“I believe he liked to find something rather special for the first time,” said Charlie.
“Did he?” said Olivia, unfazed by being one of a long line. “Only if the circumstances were right, I suppose—if there’d been a bit of a buildup. Mum and he just left the restaurant where they’d met up and were at it in Acton within half an hour.”
“So when you finished admiring it, what happened?” asked Oddie.
“Nothing. I’d been half expecting him to pop his head round the bathroom door, burst out laughing, and then get down to business. I went and opened it, but there was no one there. I even opened the wardrobe. I felt such a fool. Then I sat down. I was beginning to get angry. There was champagne in a bucket. I opened it and had a glass—no more: drink does nothing for my voice. The point is, there was nothing I could do but just sit there getting angrier and angrier.”
“When did you decide to leave?”
“Much later than I should have done. I was a fool. This was a disaster for the voice—not just no fuck, but absolutely the wrong frame of mind for the final scene. I only have ten or fifteen minutes in that scene—Verdi was a bloody fool—but they’re good ones, and Marius had spoilt it so that everything was just wrong. Anger was absolutely the wrong mood for it. I wished I’d had a quickie with Colm in interval. Better than nothing. Anyway, I just banged out of the room, down that creepy corridor and stairs, threw the key to the creep, then marched out into the street and back to the theater.”
“What was going on onstage?” asked Charlie.
“Preziosilla doing her bloody rataplan with the chorus.”
“So you went straight to your dressing room, and saw no one till you got your call for the final scene?” asked Oddie.
“That’s pretty much right. I saw one of the stagehands, but I didn’t proposition him, if that’s what you’re interested in. I was too angry for that to do any good.”
“And when you heard of Mr. Fleetwood’s death, you decided to conceal the assignation at the Crescent?”
Again she shrugged that field athlete’s shrug.
“Nobody’s business but mine. I don’t like being stood up, and I didn’t know when he was killed. Mum’s in no position to cast any first stones, but on the whole it was better if the thing didn’t come out. Let her live with her illusions. It’s what she’s always done, until the feller proves to be yet another louse in her eyes.”
“So—no shame?” said Oddie.
“Are you a policeman or a bloody clergyman?”
And that was all they got from her. Charlie escorted her and the solicitor out to the main office and into the public area. She dismissed her legal adviser with a curt “Thanks.” When he had slunk off she turned to Charlie. He wondered whether she was going to proposition him, and didn’t know whether to feel miffed or relieved when she didn’t.
“Does my mother have to know about this?” she asked.
“She knows already,” he replied.
She nodded, unfazed. “I’d better keep out of her way for a bit,” she commented, and sailed serenely through the glass door.
Outside, Charlie could see the substantial car that had brought her there. As she appeared at the top of the steps, the large young man leapt out of the driver’s seat and went to open the passenger door. Charlie slipped outside.
“What the hell have you waited for?” Olivia demanded. “I told you not to. I’m not fucking help less. You don’t fucking own me.”
Chapter 15
Backstage
Thursday morning Charlie had off, and Thursday afternoon was filled with tedious and backbreaking formalities connected with the Fleetwood murder. It was close on seven when he arrived at the Grand Theatre. The audience for the evening’s performance was gathering and greeting one another: the atmosphere was friendly because many of them were subscribers, and they saw one another at every performance. Charlie, however, slipped down the side lane that led to the stage door. As he descended the five or six steps he saw that the stage doorkeeper was in close conversation with a gangling middle-aged man in tight jeans and a baby blue sweater. They were both bent forward, and the keeper had been writing something on a piece of paper, which he now handed to the other, who slipped it into the back pocket of his jeans and straightened up.
“My best thanks, as always,” he said to the keeper. “My visits to Leeds wouldn’t be the same without you, Syd.”
As he left the window Charlie came forward, flashing his ID.
“Detective Sergeant Peace. It’s about the Fleetwood murder.”
He was conscious as he said it that the middle-aged man in the blue sweater had suddenly stopped on the steps leading out. Charlie turned toward the exit onto the street, but only in time to see the man’s feet disappearing through it.
“Oh yes, Mr. Peace. I’ve talked to your boss—Oddie, is it?”
“It is. Before I get down to business, who was that?”
“That? Oh, that’s Rick Radshaw. An actor and singer. He’s been with us in The Mikado and Yeoman—with the Doyly Carte and a company that calls itself the Carl Rosa. Nice little tenor voice, they tell me.”
“I see. And the father of Olivia Fawley.”
“That’s right. She took her mother’s name. More recognition potential, her mother having made a nice little career in television.”
“Never misses a trick, Miss Fawley,” commented Charlie. “Has he been visiting her now? Or did he want her address?”
“No—this was something quite different—personal,” said Syd. “Now, what can I do for you?”
Charlie decided to let the matter slide. For the moment.
“I wanted to talk to one of the stagehands. Nothing too important. Just confirmation of a time—alibis and suchlike, you know.”
The keeper waved his hand toward the theater.
“Be my guest. Be a bit careful where you go, though. Curtain up in five minutes’ time. Don’t want you suddenly appearing onstage.”
Charlie rather fancied himself onstage—had once considered applying to drama school. Opera, though, didn’t appeal. He went into the maze of corridors with caution, through what seemed to be a building site of activity, with costumes being adjusted, stage mechanisms given a last-minute testing, and people rushing hither and yon on missions that no doubt seemed to them important when they set out. Gaining the wings, and treading gingerly as if at any moment he might be whisked up into the flies, he caught a glimpse of a set that looked more like a cartoon than the background for a Verdi opera.
“Isn’t Forza being done tonight?” he asked a passing stagehand.
“No, not till Saturday. You have to have at least two days’ rest between performances, preferably more. It’s punishing, that’s what all the singers say, and I can believe them. It’s Love for Three Oranges tonight. A doddle for the voices, a bit of a nightmare for us.”
“I’m looking for one of the stagehands who may have seen Olivia Fawley arrive back in the theater during the first night of Forza.”
“Policeman, are you? The one you’re after will be Simon Neely. That’s him over there, with the fair-to-brown hair. I saw her leave, by the way.”
“You did?”
“Yes—I bet she thought no one did, didn’t she? She left about halfway through the interval, when everyone was busy getting the stage ready for the second part, and all the performers were hovering around the stage. I was fetching something, and I saw her slipping out the big doors into the side lane. I suppose that would be about twenty or a quarter to nine.”
“Right,” said Charlie. “That could be useful. And that’s Simon Neely, is it?”
“Yes. Wait ten minutes until the opera’s started, then he’ll be free.”
Charlie nodded. But instead of standing around he slipped away from the stage, found a pay phone in a private area backstage, and rang Oddie’s home number.
“Mike? Charlie here…. Backstage at the Grand Theatre. Just waiting to talk to that stagehand. They’re not doing Forza ton
ight—something about oranges…. Mike, this is just a hunch—not a brilliant guess based on a sensitive reading of masses of evidence, but a hunch…. Yes, I’m sure you’ve had them, Mike. Now, didn’t you say that when you were talking to the owner of the Crescent you made a joke at the end?”
“Yes” came Oddie’s voice. “He could think of nothing that swish room in his dingy hotel could be used for, and I suggested that he let it out as a knocking shop for the highly discriminating. People like the performers at the Grand Theatre, for example. I had a feeling he might have taken me seriously.”
“I have a feeling he did just that,” said Charlie.
Back in the wings Charlie was deafened by brass, but things seemed to be going to plan onstage, and there was a good deal of audience laughter. He started looking around for his quarry, but someone came up behind him and touched him on the shoulder.
“Are you looking for me? I’m Simon Neely. Dick said you wanted to talk to the man who saw Fawley arrive back.”
Charlie registered the brutal use of the surname.
“Yes, I did. Anywhere we can talk and actually hear each other?”
The man nodded and led the way back from the stage area, ending up in a little alcove in the middle of a long corridor.
“It’s not really worth your trouble all this,” Neely said. “I could have told you what I know in ten seconds. I saw her coming in through that door over there, the one cut into the big doors for the sets. That was around twenty or a quarter to ten. End of story.”
Charlie nodded, looking at the immense square area through which the sets had come.
“Know what was going on at the time onstage?” he asked.
“The soldiers’ moll was doing her number,” said Neely. “They call it rataplan or something like that.”
“Right. Now, where’s her dressing room?” he asked. Simon Neely gestured down the corridor in the other direction.
“Five doors down. She’s there now.”
“There now? She’s not in this opera as well, is she?”
“Good Lord, no!” said Neely, grinning wickedly. “Not her cuppa at all. A bundle of laughs, this one.”
“Why’s she here tonight, then?”
Simon looked him straight in the eye.
“You’re on this case, mate. Your guess will be as good as mine, if you’re doing your job. It’ll be exactly the same as mine, though I’m more up on who she’ll be doing it with. My guess is that it’s the cook.”
“The cook? Does the theater have a cook?”
“The cook in Oranges. He’s a fantastic figure about seven feet high (stilts, of course) and he rages about wielding a great cleaver in the second act. I should think he’s using his chopper now.”
“I get you.”
Neely looked at him, his face twisted, but apparently in some effort to understand the woman he was talking about.
“She’s not subtle or choosy, you know. Her contract gives her the use of the female star’s dressing room every night while Forza and Oranges are on the bill. Oranges has no real female star, so no hair has been flying. She can use the room whenever it suits her, and for whatever suits her.”
“You don’t like her. Did you and she by any chance have words on Saturday night when she arrived back here?”
“Not then.” Neely pulled himself up. “Oh, wait: she muttered, ‘You’re bloody useless,’ as she went past.”
“Flattering.”
“I’d better explain. She did send out clear signals in my direction a fortnight or so ago, when stage rehearsals started. I just said, ‘I’m sorry, love. I’m gay.’”
“Are you?”
“Oh, I’m a happy chappie most of the time. But no, I’m not gay in that sense. It just seemed—I dunno—more final than saying that I wasn’t interested.”
“It certainly worked. Why weren’t you interested?”
“Does that need an explanation? You are or you aren’t. I just wasn’t. I’m not into being eaten alive. There’s something—I don’t know—unhealthy about her. Twisted. Perverse. I don’t know the right word, but she seems consumed with getting what she wants. Anyone who goes with her must feel like a sort of machine. You get a few like her in the theater. In fact, I’ve been with one or two of them. You don’t feel good afterwards, and that’s putting it mildly. You feel like a dirty, used rag.”
“What did she say when you told her you were gay?”
“Word for word it was ‘Christ, just my luck to fancy a bloody faggot.’ I think political correctness has passed La Fawley by. Though I rather suspected that she didn’t actually believe me, but had to pretend to because anything else would be less than flattering to her ego. She preferred not to think I was straight, because then she would have had to work out why I’d knocked her back.”
His eye caught a figure at the other end of the corridor.
“There’s boyfriend, or whatever you call him. Use-in-emergency prick is what he really is. It’s pathetic, isn’t it.”
Charlie looked at the figure skulking at the other end of the corridor of dressing rooms—moody, unhappy, uneasy with himself. Suddenly Colm became conscious he was being watched. He turned with military precision, and they heard the sound of his shoes scuttling off.
“Pathetic,” he agreed. He asked Neely to keep him informed if anything happened he might be interested to hear about.
“I’m all bewildered by these corridors,” he said. “Could you point me in the direction of the stage door? I’d like to have another word with the keeper.”
“Syd’s not the keeper. The proper one is in hospital at the moment. Syd’s just one of the underlings who’s got his two weeks of glory.”
Neely was good at conveying his opinion of people without openly stating it. Charlie looked at him quizzically.
“And Syd’s reputation is?”
“A touch on the sleazy side. You want special services, or if you’re offering them, Syd’s the one to go to.”
Charlie nodded gratefully, and went in the direction the stagehand had pointed.
Business for Syd seemed to be brisk. He was in the middle of another hushed conversation when Charlie arrived back at the stage door. It was with a small, youngish woman, growing into fat, and at the approach of Charlie she ended the conversation and slipped up the stairs to the outside world.
“I seem to have that effect on people,” Charlie said genially.
In fact, he had always found since joining the force that his presence anywhere got round incredibly quickly, presumably due to his color. It was a disadvantage more than an advantage.
“Nothing personal,” said Syd, with an attempt at geniality himself. “That was Sally Lane: chorus member and bit-part player. She’d done her bit in Oranges and was off home. As you are, I suppose.”
“All in good time,” said Charlie, his grin especially wide. “I’m not really interested in Sally Lane, but I am distinctly interested in Rick Radshaw.”
“Ah—the one who—”
“Who stopped on the stairs when he heard I was a detective, then scooted out when I turned to look at him.”
“Oh, I think you’re making too much of that, Mr. Peace. Everyone here is interested in the murder, naturally.”
“Oh yes, naturally. Especially when your new star singer has been twice interviewed at length by us.”
“Well, I’ll not pretend she’s a general favorite here.”
“Is she not? Rather ungrateful on the men’s part, I’d have said. You just said ‘everyone here’ is interested in the murder. But Mr. Radshaw is not ‘here’ at the moment, is he?”
“Not at the moment, but like I said, he has been.”
“Yes. And when he has, you’ve been able to be of service to him, haven’t you?”
“Well, we try and be of service to all the players, Mr. Peace. That’s part of a stage doorkeeper’s function.”
Charlie leaned forward, suddenly intimidating.
“Don’t give me all that bullshit, Syd.
I wasn’t born yesterday. I’m not interested in any pimping you may have done for Rick Radshaw in the past, but I am interested in what you’re doing for him at the moment. Tell me, fast.”
An expression of injured innocence suffused Syd’s face. It was well practiced, Charlie guessed.
“At the moment? I’m not doing anything for him at the moment.”
“Then why was he here?”
The man swallowed, and in his head he ran through a litany of the lies he used when the theater authorities decided his activities had overstepped the mark.
“He’s in the area because his partner is acting in Bradford. He just called in to pay his respects.”
“Pull the other one. He thanked you, and said his visits to Leeds wouldn’t be the same without you. Would it help to jog your memory if I mentioned the Crescent Hotel?”
His mouth dropped a fraction.
“How did you know about that?” Charlie stood quite still and waited. “I ain’t done nothing wrong.” This was said aggressively. “The hotel just rang, said they’d got this very swish room, and it was available for hire.”
“Long or short lets?”
“Yes.”
“Redecorated to the specifications of Marius Fleetwood, lately deceased.”
“Well, he did mention that.”
“And you’d get your cut for bringing it to people’s notice.”
“Nothing wrong with that, is there? Nothing wrong with any of it.”
“No, there’s not,” said Charlie, drawing back a little from the confrontation. “An assignation for a quick one is not an offense anywhere except Kabul or Tehran—and maybe Boston. But just because there’s something rather whiffy about all this, as I think you realize, perhaps you’d better tell me precisely what you’re doing for Mr. Radshaw. Otherwise I might have to go a lot higher up to get the necessary muscle to pry it out of you.”
Syd looked sick.
“Well, you might say Mr. Radshaw is a bit of a connoisseur.”
“Oh yes? What is it? Delft china? Netsuke?”
“Don’t come the smart arse with me!…Oh, sorry, Sergeant. No, it’s what you might call physical things he’s a connoisseur of.”
The Mistress of Alderley Page 17