And yet, apparently not. Bill Welsh, if he was to be believed, had scarpered before attending to the curtains, and minutes later, Cassie Chase was dead.
If Fiske had been alone, Rex might have ventured to ask for an opportunity to speak with the elusive director, and then Helen’s Renault pulled up in front of them, and he took his leave.
“Was the inspector of any help?” his wife asked as they drove past the fleet of blue-yellow-and-white police vehicles and through the redbrick gateposts.
“Up to a point, but he doesn’t have the benefit of having seen the play.”
“Now you can watch the whole thing,” Helen said encouragingly. “Penny gave me the DVD of the dress rehearsal. It’s in the glove compartment.”
Rex smiled at her in the dimly lit car. “If we watched it tonight, I could offer to get it to the inspector tomorrow. Then perhaps I could gain access to your heartthrob, Tony Giovanni.”
“Heartthrob, indeed! I just said he looked like an actor and had a lovely name. You know, if we’re going to watch the play, I’ll need sustenance. Fancy some Indian take-away? There’s a Tandoori place just up the road. See that big orange sign?” Helen made a ruefully apologetic face. “It seems awful to be hungry at a time like this.”
“Quite normal, I think. That’s why there’s always a pile of food at funerals.”
Rex thought of the young woman on a mortuary slab and wondered again at the brazen killer who had put her there; for nothing he had learnt so far pointed to an accidental shooting or suicide, even if the players did appear to all have convenient alibis.
eight
“I’m trying to remember what I did with the DVR player,” Helen said as they unpacked the foil-lidded cartons of Indian food in the kitchen.
“I put it in one of the boxes,” Rex told her. “I’ll hook it back up.”
“I’ll see to this. You know, if you are going to pursue this case, we’ll never get the packing done.”
“Och, so what? Julie’s not going to be using our bedroom, is she? Why not store up there what we’re not taking with us back to Edinburgh until we’re next down for a weekend?” In Rex’s view, Julie’s judgment could not be trusted when it came to men, and piling the room with boxes would help keep her out while freeing up some of their time.
“That’s called procrastinating,” Helen said with a smile.
“I believe it can sometimes be referred to as sensible time management.”
With the DVR set up in the entertainment unit, and the coffee table spread with a late supper, Rex loaded the disc and installed himself on the sofa beside his wife.
“Ready?” Taking up the remote, he started the DVD.
The familiar red bi-parting curtains opened on the parlour scene and the group of detectives began speaking in turn. Fortunately, the recording, both video and audio, proved of adequate quality.
He took up his bowl of aromatic curry and rice. “At least Cassie’s mother will have this to remember her daughter by.”
“One day, when she can bear to watch it.”
“Did Penny say when the dress rehearsal was held?”
“The day before yesterday. Wednesday.” Helen nodded towards the spinster detective in the blue silk dress and dainty lace-up boots. “My money’s on the elderly lady wielding her evil knitting needles,” she whispered darkly, in an attempt to lighten the mood.
“Are we talking Jane Marple or Ada Card?”
“Well, I suppose either could have concealed the murder weapon in that black bag beside her. The dagger in Miss Marple’s case, the gun in Ada’s.”
The handbag on screen was the same one Ada had taken home with her as she escorted Trey out of the hall. “It’s not Miss Marple,” Rex divulged to Helen. “I can tell you that much.”
“You’re not supposed to tell me, remember,” Helen remonstrated, chucking a piece of poppadum at him.
“I may just be misleading you.”
“You’re incorrigible, you know that?”
“Aye, you’ve told me often enough. You said it was the main reason you agreed to marry me.”
“Ri-ight,” his wife responded with playful sarcasm. “Anyway, if I were Cassie and didn’t intend to kill myself, I wouldn’t be holding a loaded gun. But then, I’m petrified of guns,” Helen stated, tearing off some naan bread and spooning a dollop of mango chutney on it. “Penny said theirs was a relatively light replica. If it was switched at the last minute, Cassie would surely have noticed.”
“Maybe she did notice, but it was thrust into her hand and she had no time to react, needing to get on with the next scene. Though I agree it’s more likely she was standing onstage with the prop, and the killer substituted it for the real gun after he shot her, no doubt having wiped off any fingerprints first. Let me just check something.”
Rex fast-forwarded to the attic scene and paused the disc on Lady Naomi pointing a revolver in her right hand. He got up from the sofa and crouched in front of the television screen but still couldn’t make out any details, even with the aid of his reading glasses. From what he could see, however, the gun in the dress rehearsal looked like the one he had seen in the play earlier that evening. He pressed play and the red velvet curtains closed on Lady Naomi maintaining her pose. Behind the joined curtains came a scream. And then silence. He replayed the attic scene without pausing.
“Did you notice that Cassie holds her pose for a shorter duration than she did tonight?” he asked Helen, who nodded in agreement. “In the dress rehearsal someone must have closed the curtains on cue.”
And something else: if Cassie had been using the replica gun tonight, where was it now? Rex wondered if Inspector Fiske would mind very much if he rang him to find out if it had been found, but when he consulted Helen on the subject, she categorically advised against it. The inspector might be asleep, she argued, or else eating a late dinner with his wife, just as they were. Rex informed her that Fiske was divorced from his third wife, and Helen retorted that she could see why: the poor man was probably beset by calls at all hours.
Rex capitulated. He didn’t want to make a nuisance of himself and ruin the rapport he had built with the inspector. It would have to wait until tomorrow. He rewound the DVD to where they had first left off, with Miss Marple wittering on about the attic as a possible place for the thief to have hidden.
By the end of the first act he had gleaned nothing further with regard to the murder, except the order in which the actors had left the parlour. This he had missed at the theatre when he nodded off after Henry Chalmers was called away by the butler to take a phone call offstage. Aunt Clara had then retired to her room with a headache, accompanied by Robin Busket. The solicitor had followed on their heels, presenting his excuses to the detectives and saying he needed to ring his office. And Lady Naomi, with a dramatic sigh of impatience, had taken herself off to the attic. The scrim had then descended on the five sleuths discussing the case in the parlour.
Helen sat back on the sofa with a satisfied and knowing expression. “Aunt Clara’s companion, Robin Busket, is really a man. He’s the murderer in the play.”
Rex smiled and nodded. “I’m impressed, and we’ve only seen Act One. Penny told me it was Robin. How did you know?”
“The first clue is the name. Bosquet is French for ‘grove’. Robin Busket has to be related to Naomi and Clara Grove of Pinegrove Hall, presumably built when their aristocratic ancestors fled France during the revolution and resettled in England, bringing their most treasured possessions with them. And the solicitor mentioned an indiscretion. The Marquis de Bosquet presumably had an illegitimate son, Naomi’s half-brother, who has ingratiated himself with Aunt Clara and become a member of the household so he can find an opportune moment to steal the goblet and murder the heiress.”
“A bit of a cheap trick if you don’t know French,” Rex contested.
“Well, there are ot
her clues. Robin’s manly gait, for instance. She said she’d been thrown by a horse, a stallion, no less, and had sprained her ankle, but she looks able-bodied enough to me. And she over-compensates as a woman in her mannerisms. ‘Oh, my dear this!’ and ‘Oh, my dear that!’”
“I thought it was just bad acting.”
“There’ll be other clues in the rest of the play. Shall we?”
They continued watching, and Rex tried to follow the complexities of the plot to its conclusion whilst focused on the actors and their demeanour. Henry Chalmers, on whom suspicion of the theft had fallen in Act I, was exonerated when Robin Busket was finally unmasked by Miss Marple for the very reasons Helen had enumerated, helped along by Hercule Poirot’s little grey cells. Contributing, too, were Wimsey’s airily astute observations, Sherlock’s keen powers of deduction, and a dose of divine intervention, thanks to Father Brown, in the form of Lady Naomi’s ghost. Aunt Clara had felt “chills” when Lady Naomi’s avenging spirit was in the room, the spirit ultimately tripping up the aunt’s companion by placing a footstool in her path, resulting in jewels from the stolen goblet spilling from the imposter’s riding boot and ultimately forcing Robin’s confession to the heroine’s murder. “Under our roof the whole time!” Aunt Clara had exclaimed in a fit of vapours.
Henry Chalmers, whom Naomi had valiantly sought to protect right up to the end, was not only spared the hangman’s noose but inherited her estate through a secret will she’d had drawn up, and which the solicitor revealed in the final scene, whereupon Henry declared he would forever stay true to the memory of his dear, departed betrothed. The vying detectives refused any reward for their services. As Hercule Poirot put it, having the last word, “Noblesse oblige.”
“Some of the acting was a bit wooden, but, overall, a pretty flawless production, I thought,” Rex said at the end. He lifted his tea mug. “Kudos to you, Mrs. Graves, for solving the mystery before the second act.”
“You might have done, too, had you been paying more attention the first time around.”
Rex had hoped she had not noticed his lapse at the theatre. “I’ll try to redeem myself by solving the real mystery,” he told her with a sheepish smile. “And you were right when you said it was never the butler. But could it be in real life? Dorkins never reappears in the first act after he summons Henry Chalmers into the hall for the phone call. Inspector Fiske relayed to me that Christopher Ells saw the director in the storage area, but who saw what Ells was up to?” Other than Rodney Snyder, a.k.a. Sherlock, who had reportedly seen him downing some liquor during the interval, as Rex recalled the inspector telling him.
“I’m sure you’ll get to the bottom of it.” Helen planted a loving kiss on his lips. “But kudos really to Penny and everyone involved. It’s no mean feat to pull off a play like this, especially on a shoestring. It must have been very satisfying to see it all come to fruition.” She gazed back at the TV. “It’s a shame the actors never got a real curtain call.”
The screen was frozen on the eleven players strung across the front of the stage, hands linked, in the process of taking a bow, with Lady Naomi in the middle, Henry Chalmers to her right, and Poirot to her left, emphasizing the disparity in their heights. Cassie was close to five nine in her heels, judging by Trey Atkins, whom Rex had stood beside earlier and estimated to be at least six foot tall, whereas Dennis Caldwell, who played the Belgian detective, did not top five five.
“What are you staring at?” Helen asked.
“I’m wondering why they placed a short man beside a tall girl. In fact, all the women are tall except for Miss Marple. It might have looked better if Poirot and Father Brown had stood on each end.”
“Poirot was probably given a prominent place because he’s the funniest actor.”
“By virtue of being so ham? He’s no David Suchet.”
Helen yawned into her hand. “Well, either way, he got a lot of laughs this evening.”
“Yesterday evening,” Rex corrected, glancing at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece. “It’s hours past our bedtime.” He stretched his arms above his head. “I’ll clear the dishes. I’ve kept you up long enough.”
It had been a long day for them both. When they had set out from Edinburgh, he had never entertained the prospect of a real murder.
nine
The next morning after breakfast, Rex was able, after several tries, to make contact with Inspector Fiske who, albeit sounding weary, was as cordial as before. In answer to Rex’s enquiry, he said the replica gun had not yet been retrieved. The one used in Cassie Chase’s death had been shown to Tony Wade in its evidence bag the previous evening, and the producer was adamant it was not the one he had bid for on eBay and which had been used in the rehearsals. The prop, although similar, had been made of plastic, according to Wade.
Inspector Fiske told Rex that the police were conducting a search of the Chase residence, not only for the missing prop but for any indication at all of Cassie’s frame of mind.
“Such as a suicide note?” Rex asked.
“That would certainly be helpful, but any leads pointing to what happened last night would be welcome.” The inspector concluded by reminding Rex to keep all information he had passed on as confidential.
Rex assured him he would and asked if he had seen the DVD of the dress rehearsal. “My wife and I watched it last night,” he explained. “I can’t say that anything really leapt out at me, but it was useful as context.”
“Penny Spencer mentioned such a recording to my sergeant. Did she give you her only copy?”
“I’m not sure, but you’re welcome to it.”
“If there’s any way you can return it to her in the course of the morning,” Fiske requested, “I’ll be visiting her after lunch.”
Rex agreed to do just that, glad of the opportunity to speak to Penny again. He was about to broach the question of Tony Giovanni when Fiske said he had to get off the phone and attend to a witness. Rex reluctantly ended the call, wondering who the witness might be and how much further ahead than himself the inspector was in the case.
Tapping the mobile phone against his beard, he contemplated the fate of the replica gun. The police would presumably comb the roads radiating out from the community centre, in case the killer had thrown it out of a car window. However, Rex doubted the person who had managed to avoid detection thus far would have been so careless as to get rid of evidence close to the scene of the crime. More probably, it had been disposed of in a body of water, or else smashed to smithereens and scattered to the four winds. But how had it been smuggled out of the building? All cast and crew members would have been searched before they left.
“More coffee?” Helen asked, poking her head into the sitting room.
“Thanks, but I’ve already had two mugs.” Rex heaved himself out of the cushy armchair and stretched his arms in front of him. “Inspector Fiske asked me to return the DVD to Penny. Are you coming?”
Helen hesitated. “I should really carry on with the packing. I’m in the process of wrapping up some small items.” She had agreed to leave the less important boxes in the bedroom until their next visit rather than try to arrange for a moving van over the Spring Bank Holiday weekend.
“I can drop off the two crates at Oxfam. Anything else I can do while I’m at it?”
“If I give you a list, can you be a love and take care of the shopping? And I’d better give you Penny’s address.”
Rex decided to go there first and leave the errands for later. Once the car was loaded with the charity donations, he set off for the neighbourhood where Penny lived, close to the community centre in a residential street filled with newer two-storey homes clad in white wood and enclosed by tall hedges. A red estate wagon was parked in the driveway. Rex somehow doubted the lacklustre vehicle belonged to the sophisticated Penny Spencer. If she had a visitor, he would have to just drop off the DVD and leave, more the pity. He r
ang the doorbell.
Within seconds he heard clicking footsteps approaching from inside and Penny answered the door, dressed in a light, oatmeal-coloured jumper and slacks, the same look of chic about her as before, due in part to the silk scarf in shades of brown and amber flowing from her neck. She appeared more composed than the previous night and had a bit of colour in her cheeks. “Oh, hello, Rex.” She glanced around him. “Is Helen not with you?”
“She’s busy packing. I came to return the DVD.” Rex handed it to her. “We couldn’t wait to watch it and enjoyed it immensely.”
“I’m glad. Do come in.” Penny stepped back from the doorway.
“I don’t want to impose if you have company.”
“Nonsense. You can meet Tony, the director of the play. You might find it helpful to talk to him, and I just made tea.”
What excellent timing, Rex thought, closing the front door behind him. “Did you need a lift to the community centre to get your car?” he asked, following Penny as her mules clacked back through the stone-tiled hall.
“It’s in the garage. It was sweet of Helen to offer last night, but Tony drove me over this morning.”
Bully for Tony. Rex felt a bit of a let-down. It would have been a convenient excuse to go back to the community centre and see if the police were still milling about looking for clues in broad daylight. However, this minor setback was far outweighed by the opportunity to speak with the play’s director.
“We’re through here.” Penny led him into a stylish and sparely furnished sitting room where Tony Giovanni occupied one end of a low trestle settee, his long legs almost folded to his chin. Gone were the gabardine suit and bow-tie, replaced by a light denim shirt worn over a pair of beige khakis and loafers.
Penny introduced Rex as the husband of an ex-colleague at her school, and the two men shook hands. She urged Rex to sit down and he smiled pleasantly at Tony a few feet away, waiting for him to open the conversation.
Upstaged by Murder Page 6
