Stagestruck

by Peter Lovesey

  Gisella wished she’d been as firm as that. She needed the interval break herself, and more than ever on this important night. She had to be on again from the opening of Act Two. All Schneider had to do was announce a couple of visitors. ‘I’d forget about it if I were you,’ she said, taking a step away. ‘You don’t want it affecting your performance.’

  ‘I’m scared,’ Schneider said in a little-girl voice. ‘Doesn’t anyone believe me?’

  ‘There’s nothing to be scared of.’

  ‘Someone else must have seen her. I’ll ask stage management.’

  ‘Do that. I must get to my room.’

  Soon, the news of the sighting circulated backstage. Sceneshifters tried peeping through the slots in the curtain. The grey lady was no longer on view. ‘She must have gone for her interval drink,’ was the quip. The word got through to the Garrick’s Head, where Titus O’Driscoll was holding court with a few friends. Titus was never going to treat the theatre ghost lightly.

  ‘This has to be investigated at once. A sighting of the grey lady is an event.’ He left his half-finished wine and hurried round to the foyer. The interval was still on and the usual smokers were standing in Saw Close. None looked as if they’d seen a ghost. The royal circle bar was the obvious place to check first and Titus headed there. The talk in the bar was all about the play, not the grey lady. Deeply disappointing to a ghost-hunter. Recalling that earlier sightings had been from the stage itself, Titus hurried to the pass door at the end of the corridor and let himself through to the backstage area.

  He had an immediate success. One of the crew who recognised him told him exactly what Schneider claimed to have seen.

  ‘Marvellous,’ Titus said. ‘This has all the hallmarks of a classic encounter. Where is she now – in her dressing room?’

  ‘Probably on her way back. The second half starts in five.’

  ‘Is she on at the beginning?’

  ‘Quite early in the scene.’

  Torn between getting Schneider’s account at first hand and trying for a sight of the ghost, he chose the latter, returning through the pass door to the royal circle. The five-minute bell had gone and the audience were coming back to their seats. The house lights were still on. A clear view of the box could be had from here. Disappointing. No grey lady. The box was unlit and to Titus’s keen eye had a look of disuse. He asked some people who had just returned if they’d noticed anyone occupying the upper box before the interval. They had not, but then they were foreign tourists and all their attention must have been on the play, trying to follow the dialogue.

  He was deeply frustrated by knowing someone had reported a sighting just a short time ago. Perhaps he was fated never to see the grey lady, to be an expert reliant on other people’s experiences. He went backstage again, still hopeful of a firsthand account from Schneider.

  No question: the place was charged with nervous energy. Preston was on stage ready for the second half and Gisella stood in the wings ready to make her entrance. The deputy stage manager’s urgent voice was coming over the tannoy system. ‘I’m not raising the curtain without her. We’ve been through this a dozen times. She has to be out here and ready. Will someone please put a bomb under her?’

  ‘Who does he mean – Schneider?’ Titus asked a stagehand.

  ‘Wouldn’t you know it? Old bossy-boots. She’s not in position and we’re running late already.’

  ‘I’ll check. Which dressing room is she in?’

  ‘Nine, on the OP side. It’s being taken care of.’

  ‘I’ll still check. That’s where she’s got to be.’

  He crossed behind the scenery. Out of consideration for her below-average mobility, Schneider had been given a ground-floor dressing room that by rights should have been occupied by a leading actor. The door was open. Two stagehands were trying to coax her back to the stage, but she was in her chair with arms folded showing no intention of budging.

  One of them was saying, ‘You can’t stop the show. It isn’t fair to the rest of the cast.’

  Schneider was implacable. ‘I won’t be treated as a half-wit. I know what I saw. Mr Shearman was downright rude to me. He seems to think I imagined it. Well, if that’s what he thinks, he can rot in hell and so can the rest of them.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better to make your point after the play is over?’ the other stagehand said. These two young women were almost certainly drama students getting experience, and they would learn from Schneider’s behaviour, but they weren’t competent to reverse it.

  Titus took over. ‘I understand you had a sighting of the lady in grey. I’m Titus O’Driscoll, dramaturge.’

  ‘If you’re here to drag me kicking and screaming onto the stage, you’d better think again, because it won’t look pretty.’

  ‘Madam, I have no such intention,’ Titus said. ‘I have the utmost sympathy for you.’

  ‘Bad cop, nice cop, is it?’ she said with a glare. ‘That won’t wash with me.’

  ‘What was her appearance?’

  The more vocal of the stagehands said, ‘Sir, we don’t have time. She’s needed for her first entrance.’

  ‘Grey. She was all in grey, with cold, glittering eyes I shall never forget so long as I live,’ Schneider said.

  Titus asked, ‘Was she wearing the costume of a nineteenth-century lady?’

  She became more animated. ‘Yes! It looked like a cloak, the sort of thing they used to wear over their ball gowns, with a cowl, all grey.’

  Titus gasped and his voice faltered in excitement. ‘This is truly momentous.’ After a moment’s thought, he said, ‘We need to speak for longer. Why don’t you go on stage now and meet me afterwards to talk about this amazing occurrence?’

  ‘I’ve made my position clear,’ Schneider said. ‘I’ve been through a terrifying experience and was given no sympathy whatsoever. Until that horrible little manager man goes on his knees and apologises to me I’m not moving from here.’

  ‘Find Mr Shearman,’ Titus said to the stagehands with more drama than anything heard in the play. ‘Get him here fast. Tell him he’s needed by the dramaturge.’

  ‘There isn’t time.’

  ‘Young lady, if you want to stay working in this theatre, do as I say. I don’t care if you drag him feet first. Do it!’

  Both of them hurried out.

  ‘You’re a gentleman,’ Schneider told Titus.

  The DSM’s voice over the tannoy said, ‘We’ll have to manage without her.’

  ‘Fat chance,’ Schneider said with a smirk.

  ‘All she does is step on stage and announce people,’ the DSM went on.

  Schneider drew in a huge, affronted gasp.

  ‘We’ll have to improvise. Isherwood must answer the doorbell himself. Are you okay with that, Preston?’

  ‘The hell he is!’ Schneider said, rising from her chair. ‘They’re going to axe me from the scene. They can’t do that.’

  ‘You’ll be redundant,’ Titus said, sharing her outrage.

  ‘It’s underhand. It’s blackmail,’ Schneider said.

  ‘You’d better deal with it fast,’ Titus said. ‘We can talk about the grey lady later.’

  The protest came to an abrupt end. Schneider swept out of the room and beetled towards the wings, elbowing Hedley Shearman aside as he arrived to plead with her, flanked by the stagehands.

  ‘Is she going on?’ Shearman asked. The emergency had exacted an extraordinary toll from him. He was sweating and he’d changed physically, drained of colour, jowls quivering, voice thinner, as if he’d seen the ghost himself.

  ‘Under protest,’ Titus said. ‘I doubt if you’ve heard the last of it.’

  ‘Whatever you said it appears to have worked.’

  ‘The lady has my sympathy,’ Titus said. ‘The supernatural is extremely unnerving. I’ve no doubt in my own mind that the theatre ghost was among us tonight.’

  ‘Auto-suggestion, I expect,’ Shearman said.

  ‘Unlikely.’

 
; One of the stagehands said, ‘She convinced me she’d seen something.’

  ‘Me, too,’ Titus said, ‘and I propose to go into the box and check for proof positive: the scent of jasmine.’

  ‘Not now,’ Shearman said, close to panic.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘There’s a performance in progress. I won’t have the audience distracted. It isn’t fair to the performers.’

  ‘All I need is to open the door and sniff.’

  ‘You won’t. The box is locked on my instructions. As soon as this daft rumour started I knew some idiot would want to get in there. It isn’t going to happen.’

  ‘You can unlock it for me,’ Titus said. ‘I’m not “some idiot”, as you put it. I’m on the staff, and, what is more, on the creative team, not mere management.’

  Even in his depleted state, Shearman wouldn’t relent. ‘For God’s sake, I’m not getting into an argument about status.’

  ‘See some sense, then. If I wait for the curtain, the jasmine will have dispersed.’

  ‘There is no ghost and there never has been,’ Shearman said, practically stamping his foot. ‘It’s a myth put about by people who ought to know better. This has been one hell of a night, and my job is to restore sanity to this theatre. I suggest you return to the Garrick’s Head, or wherever it is you came from.’

  ‘There’s gratitude,’ Titus said, knowing he’d lost this skirmish.

  The play resumed seven minutes late, barely enough to register with the audience. Schneider may have appeared subdued compared to other performances, but she didn’t miss a cue or dry or scramble her lines. Gisella was in fine form as Sally Bowles and this seemed to inspire Preston. The second half sparkled.

  From the back of the royal circle, Titus kept a vigil on the box opposite, and was disappointed. The grey lady failed to appear for him.

  In the stalls, the casting director from the National Theatre studied Gisella’s performance and made a few notes. Francis Melmot loomed in the aisle, studying the casting director.

  In the understage area, Kate from wardrobe found Hedley Shearman alone in the company office, hunched over his desk, his hands covering his face. The loudspeaker in the corner of the room was relaying the dialogue from upstairs.

  ‘Someone obviously needs more therapy,’ she said, putting an arm around his shoulders and nudging his face with her breast. ‘As a matter of fact, I feel the need myself. How would Hedley like to give his Kate another good seeing-to?’

  He tensed. ‘Leave me alone.’

  Stung by the reaction, she snapped back, ‘What’s your problem? Not in the mood? That’s got to be a first.’

  ‘We’re in deep shit,’ he said.

  ‘Why? What do you mean?’

  ‘There’s been another death.’

  16

  Diamond and Paloma were debating whether to finish a vintage Rioja or have it corked and take it with them. Truth to tell, he wasn’t a wine man. He’d started the evening with a beer. The wine was mainly for Paloma and he’d restricted himself to less than a glass, keeping her company. They had eaten well in the Olive Tree at the Queensberry Hotel and his thoughts were turning to a taxi ride to Paloma’s big house on Lyncombe Hill and a romantic end to the day. He was trying to persuade her to finish the bottle at home and she was arguing that he hadn’t drunk his share.

  ‘I know my limit,’ he said. ‘You don’t want me turning grouchy.’

  ‘Is that what happens?’ She was laughing.

  ‘Even more grouchy, then.’

  ‘Funnily enough, I quite enjoy your grouchy moments. You can be amusing and curmudgeonly at the same time.’

  ‘It’s a rare talent.’

  ‘So what are you going to do about Flakey White?’

  Put on the spot, he said, ‘From what the Yard told me, it won’t be easy to trace him after more than forty years.’

  ‘But you’ll try?’

  ‘I suppose. I can try Hampshire, where he was convicted, and some of the adjacent police forces. Not sure what good it will do. He may have emigrated, or died. He’d be an old man now.’

  ‘You need to know. This can’t be shelved. It goes deep. I see it in your eyes each time it’s mentioned.’

  ‘I’m on the case.’ He released a long breath. ‘But it’s not an after-dinner topic.’

  ‘If my friend Raelene can be of any help the offer is still open.’

  He was about to wriggle out of that one when they were interrupted by an old-fashioned phone bell.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, fishing in his pocket. ‘Didn’t know I had it with me.’

  Paloma watched in amusement, half expecting him to produce a phone set with receiver, cord and stand. In the event, he took out the mobile she herself had given him over a year ago. Some playful member of his team had programmed a ring tone from the nineteen-sixties.

  He switched off and raised an apologetic hand to the people at the next table.

  ‘Who was it?’ Paloma asked.

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘You can find out.’

  ‘I have better things to do.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Like asking for the bill and getting them to call a taxi. Did we settle what to do about your wine?’

  ‘Our wine. All right, let’s take it with us. But I think you should check that call.’

  He handed the mobile across.

  Paloma pressed two keys. ‘Bath Central.’

  He winced. ‘At this hour?’

  ‘Hadn’t you better call them back?’

  A few minutes later, two taxis left the Olive Tree. One took Paloma home to Lyncombe; the other, Diamond to the Theatre Royal.

  Saw Close was crowded when he arrived. The theatre crowd had not been out long and many were waiting for transport. His taxi was hired before he stepped out of it.

  This time he didn’t pander to his anxieties by using one of the side doors. Taking a grip on his nerves he marched straight into the foyer, braced for the personal challenge of entering the auditorium. But there was no need for heroics.

  After making himself known, he was directed down some stairs and along the red-carpeted passageway leading to the front stalls and boxes. Through open doors to his right he couldn’t avoid glimpsing the stage itself, yet he was relieved to see that the house lights were on, the safety curtain down and the cleaning staff at work along the rows. The access to the boxes was up the curved stairs at the end of the passage. This little theatre was an obstacle course of different levels. Grabbing the rail, he climbed upwards, passing the box on the royal circle level and then higher to where a uniformed female constable guarded the door of the upper box. She recognised him and actually gave a cursory salute.

  ‘No need for that. Who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘PC Reed, sir.’

  ‘I expect you have a first name.’

  She blinked in surprise. ‘It’s Dawn.’

  ‘Who’s inside, Dawn?’

  ‘DI Halliwell and the manager, Mr Shearman. Oh, also the deceased.’

  ‘Bit of a squeeze, then. Don’t let anyone else in.’

  He pushed open the door. The single wall light didn’t give much illumination. Keith Halliwell was bending over the body of a woman, shining a torch on the face. Shearman was in shadow on the far side.

  ‘Have you checked for a pulse?’

  Halliwell looked up. ‘Ah, it’s you, guv.’

  ‘I wasn’t asking about me.’

  ‘She’s been confirmed as dead by the paramedics.’

  ‘Any idea who she is?’

  Halliwell sidestepped the question. ‘Mr Shearman identified her.’

  But at this minute Shearman was reluctant to repeat the name. He was looking deathly pale himself. ‘It’s a nightmare,’ he said, ‘and just when I thought we were getting over our difficulties.’

  Diamond moved in for a closer look. He wasn’t often thrown by surprises. This ranked high in the register and he took several seconds to absorb it. He knew the features a
t once and the torchlight showed the skin damage. The dead woman was Clarion Calhoun.

  ‘For the love of God. She’s only just out of hospital.’

  ‘Discharged this morning,’ Shearman said.

  ‘What’s she doing here?’

  ‘She called Mr Melmot with a special request. She wanted to see the play before it closes, but not from the public seats where people would recognise her. She was brought in through the side door wearing one of those hoodie things and given this box for the evening.’

  ‘Did you know about this?’

  Some colour returned to his face. ‘I was in on it, yes. Mr Melmot told me.’

  ‘Who else knew?

  A shrug. ‘Now you’re asking. Word gets round, even when you try and do something in secret.’

  ‘Who brought her up here?’

  ‘One of the security people, name of Binns.’

  ‘I’ve met him. Security so-called.’

  ‘Fair comment. Anyway, I was waiting in here for them. I welcomed her.’

  ‘How was she looking?’

  ‘I couldn’t see much. She was holding the scarf across her face, to hide the damage, I suppose. She seemed calm and said she’d be all right. I offered to send up a drink, but she didn’t want one. It was obvious she wanted to be left alone, so I didn’t linger.’ He shook his head. ‘What the press will make of all this, I dread to think.’

  ‘Do they know?’

  ‘I haven’t told anyone except you, but it’s certain to leak out.’

  ‘I can’t disagree with that,’ Diamond said. ‘Look, this is ridiculous, using a hand torch. Why don’t we get proper lighting? It’s a theatre, for God’s sake. They can point a spotlight straight in here.’

  ‘I’ll see to it at once,’ Shearman said, eager to be out of there.

  ‘Careful. Keep close to the wall.’

  The little manager’s voice turned even more panicky. ‘You don’t think this was a crime?’

  ‘We can’t see unless you fix the bloody spot.’

  Sounding as if he was hyperventilating, Shearman edged around the wall and hurried out.

  ‘Give me that torch,’ Diamond said to Halliwell.

  No question: this nightmare was true. She was definitely the woman he’d visited at Frenchay Hospital. The scarring was still apparent, even if most of the redness had faded. As to a cause of death, he could see no bleeding at the mouth or nostrils. Although a grey chiffon scarf was around her neck, it wasn’t tight and there were no obvious ligature marks. She appeared to have fallen sideways from a chair that was still upright.