by Celina Grace
I’d been so flurried, what with getting everything ready for their dinner, that I’d completely forgotten about preparing anything for the servants. Frantically, I looked around the kitchen as if a fully cooked meal would suddenly miraculously spring into existence.
Verity came through the door with a book in her hand. “What’s wrong? You look as if you’re about to drop.”
“I forgot to get the servants’ meal,” I hissed. Near tears, I tore open the door of the refrigerator and glared into it. Oh, praise be to the Lord and Mrs Watling. I’d forgotten about the big pot of beef stew she’d made yesterday. Grabbing it with both hands, I ran with it to the range and shoved it inside to heat up. Some herb dumplings to accompany it wouldn’t take much time at all.
“Panic over?” Verity asked, sitting down at the table and opening her book.
I nodded, rolling my eyes. While the stew was heating up, I got on with the dumplings, instructing Doris to peel some extra carrots and mash some more swede. When we all finally sat down, the table was gratifyingly covered in various dishes and there were appreciative comments, especially from the men. I remembered Mrs Watling telling me that gentleman or working man, men liked meat. Perhaps that was why I’d been so insistent on the roast beef for Inspector Marks.
Verity sat next to me at the dinner table as was usual. “When do you next have a night off?” she asked.
I thought about it. “On Tuesday. Why?”
“Fancy going to the theatre again?”
I looked at her, feeling a thump of both excitement and anxiety. “The theatre? You mean, to see Tommy’s play again?”
Verity nodded. “He promised me tickets. And, we can go backstage afterwards. You know. Talk to people.”
The excitement was there and sharper now. I wanted to talk to people, to all the stage hands and the actors and the people who’d been there on the night of the murder. “That would be wonderful,” I murmured, trying to keep my voice steady. “I’m sure it’ll be fine but I’ll check with Mrs Watling.”
“Good.” Verity took care of the last forkful of stew on her plate and then daintily wiped her mouth with the rough napkins we used below stairs. She jerked her head up to the ceiling. “What do you think they’re talking about, up there?”
I knew exactly who she meant. So Verity had been puzzling over it too? “I don’t know,” I said, reluctantly. And then, because I had to know, I leant a little closer and whispered, “Dorothy’s not – not interested in the inspector, is she?”
Verity laughed. “I doubt it. Dorothy might like to dabble with men of a different class but she’d hardly go so low as a policeman. Come on, Joan.”
I sat back, feeling unaccountably relieved. “Well, that’s what I thought too, to be honest.”
Verity pushed her chair back, shaking her head. “Want me to help you clear up? Haven’t you got the pudding to do?”
I got up too, thankful that at least I had that under control. “All done and waiting to be taken up. If you could wipe the kitchen table down for me, that would be wonderful.”
“Consider it done.”
Gradually the servants’ hall emptied of staff until there was only Doris, Verity and me left. I left Doris to get on with the washing up in the scullery and got Andrew to take the coffee and cheeseboard up to the dining room. Almost over… Wearily, I began hanging up the copper pans and putting the washed utensils away.
The dining room bell jangled, and both Verity and I looked up in surprise. “I’ll go,” she said, getting to her feet with a groan. Nodding, I waved a tired hand at her as she left the room.
I helped Doris with the last of the washing up and then sent her up to her room at the top of the house, which she shared with Nancy. I was expecting Mrs Watling back at any moment – it was past eleven o’clock. What were the chances of Dorothy and Inspector Marks wanting any more refreshments? I wavered for a moment and then re-filled the kettle, just in case they decided to go on chatting into the night.
There was a clearing of a masculine throat behind me that made me jump. I turned around to find Inspector Marks was standing in the doorway of the kitchen.
“Sorry to startle you, Miss Hart,” he said cheerfully, coming in. I was suddenly very conscious of my dirty apron and the strands of hair that had escaped from my cap and had plastered themselves to my forehead as I had stood, sweating, over the stove. “I just wanted to come down and thank you for a really excellent dinner.”
I smiled. “It was my pleasure, sir. I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“I haven’t enjoyed a meal like that in a long time. The beef was done to perfection.” I was feeling rather hot by now, under such praise. The inspector stood for a moment, looking about him. I don’t suppose he got to go into many kitchens during his usual working day.
There was a slightly awkward silence then. I could hear the faint clangs of expanding metal as the kettle began to heat up on the gas.
“Can I bring you anything else, sir?” I asked.
The inspector looked at the kettle. “Well, if you’re not too tired, I wouldn’t say no to a cup of tea.”
“Oh, certainly.” I began to worry about where the good cups were. “Would her ladyship like a tray sent up?”
“No, I meant, I’d quite like to have a cup of tea with you. Down here. If that’s not too much trouble?”
“Of course not,” I said, a little too quickly. I covered over my confusion by busying myself with the kettle and the teapot.
The kettle seemed to take an absolute age to boil. I was being as busy as possible, putting cups out (I managed to find a few good ones at the back of the dresser) and warming the pot and hunting out some biscuits from the batch Mrs Watling had baked yesterday. Still, the silence between us stretched out uncomfortably, and in the end I broke it by asking a question he’d already answered. “So, the meal was to your liking, sir?”
He smiled. “It was wonderful, Joan. Perhaps I was a bit hasty when I told you you were wasted in your job.”
I remembered him saying that, on the staircase at the theatre. All of a sudden, my nervousness fell away. He wanted to talk to me, and if I had read things rightly, he wanted to talk to me about the case at the theatre. I poured him a cup of tea, my hands quite steady now, profferred the milk and sugar and then sat down opposite him at the kitchen table. After a moment, I poured myself a cup, if only to have something for my hands to do.
“Well, Miss Hart.” The inspector took a neat sip from his cup. “Here we are again.”
I took a deep breath. “You can call me Joan, sir. If you’d like.”
“Joan. Thank you.” He inclined his head courteously. “Well, Joan, I suppose you’ve been wondering why I accepted Miss Drew’s invitation tonight – well, perhaps not so much why I accepted it, more what we were talking about. Perhaps that’s more what you were thinking?”
“Well, I was, to be honest,” I said frankly. “I can only assume it had something to do with the Lord Cartwright case.”
“You thought rightly. Miss Drew wanted to go over, in great detail, exactly where I’d gone wrong.”
“Oh.” I tried to read his tone but it was neutral.
Then the inspector smiled ruefully. “I must say, she sugared the pill rather well with that delightful dinner. Normally when I get hauled over the coals it’s standing on the cold linoleum of my superior’s office floor.”
I smiled, relieved. “Her ladyship would never want a guest to go without a good dinner, no matter why they were here.”
“I agree. True breeding there.” He looked as though he was going to say something else then but obviously thought better of it.
There was another silence that threatened awkwardness again. I decided to be bold. “Can I ask you if you’re any further forward with the murder case at the theatre, sir?”
Inspector Marks leant back in his chair and sighed. “Well, as you’ll no doubt see from the papers tomorrow, the body has finally been identified.” I sat forward in excitement and
he shook his head ruefully at me. “However, there’s a strong suspicion that he was actually travelling under a false name and his real identity hasn’t yet been uncovered.”
“Was he a spy?” I asked, fascinated.
“Now, that’s a good question, Joan. I’d like very much to know that.” The inspector was silent for a moment and then added, “There was something so clinical about his death – almost like an execution. A professional murder, if you will.”
I took a sip of my tea. His words had just made me recall something I’d thought of earlier, when I was thinking about how Verity and I had sat in those theatre seats, our eyes glued to the action on stage.
“Sir, if I may…” I faltered and then took a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking about that, about how he was killed, I mean. And I think it’s something to do with the theatre.”
Inspector Marks looked at me. “Go on,” he said, after a moment.
“Well, I don’t necessarily mean to do with anyone at the theatre. Anyone who works there, I mean. But it was the timing of it that made me pause. I mean, it was a very dramatic play and we were all mesmerised by it. I don’t think I would have noticed anything going on around me in the seats. Well, I didn’t notice anything, apart from the woman that came in right before the play started. Once the play had started, I might have been in another world. So you see, sir, it was a very good place for the murderer to strike, because nobody was taking any notice of them.” I subsided, gripping my cooling tea-cup with both hands. I hoped it hadn’t sounded as though I was implying Inspector Marks didn’t know his job.
“That’s very interesting,” Inspector Marks said. I breathed an inner sigh of relief. “That’s very interesting indeed, Joan. Thank you.” After another brief silence he went on. “Your friend, Miss Hunter – her uncle is one of the actors at the theatre, isn’t he?”
“Yes, Tommy – I mean Mister Vance – is Verity’s uncle. That’s why we were able to see the play – he’d arranged for free tickets.”
“Hmm.” The inspector drained his cup and put it back on the kitchen table. “I suppose you girls know the actors and the crew quite well?”
“Well, Verity more so than me,” I confessed. “But we’re going back there on Tuesday to see the play – the whole of it, I mean, this time. Unless anybody else gets killed.” I laughed a completely brainless laugh after I said this and the inspector smiled minutely but didn’t laugh in response. I could feel the surging tide of blood in my cheeks at my stupidity. “I’m sorry, I mean – I’m sure nothing like that will happen.” I still tinkled a laugh on the end of this sentence. Hold your tongue, Joan.
“So you ladies will be going backstage, after the play?” The inspector sounded quite casual but there was just a shade of something in his voice, something that made me forget my blushes and my silly girlish giggling and meet his eye.
“That’s right,” I said slowly. “We’ll get to meet everyone then. I hope.”
“I understand,” said Inspector Marks. We continued to hold each other’s gaze for a moment. It was as if he was trying to tell me something telepathically. But what? Was he – was he giving me permission to try and investigate what happened?
For a moment, I was sure that he was, and then his gaze dropped and he got up from the table, brushing his hands together to remove the biscuit crumbs. Quickly, I leapt to my feet too.
“Do let me know if you hear anything interesting, Miss Hart. Joan.”
“I will, sir.”
For a moment I thought he was going to shake my hand but he obviously thought better of it. He nodded again, with a rather embarrassed smile, and then he was gone.
Chapter Eight
It was very odd to be back in the theatre again, up in the Gods again. At least we didn’t have to sit in the same seats again – that would have been a little too close to the memory of the night of the murder for comfort. The seat where the man had been killed had been removed, as had several feet of the dusty red carpet around it. I suppose it had been too stained to be used again, and who on Earth would have bought a ticket for that particular seat, even at a penny a go? They wouldn’t have been able to give that seat away.
We were the only ones in the Gods that performance. I suppose it wasn’t usually a very busy night, a Tuesday evening during the middle of the play’s run, but I would have expected at least a few other playgoers to have joined us by the time the curtain went up.
“Too scared,” Verity said, leaning back in her seat a trifle smugly. “They think they’re going to fall victim to the dastardly seat stabber of nineteen thirty two.”
“Oh, don’t,” I said, more nervously than I meant to. I glanced at the sea of empty seats around us. What if somebody was hiding behind them? You’re being fanciful, I told myself but I still had to get up and take a quick look, just to check. Verity watched me with an amused smile.
“I’ve already done that,” she said. “While you went to the Ladies.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Ah, so you’re just as nervy as I am then.”
Verity snorted and then gestured for me to sit down. “Come on, it’s starting. We’ll be alright.” I sat back down and took off my cardigan; it got hot up here in the Gods. Verity added “Besides, now that we’re here all alone, it’s like our own private box.”
I smiled and tried to dismiss my anxiety. Of course, as soon as the play started, I forgot my nerves. Once more I was riveted by Caroline Carpenter’s performance. She was the first one to appear on stage – in fact, she was in almost every scene in the first act. Tommy and she had a wonderful sparring of wits in the first scene, which was both exciting and comical. I watched out for Aldous Smith, wondering if he would be much different from that first time I’d seen him. When he appeared in the second scene, I could see he was a little more relaxed on the stage, a little more convincing than he had been the first time we’d seen the show.
As we applauded the stage as the interval curtain went down and the massive chandelier hanging from the auditorium’s ceiling glowed back to life, I couldn’t help a nervous glance over to where the body had been found. Of course, there was nothing there, not even the chair he’d been sitting on.
Verity rummaged in her handbag and produced her purse with an air of triumph. She waved it at me. “Got enough for a couple of ices, Joan. What do you say?”
“Ooh, yes please.” A refreshment at the theatre was a rare luxury, but Verity earned more than I did so I was happy for her to treat me occasionally.
“Come on, then.”
The Gods didn’t have its own bar. We had to walk down a flight of steps to the bar that served the Dress Circle. It wasn’t very busy, unusually so for an interval. I wondered whether the murder had scared off the public and said as much to Verity.
“Maybe,” she said, rather cynically. “I would have thought the great British public would have flocked to the scene of a murder, just to gawk at where it happened. I thought Tommy said they had sold out for the next few weeks.”
Remembering the public furore over the Asharton Manor murders and the Merisham Lodge case, I had to agree. Perhaps it was just that it was mid-week and the cold and rainy night was discouraging people.
“I suppose it’s lucky that they didn’t have to cancel the entire run,” I said, as we found seats by the back of the bar and ate our ices.
“Yes, that’s exactly what Tommy was saying.” Verity licked her little spoon with relish. “He was frantic that the whole show was going to be cancelled and he was going to be out of work.”
“Will we see him afterwards?”
“Of course.” She paused and gave me rather a sly look sideways. “You’re rather keen on our Tommy, aren’t you, Joanie?”
“I am not!” I said, hotly. “I just think he’s a nice man, that’s all.”
“Oh he is, he’s lovely. But you know, Joanie, he’s not for you. He’s not that way inclined, if you see what I mean.”
Of course I knew what she meant. Did she think I was
stupid or something? I said nothing but gave her a look, and then a poke with my ice-cream spoon for good measure, and she ducked away, laughing. The bell rang to remind us to retake our seats.
As we walked back to the Gods, up the stairs, I took note of the entrance. There was a small landing at the top of the steps, with a narrow corridor leading to the lavatories for this floor. The steps led down to the bar in which we’d just been and then onwards, down to the Grand Circle and finally to the stalls on the ground floor of the auditorium. As I walked into the Gods, I tried to think like the murderer would have. Had it been that woman I’d seen or someone else who’d crept in after dark? But then, how had the man been stabbed through the back of the chair if the woman had sat there and she hadn’t been the killer? I looked around, searching for another entrance, a hidden door or something like that, and even got up and walked about along the back row of seats, looking harder, but there was nothing. Just a plain, unbroken wall. There was no possible way that the killer could have climbed down into the Gods by the balcony without having been seen by Tophat and his group of friends, so the murderer must have come up via the staircase. But then, why had nobody seen him – or her?
“Come on, Joan, it’s starting,” Verity whispered, and I sat back down in my seat and turned my attention towards the play.
I enjoyed the second act even more than I had the first. Caroline’s character, of course, ending up renouncing the bad boy (Tommy) for the good man (Aldous) but the way the playwright went about it meant that Verity and I were on the edge of our seats to see which way the leading lady would take. When the final applause finally died down, Verity and I looked at one another with rather dazed delight.
“She’s awfully good, isn’t she? Caroline Carpenter, I mean.” I began to gather up my things in preparation for our departure.
“Yes she is. Come on, let’s give it five minutes and then we’ll go down and meet everyone.”