Clouds among the Stars

by Clayton, Victoria

  Something swelled in my throat. It was a sob. Once I let it out more followed, like toads dropping from the mouth of the bad princess. I longed for tears but there was only a dry painful wrenching. I heard Pa walk into the room. I knew it was selfish of me to let him see how much I minded but I could not help myself. The dreadful sounds, sounds of weakness and misery, burst out of me. A hand rested for a moment on my head.

  A voice – not my father’s – said, ‘Poor Harry.’

  Then the footsteps went away.

  THIRTY-SIX

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ I panted as I dashed up the aisle of the Phoebus Theatre auditorium. ‘Traffic jam. The bus was hours getting here.’

  Inspector Foy was standing on the stage. Its darkness was pierced by a single beam of light that made a small bright circle, roughly in the centre. ‘It doesn’t matter a bit.’ He bent and stretched out his hand to hoist me up. ‘It’s always a pleasure for a theatre buff to have a chance to wander about the place. I wonder sometimes if I shouldn’t have followed my first inclination to be an actor. There’s too much reality in a policeman’s life.’

  I had forgotten how his ears turned over at the top, rather sweetly, like a breaking wave. I discovered I was extremely pleased to see the inspector again. His presence had the old calming affect.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Harriet.’ He smiled and looked as though he meant it. ‘I was never so delighted in my life as when I signed those papers of release.’

  ‘It’s wonderful to have Pa home. Though we don’t see much of him. The telephone never stops ringing with people swearing eternal friendship, wanting him to star in their plays, be godfather to their children or go on yachts with them.’

  Actually, since we had come home two days ago, my father had been out nearly all the time. He looked so guilty when he came back that I was careful to conceal any appearance of curiosity. I assumed he had been with Fleur. We were treating each other with polite circumspection, not talking more than was necessary, avoiding eye contact.

  ‘It’s surprisingly tiring.’ I smiled.

  I had lain awake the last two nights while adrenalin coursed through my body and made my heart pound until I felt ill. Towards dawn I had slept uneasily, dreaming of people and places of indefinable menace. Ma had rung the day before. Neither of us mentioned the divorce by name. She had talked of the house she had persuaded Ronnie to buy with his savings, which had turned out to be surprisingly substantial. The savings, that is. ‘Such a darling house, Harriet, like a large cottage orné – eighteenth-century Gothick with ogee windows, painted palest pink – its own little cove, sandy beach, cliffs, woods – you never saw such a delicious place. We’re going to let rooms to our friends for enormous sums. Such fun – imagine the parties. You must come down and see it soon, darling.’

  ‘I’d love to, when I next get some holiday.’

  ‘Ronnie’ll be thrilled to see you. Between you and me, I think Bron and the others frighten him a bit. But I can tell he’s got a soft spot for you. I could be jealous – except he’s such a silly old thing.’ She laughed complacently and I realised she sounded happier than she had done for ages. ‘He’s so loyal, you know. Of course he doesn’t have your father’s magnetism – who does? – but it’s rather nice being the only pebble on the beach for a change. Relaxing. The only thing we quarrel about is Ronnie’s appalling stinginess. The other morning I turned out his pockets and found the salt and pepper pots from our table in the hotel dining room. He said we might need such things if we’re going to run a rest home for out-of-work actors. I said undoubtedly we would but he’d better think again if he imagined I was going to have EPNS rubbish on my tables. I made him put them back at lunchtime.’

  My mother chattered in this vein for some time and finally rang off, promising to call again soon. I was glad she was happy, I told myself fiercely. But how could she endure the prospect of leaving for ever the dear old house in which she had brought us up? All those glorious occasions when she had created such a vibrant and original atmosphere, when she and Pa had blown kisses to each other down the length of the table, when they had laughed themselves into a state of helplessness at a favourite joke. Those rapturous moments of reconciliation after one of them had wandered, when they had seemed to fall back in love with renewed fervour. Had it meant so little, after all?

  The inspector was saying something about being glad that things had worked out as they had. I made myself concentrate. ‘I particularly wanted to show you how it was done,’ he said. ‘We needn’t expect anyone else, I take it?’

  ‘Pa’s seeing his agent,’ I explained. ‘Besides, he doesn’t like talking about anything to do with the recent past. Bron and Ophelia are still away. She’s coming home tomorrow. And Portia’s in Manchester. Cordelia’s at home, making herself a pair of pedal pushers – it’s a kind of trouser.’

  As Pa no longer needed it to brighten the walls of his cell, the tapestry had been abandoned. This was a relief as it had taxed my paltry needlework skills to the limit. I had tried to persuade Cordelia that trousers were tricky and it would be much easier to make a skirt but she had been adamant that she could do it. I had to admire her self-confidence. She had cut up an old seersucker tablecloth striped in lurid shades of pink. Unfortunately the pedal pushers had given trouble from the start and Cordelia had been looking rather black by the time I set out.

  ‘Oh well.’ Inspector Foy resigned himself gracefully to an audience of one. ‘You’ll be able to explain to the others. Now,’ he shot his cuffs and made conjuring motions with his hands, ‘allow me unfold the mystery. This is more or less as the stage was when it happened.’

  There were a few books and some tins of paint in one corner and a Thermos flask and what looked like an old coat in the other. A newspaper had separated into crumpled sheets towards the backcloth, which was nothing more than a sketched outline of trees and bushes. A theatre that is dark – that is, without a production running – is a melancholy place. It is cold and echoing, with the characteristic smell of glue and paint and dust that had been in my nostrils from babyhood.

  ‘The body of Sir Basil was discovered here.’ He pointed to the centre of the stage where so many famous actors had taken their final bow. The beam of light picked up a dark stain that was both sad and horrible. Basil’s bow had been more final than is generally the case. I had never liked him, but one cannot help having tender feelings for anyone meeting a violent end. ‘You know what a deus ex machina is?’

  ‘Literally, the god out of the machine. A sort of artificial device to resolve a play.’

  ‘That’s right. Zeus or the personification of an abstract idea, Peace or Justice, something like that, is lowered on to the stage – in a throne or a chariot or a sunburst – to reward the good characters, punish the bad and deliver a judgement. The Greeks and Romans were very keen on it and it had another burst of popularity in the seventeenth century.’ I nodded dutifully. ‘You remember in King Lear there’s a violent storm at the end of Act Two and for a lot of Act Three?’

  ‘It’s always my favourite bit. I can’t stand the gouging scene. Nor Cordelia being hanged.’

  ‘This was to be a Baroque production. The director decided to represent the storm by dropping a canvas of thunderclouds amid the appropriate flashes of lightning and cracks of thunder. Seated among the clouds was to be a personification of Nature wearing widow’s weeds and holding an amphora of dry ice. Nature in mourning because of the forces of evil and destruction released by Lear’s misguided actions at the beginning of the play. You get the picture?’

  ‘I remember Pa telling us something about it. He thought it was very effective.’

  ‘Just stand there a minute and whatever you do don’t move from that spot. Keep well away from the centre of the stage. Promise?’

  I promised. The inspector disappeared into the wings. A delay was followed by a discreet whirring, then my eye was drawn by something moving high up above my head. Slowly it descended. As soon as it hit the
beam of light I saw that attached to the base of a boldly painted canvas of black, purple and grey swirling clouds was a prong of metal. It was bent into a zigzag with a dangerously sharp tip. Abruptly the canvas gathered speed and dropped the last ten feet with a mighty thwack. It stopped some three feet above the stage, quivering with the violence of its descent. The lightning shaft pointed like an accusing finger at the circle of light.

  The inspector reappeared, an expression of modest triumph on his face. ‘Simple, wasn’t it? The thing is controlled by ropes and counterweights. According to your father, in rehearsal a few days before Sir Basil’s death, it came down too fast because one of the stagehands had mistakenly removed a weight from the counterbalance. Fortunately no one was standing beneath it then. That’s how the murderer got the idea, of course. The shock of Sir Basil’s death drove what had been a minor incident out of everyone’s heads. It was clever in its absolute simplicity. But none of us thought of it. The moment the blow had been dealt, almost splitting Sir Basil’s skull in two, the murderer simply hoisted the canvas back into the flies. Then your father came in, stumbled over the body, and you know the rest.

  ‘Our chaps did a fingertip search of the stage, the wings, the green room, the dressing rooms, the traps, every inch of the place. But not being theatre people it didn’t occur to them to look up. It didn’t occur to me either until I came back here on my own about three weeks ago. You’d told me about the séance. I was inclined to disregard it but we had so little to go on. So I turned it about in my mind. I made the connection with the storm and that’s when I looked up and saw it. After that, everything was clear. Forensic found dried blood of Sir Basil’s type all over the shaft.’ The inspector detached it from the canvas. ‘Exhibit A, if we ever get to a trial. I brought it over just to show you.’

  ‘The cunning of it!’ I was admiring. ‘And how clever of you to guess!’

  ‘I realised, when your father told us about the single spotlight, it was probably a marker. That helped to persuade me that he hadn’t done it. He would hardly have brought it to our attention, if so. But that seemed to suggest pot-shots from the back of the theatre. It didn’t seem to fit with a hand-to-hand encounter.’

  ‘I see. Whoever did it must have been in the fly tower at the crucial moment. Then they probably rushed on stage with the others when my father started shouting. So it could be anyone in the company – apart from Pa and the three women. But Rupert said it might have been an accident.’

  The inspector looked rueful. ‘Well, yes. I don’t believe it was for a moment but it’s going to be very difficult to prove it was murder unless, of course, I can get a confession. There is just a possibility it fell accidentally on Sir Basil. And that someone innocently hauled it back up without realising what damage it had done. But the spotlight, which unfortunately only your father remembers, seems to me an important piece of evidence.’

  ‘Wouldn’t the murderer have come back and cleaned the bolt of lightning?’

  ‘I expect he’d have liked to. But I put a man on to watch the place. The caretaker who let you in is PC Willett.’

  ‘I thought he seemed a bit brisk and efficient. Theatre staff are generally garrulous characters. It’s a lonely job so they make you stop and chat so they can tell you what they think about everything. You know, like taxi-drivers.’

  Inspector Foy sighed. ‘Probably our murderer thought the same. That was a bad mistake on my part.’

  ‘Are you going to interview everyone again?’

  ‘I shall try. But half the suspects are scattered all over the world by now. I can’t say I’m at all pleased with the way things have turned out.’

  ‘Do you mean you won’t be able to catch the murderer?’

  ‘It looks rather unlikely. We’ll go on trying, of course. We’ll go back over all the old ground and try to establish a motive. But you see the difficulty. Your usual murder is something done in the heat of the moment: husband whacks wife in a temper; jealous boyfriend stabs unfaithful lover. What we call a “domestic”. Then there are gangland killings, usually involving drugs. Sometimes there are contract killings. Occasionally there’s a madman on the loose – a psychopath who strikes at random. Paedophiles, rapists, sexual perverts – their victims have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the calculated murder of one individual by another is comparatively rare. In those cases the motive is usually money. Less frequently love or jealousy.’

  ‘Who profits by Sir Basil’s death?’

  ‘His Jack Russell terriers and Battersea Dogs’ Home. I think we can safely rule them out. There were a few small bequests to friends but nothing worth killing him for.’

  I thought of Sir Basil’s flabby cheeks, his angular body, his large bald forehead. ‘I can’t imagine anyone being jealous of his love.’

  The inspector shook his head. ‘According to his housekeeper, when not at the theatre, Sir Basil spent most of his time quietly at home with his dogs. He almost never entertained callers of either sex. I admit it’s a puzzler. Unless …’

  I waited for him to go on. ‘What?’

  ‘Unless we admit the possibility that Sir Basil was not the intended victim. That X was waiting for someone else to come on to the stage and stand on that spot. X had to keep out of sight of the wardrobe mistress and the understudies so he might not have had a clear view of things. The lighting, as we see it now – as it was on that morning – is sharply chiaroscuro. He saw a man on the marker and assumed it was his man. He let the canvas fall, bang! Only to find Sir Basil lying dead with a smashed skull and no chance of a replay.’

  I thought about it. I felt suddenly sick. ‘You mean … you mean … Pa?’ I almost whispered it.

  ‘Your father was in the habit of running through scenes on his own while waiting for rehearsals to start. He told us so himself. Probably everyone in the theatre knew that.’

  ‘But who would want to kill Pa?’

  ‘Ah! Now you’re asking. I hoped you might be able to tell me.’

  ‘Pa hasn’t any money. He’s always spent whatever he’s had. Our house is mortgaged. Our only car is Bron’s and he hasn’t finished paying for it yet. My mother’s jewellery is paste.’ The inspector did not look surprised. It occurred to me that he must have acquainted himself with our financial standing weeks ago. ‘So –’ I was reluctant to say it – ‘if it was anything, it was – probably – love.’

  I stared at the inspector’s shoes. They were black, highly polished, the laces tied into neat double knots. The list of my father’s amours was lengthy. Doubtless there were as many again that I had known nothing about.

  ‘I’m not asking you to betray him.’ Inspector Foy’s voice was patient. ‘I’ve already asked him if he could think of anyone who might be nursing jealousy or thoughts of revenge. He was very co-operative. Laudably frank, in fact.’ I bet he was, I thought. There were few things my father enjoyed more than reminiscing about his former conquests.

  ‘I understand that you might not wish – perhaps it’s unfair of me to ask you – it’s just that sometimes men aren’t very good at seeing what’s under their noses when it comes to other people’s feelings. I’ve always found women much more acute. I only ask if you’re aware of anyone who might hate your father enough to kill him.’

  ‘I don’t think there was anything between him and Marina Marlow. She only wanted the publicity.’

  ‘So he said.’

  ‘There was Patsy Pouncebox last year. But she went to New Zealand.’

  ‘She could have come back.’

  ‘But she wasn’t the type to kill anyone – if there is a type. She was neurotic but kind-hearted. Always crying, poor thing. You couldn’t help liking her, really.’

  ‘Husband?’

  ‘No. That was the trouble, I think. She hoped that Pa –’ I stopped. I had been going to say that she had hoped my father would leave my mother, which was ridiculous, when I remembered with a pinch of agony in my stomach that that was exactly what he was going t
o do. I was back in the cycle of forgetting, remembering, and then trying to come to terms with the facts.

  ‘Before Patsy it was someone called Fenella Fanshaw.’

  ‘Your father didn’t mention her. Is that significant, I wonder?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. I expect he’s just forgotten. She married soon after it broke up. There’s Fleur Kirkpatrick.’

  ‘As far as I know they met after your father was arrested.’

  ‘Of course.’ How stupid of me to forget. Misery filled me and I felt very, very tired.

  ‘He’s told me they intend to marry.’ How kind his voice was! ‘That must be difficult for you.’

  My face had become stiff. I grimaced, trying to stretch the muscles. ‘I’d better go. There’s only me to cook supper. And I need hours to do it, in case I have to throw everything away and start again.’

  He looked disappointed. ‘It was good of you to let me show off my powers of detection. I’m sorry to have kept you so long.’

  ‘Why don’t you come and have supper with us tomorrow?’ I was surprised the moment I issued the invitation and even more surprised when he said, ‘Thanks. I’d like that.’ I hadn’t made it sound very enticing, after all.

  ‘Seven thirty, then.’ I smiled and turned away to avoid seeing the sympathy in his eyes, which made me want to burst into tears.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  It was during this period of my life that the blessedness of having a job to do was brought fully home to me. Muriel and Eileen had obviously read their newspapers over the Christmas holiday for when I arrived at the office they almost curtsied. Mr Podmore, sitting behind his desk, grunted when he saw me, snorted disgustingly into his handkerchief and held out an impatient hand for my ‘copy’. I saw he had added something extra greasy, perhaps goose fat or brandy butter, to his waistcoat. His pencil ran through my beautiful sentences and arrows turned my article on its head. After he had, as far as I could see, rewritten the entire piece, he fixed his little blue lenses momentarily on my face.