by Helen Smith
‘I rather liked Morgana’s theory that perhaps he was sending them because he wanted to get my attention, maybe even as a way of getting back together with me. But earlier on today, when I held his hand for the first time after all those years, there was no spark. And Dolly’s no pathetic invention to give him an excuse to visit the school – she really is his daughter. She looks just like him.’
‘Still, someone sent the letters,’ said Emily.
‘And whoever it was threatened to stop the show in the latest note,’ said Dr. Muriel.
‘Did they, indeed? I shan’t say “over my dead body!”’ said Victoria with a wink. The music coming from the assembly hall changed to jolly, comedic piano music, played very fast. ‘Oof!’ Victoria said. ‘Good old Samuel! That number’s the one before mine and Graham’s – I’d better go.’ She adjusted the invisible dog lead, pretending the unseen animal was tugging at the collar. With a backward flick of her head and a jaunty kick of her right foot, she dashed off after it in time to the music, towards the classroom nearest the assembly hall that was serving as a dressing room for the show.
Emily and Dr. Muriel went into the playground. The hopscotch-covered tarmac of the primary school days was now converted into a pleasant courtyard seating area, with wooden benches and raised flower-beds, and shady areas provided by wooden arches covered in vines and clematis, the landscaping reminiscent of holidays Victoria and Piers had enjoyed in Provence.
They could see the shed at the far end of it, where Dizzy kept his tools. Next to it, within the walled perimeter of the grounds, abutting the school building, was the caretaker’s cottage that had been the home of the landlord, Mr. Barrymore. A thin blue and white strip of police tape ran between the front of the cottage and the playground.
Dr. Muriel put her hands in her pockets and strolled next to Emily in a hopelessly suspicious-looking way, as though she were a prisoner of war in a German camp, planning to distribute sand dug from an escape tunnel onto the ground as they walked. Emily was worried that at any minute her companion might actually start whistling.
‘I’ve got a bad feeling about all this,’ Emily said. ‘The poison pen letters were meant to frighten Victoria, but now that the video’s no longer in her possession, the notes no longer have any effect. I think Victoria might be in danger.’
‘Do you know, m’dear, I agree with you.’
‘Should we go and stand guard by the stage, in case we need to do something? Or should we call the police?’
‘Knowledge is what we need: “intel”. If we don’t know what we’re looking for, we won’t know how to stop it. I don’t suppose we can get inside the house here, but there’s nothing to stop us peering through the window. First things first: the shed.’
The door to the shed was padlocked and didn’t open when they pulled at it. They stood side by side at the two small square windows on it and looked into the darkness inside. But nothing looked out of place or suspicious. They turned and stood with their backs to the shed and looked over to Mr. Barrymore’s home, to their right. It was also in darkness. The kitchen window faced them. It appeared to be positioned above a sink, where Mr. Barrymore might very well have stood and smiled at David Devereux while he was doing the dishes or filling the kettle for a cup of tea – if only he hadn’t already been dead.
‘The policeman didn’t say where they found him,’ said Emily. ‘If someone wanted to frame Victoria for murder, or make David look like a liar, could they have propped Mr. Barrymore’s body up there, at the sink?’
‘Interesting,’ said Dr. Muriel. ‘It makes a liar of David, certainly. But it doesn’t put Victoria at the scene.’
Dr. Muriel pressed the end of her stick into the blue and white tape, moving it close enough to the cottage so that she and Emily could press their faces up against the glass of the living room window. They could see the young policeman inside in the gloom. ‘You know,’ said Emily, ‘if someone wanted to harm Victoria or at least humiliate her and stop the show, wouldn’t they choose her Wizard of Oz number to do it?’
‘We’re running out of time, then, m’dear. We urgently need to get ourselves a clue.’
The policeman came to the door of the house and opened it. He looked at Emily, and his hand floated up towards her elbow, tenderly. He didn’t quite touch her, and he let his hand drop again as he said, ‘Don’t worry about the dog, miss. I don’t think it suffered at all.’
Emily said, ‘You can call me Emily.’
‘James,’ said the policeman.
‘Constable James,’ said Dr. Muriel, ‘what are you doing lurking about in the gloom back there? Even at your young age, it can’t be very good for your sight.’
‘The fuse has gone. All the electricity’s off.’
‘Has it, has it, has it, is it?’ said Dr. Muriel. ‘Hmmmm. Dodgy wiring, perhaps? Tell me, was he found here in the kitchen, holding on to the taps?’
‘You know I can’t tell you that, madam.’
‘Doctor.’
‘Do you need one?’ The policeman looked alarmed. His hand floated up, now, towards Dr. Muriel’s elbow.’
‘You may call me “doctor”. But I don’t insist on it. As you wish.’
‘Oh, I see.’ James looked at Emily and widened his eyes a bit to signal that he hoped she’d let on whether or not Dr. Muriel was teasing him. Emily grinned back.
‘Were the taps metal?’ said Dr. Muriel. ‘Can you tell me that?’
‘Well, I don’t see what else they’d be made of,’ said the policeman, a bit sulkily.
Dr. Muriel said, ‘Here are the facts, as you have hinted at them or (in the case of the taps) confirmed them: Mr. Barrymore, a most unscrupulous landlord, a saver of pennies and cutter of corners, was found here at the sink, gripping the metal taps and staring out the window, with a ghastly grin on his face. The electricity was off, a fuse apparently having blown.’ Dr. Muriel turned to Emily. ‘What do you make of that, Emily?’
‘The metal taps were live, somehow? He went to fill the kettle or wash his hands and he was electrocuted, and that caused a short circuit and blew a fuse?’
‘Precisely!’
‘Well, yes,’ conceded James the policeman. ‘It could be something like that.’
‘The bulldog, Precious, was lying in the living room, teeth bared in the approximation of a human smile, having been electrocuted also because some part of her body was touching a lamp or some other electrical apparatus, which had also gone live.’
‘She didn’t suffer at all,’ James said to Emily. ‘I really think she didn’t.’
‘That’s very clever,’ said Emily to Dr. Muriel. ‘Shouldn’t you save it all for the confrontation?’
‘That wasn’t the confrontation, it was the denouement. And yes, I’ll have to go through it all again. But let’s consider it a dress rehearsal. It is a show business event, after all.’
‘So it was natural causes?’ Emily said. ‘That means Victoria’s not in danger. David Devereux’s not a liar. We can go in and watch the show.’
‘David Devereux?’ said James. ‘The actor in that spy thing? Isn’t he supposed to be going to Hollywood?’
‘Goodbye, Constable,’ said Dr. Muriel. ‘Come, Emily. If we hurry, we’ll catch Victoria’s performance. She’s a talented actor, with wonderful comic timing. I won’t say she’s wasted here, but there’s no match for her in any of the shows currently playing in the West End.’
They rushed back to the assembly hall, where they waited for the sound of applause to signal the end of the current number before Emily slipped in discreetly at the back of the audience, while Dr. Muriel went through a side door and took her place next to Morgana Blakely, whose face was so pinched with fury at being left alone that it looked as though her features were trying to shrink themselves to match the size of the tiny top hat she was wearing.
There was a space in a row at the back, three seats in next to David Devereux – the only space Emily could see, though she didn’t look very hard. David
saw her approaching, bent low as though she was a giantess who feared catching her hair in overhead pylons, and he moved up and moved Dolly up next to him, so Emily could take the seat on the end. He smiled and put his arm across the back of Dolly and reached to Emily’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze, pressing his leg into Dolly’s and Dolly’s whole body into Emily, so for a moment they were all three of them scrunched up and cute-looking like a family of foxes in a den.
‘Victoria’ll be hilarious!’ he whispered. ‘If she’s anything like she was at drama school. Wait till you see this.’
To the right, about halfway down the auditorium, Emily noticed a gleam of white as Seema edged her way in and stood quietly watching, back against the wall. White trousers really were distracting when worn by audience members, Emily thought. It was almost as bad as people eating popcorn in the cinema or texting on their mobile phones. Because of the trousers, she couldn’t help tracking Seema’s movements as she moved slowly to the back of the hall and then went to stand by Dizzy, where he operated the mixing desk for the sound and lights for the show.
Emily wasn’t a regular theatre-goer, and she found she was summarising her reactions to the performance as though sending postcards to herself: Victoria was very funny, and Graham was a little stiff in his movements but had an extraordinarily deep and attractive vibrato voice. Victoria’s cartwheel was hilarious! ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ was beautiful, and when she sang it, a capella, Victoria made almost everyone cry.
Dolly held Emily’s left hand in her right hand, and her father’s right hand in her left as she sat between them. Emily wished that everyone she had ever known – everyone she had ever worked for or with in a temp contract in a miserable job – could be here to see their little group and speculate that Emily was somehow connected to David Devereux. She sent herself a little postcard about it: On her way to Hollywood!
David leaned over and whispered, ‘She’s great, isn’t she? Remind me to tell you about this video we made when we were students. It was hilarious. You’ll laugh your socks off.’
Remind me to tell you when? When we’re on a date? When you come to pick me up from my next temp job in your Bentley or your Lamborghini? When we’re flying to Hollywood together?
David bent and kissed Dolly’s adorable head. He laughed as if Victoria’s Wizard of Oz skit was the funniest thing he had ever seen and this was the happiest day of his life. His laughter carried, and a few people looked round to see what was going on and then smiled when they saw it was David Devereux, and he really was laughing at the show. Behind them, Emily was aware that Seema was agitated, whispering to Dizzy about something. Perhaps she was disappointed that there was to be no tap dancing routine from Victoria? Or perhaps she was jealous that Emily was sitting next to the world’s most good-natured handsome man.
In the classroom across the corridor that was serving as a dressing room, out of sight of the audience, all the members of Showstoppers were assembled, their small sweaty feet laced into their tap shoes, ready to take the stage for the final number, their small sweaty hands linked together as they prepared to come on in tightly-squished, snaking rows and then form one big circle together.
Victoria and Graham took their bow. Next to Emily, David whooped and blew three wolf whistles through his fingers. Victoria smiled and nodded her head once in his direction in acknowledgement, one professional to another, just like any other seasoned performer glad to see that one of their kind is ‘in’ to see the show.
‘Brava!’ shouted Dr. Muriel in her seat near the front, for all the world as if she were at the opera in Italy, where it’s usual to match the gender of the exclamation to the person who is being praised. ‘Brava!’ If she had meant the praise for both Graham and Victoria, she would have shouted ‘Bravi! Had her praise been meant just for Graham, she would have shouted ‘Bravo!’ Presumably she meant no offence to Graham by singling out Victoria – they were neighbours, after all. And Victoria was the school’s artistic director and owner. Also, her cartwheel had been magnificent, as had her ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’.
Victoria and Graham left the stage with a final wave to the audience, Victoria pretending to be led off by the invisible dog, to the amusement of Dolly and the other children in the audience, who shrieked in recognition of a kind of magic that needed them to ‘see’ it and believe in its charming illusion. Emily thought of her dog, Jessie, who had died and left a kind of invisible dog in her place which Emily ‘saw’ sometimes when she was tired or lonely, or when she simply forgot that Jessie had died. She wasn’t too old to believe in magic, even if it made her feel sad sometimes.
The lights went down, and there was no music, only the swelling sound, stage left – to the right of the audience – of a hundred pairs of tap shoes beginning to beat a rhythm in the dressing room as the children prepared to come on. It was very theatrical! So effective! Emily postcarded to herself, enjoying the build-up. She began to think she should go to the theatre more often.
The children began to cross the corridor from the dressing room, heading towards the back of the stage where they would come on, though their performance had already begun. The sound of their tapping feet grew louder.
‘Oh my God!’ shrieked Seema white trousers gleaming where she now stood where she had first come in at the side of auditorium. ‘Oh my God! Tap shoes! They’re wearing tap shoes! All them sweaty little feet in metal and leather! Oh my God! Oh my God!’
Emily thought that if she were in charge of this place – which she was not because if the past was anything to go by, then for the rest of her life she was only ever going to have crappy administrative jobs, working for others, for a pitiful wage – she would send Seema on a management course to help her cope with change. Victoria had decided at the last minute to put the children in tap shoes for the final number. So what? So far, it sounded great.
But Dr. Muriel was on her feet at the front now, waving her walking stick in the air. ‘Emily!’ she shouted. Dr. Muriel was not the sort to try to storm the stage at a children’s end-of-term show so she could join in the dancing – she had plenty of limelight during her day job, where she frequently addressed large conferences on her specialist subjects: ethics and philosophical conundrums. Even if Dr. Muriel did plan to storm the stage, there was no reason for her to call for Emily to join in. So it was something else…
Suddenly, Emily understood.
She jumped to her feet. She rushed to the technician’s desk where Dizzy was standing and began pulling at wires and plugs, screaming, ‘Turn it off! Turn it off!’ If she could just expose two live wires and touch them together, she might stand a chance of tripping the fuse and killing the power – if she didn’t kill herself first.
At the front, Dr. Muriel had whisked Morgana Blakely’s miniature top hat from her head and now skimmed it onto the stage, where it skidded across the boards, sparking as the mesh veil attached to the hat and the hat pins that had secured it caught on a live wire or wires poking from beneath the stage, not far from the spot where Victoria had been performing her Wizard of Oz routine.
Morgana got to her feet and took action. ‘No children on stage!’ she commanded. ‘Victoria, do you hear me? Graham! Don’t let the children on the stage!’
Graham the Tin Man appeared through the side door in the assembly hall nearest to the stage, trying to make sense of what was going on. Dr. Muriel didn’t hesitate. She grabbed his triangular hat and threw it towards the location of the exposed live wires on stage in front of her. She was a frequent guest lecturer on cruise ships and was an expert player of deck quoits (donut-shaped, heavyish objects made of rubber or rope, guaranteed not to bounce and go over the side), so her missile struck its target effectively. Sparks flew, and a hissing sound came from the stage.
In the background, the ominous thrumming of two hundred tap shoes continued, the children held at bay as Morgana had instructed, though it seemed Victoria was determined that, somehow or other, even if out of sight of the audience, the show wou
ld go on.
Dr. Muriel next threw her stick with its metal band around the tip (which didn’t have any effect, though it made an impressive rattling sound), then she removed her jacket and threw it metal-button side down, causing more sparks and then, at last – whether through Dr. Muriel’s interventions or Emily’s – the fuses blew, the lights went off. Everyone was safe.
There was silence. Even the tap shoes had ceased tapping. There was darkness except for smears of late-afternoon sunlight coming through the cracks in the blackout curtains that had been hung at the tall windows along the left-hand side of the auditorium. Then there was spontaneous, rapturous applause from children and parents, and whoops and whistles, and then the sound of scraping chairs as the audience got to their feet in a standing ovation. At the periphery of her vision, Emily caught a flash of white as Seema turned and ran out through the door at the back of the assembly hall.
Dizzy had seen it, too. ‘Oh no you don’t, missy!’ he called as he rushed out after her.
David Devereux had joined Emily near the technician’s desk, where she stood with wires and plugs in her hands. He had Dolly with him – she didn’t look frightened. She was young enough to think the finale might have been part of the show.
‘Emily!’ said David. ‘Girl, that was brave of you.’
‘Now we can have the denouement,’ said Emily, shaking a bit – with shock, she thought, rather than electrical energy.
David reached over and grabbed her arm and pulled her towards him, and he kissed her.
So that’s what you do when something I say isn’t particularly funny, thought Emily. She resolved to be less amusing in front of handsome actors in future.
David’s phone rang, and he answered it, ‘Yes, yes… Yes! Yeah, I can. Yeah. OK, buddy,’ while nodding and pretending to listen to Dolly, who was asking him a question.
‘Daddy,’ she said, ‘is this my new school?’
‘No, babe.’ He finished his call. He put his hand on Dolly’s head, smoothing her gorgeous curls, and he smiled at Emily.
