A Decent Interval (18 page)

‘That would be very nice, yes.'

‘Very well. I had told everyone in the
Hamlet
company that I was going to get a cab to Swindon and catch the train for London. And I left the theatre in time to do just that.'

‘Before the performance started?'

‘Yes.'

‘Though, of course, you had no intention of going back to London. You were going to come here to join Dan.'

‘You do make it sound rather squalid, Charles.' He didn't say anything. She'd used the word; he hadn't.

‘Anyway, I'm about halfway here in a cab when I get a text from Katrina. She says something really important's come up and she needs me back at the theatre immediately.' Peri sighed. ‘The temptation to pretend I hadn't got the text was huge. And what Katrina regarded as “something really important” could be something really trivial. But looking after her was my job, so I got the cab to turn round and back to the theatre I went. The Stage Doorkeeper fortunately wasn't in his cubbyhole, so no one saw me arrive.'

She sighed again. ‘And, needless to say, it wasn't anything important. Just Katrina's fatuous plan to move her belongings into the star dressing room while Sam Newton-Reid was busy onstage. Well, I'd by then realized that it was often simpler just to go along with what Katrina wanted than to make an issue of it. So I said I'd help her with the stuff, intending to come straight back here and leave her to face the consequences of her selfishness. I cannot imagine that what she'd done would have got much sympathy from the
Hamlet
company.'

‘That is an understatement.' Charles Paris looked Peri Maitland steadily in the eye. ‘So what happened?'

Another sigh, but this one was different. The previous ones had been reactions to Katrina Selsey's solipsistic behaviour. There was more pain this time. It wasn't easy for Peri to re-create the scene.

‘OK, so we shift Katrina's stuff into the star dressing room. And we move poor old Sam Newton-Reid's stuff into the dressing room she's vacating.'

‘Does anyone see you doing this?'

‘I don't think so. I didn't see anyone. Everyone was either onstage or in the wings.'

Charles decided to keep quiet about what he'd heard from Dennis Demetriades as, becoming increasingly tense, Peri Maitland went on, ‘OK, the deed was done, my duty had been discharged and I was on my way out of there. But just before I left the dressing room, Katrina said she was going to repair her make-up.'

She was silent for a moment, marshalling her memories. ‘She picked up her mascara from the table, opened it and brought the brush up to her lashes …

‘Then I'm not exactly clear what happened. It was like the mascara stung her eye or … I don't know. She kind of leapt up from her seat in shock and fell backwards over it. And the back of her head went down hard on the stone floor.' Peri Maitland winced. ‘I can still hear the sound it made. I can't believe how loud it was. I sometimes wake in the night hearing it.

‘I could see immediately that Katrina was dead. So I just got the hell out of the place.'

W
hat Peri had told him completely changed all of Charles's thinking about Katrina Selsey's death. It had been an accident. And yet not totally an accident. He remembered seeing the discoloration around the dead girl's eye, as if she had rubbed it. And the only witness of her actual death had talked about Katrina's eye being stung. What was in the mascara? Had it been sabotaged?

Of course, he'd asked Peri these questions, but she couldn't help. She hadn't inspected the dressing room, just got out of the Grand Theatre as quickly as possible, hoping that no one would ever know that she had returned there at all that evening. She had got a cab to the hotel and joined up with her married lover.

Not for the first time Charles Paris felt the frustration of the amateur detective. He bet the police had done forensic tests and already knew what noxious substance had been introduced into that mascara tube. They were probably well on their way to knowing who put it there too. How could he compete when the police had all the evidence and information? It wasn't fair.

Idly, Charles wondered whether, assuming Peri Maitland had been telling the truth about Katrina Selsey's last moments, the death could be regarded as murder. If, as seemed likely, the mascara tube had been doctored by someone with a grudge against the girl, would he or she be legally responsible for the death? It was reaction to the pain in her eye which had made Katrina leap back, stumble over her chair and have her fatal fall. But the mascara-adulterator couldn't have anticipated that sequence of events. And didn't the definition of ‘murder' involve the concept of intent? Charles wished he knew more about the law, but he reckoned the most the perpetrator could be charged with would be manslaughter.

It was still a very vindictive thing to do. Depending on what was actually in the mascara tube, it could have caused permanent damage to the girl's eye. And though Katrina Selsey had gone out of her way to antagonize many of the
Hamlet
company, who would feel strongly enough to take that kind of revenge?

These thoughts circled around Charles Paris's mind as the private hire car drove him back from the boutique hotel. The chauffeur hadn't gone off to collect a superstar from an airport, he had just waited for Charles. He was set to take him back to his digs, but Charles, realizing he hadn't had any lunch, asked to be dropped at The Pessimist's Arms instead. He'd got
The Times
with him; he wouldn't look lonely if he was doing the crossword.

He ordered a pint and, remembering his unfortunate experience of the Sunday Roast, asked for a ham sandwich. Surely not even The Pessimist's Arms could get a ham sandwich wrong?

Charles was about to take his pint and paper to the alcove he'd occupied before when he saw someone he recognized. Milly Henryson, with a glass of sparkling mineral water and a noxiously unappetizing wrap on a plate in front of her. She looked very forlorn.

‘Hi.' Charles acknowledged her and then felt uncertain as to whether he should force his company on her. Fortunately, she gestured to the empty chair opposite and said, ‘If you'd like to join me …?'

He sat down and grinned. ‘I'm rather surprised that this is your sort of place.'

‘It isn't,' she said ruefully. ‘You are witnessing my first and – having just tasted that wrap – very definitely my last visit. No, I was just at a loose end and …'

Oh dear. She did look rather upset. Charles hoped nothing had gone wrong between her and Sam Newton-Reid. He bit back the urge to ask a how's-lover-boy type of question.

But she answered without its being asked. And the news was not terminal.

‘Sam's at an interview in London. For a leading part in a new drama series the Beeb are doing.' She couldn't keep the wistfulness out of her voice. However much love is felt for the person who's got lucky, there's an instinctive bit of every actor which wishes they'd got the break instead.

‘He'll be back in time for the show tonight?'

‘Oh. Of course he will. It's all been organized by Tony Copeland, whose television company is involved in the series somehow. He's got fingers in so many pies.'

‘You can say that again.'

‘And now Tony's backing Sam in
Hamlet
, he's going to get him lots of other stuff to “raise his profile”.'

‘Seems to be the way things are done these days,' said Charles Paris lugubriously, wondering whether he'd ever actually had a ‘profile'. ‘There are actors who—'

He was interrupted by the sullen barman bringing his food across. Looking at the curling bread, garishly pink filling and sad garnish of crisps, Charles realized that he'd been wrong. The Pessimist's Arms could even get a ham sandwich wrong.

He took a bite to see whether the presentation was outclassed by the taste. It wasn't.

‘So …' said Milly Henryson in a tone close to despair, ‘I wonder how much longer Sam and I will be acting in the same kind of shows.'

‘Oh, you'll get the breaks. You're very good too.'

The look the girl gave him showed that his words had not carried sufficient conviction. Milly was a realist. She wasn't ‘very good'. She was ‘quite good', and she knew it. She could have a perfectly satisfactory career in the theatre – particularly given how pretty she was – but she was never going to be in the same league as her boyfriend. Or perhaps, Charles thought gloomily, her current boyfriend.

‘And I don't even feel secure that I'm going to keep the part of Ophelia.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Well, I've been told I'm playing it, right, but I'm still expected to do some of the stuff I was doing as an ASM. You know, I've been told I've got to help with the get-out on Saturday night.'

Charles was surprised by this news, but he tried to sound reassuring as he said, ‘I'm sure that's just a temporary thing. You know, with everything else that's been going on, the stage management haven't yet had time to bring in someone else. I'm absolutely certain Tony Copeland is planning to keep you on as Ophelia.'

‘Oh yes? You don't think he's more likely to get in a “name” for the West End? Someone who brings a bit more publicity with them? One of the
StarHunt
runners-up, maybe?'

‘I'm sure that's not the sort of thing that Tony'd do.' Though even as he said the words Charles knew it was exactly the sort of thing Tony'd do. He tried to shift the direction of the conversation. ‘Did Sam go up to London by taking a cab to Swindon and then getting the train?'

‘Oh no, he got the full Tony Copeland Productions treatment.'

‘Meaning?'

‘He was driven up and he's being driven back by Doug Haye.'

‘There's posh for you. He's very honoured. I'm never quite sure what Doug does in Tony's set-up.'

‘More or less everything, it seems. Being Tony's driver is his main job, I think, but he helps out with other stuff.'

Milly spoke distractedly, though. The desolation Charles had seen in her face when she thought she was alone had returned.

‘It'll be all right,' he said. ‘Sam adores you.'

‘Yes, he does now,' she agreed. ‘But if his career takes off stratospherically …'

‘No reason why he shouldn't continue to adore you. He seems to me an extremely sensible young man. Head very definitely screwed on the right way.'

‘I hope so. I just couldn't manage without him. And I know having relationships with actors is difficult.'

‘How do you know?' asked Charles, trying to lighten the mood. ‘Have you had a lot of them?'

‘No. But when I said I wanted to go into the business, my headmistress at school always said that being married to an actor was sheer hell.'

‘Oh.' Then Charles realized that she was talking about his wife, Frances. Which didn't make Milly's remark the most comforting he had ever heard.

After the couple of pints at lunch he had gone back and fallen asleep. When he woke, his digs still didn't seem very congenial, so he went to the theatre early to have another go at The
Times
crossword in the Green Room. The grid didn't prove very tractable. He was having one of those days when the clues seemed blankly impenetrable. His conversations with Peri Maitland and Milly Henryson had lowered his mood and his cruciverbal incompetence did nothing to lift it.

The Green Room door was open and Charles heard footsteps approaching from the Stage Door. And voices. ‘Thank you very much,' Sam Newton-Reid was saying. ‘It would have been a hell of a trek to do it by train.'

‘No problem. I had stuff to sort out in London too.'

Charles Paris recognized the second voice immediately. He had last heard it in discussion with Bazza at The Pessimist's Arms. Moving quickly to the Green Room door, Charles was quick enough to see Sam Newton-Reid turning out of sight on the stairs up to his dressing room.

And to see the stockily-built figure making his way out of the Stage Door.

It was Tony Copeland's factotum, Doug Haye.

A
shrewd observer might have noticed a slightly distracted quality in the performances of the Ghost of Hamlet's Father and First Gravedigger in that night's
Hamlet
. Charles Paris's mind was full and racing. He recalled every detail of the conversation he'd overheard in The Pessimist's Arms after Jared Root's accident. At the time he remembered thinking it could have implied that Bazza had set up the sabotage. Now Charles knew that the stagehand had been talking to Doug Haye, a whole new set of possibilities opened up.

He'd never seen Bazza joining the post-show drinkers in the pub nearest to the Grand Theatre, but then the man was a local who lived in Marlborough and probably had his own favourite drinking hole. On the premise that he had once seen the stagehand there, Charles reckoned it might be The Pessimist's Arms. So he found his weary footsteps wending towards the same unattractive venue for the second time that day.

His hunch had been right. Bazza was sitting in the same alcove as he had with Doug Haye, but now in lugubrious isolation. He was more than halfway down a pint, which gave Charles the perfect opening. ‘Can I get you another of those?'

The lanky young man looked up with something that could almost have been a grin. ‘Never been known to refuse an offer like that.'

‘What is it?'

‘Six-X.'

‘Leave it with me.' At the bar, reckoning that Bazza as a local would know the best beer, Charles ordered two pints of Wadworth's 6X and returned to the alcove with them. He took an exploratory swig. ‘Excellent.'

‘Never fails,' Bazza agreed. ‘This may be a pretty grotty pub, but they know how to look after their beer.'

This masculine badinage was all very well, but Charles realized that he hadn't really prepared for the conversation he was about to embark on. He'd been so preoccupied with the connection he'd now made between Bazza and Doug Haye that he hadn't worked out how to broach a subject which might very quickly lead to accusations.