Smoke and Mirrors (13 page)

‘Murdered children’s teacher found dead.’ Lou Abrahams was reading the paper in his cubbyhole. Max, on his way to change for the evening show, looked in and saw the headline.

‘Christ,’ he said. ‘What’s that about the teacher?’

‘What?’ Lou was deep in the sports news.

‘On the front page.’

‘Oh. Those poor kiddies, the ones who were found up at the Dyke. Their teacher’s been found dead.’

‘How was she killed?’

‘Paper doesn’t say. They have to be careful about stuff like that. At first I thought she’d done it and topped herself but it says “suicide has been ruled out”. Here, you can have a look. You know the policeman, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I served with him in the war.’ Max found that this explanation always tended to be accepted at face value. He took the paper.

Max thought of the mesmerising figure in black reading from scripture. He had thought then that she was an interesting woman and it seems that he was right. Uninteresting women, in his experience, didn’t get murdered. He noticed how the paper homed in on Miss Young’s mildly aristocratic background. He had suffered from this fixation himself. In the early days, no review had been complete without calling him The Hon. Max or mentioning his father. All the same, he wondered how Daphne Young had ended up teaching in a backstreet Brighton school.

‘Max, have you seen Diablo? I just want to go over his scenes with him.’

It was Nigel Castle, the scriptwriter, looking as harassed as ever. Max knew that Diablo would be drinking gin in the chorus girls’ room and would welcome seeing Nigel as much as Nigel would welcome Diablo’s ad-libs later that night.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Have you tried the Green Room?’

But Nigel had caught sight of the
Evening Argus
. ‘What’s this?’ He almost snatched the paper and began reading. ‘My God. That’s terrible.’

‘You were at the funeral yesterday, weren’t you?’ said Max.

Nigel looked at him, still pale with shock. ‘Yes, I was.’

Max tried to think of a subtle way of asking the question but eventually settled on a bald, ‘Why?’

Nigel didn’t seem to resent his curiosity. ‘Roger and I went into a few local grammar schools to do some drama with them. It was all part of some community project. I met the children then.’

‘You met Annie and Mark?’

‘Yes. I remember them because they were so talented. Annie, in particular, had a real gift for story-telling.’

‘I’ve heard.’

‘I was so shocked when I heard that they had been killed. It brought on an attack of nerves. I was in bed for a day.’

Nigel’s nerves were already notorious amongst the cast.

‘Did you go into this Miss Young’s school?’

‘No. We went into the grammar schools. I remember Mark’s headmaster in particular. He was very interested in the theatre.’

Max wanted to ask more but Nigel staggered away still clutching the paper and looking at if he’d seen the theatre ghost.

*

There was no chance of getting to Ruby’s first night. In fact Edgar didn’t even think of her until he looked at the station clock and realised that it was seven o’clock. It had been a long and stressful day. After briefing the team, Edgar had driven to the morgue, where Solomon Carter confirmed that Daphne Young’s death had occurred from manual strangulation. He put the time of death at about seven p.m. on Friday night. So Daphne was killed only a few hours after she had delivered her letter to Edgar. Who else had she contacted on her way? He sent officers door-to-door and went back to Montpelier Terrace with Emma and Bob.

Irma Gold was waiting for them.

‘I thought you’d be back. I’ve been thinking about the man.’

‘Which man, Mrs Gold?’ asked Edgar.

‘The man I heard upstairs last night. I think he may have been Irish.’

‘Irish?’

‘Yes. Morris doesn’t agree but I think I heard a definite Irish lilt.’

Morris shouted from inside the flat, ‘You couldn’t even hear his voice, let alone a lilt.’

‘I’ve been thinking about it and there was definitely a musical quality.’

‘Josef Locke was on the wireless singing “Danny Boy”.’

‘If you’ll excuse us,’ said Edgar, ‘my officers and I need to go upstairs.’

‘Shall I make you some tea?’

‘That’s very kind but we don’t want to put you to any trouble.’

‘No trouble.’ Irma retreated but Edgar had no doubt that she would appear again, ten minutes later, with a laden tea tray.

Daphne’s flat already had the stale, sad air of a place that has been abandoned. There was post by the door and Edgar flipped through it. A gas bill, a flyer for a women’s clothes shop and a postcard showing Edinburgh Castle. Edgar turned it over.

‘Toodle-oo, pip pip, Bootsie,’ repeated Bob. ‘What the bloody hell does that mean?’

‘The upper classes speak a different language,’ said Edgar.

‘Who’s her pal in the panto?’ said Emma, reading over Edgar’s shoulder.

‘
Doing
the panto,’ said Edgar. ‘He might not be an actor.’

‘You can ask
your
pal,’ said Bob, who seemed to harbour a deep resentment of Max.

‘Yes, I can,’ said Edgar. ‘Bob, you look in the kitchen. Look for any signs of recent meals, anything unusual. Don’t touch anything. Emma, you do the sitting room. I’ll do the bedroom.’ He was dreading the bedroom but, because of that, knew that he couldn’t delegate it.

There was nothing surprising in the room. A double bed, still with its rumpled lacy cover, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers. Carter thought that Daphne had been killed in the sitting room and carried into the bedroom. There were fibres from the sofa on her hair, he said. Edgar agreed. Daphne was not the sort of girl to have brought a man into her bedroom. Even so, the sitting room had shown no signs of a struggle. Had the visitor just leant over and strangled Daphne where she sat, not even knocking over her teacup?

Edgar opened the wardrobe. Daphne’s black velvet suit, the one she’d worn for the funeral, was there on its hanger. When she died, she’d been wearing a tweed skirt and lavender jumper. She’d changed before she set out with her letter, which made sense because it was a long walk and her black shoes, placed neatly on the wardrobe floor, were very high. He thought of the body on the bed, the stockinged foot touching the floor. He called out to Emma, ‘Any shoes in the sitting room?’

‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘a pair of brogues by the door.’ A sudden picture of Daphne, curled up on the sofa reading her fairy tales, came into Edgar’s mind. For a moment he felt almost angry with her. Why hadn’t she screamed? Why hadn’t she run? Why hadn’t she told him more in her letter?

He went into the hall again. ‘What time was Josef Locke on the wireless last night?’

‘No idea.’ Bob emerged from the kitchen. ‘I hate that sort of singing.’

‘There’s a
Radio Times
here,’ called Emma from the sitting room. He heard her turn the pages. ‘Six-thirty.’

Edgar went back into the bedroom. At six-thirty, while Josef Locke was singing ‘Danny Boy’, Irma had heard voices upstairs. By seven o’clock, Daphne was dead.

Edgar was looking through the chest of drawers – underwear, scent, scarves, gloves – when he heard a tentative tap on the door. That would be Irma with the refreshments.

But when he opened the door, the downstairs neighbour was there but she was accompanied by a smartly dressed middle-aged couple.

‘Detective Stephens?’ said the man. ‘We’re Basil and Laura Young.’

It wasn’t how Edgar would have planned it, meeting the bereaved parents in their daughter’s flat. He was actually grateful to Irma for fussing around with tea and biscuits and saying how fond she had been of Daphne.

‘She was a real lady, that’s what Morris and I always said.’

Laura Young dabbed her eyes. ‘She told us how kind you both were.’

When Irma finally left, Edgar asked Bob and Emma to wait in the kitchen. He didn’t want to overcrowd the Youngs but he also wanted his officers within earshot, just in case.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Edgar. ‘This must be a terrible time for you.’

‘Yes,’ said Basil. ‘We’ve driven straight down from Shropshire. We left as soon as we spoke to you on the telephone.’

‘We couldn’t take it in,’ said Laura. ‘You said that Daphne had been murdered?’

‘I’m afraid it looks like that,’ said Edgar.

‘But who would . . .?’ Laura started crying again. Basil glared accusingly at Edgar. He was a large man with sparse gingery hair. Daphne might have inherited his colouring but, in all other respects, she resembled her mother.

‘Can we see her?’ asked Laura, looking around the room as if she expected to find her daughter’s body there.

‘Of course,’ said Edgar. ‘I’ll take you to the . . . to the place myself. I just wondered if I could ask some questions first.’

‘Why?’ asked Basil. ‘What could we possibly tell you?’

Edgar sat opposite them. ‘We want to find your daughter’s killer and any little thing might help. I promise you, we won’t rest until this person is found.’ He seemed to be saying this a lot these days.

Basil muttered about the police not having done much so far, but he sounded mollified all the same.

‘The thing is,’ said Edgar, ‘we can’t discount the possibility that Daphne’s death may have been linked to the deaths of the two children, Annie Francis and Mark Webster. As you probably know, Daphne taught the children in primary school.’

‘I always said she shouldn’t have become a schoolteacher,’ exploded Basil. ‘She should have stayed at home and found a husband, like her sister did.’

So Daphne had a sister, thought Edgar. Aloud he said, ‘When did you last speak to Daphne?’

‘She telephoned the night before last,’ said Laura. ‘I spoke to her every week.’

‘How did she sound?’

‘A bit down, a bit sad. It was the funeral the next day and she was dreading that. She’d been asked to do a reading and she was very nervous. And she loved those children. She got fond of all the children she taught but she always said that Annie was special.’

If Daphne had been nervous in the church, thought Edgar, it hadn’t showed. He had been the one who gabbled and stuttered and looked an idiot. Daphne had been all coolness and grace.

‘Did she talk to you about Annie?’ he asked.

‘Yes. She said she was really clever. That she deserved a better life than her parents could give her. Some of those children come from very poor families, Detective Inspector, very poor indeed. And when she died, Daphne was heartbroken. She felt . . . I don’t know.’

‘She felt what?’

‘She felt as if she should have saved her.’

‘What do you think she meant by that?’

‘She had some crazy idea about adopting the child,’ Basil cut in. ‘Madness, and we told her so.’

‘Daphne wanted to adopt Annie?’

‘It was only an idea,’ said Laura. ‘Daphne always had these impetuous ideas. She felt that Annie didn’t . . . didn’t fit in with her family, though I’m sure they were very decent people. Daphne thought she could give her a better life, one filled with music and art and stories, that’s what she said.’

‘Did she speak to Annie’s parents about this?’

‘Oh no,’ said Laura. ‘As I say, it was only an idea. She soon saw that it was impossible. Anyway, Annie passed her eleven-plus, she was on the way up. She didn’t need Daphne any more.’

Interesting, thought Edgar. He asked Laura Young if she’d heard anything from her daughter on the Friday. No, said Laura firmly, they always spoke on Thursday, that was their routine.

Edgar picked up the postcard, which was lying on the table.

‘Have you any idea who this is from?’

Laura’s eyes filled with tears. ‘It’s from Daphne’s sister, Sarah. We always call her Bootsie.’

Why? thought Edgar. As he had told Bob, it’s a different language.

‘Bootsie lives in Edinburgh,’ said Laura. ‘Her husband’s a doctor.’

‘Sarah . . . er, Bootsie . . . mentions Daphne having a friend in the pantomime. Have you any idea who that could be?’

To his surprise, Laura smiled mistily. ‘Oh, that will be Nigel. Nigel Castle. He writes plays. He was a friend of Daphne’s from university. Such a nice boy.’

‘So what sort of man is Nigel Castle?’ asked Edgar.

Max frowned into his coffee. It was Monday morning and they were sitting in a seafront cafe. Freezing sleet battered the windows but there was a warm fug inside and a comforting smell of frying. Edgar was looking forward to his eggs and bacon. Max had – of course – rejected food with a shudder.

Edgar had called at Max’s digs at an hour which felt like midday to him but he was sure would count as breakfast-time for the pros. Sure enough, Mrs M answered the door wearing a frilly apron and Edgar could hear sounds of a meal in progress.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ said the landlady. ‘Is it Mr M you want?’

‘Yes, please.’

Mrs M smiled and beckoned him into the hall. Then she shouted upstairs, ‘Mr M! Visitor for you.’

‘If it’s the bailiffs, I’m out,’ Max shouted back. Edgar was surprised to find him so jocular in the morning. Max appeared a few minutes later, tucking in his shirt.

‘Ed! What are you doing here?’

‘I wondered if we could have a talk.’

‘Well, we can’t talk here, the place is full of actors. Let’s go to the Sea Spray. They do a decent coffee there.’

‘Your coat, Mr M,’ the landlady held it out to him.

‘You’re a diamond, Mrs M.’

‘Mr M and Mrs M,’ said Edgar as they made their way along the seafront, heads down against the wind. ‘You could be a married couple.’

Max didn’t reply, but then it was an effort talking at all. Inside the cafe it was easier. Max drank some coffee and lit a cigarette.

‘Nigel? He seems harmless enough. Always fussing about the script. Most panto writers accept that the cast will make it up as they go along but Nigel seems really hurt if we don’t stick to his words. Diablo is driving him insane.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘It seems odd, though, that Nigel didn’t tell me that he knew this Daphne Young. He just said that he’d been at the funeral because he’d visited the school and met the children.’

‘He did? Bristol Road Juniors?’

‘No. The grammar schools, he said. Nigel and Roger Dunkley, the director, went to do some work with the children, teach them about acting. Not that Nigel knew anything about acting.’

‘I’ll follow that up. Apparently Daphne met Nigel Castle at university. How old is he?’

Max shrugged. ‘I don’t know. About twenty-five or twenty-six, I suppose. I know he was too young for the draft.’

Edgar always felt ashamed of the slight resentment he felt for men like Nigel and Bob who had been too young to fight. Added to that, Nigel had completed university while he had had to leave after two terms and been sent to freeze to death in Norway. Jonathan had gone straight from school to the army and had been dead within the year.

‘Do you seriously think that Nigel might be a suspect?’ asked Max.

‘I don’t know,’ said Edgar. ‘But I have to consider it. Nigel knew Annie and Mark and he was a friend of Daphne’s. And then there’s the writing. Annie wrote plays; Daphne seemed obsessed with fairy tales; you say that Nigel is pretty obsessive too.’

‘Yes. And of course most pantomimes are based on traditional tales. Nigel keeps going on about that.’

‘Denton McGrew said that Ezra Nightingale was always talking about the true sources of fairy tales. How they were all very gruesome really and shouldn’t be made sweet for the audience.’

‘Ezra? Oh, Diablo’s killer. Do you still think there’s a link?’

‘There are a lot of links. Denton, Diablo, the Billington family, the murder of children. It’s just whether any of them mean anything.’

Edgar’s breakfast arrived, steaming and beautiful. He plunged his knife into the egg and tried not to think about Diablo’s description of Betsy’s blood running down from the stage.

‘How was Ruby?’ asked Max.

Edgar was taken aback. ‘She seemed very well,’ he said. ‘I meant to go to see the show last night but I couldn’t really get away.’

‘Well, she’s only in the chorus anyway.’

Edgar was stung on Ruby’s behalf by the dismissiveness in Max’s tone. ‘She still wants to be a magician.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’ Edgar told Max about the trick with the piece of paper in the restaurant. To his surprise, Max enjoyed it hugely.

‘Very clever. A waiter makes the perfect stick. They’re always there and yet you never see them. Classic misdirection.’

Edgar knew that ‘stick’ was a magician’s word for a stooge or plant. He found Max’s praise as irritating as his indifference.

‘I’ll walk with you to the theatre,’ he said. ‘And then I can speak to Nigel Castle.’

‘All right,’ said Max. ‘I’m sure he’ll be there. He seems to sleep in the place.’

*

Max was right. They found the scriptwriter sitting in the foyer, reading the programme. Surely he must know what’s in it by now?

‘Max.’ Nigel looked up. ‘You’re early.’

As it was now past twelve Edgar found it hard to believe that anyone could call it early. But the matinee started at two and there were no other actors to be seen, so maybe Nigel was right to look surprised. Max smiled, rather grimly.

‘Nigel, this is my friend Edgar Stephens. He’s a policeman. He’d like to have a chat with you, if that’s all right.’

Edgar had thought that Nigel looked nervous before. Now he positively quailed, literally shrinking away from them.

‘Talk to
me
? Why?’

‘I understand that you were a friend of Daphne Young’s.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Her parents.’

‘Oh.’ Nigel’s eyes darted from Max to Edgar and back again. Then he seemed to make a huge effort to compose himself. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Yes. It’s a terrible thing. Poor Daphne. I must write to Laura and Basil.’

‘I’m sure they’d appreciate that,’ said Edgar. ‘I’m just trying to get some idea about Daphne as a person. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.’

‘You can use my dressing room,’ said Max. ‘I’ll go and see Lou.’

‘No,’ said Nigel. ‘Please stay, Max.’

Max raised his eyebrows. ‘If you want me to.’

They sat in Max’s dressing room amongst the telegrams and empty champagne bottles and scraps of paper with girls’ names on. Nigel perched on the sofa and Edgar sat next to him, trying not to seem confrontational. Max took his dressing-table chair, which he pushed back against the wall.

‘I understand you knew Daphne from university,’ said Edgar.

‘Yes. We were both at St Andrews. In Scotland, you know. Both doing English. We hit it off immediately.’

‘Were you romantically involved?’

Nigel laughed. Edgar would not have believed him capable of making such a cynical sound. ‘Oh no. Daphne was much sought-after. She could take her pick of boyfriends. No, I was cast as the best friend, the confidant, safe and sexless.’

Edgar noted the theatrical terminology. Also the bitterness.

‘And was it pure coincidence that you both ended up in Brighton?’

‘Yes. I sent some scripts on spec to Bert Billington. He liked this one and he signed me up. He told me that I didn’t have to be here for the run but I wasn’t going to miss seeing my pantomime in rehearsal. I took digs near Brunswick Square.’

Brunswick Square was not far from Montpelier Terrace. Also,
my
pantomime. ‘What did Daphne say when you told her?’

‘She was happy for me. She knew how long I had been waiting for my chance.’

‘What did you do before this?’

‘I was a teacher. I only went into it because you could get out of National Service if you agreed to teach for five years after graduation. To make up for the shortage of teachers after the war. I hated it. The kids made my life hell. Not like Daphne; she was a natural.’

Edgar felt another wave of resentment. He was sure he would have hated National Service but he would have done it, in the same dogged, conscientious way he’d gone to war. Why should Nigel – sitting there in his corduroy trousers and cravat – escape all the horrors of life? He found himself hoping that Nigel’s pupils really had made him suffer.

‘I understand that you and the director, Roger Dunkley, went into some local schools,’ he said. ‘Can you tell me about that?’

‘It was an idea the Local Authority had, to encourage creativity and what have you. We went into the schools and did some basic drama and writing exercises. I was worried about it at first but it seemed to go quite well.’

‘You went into both grammar schools?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you met Annie Francis and Mark Webster?’

Nigel looked at Max as if asking for his help. ‘Just briefly. Annie had rather a good idea for a script. It was a version of “Hansel and Gretel”. Quite dark, quite funny.’

‘What about Mark?’

‘He was more interested in the technical stuff. I thought he would have made a brilliant stage manager.’ Nigel rubbed his eyes. ‘So tragic. When I heard they’d died . . .’

‘Mr Castle,’ said Edgar. ‘I’m asking everyone this. What were you doing on the night of Monday the twenty-sixth of November?’

He had tried to soften the blow but Nigel still goggled at him. ‘You can’t think . . . This is madness . . . I . . .’

Max said. ‘As I understand it, the police are simply trying to eliminate people from their enquiry.’

His voice seemed to have a calming effect on the writer. Nigel’s voice still shook, though, when he said, ‘I can’t remember. I was here, I think. Then I went back to my digs, listened to the wireless . . .’

‘Did you see Daphne?’

Nigel blinked. ‘No. I think she was working late. We didn’t see that much of each other. She had her own life.’

‘Did she have a boyfriend? You said she could take her pick.’

‘I don’t think so. There was a man at St Andrews but, when that finished, she said that she was going to concentrate on her career. She was going to live for the children, she said.’

Did Nigel know that Daphne had thought about adopting one of those children? wondered Edgar. Once again there was something cynical in his tone, as if he hadn’t believed in his friend’s vision of a selfless life devoted to education.

‘What about Friday night? Where were you then?’

Nigel blinked rapidly but he answered fairly calmly. ‘I had a drink with a few members of the cast. Diablo was there and Denton and some of the girls. Then I went home at about nine.’

‘What time was this drink?’

‘About seven. In the Colonnade Bar, next to the Theatre Royal.’

Edgar knew the bar, a famous hang-out for theatricals. If Daphne was killed at six-thirty, whilst Josef Locke was singing, it was possible that Nigel could have killed her and still made it to the bar for seven. Possible but not entirely probable.

‘Can you let me know if you remember the name of the man in Scotland?’ he asked.

‘It was Douglas something. I’ll think.’

‘That would be very helpful. Thank you, Mr Castle.’

Nigel stood up. ‘You mean I can go?’

‘Of course.’

Nigel did not need telling twice. He shot out of the door so quickly that Max’s champagne rattled in its ice bucket.