Honey glanced at her watch. ‘I don’t want to be late.’
‘You’re not worried about being late, Mother. You are just in a damned hurry to get it over with.’
Lindsey was wise beyond her years. Where did she get that from?
By the time she’d finished the second vodka, her daughter had appeared in blue jeans and a thick, padded jacket.
Honey’s opinion of the outfit must have shown in her face.
‘I’ve got a pretty top on underneath, but I have to warn you, that old place they’re giving the readings hasn’t changed much since Winston Churchill was a boy.’
‘Right! How about one for the road?’
Alex was poised and ready.
Lindsey put an end to it. ‘Two’s enough.’
‘Three would be better,’ Honey protested.
‘No!’ Lindsey shook her head in that schoolmarm style of hers which made Honey feel about fourteen years old. ‘Grandma will be livid if we fall asleep. We’d never hear the last of it.’
Lindsey was proved right. The heating at the Old Pavilion, where the readings were being staged, was provided by an ancient boiler with a mind of its own. There was no equilibrium in its heating technique. It was either lukewarm or piping hot. Tonight it was the latter.
People were fanning themselves with their programmes. Some began dozing. Within the hour, the first subdued snorts sounded as those snoring were nudged back into consciousness.
The woman sitting next to Honey had obviously been expecting the venue to be sub-zero. She took a hot-water bottle out from under a thick Welsh wool poncho.
‘The warmth won’t last. Forewarned is forearmed. I’ll put it at my feet,’ she said in response to Honey’s enquiring glance.
‘Good idea.’
The poncho followed, placed over the knees.
Lindsey was looking around.
‘I know her,’ she said.
Honey couldn’t see who she meant and as things were about to start, wasn’t about to pursue the matter.
‘Ladies and gentlemen …’
Here it was. The master – or rather mistress – of ceremonies had stepped on stage.
The first three or four readings were introduced. Three short one-act plays about inner angst, social inequalities, and a student’s opinion of how awful the world was and how best to change it.
‘As if the ideas had never been touched on before,’ murmured Honey.
‘Grim,’ Lindsey said.
‘He’ll learn,’ Honey responded.
The old boiler was galloping away. The ancient radiators accompanied the readings with a metallic humming and the odd clunk from its piping.
Feeling her eyelids getting heavy, Honey attempted to take her coat off, but there was no room. Like an apple pie in a hot oven, she was destined to bake until her outer covering was at least crisp if not brown.
‘Grandma’s next,’ said Lindsey, as they clapped for the previous reading.
Honey’s eyelids blinked wide open. ‘Thanks for the nudge. I was beginning to doze.’ She forced herself to sit bolt upright. She mustn’t fall asleep, however bad the play might be.
‘Our prize winner …’
Honey listened. The presenter was going on at lengths about her mother’s play, plus two others that were in contention for the one and only prize – a day at a Robert McKee scriptwriting workshop in London. The suspense was killing.
‘I wish he’d spit it out and get it over with,’ she said to Lindsey. ‘Then we can commiserate and go home.’
‘Or celebrate. It might just happen, you know.’
Honey shook her head. ‘Doubtful. It’ll be a sickly sweet romance. You just see if it won’t.’ Her mother read Mills and Boon by the bucket load.
Lindsey agreed it was a safe bet.
The mistress of ceremonies stood up again. She was a gangly woman with buck teeth and a five o’clock shadow on her upper lip. She started off by praising the entries and saying how difficult it had been for the judges. Eventually, once she had noticed that the audience were fidgeting and shuffling their feet, she got to the nitty-gritty.
‘After great deliberation, the judges came to a unanimous decision. This season’s winner is …’
Just like on the television talent shows a pause was held before the announcement was made.
‘Jack and Me by Gloria Swanson-Cross.
There was a great deal of clapping.
Honey sat dumbfounded.
The clapping subsided. The mistress of ceremonies recommenced her announcement. ‘Tonight it gives me great pleasure to hear our winning entry being read.’
Honey and her daughter looked at each other in stunned silence. The title was fine; could be romance, or perhaps not. Gloria Swanson-Cross? The middle name had been swiped from the old-time movie actress. Grandma had no real right to it, except as a dramatic device.
There was something else. Honey and Lindsey stared open-mouthed at the man and woman doing the reading. The woman was not known to them. The man most certainly was. There was only one person with a spider’s web design tattooed on his neck and enough earrings and nose rings to hang a curtain.
‘Our readers are Mr Rodney Eastwood and Lady Cynthia Morrison-Poage. Please give them a warm welcome.’
Under the cover of more applause, Honey hissed to her daughter, ‘Since when has Clint been into amateur dramatics?’
‘Interesting contrast,’ Lindsey hissed back.
Honey was of the same mind. Rodney (Clint), now reading the male part, was a man of many jobs. He was a guy with a finger in many pies, and not all of them legal; obviously this was one pie they’d not known about. It was a strangely exotic one for him, seeing as they’d only seen him washing up, running a shop part-time for a friend, and working as a bouncer at the Zodiac.
The female reader had snow-white, shoulder-length hair, wore a black velvet Alice band and was at least sixty years of age. Being titled, she was also at the opposite end of the social structure to the likes of Clint.
‘Before we begin, I will give you just a brief description of the subject matter,’ said the mistress of ceremonies. ‘This is a one-act play about President John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. The premise is that she seduced him and not the other way round as believed by many. I have to warn you that this work does contain material of a very sexual nature plus some explicit dialogue.’
Honey and Lindsey sat dumbstruck.
The subject matter had drawn mumbled comments from the audience around them. Those who had been snoring suddenly awoke, sniffing the air as though the subject of sex had a smell all of its own.
There was a hushed silence. Not one person got up to leave. Even an old gent wearing a hearing aid turned up the volume and leaned forward expectantly.
The play commenced. The readers put on convincing voices. Thankfully, as this was not a visually produced play, they refrained from taking their clothes off and getting into some of the clinches referred to in the dialogue. The audience didn’t seem to notice that.
At the end there was stunned silence. It was as though the audience was expecting more. Once it became obvious that there was no more, there was clapping. Then more clapping. Then an encore, and another encore.
The actors bowed and smiled.
Clint beckoned for Honey’s mother to join them on the dais.
Gloria ‘Swanson-’Cross beamed as brightly as a Spanish morning as she took her place.
Up until now she’d been sitting, unseen by her family, at the front with other would-be playwrights and members of the Society.
As she took the stage, Honey and Lindsey sucked in their breath.
‘My God!’ said Honey in a loud whisper.
‘Move over Danielle Steele!’
Honey could have reminded her daughter that this was a play not a novel, but she knew what she was getting at. Her mother was dressed in a sharp black and white outfit; the dress black with white buttons and a wide white collar. The brim of a white Panama shad
ed one side of her face. A pair of spectacles hung from a chain around her neck. They were totally unnecessary. Her mother had had laser treatment two years ago. This, Honey realized, was just a prop; as was the ebony cigarette holder.
‘Has Grandma taken up smoking?’ asked Lindsey.
Honey shook her head, too stunned to answer. Her mother was good at playing a part. Tonight she was a playwright and had gone all out to look the opposite of the ‘starving in attics’ bit. The outfit was new. No expense spared.
‘Do we wait for her?’ Lindsey whispered.
‘We have to.’
Her original plan had been to pop in, listen to her mother’s work being read, then pop out again. But winning a prize put a different light on things. They could hardly leave without giving her hugs and kisses and saying what a clever cat she was. Woe betide them if they failed to provide due congratulations. She’d also expect supper at the Theatre Royal restaurant accompanied by a bottle of bubbly. Perhaps two bottles of bubbly.
‘There’s a downside to this,’ Honey pointed out.
Lindsey demurred. They were obliged to sit through the runners-up. This was worrying, or to put it more honestly, sitting through more than an hour of recitation could be soul-destroying. The best had been read. What were the rest going to be like?
Honey resigned herself and Lindsey followed her mother’s example. Her body relaxed, slumping as comfortably as possible in the conference-style chairs; the sort designed to stop you from dozing off.
The next play was awful – a dreadful dirge about the futility of war, but full of clichés and a scenario that better writers had used before.
Her mother’s play, Jack and Me, was still in Honey’s mind and stopped her from falling asleep despite the near tropical heat.
She vaguely realized another prize was being given, this time for a play with historical leaning. She probably wouldn’t have given it much attention if she hadn’t heard the magic words: The Life of Jane Austen. And then something else.
‘The Life of Jane Austen was written by Perdita Moody. Unfortunately she had other commitments this evening and couldn’t be here. She sends her apologies.’
Honey sat bolt upright. Had she heard right? Yes. Of course she had. A few physical bits and pieces were going west into the sunset, but not her hearing.
The scene was between Jane and one of her sisters. The Lady with the snow-white hair and the Alice band took Jane’s part. A woman in a tie-dyed skirt and dangly earrings took that of the sister.
Honey listened. She couldn’t possibly say whether this was part of the script that she’d found covered in blood. She’d merely glanced at the script, but her memory was good. She was pretty certain the words being spoken were the same.
One thing she was definitely sure about was that the script she had found was not accredited to Perdita Moody, but to a Chris Bennett. But who was Chris Bennett? She hadn’t come across him, and to her knowledge, neither had Doherty.
‘I’ve got to go,’ she whispered to Lindsey.
There was a look of surprise on her daughter’s face.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Swindon.’
‘What about Grandma?’
‘Take her to supper. Here, take my credit card. You know the pin number.’
Chapter Thirty-six
Honey hurried along the road towards North Parade. There was a smell of leaves in the air. There were none on the trees. Perhaps spring was thinking of springing early, tiny buds wanting to burst out.
She waited by the traffic lights. For the first time this month, she was glad of the chilled night air. By the time Doherty arrived, her pink cheeks were pinched not roasted.
The MR2 slid into the kerb. Doherty pushed the door open. Honey got in.
As he pulled out into the traffic, she blurted out the business about the script in more detail.
His eyes studied the cars ahead. At last he said, ‘It’s not important. Not any more.’
‘How come?’
‘We’ve arrested Brett Coleridge.’
‘So what’s his motive?’
‘We don’t know yet.’
Honey shook her head. ‘No. I don’t believe it. Why would he kill his fiancée? There was no life insurance out on her.’
‘But there was an insurance policy on the film. Scrap the film and – hey presto – a massive twenty million dollar fallback from the insurance company.’
‘There’s still the script. Blood on the script. Perdita Moody wrote that script, not Chris Bennett. Have you actually met this Chris Bennett?’
‘No. No reason to. He wasn’t on set.’
‘Or was he?’ Honey sat back and thought about it.
‘The script was being passed off as being written by this bloke who we haven’t run across. OK, I know this kind of thing goes on a lot nowadays – professional writers complete the work, and a big celeb, who can barely write their name, gets the kudos, but this is slightly different. This is plagiarism. So where is this guy?’
‘Listen to me, Honey. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, I thought you wanted to nail Brett Coleridge. You didn’t like him the moment you set eyes on the guy.’
‘Arrogant, male chauvinist, rude, snobby … yes, all of those …’
‘That’s beside the point. The production company – head of which is you know who – has claimed on the insurance. Everyone has to be paid off, but the insurance is holding off until we’ve finished our investigations. They smell a rat and King Rat is Brett Coleridge.’
He turned off and headed out of Bath.
‘So when are you interviewing him?’
‘Tomorrow. The Met have got him in custody.’
‘So you’re off there tomorrow?’
‘Do you want to keep me company?’
She thought about it. ‘You’re going by train?’
‘Yes.’
He pulled into the parking lot at the top of Tog Hill. The view was significant. Behind them were the dark trees and hills that girdled the City of Bath. Ahead of them were the lights of Bristol, spread out like a twinkling counterpane.
‘I’ll come with you, but only as far as Swindon.’
She felt his eyes on her.
‘You look good in this light.’
‘You mean darkness? I look better when it’s dark? Charm doesn’t come naturally to you, Steve Doherty!’
Folding her arms, she glared glumly at the city lights.
‘It’s not easy to flatter you, Hannah Driver!’
It rankled when he used her real name. Only her mother used it. Everyone, but everyone, called her Honey.
‘OK,’ he breathed on the back of a sigh. ‘So I’m no Casanova. Words are not my thing, so I’ll try again. The subtle light up here accentuates your cheekbones. There! Is that any better?’
It was hard to be ratty when he was trying so hard.
‘Thanks.’
At first he didn’t react.
‘You can apologize when you’re ready,’ he said finally.
‘For what?’
‘For snapping my head off.’
She turned to face him. He was right about the subtle light; amazing that the distant glow of city lights could reflect this far. Her features were better defined.
‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘You look quite good in the dark too.’
She saw him smile. ‘I like flattery. Flattery rates a number seven on a ten-to-one liking scale.’
‘I know what you’re playing at. I’m not going to ask you about numbers six to one.’
‘Or even ten to eight?’
She considered. Things he liked from number ten to number eight had to be fairly innocent; certainly in comparison with the top three in his list.
‘OK. Tell me.’
She waited. What will they be, she wondered as a gooey feeling took over her insides. Something that came behind flattery.
One corner of his mouth lifted in a lopsided smile. ‘I like having the nape of my neck tickled.’
&nb
sp; She looked at him. No. Having the nape of his neck tickled had not occurred to her.
‘Do you mind obliging?’ he asked when she failed to move.
Overall this evening had been full of the unexpected. First her mother’s play, replete with sexual content and bad language. Now this. Perhaps if it hadn’t been for the play, she might not have played ball. Perhaps her libido had been touched or even tickled by it. Whatever! Her arm rose seemingly of its own volition. If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well, and she was a girl who was always up to the job.
‘You’re hairy,’ she said.
‘Pardon?’
‘I said, you’re hairy.’
His eyes were closed.
‘I thought you said something else.’
Honey knew from experience where this was going. ‘And are you?’
‘Hairy or horny?’
‘Doherty!’
She started to remove her fingers, but didn’t get the chance.
Doherty kissed her. Her arm was still resting on his shoulder, her fingers on his neck. There was nothing she could do. Nothing she wanted to do.
‘Are you coming with me on the train tomorrow?’ he asked between kisses.
‘Yes. But I’m getting off at Swindon.’
Chapter Thirty-seven
Doherty got off the train with her at Swindon.
She hadn’t dared look him in the eyes so far this morning, but there had to come a time. Why had he decided to get off at Swindon with her?
‘Is this because of last night?’
‘No. I’ve had a text message. The Met police have let Coleridge go.’
Perdita was having a break from rehearsals. Someone got them tea and crumpets. The butter was melting a treat and blackcurrant jam had also been supplied. Railway food on the train coming up had been basic and expensive.
Doherty tucked in. Honey was priding herself on resisting temptation – just!
‘Are you on a diet?’ Perdita asked, noting Honey’s hungry eyes and tight lips. ‘They’re very good. Freshly baked at a small place round the corner.’
Resistance crumbled. ‘Diet, schmiet!’ Honey exclaimed, and tucked in.
Perdita crossed her extremely long legs and tossed a curtain of dark hair back from her eyes. She did it twice; visible evidence of how nervous she was.
Killing Jane Austen - A Honey Driver murder mystery (Honey Driver Mysteries) Page 22