Stagestruck (13 page)

‘I would characterise it as an occasional indulgence.’

‘Knock it off, for all our sakes. It caused confusion and near panic. The only quoting we do in CID is the official caution.’

‘I shall curb the habit,’ Dawkins said, and added with an earnest look. ‘I trust I haven’t blighted my prospects… guv.’

They were blighted the moment you stepped in here in that clown suit, Diamond thought. ‘So are you a theatre-goer?’

‘One of my indulgences,’ Dawkins said.

‘I suppose it comes with the dancing. Do you know the play Clarion was in?’

‘Know it, no. Know of it, yes. I haven’t seen it, which is a pity. I was at some disadvantage questioning Mr Shearman, the manager, but I formed the impression that he wasn’t all that familiar with the script himself.’

‘It’s the same story as
Cabaret,
I’m told.’

‘Then you were not told the whole truth. There’s no music in
I Am a Camera
, no dancing and no changes of scene. The only changes are of time and costume. Putting it on at all was a risky venture.’

‘A vehicle for Clarion Calhoun.’

‘That, I think, goes without saying.’

‘You also spoke to Denise Pearsall. What did you make of her? Was there any aggro towards Clarion?’

‘Aggravation? None that I noticed. I saw anxiety in plenty.’

‘Denise was troubled?’

‘Exceedingly.’

‘From guilt, would you say?’

‘Difficult to divine. Conscience, possibly. She appeared to accept that her make-up was the likely cause of the occurrence.’

‘Did you question her about it?’

‘Minutely. She told me she used new materials.’

Diamond’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Some new brand?’

‘She meant “new” in the sense of unopened. The brand was the same she had used before without ill effect. That was made clear.’

‘She wasn’t blaming anyone else, then?’

‘The question of blame didn’t arise. If you care to look at a transcript of the interview it is now stored in the computer, as you instructed.’

‘Good. I will.’ Somehow, Dawkins was coming out of this so-called roasting better than he came in. ‘Watch what you say in future.’ Even as he spoke the last words, Diamond knew he’d used the faulty logic the man revelled in dismantling.

But Dawkins had the sense not to comment. He nodded and left the room. If there was a faint smile lingering it may have been only in Diamond’s imagination.

The notices were in and Hedley Shearman was relieved. The critics praised Gisella Watling’s performance and didn’t make too much of Clarion’s collapse. The sensational stuff had all been covered in news stories the previous day. UNDERSTUDY’S SUCCESS IN DEMANDING ROLE, went one headline. Another: GISELLA’S STARRY NIGHT. Reviews like that would keep the show afloat until the end of the week. Nobody now expected it to transfer to London unless Clarion made a miraculous recovery.

He clipped the reviews. Anything good for morale was to be encouraged. They would be pinned on the stage doorkeeper’s noticeboard where everyone would see them as they arrived. Before that, however, he would use them to boost his chances with Gisella. He was waiting inside when she arrived for the matinee.

‘Have you seen these?’ he said. ‘They loved your performance.’

She hadn’t. She was over the moon, even if she tried to appear casual. In all the mayhem after Clarion broke down, he’d missed an opportunity to get to know this young woman who had been thrust into the limelight and performed so ably. She was taller than Clarion, with less of the showbiz glamour about her. For the play, her dark hair was styled with waves and cut short at the back, a style he could quickly get to like. She wasn’t a starry-eyed beginner. She must have been on the stage some years. The concept of ensemble casting in the modern theatre ensured that she knew the role and didn’t need to appear on stage with the book in her hands. Even so, it had taken courage to go on.

‘It’s a big step up the ladder,’ he told her with a fatherly show of encouragement that often did the trick with young actresses. ‘All sorts of people will read this, especially casting directors. You never know where it will lead. Clarion’s misfortune is your opportunity.’

‘I don’t think of it like that,’ she said in a voice that could have come from a twelve-year-old. ‘I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to get the part this way.’

‘My dear, the theatre is one long story of actors seizing the moment. Did you know Shirley MacLaine was just a dancer in the chorus of
The Pajama Game
and doubling as understudy when the star, Carol Haney, broke her ankle? She was thrust into the limelight, took the audience by storm and got the movie role as well, because Hal Wallis happened to be in the audience. You never know your luck.’

‘I still feel bad about Clarion.’ Her eyes confirmed it. To Shearman, she appeared utterly sincere.

‘Why should you? You’re not responsible.’ After a pause he added, ‘I hope.’ He laughed. ‘Ignore my twisted sense of humour. You could move into the number one dressing room if you wish. You’ve earned the right.’

‘I’m happy where I am, thanks.’

‘Which room is that?’

‘Number eight. The one with the gloves and handbag in a frame on the wall.’

‘They belonged to Vivien Leigh, you know. It’s endowed in her name.’ He stopped himself telling her that eight had the reputation of being haunted. Various unexplained phenomena had been reported over the years by actors who had used it. ‘If it ever feels cold in there, be sure to ask for a fan heater.’

‘Thanks, but it’s comfortable. I’d better get up there now.’

‘Do you do your own make-up?’

She nodded. ‘I’m used to it.’

‘Well done. Hope there’s a good house in this afternoon with at least one butterfly. You know about the Theatre Royal butterflies?’ He was being over-friendly now, doing his best to charm her. He’d got lucky like this a few times over the years.

‘Yes, I heard the stories.’

‘I’ll come with you and show you something. It’s on the way. It won’t hold you up.’

She had to pass the fly tower to get to her dressing room. He walked close behind her, enjoying the swing of her hips. ‘Back in the nineteen-forties, when the whole butterfly thing started,’ he said, moving closer, ‘the man who had my job was called Reg Maddox and he designed a butterfly ballet for the pantomime and because of what happened one of the big gauze butterflies made as the backdrop was kept hanging in the flies as a kind of talisman. You wouldn’t know it was there unless someone told you where to look.’

They had reached the fly floor, the area immediately behind the stage, where the peeling walls, old props, unwanted arc lamps and looped cables were in sharp contrast to the plush public areas of the theatre. Above them, the steel-framed fly tower, with its intricate single-purchase counterweight system of grids, lines and pulleys, rose eight metres clear of the rest of the building.

‘The lighting isn’t so great here, but if you look straight up, you’ll get a sight of the lucky butterfly right at the top.’ He pointed upwards with his left hand and at the same time curled his right over her shoulder. ‘Do you see it?’

Gisella tilted her head back and didn’t flinch when Shear-man touched her. She was taller than he, but he didn’t mind that. As he sometimes said when he’d got a woman into bed, the length that mattered wasn’t from head to foot. He’d moved so close that he could feel her hair against his cheek. The sensation pleased him. He wasn’t looking up at the damn butterfly. He knew where it was.

Suddenly she tensed and her whole frame shuddered.

He jerked his hand away from her shoulder. ‘It’s okay,’ he said.

‘It isn’t,’ she said in a shocked voice. ‘Can’t you see what I can? It’s anything but okay.’

8

A
police car and an ambulance were parked in front of the triple-arched theatre entrance in Saw Close. The whole area was congested with people arriving for the matinee.

‘The stage door,’ Diamond said to Keith Halliwell, and headed along the paved passage, past the tables outside the Garrick’s Head. His negative feelings about entering the theatre had to be ignored. When you get the shout in CID you can’t stop to think. Up the steps into the dim interior, they found their way through the backstage honeycomb and emerged under the fly tower, where an assortment of actors and technicians were gazing upwards at two paramedics and a uniformed police officer who had made their way along a narrow catwalk close to where a body was jackknifed over a pair of battens suspended from the grid under the roof. One arm hung down. The other must have been trapped.

‘Do we know who it is?’ he asked a stagehand.

‘It must be the dresser. She went missing earlier.’

Missing no longer. He hadn’t met Denise Pearsall and wouldn’t have recognised her. All he could make out was that whoever was up there was dressed in jeans and black trainers. There was no indication of life.

He stood for a moment in silence. Violent death of any sort is a desecration, deserving of pity. A fall on to steel battens, almost certainly fracturing the spine, was chilling to contemplate. Here was a woman who had been in the prime of a useful, creative life. Who could say what hopes, memories, disappointments had been prematurely ended by this act?

A short, stout, self-important man in a striped suit came over and put an end to compassionate thoughts. ‘Plainclothes police, are you? I’m the theatre director, Hedley Shearman. I made the emergency call.’

‘Was it you who found her?’

‘I was with Gisella, one of the cast, and we happened to look up and had the shock of our lives. That arm, hanging down. Dreadful.’

‘Are you certain who she is?’

‘It has to be Denise, Clarion’s dresser. You can’t see her face from here, but some of her long red hair is visible. I knew she was upset by what happened on Monday. She phoned yesterday and told me she couldn’t face coming in for last night’s performance. God forgive me, it didn’t cross my mind that she was suicidal.’

Diamond turned to Halliwell and asked him to pass the news to Manvers Street, making clear that although the missing person enquiry would shortly be called off, the dead woman’s car still needed to be found. ‘Where does she park?’ he asked Shearman.

‘The nearest is right across the street, but it’s so small you hardly ever get in there on a weekday. Most of us use Charlotte Street or the multi-storey in Corn Street.’

Halliwell used his personal radio.

‘When did you spot her?’ Diamond asked Shearman.

‘Twenty minutes ago. Gisella – who is playing Sally Bowles now – had just arrived for the matinee and I wanted to point something out to her in the fly tower. She looked up and saw the arm. She’s profoundly shocked, as I was. She wants to go on, though. I’m not planning to cancel the performance.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ Diamond said.

‘It’s all right. Nothing is visible to the audience,’ Shearman added in earnest support of his decision. ‘There are no scene changes. The set is all in place. You and your officers can remain at the back here throughout and you won’t disrupt the show.’

A cancelled performance was anathema to theatre people. And from a police point of view it might suit to have the minimum of fuss. Yet how bizarre to have an audience enjoying the play while a corpse was behind the backcloth.

‘No. Send them home.’

Shearman was appalled. ‘What – cancel, at this late stage? Impossible. Denise wouldn’t have wanted that.’

‘Denise is out of the equation. It’s my decision.’

‘I don’t know about that. I’m in charge here. What can I possibly say to people?’

‘Unforeseen circumstances. The truth will have leaked out anyway. They’ve seen the ambulance and the police cars as they came in.’

‘We’ve got coach parties coming in from miles around.’

‘Bath isn’t short of other attractions. They’ll think of something else to do. Teashops, pubs, shopping. I suggest you make the announcement now if you want us out before the evening performance.’

Red-faced and angry, Shearman caved in and used his phone to issue instructions.

‘Make sure the staff don’t leave as well,’ Diamond told him. ‘I may need to question them.’

For all his bluster, Shearman wasn’t going on stage to announce the cancellation. He delegated that thankless task to his front-of-house manager.

‘Did anyone see Denise arrive this morning?’ Diamond asked.

He shook his head. ‘Someone would have told me. I was trying to contact her.’

‘So when do you think this happened?’

‘I’ve no idea how long she’s been up there. People are walking through here a lot, but you don’t look up unless you have a reason.’

‘What was your reason?’

‘I told you, I was with Gisella. She’s the understudy who took over from Clarion. I wanted to show her the lucky butterfly – as encouragement.’

Diamond’s interest quickened. ‘Butterfly, you said?’

‘Not a real one. A piece of scenery from way back. You can see it yourself right up near the roof if you stand in the right place. A dusty old thing more than sixty years old, but we value it as an emblem of good fortune.’

‘Show me.’

Shearman moved a few strides to the left and pointed upwards, across the tower and at a higher level from where the corpse was lodged. A flashlight would have helped. Fortunately the thing suspended among other strips of scenery was colourful enough to make out. Red, purple, green and yellow and with scalloped edging, it didn’t look like any species of butterfly known to biology.

‘The scene painter enjoyed himself by the look of it.’

‘It was for a pantomime.’

‘Ah, I heard about this from someone else. So you looked for the butterfly and saw the body?’

‘Gisella spotted it first. To her credit, she didn’t scream. I almost did myself when she pointed.’

‘Gisella stayed calm?’

‘I wouldn’t say calm. She was in control, but obviously shaken.’

‘So you’re saying the body could have been there some hours without anyone noticing?’

‘Quite possibly. It’s dark up there, as you see.’

‘Nobody goes up between performances?’

‘There’s no reason to. The scenery for this production is all in place and we won’t be changing it this week.’