Midsummer Mayhem

by Marty Wingate

  A light breeze kicked up, and Titania’s hairnet threatened to take off from atop the costume pile. Pru clamped her chin down on it just as Miriam came round the corner of the hedge with outfits for the Wall and the Moon in hand.

  The costumer tsked. “What are you still doing with those? You’re not a coatrack, you know.”

  * * *

  —

  The Mechanicals performed a tedious brief scene of young Pyramus and his love Thisbe, and this time Bottom made it through his line—Now die, die, die, die, die—without Nell breaking into tears, and so the play continued to the end. Pru had little left to do, and so she stood in the wings. The voices onstage were nearly drowned out by an incessant buzzing that had started up in her head. By the time Puck reached I am sent with broom before to sweep the dust behind the door, Pru thought she might have the start of a summer cold or, at the very least, a bad headache, and determined to take something for it as soon as she could.

  Max kept the actors out on the theater lawn while Nina and Pru took the children off for teatime. But before juice boxes and chocolate biscuits were offered, all costumes had to be put away safely and everyday clothes donned. Nina took the boys to the stables while Pru stayed in the cottage with the girls, sifting through the single heap of clothes that had been left on the floor and trying to find each item’s proper owner. She suspected the girls were trading off apparel, and so it took an inordinate amount of time as she held up tiny shirts, jackets, trousers, skirts, leggings, socks, shoes, and—remarkably—a tutu.

  “Whose is this?” Pru asked, holding it up.

  Peaseblossom Three pointed at her and said, “It’s yours!” and then burst out into hysterical laughter.

  Pru put the tutu on her head and hands on her hips. “How do I look?”

  Amid the squeals, Nina put her head in the door and surveyed the scene. The girls slapped their hands over their mouths in a vain attempt to muffle giggles, and Pru pulled off the tutu.

  “The boys are dressed,” Nina reported. “Shall I leave you all to it and take the chocolate bickies back to the stables with me?”

  Within five seconds, all clothes were on, and the girls were ready. During the mayhem of the fairies’ teatime, Pru managed to down a couple of bicuits before it was time to accompany the children to the minibus. Where were Bubble and Squeak when you needed them—was Max giving the dogs notes, too?

  “Will you be all right?” Pru asked Nina. “Would you like me to go along?”

  “No, we’ll be fine. That’s because Mum or Dad will be waiting for us in the school car park, and they’ll want to know exactly how the afternoon went. Won’t they, children?”

  The bus was quiet when Nina closed the door. She reversed and started down the drive, and, for a moment, Pru considered following them and then continuing to the Robber Blackbird, ordering a large whiskey, and hiding in a corner. The buzzing in her head—chased away by the din of excited children—had returned.

  She walked back toward the cottage and met the company in the yard as they hurried in for their tea, in need of a quick cuppa before departing. Penelope brought up the rear, pausing to collect several loose sheets of paper that had escaped the three-ring binder. One had sailed several feet away, and Max, walking back with her, stepped over and put a foot on it before it could fly further.

  “Nina’s just left with the fairies,” Pru said, as they stood out in the gravel yard. “I was coming to check if you had any notes for me. How do you think the afternoon rehearsal went?”

  “Quite well,” Max said, adding, “all things considered.”

  “Max had next to nothing for you,” Penelope told her. The open binder teetered in one arm as she turned pages until she found what she needed. “Here now—he thought intermission might be a good time for you to tidy up the plants.”

  “Everyone’s busy opening their second bottle of wine by then,” Max said, “or locating the dessert course inside their hampers. They will pay no attention to you. Also, Prunella, it might be best to have extra lengths of lavender ribbon on hand—I fear it will need to be replaced more than once during our run.”

  The run—the number of performances—was only five, Wednesday through Sunday matinee. Opening night was a mere four days away.

  “Right, well, that isn’t much for me to do, is it?”

  “And you’ll be there for Miriam backstage?”

  “Yes.”

  “I daresay Nina will need a hand with the fairies,” Max added, examining the ends of his scarf.

  “Of course.” Pru swallowed.

  “Uncle Max,” Penelope chastised the director. “He’s having you on, Pru—we have two mums to stay with the fairies.”

  Pru saw a twinkle in Max’s dark eyes. “Ah well, Penny, perhaps we will find one other duty for Prunella then, yes?”

  Pru laughed—he was joking, right?

  Penelope and Max continued to their tea. Pru, on the other hand, took a right turn and went into the potting shed. It was time for her to get to work. She called to Miriam, who was at the door of the cottage. “I’ll be late back this evening—I’m staying to do a few things in the garden. Would you tell Evelyn?”

  She went into the shed and located the hand pruners, loppers, rake, tarp…Seriously, did she think she could make it through the rest of the double border this evening? Not likely—but she’d make a go of it if only to say she’d done something in the garden. Loading the handcart with her tools, she picked up the handles and steered it out the door.

  “You gardeners,” Nell said as Pru emerged. “You never stop, do you?”

  “It’s the catmint,” she explained. “Just thought I’d get a bit more of it trimmed back.”

  “Isn’t that your Hal’s job?” Nell asked. “Now that we’ve wrapped up rehearsal for the day, he won’t be distracted.” She waved as Will and Anna came out of the cottage, and they all three headed toward the gate.

  Yes, it was Hal’s job, and for a fleeting moment, Pru had half a mind to ring him on the spot and demand that he return to Coeur-de-la-Mer and finish what he’d started. But on second thought, no. Hal was at Dean Bank—the garden in Romsey that he’d neglected—digging out a pond, and she felt it best that there was some distance between him and his infatuation for a while. And she’d be able to use her time alone trying to pry open those closed doors in her mind.

  Pru took the handcart down the short incline and straight up the middle of the theater lawn. The director’s awning was gone, and despite the multilevel platforms on the stage, the grounds were quiet and Coeur-de-la-Mer felt as if it had returned from a theater to a landscape. This was just what she needed. Gardening helped Pru think—weeding in particular, but pruning and trimming certainly held their Zen-like qualities. She took a deep breath and exhaled—yes, there, that was better.

  When she’d reached halfway across the theater lawn, a brown streak raced past her feet so close she felt a breeze. She heard oncoming barks behind her, and braced herself.

  Bubble and Squeak, blurs of black-and-white fur, flew past not ten yards behind the hare, which headed for center stage. But it didn’t take a direct route—instead, it zigzagged across the lawn and up to the multilevel platforms, hounds at its heels. Up and down, left and right, it led them a merry chase until it looked as if the dogs were within striking distance when their master’s voice rang out over the lawn.

  “Stop!” Nick shouted, and the dogs put on the brakes, tumbling into each other across the Athenian court platform and knocking into one of the heavy iron planters, which didn’t even bother to rock but immediately crashed to the stage.

  The hare went one way and the dogs another, turning tail and running for home—that is, Nick and Linden, who stood at the back of the theater lawn. Onstage lay the fallen soldier—the urn—a mound of potting soil scattered next to it. A few feet away, the acanthus had landed on its h
ead, thick white roots to the sky.

  “Here now,” Nick called, “we’ll clean that up.”

  Pru looked back to see Bubble and Squeak glued to either side of Linden. She had a hand on their heads while they panted and pricked their ears at Nick. He gave them a stern look, and they responded by each raising a paw and waving it at him.

  “No,” Pru called, laughing at the canine apology—if that’s what it was. “It’s all right. Won’t take me a minute. Are you on your way out?”

  “We are,” Linden said. “What about you?”

  “I’m staying behind for a while to do a bit of work.”

  “We’ll see you tomorrow, then. Shall we close the gates?” Nick asked.

  “Yes, please do.”

  As she waved goodbye to Nick, Linden, and the dogs, trotting happily behind, Pru told herself that if she had taken care of those urns to begin with, this might not have happened. Or perhaps it would’ve regardless—Bubble and Squeak were determined in their pursuit, and no cast-iron urn could’ve held up to their energy. Right, here’s another job to add to the list. Too bad the pub trick of putting a folded-up beer mat under one leg wouldn’t work to stabilize the planters.

  She steered the cart through a side arch in the theater lawn, left it near her plant corral, and went out to assess the damage. With the urn lying on its side, it was easy to see the problem—there was a large blob of old concrete stuck to the bottom of one of the pedestal feet. The planter must’ve been a permanent fixture at its former residence and had been wrenched unceremoniously from its home. Well, then, couldn’t they just get a sledgehammer or something and knock that bit off? No, perhaps one of those handsaws that cut through anything. In the meantime, could she find something to use as a shim?

  Poking around her plant corral yielded nothing, but it led Pru to tidying the place up—stacking nursery pots and gathering leftover plants that lay scattered about. She would check in the shed on her way out and arrive early tomorrow to sort out the planter. But the plant itself was a different matter. Pru took an empty black container out with her to the platform. She’d pot up the acanthus for the night and return it to a more stable environment on the morrow.

  That made her smile—on the morrow. All this Shakespearean language must be rubbing off on her.

  She scooped up soil with her hands, filling the nursery container’s bottom before moving on to the acanthus itself. It may need a few broken leaves clipped off, but overall looked in good condition. She picked the plant up with both hands and set it into the pot, but as she did so, a couple of the thick white roots fell back to the stage with a light clunk against the plywood. So, there had been damage after all.

  Pru picked one up. No, not a root—not at all. That buzzing returned, like a swarm of bees in her brain. Her head jerked up. She scanned the empty theater lawn, and then dropped her eyes back down to examine what she held.

  A white plastic cylinder about the size of a fat pen. She wiped the dirt off and read the label: ADRENALINE (EPINEPHRINE). AUTO-INJECTOR. PATIENT: GABRIEL GIBB.

  The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

  Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

  A local habitation and a name.

  5.1.15–17

  Chapter 33

  All the shut doors in Pru’s mind flew open, and thoughts came flooding out, threatening to overwhelm her.

  Hal had murdered Gabriel.

  And with that one thought, others began to fall into place like a jigsaw puzzle or setting out plants in a parterre, creating a pattern from confusion. She studied the picture that had been made.

  How had Gabriel’s injection pen, which she now held in her hand, ended up in the planter onstage?

  On Tuesday, the day Gabriel Gibb was murdered, Pru and Les Buchan had seen Hal leaving for Beaulieu to collect more plants. Hal told her he’d potted up the acanthus in the heavy Victorian urns, just as she had directed. Had she really assigned him that task? She could only remember being relieved one more piece of the set was in place.

  Now she understood that Hal couldn’t wait until the following morning to plant up the urns because he was in possession of Gabriel’s injection pens and needed to stash them in a place no one would look. The compost bins? No, they’d turned those and used some of the material on the set. But once the urns were planted, no one would bother with them, and he’d have the time later to retrieve the pens.

  When had he taken them?

  Each day, actors piled up their personal bags under the awning, and sometimes left them there until the end of rehearsal. Everyone had felt so safe within the walls of Coeur-de-la-Mer. On Tuesday midmorning, the cast and crew—Pru as well—had been drinking coffee and eating Evelyn’s ginger cakes in the cottage or stables.

  Hal could’ve taken the pens out of Gabriel’s bag then. He knew they would be there, because—it seemed obvious now—he’d known him in school years before. And as Hal had been on-site for a week before Pru arrived, he had time to study Gabriel’s habits through the day.

  Later, Gabriel must’ve taken his bag back with him. Perhaps he wanted to have it on hand for a lunchtime assignation—that took no stretch of the imagination to believe. But Hal—who had not left for Beaulieu—knew Gabriel would be defenseless and set about gathering the elements for his jar of death.

  She felt sick when she imagined the scene in the little study of the cottage. Didn’t Christopher say Gabriel had a contusion? He’d been hit, perhaps knocked out, and the jar full of flowers and bees had been thrown on the floor, where it shattered. If he had come to, how easy to panic—bees, agitated by confinement, swarming, stinging. Had Gabriel gone for his bag, desperately searching for the pens that would save his life?

  Premeditated murder. Hal Noakes—a gardener? Did she have this right?

  A movement stage right and Pru gasped, her heart pounding. She peered at the hedge but saw nothing, until she noticed an ear twitch. It was the hare. It had come out from under the yew and now sat quietly watching her. She was struck by the animal’s size—much bigger than a rabbit, and with enormous ears, black at the tips. “Thanks,” she said. Wasn’t the hare owed that for finding the key evidence in a murder case? “You’re fearless, aren’t you—even though Bubble and Squeak are bigger than you?”

  Its ears moved independently, like aerials, and then it turned and hopped away—happy, no doubt, that the people and dogs were gone.

  The exchange with the hare—she wasn’t going mad thinking they’d had a moment, was she?—gave Pru time to calm her nerves. Now it was time to act. She left one injection pen untouched and in situ, taking the other with her, but keeping hold by the end she’d first touched. Fingerprints.

  Fingerprints, unless the perpetrator wore gloves. She saw them now—garden gloves in Hal’s back pocket as he unloaded Italian cypresses and took them to her plant corral. He never wore gloves, she remembered thinking, but he had a pair with him on Tuesday, the day Gabriel was murdered.

  Pru retrieved her bag from the cart, dug inside until she found a tissue, and wrapped the pen loosely before dropping it in. She rubbed the palms of her hands on her trousers in frustration. How she had missed all those clues? Or were they only obvious now that she had real evidence?

  Right, she decided, as she threw her bag over her shoulder and started off for the gates—she’d be quite happy to let the police take it from here.

  And, as if he’d heard her thoughts, her phone rang. Christopher—along with voices and other noises in the background.

  “Where are you?” He spoke low, and so she had to listen hard.

  “I’m still at Coeur-de-la-Mer.”

  “I wanted you to know, we’re taking a look at Hal.”

  “Oh, Christopher—” A sob rose in her throat.

  “I followed the trail,” he told her. “I rang Farrer, got the therapist’s na
me and talked with her. I had to push, but we’re allowed that now, so at least I didn’t have to wait for a warrant. Hal had a cease-and-desist order against him for stalking and harassment of an actor in a production of Othello—this was four years back.”

  “Gabriel?” Pru asked.

  “No, but those two were in school together—sixth form—and both involved in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Gibb played Lysander, Hal was on the crew.”

  Everyone wants to be an actor—no one wants to be on the crew. Hadn’t Penelope told her that to begin with?

  “After the more recent episode, Hal was diagnosed with obsessive tendencies—but agreed to therapy, and so when he completed the program, the order was sealed.”

  Had she held out a last hope that Hal had nothing to do with Gabriel’s death—that some other hand buried the injection pens in the urn, that it was somehow, some way, a massive mix-up? That last hope fled.

  “But Hal hadn’t auditioned for this production.”

  “It could’ve been a trigger,” Christopher said. “The same play, the same actor. His alibi for Tuesday afternoon fell short, too—the roadworks on the A3057 didn’t start up until after three o’clock that day. I doubt if it will be difficult to find that bread van he’s been driving on CCTV. Look, I’m heading back now. I’ve got an unmarked car parked on Mill Lane keeping an eye on Noakes where he’s working.”

  “Dean Bank, digging out a pond.”

  “We’ll take him in for questioning. You should go home.”

  “But Christopher—”

  “Pearse?” Pru heard a voice in the background at Christopher’s end.

  “Yes, coming,” he answered. “You’re all right?” he asked Pru.