‘Is everyone still here, Mr Bethencourt?’ asked Felix, when the director returned. ‘I don’t want anyone to leave at the moment.’
Alastair leafed through his inevitable clipboard and looking around him ran a finger down a list. ‘Cooper?’ he called. ‘Anyone seen him? He’s our lighting chap.’
‘Here,’ said a voice from on high. ‘And I can see Jim Hammond.’
‘Frank? What about your chaps?’
The orchestra’s leader did his own quick head count. ‘All still here bar Stan Platt, second fiddle. He cleared off as soon as he guessed we weren’t restarting; his father is very ill in hospital. He came with us this morning and hasn’t been out of my sight, except to go to the cloakroom and telephone. I couldn’t have stopped him leaving if I’d tried.’
‘All right, perhaps you’ll give us his contact details,’ said Felix, ‘just in case.’
‘What about the front-of-house people?’ asked Alastair.
‘Yes please, sir, just to take their details. Do you want to do that, Sergeant, as you’re camera-less?’
‘Humph, I can see how it’s going to be now,’ grumbled Nash. ‘She’s prettier than me.’
‘John is your normal photographer, I take it?’ said Alastair.
Felix looked confused for a moment. ‘Oh, of course, you know him through Clare. Yes, he is. And Sergeant Yardley here is our fingerprints man. He’s going to dab the coach inside and out, plus the floor of the stage all around it. Is that camera up to the job of photographing dabs, Clare?’
‘I think you’ll need a slower film for that, and I haven’t one with me. Also, I’ve only got nine flashbulbs left.’
Felix turned to the retreating Nash, already threading his way through the last of the audience. ‘Nash, scrub that! We need your camera for the dabs. Can you phone the office on your way out and see if you can rustle up another inspector for us? I’d like all these folk to be seen before they go home. Now, Mr Bethencourt. Give me a tour if you will. Where was the coach before it stopped here? In the wings?’
‘Yes. It sits there waiting to be drawn in front of the kitchen backdrop. It appears to the audience to be drawn by some child-sized pantomime horses but actually it’s an invisible rope. I’m not just Artistic Director, by the way, I’m chief cook and bottle washer. There’s only me and Bill Hutchings, the Stage Manager, and that’s it.’
‘I’ll remember that. Where are those children now? The operators of the pantomime horses, I mean.’
‘Probably back in the green room, together with a swarm of tap-dancing mice and their mothers. We’re vastly outnumbered by children in this production.’
‘Lord! How many?’
‘Not sure. Twenty, I think. We had to send a couple home with impetigo and one of the boys broke his arm. The smallest is about five.’
‘They weren’t on stage at the time?’
‘No, thank God.’
‘Did you want me to send them home, sir?’ said Yardley. ‘I can come back to this.’
‘Perhaps you’d better. Tell the mothers discreetly what’s happened and ask if anyone has any suspicions — you never know. And we’d better have all their details as well.’ He peered inside the pumpkin-shaped coach. ‘It’s really quite small in here, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it’s pretty tight, particularly with Jane’s ball-gown.’
‘And over there in the wings is where the coach stands waiting to come on?’
‘Yes, and stays there for the duration of the show.’
‘Then assuming he wasn’t killed in situ, it must have been where Sullivan was put into it?’
‘One assumes so, yes.’ Alastair shook his head in bafflement. ‘You know, I know we’re talking about a man’s life here, but if they’d set out to ruin this production, they couldn’t have chosen a better way to do it than to shove him in the pumpkin coach.’
Felix nodded sympathetically. ‘It looks to me like panic on someone’s part — they wanted to hide him somewhere quick. And if the gentleman had been found elsewhere in this theatre, I’m afraid we should still have had to stop the show.’ He walked thoughtfully into the wings, Rattigan following. ‘Coach sits here?’
‘Yes.’
At first sight they appeared quite hemmed in by curtains and painted flats, designed to create a number of entrances and exits from the stage. From the opposing wings, however, all was visible. ‘Not very private,’ he said. ‘When might it have been done? Any ideas?’
Alastair looked doubtful. ‘Surely not today? It’s always chaos backstage, and last night there’d have been people around the place until quite late, preparing for the show. Too risky, I’d have thought, before nine or so. Bill was here until nine-thirty, I think he said. After that they’d have been fairly safe, I suppose.’
‘What about the nightwatchman?’
Alastair looked embarrassed. ‘We haven’t got one. The original chap retired a month ago. Robin Hubbard, who runs the theatre for his grandfather, was supposed to be dealing with it but hasn’t come up with anyone yet. Mr Sullivan was, quite rightly, appalled and asked Andrew Haigh, his assistant, to find us one. I don’t know how far he’s got with that. I’ve been taking the cash home with me. There’s little else of value here, fortunately. Not that’s readily portable anyway.’
‘Andrew Haigh, did you say, sir?’ said Rattigan, glancing at Felix.
‘Yes, do you know him?’
‘Would he be about thirty, well-spoken, five-foot nine or so, good-looking, dark hair, snappy dresser?’
‘That’s the man. Capable sort of fellow. I’m not sure what he does normally. Bookie’s runner, would it be?’
‘Probably connected with the turf anyway,’ said Felix. ‘That seems to be his line. What did you think of Mr Sullivan? Whom we also knew, by the way. Hardly his mise en scène, I’d have thought.’
‘That’s what I said to begin with. I was pretty sniffy about him, to be honest, and thought he was probably wasting our time. In the event he stumped up five hundred pounds and just about saved our bacon. All he wanted, it turned out, was to put his mistress on the stage. Unfortunately, he insisted she be Principal Boy, a part for which she was totally unsuited and which by then was already cast. Anyway, I gave it to her, not without a great deal of upset. Then last night, she came to me and said she didn’t want to do it after all and would I get her out of it without upsetting Sullivan. I was naturally extremely cross with her, though not as much as I might have been as it actually suited us very well.’
‘Because you preferred the original incumbent?’
‘Miss Figg, yes.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Took her home and hid her until it was too late for her to play the part, though it was necessary, for obvious reasons, to keep it from the others in case Sullivan got to hear of it. They all thought she’d cleared off somewhere, when in fact she was wandering around the shops, waiting until it was safe to show herself. Goodness knows what Sullivan would have said.’
‘Who is this lady? Is she here?’
‘Yes. Well, she was just now. And that’s another thing. When she arrived, she was Vladlena Ossipova, a strutting, arrogant Russian with an accent you could cut with a knife. She’s a statuesque blonde, extremely attractive and about five foot ten inches tall, all of which seemed to fit the name somehow. Last night, however, she revealed herself to be English, and rather sweet, if you can ignore her shocking behaviour. Her real name’s Betty Bagshaw. Turns out the Russian persona was just to impress old Charlie.’
‘What did she do before? Do you know?’
‘She told my wife, who was fascinated by her, that she’d been a fan dancer at the Folies Bergère. Not the Paris one, I hasten to add. It’s some sort of nightclub in Soho apparently.’
‘That dive,’ chuckled Rattigan.
‘I’m afraid I don’t know it,’ said
Alastair disdainfully.
‘I’ll be interested to meet her,’ said Felix. ‘Do you think she could have done it?’
‘I suppose it’s possible, but it would have had to be early in the evening as she was with us at home for most of it. Also, she appears quite distressed by his death. Not that that means anything in our business I suppose.’
‘Because she can act?’
‘Yes. I blush to admit it, but she had me fooled about the Russian thing. I pointed out that if she could pull that off, she could surely play Prince Charming but she was adamant she wouldn’t. She said that for one thing she had too feminine a shape and felt foolish playing a man. I pointed out there were precedents but she wouldn’t be moved.’
‘They’re all assembled, sir,’ reported Yardley, ‘and we’ve got Inspector Hilliard and five constables. Nash is back with his camera.’
‘What about Clare?’
‘Still here. Two of her friends are in the cast and she’s pretty pally with the rest of them now. She thought it might be useful if she stuck around.’
Felix nodded. ‘It might be at that. Let’s go and see what we’ve got.’
Chapter Five
They found Derek Hilliard chatting to the doctor. The inspector was only twenty-eight but his sturdy build and already thinning pate made him look older. He was known to be a safe pair of hands, and Felix, who for all his easy-going ways didn’t suffer fools gladly, approved of him.
‘Hello Derek, thanks for turning out. I’ll just have a word with the doctor and I’ll be with you.’
‘Fairly straightforward, this one,’ said Benyson. ‘Point blank range, small calibre. Shot entered the submental triangle and will have ended up inside the skull somewhere.’
‘Time of death?’
‘Not less than twenty-four hours. Rigor is all but gone.’
‘Before eight-thirty yesterday evening then?’
‘Call it an hour or so either way.’
Emerging from behind the hastily placed screens they found all the Regent’s personnel waiting as requested. The stage of the old-fashioned theatre was not a large one (“intimate,” as the advertisements preferred to style it) and was now quite crowded. With the various technicians, the front of house staff and the cast, they totalled no fewer than thirty-two souls, any one of whom could conceivably have caused the death of Charlie Sullivan, not to mention the conventional “person or persons unknown.”
Felix stood with his back to the footlights and addressed them.
‘As you all probably know,’ he said, ‘the body of Mr Sullivan was sadly discovered onstage during the panto at about eight-thirty tonight. You’ll understand that we need to speak briefly to all of you and take your details and fingerprints before you go home, so please do not attempt to leave until we’ve seen you. It will also be necessary to examine the dressing rooms and some corridors and public spaces, so don’t return to them until you have permission. In the meantime, I’m informed you may wish to wait in the green room, the stage manager’s rest room or the booking office, where I understand refreshments can be had. If you wish to telephone home you may, but only provided a police officer is with you. There will also be officers at all exits from the building. Be assured we won’t delay you any longer than we have to, though we may ask you to come back tomorrow. In the meantime, if any of you has important evidence to impart, we’ll be glad, of course, to see you now. Thank you for your cooperation.’ He turned to Alastair. ‘Where can we talk to people privately, Mr Bethencourt? We’ll also need somewhere for Detective Inspector Hilliard.’
‘There’s the manager’s office off the main foyer,’ said Alastair, ‘which I don’t actually use very much, and there are more offices downstairs. The downstairs ones’ll be closer to the cast.’
‘All right, downstairs it is. Derek, do you want to do the front of house and backstage people in the manager’s office? No Sergeant Tench?’
‘Off sick, sir.’
‘Well, pinch one of the constables to help you. And if you think anyone needs showing the instruments of torture, send them to me.’
‘What about the dabs, sir?’
‘Good point. Borrow Yardley. He can rattle through them first and then come down to us.’
◆◆◆
They were a little surprised to find that “downstairs” was the concrete ceilinged basement.
‘It’s all here,’ said Alastair, ‘green room, dressing rooms, the stage manager’s office, the office I mostly use, and various other things. Being down here means we don’t have to worry too much about noise during a performance. Half the rooms have no natural light, unfortunately, but they’re mostly used at night so it’s not too much of a problem.’
‘Which means a fight or screaming and shouting might well go unnoticed above? Even a shot perhaps?’
‘Hadn’t thought of that,’ admitted Alastair. ‘Yes, it probably would; although it’s a long way from the pumpkin coach, you know.’
‘Do they all have their own dressing room?’ asked Rattigan, peering at the names on the doors.
‘Yes, apart from Jane and Figgy, who share one. They’re practically joined at the hip, those two.’
Following a buzz of conversation, Felix pushed open the door labelled Green Room. ‘May we come in?’ he asked, and despite himself broke into a broad grin. For scattered about the smoke-filled room, still dressed and in full makeup, were all the characters in the panto. The Fairy Godmother was bringing in a tray of coffees; Lord Hardup was playing cards with Dandini and Buttons; Semolina and Tapioca, the Ugly Sisters, were sprawling immodestly in armchairs reading magazines and Cinderella, having divested herself of her impractical ballgown, was reclining on a rather battered sofa in loosened corset and lace-trimmed pantalettes with her feet on Prince Charming’s lap. The only people in ordinary clothes were Clare Nash and a tall, blonde girl whom he correctly assumed to be Betty Bagshaw.
‘I’ll take your statements as soon as your rooms have been done,’ he promised. ‘And once we’ve seen you, you can go. However, I’ll want the whole cast and crew back tomorrow so that we may continue the investigation. I take it that won’t discommode anyone, since you’ll have been here anyway. That will include you, Miss Bagshaw.’ He looked around for objections. There were some shrugs, but no-one spoke.
‘And the sooner this is resolved, the sooner we can reopen,’ added Alastair. He looked questioningly at Felix. ‘Presumably?’
‘Yes, you can. Clare, I’d like a word, please.’
◆◆◆
‘I don’t know nuffink, mister,’ protested Clare when they got outside. ‘I wuz just ’ere.’
‘A likely story,’ chuckled Felix. ‘We know your sort. Seriously though, your statement might act as a useful benchmark. It’s accurate times we’re after, if you can remember them. Also, you might have overheard something interesting without realising it. Come into our lair.’
‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ said Alastair, turning away.
‘Where will you go, Mr Bethencourt? We’ve pinched your office.’
‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll bunk up with Bill Hutchings next door. Is it all right if I go and talk to them?’
‘Yes, if you wish; they’re not under arrest. But not about this case, please. I want their recollection of what happened last night unsullied by gossip. Take a seat, Clare. Tell me first, is anyone likely to be troublesome at all?’
Clare shook her head. ‘With the questioning? No, I shouldn’t think so. Arthur Penfold is a bit of an old curmudgeon, but he’s all right really. Sam Snow’s a cocky little show-off – none of the girls like him – but you only have to say boo to him and he’ll shut up, and Iwan Parry is inclined to stand on his dignity somewhat. The others tease him because of his accent.’
‘He’s Welsh?’
‘Yes, very. I must say, though, I can’t imagine any of them mur
dering anyone. I know you can’t tell, but I really can’t.’
Felix smiled. ‘All right, let’s have an account of your Friday and we’ll see where we get. Just the bare bones and we can fill in when we have more time. Doctor Benyson puts the time of death provisionally at about eight-thirty yesterday evening, but it could have been an hour or so either way.’
‘Then how about if I start with the dress-rehearsal,’ suggested Clare. ‘It was supposed to be two-thirty to five, although it went on a bit longer than that.’
◆◆◆
‘Hello, everybody,’ said Yardley, introducing himself. ‘I believe you already know Sergeant Nash. We’re here to take your fingerprints and to photograph them.’
‘In case you’ve been putting them where you shouldn’t,’ added Alastair with severity.
‘Just routine, sir,’ smiled Yardley, ‘mostly for elimination purposes. Who is going to be first?’
‘I will, if you like,’ said Dandini, clearing the cards from the table. ‘I want to go home.’
‘The innocent have nothing to fear, so they tell us,’ boomed Lord Hardup. ‘You can do me next, my man.’
‘But I’m not innocent!’ cried Semolina, looking fearful. ‘I kissed a boy at the ball.’
‘You dirty beast!’ said Tapioca, striking her with a copy of The Stage. ‘You never told me!’
‘I don’t have to tell you everything. And he told me he loved me.’
‘He told you he loved you? I don’t believe it!’
‘Well, it was either that or a broken arm!’
‘Any audience will do for these two,’ said the Fairy Godmother disapprovingly. Take no notice of them.’
‘This is going to be a long night,’ sighed Alastair.
◆◆◆
‘Caernarfonshire, I see,’ said Felix. ‘That’s a lovely part of the country.’
‘You know it?’ said Iwan.
‘Yes, we had a case there. We had to buzz about a bit so we got to know the north quite well. When did you leave?’
Death and Cinderella (The Inspector Felix Mysteries Book 11) Page 4