Death and the Chaste Apprentice (10 page)

“Frank, you seen Des?”

Frank's forehead creased. “Saw him during the first half, Mrs. C. He went in and watched the play for a bit.”

“Haven't you seen him since then?”

“Only when he came out. He went into Reception, said he'd either be there or up in the flat if he was wanted. He
said he might look in on the second half, but he didn't. He's not in Reception now. Want me to call up the stairs?”

Win considered. “No. Better not. He'll have something on. He hates being disturbed when he's got something on.”

“I
bet
he does,” muttered Ronnie Wimsett as Win moved away.

At eleven o'clock Win called “Time,” and at ten past she flicked the light switch two or three times. The townspeople and festival-goers had drifted away, but the performers were reluctant for the evening to end.

“Don't they have any all-night bars in this place?” demanded Krister Kroll.

At the bar Win contemplated the second mountain of dirty glasses and ashtrays.

“It really is too much,” she said to Dawn. “I think we should count this as a special night and leave everything till morning. I'll ring Des and tell him.”

But when she dialed the flat number on the telephone behind the bar, she got no reply.

“But if he's not in the flat, where
is
he?” she said in bewilderment to Frank, who had just come into the bar again. “I just hope he's not
ill
—but Des is never ill. He's so conscious of health things.”

“That sort's sometimes the first to go,” said Frank with gloomy tactlessness. “Would you like me to go up and have a look.”

“Oh, dear . . . Well, I think
I'd
better go. You know how Des is—But if he's not in the flat, I don't know where to look. . . .”

She bustled off, distractedly poking at a stray strand of hair. Everyone left in the bar had been pushing back their chairs, preparatory to going to bed or continuing the parties in their rooms. Something made them wait. It
was
odd that Des had not been around after the show—
his
show, or so he had often seemed to believe. From his table
in the corner with Natalya and Krister Kroll, Peter could see through the glass door of the Shakespeare Bar. He saw Win go out, saw her cross the hotel entrance lobby, saw her go around the reception desk and into the manager's room behind. Then he could see no more, but could only wait. It was not a long wait—less than a minute—before he heard clattering footsteps falling over themselves on the stairs and cries, cries that continued as Win stumbled through the manager's room and out into Reception, her face twisted in horror, her hands bloodstained.

“Oh! Oh, my God! He's dead! He's been killed! Frank! Frank! Call the doctor. No. Call the police. Someone's killed my Des!”

I
N THE CAR
from the Police Station, coming from the other side of town, Superintendent Iain Dundy gazed gloomily out over the dark, nearly deserted streets of Ketterick. He was a man in his mid-thirties, with a broken marriage behind him, a reputation for fairness, and a long fuse to his temper. He was already possessed by the conviction that on this case he was going to need it.

“I've always thought of myself as an unprejudiced man,” he said apropos of nothing to Sergeant Nettles, who was driving. “I've never had any sort of a ‘thing' against homosexuals, never hated blacks or Indians. Most of the Japanese I've met seemed perfectly charming, though I've never been able to understand a word they've said. I've had a holiday in Germany and quite like the people, and most of the American tourists we get here seem pleasanter than you're led to expect. I even once had a friend who was a Northern Ireland Protestant. . . . But I do hate arty people. I admit it. I can't stand them. They touch a nerve in me. I've had a feeling ever since this festival started up
that one day I was going to get stuck with a case chock-a-block full of arty people. And I wouldn't mind betting this is it!”

His expression became positively dyspeptic as the police car drew up outside the main entrance to the Saracen's Head.

• • •

It was difficult, the Saracen residents found, to know what to do after Win's spine-chilling reappearance. Of course, she had to be seen to first. While Frank made an imperative phone call to the police from the reception desk, Gillian helped Dawn, the stand-in barmaid, to get Win into the Shakespeare and settle her onto the sofa. But when Frank came back with a portentous expression on his face, as if the world's cares were now on his shoulders, and when he had announced that the police were on their way and had peremptorily forced on Win a stiff neat brandy, there really seemed nothing left for the rest of them to do. Actors do not commonly feel themselves
de trop,
but that was how they felt now. Win, after all, had never seemed particularly to take to their company, and she obviously would be more at ease with her own kind, whatever that was. She was moaning, “Oh, it was horrible,” and crying intermittently, but she was calming down. To leave might seem like copping out, but to stay and gawp would surely be vulgar—since Sir Henry Irving, the British actor, has above all things eschewed vulgarity. They cleared their throats awkwardly and skulked off.

“We'll be in our rooms,” said Jason, “if we should be wanted,” and Frank nodded importantly.

That wasn't how it worked out, though. Singh certainly went to his room; he said to Brad that he wanted to see the late-night movie, which was
The Texas Chain-Saw Massacre.
Gillian went rather green at that, but Brad Mallory
murmured fondly: “Oh—the young! They have such wonderful powers of recuperation.” Though in fact Singh had given no sign of having anything to recuperate from. The rest of them seemed instinctively to cling together. The thought of solitary bedrooms was uninviting. They lingered in one of the large, open spaces on the first floor, which had a window looking out onto the High Street. From there, silent, they saw the police arrive—first the detectives, then a uniformed constable, who took up position outside the main entrance, then several more from the uniformed lower ranks. The actors had an odd sense of passing almost imperceptibly from one drama into another. This second one was certainly not going to be amusing.

“If only,” said Ronnie Wimsett, “if only we knew exactly
when
he died.”

“Why?” asked Gillian.

“Because, dear dumb cluck, if he died during the play and if he's up there in his flat, you must see that no one of us could have done it.”

“I never considered for a moment that one of us could have,” said Jason Thark. The silence that followed this was one of relief, as if Jason's position as producer gave him some sort of authority in police matters as well. That his statement was untrue, however, he immediately revealed by his next. “I suspect that we can narrow down the time much more closely than merely that of the duration of the play. Because when I was getting my drink after the show, poor old Win was wondering where Des was, and that girl from the dining room—Dawn is her name?—said rather sharply: ‘It's no good him showing up now. It was during interval that he was wanted and when he said he'd be here.' So I rather suspect that the police will find that he's been dead some time.”

“Which will let us out,” said Ronnie Wimsett.

“We-e-ell,” began Gillian, but she was interrupted by
footsteps on the stairs. And not just footsteps. The carrying voices of the Galloways were unmistakable.

“It was Des, dreadful Des” came Clarissa's voice.

“Are you quite sure?”

“I heard the commissionaire, or doorman, or whatever you call him, say it to the constable by the main entrance. ‘His name is Capper, or was. Des Capper.' Unless he's gone out of his mind, the police are here because somebody's dead, and that somebody is Des Capper.”

“Well, I'll be damned” came Carston's impeccably well bred tones.

They emerged blinking from the stairwell: Clarissa, Carston, and Susan Fanshaw, who characteristically was saying nothing. When they had got their bearings, Clarissa stared triumphantly at the assembled cast of
The Chaste Apprentice of Bowe
.

“There! You see? Everyone's here and discussing it, aren't you, darlings?”

“We are,” admitted Connie Geary. “But where have you been that you missed the fun?”

“Oh, my dear, such a miscalculation! I wouldn't have missed being first to hear of dreadful Desmond's death for the world if I'd known! But how could I? We went to the Webster.”

“Why on earth did you do that?”

Clarissa had her audience and, as was her wont, immediately began acting a big scene, though it was a little enough matter she had to tell of.

“Well, darlings, after the play and the curtain calls—only there is no curtain, and I
do
find that awkward!—Carston and I changed, because the fact is we do feel it a
tiny
bit unprofessional to mingle with the dear old general public in costume—” She gestured round at Ronnie and Peter, still in their apprentice's costumes. “Call us old-fashioned if you like.”

“Old-fashioned,” said Gillian, and was rewarded with a dazzling reptilian smile.

“So when we were ready, we collected Susan Fanshaw, my husband's
sweet
little mistress, who had had a heavy evening seeing you'd all got your swords and cudgels with you and that your wimples and codpieces were straight, or whatever codpieces are supposed to be, and we went out into the yard, and there were
fans
waiting for us, still waiting after all that time. . . . Well, we saw you all in the Shakespeare, and we thought we ought to
spread
ourselves around a bit so as to be fair, so we took the fans into the Webster and let them lavish on us the best hospitality their purses could buy. Poor dears, they loved it!”

Susan Fanshaw looked at Clarissa (from behind her) with an expression of the utmost contempt on her face. Clearly she had been embarrassed by their sponging. Carston did not notice the glance and took her hand absentmindedly.

“Anyway, the consequence was, you missed all the excitement,” said Brad Mallory. “Win's announcement was a real Act One curtain, I can tell you.”

“Darling, don't tor
ment
me! I would so have enjoyed it. Because the fact that he's been murdered—I take it, with all those police, murder is in question?—”

“Apparently,” said Jason.

“—the fact that he's been murdered does seem a singularly apt retribution for his grubby little interference into my private life.”

“Don't say that to the police,” said Carston, sighing. “They might scent a whiff of megalomania. Or paranoia. It takes an odd kind of mind to find death an appropriate punishment for rummaging around in someone's drawers.”

“Carston, of
course
I am not so stupid as to talk like that to the dear policemen. Naturally I shall tell them what an
in
teresting little man he was, with his homely medical advice and his en
tranc
ing accent and his
fas
cinating memories of the last days of the Raj. I shall say that in the short time we have been here I had come to number him amongst my
dear
est friends.”

“Don't overdo it the other way either, Clarissa,” said Jason in a tired voice. “The police are trained to smell rats.” He added, rather insultingly: “And the last thing I need at this stage is to lose one of my leads.”

“Fortunately I've always found the police to be charming and
most
respectful,” said Clarissa, hardly hearing. “I've always got on famously with them.”

“Don't I remember,” said Carston.

“This is all getting way off the point,” said Gillian. “When you came, we were trying to establish when he'd been murdered. We rather think it must have been before Interval.”

“Before about eight-thirty, then?” asked Carston.

“That's it. Or a few minutes after. We were running ever so slightly late.”

“And it must have been after—oh—seven-ten, seven-fifteen,” contributed Carston.

“Oh?”

“Because he was standing at the back during the first scene and into my bit in the second scene. I've got good long sight, and there's a moment when I peer into the audience, trying to see Sir Pecunius arriving from the Palace of Westminster. I saw him at the back then, and I saw him leave, which almost put me off my stride. So it was after that.”

“Brilliant!” said Ronnie, rubbing his hands. “So we have a
terminus post quem
and a
terminus ante quem.
And they let all the actors out entirely. Because we'd have had to go through the kitchens, which had a card game going on in them, then through the dining room, which had most of the staff there, judging from their faces at the windows, then through the Shakespeare into the foyer. No way anyone could do that and then murder Des without being seen. Anyway, we were all behind the stage when we were not on it.”

His words fell on an embarrassed silence. Gillian looked down at her hands and then dared to look up at Peter
Fortnum. She found that Jason and Connie were looking at him too, and Natalya was looking at them and frowning in puzzlement.

“Well, not quite
all
the time,” said Peter, brazening it out.

“Come along, let's go to bed,” said Connie briskly. “They're going to want to question us in the morning. Let's leave the question of my gin till then. We'll go to bed and think things through.”

And that was exactly what they did. Some of them had a great many things to think through.

• • •