Staging Death

by Judith Cutler

  ‘I think you may be right about a priest’s hole. Toby’s coming back to show us where he and Greta had their magic moments. Toby’s taste in sex always has favoured unusual locations, or so I’m led to believe,’ I added, not so quickly that he’d think I was being defensive, but because I wanted to reinforce the truth.

  ‘Coming back? When? Two! Couldn’t he just tell us?’

  ‘Actors like a bit of limelight. I should brace yourself for a roll of drums and a bit of a flourish. Or it may be that his…er…love nest is somewhere really obscure, of course.’

  ‘Any ideas where it might be?’ Martin was so casual you could almost feel the pain.

  ‘Not a clue. Tell you what, I’ll get the plans and we could check my measurements. Have you requisitioned somewhere with a nice flat surface? The kitchen table would do.’ I might have meant to discuss my plans of the house but my words took on sexual overtones all by themselves.

  There was no doubt Martin was aware of the innuendo, but he pretended he wasn’t, which made it all the more potent.

  No matter how we tried, we couldn’t make my figures wrong. If there was a priest’s hole, then it was as well hidden as anyone hiding could have wished. In any case, weren’t they cramped and uncomfortable?

  ‘Is there anywhere you haven’t checked yet?’ I asked.

  ‘Plenty of places, I’d think. Not a single sighting, or don’t think I wouldn’t have asked for your help. Anywhere you haven’t measured yet?’

  ‘There was one place I didn’t need to,’ I said slowly. ‘Because it was going to be someone else’s job to restore it. Only I talked Allyn out of doing any major work because it was so inappropriate. After that I think she rather lost interest. The chapel.’

  Martin looked disconcerted, even offended. ‘Surely a man wouldn’t—’

  ‘It’s been deconsecrated.’

  ‘Even so… OK, it’s a long shot. I’ll get back up.’

  ‘Martin, I don’t love Toby anymore, but he is a mate. So much of a mate he’s getting us tickets for tonight’s show, and has invited us to a champagne reception here afterwards.’ I wouldn’t – just yet – mention my role in the catering.

  It was clear he wasn’t desperate to accept. ‘Do you really want to go?’

  ‘I really have to. And I’d like you there beside me.’

  ‘In that case, very well. But what’s it got to do with the chapel?’

  ‘I should imagine the red tops are already baying outside the gates. If one of your lads blabs about what we think Toby has been doing…’

  ‘Point taken. But we don’t go alone. Daren’t. If it’s obviously a trysting place, then we can blame Greta. I don’t think she’ll be in a position to argue about it, not for a bit.’

  The chapel was silent and still, the sudden burst of sun showing the dust motes of two and a half centuries hanging in the air. No work had yet been done on the windows, and I certainly hadn’t had time to address the problem of the pew cushions and kneelers. It was as if we were in a time capsule. In my case, just outside: Martin wouldn’t let me inside.

  ‘Armed police! Stand up and put your hands in the air. Now!’ Three or four members of the SWAT team rushed in, but as if as affected by the place as I was, kept their noise to the minimum – just the one set of sharp orders.

  Nothing happened. One by one they took cover behind and within the box pews.

  ‘Boss! Over here.’ One of the team had gone round the back of the huge pulpit, with its heavy sound-reflecting canopy, now adorned with a cheap mirror. ‘Reckon this guy won’t be preaching a sermon today.’

  Frederick wasn’t dead, not yet. And the paramedics reckoned he’d live. But he was cold and thirsty and very stiff. As you’d expect of someone left trussed and naked in the body of the pulpit. He was also very angry. I didn’t know the language he was growling away in, but the name Greta popped up from time to time, and I fancy he was feeling vengeful.

  ‘He’ll sing,’ Martin said dryly, as he led me away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  ‘Food for the nibbles party!’ Martin repeated, changing gear venomously. ‘I thought you were going to be a guest, not a skivvy.’

  He was tired – not surprising considering how little sleep either of us had had the previous night; hungry, since it was now after four in the afternoon and he hadn’t had a break for lunch; and furious because his Serious Crime colleagues showed every sign of taking over the case and the credit for what he’d achieved. Even Frederick, as soon as the medics at Stratford had deemed him fit to talk, had been seized by SOCA. Martin would clearly need a spot of soothing, a task for which I was eminently suitable.

  ‘I’m not a skivvy. I am a guest. I’m just helping out friends. Greta’s certainly in no position to cater, is she? And I can’t imagine Allyn—’

  ‘Cater! Hours in the kitchen fiddling with canapés?’

  ‘Five minutes in Marks and Spencer buying a few trays of nibbles, which I shall slide on to Allyn’s posh plates. Allyn’s kids are going to act as waiters, and I should imagine Toby will enjoy popping his own booze. There’ll be people there I’ve known for years. People you’ll know from TV. Indulge me, Martin, just this once.’ I’d forgotten how tricky the start of a relationship was – my past, not to mention my present, causing agonies to the person I was falling in love with. And Martin wasn’t some air-kissing luvvie, used to emotions turning on a sixpence. He was a man with a history so painful that he’d not had a meaningful relationship with anyone since Sandra had come out. I was glad to change the subject. ‘Look, those cyclists seem to be in trouble. Can we help them?’

  ‘If you insist.’ Only slightly mollified, he slowed to a halt in a convenient lay-by, where a couple of youngsters in regrettable his and hers Lycra were having a wrestling match with a map. The way they were yanking it about it would soon be in shreds.

  ‘Do you do OS maps?’ I asked him.

  ‘I do Sat Nav better,’ he conceded with a grin.

  Perhaps it would be all right. I kissed him and got out. My appearance was enough to trigger an avalanche of dialogue that reminded me forcibly of the Thorpes. I caught one line. ‘A road with a lot of roundabouts?’ I repeated.

  ‘Here!’ she pointed.

  ‘But we’re here and I can’t see no roundabouts.’ He pointed too.

  ‘Yes. You are here. But these aren’t roundabouts. I think you’ll find you’re on a cycle network – indicated by the little green dots…’ I couldn’t wait for their thanks. Not because I didn’t want to keep Martin waiting. But because I was having the glimmer of an idea. Only a glimmer. But at my age you didn’t even pass glimmers up.

  ‘Waterstone’s?’ Martin repeated. ‘I thought you wanted M and S?’

  ‘I do. And I want Sheep Street and that designer clothes shop. I’m not going to the theatre like this, darling. I can dress at your place, can’t I?’

  It was a good job that the cyclists had wended their unsteady way towards the A429 because Martin’s reply might have shocked them.

  My scamper round Stratford was brisk, but the only purchase I had time to look at closely was a very chic dress, and the sort of cashmere wrap that an English spring evening required. Our arrival at the theatre was somewhat delayed by the fact that Martin wanted to check whether the dress zip went down as well as up.

  Toby gave the performance of his life, surpassing every other Coriolanus I’d ever seen. Even Martin, who had no cause to love him, was on his feet applauding.

  Before we left for Aldred House I retrieved the nibbles from the boot, putting them in the rear footwell, so that they would not slither about. And I picked up the Waterstone’s bag, too, intending to stow it in the compartment at the side of my seat, but idly opening it.

  ‘An OS map? I’d have thought you’d know all the routes to Aldred House like the back of your hand.’

  ‘I think I may have an important idea coming on,’ I muttered. ‘Have you got a torch?’

  ‘In the glovebox. But won
’t my Sat Nav—?’

  The scrap of paper was no longer in my cleavage, of course, but I had stowed it in my bag. I retrieved it and unfolded the map. ‘Do the figures 202544 mean anything to you?’

  ‘They were on the cocaine wrapper.’

  ‘They’re also on this map.’ I worked out the easting and the northing. ‘And they refer to Holy Trinity Church. Martin, get someone down there. Or it may have no roof left in the morning.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ But he was already yanking the car round in an illegal turn. So he must have believed me.

  ‘Certain. And worse still – and I think we’ll have to stop a moment for me to make sure – I think I know where the other figures refer to.’

  We were at Holy Trinity for only a matter of seconds, just long enough to see that there were enough officers to take into custody the team of men stripping the lead from its famous roof, with luck earning Shakespeare’s famous curse, and for Martin to take over a police car, complete with flashing lights and siren. Abandoning the canapés to their fate, I joined him. With a squeal of tyres we were on the move again, moving almost as fast as I wished. He didn’t know the road as well as I did, of course, so I became his auxiliary Sat Nav, warning of sharp corners and awkward junctions. There was no time for conversation.

  But we were too late. Aldred House’s grand new gates stood wide open.

  A figure lay crumpled outside the gatehouse.

  The figure was Ted, and the gates were not open, but gone.

  Someone had run him over leaving the huge prints of lorry tyres over his face and abdomen.

  ‘Oh, Ted—’ I was beside him before I knew I’d left the car, feeling for a pulse in a wrist so inert I had my answer before I asked the question. How could he still live?

  I could hear Martin call for an ambulance, but we both knew it was too late.

  ‘Let’s see if we can save the living, not the dead,’ Martin said in a quiet voice more urgent and compelling than any scream. He pulled me to my feet and back to the car. ‘The statues. They must be after the statues.’

  I pointed. Heavy vehicles had gouged lumps from the grass path down to the sculpture park. ‘That way.’

  Toby’s car had arrived before us. Allyn and the kids were spilling out after Toby, who was running towards a low-loader already laden with one statue. Its grab was making light work of another, which was swinging in a slow arc. The kids ran towards it. Allyn screamed. Toby ran faster, grabbing them and throwing them out of the way.

  And took the full force of the load on the body.

  ‘Allyn get the kids to the house. Now.’ Martin’s voice was still quiet, still compelling.

  Allyn swallowed her hysteria and obeyed. But as she hurried them away, other vehicles started to arrive – the supper guests’.

  Martin spoke urgently into his radio. I ran to the smashed puppet that was Toby, stripping off the cashmere ready to swathe him in it. But where to start?

  ‘Toby? It’s me, Vena!’ As I knelt beside him, his eyes opened and seemed to focus on mine. I took his hand, raising it to my lips. It might be true that the dying could still feel a comforting grip.

  I bent my head towards his mouth.

  His voice came surprisingly clear: ‘I am dying, Egypt, dying…’ He was using Antony’s last lines. Some of them. ‘The miserable change now at my end Lament nor sorrow at; but please your thoughts In feeding them with those my former fortunes Wherein I lived…’ Something rattled in his throat and chest. Blood trickled from his mouth and nose. But he managed a few more words. ‘Now my spirit is going; I can no more.’

  They said that hearing was the last sense the dying lost. I must speak. What else could I say? ‘Noblest of men, woo’t die?’ For Toby’s sake I must use Cleopatra’s words to her dying lover. For Martin’s sake I too must edit the speech as I went along. ‘O, withered is the garland of the boards. The actor’s pole is fall’n; young boys and girls Are level now with men; the odds is gone, and there is nothing left remarkable below the visiting moon.’

  Christopher Wild was beside me. He’d lost his dream of a sculpture park and a generous patron. But he lifted me to my feet as I struggled with my sobs. ‘O, quietness, lady!’

  I let him lead me away into the silent circle that had spread to admit paramedics, their banal green uniforms, their quick gestures and terse words completely out of place in this spectacle of death. Out of place, and too late.

  Now the police sprang into action. And so must I. Voices broke into chatter, as if what they had seen was a bizarre act of catharsis. Not knowing who Martin would need to have interviewed, who not, I herded them all into Greta’s huge kitchen and made tea and coffee. And then, opening one of those giant fridges in a hunt for milk, I found it full of champagne. That was what Toby would have wanted us to drink. Someone brought Allyn and the boys in. We gathered in a ring, and raised our glasses, each sharing his or her memories in a final toast to Toby.

  Then the police arrived, and the moment was shattered.

  ‘Say, lady,’ an American said, grabbing my arm, ‘that speech of Cleo’s – you did it real well.’ It was Johann Rusch, the casting director. In the moment of Toby’s death, could it be that my life’s dream was about to come true? He made a great fuss, talking about a screen test and pressing his card into my still-bloodstained hand.

  Out of the tail of my eye I saw Martin come in.

  Smiling, I said very clearly, ‘Thank you, Johann. I used to be an actress, long ago, you know. Before I retired.’ I put the card down somewhere.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  ‘You’re back already!’ I greeted Martin from my knees in his back garden.

  ‘It’s nearly eight,’ he said almost defensively. ‘Even cops have to come home sometime. And you’re still working.’

  ‘Gardening isn’t work, not as far as I’m concerned. Though my knees might argue.’ Shedding my gloves, I took his outstretched hands and let him pull me to my feet. ‘And look, I’ve found an arbour under all those brambles.’ I pointed to a paved area I’d filled with a table and chairs that had lurked in his garage.

  He looked shamefaced. ‘You know what it’s like with a rented place. You feel temporary, and only do the essentials.’

  I didn’t argue, not when there was a decent bottle of white chilling in the fridge beside a dish of salade niçoise – both ideal for a balmy evening like this.

  ‘How are things at Aldred House?’ he asked later, as we ate.

  ‘Allyn’s still sticking it out. Her medics have arrived from the States.’

  ‘Personal physicians?’

  ‘Absolutely. More prosaically, Ginnie from St Jude’s was back today. It seems she’s got someone to reconsecrate the chapel and Allyn’ll be able to have Toby’s funeral there. Just family and friends. So long as she never knows what Toby got up to in the pulpit.’

  ‘What about Ted Ashcroft’s widow?’

  ‘Allyn offered to let her have Ted’s funeral there too, but she prefers the crematorium, she says. And who can blame her? She wants nothing more to do with the place, I should imagine. As to the future, and this is for your ears only, Allyn’s got her legal team to set up a retirement fund for her. A very generous one. And it’s binding, even if Mrs Ashcroft sues Toby’s estate over his death.’

  ‘Do I detect your hand there?’

  ‘Maybe. And maybe Miss Fairford’s.’

  ‘Are you two still not on first-name terms?’

  ‘No. I did suggest it, but she was so uncomfortable I gave up. Whatever I call her, she’s working like a Trojan organising Toby’s memorial service.’

  ‘Holy Trinity I presume?’

  ‘You presume right. And Allyn’s paid to have the roof fixed so it doesn’t leak on all the great and good paying their respects.’ I took our plates back to the cramped kitchen and returned with a plate of strawberries crushed with balsamic vinegar and black pepper, a dessert Martin was fast becoming addicted to. ‘And how are you getting on with SOCA?’

&nb
sp; ‘Emails. Bloody emails. Have I got this? Is there a record of that? It seems to me that my team and I are doing all the work and they’re going to get all the glory. As for feeding back the latest news to me…’ He tore his hair. ‘Seriously, it’s so demoralising when you learn the chief problem at the moment is the battle between them and Steptoe and Son…’

  I said prissily, ‘I take it that’s your distinguished colleagues investigating scrap metal theft?’

  ‘Distinguished! They might be if they weren’t bickering over which is the major crime, drugs or scrap metal, and which squad should deal with the murders. Sometimes all these government targets and statistics make us lose sight of the important things – like fighting crime and locking up criminals.’

  ‘At least you got to interview Christopher Wild,’ I pointed out.

  He snorted. ‘Usually it’s hard to make people talk. It was hard to make him stop.’

  ‘And I bet he told you he hadn’t told a soul about the statues, nor that they were big and bronze.’

  ‘Absolutely no one. Only half of Stratford!’ He said, more quietly, ‘If only he could get dried out he’d be a decent enough man.’

  ‘He’ll never do it on his own. Not even with AA. But I do know the odd actors’ charity – I’m sure they could fund residential therapy. I’ll get on to it in the morning.’

  I was still in my identity limbo, as I would be till every last member of the gang was safely apprehended by whichever agency got round to it. Then, of course, there was the trial to look forward to. Or not, as the case might be.

  So I was glad I had Martin’s garden to deal with. As my real self I couldn’t go looking for new work, of course, and though Allyn insisted that one day she would complete the refurbishment of the whole house, I couldn’t press her. What she did ask me to do, very delicately, as if afraid she had insulted me, was cater for the post-funeral wake. Greta was still helping the police, SOCA, that is, with their enquiries and wouldn’t be available. While she was sure Miss Fairford could find a firm of caterers, she wondered if I might help out. Only thirty or forty mourners? Easy-peasy, I told her. It would bring in cash, and mercifully render me too busy to be asked to contribute to the funeral itself with either a reading or a personal tribute. Friends though we now called each other, I don’t think either of us could have dealt with that. So while the family were driven to the crematorium, I stayed behind to ensure the booze and canapés were ready when they returned. After all, I’d already said my last goodbye, rather publicly.