Midsummer Mayhem

by Marty Wingate

  There was talk of which scenes had been rehearsed that morning. Penelope opened her three-ring binder—she had toted it along on the hunt the way Pru was never without her bag—and read out the schedule. No one appeared concerned, only annoyed, but a growing fear had set Pru’s nerves vibrating.

  “Is he alone, do you think?” Nick Bottom asked.

  Both Ambrose and Max looked round the group, and Pru thought they might be taking account of the women. “Yes,” the director said, “it looks like it.”

  “He’d better not be having us on,” Demetrius muttered.

  “Did anyone try ringing him?”

  “I sent him a text when we started out,” Hermia said, “but he didn’t answer.”

  Helena gave her a look. “So did I.”

  Linden pulled her phone out of the pocket of her denims. “Well, I’ll give him a call now.”

  From within the cottage, a phone began to ring.

  Lysander—what, removed? Lysander, lord!

  What, out of hearing? Gone? No sound, no word?

  2.2.157–8

  Chapter 10

  “Move back!” Demetrius shouted. He took aim at the door latch and gave it a hard kick with his heel. It rattled and shook but held. He kicked again, and the door burst open, banging against the wall and rebounding.

  Everyone poured in.

  “This one’s locked, too!”

  Pru, at the back, arrived in time to see Ambrose use his shoulder as a battering ram on the door of the study. It gave way, and they all surged forward. The tight crowd moved as one—and Pru was carried along—and then staggered back as, en masse, they retreated and broke apart. Those in the front of the crowd waved their arms wildly, and a bee zipped past Pru’s face, then another, heading to the open door.

  Hermia screamed unintelligible words and lurched forward into the study, caught quickly by Demetrius, who jerked her back, saying, “Don’t, Nell, don’t look.” Helena’s eyes rolled back as she sank to the floor, caught at the last moment by one of the Mechanicals—Peter Quince?—who reached out, saying, “Here, luv, come away.” Nick Bottom, who had rushed into the study first, rushed back out, his face green as he ran from the cottage, barking dogs at his heels.

  Pru pushed her way forward—if there had been an accident, someone should do something. As a gardener, she’d been on a health and safety training course and could manage basic first aid. But when she’d made it as far as the door, she froze at the sight.

  Was this Lysander? She supposed so—he wore the young man’s clothes and had that same shock of dark blond hair. But his face—swollen, distorted beyond recognition, and covered in red blotches. His engorged tongue thrust out of his mouth, and his eyes were squeezed shut from the bloated flesh. He lay slumped and still against the wall below the unopened window, the single chair overturned.

  Pru took a sharp breath and swallowed hard, breaking out in a cold sweat as Penelope squatted next to the body, two fingers to his neck. Max hovered next to her, ducking as a bee lazed by.

  From behind them came helpful suggestions. “Get him up!” “Don’t move him!” “We can’t leave him there like that!” “What’s happened to his face?” “Call an ambulance!”

  The stage manager looked up, first at the director, then at Pru, then to the crowd beyond. “He’s dead.”

  Pru took a step closer to the bookshelf, seeking support, and something crunched underfoot. Broken glass. She kept still, scanned the room, and spotted a few bees buzzing in the corner near a low table.

  “Penny,” the director said, “ring the ambulance.”

  “But, Uncle Max, what could they do?”

  “Who else are we to call?” he asked.

  Pru pulled her phone from her pocket. “The police.”

  Max and Penelope stared at her. In the sitting room, it was as if everyone had stopped breathing—apart from Hermia’s ragged sobs.

  “It’s an…unexpected death,” Pru explained, “and I believe it’s common practice. Also, it might be better if we don’t wait in here. Perhaps we could move into the yard.”

  No one questioned her authority—rather, they seemed relieved to be told what to do. Ambrose put a hand on Miriam’s shoulder, and she covered it with her own. Francis Flute slipped off her head scarf—part of her Blokes costume, a fake, thin ponytail dangling from its end—and ran a hand through her hair, the top curls falling back onto her forehead.

  “Pen?” she asked.

  “Yes, we’re coming.” Penelope put a hand on her uncle’s arm and led him away.

  As the group filed out, they asked each other questions.

  “What do you think happened?” “Did he hit his head?” “Why would he look like that?” “What about those bees?” “They must’ve come in the window—did you see them all over the flowers outside?”

  When the cottage was empty, Pru studied the room one more time—her eyes deftly skipping over the corpse. What did she see? Lysander’s leather satchel upturned near the body, its contents spilled out—including a mobile phone and a well-thumbed copy of the script. Littering the ground around the corpse were the bodies of dead bees.

  Enough—let the police take care of this. She stepped out and looked down at her bare hands. Surely everyone in the cast and crew had touched every surface in the cottage? Still, she used the hem of her shirt to pull the door to and after that, she shoved a small rag rug into the gap at the bottom. Weren’t the bees themselves evidence? Or perhaps, they were witnesses. In the kitchen, she made the call.

  “Pearse.”

  “Hello,” she said. “I’m at rehearsals. Are you far away?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  He could pick up her mood in an instant—was it the tone of her voice, a seldom-used frequency to her speech, or instinct? Regardless, it was a fine trait for a police officer, and not a bad one for a husband.

  “I’m all right. But your services are needed.”

  * * *

  —

  No sirens heralded the arrival of the police, but Pru, at the gate, saw the cloud of dust from the quiet lane not ten minutes after her call. She unclipped and reclipped her hair as first Christopher’s police-issue BMW came into sight, followed by a patrol car.

  On the phone, she had explained only the bare bones: Gabriel Gibb—she’d had to dig in her bag to find the cast list and his real name—had been found dead, locked inside the gardener’s cottage. He must’ve been dead for an hour or more, and he may have died from multiple bee stings.

  Had he been allergic to bee venom, she wondered. But those with bee allergies knew to carry medication for emergencies—wouldn’t he have had an adrenaline injection pen? And wouldn’t he be cautious about spending day after day in a garden? Although, she reminded herself, Gabriel Gibb had died indoors.

  Pru met the police as they emerged from their cars. DI Pearse wore a dark suit, and PS Grey—his driver—was in her uniform plus acid-yellow high-visibility vest. Two police constables got out of the patrol car and joined them. Christopher put his hand on Pru’s arm, and she nodded—no need to tend to her—and then he studied the gates. “Are they always open?”

  “When the company is here, yes,” Pru replied.

  “Grey, check with the Gascoignes about CCTV—although there are probably a dozen ways someone could get in around the perimeter.”

  “Do you have the Gascoignes’ contact information?” Pru asked as she led them in.

  “I rang Simon,” Christopher answered.

  At the cottage, he motioned for his team to wait, and—holding out his warrant card and badge—introduced himself and his sergeant to the cast, who stood in a tight group in the yard, the border collies at their feet looking rather pleased with themselves.

  “I know this is a difficult time,” Christopher said, “but I will want to talk with each of you this a
fternoon, and so you will need to remain on-site for a while. Perhaps you’d be more comfortable in the…”

  “The stables?” Pru suggested.

  Helena came to life. “Look!” she shouted, pointing to the pyracantha. “That’s what killed him—that bush. It has a million bees on it—and they got in the room with him. You should see what they did—he looks horrible.” She choked on her last word and shuddered.

  The others winced at the reminder of the gruesome sight, and it took Ambrose saying “Come on” to get them moving.

  Pru moved forward with the group, but Christopher caught her. “Would you wait here?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  The police made the first foray into the cottage, and while they were busy, others arrived—two women and a man, all in plainclothes. The medical examiner and SOCO, scene of crime officers. On the phone, Pru had explained the high traffic in and out of the cottage, including since the body had been found. What sort of evidence would be left?

  A police constable emerged, and Pru watched him take out his expandable truncheon and thrust it into the boxwood by the door, shoving branches this way and that, peering at the ground. When Christopher nodded her in, she followed, but paused at the entry to the study. The tiny room was packed with people, two of them hovering over the body, which remained in full view—its bloated face like an absurd cartoon figure. Pru looked away, taking several slow, steady breaths.

  Christopher pointed to the corner where a few bees lazed about in a zigzag flight pattern near the floor. The table had been moved away, and now Pru could see that the glass underfoot came from a shattered jar—pint-size, like a canning jar. It had no label. The top was still screwed down onto the broken rim, and a few airholes had been punched in it. Spilling forth from among the glass shards was a handful of blue flowers, with a few bees attending.

  “Phacelia,” she told Christopher. “It’s called the bee plant. There’s a massive amount of it planted in the orchard here—it helps with pollination.” But Pru also noticed the clear golden substance settled in the bottom of the jar. She leaned as far over as she could, reluctant to go further.

  Had Gabriel Gibb planned an elaborate suicide by bringing a jar of flowers and honey and bees into the cottage and locking himself in the study? And how would he have done that?

  “Is there a key to the study door?” she asked Christopher.

  “We’ve not found it in here,” he answered. “We’ll keep looking, but it was probably taken away.”

  So, locked in by someone else.

  Pru heard Sophie in conversation and recognized the other voice as Miriam’s. She looked out and saw the costumer clutching an electric kettle to her breast.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the sergeant said, “I’ll fill it for you.”

  Pru needed to get out of the study and away from the corpse. She needed air. “Let me do that.”

  Miriam passed the kettle over the strip of blue-and-white police tape that now wrapped the cottage and cut the entry in half like a Dutch door. “There was water enough for only one pot,” she said, her eyes darting past Pru into the cottage and then away. “And we’ve no tap in the stables.” Her ashen face seemed to fade into her blond hair, which, Pru could see on closer examination, contained a fair amount of gray.

  “Hang on.” Dodging a uniform on her way to the sink, Pru called back, “Do you need milk and sugar?”

  “Oh. Yes, I think so.”

  Pru filled the kettle and handed it over along with the sugar bowl. “I’ll bring the milk and be right behind you.” She found Penelope’s stash of biscuits and grabbed the chocolate digestives and ginger nuts to take along.

  Inside the stables, it was as quiet as a morgue. Pru blushed at the thought—the simile had popped into her mind unbidden. The cast had scattered about the place, some on the sofa, others the few chairs. Frances and Penelope had pulled two chairs together and sat holding hands, the three-ring binder clasped in Penelope’s free arm.

  The rest of the Blokes had pulled off their scarves—their ponytails were real—and now sat on the ground against a wall. Linden Parfitt had joined them, her bare shoulders wrapped in a plaid blanket, her head resting against Nick Bottom, and a dog snuggled on either side of them. Hermia and Demetrius huddled together at one end of the sofa, and it was only at that moment Pru saw how alike they were. She’d been distracted by the difference in their heights, but their likeness was evident now—they had the same high cheekbones and curly hair, although his was brown and hers golden. Related—brother and sister?

  “Was it an accident?” Linden asked Pru.

  “I don’t know.” Pru kept her head down as she struggled to open the biscuits.

  “What are the police looking for?” Hermia’s voice broke when she spoke.

  “I couldn’t say exactly…”

  “Why do we have to sit round here?” Helena demanded.

  “The police, you see.” Pru clenched her teeth and wrenched the packet open, sending ginger nuts flying.

  “How is it that you—”

  Sophie put her head into the stables, breaking off the interrogation.

  “Ms. Parke?”

  “Yes?”

  “Inspector Pearse would like a word.”

  “Coming.”

  Christopher waited for her near the cottage. “The ME says it’s likely to be anaphylaxis that killed him,” he reported. “But she’ll know for certain after the autopsy.”

  Pru frowned. “He didn’t have one of those injection pens in his bag?”

  Christopher shook his head. “Not in his bag nor anywhere in the room. He has a contusion on the back of his head, but that could’ve happened when he collapsed. We’ll know more after the autopsy.”

  They stood several feet away from the pyracantha, but she could hear the hum. “Helena blames those bees,” Pru said, “but the study window was closed.”

  “And jammed with the handle broken off. Not that he couldn’t’ve cracked the glass or wrenched the door to the room open, but if he had panicked, closed up with the bees, it would’ve made it that much harder for him.” He glanced over at the stables, full of cast members and suspects.

  “So, it was on purpose—he was murdered,” Pru said. “Someone knew he was allergic to bee venom. Anaphylaxis, that means he couldn’t breathe. He suffocated.” She took a shuddery breath.

  Christopher fixed her with one of his intense looks, his brown eyes seeing right through her. “Do you want to go home?”

  “I certainly do not,” she replied.

  He gave her a nod. “Right. Well, in that case, I need your help. You mentioned a list of names?”

  “The cast list.” She’d left her bag in the stables but had folded up her cheat sheet and stuck it in a pocket, and produced it for him now. “Also, Miriam Sykes is here. She does costumes. And Penelope, of course. There’s a crew to build part of the set, but they come when no one else is here—I’ve never seen them. And Bubble and Squeak.”

  Christopher looked up from the paper.

  “The dogs. They work in the act with the Bumbling Blokes.”

  “I’ll leave them off the interview list for now.” He glanced round the gravel yard. “The main house isn’t open, is it?”

  No, but Pru had already come up with an idea for his police interviews. She led both Christopher and Sophie to the edge of the theater lawn and pointed out the awning Max sat under during rehearsals—out in the open where no one would overhear. It would do. PS Grey returned to the cottage while Pru and Christopher remained.

  The space looked even more vast for being empty. Pru’s eyes pricked with tears. “I wish you could see the gardens,” she said, her heart heavy with the realization this could be the end not only of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and her brush with the theater world, but also her free entry into the Coeur-de-la-Mer landscape. Then,
she remembered the reason it would all come to a halt, and added, “It’s awful about Lysander. Gabriel.”

  “Was he well liked?”

  “Not by the men,” Pru said. “Well, at least not Demetrius and Ambrose. I don’t know about any of the others—except for Max. He must’ve thought well of him—after all, he cast him.”

  “And the women?”

  “That’s a different story. Hermia, Helena—I can’t remember their actual names—and Linden. I believe he was carrying on with each of them. I wonder was he playing them off each other. He seemed to have a great fondness for women—any woman, any time. An inexhaustible appetite.”

  Christopher raised his eyebrows. “You hadn’t mentioned that.”

  “Mmm,” she replied. “Not married women, though—he drew the line there. He told me so himself.”

  “Good thing. Penelope?”

  Pru recalled the stage manager telling Lysander to “sod off,” but also remembered it had been said without rancor. “I don’t think so.”

  “What about Miriam Sykes?” Christopher asked.

  “Mmm…I’m not sure. He was certainly trying it on with her, and she looked to be enjoying it, but I think that was for show. For Ambrose’s benefit.”

  “Thanks, that will help me,” he said. When PS Grey approached with Snug the Joiner—the first interviewee—Christopher added, “We’ll talk more later. Meanwhile, would you wait with the others in the stables? Better than a uniform standing watch over them.”

  “Of course. I’ll take the sandwiches and drinks from the cottage, if that’s all right. Give them something to do.”

  Pru retrieved the lunches and walked into the stables amid squabbling voices, which shut off like a tap the second they saw her. Even in the dim light she had no trouble making out the suspicious glances thrown her way.

  Hermia shot off the sofa, her blond curls shaking, and stabbed a finger at Pru.

  “You never said you were married to a copper.”