Murder in the Second Row (24 page)

Pippa giggled.
‘You mean the “Hot potatoes, officer’s drawers, Puck to make
amends” routine? I thought the Blackadder writers made that one
up.’

‘Not entirely,’
said Austin. ‘Tradition says if you mentioned That Name, you could
recite a line from Hamlet, «Angels and ministers of grace defend
us.» Or you had to turn round three times, spit over your left
shoulder, leave the theatre and then be invited back in. Not the
sort of thing you want to do when you’re due on stage at any
moment.’

Jessica caught
a flicker of movement over by the kitchen. ‘Shane! Don’t even think
about swinging on that sprinkler pipe!’

Shane lowered
his arms and looked sheepish.

Jessica looked
at her watch. Would it ever move round to 8pm so this lot would go
onstage and get busy with the show? With everyone in full costume
and make-up for the first time, excitement had risen to a new
level. Jessica was looking forward to watching the show from out
front to get a feel for the whole performance.

At last Adam
told Austin to call “beginners” and they filed out of the Green
Room to take their places onstage. Jessica followed behind them and
made her way down to the auditorium where she sat, unobtrusively,
four rows back. Adam sat in the second row with his clipboard on
his lap.

The curtain
went up, revealing the Boynton family seated centre stage. Emma
began tearing the tissue into little bits as scripted, then
suddenly pressed it to her mouth and rushed off-stage.

Jessica moved
forward and murmured to Adam.

He grunted.
‘Hold it a moment, please. We’ll just wait for Emma to compose
herself.’

Two minutes
later Emma returned and sat down, apologising weakly.

‘Right, from
the start again, thank you,’ said Adam. ‘Curtain!’

Worrying about
Emma, Jessica was distracted for the first few minutes of the play,
but then the story began to take over and she was transported to
another place and time. It was the first time she had seen the
whole performance instead of little bits and pieces when she was
passing back and forth in the wings, or stealing a quick look from
up in the box. Now the director’s vision of the action was visible
to the rest of them, played up by the lighting and staging. The set
looked real. Dramatic moments were highlighted by Gazza’s
expertise, and the actors were convincing in their roles. The lines
that had been recited night after night after night for the last
few weeks suddenly took on their true meaning, and the drama sprang
to life.

Jessica smiled
with satisfaction. Good old Dame Agatha’s script still had the
power. It looked as if they’d got a show.

At interval,
Shane’s Mum Erica was there to hand out cups of coffee and slices
of cake, which the actors tucked into happily.

‘It’s worth all
this effort just for your fruit cake,’ said Phil, patting Erica on
the shoulder. ‘So glad you could be here for the season. Pippa
never has time to do any baking at home.’

‘I might do if
you’d help out a bit more,’ said Pippa. ‘You’re not the only one
who’s working full-time you know. Those domestic chores don’t go
away just because we’re both here every night. When did you last
empty the dishwasher or put away the laundry?’

Phil took
refuge behind Erica’s comfortably round figure.

‘Hide me,
Erica! Honestly, the police interrogation was less scary than Pippa
on the warpath.’

‘It sounds like
she has a good point to me,’ said Erica. ‘You go home tonight and
pull your weight, mister, or there’ll be no more fruit cake for
you.’

‘Awwww,’ Phil
whined as Pippa applauded loudly.

The stage crew
hurried in for their tea after their big scene change, grabbing
coffee and cake to gulp down in the last few minutes of the break.
Austin checked his watch and called for “beginners, Act Two”.

Jessica was
about to go to her seat when Matt came over to her.

‘Sorry to
interrupt, but there was this woman trying to get in before. She
pulled on the door-handle and rattled it so I went to check it out.
It was some scrawny old boot looming in the doorway wearing a
hoodie, but when she saw me she turned round and left.’

Jessica
shrugged. ‘OK, thanks Matt. Might have been a parent or grandparent
of one of the young ones coming to give them a ride home, maybe,
and realised it was too early. They’ll be back later I expect.
Thanks for keeping a lookout.’

She hurried
back to her seat and was just in time to see the curtain rise on
the Petra set, revealing Nathan’s beautifully painted red rocks,
lit with an intense colour wash from Gazza’s lighting. She grinned
to see Simone sitting in her “American idol” position up by the
cave as the other actors entered from the marquee downstage on
prompt side. The twisted plot developed steadily, and Jessica felt
a surge of satisfaction that the next night an audience would be
sharing the experience. She couldn’t wait to see their response to
the show.

Friday’s
bookings were looking good, but that was to be expected when all
the complimentary tickets they’d handed out to cast and crew were
for opening night. It was the best way of ensuring that the critics
saw an almost full house, and had the added benefit of a supportive
audience who were involved with the show or performers in some way.
The box plan for Saturday night’s show was looking pretty thin so
far, but with word-of-mouth and a good review, she hoped that the
seats would fill up quite rapidly.

On stage, the
characters of Raymond and Sarah embraced and kissed. Jessica felt
hot blood rising to her face in the darkness as she remembered the
steamy session of passion with Jack on her sofa. It had been quite
a while since she’d let herself go so freely, and she hoped her
enthusiastic response hadn’t scared him away. She snorted. He was a
guy, for God’s sake – of course it hadn’t! She put her hands on her
cheeks to quell the heat radiating off them. Perhaps she’d better
stop thinking about his hard body pressing down on hers, his hot
wet kisses, the devastatingly erotic way his fingers had touched
her. It was all she could do to stop herself from whimpering with
desire. She took a few deep breaths to calm her thoughts and forced
her attention back to the stage, where the last few scenes
progressed smoothly towards the happy ending. The curtain fell and
she applauded heartily.

Adam called for
the curtain to go up again and bounded onto the stage to arrange
how the cast members were to take their bows. After two quick runs
to practise that, they sat down in the first couple of rows to hear
his final notes on their performances.

The stage crew
struck the Petra set and put up the hotel set ready for the next
performance. Gazza checked his lights. Backstage, Gert put all the
props back in place on the props table. Clara-Jane hastily sewed a
new button on where Phil had lost one off his trousers. The make-up
ladies replenished their supplies. Erica put the food away and
wisely padlocked the fridge.

Once Adam had
finished with the cast, Jessica checked that there was nothing else
needed.

‘Nothing at
all, thank you Jessica,’ he said, blue eyes sparkling warmly as he
smiled down at her. ‘You’ve done an excellent job, as I knew you
would. Try to keep this lot on the straight and narrow after I’ve
gone, will you?’

She was
unhappily reminded that he’d be leaving town on Sunday once the
season had started. She’d miss his calm authority round the place.
With Adam gone, the next person in charge of the show was Austin as
stage manager, and he wasn’t somebody she’d willingly trust in a
crisis.

‘We’ll all miss
you, Adam, it’s been great having you here again. What’s your next
project going to be?’

‘A musical for
a change – I’m reviving Carousel for the Hastings Music Society.
After that I’ll take a break and work on something of my own for a
while.’

‘Something we
can premiere here for you?’

‘We’ll have to
see how it goes. There’s a still quite lot of work to do on it yet.
Right, I’m off – see you tomorrow night Jessica. Let’s hope we get
a good house.’

He clasped her
warmly on the shoulder and walked swiftly towards the door. Just
before leaving, Jessica pushed the season clock hand round to
“Opening Night”.

Next morning
her alarm clock dragged her awake at a desperately early hour. She
hauled herself out of bed and avoided looking in the mirror,
knowing that no good could come of it. The only redeeming feature
of her early morning disturbance was that she was appearing on
radio rather than in any of the visible media, so the shadows under
her eyes wouldn’t matter. She cursed Nick for getting himself
arrested. He should have been doing all this publicity stuff. What
sort of idiot left his DNA lying around to be found on a crime
scene? It wasn’t as if he could put the “Shaggers Shield” on his
mantelpiece – there wasn’t an actual trophy. In fact, most of the
people who vied for it kept their attempts secret. Just knowing
they’d done it was enough.

She yanked a
brush through her hair, applied the minimum of make-up, and headed
for the radio station to appear on the breakfast show. Brad
Bannerman, the morning show DJ, was unbearably cheerful, waving her
into the studio to take a seat while he finished a traffic report
and set a series of ads running. Jessica was glad to see the
theatre’s publicity notes on the desk in front of him, suggesting
that he’d taken the time to acquaint himself with the details of
the show. He outfitted her with headphones, gave her a quick smile,
and plopped back into his swivel chair just as the ads
finished.

‘Hey, this is
Brad The Man Bannerman and we’re back with Wake Up Whetford! In the
studio this morning we have Jessica Jones from the Regent Theatre
here to talk about their latest production “Appointment with
Death”. Hi, Jessica, nice to have you with us. Tell me, was the
murder of Tamara Fitzpatrick really a publicity stunt? One that
went … horribly wrong?’

Jessica’s jaw
dropped. The gears in her head spun frantically then managed to
engage with her mouth. ‘No, Brad, it wasn’t. Of course not!
Tamara’s death was a shock to us all, and an absolute tragedy for
her parents, Bruce and Ruth. She was a real person, Brad, not a
means of gaining ratings.’

She thought
that would put him in his place but to her astonishment he was
unabashed. ‘But you’d have to admit that all the publicity will
help your production, wouldn’t you? Especially as the show you’re
staging is a murder story.’

‘We’ve been
getting all kinds of publicity lately, Brad. I’m sure your
listeners are aware of the developers who are threatening to
replace the theatre with a shopping mall – as if we need yet
another mall instead of a hundred and thirty year old heritage
building.’

‘You feel quite
strongly about those developers, don’t you Jessica?’

She was way
ahead of him this time.

‘I do, Brad,
but not enough to set their office on fire, if that was your next
question.’

He grinned at
her and winked. She looked for something heavy to throw at him.

‘So,
Appointment with Death – a vintage Agatha Christie?’

What, was he
co-operating now? About time. She sighed with relief.

‘Er, that’s
right. A real thriller, with one of Dame Agatha’s twistiest
endings.’

‘Indeed yes. I
bet you’d hate me to give that away on air, wouldn’t you?’

Jessica’s
throat constricted. She glared at him and growled a reply into her
microphone.

‘If anybody
listening out there would like to bring me a rope, a revolver or a
lead pipe right now, I’d really appreciate it. And Jack, if you’re
hearing this, it’s justifiable homicide, right?’

‘No need for
that, Jessica,’ Brad laughed. ‘I’m not giving anything away except
a double ticket for opening night to the first five people who
phone in now. You’ll have to go and see the show for yourselves,
folks. Bookings are open right now, and the show runs from tonight
until September the 18th at the Regent Theatre. And be listening to
this station tomorrow for our review of the opening night
performance in The Arts at Noon. And to Bruce and Ruth Fitzpatrick,
our very deepest sympathy for the loss of your daughter Tamara.
Thanks for coming in, Jessica. Now, the time is 7.15 and it’s back
to the music with Police and their big hit “Murder by Numbers” from
1983.’

He flicked a
switch and came round the desk to take Jessica’s headphones. She
gaped at him, lost for words.

‘I think that
went pretty well, don’t you?’ he said. ‘Should get people talking
about the show, and that’s the aim of the exercise after all.’

‘I guess so,’
she said faintly. ‘I just wasn’t expecting to field such curly
questions this early in the morning.’

‘This is
showbiz, Jessie-baby. Gotta jump on that train and ride it all the
way.’

She let herself
out of the sound booth and escaped with relief, promising herself a
large takeaway coffee as a reward. Although, on reflection, perhaps
she would have coped better if she’d had the coffee before the
interview.

Her cell phone
rang, vibrating her bag against her thigh.

‘Hi Jessica,
how’s it going?’ asked Jack, a laugh in his voice.

‘You heard
that, did you? That little turd ambushed me live on air! Honestly,
Jack, I really was ready to throttle him.’

‘Yes, that did
come across in your voice. Good interview though – he knows how to
stir up interest all right. You did very well to handle those
tricky questions.’

Her face lit up
with a huge smile at the pride in his voice.

‘Thanks, Jack.
Hey, are you going to be able to make it to the show tonight?’

‘Ah. I’m afraid
not, sorry. But I promise I will get to a performance before the
end of the run, how’s that? I may just have to surprise you as to
which night I show up, OK?’