Ruddy Gore (12 page)

someone who can help him in his practice. He’s starting out on his own next month.’

Phryne felt a completely unexpected pang at the idea of so finally losing Mark Fielding, mentally slapped herself on the wrist, and commented with more warmth than she intended, ‘I think you’d be ideal.’

‘That’s right, you know Dr Fielding, don’t you, Miss Fisher? Do you really think I’d be all right?’

‘Perfect for the part,’ said Phryne. Mollie beamed at her.

‘How’s the investigation going?’

‘So so. I’m still collecting information. Have you seen the ghost?’

‘There are no such things as ghosts.’

‘Well, who do you think is playing tricks?’

‘I’d say it was one of Leila’s suitors – probably a rejected one. The place is littered with them. Or Gwil’s. He’s had a brief fling with two of the chorus, Melly and Marie-Claire, silly girls. Now he’s laying seige to Leila, he’s cast aside poor Violet like a soiled glove and . . . ’ She drew a breath, patted her hands togther, bit her lip and said in a strong voice, ‘And me. I really thought he loved me, I really did, even though I knew he was a bounder and a cad and a rotter and all that.

But he only loves himself. So I might have done it all, Miss Fisher, except that it wouldn’t be poor harmless unpleasant Walter who died, but Mr Bloody Gwilym Evans.’

‘But he is alive and well and playing Sir Ruthven and Walter Copland is dead,’ Phryne pointed out.

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‘Therefore unless something went horribly wrong, you didn’t do it.’

‘No, I didn’t.’ Mollie stood still as Jill Collins lowered the bridemaid’s dress over her head. ‘And at least I don’t have to dance off with him at the end tonight, exuding delight. I get Eric Parry, who is quite ordinary, can sing and dance like nobody’s business and is, bless him, quite devoid of charm.’

Herbert could be heard in the corridor: ‘Overture and beginners five minutes, ladies and gentlemen,’ he announced. ‘Five minutes.’

In a whisk of skirts, the room emptied.

‘Miss Collins?’ asked Phryne. The woman bent on her a dessicated face to match her dry voice.

‘I hope you catch her,’ she commented.

‘Catch who?’

‘The trickster. It’s not my ladies.’

‘Who is it, then?’

‘All that pinching of things and leaving them in the wrong place. I used to be a teacher, I’ve seen girls like her, sly smile and quick fingers. They steal things and play tricks just out of mischief.

She’s the spitting image of a girl at my last school.

Found with three purses and eleven ribbons, stolen just for the thrill. She’ll be behind it, mark my words, just to make herself important.’

‘Who?’ asked Phryne as she heard the overture begin.

‘Why, her,’ spat Miss Collins. ‘The star of the show, but that’s not enough for her – Miss Leila Esperance.’

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CHAPTER SEVEN

It is absolutely essential to the success of this piece that it should be played with the most perfect earnest-ness and gravity throughout . . . Directly the actors show that they are conscious of the absurdity of their utterances the piece begins to drag.

Notes to the Engaged (Actors)
, W.S. Gilbert PHRYNE HEARD an argument in the manager’s room, and waited outside. A loud coarse voice was protesting, ‘I tell you, sir, it’s the carpenter, Brawn.

He looked shifty to me.’

‘Oh, did he?’ said John ‘Alias’ Smith caustically.

‘Who gave you divine intuition, eh? Give you some lip, did he, Billy? Is that why you hit him?’

‘He swung a clenched fist at me,’ began a sing-song recital, which Alias cut off abruptly.

‘I’ve heard that far too many times in your career, Constable Naylor. Remarkable number of people attack you, and then you just have to beat them to a pulp to protect yourself. I’ve seen that carpenter.

Big bloke, but not as big as you. What did he do?

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Fail to appreciate the majesty of the law?’

‘He was unable to account to my satisfaction for his movements on the night in question,’ replied the constable stiffly.

Sir Bernard and a man in overalls, holding a paint-stained cloth to his face, came up beside Phryne and she hushed them.

‘Look

at

your

miserable

career,

Naylor.

Chucked out of one station after another for excessive violence. On suspension for that bloke you almost killed when you thought he was a tea-leaf and he turned out to be a perfectly honest, bona fide innocent bystander – one of the few in Melbourne. If only you confined your homicidal actions to the ones who were really guilty it wouldn’t matter so much. But you sniff out the one person who hasn’t got anything to do with the crime and use him as a punching-bag.’

‘I get confessions,’ said the loud voice.

‘Oh, yes. You get confessions all right. Useless ones. False ones. Ones where your commanding officer has to stand in court and listen to silver-tail lawyers tearing them to confetti. ‘‘And was the accused injured at that time? Why is his name scrawled in this uncertain way at the bottom of this bloodstained document? Did he have all his fingers when he signed this?’’ ’ The mockery of a barrister’s public-school accent was merciless. ‘I’ll give you one last chance, Naylor. If you do this again, I’ll bounce you out of the force so fast your arse won’t graze the steps of Russell Street. Is that clear?’

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‘Clear,’ muttered Constable Naylor. ‘Sir.’

‘Good. Now get your notebook out. Jack Robinson’ll be here in a moment, and the theatre manager, I expect, who’ll be hot-footing it up here to complain about you belting his employee. And what Jack’ll say I don’t care to think. He can’t stand strong-arm tactics.’

By this time, the said Detective Inspector Robinson had joined the crowd at the door. He looked very disturbed.

Robinson opened the door and ushered Phryne, the injured man and Sir Bernard inside. Constable Naylor leapt to his feet. His face was quite blank.

‘Been up to your old tricks, Naylor?’ observed the detective inspector unpleasantly. ‘I recognise your mark. Sit down, Mr Brawn. We’ll get a doctor to look at your face.’

‘I think me nose’s broken,’ said the battered carpenter. ‘He hit me!’

Sir Bernard was indignant. ‘I must protest, Detective Inspector!’

‘Yes, yes, Sir Bernard, we can only apologise for our over-zealous officer.’ Phryne was rather impressed by Jack Robinson’s defence of Naylor, though she considered it unwise.

‘Naylor, tell me what happened.’

‘Sir. I was asking Mr Brawn where he was last night. He said, ‘‘Here, where do you think?’’ He was fixing some apparatus and I told him to stop hammering and listen to me. He did so. I said,

‘‘Did you know Walter Copland and Robert Craven?’’ He said, ‘‘Of course.’’ I said, ‘‘Did you 117

see either of them eat or drink anything?’’ and he said, ‘‘No, I was behind the scene trying to prop up the Ruddigore castle.’’ I said, ‘‘Did you see anyone give either of them anything to eat or drink?’’ and he said, ‘‘No, look, I’ve got to get this fixed.’’ I said, ‘‘Listen to me and answer my questions,’’ and he said, ‘‘Go away you stupid cop,’’

and swung a clenched fist at me. In order to defend myself, I pushed his arm away, inadvertently striking him in the region of the nose.’

‘That’s not what happened!’ exclaimed the carpenter. ‘He accused me of working in the theatre only because of all the pretty girls. He asked me if I . . . if they . . . ’ The carpenter paused and wiped his bleeding nose. ‘I’m a married man with two little daughters! I never heard such a suggestion!’

‘Did you try and hit the constable?’

‘Me? Look at the size of him!’ Phryne and Sir Bernard considered the six foot four, eighteen stone bulwark of the constable and nodded. ‘I was wild enough, but I don’t go round picking fights with blokes like him.’

‘Did you make that suggestion, Constable?’

asked Robinson with deceptive mildness. Constable Naylor looked at his commanding officer and visibly weighed up his chances of evasion, esti-mated them at nil, and threw in the towel.

‘I might have, sir, just to get a reaction.’

‘Well, you got your reaction. Right. If you’ll take a seat in one of the rooms, Mr Brawn, the doctor will come and look at your face. Sergeant, see him settled, will you, and get, oh blimey, not the police 118

surgeon again. See if you can get that nice Dr Fielding to come out. Constable Naylor will pay his fee. You’re dismissed, Naylor, go down and talk very nicely to the stage doorkeeper, he’s the only one we haven’t spoken to, and if you lay a finger on him I’ll see you shot at dawn. Now, Sir Bernard, Miss Fisher, let’s have a nice chat.’

‘Hello, Jack dear. What an interesting evening we are having, to be sure.’ Sir Bernard took the stopper out of his crystal decanter. He stared into the contents with deep suspicion, then poured out two glasses of the good whisky.

‘What have we got, then?’ asked Robinson.

‘I think we have the container for the drug.’

Phryne pointed to a sugar bag in the corner of the office – Herbert had fulfilled his trust. ‘Walter Copland was drinking heavily and he always carried a flat flask of brandy or rum with him.

Miss Esperance now says that he was reeking of spirit and his dresser and several other people say that he was afflicted with crippling stage fright.

What was in the indigestion tablets?’

‘Chalk and bismuth. The report says that both men were given heavy doses of laudanum, which is an alcoholic tincture of opium with a strong sweetish taste. The medical examiner says that it can be concealed in something like port or brandy but not in tea or water. He found no injection sites. I’ve got the post-mortem on Copland, by the way.’

‘Anything surprising?’

‘Not really. Weak heart, that’s why he died. And 119

he was an alcoholic. Liver like a hobnailed boot.’

‘Good. That confirms my information. I’m told that he took a cure and dried out but just recently he fell off the wagon with a resounding crash and has been soused ever since, though it never affected his performance.’ Phryne glanced aside at Sir Bernard, who nodded. ‘He always carried a little bottle with him, but he must have either hidden it on the stage or given it to someone. My best bet is Hans, his dresser – he was waiting in the wings for Copland to repair his make-up. The poor little man is heartbroken about Copland’s death, Jack.’

‘Why?’ asked the detective inspector. ‘He was just a servant, wasn’t he?’

‘He was his dresser for twenty years. An actor’s relationship with his dresser is closer than a brother, it’s intimate.’ Sir Bernard sensed that he was not getting through, and elaborated, ‘The dresser encourages, consoles, hears lines, and of course dresses the actor and makes up his face.

Some of the most famous actors and actresses have the same dresser for their whole career. They are mother and father and friend all in one, in the closest professional sense.’

‘Like a nanny?’ asked Robinson. ‘Or a ladies’

maid?’

‘Approximately,’ Sir Bernard gave up. ‘I agree with Phryne. Hans was getting rid of all the bottles when we went to see him. He would not want Mr Copland’s reputation injured.’

‘All right, we’ll have the bottles tested and then we’ll talk to Hans again. What else, Miss Fisher?’

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‘Well, we should see if Mr Copland left a will.

He sounds like a man of property. He proposed to Miss Esperance and said he had a house in Bendigo, which Hans confirms.’

Jack Robinson made a note.

‘I haven’t talked to them about Robbie Craven yet, but no one seems to have even noticed him.

He was Walter Copland’s understudy but he was basically in the chorus and I haven’t questioned them yet. As to the rest, Mr Evans might have done it because he was desperate to play Robin/

Sir Ruthven. He knew that Mr Copland was an alcoholic.’ Sir Bernard stirred and muttered something about bounders. ‘Robbie Craven might have done it to get the part, but something must have gone very wrong if he got a dose as well. Have you talked to him yet, Jack?’

‘No, they say I can see him tomorrow.’

‘Well, then, he should be able to say who gave him the bottle or the pill or whatever. As for the others, Mollie Webb, Violet Wiltshire and two girls from the chorus are in love with Mr Evans, which hardly seems germane to the poisoning but is of general interest. Mr Evans, Selwyn Alexander and Mr Copland, plus the chorus master Monsieur Dupont, are in love with Miss Esperance, who does not seem to care for any of them but who plays them off against each other for amusement.

Between Gwilym Evans and Leila Esperance the cast are kept in a fine state of emotional ferment, which is, as you know, productive of those gestures which make the world so uncomfortable. A 121

dresser told me that the tricks were being played by Miss Esperance, though she has no proof. But Miss Esperance probably didn’t play the trick which brought Dupont and Evans to blows outside her door because she wasn’t there to watch it. She might have stolen her own gloves, torn up her own telegram and planted it in the chorus’s room, and she might have stolen the bag and planted it on Selwyn, though I can’t imagine why.’

‘But she can’t have doped my whisky – what was that, anyway, Detective Inspector? – because she was on stage at the time and so were all the others.’

‘Green food colouring, quite harmless,’ said the detective inspector.

‘Anyway, she’s seen the ghost. And I would swear that she was frightened of it. Quite childishly and unaffectedly frightened.’

‘What about the ghost, Miss Fisher? I’m assum-ing it’s another trick, of course.’

‘Everyone who has seen it says it is Rose Maybud. Although his dresser now denies that he saw anything, Mr Alexander saw her in her maiden’s costume, at the entrance to the stage. Miss Esperance saw her in the same place, in bride’s costume. Miss Gault didn’t see a figure, just ‘‘a light and a scent’’ – the scent, of course, of hyacinths.’

‘And do you think it is Dorothea Curtis, back from the dead?’

‘No,’ said Phryne. ‘No, well, I don’t think so.

But I’m going to a medium tomorrow with Mr Alexander.’

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