Death in the Stars

by Frances Brody

  With perfect manners, he greeted her as if all that morning he had waited for no one else.

  A thrill at the newness of this experience lightened Mrs Sugden’s step as she followed Mr Duffield through corridors to the clanging lift. She had a small notebook and a newly sharpened pencil in her bag. I could have worked in an office, she told herself. I could have filed documents and filled out ledgers. Still, it was better to be working for Mrs Shackleton as a housekeeper than someone who led a more mundane kind of life.

  From the lift they crossed a landing and went into a large, high-ceilinged room with big windows that let in lots of light.

  Seated at a heavy old table, Mrs Sugden explained Mrs Shackleton’s odd request regarding the deaths of two performers sometime in January this year and June last year.

  Mr Duffield, elbows on the table, brought his palms together and rested his chin on his hands.

  ‘I have names.’ Mrs Sugden felt apologetic about this. ‘One is an odd name, Dougie Doig, real name Douglas Dougan. The other is Floyd Lloyd.’

  Mr Duffield nodded. ‘Very precise, as I would have expected from Mrs Shackleton, and from you, dear Mrs Sugden. Now will you have a cup of tea?’ Not waiting for an answer, he waved to a junior who was filing index cards. ‘Raymond! A nice cup of tea and a digestive for our esteemed visitor, please.’ He handed Mrs Sugden that morning’s paper. ‘A little read while you wait.’

  While Mrs Sugden sipped tea, Raymond went to assist Mr Duffield by climbing a ladder and taking down a large box. Mrs Sugden watched while Raymond placed the box on a long table. Mr Duffield removed several newspapers and shared them between himself and Raymond. They each looked through the papers, young Raymond with great rapidity. Mr Duffield turned pages more slowly, stopping when something caught his eye. Raymond drew Mr Duffield’s attention to an item. It did not take Mr Duffield long to come back with the appropriate pieces.

  He showed the pages to Mrs Sugden for her consideration.

  She read quickly from each of the papers. ‘Those are the two accidental deaths.’

  In spite of allowing his hair to turn its natural colour, Mr Duffield sported coal-black eyebrows. He raised one, but had the tact to make no comment. Mrs Sugden read his look. It said that if Mrs Shackleton had decided to look into these matters, then perhaps inverted commas would be required around the word ‘accidental’, and a big question mark over everything else.

  He asked Raymond to type up the items. Mrs Sugden, something of a typist herself, envied the young man’s speed.

  In the time it might take for a lesser mortal to roll a sheet of paper around the platen, he presented her with a foolscap sheet of typed copy.

  She thanked them both.

  Mr Duffield escorted her back to the lift. ‘Give Mrs Shackleton my compliments and say I should be happy to look further into these distressing incidents, at coroner reports, for instance.’

  ‘That would be very helpful, Mr Duffield. Shall I come back tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, please do. I shall look up the obituaries. I take a particular interest in obituaries.’

  Ten

  A Probability of Cloud

  As I kept watch at Billy Moffatt’s bedside, it was strange to think that only hours earlier we had enjoyed a party to celebrate the coming eclipse.

  Now Billy lay grey and still. His breathing was shallow and his pulse slow. I thought back to that party and to the people I had met. It puzzled me, as it had puzzled Selina, that this company of variety artistes were so unfortunate to have lost two of their number in such a short time. Unless some miracle ensued, Billy Moffatt would join them in their heavenly chorus.

  The party to celebrate the coming eclipse was held in Selina’s newly built house near Roundhay Park. It began late, after the theatres emptied. Her downstairs room, the size of a ballroom, glowed with gentle light from uplighter globes and lamps in etched glass, held aloft by elegant figurines. Being a gathering mainly of performers, artistes and entertainers there was no lack of pianists. In spite of the lateness of the hour, Jake, the human half of Jake and his performing pony, charmed notes from the ebony grand piano. Sandy Sechrest, the elegant memory woman who always wore black, turned the pages of the music, which had shifted towards slow and sentimental as the night wore on.

  One of Selina’s older brothers livened up proceedings with a rendition of ‘La donna è mobile’. Her younger brother, Marco, played the accordion and sang ‘Has Anybody Seen My Gal?’.

  Marco’s wife, Jess, told me that Marco had been a middleweight boxing champion but gave it up while still undefeated. Now he led the family’s expanding ice cream business. He and Selina were each other’s favourites. There was just fifteen months between them, and they had both ‘married out’. Jess was Jewish, also from Grimston Street. Selina’s family accepted Jess because Jews, like Catholics, ‘had heart’ and you could put barely a wafer between them. Agnostic Jarrod Compton was welcomed for his charm and the glamour of a show business family. Jess stayed silent on her own family’s reaction to the marriage. She did not see them these days. They had moved north.

  On first coming into Selina’s house, there had been so much to look at and admire that it was hard to focus on individuals, and to find something significant that might explain why Selina had been anxious enough to contact me.

  Now, sitting by a hospital bed I found it difficult to concentrate. Not having slept all night was no help.

  Impressions. That was what flitted through my mind. The impressions and images were so amorphous as to be useless in helping me to understand anything.

  In my mind’s eye, glamorous couples glided across the highly polished parquet floor to the tune of ‘Always’.

  Half a dozen sleepyheads lounged on the feather-cushioned casual sofas that were dotted about the room. The burr walnut table held dipped-into dishes of caviar and plates of crackers alongside sausage rolls, pork pies and pickled onions – an odd combination of the luxurious and the everyday that suited the gathering of show business people. The dancers seemed capable of eating for England. Pip Potter, strongman, also tucked in heartily. Sandy Sechrest, the memory woman, picked at a bread roll. She seemed alert to everything that went on around her, and solicitous of Selina. Perhaps it was the thought of flying but Selina seemed a little anxious. She disappeared for a while. I looked about for her husband but did not see him. Later, someone said that he had set off alone on his motorcycle, heading for Richmond.

  Billy Moffatt stirred uneasily. For a moment I thought he might be regaining consciousness. His lips were dry. The sister had left a piece of lint and a glass of water. I moistened his mouth.

  How close were Selina Fellini and Billy Moffatt? I knew so little about them.

  Selina hadn’t said much about her husband Jarrod, except that war had changed him. A husband need not be so very greatly changed to become jealous of a successful wife who became good friends with the men around her.

  A waiter, hired for the occasion, replenished dishes. As the evening wore on, the party thinned. Several musicians and five of the dancers had left early for the railway station. The Powolskis, sister and brother acrobats, and a dour-looking chap called Maurice Montague, master of music, whose act consisted of playing twenty-nine instruments in quick succession, had roared into the night on a motorcycle with sidecar.

  Members of the Fellini family, chattering and calling to each other in a mixture of English and Italian, had set off in Selina’s chauffeur-driven car and two taxis, heading for Barden Moor.

  Over the previous days and weeks, maps in the newspapers had been carefully studied and observation points argued over. The band of totality, about twenty-eight miles wide, extended across North Wales, Lancashire and Yorkshire.

  Perhaps Selina’s husband had gone to secure his place early. Why had she not invited him? Or perhaps she had. Selina’s stories of two accidental deaths set my thoughts racing. Say those deaths were not accidental. She had been close to the two men who died. Billy Moffatt was
the chosen friend for this visit to Giggleswick, the person she wanted with her on the morning of this special day.

  What had triggered his collapse? Perhaps he had some underlying condition that was exacerbated by the flight and standing for so long in the bitter cold. Yes he had been sniffing cocaine at last night’s party, but so had some of the dancers, elegantly fingering the tiny gold containers hung at their throats on slender chains. Yes he had probably dosed himself with morphine, but that was no great surprise in a man whose war injuries would always plague him.

  What else might I remember that would be of value? Someone had set an alarm clock on top of the piano, so that they would all be sure to go outside and look at the sky at the appointed time, more in hope than expectation.

  For a time I had sat on the terrace with Jake the animal trainer. He had come to the company as a replacement for Dougie Doig’s performing dog act. Jake would not be parted from his highly prized miniature pony at such a crucial time. The animal, a sensitive creature presently bedded down in the porch, might take fright.

  None of these recollections helped me, or the poor man lying in the bed. I touched the needle mark on his neck, a recent mark. ‘What happened, Billy? Did someone do this to you?’

  Unsurprisingly, the dying man did not answer.

  I wondered whether someone at the party, some enemy of Billy’s, had left early and come out here. In spite of the policeman on the gate it would not have been difficult for a determined person to find their way into the grounds of Giggleswick School.

  Not everyone at the party wanted to observe the eclipse from a vantage point on a chilly hillside. My housekeeper, Mrs Sugden, preferred to stay at home with the cat. Selina’s linen-suited manager, Trotter Brockett, claimed he needed his beauty sleep, but he hovered making some of his performers nervous by his presence, and urging Selina and Billy to be careful and warning them not to look directly at the sun. He left the party moments before we did, saying he would wait to see photographs of the eclipse in the early editions.

  At the start of the party, I had the pleasure of chatting with Sandy Sechrest, and so I went across to the piano to say goodnight to her and Jake for whom she was turning the pages of sheet music. Facts were Miss Sechrest’s stock in trade. It was not necessary, she had explained with great solemnity, for her to see the eclipse as long as she had all the necessary information. Nevertheless, the plan of this living archive, this walking encyclopaedia as she was sometimes called, was to follow the advice reportedly given by the Astronomer Royal to the boys of Bradford Grammar school. If they were unable to find a vantage point, they should go to a wooded area and stand beneath trees. By looking at the ground, they would see the eclipse through the shadow pattern of foliage. Miss Sechrest had consulted a map and felt confident of making her way from Selina’s house in Roundhay to Gledhow Valley Woods. She disliked crowds and hoped to find a solitary spot, avoiding the throng.

  She had reassured Jake that all would be well. He was upset because Mr Brockett had been very short with him when he mentioned that the steep rake of the City Varieties stage made it difficult for his pony, Pinto, to dance backwards. Beryl Lister, Miss Fellini’s dresser, said she would keep an eye on the house. At the break of day she would wake those left behind so they could see what they could see, from the highest point in the park, though it was her opinion that hangers-on from the party preferred the newly created Eclipse Cocktail to the real thing. I took the impression that Selina Fellini relied on Beryl a great deal. She had a round, pleasant, unlined face with gap teeth, was ample in figure and wore her fair hair centre-parted and pulled back into a bun. Beryl’s concession to party attire was to wear a long-sleeved sage green dress buttoned down the front. She would brook no nonsense from those she called ‘hangers-on’ and had already presented Jake with a carrot to feed to his sensitive miniature pony ‘on the way home’.

  Jake had taken the carrot. ‘But Beryl, Selina sweetly said I could share Maurice’s room, and Pinto can bed down in the garage.’

  ‘It’s Mrs Lister and Miss Fellini to you and I’ll thank you not to trade on Miss Fellini’s good nature. I happen to know you and Pinto have digs in Chapeltown, so off you go. That pony needs his sleep.’

  I admired Beryl’s sternness. As we were about to leave, she fixed me with her candid stare. ‘You’ll make sure Miss Fellini isn’t kept in Giggleswick till all hours by her admirers. She needs her rest for tomorrow night’s performance, or tonight’s I should say since we’re already in Wednesday.’

  ‘She’ll be back in good time. The airmen have another assignment so will keep to their timetable.’

  ‘Good. I hope the trip will be worth it. You know there’s cloud forecast?’

  A cynical few dared say that this being England, and the weather damp and cold, there would be no miraculous sighting. Bookmakers’ odds were three to one against. Weather forecasters all agreed on a probability of cloud.

  A probability of cloud was what Billy Moffatt had hoped for.

  It was time to stop considering any possibilities the party might throw up and think only of Billy.

  I risked looking at my watch. The time was passing so slowly, as if in honour of this funny man, allowing him those extra minutes on this miraculous earth.

  Time, understanding my appreciation, stood still.

  There were footsteps in the ward. A nurse put her head round the screen, and then withdrew. Somewhere nearby there was an exchange of words between the nurse and a patient. A man coughed. A trolley squeaked along the corridor.

  I squeezed Billy’s hand. ‘What have I missed, Billy? What might you tell me?’

  But in that moment, a terrible shudder and a gasp shook poor Billy, and then he was still. Billy would speak no more. Uselessly, I touched his throat for a pulse. There are not enough people in the world who make us laugh. I’d come to like Billy Moffatt in that short time we were acquainted. I told myself that if he had recovered he might never have been the same again. I hardly knew him. He was a grown man who made his own choices and yet his flight from this life felt like my own personal failure.

  A voice in my head whispered, someone is guilty.

  Stop it, I told myself as I walked quietly from the bedside and around the screens placed there for privacy. These are variety performers, not the Borgias. There will be simple explanations. There are always simple explanations.

  A man in the bed opposite was sitting up, watching. The man next to him began a coughing fit. I left the ward quietly.

  Cleaners had been hard at work. There was a strong smell of Vim as I walked along the corridor to find Sister. Yet even the normal atmosphere of the hospital did not dispel my imaginings.

  Someone may have tampered with Billy’s morphine dosage. Or, and here was a horrific speculation, what if Billy himself had wanted the other two friends out of the way so that he might be Selina’s favourite? If Billy had a hand in Douglas Dougan’s and Floyd Lloyd’s demise, his own death may be heaven-sent retribution, or a revenge killing.

  Sister was in her small office. I tapped on the door. She took one look at me and knew. But still I said the words. ‘Billy died a few moments ago.’ He had clung to life for just four hours after being found by the chapel.

  She glanced at her watch. ‘I’m so sorry. Come and sit down, Mrs Shackleton. You look done in.’

  ‘He didn’t regain consciousness.’

  ‘Poor man, and what a loss. I saw him once, just after the war. It was his contortions as much as what he said kept us all in stitches.’ She straightened her apron. ‘I’ll contact the doctor. Did the other patients realise, do you think?’

  ‘I’m not sure. The man in the bed opposite was quite alert.’

  ‘He’s reliable. He won’t upset the others.’

  I must give no hint of my mad suspicions. Normality was called for. Since I barely knew the man, there was the sadness one feels at any passing but not that deep distress when it is someone well known and loved. ‘Regarding the formalities�
�’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘May I use the telephone? Miss Fellini asked me to let her know and so I must break the news to her and to Billy’s manager who is staying at the Queens Hotel.’

  ‘Go speak to the porter. Say I give permission for you to make the telephone calls.’ She stood. ‘And what will you do now? Can I get you anything?’

  ‘No, thank you. After I’ve made the telephone calls, I’ll walk to the railway station and catch the next train back.’

  ‘Very well. I’ll inform the school. Headmaster and Matron will want to hear.’ She straightened her cuff.

  ‘Something occurred to me, regarding the injection mark in his neck.’ She paused. ‘I know that you gave Mr Moffatt’s pillbox to the doctor, but I’m wondering was there a needle?’

  ‘Ah, that’s a good question. No there wasn’t.’