Ruddy Gore (27 page)

he sobbed, and fell down at the ghost’s feet.

The ghost shrank away from his touch and ran to Sir Bernard, who put aside Leila and embraced her.

‘There, there,’ he soothed automatically. The sunbonneted girl pulled off her headgear and wig and revealed herself to be Marie-Claire.

‘You bastard,’ said Tom Deeping, levering himself to his feet and kicking the recumbent dresser in the ribs. ‘I thought it was you.’

‘I think,’ said Phryne, ‘that we ought to put some lights on and have some drinks sent in and then we shall have lots of explanations. But first, 270

Leila, come with me.’ She detached the actress from Sir Bernard and led her through the stunned company. ‘Stand there. Lin, put on the other light.

This is what you saw when you saw the ghost, Leila,’ said Phryne gently. ‘The bride at the end of the corridor.’

The different angle of the light turned the surface of the Rose Maybud slide into a mirror.

Leila gazed at the apparition and laughed shakily, ‘I saw myself. She was never here at all.’

‘That’s right,’ Phryne agreed. ‘She was never here at all.’

Jack Robinson had placed his captive in a large chair on stage. Phryne had sent out for a suitable array of drinks from the nearest pub, which also supplied glasses. Rehearsal had been cancelled and the company had resumed their ordinary clothes and were gathered together, talking fast.

Phryne made sure that everyone had a drink and a place to sit and Sir Bernard clapped his hands.

‘Miss Fisher will now tell us how this was contrived.’

‘Let me introduce you to Miss Mobbs.’ The elderly lady was helped onto the stage by Louis and Colin from the chorus. She marched to the chair and snapped at the quivering occupant,

‘Charles Sheffield. What are you calling yourself now?’

‘Bradford!’

said

Selwyn

Alexander.

‘He’s

Sheffield?’

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‘Both industrial cities,’ said Miss Mobbs. ‘Never did have any imagination. Is that all you want of me?’ she asked Phryne.

‘Yes, thank you. Would you like to stay?’

‘No. Not in the same place as this . . . wretch.

You may come and take me to the trial, however.

I regret that they have abolished public hangings.’

Miss Mobbs was escorted off stage right, and stopped when she encountered Leila.

‘Oh, yes,’ she crooned, putting out an arthritic hand to the milk-and-roses cheek. ‘Oh, my pretty, my pretty! Dorothea’s child, and the image of her!

Will you come and see me?’ she asked, and Leila surprised Phryne by patting the old hand and saying, ‘Yes, of course. I want you to tell me all about my mother.’

Louis and Colin took Miss Mobbs carefully out of the theatre and put her into the taxi which Phryne had hired for her.

‘Charles Sheffield, alias Charles Bradford,’ said Jack Robinson, ‘I’m arresting you for murdering Dorothea Curtis. You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say will be taken down and may be used in court. Do you understand?’

‘Yes.’ The dresser’s voice was deep with despair.

‘I did it. She was going to marry Bernard and I couldn’t bear it. I knew I was nothing without her.

Take me away and hang me.’

‘It’s a bit more complicated than that, sir,’ said Robinson. ‘But we’ll see if we can oblige you. Take him away now, Constable. Miss Fisher, you’ve done me a bad turn,’ he added in a lower tone.

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‘Me? I’ve caught you a murderer!’ Phryne was feeling rather pleased with herself. ‘Thirty-one years too late, I admit, but still . . . ’

‘You’ve verified Big Billy’s judgement. He said it was the stage carpenter. Now I’m stuck with him.’

‘Into each life some rain must fall, Jack dear,’

said Phryne unsympathetically.

‘Yes,’ said Jack Robinson heavily, and left the Maj for, he fervently hoped, the last time.

‘How did you know about the ghost?’ clamoured several voices.

‘It couldn’t have been any one of you, acting alone. My assistant made a timetable which proved that impossible. Therefore it was either a conspiracy, a real ghost or a trick. I couldn’t see any natural conspiracy amongst you and everyone knows that there are no ghosts,’ Phryne said boldly, suppressing the memory of the medium. ‘I didn’t work it out until my friend, who trained in stage magic in China, explained how to produce spirits. As to who did it, the stage carpenter was the only one who was skilled enough; I bet none of you have ever handled stage machinery.’ The murmurs increased.

‘Of course not, we’re actors, not technicals,’ said Cameron Armour. ‘If I’d wanted to be a trades-man, I wouldn’t have done all that voice training.’

Phryne began to understand Mr Brawn’s rage and scorn.

‘It could have been the electrician but he wasn’t always here when she was seen, and he wasn’t here when the weight dropped on Prompt.’

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‘Poor Prompt,’ came a whisper.

‘Prompt is the one I was angriest about,’ said Phryne, ‘because she was a total innocent. If it had hit either Mr Evans or me it would not have been so bad – at least one of us might have deserved it.

But not Miss Thomas. So. Where was I? How did I produce the ghost? I told Leila that the target of all this activity was Selwyn Alexander and in the old murder of Dorothea there were only two possibles – Tom Deeping or Sir Bernard. I never even thought of Bradford – Sheffield. I lost sleep worrying how Selwyn Alexander could possibly be involved. So I bought some glass sleeves for perfume and added a Chinese herb which smells like nothing on earth and got Herbert to open both doors so that there was a gust of wind. I dressed Marie-Claire as Leila so you wouldn’t miss her and Leila played the ghost.’

‘Yes. It felt really odd, though. I seemed to be drawn to Mr Alexander. In those padded slippers I couldn’t feel my feet, it was like I was floating.

And that’s the way I had to go.’

‘They weren’t your lines, either,’ said Phryne, and the beautiful Miss Esperance wrinkled her marble brow.

‘No, I don’t know where they came from. Normally I can’t ad lib for toffee.’

‘But I don’t know who pinched the bag and planted all those things on Mr Alexander,’ Phryne confessed.

‘Has that cop gone?’ asked Tom Deeping from his seat on the stage. Phryne said, ‘Yes, he’s gone.’

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‘Well, it was me. I recognised the bastard, I mean that bastard Sheffield. Not right away, see, but after a few weeks. I knew him from the old days. I saw his back. You can’t mistake a back. I liked Dot – Miss Curtis. She was a bit of all right.

Hard as nails but straight. I never thought she’d kill herself. So I planted things on him and I put that mad technical up to producing a ghost. He was going to do something,’ he said defensively,

‘so he might as well have done that.’

Phryne wrested his bottle from his yellow fingers and said crisply, ‘Not another drop passes your lips until you tell us the whole story.’

‘And then I’ll be out on my neck,’ muttered the old man with a glance at Sir Bernard.

‘That’s as may be,’ said the Management. ‘Say your piece, Tom.’

‘The carpenter, he says to me, ‘‘I’m going to play a trick on these head-in-the-air actors, I’m going to give ’em a good scare. They never notice us, they never appreciate us’’ – he was a bloke with one of them things . . . you know, a monomania about not being appreciated. So I says, rather than light fires all over like he wanted to do, using flash-powder, I says, ‘‘Why not do a ghost? You can scare ’em out of their wits and have a good chuckle about it, you like a good chuckle, don’t you, and I’ll help you.’’ So he gives me the nod, and I nick the bag and plant it on Mr Alexander, meaning to point to that bastard Sheffield. I was sure he done my Dorothea. Trouble is, no one notices dressers, either. Then it got all mixed up 275

with that business of Walter and his fancy man Hans and I couldn’t see no way to make Sheffield crack and confess but to keep on, so then we kept on. Gimme back me bottle.’

‘Not yet,’ said Phryne sternly.

‘Them glass things were my idea – I seen ’em in the shop in Little Bourke Street. Ladies used to use

’em in the old days – Dorothea had one, so that she’d always have the scent of hyacinths about her.

Then the carpenter, he went loopy – well, he was already loopy, he went loopier. He tried to kill you, Miss. I couldn’t have that. So I did what I always do when I can’t decide what to do.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Phryne.

‘I crawled into a bottle and I didn’t come out until I saw Dorothea’s ghost floating toward me and I thought my last hour had come, strike me dead if I didn’t. So that’s it,’ said Tom Deeping, holding out his hand. For a moment, as the battered face creased into a smile, Phryne saw the ghost of the handsome young man he must once have been. Then he applied his lips to the bottle and the glimpse was gone.

‘What are you going to do to him, Bernie?’

‘Old Tom? Nothing, Phryne darling. What would the Maj be without old Tom?’

‘What indeed?’ said Phryne blankly, suddenly possessed by an urge to escape from ‘this wooden O’, as suffocating as Shakespeare’s own Globe theatre. ‘Are there any questions?’ she asked and the company stared at her. Clearly they considered it all settled.

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‘Then I’ll thank you for your attention and I’ll take my leave,’ she said.

She turned as she and Lin Chung reached the auditorium door to look at them all for the last time. Mollie and Doctor Fielding. Cameron Armour and Miss Gault. Leila and Sir Bernard.

She stopped at the door as they all started to sing a duet from
Ruddigore
for her.

‘The battle’s roar is over,’ sang the men, ‘O my love!’

‘Embrace thy tender lover, O my love!’ sang Gwilym Evans, with his arms round two of the chorus.

‘From tempest’s welter, from war’s alarms,’ sang Selwyn Alexander to Miss Wiltshire.

Cameron Armour sang to Miss Gault, ‘O Give me shelter within those arms!’

‘Thy smile alluring,’ sang Sir Bernard to his daughter, ‘All heart-ache curing, Gives peace enduring, O my love!’

‘If heart both true and tender,’ sang Mollie Webb to Dr Fielding, ‘O my love! A life-love can engender, O my love!’

‘A truce to tears and sighing and tears of brine,’

sang Herbert, and Tom Deeping, unconscious of irony, sung ‘For joy undying shall aye be mine.’

‘And thou and I love,’ they sang in unison, ‘shall live and die, love, without a sigh, love – my own, my love!’

Then they romped into a chorus from
Iolanthe
, with the world’s most rollicking tune, but the words were clicheś.

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Nothing ventured, nothing win

Blood is thick but water’s thin

In for a penny in for a pound

It’s love that makes the world go round!

Phryne decided that actors were very, very strange.

Agony and terror washed over them and left no trace – not of dead Walter Copland or Hans or poor Miss Thomas, not of the carpenter’s rage or Tom Deeping’s revenge. The voices carrolled merrily on and Phryne left the theatre positively ill with happy endings. She put the key on the stage doorkeeper’s table and closed the door, softly, behind her. All the mysteries were solved and she felt somewhat tired and let down, like champagne left too long in the glass.

Waiting at the door as she opened it was a tall woman with glassy blonde hair and bright blue eyes. Phryne and Miss Diana Ffoulkes stopped short, nose to nose.

‘Miss Fisher,’ gasped Miss Ffoulkes. ‘Is . . . Gwil on stage?’

‘Yes,’ said Phryne, grinning ‘He’s there. Catch him while you can, Miss Ffoulkes.’

‘Oh, I shall,’ agreed the flapper. She squeezed past Phryne, who received a musky blast of ‘Love’s Dream’ full in the mouth and sneezed. With the grace of a stalking lioness intent on prey, Miss Diana Ffoulkes entered the theatre.

So there went Gwilym Evans, Phryne thought with a touch of regret. But there was someone beside her, moving as unobtrusively as a cat. He 278

was a mystery which might take years to solve.

In the dark beyond the door, in flat defiance of all custom, she turned into Lin Chung’s arms and kissed his silky mouth.

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

When day is fading

With serenading

And such frivolity

Of tender quality –

With scented showers

Of fairest flowers

The happy hours

Will gaily fly!

Princess Ida
, Gilbert and Sullivan A WEEK later, attired in dark blue and holding a bunch of flowers, Phryne wandered away from the combined funerals for Prompt and Walter Copland. The Company had departed for New Zealand, and there was only a small gathering at the graveside. It was not usual for ladies to attend the actual burial, anyway, and Phryne considered that occasionally conventions had their uses.

The Copland ladies had seemed relatively calm at the service, Phryne thought, walking away through the city of the dead. Mrs and Miss Copland had been relieved, they said, by the absence of the Company, bitterly resenting the 280

woman who might have seduced their Walter away from them.

Phryne was pleased that they had not been at the cemetery to peer down into the grave. There had been another coffin already there, an unde-corated affair of deal. It had struck Phryne as only fair that his last wish should be granted and his long devotion, however misplaced, should be rewarded. She had seen to and paid for the arrangements. Hans had been buried with his lover. Walter Copland was not going alone to the grave.

Lin Chung seemed uneasy.

‘You don’t approve?’ she asked, and he said carefully, ‘It is not my place to approve or disapprove, Phryne, and I am not in a position to cavil – the Ming Emperors had hills levelled and valleys dug to provide a place for their dead to rest in glory. But, yes, you are right, all this soaring stone makes me uncomfortable. Where are we going?’

‘Just one more grave, and I believe that it is over there,’ she said, leading the way over damp grass paths toward a towering bluestone pillar on which a white wreath was hung. The inscription was

‘John King’.