Best Served Cold

by Sally Spencer

  She turned to look at Meadows, and saw that her sergeant was similarly deep in thought.

  ‘My career wasn’t exactly soaring towards stellar heights at that point, and, to be honest, I was growing a little tired of the life.’ Ruth said. ‘Besides, I really did want to look after Mother.’

  ‘Did your sister help?’

  ‘I’m sure she would have if I’d asked, but I didn’t. The truth is – and I’m a little ashamed of this – I was being a bit greedy. I’d been away from home for several years by then, and I wanted Mother all to myself, if only for a short time.’

  ‘How long did it turn out to be?’

  ‘Ten years. She died quite recently.’

  ‘So, for the last ten years you’ve been looking after your mother full-time,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Not full-time. At least, not full-time all the time. She had her good periods and her bad periods, and when she was having one of the good ones I’d get a job as an office temp. I enjoyed it. There’s something relaxing about typing. You don’t really have to think, and yet, at the end of the day, you’ve produced something which will be useful. There’s a lot to be said for that.’

  ‘What made you come back for this reunion?’

  ‘I promised I would, twenty years ago. In fact, the whole thing was my idea. And Sarah was most insistent that I come. She said it would help to relaunch my career. She seemed to assume that was what I wanted.’

  ‘And don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘So what will you do now?’

  ‘Go back into secretarial work. It’s still not too late for me to build up a career.’ Ruth sighed. ‘It’s the others I feel sorry for. They have nothing to fall back on, you see.’

  ‘Won’t they want to continue in the acting profession?’

  ‘They may want to, but it will be harder for them now – perhaps even impossible. Actors are very superstitious. Did you know they won’t even say Macbeth because it’s considered bad luck?’ They have to say “the Scottish Play” instead.’

  ‘I don’t quite see …’

  ‘This has been a very unlucky production, and as far as most of the theatre world is concerned, they’ll all carry that bad luck with them forever.’

  ‘Do they know that?’

  ‘They should know that, but you know what actors are like. They’re very self-confident – perhaps even arrogant. They have to be, in order to survive, so some of them will automatically assume that, with a massive talent like theirs, they’ll be able to overcome any obstacle.’

  ‘Were you surprised when Mark Cotton took over the role of Hieronimo at the last minute?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘Not really. Mark had made it very plain over the last week that he considers us little more than serfs whose duty it is to serve him.’

  ‘Do you think any other members of the cast were surprised?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not even Jerry Talbot?’

  ‘Ah,’ Ruth said, ‘that’s a different matter. He was so desperate to play Hieronimo that he may have talked himself into believing that it was really going to happen. I saw him after he’d got news that Mark had snatched the role from him. He was standing by the steps to the platform and breaking his heart. Then he noticed me and walked away. But two minutes later, he was back.’

  ‘Is there anything else you’d like to tell us before you go, Miss Audley?’ Paniatowski asked.

  Ruth Audley hesitated. ‘I know you have your job to do, but I’d appreciate it if you weren’t too hard on my little sister,’ she said finally. ‘This has all been a great shock to her, and she’s much more vulnerable than she seems.’

  ‘We have to start making some assumptions,’ Paniatowski said, when Ruth Audley had left the bar, ‘and my first assumption is that it probably was Mark Cotton who was the intended target.’

  ‘I agree,’ Meadows replied.

  ‘And my second assumption is Jerry Talbot probably wasn’t the killer.’

  ‘Agreed again,’ Meadows said. ‘Ruth Audley says he desperately wanted to play Hieronimo – and he must have known that with Mark Cotton dead, there was no chance of that. Besides, a potential murderer – even a particularly stupid one – wouldn’t have stood there looking wistfully up at the platform.’

  ‘I don’t think he was just standing there and looking wistful,’ Paniatowski mused.

  ‘What do you mean, boss?’ Meadows asked.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Paniatowski admitted. ‘I’ve got an idea, but I need time to think it through.’

  She opened her handbag, reached for her cigarettes and then realized they weren’t there because she wasn’t allowed to smoke.

  ‘Moving on, then,’ she continued. ‘Do you think Ruth Audley killed Mark Cotton?’

  ‘My gut feeling is that she didn’t,’ Meadows said, ‘but then, my gut’s let me down before.’

  ‘Assuming that she didn’t do it, do you think she knows who did?’

  ‘Again, my gut says no.’

  ‘Then let me throw a really tricky one at you,’ Paniatowski said. ‘If she did know, do you think she’d tell us?’

  ‘No, I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t.’

  ‘And what makes you pretty sure?’

  ‘She has so much obvious contempt for Mark Cotton that she probably thinks killing him was no more than a waste of good rope. On the other hand, she’s more than willing to respect the opinion of anyone else who thinks he was worth killing.’

  Paniatowski nodded.

  ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ she said.

  FOURTEEN

  Beresford sat at his desk in Whitebridge police headquarters, a list of phone numbers in front of him and the prospect of several – possibly fruitless – hours on the phone ahead of him.

  He knew, from his previous experience of making contact with other police authorities, that the chances were he’d either end up speaking to the type of officer he privately thought of as a Glum, or the kind he had classified as a Gabbler.

  The Glums were precise and unemotional, and though they were police officers, they could just have easily been undertakers or tax inspectors. They were usually perfectly willing to help, but only if it could be done strictly by the book, and to expect from a Glum one of those imaginative leaps which are often so necessary in police work would have been like expecting Vlad the Impaler to agree to become the honorary president of his local ladies’ knitting circle.

  The Gabblers were quite the reverse. They talked to you as if you were sitting side by side in a pub, with several pints of best bitter already swilling around in your belly. In a way, the Gabblers were harder work than the Glums, because they gave you so much unfiltered information that vital details could quite easily slip through the cracks.

  The first name on Beresford’s list, a chief inspector in Hereford, was a Gabbler.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I think I can save you a little time here, because I know Phil McCann personally,’ he said. ‘He’s my bank manager. And he plays an active role in the local community. For instance, he runs an amateur theatre group in which his elder daughter is one of the stars. I know what you’re thinking – a whiff of nepotism there.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking that at all,’ Beresford said.

  ‘But, in fact, it’s not nepotism at all. She’s a wonderful little actress. He’s also a big wheel in the Rotary Club – no pun intended, and—’

  ‘I’m more interested in things that might relate to the murder I’m investigating,’ Beresford interrupted. ‘Has he been involved in any local scandals, for instance?’

  ‘Scandals? What precisely do you mean by that?’

  ‘I don’t mean anything precisely,’ Beresford said. ‘I’d just be interested in anything he’s been connected with which might have brought him to the attention of the police.’

  ‘Good God, there’s been nothing like that. I told you, the man’s a pillar of the community.’

  ‘Does he have any kind
of criminal record?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. He might have a couple of speeding fines – but nothing more than that.’

  ‘Could you get someone to check for me?’ Beresford asked wearily.

  ‘Scotland Yard holds every criminal record in the country. Why don’t you check with them?’

  ‘I am checking with them, but they can’t get the records to me until tomorrow morning. And anyway, local stations don’t always bother to inform Scotland Yard if it’s only a minor infringement …’

  ‘They should! It’s right there in the protocols.’

  Idiot! Beresford thought.

  ‘… so the Yard’s records are sometimes incomplete,’ he continued. ‘That’s why I need both sets of records.’

  ‘You’ve lost me,’ the chief inspector admitted.

  ‘I need both sets so I can cross-reference them.’

  ‘All this paperwork, hey?’ the chief inspector said sympathetically – and completely missing the point again. ‘In my opinion, it’s paperwork that’s killing this job. Oh, for the good old days, when it was all constables on bicycles, and most offenders were given a clip round the ear and warned not to do it again.’

  The good old days, when everybody was happy, and kids didn’t mind being hungry and suffering from rickets, and being out of work for years was a real laugh, Beresford thought.

  ‘Could you do that, sir?’ he asked. ‘Could you get someone to check your records?’

  ‘Oh, I suppose so,’ said the chief inspector, slightly huffily. ‘I’ll get back to you sometime tomorrow.’

  And it was even possible that he might, Beresford told himself, as he replaced the phone.

  ‘You were here in the theatre last night, weren’t you?’ Paniatowski asked Joan Turnbull.

  ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘And were you also here for the morning run-through?’

  ‘I was here most of the day.’

  ‘Was there any particular reason for that?’ Meadows asked. ‘You had no official standing, did you?’

  ‘I’ve never had any official standing, but I’ve always been there. Back in the good old days, I was a sort of mother hen to the company.’

  ‘Weren’t you rather young to be a mother hen, Mrs Turnbull?’ Paniatowski asked.

  Joan Turnbull laughed. ‘I was about ten years older than most of them – but when you’re in your twenties, as they were, someone in their mid-thirties seems almost ancient.’

  ‘I still don’t see why you were there last night,’ Meadows persisted. ‘The cast are a little too old for mothering now.’

  ‘I was there to assist my husband.’

  ‘But from what we can tell, your husband didn’t have much to do,’ Meadows prodded.

  ‘My husband built this company,’ Joan said angrily. ‘The Whitebridge Players were a pathetic shambles when he took over. Geoff taught those young men and women their stagecraft. He moulded each and every one of them into the actors that they’ve become today.’

  ‘Yes, but the fact remains that it was Mark Cotton – not your husband – who was directing this production,’ Meadows said, ‘so I really don’t see why either of you needed to be there.’

  ‘Mark knew nothing about theatre direction,’ Joan said, still furious. ‘He hadn’t even been on stage himself for years and years. So something was bound to go wrong – and when it did, my Geoff would be there to put it right. But before there was time for anything to go wrong, Mark was murdered.’

  ‘Some people might say the murder would fit into the category of things going wrong,’ Paniatowski pointed out.

  She had spoken mildly enough, but her words had the effect of a bucket of cold water on Joan Turnbull.

  ‘Yes, of course … I didn’t mean that,’ she said. ‘I was talking about things going wrong in theatrical terms, and I got a little carried away.’

  ‘Did you go up to the fly loft at any time yesterday, Mrs Turnbull?’ Meadows asked.

  ‘No. I don’t think I’ve ever been up to the fly loft in my life. I’m not interested in the technical aspects of the stage – only the people.’

  ‘But you know where the fly loft is?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And you didn’t see anyone up there on Monday?’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘One last question,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Have you seen any of the actors between the time the company disbanded and it being reunited last week?’

  ‘I have not,’ Joan said. ‘I would have thought one or two of them would have visited us – if only to thank my Geoff for what he’d done for them – but none of them did.’

  Crane was watching a tape of the Friday rehearsal. He had done a little treading the boards himself, while he’d been up at Oxford, and though he didn’t consider himself an expert on theatre, it was perfectly clear to him that the rehearsal was not going well, and that most of the responsibility for that lay with the director.

  A few minutes earlier, he had seen how Mark Cotton had left Jerry Talbot hanging in the harness, while he harangued him for missing his cue. Since then, he had seen Talbot repeat the scene three times, and even that had failed to satisfy Cotton. Finally, when Geoff Talbot had complained that he was being unreasonable, Cotton had exploded and forced him into a humiliating climb down.

  Crane ran the tape again, and this time he concentrated his attention on the other actors. He couldn’t always see their faces clearly, but from what he read of their body language he was convinced that Mark Cotton didn’t have a friend in the entire theatre.

  Joan Turnbull had made what she considered quite a calm exit from the bar, but once she was out on the street, she felt herself fighting for breath, and had to clutch the doorpost for support.

  She had told the two female detectives too much, she thought – far too much – but at least, thank God, she hadn’t told them about what happened between her and Mark Cotton.

  She is lying in bed with Mark, wrapped up in a blanket of contentment and slowly fading sensual pleasure, when Mark goes and spoils it all.

  ‘Geoff’s been talking about putting on The Spanish Tragedy next year,’ he says.

  ‘I know,’ Joan says, hoping she’s wrong about what she thinks he will say next, but almost sure that she isn’t.

  ‘And do you also happen to know who he’s got in mind to play Hieronimo?’ Mark asks.

  She rolls over so that she can look him straight in the eye.

  ‘So that’s what all this is about, is it?’ she asks.

  He doesn’t flinch – but then, he is an actor

  ‘I’ve not got a clue what you’re talking about,’ he says.

  ‘Is the only reason you’ve taken an old bag like me into your bed because you want the best role in The Spanish Tragedy?’

  He laughs, reaches across, and strokes her cheek.

  ‘Of course not,’ he says. ‘First of all, you’re not an old bag at all – you’re a beautiful woman in her prime. And secondly, you can’t expect actors not to think about acting, even in bed – it’s what they live for.’

  ‘Would you like me to speak to Geoff about it?’ she asks.

  He plays it very cannily.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t want to force you into doing something you didn’t believe in. But you’ve been around the theatre a long time, and if you happen to think that I’d be the best person to play the role …’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ she says – because she senses that this is the price he is demanding for their afternoons of passion.

  She tries to make the suggestion sound casual – off the cuff – but she is no actress, and Geoff senses that something is wrong.

  ‘Are you having an affair with Mark Cotton?’ he asks.

  She wants to say no, but she realizes she can never deliver even that single word convincingly.

  She gazes down at her feet, which were once young and elegant, but are now starting to look tired and middle aged.

  ‘Yes, I’ve been having an affair with him,’ she sa
ys.

  ‘But why?’ he asks pleadingly.

  Because although she loves Geoff with all her heart, he cannot excite her in bed however hard he works – somehow cannot bring her to those levels of ecstasy which handsome young Mark does almost effortlessly.

  ‘Why?’ Geoff repeats.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says.

  ‘I want you to end the affair,’ Geoff tells her.

  ‘I will,’ she promises.

  And she will keep that promise. It will be easy. She has seen a look of anguish on her husband’s face which has seared itself on to her very soul, and she can never go to bed with Mark again without that look coming between them.

  ‘If Mark Cotton really wants to play Hieronimo, then the part is his,’ Geoff says.

  ‘You don’t have to do that,’ Joan protests.

  ‘It’s the right thing for the company,’ Geoff says. ‘He’ll play the part superbly, but …’ He pauses. ‘… but if word ever gets out that you’ve been having an affair with him, he’s gone.’

  ‘Word won’t get out,’ she says.

  Mark Cotton will know it’s a bribe, but it’s a big enough bribe to make him do what Geoff wants.

  Mark had pretended to be hurt when she’d told him they wouldn’t be seeing each other again, but the truth was, he hadn’t really cared, and just a few days later he’d managed to talk Ruth Audley into his bed.

  But though Geoff had never mentioned the matter again, she knew he had not forgotten. A small – vital – part of him had died that day, and it showed in his work. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that the company had started to decline the moment she had told Geoff about the affair.

  She had killed the company and maimed her husband, and though she had spent the next twenty years trying to compensate for that one moment, it had all been a waste of effort.

  Until now!

  Now, if they could just ride out the storm, she and Geoff might just find they had the foundations on which to start to build a new life.

  Sarah Audley’s hair was the same shade as her sister’s – a deep auburn – and, like Ruth, she wore it long, but while Ruth’s hair seemed tired, Sarah’s had a bounce in it which proclaimed that it was ready to take on the world. There were other differences, too. Though the two sisters did look alike, Sarah’s face was both lively and challenging, while Ruth’s always appeared mildly apologetic.