by Anne Morice
At ten minutes past seven a Mr Roger Padmore had telephoned the stage door to enquire whether Miss Henshaw was still in the building. Marples was distinctly puzzled by this since it was well known to everyone in Elfrieda’s circle that she had her own private telephone line up in the dome. The number was unlisted however and, concluding that Mr Padmore had forgotten it, Marples duly spelt it out for him, only to be told with a trace of impatience that he had been trying to ring it for the last twenty minutes and could get no answer. Would Marples be so good, therefore, as to find out whether she was in some other part of the theatre and, if possible, bring her to the telephone. Presumably not much fancying this errand, Marples replied that it was against the rules for him to leave his post at that hour of the evening and that he would transfer the call to the Green Room.
‘All I can tell you,’ Len said, when this had been done, ‘is that she had a business appointment at six-thirty, so presumably it’s still going on and nothing is allowed to interrupt it.’
‘I regard that as the most unlikely explanation of all,’ Mr Padmore informed him.
‘All the same, it has been known. Most people wouldn’t have the strength of mind to leave the telephone ringing, but Miss Henshaw is different.’
‘I am quite aware of that, but it doesn’t account for her not answering it on this occasion.’
‘Why not?’
‘For the excellent reason that her appointment at six-thirty was with me.’
‘Oh . . . Oh, I get it. You want me to let her know you can’t make it? You’ve been held up or something?’
‘No, I have not been held up or something. What I should like you to do, if you would be so very good, is to find Miss Henshaw as quickly as you are able and tell her that I have been waiting at her house for three quarters of an hour and that I should be obliged if she would let me know whether she intends to keep our appointment or not.’
‘Oh, sure, but listen, I can tell you straight off what the answer will be. You’ve got it wrong. Miss Henshaw was expecting you to come here, to the theatre.’
There was a long, audible sigh and then Mr Padmore began again:
‘That may be your impression and I confess it was also mine until three o’clock this afternoon. When I returned to my office after lunch there was a message from my secretary telling me that Miss Henshaw wished me to call at her home this evening, instead of at her office as we’d arranged.’
‘I do think there’s got to be some mistake, though, honestly, I do. I mean . . .’
‘My secretary has known Miss Henshaw for nearly thirty years and she is not given to mistakes of that kind, I assure you. However, wouldn’t you agree there’s only one way to find out? I have wasted rather a lot of time already, so if you would be kind enough to do as I ask?’
‘Okay, if you insist, but you’d better hang up and wait for me to call you back on the other phone. About five minutes.’
This proved to be an understatement because, although he almost literally ran into Elfrieda in the space of three, as he panted up the ramp, his promise to Mr Padmore was instantly forgotten in the shock of what he saw.
She was lying about midway between the dome and the ground floor, the wheelchair having tipped over on its side, with the front of it jammed up against the outer wall of a right hand curve. Although he did not dare to go very close, still less touch her, he knew for certain and at once that she was dead.
Hours later, still in a state of partial shock and unable to stop talking, he confided to Viola and myself that his first coherent thought had been that this would mean the end of his job; his second that, in some inexplicable fashion, Melanie had been responsible for this new disaster.
NINE
‘Inexplicable is the word,’ was Robin’s comment. ‘And why should he have thought that, I wonder? Had he seen her walking on the cliffs too?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I replied, plunging my fork into the lobster armoricain, ‘although he may well have heard rumours that she was back in town. It’s more likely, though, that his remark was inspired by the absolute obsession everyone at the Rotunda has about Melanie. One way and another, she managed to set a lot of cats among all those pigeons. Their feathers got so ruffled that, however irrationally, whenever something awful happened the automatic reaction was to blame it on her.’
This was on Saturday, the day after Elfrieda’s funeral. The local dignitaries and business contingent had turned out in force for it, which was a lot more than they had ever done for her live productions and, after a good deal of argument, acrimony and vacillation, it had been agreed that as a mark of respect the theatre should remain closed until the following Monday.
As this shut-down applied to rehearsals as well, I had at first been ready to jump at Viola’s offer of a lift to London for the weekend, but when I rang Robin to tell him of this plan, he suggested coming to Dearehaven instead, so that we could explore the countryside and maybe go for a spin round the harbour in the Saucy Sal.
Since the warm, dry weather had by then returned in double strength and the newspaper headlines were given over to such witticisms as ‘Phew!’ and ‘Britain Scorches’, this struck me as a sensible move and when I went over to Dorchester by taxi to meet the London train I was not altogether surprised to see Toby alighting from it as well.
Kind as ever, Viola, then on the point of setting forth for a weekend in London, had insisted that there was plenty of room for all three of us at the cottage. However, after she had gone Toby remarked that it was curious how often large women were so fatally attracted to bijou surroundings and that he remembered Viola’s flat in Chiswick being equally claustrophobic. Furthermore, although it was true that he could not actually see the cliff edge, he knew it was there and would not be able to sleep for worrying about it. Knowing what we were up against, Robin and I surrendered at once and booked the whole party into the Green Man. So far, all the indications pointed to the fact that its illustrious reputation had not been over-rated.
‘Was she really such a menace?’ Robin asked, referring to my remarks about Melanie.
‘Hard to say. I only met her once, but she struck me as rather a jolly, extroverted kind of girl. On the make, no doubt, but she’d had it rough all her life, so who can blame her for that? I think her chief crime was in driving a wedge between Elfrieda and the company, breaking up their tight, secure little world. Not deliberately perhaps, but it was happening and they couldn’t stand it. It made them feel excluded and unloved and you know what that does to people in our profession.’
‘It would be interesting to know where she’s gone,’ Robin said, ‘and what she’s up to.’
‘Nothing good, I daresay. She didn’t turn up at the funeral, you won’t be surprised to hear and, so far as I’ve heard, no one has seen her around lately. I expect she’s heard the news about Elfrieda, realised there was no longer any future for her in Dearehaven and that the time had come to move on.’
Toby glanced up with a puzzled expression: ‘Isn’t there something missing? Do you feel that too, Robin?’
‘No, I can’t say I do,’ Robin admitted, looking the table over, also with a puzzled expression, which was not surprising, considering what was on it.
‘Surely this should be the moment when Tessa informs us that, contrary to all the evidence, Elfrieda’s death was due to far more sinister causes than a boring old heart attack?’
‘Yes, so it is; and it must be very frustrating for her, but I daresay that even she would find it uphill work, in the circumstances. I understand the poor old lady was known to have a weak heart and that her doctor had warned her on numerous occasions not to go gallivanting up and down that ramp unless she had someone with her. It must be a blow, though, Tessa,’ he added in solemn tones. ‘Are you sure you can’t find some tiny flaw that the others have overlooked, anything at all suspicious or out of place to give you a start?’
‘Well, I don’t know if you’d call it suspicious, but it was certainly out of place. I r
efer, of course, to the moustache.’
‘Oh, do you? Whose moustache?’
‘Who knows whose? It was a false one and it was in the little back bedroom behind her office. When they carried her in there, they found it sitting up on the dressing table. It’s hard to believe that Elfrieda had some secret kink about male impersonation. In any case, it would have been quite superfluous, she already looked like a man without any make-up at all.’
‘Oh well, yes, I suppose that’s better than nothing. But she certainly wasn’t killed by a false moustache and I suppose in a place like the Rotunda you’d expect to find articles of that kind lying around just about anywhere.’
‘And she did get a bash on the head,’ I reminded them, ‘and furthermore it was inflicted while she was still alive.’
‘So another small ray of hope? But it won’t be enough, I’m afraid. Anyone whose wheelchair had overturned and come crashing down on to a concrete floor would be unusually lucky not to sustain a blow on the head and, since death from a heart attack isn’t necessarily instantaneous, there is nothing very sinister in the fact that she was still alive, although probably unconscious, when the accident happened.’
‘I’m aware of that, Robin, and, as you’ve said, it is rather a pity. Not because I want to stir up trouble either. God knows, it’s going to be hard enough to stagger through the season without any extra complications. Elfrieda was the complete autocrat so far as the administration was concerned and wouldn’t delegate a thing, if she could avoid it, so there are going to be endless hurdles and pitfalls ahead.’
‘So why be disappointed that you haven’t got a murder to cope with as well?’
‘Oh, simply from a detached point of view, as of one who had no personal interest at stake. I don’t know whether either of you has noticed it, but if there had been something non-accidental about this, it would have been one of those rare cases where every single potential suspect had a perfect opportunity to spend ten or fifteen minutes alone with the victim just before her death. Only think of it! At one end of the spectrum we have Kyril claiming to have been waiting by the foyer entrance between six o’clock and twenty past, although if it’s true he must have been wearing a heavy disguise because I certainly didn’t see him there. Then there’s Jamie. As soon as the rain stopped he went stamping off, ostensibly to walk home, but there’s no proof that he actually did so. He need have gone no further than round the corner and back into the foyer. Next comes Viola, who says she spent the entire time in her dressing room, but again there’s no proof that she didn’t leave it at one point and make a quick trip to the dome. The same thing applies to Len, who was supposed to have been quietly working away, all on his own, in the Green Room.’
Robin was not impressed: ‘Quite apart from the fact that none of these people had the vestige of a motive, what you’ve just told us is almost enough to prove their innocence. I should remind you that the guilty ones invariably go through no end of hoops to provide themselves with an alibi.’
‘In that case,’ Toby announced, ‘Tessa’s wish is likely to be granted, after all. I am now convinced that the old party was indeed murdered and, furthermore, I am able to name the culprit.’
If breath was not totally bated, at least we paid him the compliment of laying down our forks.
‘The mysterious Padmore,’ he told us solemnly. ‘I have it all! Obviously, his telephone call was faked.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘I had come to the same conclusion and really, you know, it would have done very nicely. All he had to do was to arrive ten minutes early for his appointment with Elfrieda, knock her out, release the brake on the wheelchair, give it a good hard push, then nip round to her house and produce his story of there being some mix-up. It’s such a simple answer that it almost comes into Robin’s category of proven innocence. Except that a child of three could break that sort of alibi in two seconds.’
‘Although he did claim that the message altering the appointment came through his secretary,’ Robin pointed out, ‘so I suppose that might complicate things? Otherwise, you’d have to drag in a bit of collusion.’
‘Not necessarily. He told Len that the message had come while he was out at lunch, which means that it would only have been a matter of telephoning this secretary and putting on a funny voice. However, although it’s a lovely idea, I’m afraid we have to throw it out. For one thing, he’s not the mysterious Padmore, by any stretch of the imagination. He is, or was, Elfrieda’s lawyer and no pillar of respectability has ever been straighter. His firm have been looking after the Henshaw family for two generations.’
‘Highly suspect,’ Toby said, laying siege to his lobster again. ‘I expect she’d just found out that he’d been diddling them for two generations as well.’
‘Leaving the wretched Padmore out of it for the moment,’ Robin said, ‘I did notice one rather interesting omission in Tessa’s list of suspects.’
‘You mean Melanie, of course? I know and it’s too bad, isn’t it? I’d love to have included her in the game too, but she simply wouldn’t fit. The others I’ve mentioned were already inside the theatre when Elfrieda died, but Melanie wasn’t and there’s no way she could have got in and out again unnoticed.’
‘On the other hand, you did say that Jamie could have walked out by the stage door and then in through the foyer. Why wouldn’t the same objection apply to him?’
‘Because he was such a familiar feature. All the front of the house staff are so used to seeing him wandering in and out that his presence wouldn’t have impinged. He’s your actual picture on the wall now, but Melanie was a very different cup of tea. She’s always been an object of curiosity and still more so since the rumour started circulating that she was back in Dearehaven. Everyone would have been agog for a sight of her. The only time, so far as I can see, when she might have got in without attracting attention was just before the start of a performance, when there’s a terrific crush of people skirmishing around in the foyer and the box office staff are up to their eyes. But it’s never like that between six and seven in the evening. That’s one of the deadest periods of the whole day.’
At this point I found that I had lost their attention because someone at the next table to ours had ordered crêpes suzettes and there can be few more engrossing pastimes than watching them being put together by a deft and accomplished hand. However, for once my mind wasn’t really on it, because the moment I saw the waiter wheeling his trolley load of ingredients and utensils over to the table I was gripped by a new and strange idea. Mulling it over, as he expertly tilted his pan this way and that, set it over the flame, then coyly withdrew it again, I realised that, after all, I could add Melanie to my hypothetical list of suspects in the non-existent murder case.
However, I was not yet ready to pass on the news to anyone else and, when the pancake pantomime was over and conversation resumed, it was confined exclusively to discussing plans for the afternoon.
TEN
Robin was obliged to go back to London on Sunday evening, but Toby elected to stay on for another week. Dearehaven appealed to him, as I had guessed it would, for he has a great affection for spas and watering places with a genteel, Edwardian flavour about them. However, in answer to my enquiry as to whether he would be able to keep his room at the Green Man, he told me that he did not intend to ask for it. The temptation to keep popping into the dining room would prove too strong, undoubtedly reducing his life expectation by a good ten years, and he had therefore booked himself into the Royal Metropolitan Hotel.
This was a vast, granite coloured building, dominating the Esplanade and looking as though it had been built as a prison during the Napoleonic wars, but it suited Toby to perfection because his bathroom alone was the size of a billiard room. His single complaint was that, although the Palm Court still existed, there was no longer a three-piece orchestra to go with it, but since he appeared to be the only guest in residence this was probably understandable.
We did not see much of each other du
ring the first few days because I was back at work and he would not come to Viola’s in the evening, for fear of running into Jamie, to whom he was absolutely devoted but never wanted to see. He still refused to put his life at risk by dining at the Green Man and on the single occasion when he had enticed me into the Grill Room of the Royal Metropolitan, which conformed in scale and spirit to St Pancras Station, although the food was unexpectedly good and the wine exceptionally so, I found the heavy, muted atmosphere so overpowering as to destroy the appetite.
So with a view to breaking out of this impasse, I suggested that on Saturday we should go for a picnic. I had been prepared for a stream of opposition to this proposal, which is exactly what I got.
He began by asking whether, since neither of us had a car, I was planning to spread out the cloth in a bus shelter.
‘Not at all,’ I replied. ‘Some quiet spot on the beach is what I had in mind.’
‘Are you raving? In case you haven’t taken a look at the beach recently, allow me to tell you that at no time during the daylight hours is it occupied by less than three quarters of a million people.’
‘Not that beach, I was thinking of one a bit further along. It’s called Rocky Cove and it’s at the bottom of Viola’s cliff.’
‘In that case, you have doubtless arranged for a helicopter to take us down there?’
‘No, that won’t be necessary. You see, Jamie arrived at Viola’s yesterday before she got home, so I was able to consult him in depth and this cove is not nearly so inaccessible as you’d imagine. All you have to do is walk downhill towards the town for about a hundred yards and you’re practically on sea level. Then you walk back along the beach again and there you are!’