shiver or scream as circumstances demanded, settled into their seats. From behind the heavy black curtains that had been rigged up across the platform, a tinkling piano struck up a few bars of ‘With her Head Tucked Underneath her Arm’. As Mitch stepped out and bowed, a pair of skeletal hands appeared and placed the table of props at his elbow, evoking gleeful gasps of mock horror.
Mitch was in fine form. He delivered the opening couplets that Melissa had written for him, did the business with the poison bottle, the gun and the rope, and finally thrust the stage knife at his own chest – a gesture which, despite the absence of Kensington Gore, had a most realistic effect and evoked some gratifying screams from the more nervous members of the audience. He then proceeded to recite a further stanza of his own:
We hope our masque will not turn out a bore
And at the sight of blood upon the floor
Be not alarmed! The trick could not be neater –
’Tis but stage blood, at twenty quid a litre.
‘S’matter of fact, it’s dearer’n that, but twenty-two quid wouldn’t scan,’ he explained, and vanished amid laughter and applause. The skeletal hands removed the table, Mitch returned to his seat in the front row, the curtains parted and the play began.
Recognising that the audience’s attention span was bound to be limited, Melissa had written the piece in five short scenes, with an interval after the third. The first was between the heroine – played by Dittany – and her personal maid, the former consulting the latter as to which of her several suitors she should marry. The maid then left her sleeping mistress to confide to the audience her love for Tom Stannard, the gamekeeper, and her belief that his failure to ask for her hand was due to his lack of money. To a resounding chorus of ‘Aaah!’, and a poignant rendering of ‘Hearts and Flowers’ on the piano, she made her exit, wringing her hands in despair.
In Scene Two, Mendelssohn’s ‘Spring Song’ heralded the entrance of Tom Stannard and the housemaid, Susan Patch. Strolling hand in hand and gazing into one another’s eyes, they exchanged vows of eternal love. The pianist skilfully transposed the melody into a minor key as Susan, amid titters and expressions of mock disapproval, confessed that she would soon bear his child. Without money, how were they to marry and give the baby a name? They agreed to appeal to their wealthy mistress for help. As they made their exit, they were followed with exaggerated stealth by the two villains, whose presence they studiously ignored despite thunderous rolls on the piano and shouted warnings from the body of the house.
By this time, everyone was thoroughly fired up and entering into the spirit of the thing. Even Melissa, despite her awareness that drama and possible danger were not far away, found herself carried along by the general enthusiasm. Charlotte, her duties over for the moment, emerged from backstage and perched on the window seat as the curtains parted for Scene Three. She, too, appeared to be relishing the fun. Only Ken Harris, seated beside Melissa at the end of the row, seemed unable to relax. He joined in the laughter, but now and again he glanced at his watch and she knew his mind was elsewhere.
The scene opened with the criminals, who had tracked the lovers to the house of their wealthy employer, overheard discussing the details of their dastardly plot. In spite of her preoccupation, Melissa found herself hissing with the best of them. The action moved to its bloodthirsty climax: the villains entered the bedroom where the heroine lay sleeping; she awoke and challenged them; to the crashing opening chords of the ‘Hammerklavier’ sonata, Eric Pollard, in the rôle of Sam Snatchit, raised his arm to strike the fatal blow. Dittany’s scream of terror as the knife descended changed to a thoroughly convincing groan; her hands clutched at the handle, she writhed in agony and the groan became a dying gurgle. The music changed to a marche funèbre, Kensington Gore flowed in a realistic tide over the front of her nightdress as, to well-deserved applause, the curtains closed. The substitute props manager, looking well pleased with the effects, stood and joined in the clapping before disappearing backstage. Without a word, Harris got up and followed, with Melissa at his heels.
The producer and those members of the cast who had not appeared in Scene Three were making their way into the kitchen-turned-greenroom for the interval, showing every sign of delight at the way the show was going. On stage, Dittany was wiping her hands and the property knife with a rag and chatting to her ‘murderer’ and his accomplice, while the stage hands shifted furniture around them. On the other side of the curtains, Mitch could be heard announcing the interval.
DC Baxter, who had been doubling as the accompanist, was standing beside the piano. Melissa caught the exchange of glances that passed between him and Harris, and saw him nod in the direction of someone standing behind her. She swung round to see Charlotte staring at Dittany in apparent shock and disbelief. Harris walked over to her.
‘What is wrong, Madam?’ he asked. The question was spoken quietly but there was something menacing in the way his bulky frame towered over hers.
She shook her head, pulling herself together with an obvious effort. ‘Just a slight giddiness … the heat, I expect,’ she said. She picked up a script that someone had left on the edge of the stage and fanned herself.
‘Perhaps you’d better sit down.’ He took her arm. ‘I’ll get you some water.’
‘I assure you, I am perfectly all right,’ she said, shaking her arm free. She had recovered her poise and was looking at him with the expression of an outraged duchess. ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’
He took out his identification card and held it in front of her. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Harris of the Gloucestershire County Constabulary,’ he announced. Her mouth fell open and then closed again; her eyes grew wary. Heads turned and the room became
quiet. ‘I’m here to investigate some very serious crimes. Ah, thank you, Baxter.’ Harris took the plastic bag that the young officer, who had removed his ‘Demon King’ make-up, handed over. ‘I’m sure you know what this is, Madam,’ he said, holding it under Charlotte’s nose.
She gave the bag a cursory glance. ‘It appears to be a kitchen knife,’ she said, with an air of disdain.
‘It is a kitchen knife,’ said Harris smoothly. ‘And it is sharp enough to kill. In fact, it was intended to kill.’ He paused for a moment to allow the implication to sink in. By now, the atmosphere was electric; horrified glances were exchanged, cups of coffee left untouched on the table. ‘Perhaps, Madam,’ he continued, ‘you can explain how this very dangerous weapon came to be substituted for the property knife used in this production.’
Charlotte met his gaze without flinching. ‘I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about,’ she declared. She might have been talking to an insurance salesman; had the conversation been taking place on the telephone, Melissa thought, she would have hung up without more ado.
‘And I suppose you have no idea where the property knife is hidden?’
‘What are you talking about, Chief Inspector? It was used on stage a few minutes ago – that young woman has it in her hand.’ She inclined her head towards Dittany, who was standing on the fringe of the group, frowning in perplexity. At that moment, Mitch came bounding into the room.
‘Tanny, you were marvellous!’ he exclaimed. With outstretched arms he went to enfold her in a full frontal embrace, but she held him away and pointed to the sticky mess on her gown. He laughed and slid an arm round her shoulders. Then he caught sight of Harris and the ring of serious faces around him, and his smile faded. ‘Something wrong?’ he asked.
‘Mr Mitchell, I am so glad you are here,’ said Charlotte. ‘Will you kindly instruct these policemen’ – the acidity injected into the word was enough to turn litmus paper bright scarlet – ‘to stop asking foolish and distressing questions.’
Murder at the Manor Hotel Page 23