Stagestruck

by Peter Lovesey

  Sudden deaths can and do happen to people in the prime of life, but they are rare. This one had to be suspicious, to say the least.

  ‘Has anyone else been by?’ he asked Halliwell.

  ‘The two paramedics.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Before I got here. A pathologist is on his way.’

  ‘Right. And who discovered her?’

  ‘The theatre director, I think.’

  ‘Shearman. Did he say what time?’

  ‘I got the impression it was when the show ended. I suppose he came up here with the idea of escorting her to a taxi.’

  ‘“Got the impression”?’

  Halliwell looked uncomfortable. ‘I haven’t asked him yet.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I haven’t been here long.’

  Diamond bit back the impulse to find fault. ‘It’s all very odd, Keith. If she was murdered – and we’d better assume she was – it throws new light on the previous incidents.’

  ‘The dresser’s fall?’

  ‘And Clarion’s scarring. Is someone responsible for all three?’

  Halliwell didn’t answer. He’d worked with Diamond long enough to know guessing wouldn’t do.

  As if cued by Diamond’s remark about new light, the spot came on, dazzling them, and after their eyes adjusted they found the box deprived of its lush look. Cracks in the paint-work, old stains on the carpet. Even a cobweb on the ceiling was exposed in the glare, and tangled in it was a dead butterfly, a tortoiseshell.

  Diamond gave it a glance and passed no comment.

  The two detectives learned no more about Clarion’s death. There was no obvious injury, no sign of a weapon, not even a glass she’d drunk from. In the powerful light her skin was paper white apart from the scar tissue. There wasn’t the facial congestion you expect in a violent death like strangulation.

  Halliwell spotted a black leather handbag on the floor below the front of the box. It was zipped. If theft had been the motive and money or cards taken, it was unlikely that the thief would have bothered to refasten the zip.

  ‘Leave it,’ Diamond said at once. Proper forensic procedure debarred them from handling anything at this stage. ‘We’re doing everything by the book, right?’

  ‘Right, guv.’

  ‘She’s so famous that every action we take is going to be picked over by the media. And what is more, from now on, anyone backstage from the manager down has the chance of making big money by selling exclusives.’

  ‘Christ, they’ll be round here with their mobiles taking pictures.’

  Diamond nodded. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if the lighting guy has already taken a long shot from somewhere up there.’

  ‘And those paramedics may have spoken to the press. You want to seal the building?’

  ‘That would be a start. This theatre has more entrances than Victoria station. I’m sure PC Reed is a good copper, but we need twenty of her. Yes, get reinforcements. Get our team in, everyone you can raise, and a scene of crime unit.

  Tell them to bring arc lamps and some kind of screen for the open side.’

  ‘There are curtains.’

  He cringed at his own stupidity. Crimson velvet and about ten feet long, they were difficult to miss, but he’d managed it. ‘Where would I be without you? Pull them across. And where does this other door lead to?’

  He opened it and got his answer: the dress circle.

  He pushed open the door to the stairs and told PC Reed she now had two doors to guard, so she’d better come inside the box with the body. ‘Does that bother you?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Good answer. You’re the speed writer, I believe.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Do you get every word?’

  ‘I try to.’

  ‘And is it understandable to anyone else?’

  ‘If they can read my writing.’

  ‘May I see?

  She took her notebook from her tunic pocket and opened it at an example.

  ‘What’s this, then?’ he asked.

  ‘The interview with Denise Pearsall.’

  ‘On Tuesday morning? You and Sergeant Dawkins?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He frowned at the first few letters – hv w mt b4 – and then smiled. ‘Neat. I get it. May I tear these pages out? I’d like to read the rest.’

  ‘Take the notebook, sir.’

  ‘No, you’re going to need it. We’re expecting the pathologist. If he says anything, be sure to get it down. Over to you, then.’

  He and Halliwell stepped through to the dress circle and for no obvious reason he felt less troubled than he’d expected by the sight of the auditorium. He looked across to the far side and spotted a movement in the royal circle, one level down. He shouted through his hands, ‘Where are you going, Mr Shearman?’

  ‘Backstage, to see if the actors are all right.’

  ‘Make an announcement over the public address. Nobody leaves the building. Everyone still here is to assemble in the stall seats: actors, crew, cleaners, front of house people, the lot.’

  ‘It’s getting late.’

  ‘That’s an order.’

  Halliwell, phone in hand, told him CID and uniform were alerted. More officers were already downstairs and security had been told to seal the building. ‘But if she was murdered, whoever did it is most likely out and away.’

  ‘Which is one good reason to find out who’s still here,’ Diamond said. ‘Get them listed when they’re all together. They’re going to be stroppy. Do your best. I’ll speak to them as a group.’

  Dr Sealy, the pathologist, arrived, grumbling that he’d been watching an old Inspector Morse on television and now he wouldn’t find out who did it.

  ‘Give me strength! This is the real bloody thing,’ Diamond said.

  ‘Without the culture.’

  ‘Do you want me to hum the Morse music?’

  ‘Frankly, old boy, if you sang the whole of Die Meistersinger, it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference.’ Sealy lightened up at the sight of PC Reed, still on duty. ‘But here’s a Rhine maiden sent to help me into my zip-suit.’

  ‘She won’t be doing that,’ Diamond said. ‘She’s working for me.’

  ‘Getting into one of these isn’t simple, you know.’

  ‘Tough.’

  Dawn Reed remained impassive while Sealy struggled into the white suit.

  Over the public address, Shearman made his announcement telling everyone where to assemble. There was a definite tremor in the voice.

  The crime scene people arrived soon after and set up their lighting. Downstairs, more uniformed police reported for duty. Halliwell went off to supervise them.

  From the dress circle, Diamond watched the actors and backstage staff respond to the summons and take seats in the stalls. A hierarchy was observed without any supervision from the police: actors in the front row, stage management behind them, the crew next, then the front-of-house team and finally the cleaners. Among the actors, Diamond spotted Gisella, Preston Barnes and the woman playing Fräulein Schneider. Kate from wardrobe was in the third row. A late arrival from backstage was Titus O’Driscoll and he was uncertain where to position himself until Shearman offered him a second-row seat. There must have been forty to fifty people there already.

  Binns, the standin doorkeeper, was one of the last to arrive, having reluctantly been replaced by a policeman.

  Still upstairs, Diamond opened the door of the box and asked Sealy if he’d found anything of interest.

  ‘Run away and play, will you? I’ve hardly started.’

  Impatient investigating officers don’t cut much ice with pathologists. Diamond exchanged a long-suffering look with PC Dawn Reed. ‘Tell me when he comes out.’ He took the stairs down to the ground floor and was pleased to find most of his CID team already there: Ingeborg was helping Halliwell list the names of all present. Leaman and young Paul Gilbert were in the aisle and the man he thought of as the square peg, Fred Dawkins,
was in conversation with one of his recent colleagues in uniform.

  Diamond asked Shearman if anyone was missing.

  ‘I think not,’ the manager said. ‘There’s a spare programme here. If you go through the names you’ll find all the cast and crew are accounted for. How long will this take?’

  This was brushed aside. ‘So where’s the big man?’

  ‘Who do you mean?’

  ‘Melmot.’

  ‘Francis? He’s not in the play.’

  ‘I’m not asking who’s in it. Was he in the theatre tonight?’

  Shearman pressed a hand to his mouth as if the thought had just dawned. ‘He was, yes, doing the hospitality bit with our special guests. It was Francis who told me Clarion wanted to come. We decided between us that a seat in the box was the best way to keep her hidden.’

  ‘But has anyone seen him since the play ended?’

  Nobody spoke.

  Then Gisella said, ‘Did I hear right? Clarion was here?’

  Titus O’Driscoll, seated next to Shearman, gave a gasp. ‘I knew it, we’ve been duped.’

  Diamond glared. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The sighting.’

  ‘You’re not making sense.’

  ‘There was a sighting of the theatre ghost this evening, the same grey lady you and I discussed the other day. A manifestation would be a sensational event by any stretch of the imagination. That’s why I’m here. A reliable witness saw her in the Arnold Haskell box, the one with the drawn curtains.’

  All the conversations around them had stopped.

  ‘This evening?’ Diamond said.

  ‘During the play. She was all in grey. Where’s Fräulein Schneider?’

  ‘Here,’ a voice answered from the front row. The big woman turned a stricken look on Titus.

  ‘Don’t be nervous,’ he urged her. ‘Tell them what you saw.’

  ‘They won’t believe me.’

  ‘Out with it, ma’am,’ Diamond said.

  Her words soared melodramatically. ‘She was here tonight, I swear, staring at me from the upper box where she is known to materialise.’

  ‘Dressed in grey?’

  ‘Totally. In a hooded gown of exactly the sort a lady of fashion wore to the theatre two hundred years ago. Most of her face was veiled in some shroud-like material.’

  ‘She’s round the twist,’ a voice from the back said.

  ‘You see?’ she appealed, hands outspread.

  ‘What time was this?’ Diamond asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I was on the stage in performance. Before the interval.’

  ‘Was she there after?’

  ‘I can’t say. I was too petrified to look.’

  ‘She was not,’ Titus said. ‘I observed the box for the whole of the second half.’

  ‘Are you doubting me as well?’ Fräulein Schneider said in the voice of a martyr.

  ‘Not at all, madam. I hate to say this, but I fear that my friend Mr Diamond can account for what you saw.’

  ‘The dead woman everyone is talking about?’

  ‘Get with it, love,’ someone shouted from the third row. By now almost everyone knew why they were there.

  Diamond didn’t want this potentially vital witness driven into silence or hysteria. ‘What you’ve told us, ma’am, could be important, and I want to hear more from you in a moment.’ While he had full attention from everyone he announced what he could about Clarion, stressing that she’d been wearing a grey scarf and dressed in a grey hooded jacket that if seen from the waist up could conceivably have been taken for a cloak.

  Fräulein Schneider gave vent to a great theatrical sigh.

  Diamond said he expected a number of witnesses had seen Clarion and he would need statements from all of them.

  ‘What the hell was Clarion doing here?’ Preston Barnes asked.

  He got a dusty answer from Shearman. ‘She wanted to see the play. Perfectly understandable considering she was in it until Monday night.’

  To avoid this descending into a free-for-all, Diamond said his officers would start taking statements directly.

  ‘Did someone murder her?’ Barnes asked.

  ‘It’s an unexplained death. We have a duty to investigate.’

  ‘Most of us can’t help you at all.’

  ‘We’ll be the judges of that. Everyone will be interviewed.’

  ‘We’ll be here all bloody night, then.’

  This prompted quite a hubbub of alarm over personal arrangements.

  Diamond ignored that and briefed his team. The key points to discover, he told them, were whether anyone had seen or heard anything about Clarion’s visit. Those unaware of it would be allowed to leave.

  ‘If one of them killed her, he’s not going to put up his hand and tell all,’ the hard-headed John Leaman said.

  ‘I’m not expecting a confession tonight,’ Diamond said. ‘We’re collecting facts.’ He named his interviewers and sent them to various parts of the auditorium. He was left with one lost sheep, Fred Dawkins.

  ‘Am I not to be trusted, guv?’

  ‘Far from it, Fred. Have you heard of Wyatt Earp?’

  He frowned. ‘The sheriff?’

  ‘I think you’ll find he was a marshal, and so are you, for one night only. Marshal this lot in an orderly way, keep them sweet and send them one by one to whoever is ready to see them. Can you handle that?’

  ‘Only if I get a badge and a gun.’

  The man had a glimmer of humour. Given time, he might fit in.

  A massive gap in the sequence of events needed explaining. Diamond took Shearman on one side. ‘You’ve got some explaining to do. You told me you went to the box at the end of the play and found the body.’

  The manager had turned pale. ‘That is correct and I called 999 and got the ambulance here.’

  ‘I’m more interested in what you didn’t tell me. At which point of the evening did you know she was dead?’

  His mouth moved without any words being spoken.

  ‘You heard what O’Driscoll said. No one was visible in the box during the second half. She was already dead, wasn’t she?’

  Still he didn’t answer.

  ‘There she was, your VIP guest. It would be extraordinary if you didn’t look in during the interval to see if she was comfortable. The truth,’ Diamond said.

  Shearman sighed and finally found some words. ‘Unless you’ve been in my position you couldn’t possibly understand the pressure I was under. I had a theatre full of people, a performance in progress. To interrupt it would have created mayhem.’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question. When did you find out? In the interval?’

  ‘Shortly before the second half started. I knew she’d prefer to remain hidden, so I took her a glass of champagne. I tapped on the door and looked inside and had the shock of my life.’

  ‘Think hard before you answer this. Are you certain she was dead?’

  ‘Definitely. I spoke her name several times, and felt for a pulse. Absolutely nothing. I was petrified. The four-minute bell had gone for the second half to begin again.’

  ‘So you let it run. The show must go on. That’s the mantra, isn’t it? You had a dead woman lying in the box -’

  ‘No one could see her. She’d fallen on the floor. It looked like an empty box to anyone who didn’t know.’

  ‘How long is the second half?’

  ‘About an hour and a quarter.’

  Diamond was appalled. ‘You left her lying dead for all that time and did nothing?’

  ‘What could I do? Empty the theatre? I couldn’t get her out without disturbing the audience. I was in a terrible dilemma. I’m responsible for all those people. She wasn’t visible to anyone, as Titus told you.’

  ‘You could have got her down the back stairs.’

  ‘Not without being noticed. You heard what Titus said. He was watching the box and no doubt others would have seen us moving her.’

  ‘When this leaks out, as it’s bound t
o, the press are going to hang you out to dry.’

  ‘I had to reach a decision. It seemed the best thing to do. It was all down to me. Francis wasn’t about.’

  ‘He’d already left, had he?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, but he wasn’t taking much interest in Clarion at that stage.’

  ‘Did you tell anyone? Kate, the wardrobe mistress?’

  ‘I kept it to myself, I swear. And as soon as the show was over I dialled 999.’

  ‘If Clarion was murdered – and it’s quite possible she was – we’ll need to know where everyone was during the interval.’

  ‘I can tell you what I was doing for most of it. I was trying to speak sense into Schneider.’

  ‘Schneider?’

  ‘It’s the part she plays. Everyone calls her that. She was ranting on hysterically about the grey lady and not being able to continue. I told her flatly she was a professional actor with a duty to the rest of the cast. She’d obviously noticed Clarion in the box before the interval, but I couldn’t tell her who it was.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She’s a blabbermouth. She wouldn’t keep it to herself. Clarion wanted privacy.’

  ‘Wasn’t she visible from the audience?’

  ‘She was sitting well back. Only someone on stage would catch a glimpse.’

  ‘Any one of the actors could have spotted her, then?’

  ‘They may have seen a figure there. Hard to recognise who it was.’

  It was clear to Diamond that anyone in the cast or crew might have learned that Clarion had been in the theatre. Melmot and Shearman knew for certain, and so did the security man, Binns. For a would-be murderer, the opportunity had been there: Clarion alone in the box during the twenty-minute interval.

  He’d heard as much as he wanted from Shearman. Binns was next up, all silver buttons and defiant, staring eyes, expecting an attack on his professional competence.

  ‘How did you learn about Clarion’s secret visit?’ Diamond asked.