‘You’re such a chump sometimes, Hazel,’ said Daisy, rolling her eyes. ‘Whether you like it or not, you have to grow up. Even if you pretend you aren’t older, everyone else notices that you are. Now, take a deep breath – good – and another – and another. All right?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m all right, Daisy. I can detect.’
‘Of course you can!’ she said. ‘It’s the one thing you know absolutely how to do, Watson. Buck up! Let’s hunt for more leads in Wardrobe.’
I squeezed her hand. Daisy winked at me, reached down and ripped a long piece of lace from the hem of her costume. Then she pushed at the door to Wardrobe and cried, ‘Oh dear! Annie! I’m afraid I’ve done something dreadful to my dress!’
5
But, instead of the door opening, it stuck, and there was a scream from inside the room that made both of us start. I clutched at Daisy’s arm. Had something else happened?
‘Who is it?’ Annie’s voice cried out nervously.
‘It’s us!’ Daisy called back. ‘Daisy and Hazel! I’ve ripped my dress – please let us in!’
It was very odd, I thought, that the door was locked.
There was a pause, and then the door rattled and cracked open a few inches. Annie appeared in the gap.
‘It is you!’ she said, sounding relieved. ‘I thought it might be the murderer. Oh, all right, come in!’
Daisy and I went in carefully, and found the room in dim, warm half-darkness, full of racks of costumes and dressmaker’s dummies – and Annie, hovering in a dark corner, clutching her hands together and chattering away.
‘I’m so pleased that you aren’t anyone dangerous!’ she cried, lunging forward to pat at the fluttering piece of lace drooping from Daisy’s skirt. ‘I was so afraid. Now, you’re right – you have ripped it. Stand still, Daisy darling. Let me look at it. Oh, that’s a nasty tear, just exactly like the time I was working on Anything Goes and Amy Snow’s skirt got caught in the doorway and almost ripped in two. Hazel, lock the door again, will you? Doors can be very dangerous. I once cut my hand quite badly on one that hadn’t been properly sanded. I know a woman who never likes to go through a door if she can help it, although I do think there might have been something else odd about her apart from the doorway issue, really. It isn’t normal to be so very afraid of them.’
She had knelt down in front of Daisy and begun busily pinning up the rip, talking all the while. I drifted away from her towards the racks of costumes, running my fingers through the brocade and velvet and shot silk and fur. They seemed to glow with warmth and beauty, and I could almost feel the rich colours under my hands. I rubbed the tip of a fur collar against my cheek and smiled.
There were dresses draped across three dummies, halfway through being re-hemmed. There is something oddly formal about a dress when it is on a dummy, I think. It suddenly stops looking like clothes and begins to look like a person. You can almost see the character of its wearer, as though they’re really there and their arms and head have simply been erased by a piece of India rubber.
One was the Nurse’s heavy black-and-white robe – of course, the Nurse would have to be played by someone else in the cast now that Martita was playing Juliet. One was another of Juliet’s dresses that was being altered for Martita. I could see where the hem was being taken down and the bust let out, for Rose, like Annie, had been a dainty woman, while Martita was taller and fuller-figured, and the last … was Juliet’s second nightgown, the one we had been looking for! So this was where it was!
I almost began to search over it for the missing thread that we had found on the well room’s ladder, but then I remembered: Rose had gone into the well wearing its double. This gown could tell us nothing. But, all the same, I ran my hand across it. It was a little damp, with a shadowy brownish stain on its skirt.
‘Tea,’ said Annie, and I turned and saw her half looking up at me, stitching away at the lace on Daisy’s skirt while she held it in place with her left hand.
‘Poor Rose was holding a cup of it when she stepped on that glass last night. She spilled it all over her skirt and we had to change her into her spare while I washed this one. It’s a stubborn stain – it’s not all out yet. I did say to her how lucky it was that we have two of each costume.’
‘Isn’t that normal?’ asked Daisy, wriggling impatiently.
‘It is for the shows I dress,’ said Annie. ‘I was in a production once where the actresses only had one of each dress, and the leading man spilled wine over the bodice of the leading lady. She simply had to go on for Act One wearing Act Three’s dress. I vowed never to let it happen again. Rose was such a beautiful person to dress; such a nice waist and very pretty arms. She looked lovely in capped sleeves – so quaint!’
‘So you liked her?’ I asked, turning back to Annie.
‘Of course I did! She was lovely, always so kind to me. And I felt sorry for her. It’s a dreadful thing to lose your family, especially as young as she did. When I think about my own parents, and my sister – it’s terrible.’
‘Oh, do tell us what happened!’ said Daisy.
Of course, Annie was delighted to talk about it.
‘It was awful!’ she cried, blinking her heavily made-up eyes and shaking back her blonde curls, which were falling over her face. ‘She was thirteen – at least, I think she was? She was on holiday with her mother and father at— Oh, I can’t recall. I think it was Blackpool, one of those places with a pier and bathing and donkey rides on the beach. I always think they’re such terrible value for money, don’t you?’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever been on a donkey,’ said Daisy. ‘Is it anything like a pony?’
‘Goodness, I have no idea,’ said Annie, ‘but, if pony rides are anything like as bony and slow, then I don’t know why anyone bothers with them. Anyway, so Rose was there with her parents – she wasn’t called Rose Tree then, of course – that’s only her very clever stage name – she was little Susan Brown. Whatever her name, the three of them went out boating, only something went wrong. The boat capsized and they were all simply swept out to sea. Her parents couldn’t swim, and drowned, but Susan was carried by the current and washed up on a beach a mile away. She was found by a local girl. She went to live with her doddery old aunt, and then, as soon as she turned eighteen, she went to London to go on the stage. Isn’t that romantic?’
I thought it sounded utterly awful. Daisy, though, was nodding away.
‘So you were here in Wardrobe last night?’ she asked.
‘Of course,’ said Annie. ‘I had that dress to clean. There was tea all over it and I knew Rose might want it today. But I did go to borrow a cigarette off Jim. I don’t like to smoke around the costumes – it’s a fire risk. I know a wardrobe mistress who fell asleep in her room and her lit cigarette fell onto a pile of lace. She went up like a candle! I’ve been mortally afraid of that ever since. Oh, poor Rose!’
‘So you can’t prove where you were apart from the time you went to see Jim?’ asked Daisy.
‘Goodness me, you sound like the police!’ said Annie, head bent as she stitched. ‘No, of course I can’t. How was I to know that someone was about to kill poor Rose? If I had, I wouldn’t have been alone. Imagine, they might have come in here and killed me too! Really, you never know. I heard about a man in the East End who went on a murder spree. He killed absolutely everyone who got in his way, and the only person who escaped was a poor man who managed to climb out of his bedroom window, absolutely naked!’
‘Well, yes, but that was a hundred years ago,’ said Daisy. ‘I don’t really think this case is like that one.’
‘How do you know?’ asked Annie dramatically. ‘I’m afraid for my life today. I didn’t see anything – anything at all – but I keep imagining what might happen if I had. If I did know something. Oh, the murderer might come for me next! I don’t feel safe in my own Wardrobe!’
‘The police will catch whoever did it!’ I said.
‘But they might not!’ said Annie. ‘U
ntil they do, I’ll be keeping this door locked behind me, you can guarantee that. I shan’t be the next victim!’
‘I’m sure you shan’t,’ said Daisy. ‘After all, you’d have to know something, and you’ve told us you don’t.’
I happened to be looking up then, and I saw something flash across Annie’s face. She turned her head away again, down to her work, and I almost wondered if I had imagined it. Except I was sure that I had not.
6
‘That was deeply odd!’ Daisy hissed to me as we left Wardrobe and heard its lock click behind us. ‘Why was she so afraid? She’s not an important actress, is she? No one wants to kill her! She’s just the dresser.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, trying to shake the uncomfortable feeling in my stomach. ‘I think – I think she might be hiding something.’
‘She was acting strangely, wasn’t she?’ Daisy agreed. ‘I think she did see something, or find something out— Oh bother, I wish people would simply tell us everything! But then I suppose our cases wouldn’t be half so interesting. Now, Hazel, I have had another thought. I suspect that clodhopping policeman with the Inspector will care more about his stomach than about guarding the well room. He’ll want to go for lunch, and therefore I believe that now is the perfect moment to record our timings, and recreate the crime. Are you game?’
‘Of course!’ I said.
‘Excellent,’ said Daisy. ‘Now. First measurement: Wardrobe to the top of the stairs. Then do the top of the stairs to Theresa’s office.’
We walked from Wardrobe back along the dressing-room corridor (Lysander, thankfully, had gone). Standing outside our own dressing room and Theresa’s office, I checked my wristwatch carefully.
‘Five seconds from Wardrobe to the stairs, and thirty seconds from the stairs to Theresa’s office!’ I whispered.
‘Good,’ said Daisy. ‘Now, top of the stairs to the door of Rose’s dressing room, and then on to the stage door.’
We crept down the stairs again, past Rose’s door (fifteen seconds), and then the steps to Jim’s cubbyhole. He looked up at us from the newspaper-wrapped fish and chips he was eating.
‘Hello, Jim!’ Daisy called out. ‘I’m feeling so much better, thank you!’
‘Twenty-five seconds,’ I whispered to her.
‘We must go!’ Daisy trilled, ignoring Jim’s confused face, and we turned and made our way into the theatre again, facing the stairs with Rose’s dressing room at our backs.
Down the stairs we went, once, twice, lower and lower, and then out into the stuffy dark of the theatre’s lowest level. We wound past clanging boilers, and found ourselves in the corridor that had the well room at its end. The policeman, just as Daisy had thought, had gone. It was empty apart from us, and eerily quiet. I glanced at my watch – two and half minutes.
But this corridor was quite crammed with bits of old scenery that were spiky with broken wood and trailing wire; things that might easily catch a trailing skirt or hook an unsuspecting ankle. It was hard to move quickly and quietly through the Rue, even for someone who knew it well. Just as I thought that, I felt my stocking catch against something. The wool pulled and tore with a small noise, and I yelped.
‘Shh!’ hissed Daisy. ‘Hazel, unhook yourself from that nail and hurry along. You’re ruining our timings and we shall be late!’
‘We’re solving a murder, not going to a tea party!’ I said – and then I saw from Daisy’s rather shocked face that what had come out of my mouth was one of the things that, a few months ago, I might have kept inside my head. ‘I didn’t quite mean that,’ I stumbled, kneeling and tugging at my stocking, which seemed well and truly entangled. ‘It’s just that there’s no need to hurry, is there?’
‘Of course there is,’ said Daisy. ‘We’re pretending to be a murderer! Oh goodness, move aside. I’ll fix it.’ With a rush, she dropped to crouch next to me, her face intense and serious as she peered at the caught stocking. Her slim fingers poked at the nail and she sighed.
‘This is dreadfully stuck, Hazel! I don’t know how you managed— Wait! Don’t move a muscle!’
‘What is it?’ I asked, suddenly wobbling, for of course it is the hardest thing in the world to avoid thinking about something as soon as someone has told you not to do it.
‘That nail,’ said Daisy almost dreamily, ‘is a dangerous one. It has clearly been responsible for more snags in the past. Look, here, beyond the bit of wool from your stocking. There’s something else. It’s been pushed back – we really wouldn’t have seen it if it wasn’t for your clumsiness, but I’ve almost – got – it – THERE!’
And she sat back on her heels, holding up something white.
I had the oddest tug of memory, as if my brain had snagged on a nail of its own. I remembered our very first case, and the nail that had caught the white piece of Miss Bell’s lab coat. This, whatever it was, was white too, but it was not tough material. It was thin and soft, drooping against Daisy’s fingers.
‘It’s more from Juliet’s nightdress!’ cried Daisy. ‘And since we’ve just seen the one in Wardrobe, which was stained but not ripped, it stands to reason that the dress that caught on this nail is the one worn by the corpse. I know quite certainly that this piece is from her skirt – the bodice was embroidered and is quite a different kind of material. Now we know for certain that Rose walked to the well room quite willingly. If she was carried, her skirt wouldn’t have caught on this nail.’
‘I suppose that’s useful,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘but it doesn’t really give us anything new.’
‘Isn’t it a bother?’ Daisy agreed. ‘All this evidence to do with our victim and none left by our murderer! They were annoyingly careful, weren’t they? It’s as though they knew they would be up against the formidable might of the Detective Society.’
‘They knew they’d be up against the police,’ I pointed out. ‘They’re formidable enough.’
‘Yes, but everyone expects the police,’ said Daisy. ‘And, as I have told you countless times, Hazel, the police make terrible mistakes, even clever policemen like the Inspector. No one expects us, which is why our work is so crucial. Now, I shall put this fabric into my handkerchief for safekeeping. Start your timings again, if you please – we’re almost at the scene of the crime!’
7
Of course, this meant that I had to climb back into the well room. After I had paused at the door to check my watch and scribble down the time (two minutes and forty seconds from Rose’s dressing-room door to here), there was nothing for it but to face the horror of the murder scene.
And it was horrid – for many reasons.
As we stood at the bottom of the ladder, shining our torches around the room, Daisy tutted crossly and I let out a gasp. The space had already been dirtied by the feet of the other actors, but now it had been truly ruined by the police, and their efforts to get Rose up out of the well.
The floor was wet and sticky. The bare footprint we had seen had been erased by splashes of water and tracks from many other people – there were the coroner’s neat brogues, heavy hobnailed police boots and the Inspector’s large, flat shoes. They had run ropes over the lip of the well, scuffing the stones, and there was a messy, wet print where they had lowered the body before they stretchered it away.
‘Clodhoppers!’ said Daisy, disgust dripping from her voice. She sounded so furious, but she was quite right. Thank goodness we had seen the room before the police arrived. ‘However are we supposed to work in these conditions? But of course we must. Watson, get out your casebook and let us do our best to recreate the scene.’
I turned back in my book to the notes I had made this morning. There was the footprint I had sketched, and the room itself with the clue of the white thread marked in.
‘So, the murderer lured Rose into this room,’ said Daisy. ‘How they did it will depend on who it was. Flirtation, if it was Lysander. Simon too, perhaps – Rose might have only been pretending to despise him. Annie might have asked her to come down for
a chat or a smoke, because they were friends, and Inigo and Simon might also have invited her down to smoke.’
‘What if Inigo or Miss Crompton said they wanted to talk about something to do with the theatre?’ I suggested. ‘And they wanted to do it somewhere very secret? They might have made her think she was going to get another role, or something?’
‘Very possible indeed!’ said Daisy. ‘Good, Watson. Now, what about Jim?’
I shook my head. ‘Daisy, now we know the timings, I can’t see how Jim could possibly have done this. He walks with a limp and very slowly – you’ve seen him. It took us almost three minutes to get down here from his cubbyhole, and it would take the same time for us to get back again – so six minutes. Jim was the closest person to this room, but even so, if he moved at his slow pace it would take him more like ten minutes all together. He wasn’t away from his desk for more than about nine minutes, we know that – he wouldn’t have had time to kill Rose as well! We have to rule him out.’
‘Hazel, that is brilliant!’ cried Daisy. ‘All right. So we must now work out how long the crime itself would have taken. Rose came down the ladder on her own two feet, unaware that anything nefarious was going on. I think we are agreed on that, aren’t we? The door closed behind her and her murderer. Then what?’
‘Then – then the next thing we know for certain is that she and the murderer fought,’ I said. ‘We saw the scuffed footprints on the floor. They came all the way across the room to here, and this is where we found the proper print of Rose’s foot. The murderer must have been trying to get her close to the well. And then—’
‘They uncovered the well; they pushed her in head first; they put back the cover and they rushed out of the room again,’ said Daisy, nodding briskly. ‘Simple. Now, Hazel, I have a task for you. Come here and be Rose.’
Death in the Spotlight Page 13