More Deaths Than One

by Marjorie Eccles

  “Enough to have risked what I did for you,” he reminded her, stung.

  Suddenly she sounded weary, unlike Georgina. “I’m grateful for that, Tim, I really am. I won’t ever forget it but” – and her voice grew cold again – “it was as much for your sake as mine, so don’t let’s get too sentimental.”

  The March morning was clear and cold and bright and the naked branches of a Kanzan cherry were black against a sky like stretched blue silk. The buds were fat on an ancient magnolia that leaned against the wall. A blackbird regarded them with head on one side, then flew away in sudden panic, low above the ground, chattering.

  He began to speak again and she wondered with despair how she was going to be able to live with herself.

  EIGHT

  “That key will lead thee to a pretty secret.”

  THE GAIETY THEATRE was situated in Stockwell Lane, being part of a larger building, itself squashed into a narrow strip of land between the river and the road, with very little room either side. Officially this building was the Lavenstock Community Centre, because as well as housing the small theatre, it contained a large hall where dances and rock concerts, the occasional symphony concert and wedding receptions could be held, and smaller rooms where various local clubs such as the Camera Club and the local Writers’ Circle held their meetings. Bingo was played there every Wednesday afternoon, and the premises were used for a toddlers’ playgroup each Tuesday and Thursday morning. But its official name had never caught on; it would always be known locally as the Gaiety simply because the old theatre had been called that – the Gaiety, the one that had been pulled down to make way for the new shopping precinct, and still loudly mourned as a lost architectural gem by the Victorian Society who’d faded to save it. The inherited name of the present one bore no relation to its appearance, which was stark and modern and always reminded Mayo of nothing so much as an aircraft hangar.

  Boards outside the box office informed the public that the next performance by the Thespians would be The Changeling, a Jacobean tragedy by Middleton and Rowley, a billing which caused Mayo to raise his eyebrows. They were only an amateur company, after all. But ambitious, seemingly.

  “Oh, I don’t know, they’re supposed to have been going great guns since the Community Arts Director was appointed,” Kite replied when he said as much.

  “So that’s why Doc Ison’s been pressing me so hard to subscribe to a season ticket.”

  “He’s been on at me too. Fat chance we’d have of getting here regularly! Anyway, it’s not much in my line.”

  “This Cockayne’s supposed to have been a professional actor, I gather?”

  “Sort of. You know you’ve heard his name somewhere, you feel sure you’ve seen him on the telly, only you can’t just remember in what ...”

  Kite went to try the door, while Mayo studied the prominently placed photograph of the Arts Director ... Cockayne in typically flamboyant actorish stance, studied and self-aware, a comma of dark hair over his forehead, dark expressive eyes, his mouth slightly petulant. Handsome features, but basically unremarkable, the face of a thousand juvenile leads. Mayo wondered how long ago it had been taken, how much it resembled the present Ashleigh Cockayne. Well, he was about to find out.

  “It’s locked,” Kite said. “Let’s try the stage door.”

  That too proved to be locked, but there was still one more entrance at the back of the building they could try, where a terrace was cantilevered out over the river, with steps down to it and doors leading directly into the bar. Rounding the corner in order to try the other entrance, they came upon a builders’ pick-up truck and a board propped against the wall announcing that Ron Prosser (Lavenstock) Ltd. was at work.

  It seemed they had walked straight into an argument. Detectives both, they automatically came to a halt and listened to what was going on. The row appeared to be between Prosser – if he was the burly individual perched on a ladder and wearing a donkey jacket and woolly hat – and a small woman clad entirely in black. Her tiny, tapering figure, generous about the bust, slender on the hips, was wrapped in an outsize, hairy black poncho from which protruded two slender, elegant, black-stockinged legs finishing in high-heeled black suede shoes. “But it’s too bad of you to disappear for a week, then choose to start again at the only time we have a daytime rehearsal!” she was declaring vehemently, perfectly colloquially, though with a slight accent which Mayo couldn’t immediately place. “We can hardly hear ourselves speak ... are you listening to what I’m telling you?”

  Her hair, densely and improbably black, since the lady must have been sixty if she was a day, was scraped back like a ballerina’s from a face which heavy make-up and a bright crimson slash of lipstick had made into a clown’s. The man on the ladder regarded it imperturbably.

  “Yo’ want this job finishing, missis, yo’ll have to put up with us,” he returned, unmoved. “Think yersels lucky we’m working at all of a Saturday – which we shouldn’t’a been only some clever dick’s kept nicking me tackle. Fust one o’ me ladders, next me gas bottle and a roll o’ me roofing felt. Buggers round here’ll tek anythink what isn’t cemented down!”

  “What’s up, gaffer?” came a disembodied voice, followed by the face of a youth with a bleached, bristly head appearing over the parapet of the flat roof.

  The man on the ladder and the woman ignored the interruption, the latter throwing out her hands widely and expressively at the incomprehensible chaos of builders’ necessaries scattered around. Hosepipes. Wet cement. The ladders and a propane gas cylinder and a roll of roofing felt which presumably had been either retrieved or replaced.

  “Perhaps if you didn’t leave your things lying around to be tripped over they wouldn’t be stolen,” she declared, “and then you wouldn’t have to work at the weekend, causing so much disturbance.”

  The builder put a foot on the ladder and gave her a long, considering look. “Sod off, missis,” he said without rancour and began to climb, slowly and without haste. “Now, Justin, what yo’ doing up there, besides minding other folks’ business?”

  The woman below looked savage and quite capable of replying in similar vein but then, her outrageously overdone costume earrings practically threatening to overbalance her, she spun round on her heel and began to march off. Mayo, who had never before seen this action performed outside the pages of fiction, watched fascinated. Halfway to the stage door she stopped abruptly, apparently only just becoming aware of the presence of the two watchers. “Yes? Was there something you were wanting?”

  Annoyance put aside, she smiled at them, a melon-slice smile, and was transformed. Beautiful she was not at first or even second sight, but one might never be sure. What the French call jolie-laide, Mayo thought, and recognized that was what her accent was, French. “Can I help you?”

  Mayo explained that they were looking for Mr. Ashleigh Cockayne, but it seemed they were due for a disappointment. “I’m afraid he’s had to go to London rather urgently. Perhaps I can be of assistance. I’m standing in for him while he’s away. My name is Lili Anand.”

  Mayo hesitated. He wasn’t sure what this woman’s position was and how much to tell her. She waited without speaking, watching him with bright, intelligent black eyes.

  “We’re police officers investigating the death of Mr. Rupert Fleming. I understand he was a friend of Mr. Cockayne’s.”

  “Ah. Yes, I thought that was why you were here. Poor Rupert. Yes, he and Ashleigh were acquainted.” The wind whipped round the corner, blowing the centrefold of last week’s Advertiser into the river, flapping at the edges of the polythene under the builder’s wet pile of cement. Lili Anand shivered suddenly and huddled herself deeper into her poncho. “Come inside where it’s warmer. There’s a rehearsal going on, but we shouldn’t be long. We’ve nearly finished, and if you don’t mind waiting, we can talk afterwards. I don’t want to interrupt them. They’ve given up their Saturday afternoon after all, and they don’t get paid for it.”

  Following her int
o the darkened auditorium, they slid into seats a few rows from the front. The stage was bare, the actors were in casual working clothes, mostly jeans and sweaters, and there was as yet no scenery in evidence. It wasn’t easy to understand what they were up to on the stage, but after a while Mayo began to gather the threads. Powerful stuff, seemingly, a play full of dark obsessions, capable of degenerating into overdone melodrama if not handled properly, he suspected. A sombre and sinister story of intrigue and murder committed by an ill-favoured serving man at the instigation of his mistress against those who were an obstruction to what she desired. Kite shifted in his seat, nudged Mayo, whispered in his ear and nodded towards the stage.

  Mayo nodded back to show he’d noticed too, and for a while continued to try to get to grips with the plot. But at last he abandoned it as a bad job and concentrated on the two principal actors. The man who took the character of the ugly de Flores (an athletic, handsome bloke who would presumably be suitably uglified for the performance) was acting his socks off, his intention obviously being not to be upstaged by the woman he was playing against. Didn’t he realize when he was beaten? He hadn’t a hope, poor devil. She would always outshine anyone else on stage because, apart from the stunning impact of her physical presence, she knew what she was about, she could really and truly act.

  He should have known, Mayo told himself. She was born to it. How far had she been playing a part when she’d told him she barely knew Rupert Fleming? Was she yet another of his women? Along with Georgina, Bryony, Lois?

  He gave her his attention again, but nothing in her demeanour gave him any clue. Whether she was aware of their presence in the audience it was impossible to say, but if so, she certainly wasn’t letting it affect her performance. The beautiful Mrs. Susan Salisbury had totally become Beatrice Joanna, a woman committed to evil, whispering and entreating her besotted servant to perjure his soul for her, and now refusing to pay the price of herself. Mayo, bedazzled, followed her movements, light as thistledown, listened to her voice, clear and innocent as an angel’s: “Thy language is so bold and vicious, I cannot see which way I can forgive it with any modesty.”

  And de Flores’s answer: “A woman dipped in blood, and talk of modesty?”

  “She has the edge on them all, hasn’t she, sir?” a voice next to him whispered, and turning, Mayo saw that Janet Lindsay, whom he had thought to be in Crete or Rhodes, had slipped into the seat beside him. “She used to be a professional actress.”

  Unsurprised, Mayo reflected that the only wonder was that she had abandoned what must have been a spectacular future for a man like Tim Salisbury and the life of a farmer’s wife, albeit a prosperous one. No wonder she had turned to the Thespians, no doubt in an endeavour to combat the dullness. And perhaps to Rupert Fleming? She had given him to understand that their acquaintance had been of the slightest, but she must have known him better than that, surely, from his frequent visits to the Gaiety? He had put one of his men onto finding out what he could about that putative relationship, but nothing had been turned up.

  On stage, de Flores was declaiming: “... and made you one with me.”

  “With thee, foul villain?”

  “Yes, my fair murderess ...”

  “Try that once more,” called Lili. “With slightly less sibilance, de Flores, if you please. We wouldn’t want to go over the top, darling, now would we?”

  Mayo turned to W.P.C. Lindsay and spoke to her in a low voice. “If you’re not needed for a while, come outside, please. I’d like a word with you.”

  “I’m spare at the moment. I’ve been on the book, but they’re word perfect by now so they don’t need me,” Janet whispered back, and he followed her as she slid from her seat.

  Lili Anand saw them go from the corner of her eye but forced herself to keep her attention concentrated on the stage. When the scene came to an end she reluctantly wound up the rehearsal for that day. If she could have prolonged it, she would have done so. She’d known that, sooner or later, the police would be here and though she’d prepared what she was going to say to them, she was frightened at the thought of going through with it.

  She’d begun to wish, these last few days, that she’d never come to Lavenstock, that the chance meeting with Ashleigh in Piccadilly had never happened. They hadn’t seen each other for years, not since they’d worked together at the Winter Gardens in Malvern, and that had been more years ago than she was willing to admit. She’d always had a specially soft spot for Ashleigh. He enjoyed being mothered by her, and relished the boost her admiration gave to his fragile ego when he was feeling low, while he endeared himself to her by listening amiably to her stories of past triumphs and successes. Not that there’d been so many he hadn’t heard them repeated over and over again. But he’d never so much as hinted that he found the repetition dull. All actors knew about the need for reassurance. He’d always been a good type, easy-going, if not particularly strong-minded.

  He had been. Past tense. Lili wasn’t so sure about either quality, now. People, like time and circumstances, change. The years hadn’t brought Ashleigh the success he thought was due to him, the West End roles or the bland, television comedy parts he knew he would have excelled in, given the chance. He was thirty-seven, and he’d grown fed up of waiting. The recognition which he felt had always eluded him, the setbacks and disappointments, far from being character-forming as such things were supposed to be, seemed to have given him only a sense of grievance, a chip on the shoulder.

  But when she’d met him in London and admitted that times were hard, and becoming harder, that she was due to lose the flat where she lived and that her agent hadn’t had an offer of a part for her for over a year, he’d immediately turned up trumps and suggested she share the tiny house he had in Lavenstock. Actors were like that, generous when they were on the up, sticking together when they were down. As long as it suited them. She could help out with the productions at the Community Centre if she felt so inclined, he told her, and cook him those marvellous meals she was famous for. She’d jumped at the chance, though she was warned there could be no pay. But she had her pension now – a secret she kept well guarded – and as a Frenchwoman, though long-exiled, cooking came to her as easily as breathing. It was a small price to pay to be back in the world of theatre, even amateur theatre, and however peripherally.

  Where was he?

  She’d told the police he’d had to go to London suddenly and she was prepared to stick to her story for as long as she thought it might help him, which might not be for very much longer now, but that wasn’t what had happened. The truth was he’d simply disappeared. She knew without being told that it was something to do with Rupert Fleming and an enormous fear clutched at her heart now as she sat where she was in the stalls, giving the police sergeant the names of the cast in case they might want to interview them, feeling every one of her sixty-four years.

  She’d known that man Fleming was trouble the moment she met him. He’d blown into the theatre like an ill wind, or rather insinuated himself in, sneaking and ill-natured, like a chilling spiteful draught, cooling the warmth and good humour of the production, spoiling the enjoyment of those taking part. Trouble for Ashleigh also, though when she’d mentioned this – cautiously, obliquely – Ashleigh’s furious silence had left her with the distinct impression that she could mind her own business or pack her bags and go. That’s what she meant about his having changed. He’d never have reacted like that in the old days. She’d grown more and more sure the two men were involved in something underhand together. All those late-night sessions at the theatre. And what about Trish? She worried about that a lot.

  And then, Ashleigh had simply vanished, without a word to her or anyone else as far as she knew, and the next day Rupert had been found dead. There was a sick, churned-up feeling in her stomach whenever she thought about it, which was most of the time.

  Janet Lindsay took Mayo with her into one of the small, empty dressing rooms back-stage, where she switched on a small electric fire
. “I only got back from holiday yesterday, sir,” she explained. “And I didn’t hear about Rupert Fleming until I got to the theatre. I rang the station immediately to speak to you and they said you were on your way here, so I waited for you. I’d like to help if I can.”

  “Aren’t you still on leave?”

  “That’s all right, sir. I’m at a bit of a loose end, actually.”

  Mayo smiled. “If you put it that way, thank you – I understand Fleming had connections here and it’ll be useful if you can tell me what you know about him, put me in the picture.”

  “I’ll do my best, sir, but there isn’t much. He wasn’t a man who gave out a lot about himself. The person who’d know most about him is Ashleigh Cockayne. Fleming seemed to hang around here quite a lot, sometimes during rehearsals, but mostly he came along as they were ending. I couldn’t make out why. It was nothing to do with me, of course, nothing to do with anybody, he might simply have been waiting to go out with Ashleigh for a drink or something ... and if it hadn’t been for Trish I’d have tried to forget it.”

  “Who’s Trish?”

  “Diaphanta, the waiting woman in the play who also gets murdered. The red-haired girl, Trish Lambert. Did you notice her, sir?”

  He’d have been blind if he hadn’t. A young girl, seventeen or eighteen at a guess, bursting out of her skin-tight jeans like a ripe fig, giving out provocative sexual signals from under her eyelashes. A taut bottom that ought to be thoroughly spanked. A long fall of shining red-gold hair.

  “Red at the moment,” Janet amended thoughtfully. “She keeps changing the colour and the style.”

  “Why were you worried about her? Was Fleming pestering her?” Though the girl was unlikely to have let that bother her overmuch, he’d have bet, from the little he’d seen of her.

  “No, at least I don’t think so, but you could never tell with Fleming ... he always had some woman or other in tow, different women, you know. I had the impression he used to string them along and then drop them suddenly when he got fed up. But I don’t know about Trish. She’s still at school, but she wants to act professionally. She’s not bad, really, for her age, I suppose. She’ll never be anywhere near as good as Susan, mind, but if determination will get her anywhere, she’ll succeed. Although in some ways, she’s rather a silly girl.”