Why oh why had Ruby locked the room? I could see now that it made the whole thing look far more premeditated than if we had simply abandoned the room and left the door unlocked. Someone was bound to find the key in the plant pot. They would water the palms, the soil would shift and the brass key would reveal itself. Someone must have seen Ruby hiding it.
“Happy New Year!”
I jumped out of my skin. Billy was leaning over the counter of the ticket booth, smiling at me. “Although it’s not a happy new year for poor old Mr Franklin, is it?” he added. Billy didn’t sound unduly sorrowful at Mr Franklin’s demise.
“What do you know about it?” I asked, the words tumbling out of my mouth.
“Only what’s in the papers,” he said, looking a bit taken aback. “I heard about it from Ma who heard about it from the neighbour this morning. News like that travels fast.”
“Oh, right. Sorry.” I was going to have to be careful how I reacted when people raised the topic of Mr Franklin’s death, as they were bound to do.
“Anyway, did you have a nice time at the ball?”
“It was all right.” I couldn’t meet his eye.
“Good, well then, I’d better go and get the film ready.”
“Yes. I need to sort out the tickets.”
“Right you are then.” Billy went away with a puzzled expression on his face and I felt even worse than ever.
~~~
I have no idea how I managed to get through that day. I sold tickets to customers, sure that each person who came to the ticket booth could read the guilt plastered all over my face. But people handed over their money, took their tickets and made their way into the theatre without so much as a second glance in my direction, although a few people that I knew asked if I was feeling well because I looked so pale. When the film started, I slipped into the back row of the stalls and tried to lose myself in the story, but I couldn’t concentrate on the plot and the movie failed to lift my sunken spirits.
I left the auditorium before the film ended so I could tidy the ticket booth and slip out before Billy had a chance to come downstairs. I felt bad leaving like that, I hadn’t even asked him about his trip to Whitby, but I just didn’t want to talk to anyone right then. I decided I would tell him later that I’d had a headache, which was true enough. All I wanted was to go home and hide myself away and never come out again. I dumped the newspaper I had bought that morning into a bin in the foyer and walked home, keeping my head down.
The smell of a stew bubbling on the range turned my stomach as I entered the cottage. I would have gone straight upstairs but Mother called from the parlour, “Is that you, Lilian?”
I went into the parlour where Mother and Aunt Ellie were drinking cups of tea. To my horror, Mother was reading the account of the death on the front page of the newspaper. A momentary faintness hit me and I had to steady myself against the dresser.
“Are you all right dear?” asked Aunt Ellie. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Here, sit down and have a cup of tea.” She poured me a cup from the pot and passed it to me. I thanked her and put it down on the dresser so she wouldn’t notice the trembling in my hands.
“Isn’t this shocking?” said Mother. “I’ve just been reading about what happened at the Grand Hotel on New Year’s Eve.”
“Oh?” I said.
“You must have heard about it,” said Mother, holding up the front page for me to see. “It’s the main story in the local paper. That American, Theodore Franklin, was found murdered in his hotel room. And he was so nice when we chatted to him at the cinema.”
“He must have been keeping bad company,” said Aunt Ellie, setting down her tea cup and picking up her knitting.
“Exactly what I was thinking,” said Mother, making a tutting sound with her tongue on the roof of her mouth. She turned to me. “And to think you were there that night! Did you see anything strange? You might be able to help the police with their enquiries.”
I wanted to scream at her to shut up, but instead I swallowed the words that were rising in my throat and took the newspaper she thrust in my direction. I gazed once again on the hateful features of Theodore Franklin. That face would haunt me for the rest of my life.
“No, I don’t think I saw anything,” I faltered. “There were so many people there. I really can’t remember.” This was torture. I wished I hadn’t come into the parlour but had gone straight up to my room.
“Nothing’s the same since the War,” said Mother. “There’s far more crime on the streets these days. It isn’t safe to go out at night.” It was a familiar theme, and one that I had heard time and again since the peace. “Well, are you going to take your coat off or are you going to wear it all evening?”
“What? Oh, sorry.” I fumbled with the buttons on my coat.
“Are you sure you’re feeling all right?” Aunt Ellie came and stood beside me, putting a hand on my forehead. “You look a bit flushed. Are you going down with something?”
“I’m fine.” It came out a little abrupt and I was sorry. I’d have to get myself under control, or I really would fall ill with the strain of it all. “I’m still a bit tired, that’s all. I think I’ll go and lie down for a while if you don’t mind.”
“Yes, well, if you will burn the candle at both ends,” said Mother, shaking her head at me.
Later that evening, when Mother and Aunt Ellie were getting ready for bed, I crept downstairs and retrieved the copy of the newspaper from the parlour. Although seeing it all in black and white horrified me, at the same time I felt compelled to read the details all over again, unable to go to sleep before I had satisfied myself that there was absolutely nothing in the story that could incriminate me. When I had finished I cut out the story from the front page and hid it in the bottom compartment of my jewellery box. The rest of the paper, I stuffed into the stove.
~~~
The next day, on my way into work, I bought the morning edition of the newspaper. I couldn’t help myself. I needed to know what had been discovered and who, if anyone, was suspected. Had they found the room key in the Egyptian vase? Had someone seen me and Lilian leaving the ballroom with Mr Franklin? The trail of clues leading to me as the murderess seemed obvious to anyone who cared to look. I had a self-destructive need to know the worst.
I had slept badly again, not drifting off until the early hours of the morning and then dreaming that I was locked in a room at the Grand Hotel with a bloodied Mr Franklin who had come back to life like Frankenstein’s Monster. When I came downstairs I must have looked like death on legs because Mother tried to persuade me to stay at home, convinced I was ill. But I refused. Although part of me wanted to hide myself away, I didn’t think I could stand to stay at home with Mother and Aunt Ellie fussing over me all the time. At least Billy was away in London, having gone to his interview. I didn’t want him seeing me like this.
When I arrived at the Futurist Mr Thompson was showing Billy’s temporary replacement around the building. Mr Thompson introduced us but I forget the man’s name. Ron or Rod or Rob, something like that. He had come from a cinema in Leeds to cover for a couple of days whilst Billy was away. I greeted him, probably in a peremptory fashion which he must have found rude, then I shut myself in the ticket office and started to read the paper.
This time the front page had a more detailed account of who Theodore Franklin was, his family history and so on. He was, according to the paper, not just a distinguished movie director (there was a list of his credits, none of which I recognised) but also a businessman with interests in Chicago, although the writer was a little hazy on what exactly those interests were. Theodore Franklin, it seemed, had come to Britain to invest in the British movie business and to search for new talent for his films. The writer of the article claimed it would have been a great opportunity for a young British actress who wanted a career on the big screen. I felt they were making him out to be some kind of saint. He had been married three times but none of his wives had stayed with him. That didn�
�t surprise me.
Mr Thompson limped across the foyer then, having directed Ron or Rod or Rob to the projection room. He paused to glance in my direction, a thoughtful look on his face, before continuing on his way to the office. He hadn’t said anything about the demise of his investor and business partner so I had no idea what he thought of the matter. I quickly folded the newspaper, set it aside and prepared the tickets for that day’s showing.
Once the customers started arriving, I sold them tickets, glad of the routine nature of my job which didn’t require me to think much, just to get on with it. After the last customer had gone through to the auditorium, the double doors burst open and Ruby waltzed in. She was dressed in a fur-trimmed coat and gloves with a new cloche hat set at a jaunty angle. Her lips were bright red and her cheeks were pink, either from rouge or the cold, I couldn’t tell. This was the first time I’d seen her since the night of the ball and I marvelled at her ability to look so stunning when everything was falling apart.
She put her hands on the counter and leaned towards me. “Have you read the papers?” She was slightly out of breath, as if she’d run to the cinema.
“Yes,” I said glumly, pointing to this morning’s copy.
“Can you believe he had three wives?”
“He was obviously good at conning people,” I said bitterly.
To her credit, Ruby looked momentarily abashed. Then she regained her self-control and said, “The police inspector is going to interview everyone who was at the ball.”
“I know,” I said, remembering what I’d read yesterday.
“So we need to get our story straight. We don’t want to contradict each other.”
“Right.” I wished she would keep her voice down. Mr Thompson could have walked out of his office at any moment and heard her.
Ruby leaned close to the glass. “Don’t worry, he’ll never suspect a couple of females.”
I wasn’t so sure.
“What time do you finish this evening?” she asked.
“Six o’clock.”
“Come back to my place, can you do that? We’ll decide what to tell the Inspector.”
I nodded miserably. What else was there to do?
~~~
Julia opened the door when I rang the bell at Queen’s Terrace. “Ruby’s in her room,” she said as I stepped inside. “Did you enjoy the ball at the Grand Hotel?”
Her question caught me off guard, and for a moment I couldn’t answer her. But she was looking at me with such eager anticipation that I mumbled something about having a terrific time. Then I climbed the stairs to Ruby’s room with a growing sense of foreboding. How long could we go on like this, pretending that nothing had happened?
Ruby’s room was as messy as ever. Clothes were strewn over the bed, tumbling onto the floor. The dress she had worn to the party was hanging off the back of a chair as if she might decide, on the spur of the moment, to go out in it. I was never again going to wear the dress I had worn to the party. I had scrunched it up and stuffed it into the back of the wardrobe, out of sight. When I had an opportunity I was going to burn it in the kitchen stove. If Mother or Aunt Ellie asked me where it was, I planned to tell them it had ripped with all the dancing and I had thrown it out for scrap. How devious I was becoming.
I cleared a small space for myself on the edge of the bed and sat down. Ruby leaned against the window sill and lit a cigarette. I waited for her to speak since this had been her idea.
“So we have to get our story straight,” she said, blowing out a stream of smoke.
“What are we going to say?”
“We have to admit we were there and that we talked to Theodore --” I winced at the easy way Ruby said his name as if he was still alive and kicking “-- and it’s quite possible that other people saw us leaving the ballroom with him, so we can’t deny that. We should say that he took us to his room, we did a quick audition for his new film and then we left.”
“But no one saw him alive after he left the ballroom with us. Doesn’t that make us the prime suspects?”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Ruby matter-of-factly. “We did the audition. You played Portia, you know that speech about mercy or whatever it is. I’ll say I played the mad Ophelia, and then we left.”
“Won’t the Inspector think it odd that we left the ball so quickly after doing these supposed auditions?”
“Why should it? We’re two young women who came to the ball on our own. Tell the Inspector your mother wanted you home before midnight.”
“But what about you?”
“I’ll tell him I couldn’t let you go home on your own, so I went with you.”
I put a hand over my eyes. “It’s all such a mess. Maybe we, I mean I, should just tell the inspector the truth. I’ll say it was self-defence, which it was.”
With a shake of her head Ruby pushed herself off the window sill and came to sit beside me, putting an arm around my shoulder. “We’ve already talked about this,” she said. She spoke slowly as if she were addressing a dim-witted child. “If you tell the Inspector the truth, you risk being tried for murder, or manslaughter at the very least. And if you’re arrested, I’ll be arrested too for conspiracy. Look at me. We just have to keep our powder dry and sooner or later the whole matter will go away. Trust me.”
I so much wanted to believe that Ruby was right.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Dan rang the bell at Tollergate and was dismayed when Andrea opened the door. He’d hoped Rose would be ready and they could just go straight to Scarlett’s party, but now it looked as if he was going to have to make small talk with his girlfriend’s mother.
All week at school the talk had been about Scarlett’s party and Dan was thoroughly sick of it. He just wanted to get this evening over and done with. He didn’t have a good feeling about it. Anything that Scarlett Denvers was involved in usually meant bad news. The only thing that Dan was interested in (apart from seeing Rose in this amazing new dress - Sophie had dropped hints that it was stunning) was seeing whether Scarlett’s new boyfriend really was the guy on the motorbike. If so, Dan was not going to miss this opportunity to have it out with him.
“Oh, it’s you,” said Andrea, as if she had been hoping someone else might be escorting her daughter to the party. “She’s not ready yet. You’d better come in and wait for her.”
“Thanks,” said Dan, stepping into the tiny front room. A log fire was blazing in the grate and Dan started to feel hot under the collar, Andrea’s frosty welcome notwithstanding.
“So how is school?” asked Andrea. She didn’t invite him to sit and he stood in the centre of the room feeling awkward.
“It’s fine, thanks.” He could hear footsteps overhead and wished Rose would hurry up so they could be out of there.
“And how are...things at home?”
Dan hesitated. She must know his dad had gone to prison for his part in the drug smuggling racket that had been going on over the summer. It was what had landed him and Rose in the yacht at the mercy of a gang of armed criminals.
“Everything’s good,” he said. What else was there to say? Dad’s a convicted criminal, Mum’s knocking back way too much wine and, oh, we had a burglary the other week, but otherwise life’s hunky-dory.
“Well, as long as there’s no trouble tonight,” said Andrea pointedly. Dan got the impression he was being given one last chance to prove that he wasn’t a complete liability where her daughter was concerned. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked. A log in the fireplace sparked.
“Hi there.” To Dan’s immense relief Rose appeared in the doorway and Dan’s jaw practically hit the floor. She looked eye-poppingly stunning. She was wearing a figure-hugging purple dress that clung to her perfect body like a second skin. She’d put her hair up and done her make-up so that her eyes looked twice as big as normal. He was desperate to take her in his arms and was only prevented from doing so by the presence of Andrea who hovered at the corner of his
vision like a school matron.
“You’ll need a coat,” said Andrea. “That dress isn’t going to keep you warm.”
“Don’t worry, I have a coat,” said Rose, holding up a black jacket.
“Don’t be late back,” called Andrea.
“I won’t,” said Rose.
Outside Dan pulled her towards him and kissed her on the lips. “You look amazing.”
“Not too bad yourself.”
They wrapped their arms around each other and set off for the Futurist nightclub.
~~~
The builders’ boards had gone and the old 1920’s cinema had been transformed into a vibrant new venue. Rose and Dan looked up at a huge LED screen on the front of the building across which the words THE FUTURIST flashed in a riot of psychedelic colours and patterns. Two guys who looked like they played rugby for the national team were standing either side of the doorway dressed in black polo necks, each with black shades and radio mikes running into an ear piece. The Futurist might be Scarborough’s hottest new club, but tonight was a private party and the bouncers were refusing to admit a couple of foul-mouthed teenage girls and their lager-touting boyfriends who were already well on the way to being rat-arsed.
Scarlett had issued all invitees with a yellow wrist band so that the bouncers would know who to let in and who to turn away. The four trying their luck at the moment were definitely not invited. Rose and Dan waited whilst one of the girls, a peroxide blond in a strapless dress the size of a postage stamp, hurled a stream of abuse at the bouncers that would have made a sailor blush. The bouncers stood firm, the girl’s language having no effect on their humourless demeanours.
“Aw, come on,” said her friend, an overweight redhead in a black mini-skirt that revealed a pair of dimpled thighs. “This place looks crap anyway.” The girls linked arms with their boyfriends, both of whom had bad cases of acne, and staggered off into the night.
Scarborough Ball (Scarborough Fair Book 2) Page 18
