“They’ll wilt in the car.”
“In that case, we’ll leave them for Julie.”
While he finished unpacking the bags, Helen filled the vase with water from the sink. “Now, tell me about the rest of your morning. You have that look about you.”
“What look?” Rex asked innocently.
“The look of a satisfied cat. A big ginger tom. I sense there’s more.”
“Och, I’m a long way from catching the canary. But a wee birdie did tell me something of interest.”
“I can’t wait to hear.” Helen placed the flower arrangement on the table, which was set for lunch. “Homemade lentil soup and avocado salad. Will that do you? I thought we could have the leftover curry for dinner.” She went to the gas cooker, adjusted a temperature knob, and stirred a wooden spoon in a saucepan.
“Perfect.” Rex sat down and shook out his napkin. “Well, as luck would have it, Tony was visiting Penny.”
“Progress, indeed!” Helen brought two bowls of soup to the table and took her seat opposite him. “I know you wanted to talk to him.”
“Marginal progress on that front.” Rex took up his spoon. “To begin with, Tony does not know who was responsible for operating the curtains last night, unless it was Bill.”
“For the director, Tony seems curiously uninformed,” Helen remarked. “But he’s probably more of a creative than practical person, which stands to reason, given his occupation.”
“Aye, I can see him teaching art to children,” Rex said, adding a sprinkle of rock salt to his soup. “He carefully considers what he’s going to say before he speaks. He was a bit reticent to begin with, but did open up gradually. According to Penny, his sister took an overdose of sleeping pills when she was eighteen. Seems Cassie reminded Tony of her, and Penny now says she may have mistaken his innocent affection for Cassie as attraction.”
“Oh, dear,” Helen said with a worried frown. “I hope she’s not getting her hopes up again.”
“And then I went to see Rodney Snyder, the man who played Sherlock Holmes.”
“Ah, now I get it.” Helen gave a knowing smile. “He owns a flower shop, doesn’t he? But the roses were still a very thoughtful gift,” she added, trying to keep a straight face.
Rex put on a contrite one. “I wanted to get you a little something and I remembered A Rose by Any Other Name.”
She laughed into her napkin. “I think a ‘whatever’ is in order here. Moving on …”
Rex buttered his roll. “Well, Rodney Snyder pretty much confirmed what Tony had told me regarding who was backstage at the time of the shooting. We didn’t have a long chat because a customer came into the shop, and he appeared to be working by himself.”
“So where does this leave you in the investigation?”
“Good question. Trey Atkins, three of the fictional detectives, the butler, and Tony were backstage at the time of the shooting. The producer had already left to go to his car. Bill and Ben had gone for a smoke. So, too, Robin Busket and the solicitor. Miss Marple, Aunt Clara, and Father Brown were down the hall in the loos.” Rex counted them off on his fingers. “If everyone is accounted for at the crucial moment, there must be one unknown person in the mix, unless someone is lying or mistaken. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“You are completely ruling out suicide and accidental death, then?”
By this point, the spectre of suicide had all but vanished from Rex’s mind, displaced by a yet faceless killer whose motive he could not imagine.
“For now,” he replied. “We won’t know for sure until the gunshot residue tests come back from the lab. Well, Fiske should know, and hopefully he’ll inform me. If none is found on Cassie’s hand, the revolver likely didn’t go off while she was holding it. The ME said he would call Fiske on Monday with the results of the autopsy. Presumably he’s working over the bank holiday. I don’t know if the lab is.” Rex saw that Helen had put down her spoon. “Perhaps we should change the subject for now. Have you spoken to Julie today?”
“Yes, she rang earlier for an update on the shooting. And to see if we needed any help with the packing.”
In Rex’s mind, the words Julie and help did not go hand in hand. “And what did you say?”
“I thought she’d only be in the way, especially when she said she could bring the first load of her stuff over. But I invited her over for Sunday lunch.”
“You told her she would be in the way?” Rex interjected in surprise. Julie was highly sensitive and had to be treated with kid gloves. No one knew that better than Helen.
“Of course not. That’s only what I thought. And I knew what you’d say. So I just said we had everything under control and were hoping to spend some time alone together this afternoon. Unless you have other suspects to visit?” Helen raised her blonde eyebrows at him in enquiry and continued eating her soup.
“I may have run out of suspects to annoy for now. No, I’m all yours.”
“Ah, music to my ears,” his wife said with a flirty grin. “And I do love the roses,” she added, admiring them on the table.
eleven
The next morning, as Rex and Helen sat at the breakfast table leafing through the Sunday papers for any further news on Cassie Chase’s death, the house phone trilled in the hall.
“I wonder who that could be,” Helen said with a frown, looking undecided as to whether to answer it. “If it’s important and someone I know, they’d call on my mobile.” The phone kept ringing and she got up from her chair with a sigh, tightening the belt on her pink satin dressing gown. “It had better not be someone selling double glazing or I’ll give them a piece of my mind, ringing at nine a.m. on a holiday weekend!”
Rex smiled. His wife, while being the sweetest person in the world, could make her displeasure sorely felt on rare occasions.
“Helen d’Arcy,” he heard her answer in a matter-of-fact tone. “I mean, Mrs. Graves.”
Rex chuckled into his mug of coffee. “It’s for you,” he heard her call out to him. Thinking it might have something to do with the case, he immediately set aside his newspaper and went to join his wife in the hall, where she stood with a hand over the mouthpiece.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“He wouldn’t say, but he sounds upset.”
Rex took the receiver from her. “How can I help you?” he asked.
“Mr. Graves?” a muffled male voice asked, as though he had been crying.
“Speaking.”
“I thought you should know; she did it because of me. I told her I couldn’t marry her.” The caller broke down in anguish at the other end of the line.
“Are we talking about Cassie? Is this Trey? Calm yourself, lad. I’m having difficulty understanding you. I’m sure you’re not responsible. Would it help to talk in person? Perhaps with my wife? Helen is a school counsellor. She’s really good in these situations.”
Helen, who had returned to the hall with her coffee, gave a concerned nod.
“Thank you,” the caller murmured. “But I have to go now.”
The phone went dead all of a sudden, and Rex stood listening to the disconnected line. “He rang off,” he told Helen in a puzzled tone.
“Remorse?” Helen asked.
“For spurning Cassie? He was in an emotional state on Friday night when I spoke to him, but composed enough. He sounded highly agitated just now and a bit incoherent. I just hope he’s not going to do anything stupid.”
“Oh, Rex, I hope not! Ring him back.”
Rex retrieved the number using the 1471 feature code and pressed “3”. The phone rang at the other end, and kept ringing. “I wonder if it’s Ada Card’s number,” he murmured. “I think he’s staying with her.”
“Hello?” an older male voice answered just then.
“Oh, hello! Could I speak to Trey Atkins?”
“The young ma
n who just left? He got in his car and drove off.”
“I’m not sure he should be driving. He’s under a lot of stress.”
“Seemed all right to me. But I don’t know him. I was just passing the pay phone and it was ringing. I felt it would be wrong to ignore it, in case it was urgent.”
“Where is the pay phone located?”
“At Morton’s Petrol Station at the ring road north of Derby. Is he your son?”
“No, but I have a son his age. I was trying to help him.”
“Like I said, he looked okay, but I wasn’t that close and he was wearing sunglasses, so I can’t be sure.”
“Thank you. Can you tell me what he was driving?”
“A Vauxhall Hatchback. Grey, I think, or silver.”
Rex thanked the Good Samaritan once again and replaced the receiver. Helen stood leaning against the wall, cradling her mug.
“Should we ring Ada?” she asked. “Penny will have her number. Should I ask for Trey’s mobile number as well?”
Rex nodded, seriously concerned about the lad’s frame of mind, as was Helen, judging by her expression as she ran upstairs for her mobile phone. He rang Fiske at the station, but was told that neither he nor the sergeant were there. He hesitated to call the inspector at home on a Sunday morning.
He heard Helen talking upstairs and presently she returned with two numbers written on a sheet of notepaper.
“The top one is Ada’s home number, but Penny thought she might be at church.”
This Rex found was no doubt the case when he tried phoning and received Ada’s answering machine. He left a message. His call to Trey’s mobile yielded the same result, and he left another brief message asking that he ring back at the earliest opportunity. Of course, it was possible the police had Trey’s phone and were scouring it for leads.
This was turning out to be a frustrating morning, Rex decided, and it was concerning he could not get hold of Trey.
“Do you think we should send the police after him?” Helen asked.
“I don’t think there’s enough justification. We don’t know for sure he’s suicidal, and he might not appreciate our interference. Plus, he could be miles away from the service station by now.”
“So, what do we do now?”
“We wait. Or rather, I think I’ll go over to the community centre, take a look around the grounds. There’s not likely to be much activity at this hour on a Sunday. Could you hang around in case Trey tries ringing on the land line again?”
“Of course, but let me take a quick shower first.”
While Helen went back upstairs, Rex gathered his wallet and the keys to his wife’s car. He had left his less roomy Mini Cooper in Edinburgh when they had driven down together on Friday morning. The boxes they were not taking were neatly stacked in the main bedroom and two smaller ones were tucked in the broom closet under the stairs, since Helen did not have a garage. He thought of all the wedding gifts at his mother’s house waiting to be sorted. Yet more boxes, he despaired.
“Okay, you can go now,” Helen, wrapped in a bath towel, called over the bannister. “I’ll be able to hear the phone if it rings.”
“All right, lass. What time should I be back for lunch?”
“Julie’s coming at eleven. We’ll probably eat at twelve thirty.”
“Ring me if you need anything. Do we have wine?” Julie liked her white wine.
“I put a bottle in the fridge. Good hunting,” Helen added as he opened the front door.
He certainly hoped to catch a nice lead. And there was always a chance Ada, Trey, or Inspector Fiske would return his call while he was out reconnoitring the community centre. In any case, he felt better doing something active, rather than sitting at home waiting. He only had two days left to make some headway in the case.
twelve
When Rex reached Hill Grange Community Centre, he saw no other cars in the lot. He parked in one of the marked-up spaces and wandered in the May sunshine towards the two-storey brick building, where he found blue-and-white caution tape girding the entrance.
Following the concrete path to the far corner, he ran into a wiry man in a flat cap and shirtsleeves, and shapeless brown corduroys and work boots.
“And who might you be?” the man asked in a gravelly voice, regarding him suspiciously.
“I’m a private detective. Penny Spencer, whose play was performed on Friday night, asked me to lend assistance in the shooting incident. And whom might I be speaking with?”
“Nob Jensen, the caretaker. A bicycle belonging to one of the actors went missing that evening and I said I’d take a gander while on my rounds.”
“Mightn’t the police have taken it if they found it on the premises?” Rex asked.
“That’s what I told Mr. Holden, him what plays the clergyman. Happens I haven’t found so much as a bit of litter, just a new badger’s burrow. Right pests they are, tearing up the grass.”
“At what time did Mr. Holden last see his bike?”
“He said he arrived sometime before six and noticed it were gone at ten thirty, when he left to go home.”
“Were you here on Friday evening?”
“I were round my sister-in-law’s. But I were in the hall that afternoon until four setting out the chairs.”
“Did you go backstage?”
“No reason to. But I did go back here to check the emergency exit. Mr. Holden lent his bike against that tree and has been known to use this door when leaving after rehearsals, instead of the front entrance. I’ve told him often enough not to. But it were locked on Friday afternoon when I left.”
“There’s no fire alarm fitted?”
“Not since the building was a school.”
“Why’d he keep his bicycle back here? There’s a bike rack out front.”
“He didn’t have a lock for it and I expect he didn’t want it stolen, even though somebody’d have to be desperate to take it, it were such a rusty old heap.”
“Is it just yourself who takes care of the community centre?”
“I have two ladies come in midweek to clean the communal areas and offices. I do the stage and back rooms, as there’s a lot of stuff lying about what could trip a body up.”
“Do the cleaning ladies have keys to the building?”
“No, I always let them in and stay to supervise.”
“Who else has keys?”
“I lent one to Mr. Wade, the play’s producer, so he could let the cast and crew in for rehearsals. I live on the grounds and come by every morning and again at nine at night to check everything is locked up and in order. They was usually gone by then.”
In spite of what Ben Higgins had said about Jensen being “a lazy old git,” he seemed to Rex to be efficient enough, and the grass, hedges, and flowering bushes in the grounds looked neatly tended.
“But on opening night, you were at your sister-in-law’s house?” Rex clarified.
“I was going to go in later, after the reception, to clean up, but we saw the police cars on our way home. ‘What’s going on here?’ I asked the missus. I thought at first there’d been a bomb scare, and then a bobby told us someone in the play had been shot. I asked who, and he said it were a lass. I knew right then it had to be Cassie. Such a kind and thoughtful girl, she was. Once, when I were locking up, she said, ‘Sorry we ran overtime, Mr. Jensen, but I think we left everything nice and tidy for you.’ She and the tall young man made a nice couple. I sometimes saw them lingering in the car park by his shiny BMW coupe. I thought, ‘He’s doing all right for himself. That girl could do a lot worse.’ And he was gone on her. You could tell that a mile off. And now this tragedy.”
Jensen removed the flat cap from his cropped grey hair and clamped it to his chest. “What a shame! And now I have to get the hall ready for the memorial service,” he said with a sad shake of his head.
“It’s being held here?” Rex asked in surprise. “When?”
“Four o’clock tomorrow. Ms. Spencer said the police inspector had agreed as long as no one goes near the stage. She asked me to put a platform in front of it for the speeches. No doubt, coppers will be there to make sure no one trespasses. Ms. Spencer and the actors feel the hall is the most appropriate place.” Jensen glanced at the redbrick building. “It’s where Cassie Chase drew her last breath.”
“It’s bound to be packed,” Rex remarked, fully intending to be there. “By all accounts she was very popular.”
“I just hope no one thinks to bring candles. We can’t be having those. Too much of a fire hazard, I told Ms. Spencer.”
“Thank you, Mr. Jensen. I won’t take up more of your time.”
The caretaker nodded and pulled his cap back on, continuing along the path to the front entrance, while Rex headed towards the next corner of the building looking for other points of access and egress. Despite what the morning caller had said about being responsible for Cassie’s suicide, Rex remained sceptical that she had died by her own hand, and the murderer may well not have used the main entrance.
He found another emergency door exiting from the hall close to the stage. The path ended beyond the two tall windows, and rather than walk on the grass, he returned the way he had come, passing the birch tree that Timothy Holden had used to prop his bicycle against during rehearsals. If the police had not taken the bike into evidence, who had stolen it? Had it simply been a random theft by someone prowling around the community centre on opening night?
As Rex was walking back to his car pondering these questions, the phone jangled in his jacket pocket. A Derby number, he saw when he pulled it out, and he hurried to answer it.
“This is Ada Card,” said a brisk voice. “You left me a message to ring you at once.”
“Aye, thank you. It was regarding Trey. I wanted to make sure he was all right.”
“Better, I think. We just got back from church, otherwise I would have rung sooner.”
“Trey was with you at the service?”
Upstaged by Murder Page 8
