An Expert in Murder (22 page)

‘I’m impressed, Archie. Yes, nicotine poisoning often affects the eyes – that’s true of a heavy smoker, not just these extreme cases.

It’s known as tobacco blindness – the sudden appearance of a rapidly growing dark patch in the field of vision, not dissimilar to alcohol.’

‘There was a lot of it in the trenches.’

‘Exactly. It was very common then, mostly because of home-grown or badly cured tobacco. That stuff often has a lower com-bustion temperature than properly prepared tobacco, so less of the nicotine is destroyed.’

‘If I told you that Bernard Aubrey spent his war underground and was clinically claustrophobic as a result, what would you say?’

Spilsbury stepped out of the way as his colleagues prepared to remove Aubrey’s body from the room. ‘Well, he died not being able to breathe or, in all probability, to see, so with the possible exception of being buried alive – which presents obvious practical difficulties – I’d say he had the worst death imaginable.’ He gestured to the desk where the bayonet had been found. ‘Are you linking this to the girl on the train?’

Penrose nodded. He had two deaths and two victims which, on the face of it, could not have been more different: a young girl and a man facing old age; a stabbing with relatively little suffering and an agonising, degrading end. But he was starting to see more connections and, although the theatre was the most obvious link, the past seemed to him more significant. Aubrey had died surrounded by reminders of the war – a war which was also the backdrop to an illegal and inevitably painful adoption. And even the causes of death, apparently so contrasting, had in common a spiteful appropriateness to their victim: Elspeth’s murder had undermined every-152

thing that mattered to her, had scorned her innocence; Aubrey, a man of wealth and authority all his life, had been physically humiliated and had died gasping for air. In both crimes, there was a terrifying lack of humanity, a mockery of the dead which chilled him even more than the loss of life itself.

153

Eleven

Penrose stood at the door to the Green Room, and was not surprised to see that his cousins’ efforts to comfort everyone with tea and brandy had had very little effect: Lydia was dreadfully pale and clearly shocked to the core, while Josephine and the woman to whom he had been introduced earlier were united in solicitous concern for her. It was Marta who spoke first.

‘What the hell has happened, Inspector?’ she asked with a flash of anger which took him by surprise. ‘How can you have allowed her to walk in on something like that? You should have gone to find him, not Lydia.’

‘I’m truly sorry you’ve had to go through this,’ he said to Lydia with genuine compassion, ‘and I don’t want to cause anybody any further distress, but I do need to talk to you briefly about what happened tonight.’ He turned to the others in the room. ‘And to anybody else who saw or spoke to Bernard Aubrey in the last twenty-four hours.’

Marta was not so easily dismissed. ‘Can that really not keep until the morning? Right now, I’d like to take Lydia home to get some rest. She’s had enough.’

Penrose, who had already missed out on one vital interview that evening through having been made to wait, had no intention of letting it happen again, but he was saved the discourtesy of insisting.

‘It’s fine, darling, honestly it is,’ said Lydia, taking Marta’s hand.

‘I’d rather do it now. The sooner I stop having to talk about it, the sooner I can start trying to get that image out of my head.’ She smiled unconvincingly, as if recognising the naivety of her words, and turned to Penrose. ‘Although somehow I don’t think it will be 155

that easy, do you Archie? Can I still call you Archie, by the way, or does it have to be Inspector now that this is official?’

‘Archie’s fine. And I won’t keep you any longer than I have to.’

‘All right, but can I have a minute to pull myself together?’ She looked at her reflection in the full-length mirror which ran along one wall. ‘I know it’s not the time to mention it, but I feel worse now than I ever have on my deathbed. I just need to pop to my dressing room for a moment.’

Penrose nodded, trying not to look too impatient. As soon as Lydia had left the room, accompanied by a seething Marta, Lettice took the seat opposite her cousin.

‘Can we tell you about our encounter with Aubrey before they get back,’ she whispered, nodding towards the door and glancing conspiratorially at Josephine, who understood immediately what she was getting at. ‘Something happened that would only upset Lydia even more, and I’d rather not mention it in front of her tonight.’

‘Go on. Josephine told me it wasn’t exactly an amicable meeting.’

‘No, not at all. In fact, it couldn’t have been frostier.’ She gave an uncharacteristically succinct account of the afternoon’s meeting, missing out many of the more entertaining asides which had been shared with Josephine over dinner, but leaving Penrose in no doubt as to how unpopular Aubrey had made himself.

‘So, by the time the meeting was over, Terry was put out, to say the least?’

‘Oh, face like a slapped arse, dear,’ confirmed Ronnie. ‘He was absolutely furious.’

‘But powerless to do anything about it, presumably.’ And impo-tence had a habit of making people dangerous, he thought. He had seen that quality in Terry’s performance earlier – a barely suppressed anger which had made his portrayal of the increasingly vulnerable Richard all the more convincing. But was it enough to drive him to murder? And did he have it in him to kill so mali-ciously? Arrogance, yes, he could believe that was in character, but spite? He turned to Josephine. ‘How serious do you think it is for Terry to miss out on a film like that?’

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She shrugged. ‘It’s hard to say, really. Artistically, it could take his career in a whole new direction, but I’m not sure he’d want that long-term. He’d be starting at the bottom again, you see, whereas on stage he’s so established and highly thought of that he can do virtually what he likes. There are very few people who’d dream of standing in his way in the theatre.’ And one of those was now dead, Penrose thought as Josephine continued. ‘Financially speaking, though, it’s a different matter. There’s simply no comparison between the money he could make in a film and what he gets for a stage role. And the girls were saying earlier that he seems more money-driven these days. I don’t know why that should be. He’s never struck me as the greedy type, except for praise, of course.’

‘That’s useful to know, but I don’t quite see why you were so reluctant to tell me all this in front of Lydia. What does she have to do with Terry?’

‘Oh, it’s not that,’ Lettice said quickly. ‘We just didn’t want Lydia to find out about Aubrey’s plans for her – or rather the lack of them.’ She stopped guiltily as the door opened again, but it was only Fallowfield.

‘Aubrey’s address, Sir,’ he said, handing Penrose a piece of paper. ‘His wife’s expecting you, and there’s a car waiting outside.’

‘Thanks, Sergeant. How did she take it?’

‘Calmly, I’d say, Sir. I don’t mean she wasn’t shocked, but she didn’t strike me as the type to go in for hysterics. She insisted she didn’t need anybody to wait with her until you got there, but there’s a maid in the house, so she’s not on her own.’

‘All right. I’ll get over there now, but wait here a minute – this is interesting.’ He turned back to Lettice. ‘Go on, but be as quick as you can.’

‘It’s only that Lydia isn’t in line for a part in the film either, and she’ll be devastated when she hears about it. I didn’t think she needed that news on top of everything else.’

‘Are you absolutely sure she didn’t know?’

‘Archie, for God’s sake!’ Josephine looked horrified. ‘You surely can’t be suggesting that Lydia had anything to do with this? That’s not what Lettice meant at all.’

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‘I’m not suggesting anything,’ he said, as Lettice put her finger to her lips and nervously checked the corridor outside. ‘I just need to establish who knows what. How about Marta? Could she have got wind of it?’

‘No, I really don’t think so,’ Josephine continued. ‘We had a long chat this evening about Lydia and the future, and I’m sure she would have mentioned it if she’d known.’

‘I can hear someone coming,’ said Lettice from the doorway.

‘Time for us to go.’ She passed Ronnie her gloves. ‘That’s all right, isn’t it Archie? I thought we’d go back to 66 and get a bit of supper ready for everyone. We all need to keep our strength up.’

‘That’s fine. You’ll get one of my lot to see you over when you’re ready to go?’ he asked Josephine. She nodded and, although he wouldn’t have wished the night’s events on anyone, he was pleased to see that she seemed now much less defiant about his concerns for her.

Lettice looked worried as she allowed Fallowfield to help her on with her coat. ‘I do hope I haven’t landed anyone in it,’ she said.

‘Don’t be silly, dear, of course you haven’t. It’s Archie’s job to make a Judas of us all.’ Ronnie’s smile was sweet and deadly.

‘Judas? I don’t like the sound of that.’ Lydia had returned looking considerably more composed, and Penrose was relieved to see that she was alone.

‘I’m afraid so, dear,’ Ronnie said, deliberately ignoring Lettice’s frantic attempts to catch her eye. ‘Detective Inspector Penrose has been quite ruthless in his interrogations and we’ve had to snitch on Josephine to save our own skins.’ For once, her sarcasm defused the tension in the room. ‘Seriously, though, we were just saying that Aubrey’s behaviour of late hasn’t made him very popular with any of us.’

‘That’s true enough,’ Lydia acknowledged, kissing Ronnie and Lettice goodbye and settling down next to Josephine on the settee.

‘And before you have the embarrassment of asking, Archie, that includes me. We had a very frank discussion only the other day in which he made it quite clear that my top billing days were nearly over.’ She took a sip from the glass of wine that she had brought in 158

with her. ‘It must have been torture for him, mustn’t it? I’ll never forget his face. All that pain, and no one there to help him. I can’t think of anything worse than to leave this world alone like that.

How did he die, Archie? Do you know? Can there really have been two murders in two days?’

‘We can’t be sure of what’s happened at the moment,’ he said, non-committally, ‘but I
am
sorry that it was you who found his body. I know you and Aubrey were close.’

‘Yes, we were. He was a good man, you know. But how were you to know what was waiting for me at the top of those stairs?

Don’t think badly of Marta. I’m sorry she was angry with you but this is the first crisis we’ve had and you know what that’s like in a relationship. She’s just being protective.’

‘I understand. Where is she now?’

‘In self-imposed exile in my dressing room. She said she couldn’t trust herself to be civil so she’d wait there until I was free to go.’

Penrose took Lydia gently through the period between the end of the play and the discovery of Aubrey’s body, but learned nothing that Fallowfield had not already discovered in his earlier brief conversation with the actress. ‘I suppose I should have come to fetch you when I realised that the door was locked,’ she said.

‘Something was obviously not right, but you do things instinctively, don’t you? I just opened it without even thinking what might be on the other side.’

‘You’re absolutely sure that the door
was
locked, aren’t you, and not just stuck or difficult to open?’

‘I’m positive. I tried the handle once, turned the key and tried again. The door opened, and I saw him right away. I know it’s odd, but that’s how it was.’

‘Did you go into the room?’

‘No more than a couple of steps. It was obvious that I was too late to help him. A part of me couldn’t believe what I was seeing, but most of all I just wanted to get away.’

‘You told Sergeant Fallowfield about some unpleasantness amongst the cast after the show. What had Aubrey done to upset everyone so much?’

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‘Well, Esme McCracken has always hated him just for being successful, but it’s got worse since he refused to accept her play for production. I don’t know about Lewis Fleming; he and Johnny have always hated each other, and that’s about rivalry and social background as much as anything, but I’ve never known Lewis to show Bernie anything other than respect until today. As for Johnny, I think he was simply starting to outgrow what Bernie could offer him. He’s always been restless, but he’s sick to the back teeth of this play and Bernie is – was – determined to hold him to his contract. And there’s the Swinburne issue, of course. Johnny was set on having him – in all senses of the word, probably – for Bothwell in
Queen of Scots
, but Bernie preferred Fleming. At least, I thought he did. Perhaps he’d changed his mind. That might explain Fleming’s behaviour, but not Johnny’s.’

‘Aubrey hadn’t changed his mind about Bothwell,’ Josephine said. ‘Apparently he was still very keen this afternoon on hiring Fleming.’

Lydia gave an involuntary shudder. ‘You know, I’ve just remembered what Johnny said when he made the toast tonight: “To memorable exits.” He couldn’t have known, could he? Surely he wouldn’t . . .’ she tailed off, unable to bring herself to say the words.

‘I thought you said you wouldn’t keep her long, Inspector?’

Marta stood in the doorway, calmer now, but no less protective.

Penrose looked up at her and said, politely but firmly, ‘There are a couple more questions. Please take a seat, though, I’ll be as brief as I can.’ Marta moved across to be near Lydia, but remained standing. ‘Now, the tray of drinks for this ritual,’ Penrose continued, ‘who got that ready today?’

‘Hedley made sure everything was there before the matinee. At least, that’s what usually happens. McCracken was on duty tonight, so she’ll have put the drinks in place.’

‘And do those two get on? White and Miss McCracken, I mean.’

‘I don’t think you could honestly say that McCracken gets on with anyone – except Johnny, perhaps. He actually thinks she can write. But Hedley isn’t the confrontational type and he has to work with the woman, so he puts up with all her nonsense and just 160