Death in the Spotlight

by Robin Stevens

  ‘We were right about that part – but we kept on thinking that someone else was involved in the accident, someone who now wanted Rose and Annie dead. Again we were assuming. We were making things far too complicated. Because what if … oh, tell them, Hazel.’

  ‘What if there was no other person involved in the accident?’ I asked. I saw Alexander’s mouth open in amazement and grinned at him without even meaning to. ‘What if we weren’t looking for another suspect at all? What if the killer was the only survivor?’

  ‘What if,’ Daisy pressed on, ‘Rose shoved her parents off their boat and then swam safely to shore, where she was found by Annie – who was sitting on the beach that day? Remember, Annie told us how she never liked to go swimming because she didn’t want to get her bathing costume wet. Annie was a nice person – she would have helped Rose without suspecting foul play. But, even so, there might have been something in Rose’s story that didn’t seem quite right. Annie kept a diary religiously. She would have written her questions down there, and thought about it again and again over the years.

  ‘We know from a more recent diary that Annie saw Rose again, as an adult, in the production of Happy Families, and spoke to her to remind her of their connection. She probably did it innocently, but it must have been dreadful for Rose, just as her career was taking off, to see the one person who might guess the truth about that day. I suspect she suggested that Annie apply for the Romeo and Juliet job to keep an eye on her. But when rehearsals started, she realized that it wasn’t enough.

  ‘You see, Annie was a talker. She chattered all the time about everything – and she was beginning to talk more and more about dangerous memories. She mentioned childhood and summer holidays quite a lot. Of course, we all generally ignored her – but would that have gone on for ever? What if someone had listened? What if someone else began to ask questions?

  ‘Rose must have been terrified. She was now stuck in a play with someone who knew, or at least suspected, her darkest secret – someone who could end her career. And we saw that Annie was becoming uncomfortable with Rose’s behaviour. So Rose hatched a plan: she was going to murder Annie and then pretend to be her. She used the fact that Martita and Simon hated her to send herself threats, and organize those awful posters. She wanted to get the idea into everyone’s heads that Rose was in danger and was going to be shoved down a well – so that when it really happened people would be expecting the body to be Rose. Then she went about planning the murder.’

  ‘It wasn’t hard for her to look like Annie,’ I put in. ‘Daisy’s already talked about that. But how to get Annie into the well, looking just like Rose?’

  ‘Hah!’ said Daisy, in great excitement. ‘Well, the key to that was the fact that Annie created two copies of each outfit in the play. There were two nightdresses in the Rue Theatre, not one – and the only way the murder, and the evidence we found, would make sense would be if both Rose and Annie wore white nightdresses when they went into the well room that evening. Perhaps Rose suggested to Annie that they play a trick. They would both put on a nightdress and make their faces up like Juliet, and go down to the well room, to see if they could give someone – Lysander, probably – a fright. That’s why we found white threads from a Juliet dress on the way to the well room, and again on the well-room ladder. We couldn’t understand why we only found white fibres and the print of a bare foot, and nothing left by the murderer – but, if the murderer was dressed in the same clothes as the victim, it makes sense!’

  ‘Rose set up her dressing room to look as through she was gone, then asked Annie to meet her down in the well room while everyone else was on stage,’ I put in. ‘During Act Two, Scenes Three and Four, there’s a long stretch where Juliet doesn’t appear, and that’s what Rose used. She had already made sure to have trouble with her dress onstage in the balcony scene, so everyone would see her and Annie together and be reminded that they were two very different people. Annie was beginning to worry about Rose, but she was still so trusting that she would have gone along with it. Rose could have said that Lysander had asked to meet her in the well room at the beginning of Scene Four, when Romeo has time offstage.

  ‘Once Rose and Annie were in the well room, Rose attacked. She was little, like Annie, but she could have choked her with the gauze from her foot. Then she cut Annie’s foot, bound it up with the gauze, opened the well and shoved her straight down.

  ‘She managed it all quite neatly, but she did get her dress a little dirty as she did so. That’s why the dress in Wardrobe was wet and stained when we saw it the next day, because Rose had to wash it. After she was done, she rushed away upstairs to tidy herself before she arrived onstage for her tantrum at the beginning of Scene Five. Then she flounced off to her dressing room. That’s where she had the argument with Martita that everyone else heard – seeming to prove that Rose was still alive at five past nine. After that was over, she waited until the noises outside had died down before she crept upstairs to Wardrobe.

  ‘She got changed there into Annie’s outfit, wearing a curly blonde wig for that evening, and made her face up to look like Annie too. That was when she went down to see Jim, to put Rose’s name in the sign-out book and help establish Annie’s alibi.’

  ‘Then, of course, when the alarm was raised, she helped hunt for Rose, before giving up with everyone else and going home to Annie’s accommodation,’ said Daisy. ‘She came back in the next day, continuing to make everyone think that Annie was alive and Rose dead. She was hoping that the body would be found fairly quickly, so she could move on to the next part of her plan – we thought it odd that Rose’s coat and handbag had been hidden so badly, but it makes sense if Rose was hoping they would be discovered, along with the body. Those were her most dangerous hours, because anyone might have looked at her closely enough to notice. But she kept in corners and away from direct light, pretending she was afraid of the murderer, and chattering in exactly the same way as Annie did – and no one was any the wiser. What we ought to have noticed was that Annie had suddenly switched hands, from left to right – but of course we didn’t think of it at the time. She didn’t quite manage to remember Annie’s background perfectly, either. She said she had a sister, but Annie had a brother, and she pretended that she didn’t know the details of Rose’s tragedy, which Annie certainly would have done.’

  ‘That night, she had to fake her own death – again!’ I went on. ‘She left the theatre at the usual time, went back to Annie’s accommodation and then out again, wearing Annie’s brightest clothes and carrying her incriminating diary entries from 1927 and the last month. Annie must have written about Rose, and how she was starting to suspect Rose really did kill her parents. She made sure she was seen several times – bumping into someone, asking for a light – and then when she walked onto Westminster bridge she threw the hat, coat and handbag, with a convenient note inside it, over the side. We really ought to have thought about that coat – after all, coats don’t fall off dead bodies! Finding it on its own would only make sense if someone had thrown it in. She must have tossed the diary entries into a bin, perhaps burning them with that cigarette.

  ‘Rose came out on the other side of the bridge an entirely different and much less noticeable person. She must have been hoping that another body of a similar height and build would be found in the estuary soon – it does happen quite often – and this time she was luckier than she could have expected.’

  ‘And that’s it!’ Daisy finished triumphantly, turning to Rose. ‘Well, apart from one thing. The birthmark.’

  ‘This is all nonsense,’ said Rose, who had been listening to our speech with a very sour, angry expression. ‘All of it!’

  ‘What do you mean, the birthmark?’ asked the Inspector.

  ‘Well, I think you should ask your coroner to look at the body from the well again,’ said Daisy. ‘Because I think there should be a birthmark on the foot, just underneath the rather large cut. Rose, you had to cut yourself, and the body, because Annie had a birth
mark on her right foot. If the coroner had seen it, he might have marked it down as an identifying feature, helping to prove that the body wasn’t Rose Tree’s. Am I right?’

  ‘Oh – BLAST!’ cried Rose. ‘Blast you! You’ve thought of everything. I told Annie that Lysander was frightening me. I told her that I wanted her to help me give him a scare, and if she did we could be proper friends. That’s all she wanted: someone to talk to. Of all the people who could have found me that day in Southend, it was her. She was so kind, and I was so tired. I said some stupid things; things that didn’t fit with the story I told the police.

  ‘I thought she must have forgotten, since I never heard anything – but then she came to see me after Happy Families one night, and I realized that she remembered all of it. When I landed Juliet, I made sure that she was given the dresser’s job, so I could keep an eye on her. But she kept on talking! I couldn’t shut her up. I got cross with her once, and she was so upset, but that made her talk even more. So I decided that there was nothing for it. She’d have to die.’

  It gave me chills, how matter-of-fact she was about it.

  ‘Your parents,’ I said. ‘Your friend!’

  ‘My parents!’ said Rose. ‘Why should I have cared about them for a moment? My father might have seemed respectable, but he was the opposite. He never let me do anything I wanted, and he hit me. He wouldn’t let me act, or dance. He told me I was wicked for loving those things. And my mother just – watched. She never helped me because she loved him. When I shoved her over the side of the boat, he went in after her, even though neither of them could swim. It was easy.

  ‘And Annie wasn’t my friend. She was a stupid woman who didn’t mean anything. I’d have gone away for a year and then come back onto the London stage with a new name. I could have started a new career. Lysander was beginning to suspect, so he had to go too, and Martita couldn’t be allowed to steal my spotlight. None of them mattered. It was all supposed to be EASY!’

  She made a lunge at me, out of her chair. Daisy and Alexander both stepped in front of me, and Uncle Felix stepped in front of Daisy. Inspector Priestley let his hand drop heavily on Rose’s shoulder.

  ‘I think we need to be getting you down to the station, don’t we?’ he said conversationally.

  ‘Just you wait for the trial,’ said Rose, glaring at all of us. ‘I shall give the performance of my life.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said the Inspector. ‘You’ll need to. Daisy, Hazel – I salute you. This was a fiendish case.’

  ‘It was, wasn’t it?’ said Daisy happily. ‘Just look how we’re improving!’

  11

  We are back at Uncle Felix and Aunt Lucy’s flat. I think Uncle Felix is really quite proud of us. He took us out for a slap-up dinner last night, and he even told us about one of his cases at work. He did it in a very general way, but it is the most he has ever trusted us, and Daisy is still shining with joy about it.

  Aunt Lucy was rather quiet at dinner, but after we arrived back home she came into our room as we were preparing for bed.

  ‘Girls,’ she said, sitting down on my bed and gesturing for us to sit down opposite her. ‘I want to congratulate you. I must say that you continue to impress me. You are far more resourceful than I was at your age, and I am very proud of you. I have spoken to Felix, and we agree that the details of this business do not need to be shared with either of your parents, or with your school—’

  ‘Oh, thank you!’ I said, for I had been feeling anxious about that.

  ‘Now,’ said Aunt Lucy, ‘even my husband has come to understand that you are not likely to give up this detection business of yours. I think that is perfectly sensible, for you are clearly very good at it. But I do want to say one thing: solving mysteries will only get harder, the older you are. You are looking less and less like little girls, and that will make detection difficult in future. Everyone has opinions about how women should behave, and who they should be.’

  ‘I shall be so glamorous that no one will have time to worry about anything else,’ said Daisy haughtily. ‘That’s what Rose showed us, didn’t she? That the disguise is all that matters.’

  ‘I am not sure that’s what you ought to take away from this case,’ said Aunt Lucy. ‘But I suppose that is true.’

  ‘I don’t think I can be glamorous,’ I said nervously.

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ said Aunt Lucy. ‘But you do not have to be anything you don’t want to be. All I can do is help you to prepare for all the challenges you will face. Daisy, some more work on disguise is in order. And, Hazel, if you would prefer to blend in, then we shall just have to work on making you appear as dull as possible. Codes are fearfully dull. Let’s keep training you in that. You never know when it may come in useful.’

  That night, Daisy and I could not sleep with excitement. Instead, we got into our beds, took out the remains of Daisy’s birthday tuck box as a midnight feast and talked through the case. We talked for so long that I fell asleep and woke up to find Daisy still chattering, as birds began to sing in the spindly trees outside the flat, and the sky turned grey and faded at the edges.

  We talked until breakfast, and after breakfast (heaps of buttered eggs and hot cocoa, served by a very cheerful-looking Bridget) I sat down to write all that last part up while the details were still fresh in my mind.

  I was still writing when a procession of visitors began to arrive.

  Miss Crompton, Inigo and Simon came first, just after ten o’clock, to thank us on behalf of the Rue. They made the flat’s living room seem very small suddenly – I think that was mostly because of Inigo’s cloak, which today was sky blue.

  ‘Congratulations,’ he said in his sonorous boom. ‘Excellent work. Who would have thought that Miss Tree would become … so enamoured of her role that she would copy Juliet and fake her own death?’

  ‘I gravely misunderstood her,’ said Miss Crompton. ‘I thought she was dramatic, but not murderous. And to think she killed that poor girl Annie, and tried to kill Martita and Lysander out of sheer spite! It’s dreadful. Luckily, Lysander seems to have a strong constitution. He’s recovering already, and claiming that he knew all along who the murderer was, which I don’t entirely believe.’

  I thought about Lysander’s words, and wondered.

  ‘Will the play close?’ I asked anxiously.

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Miss Crompton. ‘All this death has been wonderful for our box office. We shall probably run for six months after the press we’ve had. Everyone wants to see it. In fact …’ She looked at Inigo.

  ‘We have decided to cast Romeo as we had originally intended,’ said Inigo, beaming enormously. ‘Simon will act opposite Martita – let the critics say what they will. The public will still come – it’s more than time.’

  Simon, who had been rather subdued, suddenly beamed. He stood up straighter, and he nodded at Inigo, who clapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘It is indeed,’ said Miss Crompton. ‘And, of course, you are both welcome to continue your roles until you return to school next week. It’s the least we can offer.’

  ‘Very gracious of you,’ said Daisy, beaming. ‘We accept. Don’t we, Hazel?’

  I thought. ‘Yes please,’ I said. ‘We do.’

  And I realized that I meant it. Acting was not so bad, after all. It was only playing someone else, instead of playing myself.

  Simon hung back as Miss Crompton and Inigo left the room.

  ‘Martita’s told me that you two … know,’ he whispered to us after they had gone. ‘I just want to thank you – for not saying anything. It means a lot.’

  ‘We never would,’ I said fervently. ‘Never!’

  ‘Honour bright,’ agreed Daisy, blushing.

  ‘I kept on wanting to come out with it,’ said Simon. ‘But I was so scared that they’d get the wrong idea and arrest me for murder. I couldn’t decide which was worse – I mean, both would have gotten me thrown in prison and then sent back to America. I’m just so grateful that I never had to ch
oose. I’m in your debt, kids, for ever more.’

  Martita arrived next, and Daisy, who had been bubbling over with pride before, suddenly went very shy and rather pale. She hung back next to the armchair, so I had to be the one to speak to Martita.

  ‘I really am grateful to the two of you,’ said Martita. ‘I couldn’t understand why I seemed so guilty. It was as though everyone was pointing a finger at me.’

  ‘It was all Daisy,’ I said firmly. ‘I mean – I hoped it wasn’t you, but it was Daisy who was sure. She’s believed in you all the way through the case. It’s because of her that everything turned out all right.’

  ‘Did you really?’ asked Martita, her hair swinging round as she turned to Daisy. ‘Always?’

  ‘Er,’ said Daisy. ‘I really don’t— Hazel, really—’

  ‘It was absolutely Daisy,’ I said. ‘And she was absolutely sure. She’s the one you ought to thank.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Martita, sparkling, ‘I thank you, Daisy Wells.’ And she bowed low, like a courtly Shakespearean gentleman, took Daisy’s unresisting hand in hers and kissed it.

  Once she had left the room, Daisy sat down very suddenly on the side of the armchair.

  ‘Hazel,’ she said in a low voice. ‘My life will never get better than this precise moment. Never. Not if I live to a hundred!’

  ‘Of course it will,’ I said, nudging her. ‘We haven’t even set up our detective agency yet.’

  But Daisy shook her head.

  We really are to go back to Deepdean next week. We had a telephone conversation with Kitty, with Beanie and Lavinia jostling behind her on the telephone in Matron’s office.

  ‘Come home!’ cried Kitty.

  ‘Please!’ shrilled Beanie.

  ‘Don’t hurry!’ growled Lavinia.

  ‘Ignore that idiot – we miss you!’ Kitty went on. ‘It hasn’t been the same without the two of you. Why, school is awfully dull! Not a murder, or a kidnap, or anything! Lavinia hasn’t even run away once.’