The Strangling on the Stage

by Simon Brett

  But that was it, really. One evening of unfettered emotion and then everyone wanted to get on with doing the play. The members of the Devil’s Disciple company returned to their default preoccupation: themselves. The surface of SADOS had closed over, as if Ritchie Good had never existed.

  Not much was said about him during the following Sunday’s rehearsal, though they did get the news from Davina that Gordon Blaine had been questioned by the police. At what level this questioning had taken place she did not know, but they’d been to his house rather than taking him to the station. This information caused a surprising lack of discussion amongst the Devil’s Disciple company. But there was a general view that Gordon’s being questioned was logical. After all, he had built the structure which had killed Ritchie Good.

  As she was leaving St Mary’s Hall at the end of her first rehearsal, that Sunday, Carole was approached by Mimi Lassiter. ‘Oh, now you’re in the production you must be a member of SADOS.’

  ‘Must I?’

  ‘Yes, nobody can be in a SADOS production if their subscription’s not up to date.’

  ‘Unless they’re Ritchie Good,’ said Carole, who had heard from Jude about his non-membership. Mimi Lassiter’s face darkened. ‘He wasn’t a member, was he?’

  The Membership Secretary agreed that he wasn’t. ‘And look what happened to him,’ she said with something like satisfaction.

  They were now out in the car park. Carole looked at Mimi Lassiter, dumpy with her dyed red hair. No wedding ring, post-menopausal, archetypal small town spinster. Then she noticed that Mimi was carrying a Burberry raincoat exactly like her own.

  Carole took out her car key and unlocked her clean white Renault. As she did so, she realized that parked next to it was the identical model, also white. ‘Well, there’s a coincidence,’ she said.

  ‘Just what I was thinking,’ Mimi Lassiter agreed.

  ‘What, you mean … that one’s yours?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Carole Seddon felt very uncomfortable. The same Burberry raincoat, the same white Renault. Both post-menopausal. And she’d just mentally condemned Mimi Lassiter as an archetypal spinster. Was that how the denizens of Fethering saw her too?

  But Mimi was not to be distracted from her cause. ‘Now the subscription of Acting Members is—’

  ‘But I’m not an Acting Member,’ Carole objected. Unpleasant memories of the School Nativity Play welled up in her. Ooh, that itchy Ox costume. ‘You’ll never catch me acting,’ she said with some vehemence. ‘I am the prompter.’

  ‘Yes, well, that’s still covered by Acting Membership. Everyone who’s actually involved in the production—’

  ‘Backstage as well?’

  ‘Yes, backstage as well. They’re all in the category of Acting Members.’

  ‘Well, it’s a misnomer, isn’t it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Acting Member. Acting Member implies that people in that category actually act. It should be Active Member.’

  ‘I think it’s fairly clear that anyone who’s involved in—’

  ‘Anyway, what other categories of membership are there?’

  ‘Well, there’s Supporters’ Membership. That’s usually for people who have got too old to continue as Acting Members but are still involved with the society. And then there’s Honorary Membership, but that was really only set up for Freddie and Elizaveta … you know, because they actually started SADOS and there needed to be some recognition of their enormous contribution to the—’

  ‘So how much do I have to pay for an Active Membership?’

  ‘Acting Membership.’

  ‘It really shouldn’t be called that,’ said Carole.

  ‘Well, it always has been called that!’ Mimi Lassiter was very worked up. Clearly she didn’t like anyone questioning the way she operated as Membership Secretary. ‘And the subscription for Acting Membership is …’

  Carole paid up.

  Olly Pinto, in the role of Dick Dudgeon, had just asked if Essie knew by what name he was known.

  ‘Dick,’ replied Janie Trotman, in the role of Essie.

  He then told her that he was called something else as well. But before he could say, ‘The Devil’s Disciple,’ he was interrupted.

  ‘That’s wrong,’ said Carole. It was the Sunday rehearsal a fortnight after Ritchie Good’s death, and she was beginning to feel at ease in her new role of prompter.

  ‘I’m sure it’s right,’ said Olly Pinto, on the edge of petulance.

  ‘No. You said you were called something else as well, whereas what George Bernard Shaw actually wrote did not include the words: “I am called”.’

  ‘Well, it means the same thing.’

  ‘It may mean the same thing, but what you said is not the line that Shaw wrote.’

  ‘All right,’ said Olly Pinto, well into petulance now. ‘I’ll take it back to where I ask Essie what they call me.’ And he delivered the line that Shaw wrote.

  ‘What?’ asked Janie Trotman.

  ‘That was your cue. I was giving you your bloody cue!’

  ‘Keep your hair on. I’m not the one who’s cocking up the lines.’

  ‘I am not cocking up the lines! Look, I’ve taken on the part of Dick Dudgeon at very short notice and I’m doing my best to—’

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Janie, who’d heard quite enough of Olly Pinto’s moaning. ‘Dick.’

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘You gave me my cue. I’m giving you the line that comes next. Dick.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t know you’d started, did I?’

  ‘All right. Well, I have started. Dick.’

  Again Olly Pinto tried to get out the line where he mentioned he was called ‘The Devil’s Disciple’.

  Again Carole interrupted him. ‘You said “as well”. Shaw actually wrote “too”.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake!’ snapped Olly Pinto. ‘“As well” – “too” – what’s the bloody difference? They both mean the same.’

  ‘They may mean the same, but George Bernard Shaw chose to write one rather than the other. And the play SADOS is doing is the one written by George Bernard Shaw, not by members of the cast.’

  Olly Pinto looked as if he was about to take issue, but decided against it. Hester Winstone had been very timid as a prompter. She wouldn’t give the line until one of the actors virtually asked her for it. And she had seemed happy to accept any kind of paraphrase of George Bernard Shaw’s words. Whereas with this new one … blimey, it was like being back at school.

  Carole Seddon was surprised to find she was really enjoying her job as prompter. With the text of The Devil’s Disciple in her hand, she had the advantage over the actors. And even the most flamboyant of them looked pretty silly when they couldn’t remember their lines.

  Also, although she would never have admitted it to a living soul, she was glad to have the prospect of fewer evenings alone with Gulliver in High Tor, reading or watching television (even about convents and confinements).

  Carole and Jude’s conviction that they were engaged on an investigation grew weaker and weaker. Whenever they tried raising the subject with members of the cast, asking for their ideas as to who might have switched the two nooses, nobody seemed to be that interested. Getting The Devil’s Disciple on was much more important than Ritchie Good. He was already old gossip.

  Despite his problems with the lines, Olly Pinto was really relishing his elevation to the role of Dick Dudgeon. Previously at coffee breaks during rehearsal it had been Ritchie Good round whom the junior members had gathered. Now it was Olly. He wasn’t a natural to take on the casual insouciance of an amdram star, but he was getting better at filling the role.

  And he mentioned Elizaveta and Freddie Dalrymple and their ‘drinkies things’ significantly less often. Now he’d got the part that he reckoned had always been his due, he didn’t need the imprimatur of their distinguished names. Olly Pinto was now unquestionably the star of The Devil’s Disciple.

  At
one point, in the course of that Sunday rehearsal, Jude, returning from the Ladies during a coffee break and passing the Green Room, overheard a snatch of conversation.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t start that,’ said a peevish voice she identified as Janie Trotman’s.

  ‘Come on, I’m not doing any harm. It’s just that I do find you stunningly attractive.’ It was Olly Pinto’s voice, steeped in sincerity.

  ‘Even if that were true, it doesn’t give you an excuse to come on to me.’

  ‘Janie, I’m just—’

  ‘Oh, I get it. Now you’ve got Ritchie’s part, you reckon you can take on his personality too, do you?’

  ‘It’s not like that.’

  ‘Chat up everything in sight, eh? Get them interested and then drop them like hot cakes? Well, you’re not going to succeed with that, Olly. Certainly not with me. For one simple reason. Ritchie could get women interested because he was attractive. You can’t because you aren’t.’

  ‘There’s no need to be offensive.’ The note of petulance that she’d heard at rehearsal was back in Olly Pinto’s voice.

  Also he was using that as an exit line. Jude hurried back to the main hall to avoid being caught eavesdropping.

  What she had heard was very interesting, though.

  Carole had now attended four rehearsals of The Devil’s Disciple, but she hadn’t joined the mass exodus to the Cricketers after any of them. When her neighbour raised the subject, Carole insisted that she was ‘not a pub person’. But Jude remembered the very same words being used about the Crown and Anchor in Fethering when they first met. Carole had fairly quickly become something of a ‘pub person’ there, and Jude reckoned it was only a matter of time before she also became a post-rehearsal regular at the Cricketers. Her natural nosiness would ensure that.

  The first Sunday she attended rehearsal Carole had given Jude a lift in her Renault. Now they were both involved, that seemed to make more sense than having Storm Lavelle go out of her way to pick Jude up. Anyway, there wouldn’t be room for three of them in the Smart car. That Sunday Jude had dutifully gone back to Fethering in the Renault immediately after the end of rehearsal, foregoing a drink at the Cricketers. She had wanted to go there, though, not only for the convivial atmosphere, but also in hopes of reactivating the investigation into Ritchie Good’s death.

  So on the following Tuesday and Thursday Jude travelled from Fethering in the Renault, went to the pub when Carole left and got a lift back home with Storm. Storm was such a chatterbox, particularly when she’d got a few drinks inside her, that she was more than ready to join in conjectures about Ritchie’s hanging.

  After overhearing the conversation between Janie Trotman and Olly Pinto, there was no way Jude wasn’t going to the Cricketers after that Sunday’s rehearsal. She hadn’t had the chance, with all the Devil’s Disciple company around, to tell Carole what she had heard, but she was more insistent that her neighbour should come to the pub that evening. Carole once again demurred, though with less conviction than before. Jude reckoned her friend would be a ‘pub person’ at the Cricketers by the end of the week. But Carole was not to be swayed that evening, so Jude said she’d get a lift back with Storm.

  Though the post-rehearsal SADOS company noisily took over the pub and formed into large groups, it was still possible to have a relatively private conversation with someone at one of the side tables. By good fortune Jude found herself at the bar at the same time as Janie Trotman, and an offer to buy the girl a drink assured her attention. The nearest group of actors centred on Olly Pinto, and Janie seemed unwilling to join them, so Jude had no problem in steering her to a table beside the open fire.

  They clinked their glasses, Janie’s a vodka and coke, Jude’s predictably enough a Chilean Chardonnay. ‘Olly seems to be stepping fairly effortlessly into Ritchie’s shoes, doesn’t he?’

  Janie agreed. ‘Mind you, he’ll never be as good as Ritchie. He hasn’t got the same amount of talent. Not nearly.’

  ‘No, but I think he’ll be all right.’

  ‘He may be, if he learns his bloody lines.’ Janie giggled. ‘Mind you, Carole the Dominatrix is keeping him up to his work, isn’t she?’

  Jude giggled in turn, wondering how Carole would react to the nickname.

  ‘She’s quite a hard taskmaster, isn’t she?’ Janie went on.

  ‘Something of a perfectionist, yes.’

  ‘Where on earth did she come from? I’ve never seen her round any other SADOS shows.’

  ‘I brought her in.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, she’s a friend of mine. My next-door neighbour, actually. Why’re you looking so surprised?’

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s just … I wouldn’t have put you two down as friends. You seem so different. You’re so laid back and, well, Carole …’

  ‘Opposites attract,’ suggested Jude.

  ‘Maybe.’ But Janie didn’t sound convinced.

  ‘Hm. Anyway, the surface of the water seems to have closed over Ritchie Good, doesn’t it? Like he never existed.’

  ‘I think in some ways that’s quite appropriate.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Jude.

  ‘Well, there always was something slightly unreal about him.’

  Jude found that a very interesting observation; it chimed in with the feeling she had got about Ritchie when they’d met in the Crown and Anchor, that he was going through the motions of life rather than actually living it. She asked Janie to expand on what she had meant.

  ‘The way he used to come on to every woman he met, it never felt spontaneous. It was more like … I don’t know what you’d call it. Learned behaviour, perhaps? Certainly not innate.’

  Jude grinned. ‘You know the jargon.’

  ‘I’ve got a degree in psychology,’ said Janie.

  ‘And do you use that in your work?’

  ‘Sadly not at the moment. I haven’t had a proper job since I left uni. And that was nearly three years ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘There’s nothing I could get round here that’d actually use my qualifications. Unless you reckon that stacking shelves in Lidl gives a unique opportunity to study the patterns of human behaviour.’

  ‘Couldn’t you look for something further afield?’

  Janie Trotman shook her head ruefully. ‘Can’t really at the moment. My mother’s got Alzheimer’s. And my father’s desperate that she shouldn’t have to go into a home or a hospital. But looking after her is too much for him on his own. So …’ She spread her hands wide in a gesture that seemed to encompass the limited possibilities of her life.

  ‘Obviously it won’t always be like this. My mother will presumably die at some point. I just hope to God she goes before my father. Otherwise I’ll be lumbered full time.’ There was no bitterness in her words, just a resignation. What she had described was her current lot in life, and that was all there was to it.

  ‘It’s why I keep doing the amateur dramatics,’ she explained. ‘I enjoy it and it gets me out of the house at least three times a week.’

  Jude said again that she was sorry.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Janie. ‘I’m not after sympathy. My parents looked after me when I couldn’t help myself …’ She shrugged. ‘Some kind of payback seems logical.’

  ‘Are you an only child?’

  The girl nodded. ‘And I love both my parents … or perhaps in my mother’s case I should say I love what she used to be.’ Determined not to succumb to a moment of emotion, she went on briskly, ‘Anyway, I’ve told you about my life. What about you, Jude? What do you do?’

  She explained that she was a healer.

  ‘Ah. And it’d be too much to hope for, I suppose, that you might have found a way to heal Alzheimer’s?’

  ‘I wish. I can sometimes alleviate distress or panic in a sufferer, but cure … no.’

  Janie grinned wryly. ‘I was afraid you’d say that. But at the same time I’m rather relieved you did.’


  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you don’t come across to me like a charlatan.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I mean, I’ve looked online endlessly for anything that offers the hope of a cure. And there are plenty of people out there who do just that. If you only buy their patent medication, their dietary supplement … then hooray, goodbye to Alzheimer’s.’

  ‘Did you buy any of them?’

  ‘I’m afraid I did. When my mother started to decline, I was desperate, I’d try anything. Well, I did try one or two things, and they all had one thing in common. They were entirely useless. So, as I say, there are a lot of charlatans out there.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it.’ Then Jude redirected the conversation. ‘Incidentally, did Ritchie Good come on to you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘When he first met you?’

  ‘Yes. Didn’t he come on to everyone when he first met them?’

  ‘Certainly did with me. And Carole too, actually.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Don’t sound so surprised. Carole is a very attractive woman.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure she is. But there’s something a bit … I don’t know, a bit forbidding about her. Like, say a word out of line and she’d cut you down pretty quick. If I were a man, I’d think twice before coming on to Carole.’

  ‘But, as we’ve established, Ritchie Good came on to every woman.’

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘How did you react, Janie?’

  ‘When Ritchie first came on to me? Well, I was flattered, I guess. At that stage I hadn’t witnessed him coming on to anyone else, so I thought maybe he was genuinely attracted to me. And then of course he was the star of the show, and he was so much older than me, and … yes, I was flattered. Also, at the time I was in a rather low state about men.’

  ‘Oh?’ Jude smiled sympathetically. ‘Relationship just finished?’