Staging Death

by Judith Cutler

  Brosnic’s turn took him so close to the Ka that I had to move or get run over. Exeunt, as if pursued by a bear. Except a bear might have had a pot shot taken at him.

  At least Caddie sounded reassuring and positive when I finally got through to her. Then she asked sternly, ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I longed to pour out my woes, but her news was more important. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t get back to you sooner but I was with a client.’

  ‘You’re still working for that brother of yours? How’s his hair?’

  ‘Tufty. And unnaturally dark.’

  She obliged with a snort of laughter. ‘Mind you, it’s so hard to keep dark hair looking natural, isn’t it? If you overdo the dye, you look even older.’

  You? Did she mean you as in people in general or as in you meaning me?

  ‘I mean, look at Flora Thingy – looks nearer sixty than fifty. Well, I know she is, and I know it doesn’t help having a name like that. Goodness knows what she was thinking of, taking a stage name that makes her sound like someone’s maiden aunt, stupid creature.’

  ‘Do you think it would help if I went a bit redder?’

  ‘What? With this soap set in Cyprus coming up? Well, talk of a soap. I had you down as an expat, darling. Or even a rich local widow. So work on the accent. Get the old tapes out and practise, eh?’

  ‘This soap, Caddie—’

  ‘It’s only a rumour, darling. But you sounded so down last time we spoke I thought even a rumour might help. But a word to the wise. Never sound miserable. Stay positive. That’s what I always say.’

  It was true, she did. Even when she’d sent me up to Edinburgh for an audition for what turned out to be a role for a tall blonde half my age, she always told me to stay positive.

  ‘OK,’ I said, feeling flatter than ever.

  ‘And listen to the tapes,’ she said, cutting the call.

  ‘CDs,’ I corrected her silently, sticking out my tongue. It was the only way I’d ever get the last word.

  I would report the oddities of the Brosnics to Greg when I went back to the Stratford office on my way home. I still had a fistful of keys that ought to be in a safe somewhere. There was regular daily communication between the offices, so whoever went next to Henley could take with them the keys for the properties for which Henley was responsible. Meanwhile there was a courtesy call I needed to make. The Wimpoles’ enthusiasm might have been decidedly underwhelming but it was policy to phone every client after each showing to see what they thought. A couple of times I’d managed to reel in an elusive sale that way.

  Greg was busy with another client when I arrived, so I handed the keys to his receptionist, Claire, whose patience edged towards saintly. She had to endure Greg all day every day. She even brought me a cup of peppermint tea while I settled at a vacant desk and dialled. And it was a good job I was sitting down.

  ‘Hampton Fenny Hall really is much too big for us, Ms Burford,’ Mrs Wimpole said. ‘In fact, we only agreed to look at it because your brother was so…forceful. But we really like the look of Little Cuffley Court – from the brochure at least. Could you book us in for a viewing on Wednesday? My husband preferred The Zephyrs – but I suspect it got its name because it’s so windy there.’

  ‘I promise I’ll check that out for him.’ I would – even if it meant standing outside the front door with a wet finger in the air, as we did in Girl Guides. ‘But Little Cuffley Court nestles in that lovely valley – you get snowdrops there a week before you get them elsewhere.’ I crossed my fingers behind my back – it wasn’t so much a lie as a wild assumption. ‘What would be a good time for you?’

  Greg never congratulated anyone on their hard work and initiative, but the news of the Wimpoles’ next viewing didn’t even take the edge off his irritation over my obvious failure with the Brosnics.

  ‘It was you who insisted we never let punters out of our sight,’ I pointed out, with less than tact. ‘And I tell you I was really scared. If they want to see anywhere else, hang the commission – I go out with someone else or not at all!’

  He glanced significantly at the empty desk. ‘I had to let Robbie go, Vena. Just remember that.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  Meredith Thrale was born to brood, in the manner of the young Richard Burton. Looking decidedly less than his forty-odd summers, he was brooding very thoroughly indeed over a glass of Old Speckled Hen in the Poacher’s Pocket, one of three pubs in Moreton St Jude. When I’d phoned to suggest lunch – we were old mates, after all, and providing a bit of moral support was what mates did – I thought a village pub away from the actors crawling over Stratford would make for a less anguished meal. And Moreton St Jude just happened to be a mile or so from Little Cuffley Court, where I’d shown an entranced Mrs Wimpole around the sunlit, sheltered garden crammed with spring flowers. As to the house, if, as I suggested, you mentally stripped out all the heavy Victorian furniture and replaced it with the Regency equivalent (I tacitly assumed her bank balance was up to it), then it was irresistible. It was too. I almost frothed with envy. I could have played Iago and his green-eyed monster with the best of them.

  Just as Meredith could have done. His air of latent menace would have been ideal.

  ‘I’m line perfect, Vee,’ he declared as the blood running from his expensive steak congealed. ‘I know all the moves. God knows how often I’ve had to walk Howard through them when he was pissed. Which was every day. I prayed – I’m sorry, but I prayed every day he might just, one lunchtime, have one too many and I could go on. It’s what understudies bloody do, isn’t it? Yes, even a matinee, with the house packed with school kids, would have been something,’ he admitted bitterly. ‘I could have done it. And what happens? Bloody Toby Frensham steps forward and says, “I’ll do that”, and they all clap their hands and jump up and down like so many children at a party. It’s always been their policy to use understudies, for God’s sake.’

  I nodded. ‘I know just how you feel, darling. Been there, done that. I’ve got a drawer positively bulging with T-shirts. Yes, and sweatshirts.’ So that he would have time to eat a few mouthfuls, I listed my disappointments. Not that he’d be interested. No one really got delighted over someone else’s success; equally the only pain of rejection anyone could truly empathise with was their own.

  Tolstoy made much the same point, didn’t he, about families?

  Oh, dear, how long ago was it that I’d played Anna? The tour had gone on for ever. Now Karenin was dead of AIDS, and Vronsky had just had his civil partnership registered in LA. If I’d been able to rake together the fare, I’d have been Best Woman.

  ‘…could kill him!’ He clenched his fingers so fiercely that the knuckles whitened.

  ‘Sorry, darling? I was away with the fairies. Kill who? Whom?’ I corrected myself.

  ‘Bloody Frensham, of course. God, what a shit that man is.’

  I had to be careful. Rumour had it that Merry had taken up acting during a spell in gaol for manslaughter. Naturally I’d never asked him point-blank if it were true, perhaps because I suspected it might have some origins in truth, at least. Toby was right – he did exude violence. ‘Darling, surely if the director had known how much…’ No, that wasn’t going anywhere. ‘I mean, the director must have asked for him, or his agent wouldn’t have approached him and he couldn’t have said yes. You don’t just stroll up and say, “I want to play Iago”, do you?’

  ‘Frensham does. I tell you straight, Vee, if I could have got hold of him when the news came out, I’d have killed him with my bare hands. Now I shall try something more subtle.’

  My forkful of poached salmon stopped halfway to my mouth, now unaccountably dry. Off stage I’d never heard a death threat before, and coming on the heels of Brosnic’s latent brutality I found it hard to deal with adequately. ‘Such as?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. But I shall do such things…’

  I kept my tone light. ‘Vengeance didn’t do poor old Lear any good, did it, darlin
g? Or Malvolio, come to think of it.’

  He managed a grimace. ‘Or even Hamlet… But I shan’t let him get away with it, Vee. You mark my words.’ Then his eyes narrowed. ‘Hang on, aren’t you and he—?’

  ‘No, absolutely not!’ I declared, anxious to set the record straight. I didn’t want it to be thought that I only got the Aldred House work because Toby and I were lovers. Besides which, while Allyn must have known – and dismissed – all the rumours about our past, if she thought we were still at it hammer and tongs, where would my contract be? Torn up and floating down the Avon, that’s where. ‘Nor ever were. Ever.’

  ‘But it was in all the gossip columns… Oh, holy shit. Sorry.’

  I nodded a curt acceptance of his apology, as if I really were offended.

  He looked at me from under his heavy hair. ‘You will forget what I just said, won’t you?’

  I thought it was time to turn the subject. ‘You mean when the police come knocking on my door asking what I know about Toby’s murder?’ I asked with just enough irony. ‘As a matter of fact I said to his face pretty well what you’ve just said to me.’ At least I’d thought it in his presence, which was much the same thing.

  ‘And he said?’

  ‘Darling, you know what an ego he’s got. People like that think the public spend all their lives clamouring for yet another appearance.’ So why did I still get the hots for him? ‘Just remember you’ve got a career ahead of you, and going to jail won’t help it.’

  ‘A good murder trial might. I could be standing tragically in the dock, watching the judge don his black cap and you could race in at the last moment with an alibi to prove my innocence.’ At last he managed a grin, which took twenty years off him.

  ‘You’ve been watching too much daytime TV.’

  He shrugged. ‘I rest my case.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I’ve got too much time on my hands. I want to work,’ he added, dropping his voice to a gravelly moan, as thrilling in its way as Greta Garbo’s desire to be alone. He’d probably been practising it for weeks.

  I thought briefly of suggesting he might join me should the Brosnics ever evince a desire to check out yet another Warwickshire residence, but it would have to be on a no-fee-until-sold basis, and I couldn’t see him falling for that. Not with the Brosnics’ track history.

  ‘Don’t we all, darling?’ I allowed a wistful quiver into my voice. ‘Do you think I actually enjoy cleaning other people’s loos? Any more than I like living in an ex-council house while other people can buy mansions they don’t even live in?’

  He looked shocked. ‘I assumed you’d have a bijou black and white cottage in a cute village.’

  ‘Everyone does. And I prefer it that way. I have my pride, you know. And you, darling,’ I added, picking up the bill, ‘must have yours. No playing childish tricks that’ll only rebound on you…OK?’

  He watched, opening his mouth as if to argue, and then shutting it again. He covered my spare hand with his. The nails were bitten right down. ‘There’s no matinee this afternoon, darling. And we could both do with a bit of cheering up.’ He lifted the hand to his lips, in my book one of the sexiest gestures a man could make, beating a short bathrobe any day. The invitation itself, however, was less than exciting. A bit of cheering up? Not much passion there, then. And I still had a lurking suspicion that Meredith might prefer dancing at the other end of the ballroom.

  The waitress, who had so far taken a relaxed view about what constituted service, chose this precise moment to appear. I needed both hands to fish out my credit card. As I passed her the plastic and the paper I saw an expression I didn’t like. There was nothing overtly unpleasant; on the contrary, she was looking sympathetic and almost approving. But in basic terms, her eyes perceived us as an old bat whose roots needed attention and her impoverished toy boy. Well, I could do something about the first problem, if not the second. The moment I was in the car, I’d phone my hairdresser.

  I waited till the waitress had gone to get the machine for my card. ‘Darling, there’s nothing I’d like better. But I’ve got something on this afternoon I just can’t afford to miss.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Vee – can’t it wait?’

  ‘Not if I want to pay my mortgage.’ I tapped my PIN into the machine without adding a tip. I’d once waitressed for an employer who used the tronc to pay our pitiful wages instead of using it as a well-deserved bonus. This wicked practice was still legal, apparently. So if I left a tip it was always cash, tucked in the time-honoured way under a plate.

  Getting to my feet, I shrugged on my jacket.

  I could see Meredith eyeing up the guest beers. Was he going to stay and make a maudlin afternoon of it? What if maudlin, in his case, led to murderous? I’d better mention the Brosnics after all. But he shook his head, and, picking up a space-age skid lid, accompanied me to the car park. Poor Meredith: his wheels weren’t the huge BMW bike his helmet implied, but a little fart-and-bang machine, 50cc at most. The poor thing put Greg’s vivid car into perspective. We shared a wordless grimace.

  I reached up to hug him. ‘We both need a bit of luck, Merry, don’t we? Now don’t do anything stupid, will you?’

  As it happens that afternoon’s work, to which I would turn my attention as soon as I’d booked a hair appointment, involved not loos but the Brosnics. To my huge relief I hadn’t been summoned to show them round any more properties, but there was still the matter of the courtesy call. If it had worked for the Wimpoles it might work for them, and though my flesh crawled at the thought of having further contact with them, there was the inescapable fact that success would bring in a lot of money.

  Stratford never lost its charm, no matter how often I got stuck in traffic behind a monster coach, or waited hours to be served because someone couldn’t understand the currency. I parked as usual behind Greg’s office, and then, just for the pleasure of it, I walked back to the river. It was still chilly for the time of year, and as usual half the tourists – I heard more American accents than English ones – were as unprepared as poor Mrs Brosnic, apparently believing that if you were in a tourist spot the sun must shine. My route back took me past one of my favourite clothes shops, Basler. I felt like a child with its nose pressed against the doors of a toyshop. Except I suppose Toys’R’Us might not have the charm of the shops I swear I’m remembering, not just imagining.

  But good suits demand good salaries, so I accelerated hard, as if I were Juliet, keen to meet her Romeo. A bit of power-walking never hurt anyone, though because of other, happily dawdling, pedestrians it was hard to do it in any sustained way.

  However, I felt sufficiently full of vim and vigour by the time I swung into the office. In fact, had Greg been around, I would have had sufficient to box his managerial ears for him. We were supposed to be meticulous in updating our computer records, yet here was the Brosnics’ file with nothing on it except his phone number and the name of the football club he was supposed to be buying. Try how I might – and my territorial loyalties to the Black Country were pretty strong – I could not imagine the purchase of West Bromwich Albion giving any oligarch, from Russia or anywhere else, the cachet that buying Chelsea or Arsenal might. Oh, he’d mentioned the hired Bentley, but hadn’t quite managed to say where it was rented from or jot down the number. What sort of day had Greg been having? Had the hair transplants involved removing some of his brain?

  At least I had a phone number. I brought up the files of the houses they’d seen, and did a quick scan of any others that might catch their attention, The Zephyrs, for instance. When I’d got the Brosnics out of the way, I could make my courtesy call to the Wimpoles. There, that was something to look forward to.

  That was something I greatly needed, after a few minutes trying the Brosnics’ number. Not only did no one reply, according to BT there wasn’t such a number. Nor had there ever been.

  So what on earth was going on… Greg’s stupidity apart?

  At this point my precious brother appeared. His lu
nch had been longer than mine and apparently involved more liquid. It took him a long time to adjust his expensive glasses and peer at the computer screen, and even longer to understand what I was getting at.

  At last, predictably, he resorted to bluster. ‘They’re just history freaks, aren’t they? People who get off on old buildings without joining the National Trust or English Heritage. Why pay an entrance fee when you can get a tour of a house for free?’

  ‘I’d thought of that. But they simply weren’t interested, Greg. You know that wonderful garden at Knottsall Lodge? The one that featured on that TV programme?’ To jog his memory, I brought views of it up on to the screen. ‘The Brosnics didn’t want so much as to glance at it. And yes, I did tell them about Whatshisname going wild about the pergola.’

  ‘The weather’s been a bit cold for gardens.’

  ‘But I tell you they weren’t interested in any of the houses per se. If they’d peered in every corner, obviously been interested in the history, I might have agreed with you.’

  ‘That’d be a first.’

  I stuck my tongue out at him. ‘Well, you are the boss. There’s something up, Greg. Look, just to please me, why don’t you give one or two of your mates a ring – see if they’ve had anything similar?’

  He looked at his Rolex. He didn’t need to say anything. I’d too much family loyalty to yell at him in front of Claire, so I said mildly, ‘Very well.’

  There was no need for him to know that I might just give Heather a call. And I would wait until he had disappeared into his sanctum before I dialled.

  Heather had once worked for him. She was very good at her job, and should have been put in control of the Kenilworth office when he opened it. Instead, he slotted in one of his golfing chums. In her place I might have sued for sexual discrimination. She did better: she got a plum job with another agency, and until I put a stop to it, systematically poached Greg’s clients. Now she specialised in modern places, with only an occasional historical place in her portfolio.