“Right, well, I’ll be off,” the medical examiner announced. “I should have more for you by Monday,” he told the inspector. “I’ll let you know then when we can release the body.”
“Thank you.” Fiske turned to Rex as the man left the stage by the back. “The first thing we checked for was any visible blood on anyone who’d been back here, and we’re testing for gun residue on hands and sleeves, including the victim’s.”
“The butler was wearing white gloves,” Rex recalled aloud. “And the lady’s companion, Robin Busket, had on leather riding gloves, and Miss Marple a pair of fingerless lace mittens, which I noticed as she knitted away onstage.”
“Observant of you. I didn’t see the play, of course. None of the actors are wearing gloves now.”
“I was trying to determine the time period by the costumes. It was a bit of a hodgepodge.”
“Of course, nothing at this point precludes the possibility that Miss Chase turned the gun on herself.” Fiske’s craggy features softened. “Either way, it’s a terrible blow for her mother. It seems Cassie lived at home and helped take care of her.”
A good reason for the lass not to have taken her own life, Rex rather thought, adding it to his list of reservations. However, he knew nothing about the victim beyond her brief bio and what he had seen of her playing Lady Naomi—portrayed as a wilful young woman fiercely loyal in love. How this comported with Cassie’s real nature, he had yet to ascertain; all being well.
“Shall we?” The inspector led Rex back off the stage and down the polished wood steps.
The noise in the hall had increased in volume as people responded to questions from the police and talked in groups among themselves. Those who had brought flowers to present at the finale now lay them at the edge of the stage.
A pert blonde in a short grey skirt and a multi-hued striped top confronted Fiske, holding a smartphone up to his face. “I’m Cindy Freeman from the Derby Gazette.”
The inspector declined an interview. He gave Rex his card and strode up the aisle towards his sergeant.
The reporter turned on the Scotsman. “Any comments from you, sir?”
“Did you know the victim, by any chance?” Rex asked. “You’re about her age.”
The young woman’s eyes widened. “Not well,” she faltered, clearly taken aback by the question. “I mean, we were at school together, but Cassie was a year ahead. She always had a major role in the school play. I really can’t believe she’s dead!” Ms. Freeman tucked a short lock of hair behind her ear. “I only came to review the play for my paper. The features editor is now insisting I get a story. This could be a big break for me, but it doesn’t seem right, somehow,” she added, mostly, it seemed, for appearance’s sake.
“Och, you’re just doing your job.”
“Are you a colleague of Inspector Fiske’s? I saw you go up to the stage with him.”
“I’m a barrister, an advocate as we call them in Scotland, but I have an interest in solving murders as well as prosecuting those who commit them. I don’t know much more than anyone else at this point, and even if I did, I would not talk to the media about it,” Rex added with a kindly smile.
“But you saw the body?” the young woman persisted with a catch in her voice, lifting the phone closer to his face.
“Aye, I did. She looks lovely even in death.”
“Can I at least quote you on that?”
“If you must, but I didn’t see anything amiss during the play.”
“I found out from the writer of Peril at Pinegrove Hall that the scream was part of the play, but that the shot wasn’t.”
“She told us the same thing.”
“Could I get your full name?”
Rex complied and wished her the best with the story and with her journalistic career, hoping she would not overstate his importance in the case. He found Helen waiting for him by their chairs in the front row.
“Was it gruesome up there?” she asked with a sympathetic frown.
“Not so much gruesome as unreal. In fact, it almost looked staged. Or perhaps it was just an effect of the costume and setting.”
“It’s tragic, isn’t it, especially when you consider that her mother was in the audience? I’m sure Cassie Chase didn’t kill herself. Who would do that to their mother, especially since she’s confined to a wheelchair?”
“That’s what I thought. What’s been going on here?”
“The officer asked if I had seen anyone slip out from behind the curtains after the shot went off, which I didn’t, and whom I know from the play, and if I could vouch for the person sitting next to me, you included. I told him that one spectator in our row had got up during the play and returned about five minutes later, but that was halfway through the act. I suppose they’re checking to see if anyone didn’t return before the interval. The ticket attendant was in the lobby and didn’t see anyone come in from outside after the play started.”
“Who told you that?”
“He was talking to the woman behind us, the one who was complaining about you obstructing her view,” Helen murmured, since the lady in question was still in her seat. “Did you learn anything from Inspector Fiske?”
“Aye, he’s been very amenable so far.”
“That’s good.” Helen glanced towards the back of the hall. “His subordinate is questioning the cast and stagehands.”
“So I see. I think I’ll go and take a wee look. Are you all right here for a few minutes?”
“Of course.”
The cast members, along with two men in matching tee-shirts and jeans, were assembled in the far corner by the window. Penny stood among them, holding an animated conversation with “Hercule Poirot,” whom Rex could see, as he drew closer, was heavily made-up with black eyeliner, pencilled eyebrows, and reddened lips—reminding him of a vaudeville actor.
The long-limbed young man with light brown hair who had played the seductive Henry Chalmers sat weeping in a chair, his face in his hands, while a teary-eyed Miss Marple draped a consoling arm around his shoulders. She had removed her white wig to reveal fading chestnut hair cut in a no-nonsense style, but her lace-trimmed dress in pale blue moiré silk gave her away.
Sherlock Holmes and Lord Peter Wimsey, who had taken off his false nose, lounged despondently against the back wall. The bespectacled Father Brown, cross-legged on the floor in his cassock, dazedly thumbed his phone. A nondescript man, other than having a noticeable overbite, he could have been in his thirties or forties.
Dorkins the butler awkwardly hugged Aunt Clara, who had switched her calf-length black skirt for a pair of purple corduroys and unpinned her dark mane. Rex could not tell if the grey streaks were natural, but either way, Susan Richardson was younger than her character. Rex noticed she kept looking over at Trey Atkins, and there was a depth of feeling in those green eyes. Was it maternal?
The ungainly woman with short, crimped auburn hair who had played her companion conversed with the solicitor by the open window while smoking a cigarette, one hand tucked under her armpit as though she were cold, despite the mild May evening gradually fading outside over the grounds.
The question of who among them had been front-stage when Cassie Chase was shot featured uppermost in Rex’s mind as he reviewed each suspect in turn.
four
Rex caught the inspector likewise eying the actors, and the distraught young man in particular. Taking advantage of the fact that Fiske was not currently speaking to anyone, he sauntered up to him, hands resting in the pockets of his brushed cotton jacket.
“How was his acting?” the inspector asked, without withdrawing his gaze from the man who had played Henry Chalmers.
“He hardly had any lines in the first act. He just had to act moony. He’s after Lady Naomi’s fortune, by all accounts, and is a bit of a dandy, but she is naïvely and hopelessly in love, and won’t listen
to reason. That’s about the gist of it.”
“I don’t think it required a lot of acting on their part. They were going steady in real life.”
“Ah, I did wonder.” Rex nodded thoughtfully. “That would explain his state of mind now.”
The young man, as though sensing he was the topic of conversation, glanced up from his spread hands which had covered his face. He was possessed of regular, if rather sharp, features and lightly freckled fair skin, the whites of his eyes stained red from tears. The lilac silk cravat hung loose about his slender neck. Rex followed the rest of his costume down to his burnt-orange brogues buffed to a mirror shine.
“Trey Atkins, twenty-seven, works in an architect’s office,” Fiske filled Rex in from his notebook. “I’ll give him a couple of minutes to collect himself.”
“I have a son close in age,” Rex said pensively, hoping for sentimental reasons that the young actor was not responsible in any way for Cassie Chase’s death. However, he knew that Trey’s close relationship with the victim would make him a prime suspect in a murder investigation. The depth of emotion the lad was displaying was revealing, as well as affecting. That there was a love parallel between the play and real life made the case doubly intriguing.
Rex spotted Helen talking to Penny in a back row of seats, her chair turned sideways in the aisle. Leaving the inspector to get on with his work, he went to join the two women. Those spectators who had been questioned by police were trickling through the double doors, and the crowd in the hall was thinning out slowly. The sound of voices had dwindled to a steady hum, emanating mainly from the far corner of the hall, where the main witnesses were still being interviewed at length.
“Cassie was an only child and her dad passed on when she was eight,” Penny was telling his wife, who was good at lending a sympathetic ear.
Rex sat down beside Penny and waited for a pause in the conversation. “Inspector Fiske told me Cassie and Trey Atkins were an item,” he said, with a slight query in his voice.
Penny gazed down at the twisted wad of damp tissues in her hands. “I guessed as much, but they played it down, at least during rehearsals.”
“Nice lad?”
“The best. The sort you’d want your daughter to be going out with. Trey got on with everybody involved in the play.”
“Did everyone else get on?”
“Oh, yes. There wasn’t any friction, if that’s what you mean; at least not between the cast. I’m sure a lot of backstabbing goes on in the professional acting world, but not here. I wish you could have seen the rest of the play,” Penny told Helen. “We video recorded the dress rehearsal, if you’d like to watch it.”
“I’d love to.”
“So would I,” Rex said, significantly more interested in the play in the wake of the tragedy, much as he wished the outcome could have been different. The recording might help give him a better feel for the case. “You said there was no friction between the cast, yet you implied there was some elsewhere …”
Penny gave a light shrug of her shoulders, clad in the black cocktail dress, which Rex could not help but reflect could be one of mourning. “It was nothing, really,” she answered. “Just a bit of tension between Ron and Tony Giovanni, the director.”
“The tall man in the bow-tie who announced the accident,” Rex stated for the sake of confirmation. “I haven’t seen him around since.”
“He looks rather like an actor, I thought,” Helen put in. “And such an operatic name!”
“A lovely man,” Penny agreed. “But too shy to perform onstage.”
Rex recalled that Tony Giovanni had appeared very flustered, but he had put it down at the time to shock rather than nerves.
“He teaches art at the local primary school,” Penny told them, and then confided, “He invited me to dinner once, but nothing came of it.”
“Why?” Helen asked, always curious about personal relationships. “You have teaching and drama in common.”
“I’m not sure, exactly. He’s charming and well-mannered, and all that, but very much a bachelor. I can’t really understand why, with his looks. In any case, he didn’t ask me out again. I think, if truth be told, he was rather sweet on Cassie, understandably enough. She was a beautiful young woman, without any of those airs that sometimes come with beauty. But it would have been a May-September romance, as Tony is almost fifty, and as Rex mentioned, it seems Cassie was involved with Trey, which was a far more suitable relationship.”
“Getting back to his working relationship with the producer … ” Rex intervened before the women could become too sidetracked. “What happened there?”
“Oh, nothing much. Tony, as director and prop-master, was responsible for the creative side of things. Ron took care of the business end, but there was some overlap. For instance, Tony designed the posters and programmes, but Ron had them printed. In fact, Andrew—Andrew Forsythe, who plays Lord Peter Wimsey—he helped with that as he works in a publishing firm. Ron and Tony have been a huge asset, and I was able to give each a small stipend from the grant I received from the arts council.”
“Penny won a prize for Peril at Pinegrove Hall and was awarded funds to mount the production,” Helen explained proudly to Rex on the playwright’s behalf.
“It wasn’t much,” Penny hastened to add. “Just enough to cover expenses, like the printing, and costume rental, and such. I was the official costumier. Much of the furniture you saw was donated or borrowed. Ron is a master scrounger, bless him. But he also wanted to have his say in the aesthetic elements, such as the scenery, which Tony helped paint, and he’d make suggestions on the way the lines were delivered. I have to say I found it a bit irksome myself. After all, I wrote the sodding play. So, I can imagine how Tony felt when he criticized his artwork, like the window in the parlour scene, which I thought was very realistic but Ron said was architecturally inaccurate. But, really, the audience isn’t going to know if Pinegrove Hall is Regency or Georgian. The window is in keeping with the mantelpiece, which is all that matters.”
“So, you’re saying there was a bit of bad blood between them,” Rex prompted.
“I suppose,” Penny admitted. “But they were mostly civil about their differences, although I think if they weren’t being remunerated for their time, one or other of them would have stormed off. Of the two of them, Ron has the more forceful personality, and Tony preferred to avoid a direct confrontation. I’m sure that’s why he invited me out that time, so he could vent about Ron. And, I think, to sound me out about Cassie.”
“Did you ever have to referee between the two men?” Rex asked, feeling there might be more animosity than Penny let on.
“It never actually came to that. Tony would just roll his eyes behind Ron’s back, and sigh, and hum and do all those passive aggressive things. But he never trod on Ron’s turf, even if Ron trod on his.”
Rex had yet to clap eyes on Ron Wade. He found it surprising, in view of what Penny had divulged, that the producer had not been the one to go onstage and deliver the news of the “accident.”
“Ron does what for a living?” he asked.
“He’s a sales executive for a pharmaceutical company.”
“And the others?” Rex pulled the programme from the pocket of his jacket, fully noticing for the first time the artistic motif on the burgundy cover depicting, in black outline, two halves of an antique goblet shattered by a plunging dagger. He turned to the cast of characters and clicked the top of his ballpoint pen in readiness. Helen took her phone from her handbag and shifted away on her chair.
“Ada, who plays Miss Marple, is a librarian,” Penny informed him. “Dennis Caldwell, a.k.a. Hercule Poirot, works in insurance. Andrew Forsythe—Lord Wimsey—is in publishing, like I said. Rodney Snyder, our Sherlock Holmes, owns a flower shop, which he advertises in his bio. Something about a rose.”
“‘A Rose by Any Other Name,’” Rex
supplied, leafing forward to the brief bios, which mainly listed the actors’ dramatic training and prior productions. “And Timothy Holden who plays Father Brown? The bio doesn’t give his job. It’s a bit spare, only two lines.”
“I don’t think he has much of a curriculum vitae. He came to us last-minute as a replacement for Darrell, who quit the play to pursue his acting career in LA. Not really sure what Timothy does, but he rode to rehearsals on a push bike. That could be because he’s trying to get fit, I suppose, but I don’t think he makes much money. That’s all the detectives. The man who plays the butler is Christopher Ells, a medical technician at Royal Derby Hospital. Paul Reddit, the solicitor, is a solicitor in real life, and Trey is a trainee architect. Clara Grove,” Penny continued, twisting around in her chair, “the woman in purple trousers over there talking to the inspector, is Susan Richardson. She’s a stay-at-home mum with three teenage kids. Who am I missing?”
Rex reviewed the list of characters. “Her companion in the play, Robin Busket.”
“Oh, yes. That’s Bobbi, short for Roberta. She’s Paul Reddit’s niece and works for his law firm in some administrative capacity. They’re all very nice people. It’s certainly not one of them.”
“And those two men in casual clothes, being interviewed by the detective sergeant? Stagehands?”
“Bill and Ben, the Flowerpot Men, as we dubbed them. Remember Watch with Mother?” Penny made a wry face. “Showing my age there. They do props, lighting, and sound effects. Bill works at a sign shop and Ben is a sound engineer for a local radio station.”
Rex finished his round of scribbling. “Does the play become a murder mystery?” he enquired. “I mean, it starts off as a mystery surrounding a stolen heirloom.”
“Yes. Peril at Pinegrove Hall evolves into a murder case and the five detectives are on hand to solve it.”
“Who is the culprit?”
Upstaged by Murder Page 3
