The Strangling on the Stage

by Simon Brett

  ‘And when Ritchie had virtually got you to agree to go to bed with him, he then went cold on the idea, saying that he couldn’t cheat on his wife?’

  Hester Winstone’s eyes widened. ‘Jude, how on earth do you know that? You weren’t there in the Cricketers, were you?’

  ‘No. Let’s just say there seems to be a pattern in Ritchie Good’s chatting-up technique.’

  ‘Oh.’ Hester still looked bewildered.

  ‘And I dare say that left you feeling pretty bad?’

  ‘Well, yes. I mean, the fact that I’d even gone along with the idea, that I’d even contemplated betraying Mike, it was … It made me feel even worse about myself. It made me feel stupid and unattractive.’

  ‘And weak when Neville Prideaux came on to you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Hester looked vague again. ‘I told you about that, did I?’ Jude nodded. ‘Yes, Neville was much more practical about the whole business than Ritchie.’

  ‘He really wanted you to succumb to his charms?’

  ‘Mm.’ She spoke with slight distaste. ‘Though I don’t know whether it was me he wanted, or just a woman. A conquest.’

  ‘But you allowed him to … conquer you?’

  A quick nod. ‘Really, once I’d agreed to let him in … well, he seemed to take it for granted that I’d agreed to everything else. And he kept saying he’d really fallen for me, and that I was beautiful and … I suppose I behaved like a classic inexperienced teenager.’

  ‘And Neville behaved like a classic experienced seducer?’

  ‘Yes. I felt terrible afterwards. I mean, while I could convince myself there was some love involved, well, it was … sort of all right. But when it had happened, and I realized he’d just taken advantage of me, and I’d done God knows how much harm to my marriage and … Neville didn’t want to see me again. He didn’t want to have any more to do with me, and at the read-through for The Devil’s Disciple he behaved like nothing had happened between us.’

  ‘And that’s what made you feel so miserable that, in the car park, you took the nail scissors out of your bag and …?’

  Hester nodded again. She looked very crumpled, very downcast. Jude let the silence last. Then she said, ‘Can we talk now about the Sunday rehearsal when Gordon Blaine and Ritchie Good demonstrated the gallows?’

  A shudder ran through the woman’s body. ‘That … I don’t … That was what pushed me over the edge. I can’t talk about it.’

  ‘Don’t you think talking about it might help?’

  ‘No, it could only make things worse.’

  ‘You must have talked to the police about it, Hester.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘The fact that they released you.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘When I saw you that afternoon, you said that it was your fault, that you were the reason he was dead. By the way, I didn’t tell the police you’d said that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because, heard by the wrong people, it could sound as though you were confessing to having killed him.’

  ‘What do you mean by “the wrong people”?’

  ‘I mean people who thought Ritchie had been murdered, And, at least at first, the police must be included in that number. But you must have told them something which stopped them being suspicious of you, something that let you off the hook.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I did.’

  ‘Are you happy to tell me what you told the police?’

  There was a long silence. Then Hester said, ‘I’ve tried to blank it out of my mind.’

  ‘I’m sure you have.’

  ‘I don’t like going back there.’

  ‘But you must know that your mind’s going to have to come to terms with it at some point.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘And I think you’ll feel better when you face it, face what actually happened.’

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

  Jude waited. She sensed that to push further at this point might break the confidential atmosphere between them.

  The silence became threateningly long. Jude was just reconciling herself to having reached the end of any revelations she was going to get, when Hester said, in a thin, distracted voice, ‘What I said to you was true. I was the reason why Ritchie was dead.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘If I hadn’t been there, he still would have been alive.’ Jude didn’t prompt, just waited. ‘I wasn’t in the hall when Gordon and Ritchie did their demonstration of the gallows for everyone. I’d gone to the loo. I was finding it increasingly awkward just hanging out with people during rehearsals. Because of Neville. He seemed so cold and unaffected by what had happened between us … and also by then he seemed to be coming on to Janie Trotman. It was painful for me. So, as soon as the rehearsals finished, I tended to rush off to the loo, to avoid socializing. And I stopped going on to the Cricketers.

  ‘But that Sunday afternoon I stayed in the loo until I thought everyone would have gone, but when I came out I found Ritchie was still there in the hall. And I was, kind of, a bit awkward with him – not as bad as with Neville – but not relaxed, anyway.

  ‘He asked me what I’d thought of his escaping death by inches on the gallows. I had to confess that I hadn’t seen the demonstration, and so he insisted that I must have a private showing of it. Ritchie was just a show-off, really. Like a little boy who won’t allow anyone to miss the new conjuring trick he’s just learnt.

  ‘I thought it was a bit silly, but it couldn’t do any harm to humour him. So Ritchie got himself up on stage and climbed on to the wooden cart underneath the gallows. And he put the noose round his neck – and told me to pull the cart away.

  ‘He was being all silly and melodramatic, saying, “You can be the one, Hester! You can be the person who sends me to my death!” But I’m sure he didn’t mean it, he was just joking, just playing the scene for all it was worth, “showing off” again, I suppose I mean.

  ‘So, anyway, I did as he told me to – I pulled away the cart. And there was quite a thump as he fell and the noose tightened around his neck. He was kicking out and gasping – and I thought that was just Ritchie playing up the drama and about to free himself. And his hands were up at his neck, trying to get a purchase on the rope, but it was too tight.

  ‘Then finally I realized he wasn’t play-acting, that he was being strangled for real. And I put the cart back and tried to get his feet on to it, but they were just hanging loose, with no strength in them. And I got up on the cart and tried to loosen the noose around his neck. But I couldn’t, it was too tight.

  ‘And then I realized that Ritchie was dead.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  ‘And what the hell are you doing here?’

  Neither of them had noticed the door open, but they both looked up at the sound of Mike Winstone’s voice. He was standing in the doorway, blazered and more red-faced than ever.

  ‘I just came to visit Hester,’ replied Jude, sounding cooler than she felt as she rose from her chair.

  ‘Oh yes? And aren’t you aware that she’s meant to be having a course of rest and recuperation?’

  ‘I don’t think my presence will have delayed either her rest or her recuperation.’

  ‘I’ll have a strong word with the people downstairs. They shouldn’t just let anyone wander in to a place like this.’

  ‘I spoke to the Director. I’m here with his blessing.’

  ‘Well, you’re not here with my blessing.’ As he spoke Mike Winstone’s face grew redder still. He sat himself down with a proprietorial manner in the chair that Jude had just vacated.

  ‘I’ll be leaving shortly,’ Jude said.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. And you’re involved with that “Saddoes” lot, are you?’ He deliberately used the diminishing mispronunciation.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, if you value your life, don’t you dare mention to any of them that Hester’s in here, will you?’

  �
�I had no plans to mention it.’

  ‘Keep it that way.’

  ‘So officially she’s still “staying with a friend”, is she?’

  ‘Yes. And it’s bloody inconvenient having her away from the house. There are only so many takeaways and pub meals I can put up with.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mike.’ It was the first time Hester had spoken since his arrival.

  ‘So you bloody should be. Have the quacks here given any indication of when they’re going to let you out?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ Hester sounded very down. ‘The psychiatrist says he can definitely see some improvement.’ She offered this tentatively, a sop to her husband’s anger.

  He rolled his eyes in exasperation. ‘Huh, it’s all so bloody vague, isn’t it? The whole business of “mental illness”. Because ultimately, at some point the patient has to make the effort themselves. You know, snap out of it, stand on their own two feet, start to take responsibility for their life again.’

  ‘I am trying to get better, Mike. Really.’

  Hester sounded so reduced that Jude was tempted to say something in her defence, but it wasn’t the moment to step in between husband and wife. Though she couldn’t envisage much improvement in Hester’s condition until Mike acknowledged that she was genuinely ill.

  ‘Well, I hope you get sorted by the end of next week. The boys have got an exeat from school, and subjecting them to a whole weekend of my cooking comes under the definition of child abuse.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ said Hester in a very thin voice.

  ‘None of this would have happened,’ Mike grumbled, ‘if you hadn’t got involved with that bunch of “Saddoes”. God, what a load of posturing toss-pots they are. When I saw that idiot showing off his hanging on that gallows contraption …’

  ‘Were you actually in Saint Mary’s Hall for the demonstration?’ asked Jude.

  ‘Yes, came in to hurry Hest along a bit. She said the rehearsal finished at six, and it was easily ten past before—’

  ‘And,’ Jude interrupted, ‘you knew that Ritchie Good was later strangled by the apparatus?’

  ‘Oh certainly, I heard. Serve the bugger right, I thought. So end all show-offs, if I had my way. Good riddance. As I say, except for his bloody stupidity, my wife wouldn’t have been traumatized – or whatever other fancy word the shrinks use for it – and she wouldn’t be locked up here in a loony bin.’ Clearly Mike Winstone was never going to score any points for political correctness. His bluff cricketing bonhomie had completely evaporated.

  Jude didn’t think there was a lot more she could do. She didn’t want to create any further cause of discord between Hester and her husband. Sorting out what was already wrong with their relationship would involve going back many years into the past – and might only serve to make things worse – so she said she’d better be on her way. ‘But I’ve got your mobile number, Hester, so I’ll give you a call when—’

  ‘My wife doesn’t have her mobile phone with her,’ Mike Winstone announced.

  ‘Oh? Don’t the authorities here at Casements allow clients to—’

  ‘I don’t allow it. Hest is here for rest and recuperation, not for chattering endlessly to all her women friends.’

  ‘But surely talking to her friends—’

  ‘Will you allow me to know what is right for my own wife!’ The words were almost shouted.

  Jude left. In spite of Mike Winstone’s clear disapproval, she gave Hester a hug and a kiss. Then she went downstairs to Rob’s office. He was interested to hear that Jude had done some healing on the patient, and wanted to know how it had gone. ‘Maybe you could try some more with her?’ he suggested.

  Jude grimaced. ‘I don’t think I’d better until it’s been cleared with her husband.’

  ‘Ah yes. I saw him coming in. Apparently he was just passing. Maybe I should try to persuade him of the efficacy of another healing session?’

  ‘Good luck,’ said Jude.

  ‘Well, we have made one big advance,’ said Carole when Jude had finished reporting her encounter with Hester Winstone.

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘Assuming that Hester was telling the truth – and there doesn’t seem to be any reason why she shouldn’t be – we know that Ritchie Good caused his own death. He just wanted to show off the gallows to her.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which is quite a relief, in a way.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, trying to create a scenario in which someone actually persuaded him to put the noose round his neck, or manhandled him into doing it or made him do it at gunpoint … well, none of those ever sounded very convincing, did they? But the idea that he put his head in the noose of his own volition, that makes a lot more sense.’

  Jude nodded. ‘And then there’s only one thing we have to find out. Who switched the Velcroed noose for the real one.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And why they did it.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  It was clear to Carole and Jude the moment they were admitted by Elizaveta Dalrymple on the Saturday evening that the seafront house in Smalting was a shrine to her late husband Freddie. The hall was dominated by a top-lit large portrait of him in the purple velvet doublet of some (undoubtedly Shakespearean) character. The pearl earring and the pointed goatee beard were presumably period props.

  Except, as Elizaveta led them up a staircase lined with photographs of Freddie, it became clear that the beard at least was a permanent fixture. Whatever part he was playing, the presence of the goatee was a non-negotiable.

  His wife’s hair was the same. Jude remembered the scene reported by Storm Lavelle of Elizaveta not wanting to have her head covered by a shawl when she was still going to play Mrs Dudgeon. In some of the earlier photographs on the wall, before she’d needed recourse to dying, her natural hair did look wonderful, though not always of the same period as the costume that she was wearing. The flamenco dancer look was fine for proud Iberian peasants, but it didn’t look quite so good with Regency dresses or crinolines.

  But clearly that was another unwritten law of SADOS. Freddie and Elizaveta Dalrymple had set up the society, so it was as if everyone else was playing with their ball. Whatever the play, Freddie and Elizaveta would play the leads, he with his pointed goatee and she with her long black hair.

  There was further proof of this at the top of the stairs, in one of those large framed photographs which are textured to look like paintings on canvas. Their crowns, Freddie’s dagger and the tartan scarf fixed by a brooch across Elizaveta’s substantial bosom, left no doubt they were playing Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. With, of course, the goatee and the long black hair.

  The space into which Carole and Jude were led showed exactly why the house’s sitting room was on the first floor. It was still light that April evening and the floor-to-ceiling windows commanded a wonderful view over Smalting Beach to the far horizon of the sea.

  The sitting room demonstrated the same decorative motif as the hall and stairs. Every surface, except for the wall with the windows in it, bore yet more stills from SADOS productions, again with the goatee and the black hair much in evidence. Presumably the plays in which Freddie and Elizaveta Dalrymple took part featured other actors in minor roles, but you’d never have known it from the photographs.

  ‘Welcome,’ Elizaveta said lavishly as she ushered Carole and Jude into the sitting room, ‘to your first – but I hope not your last – visit to one of my “drinkies things”. Now I’m sure you know everyone here …’

  They did know everyone, except for a couple of elderly ladies who had ‘retired from the stage, but as founder members were still massive supporters of SADOS’. Otherwise Carole and Jude greeted Olly Pinto, Storm Lavelle, Gordon Blaine and Mimi Lassiter. All had glasses of champagne in their hands. Storm’s hair was now black and shoulder-length (hair extensions at work – there was no way it had had time to grow naturally to that length).

  ‘Now,’ said Elizaveta. ‘Olly’s in char
ge of drinks this evening, so you just tell him what you’d like.’ On the wall facing the sea, space had been made among the encroaching photographs for a well-stocked bar. Olly apologized that there was no Chilean Chardonnay – he knew their tastes from the Cricketers – but wondered if they could force themselves to drink champagne. They could.

  A lot of glass-raising and clinking went on, then Elizaveta said, ‘Now, Carole and Jude, the agenda we have for my “drinkies things” is that we have no agenda. We’re just a group of friends who talk about whatever we want to talk about … though more often than not we do end up talking about the theatre.’

  ‘In fact just before you arrived,’ volunteered Olly Pinto, ‘we were discussing the wonderful Private Lives the SADOS did a few years back, with Freddie and Elizaveta in the leads.’

  ‘Oh, we’re talking a horribly long time ago,’ said Elizaveta coyly.

  ‘Sadly I never saw it,’ said Olly, ‘but I did hear your Amanda was marvellous.’

  ‘One did one’s best.’ This line was accompanied by an insouciant shrug. ‘And of course I was so well supported by Freddie. So sad that Noel Coward was never able to see the SADOS production. He would have seen the absolutely perfect Elyot. The part could have been written for Freddie.’

  ‘I think it was actually written for Noel Coward,’ Carole ventured to point out. The information was something that had come up in a Times crossword clue. ‘He played the part himself.’

  Elizaveta Dalrymple was only a little put out by this. ‘Yes, but Noel Coward was always so mannered. I’m sure Freddie brought more nuance to the role.’

  Not to mention a goatee beard, thought Jude. And a barrel-load of impregnable self-esteem.

  ‘It was a very fine performance,’ said Gordon Blaine, as if he wanted to gain a few brownie points. ‘And of course your Amanda was stunning.’

  ‘Thank you, kind sir,’ said Elizaveta with a little curtsy. ‘Freddie always had such a touch as a director too. Very subtle, he was. Not one of those bossy egotists. He let a play have space, let it evolve with the help of the actors. “A gentle hand on the tiller” – that’s how Freddie described the business of directing.’