The Strangling on the Stage

by Simon Brett

  Janie nodded. ‘Actually, it finished quite a while ago, but I was still feeling raw. I had quite a lot of boyfriends while I was at uni, but there was this one boy I got together with in my third year, and we kind of stayed together after we’d done our degrees. We had a flat together in Crouch End, but then … Mummy got ill, and I was having to spend more and more time down here. And, you know, I’d rush up to London for the odd night, but that made me feel guilty and … Oh, I don’t blame him. I don’t think I was much fun to be with at the time. Well, we tottered on like that for … over a year, it was … and then the inevitable happened.’

  ‘He met someone else?’

  ‘Yup,’ replied Janie, trying to make it sound casual, as if the separation was something she had come to terms with. But Jude could tell that she hadn’t. ‘So, anyway, having an older man, an attractive man coming on to me, telling me I was beautiful, even if he was married, even if he was Ritchie Good … well, it gave me quite a boost. And yes, I did fall for him a bit.’

  ‘Did anything come of it?’

  ‘Like what? Are you asking whether we went to bed together?’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose I am.’

  ‘Then the answer’s no. But it was odd …’

  ‘Odd in what way?’

  ‘Well, he kind of implied that we would go to bed together. He kept telling me how much he fancied me and trying to persuade me to say yes. And he said he’d book a hotel room for us and … well, he persuaded me, I guess. I don’t know how much I really wanted to, but, you know, it was the prospect of something different happening in my life, something apart from looking after my mother and attending rehearsals for The Devil’s Disciple.

  ‘So I said yes. And we fixed the date, and Ritchie said he’d booked the hotel room and … Then the afternoon of that day I had a text from him saying he’d decided he couldn’t go through with it.’

  ‘Did he give any reason?’

  ‘He said he’d realized that he was just being selfish and, however much he fancied me, it wouldn’t be fair to his wife.’

  ‘And how did he treat you after that, Janie? When you met him at rehearsals? Was he embarrassed?’

  ‘Not a bit of it. He behaved as if nothing had happened between us. I mean, he stopped coming on to me, but he didn’t try to avoid me or anything like that. And certainly his confidence wasn’t affected. In fact, I would have said he was cockier than ever after that.’

  ‘Pleased that he had avoided the pitfalls of sin?’ suggested Jude with some irony.

  ‘I don’t think that was it. It was almost as if for him the process was complete. He’d got what he wanted out of his relationship with me. He’d persuaded me to agree to go to bed with him and, having achieved that, he had lost interest.’

  What Janie Trotman had said confirmed the impression Jude had got when she and Ritchie met in the Crown and Anchor. She didn’t know if there was a word to describe a man who behaved like that, but had it been a woman she would have been called a ‘cock-teaser’.

  SEVENTEEN

  ‘Is that Jude Nichol?’

  She was surprised. So few people ever referred to her by anything other than her first name. It was only on official documentation that she used the surname she had gained from her second marriage.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied cautiously.

  ‘It’s Detective Inspector Tull,’ said the voice from the other end of the phone. ‘You remember you gave a statement to me and one of my colleagues after the death of Mr Ritchie Good.’

  ‘Yes, of course I remember.’

  ‘And I said then that I might be in touch with you again in connection with our enquiries.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So here I am, being in touch,’ he said with some levity in his voice.

  ‘Right, Inspector. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I just wanted to check a couple of details that you put in your statement.’

  ‘Fine. Fire away.’ But Jude felt a small pang of panic. She had withheld from the police what Hester Winstone had said to her in the Green Room that Sunday night. Maybe, when interviewed, Hester herself had mentioned it and Inspector Tull was about to expose Jude’s lie.

  ‘We’ve now spoken to all of the people who attended the rehearsal that afternoon,’ the Inspector began smoothly, ‘and they all seem to tell more or less the same story.’

  ‘That’s not surprising, is it?’

  ‘Not necessarily, no. And the sequence of events that everyone agrees on is that before the demonstration of his gallows, Gordon Blaine was holding a real noose as opposed to the fake one. Would you go along with that, Mrs Nichol?’

  ‘Please just call me Jude.’

  ‘Very well, Jude.’

  ‘Yes, I would go along with that.’

  ‘Thank you. And then when the stage curtains were drawn back to reveal Mr Good, he had the fake noose around his neck …?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he was standing on the wooden cart, which Gordon Blaine moved away so that it no longer supported him …?’

  ‘Exactly. And Ritchie then grabbed the noose so that the Velcro didn’t give way immediately, and he did a bit of play-acting, as if he was actually being hanged.’

  ‘“Play-acting”?’

  ‘Yes, playing to the gallery, showing off.’

  ‘And to do that would have been in character for Mr Good?’

  ‘Completely.’

  ‘So, after the demonstration, everyone went off to the Cricketers pub opposite St Mary’s Hall …?’

  ‘Yes, I’m honestly not certain whether everyone went, but most people certainly.’

  ‘And within half an hour you went back to the hall and found Mr Good dead, hanging from the gallows with the real noose round his neck …?’

  ‘As I said in my statement, yes.’

  ‘Yes. So within that half-hour – or however long it was exactly – someone substituted the real noose for the fake one …?’

  ‘They must have done.’

  ‘Mm.’ The Inspector was silent for a moment. ‘When you went to the Cricketers pub that evening, did you notice any members of the group missing? Or did you see anyone leaving the pub to go back to the hall?’

  ‘I wasn’t aware of anyone missing or anyone leaving, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. You know, I was just having a drink with a bunch of people. I wasn’t expecting ever to be cross-examined on the precise events of the evening.’

  ‘No, of course you weren’t.’ Another silence. ‘Well, Jude, you’ll be pleased to know that your account tallies more or less exactly with what all the other witnesses have said.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Did you know Mr Good well?’

  ‘No, I’d only met him since I became involved in the production.’ No need to muddy the waters by mentioning drinks à deux in the Crown and Anchor.

  ‘So you probably didn’t know him well enough to have a view on whether or not he might have suicidal tendencies?’

  ‘No. But from what I had seen of him, I would have thought it very unlikely.’

  ‘A lot of suicides are very unlikely.’

  Jude agreed. She’d seen plenty of evidence of that in her work as a healer. ‘I know. It’s often impossible to know what’s going on inside another person’s mind.’

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘Does that mean, Inspector, that you are thinking Ritchie changed the nooses round himself?’

  ‘It’s something we’re considering … along with a lot of other possibilities.’ She might have known she would just get the standard evasive answer to a question like that. ‘One of the people in your group seemed to think it was the most likely explanation.’

  ‘Oh, who was that?’

  ‘Come on, Jude. You know I won’t tell you that.’

  ‘Was it Hester Winstone?’

  ‘Or that.’

  ‘And I suppose you won’t tell me if you’re about to make an arrest either?’

  ‘How very perceptive of you.
Anyway, an arrest implies that a crime has been committed. There seems to be a consensus among the people in your group that Mr Good’s death was just an unfortunate accident.’

  ‘Really? No one’s mentioned the word “murder”?’

  ‘You’re the first.’ Once again there was a note of humour in his voice.

  ‘I’m amazed. I would have thought that self-dramatizing lot would have all—’

  ‘You’re the first.’

  ‘Well …’ She was flabbergasted.

  ‘Anyway, Jude, thank you very much for your time. I think it very unlikely that we will have to trouble you again.’

  ‘Does that mean you’ve closed the investigation?’

  ‘It means I think it’s very unlikely that we will have to trouble you again.’

  That was it. Inspector Tull’s call did not serve to make Jude feel any more settled. She still felt convinced that Ritchie Good had been murdered, and it was frustrating to have just been talking to someone who undoubtedly knew a great deal about the case. Who had, quite properly, resisted sharing any of that knowledge. Her own investigation seemed to have hit a brick wall.

  And she did wish she could contact Hester Winstone. She’d love to know what the former prompter had said when she was questioned by the police.

  Jude had another unexpected call that Monday. It was round five o’clock and she was just tidying up after a healing session with a woman suffering from sciatica. Her efforts had proved efficacious and she felt the usual mix of satisfaction and sheer exhaustion.

  ‘Hello?’ she said.

  ‘Is that Jude?’ A woman’s voice, cultured, precise.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My name is Gwenda Good. I’m the widow of Ritchie Good.’

  ‘Oh.’ Jude hastened to come out with appropriate expressions of regret and condolence, but the woman cut through them.

  ‘I believe you were the first person to find my late husband’s body.’

  ‘One of the first, certainly.’ Jude didn’t want Hester Winstone’s name to come into their conversation unless Gwenda Good introduced it.

  ‘I would very much like to talk to you about what happened to Ritchie.’

  ‘I’d be happy to talk about it. Do you think there was something suspicious about his death?’

  ‘I don’t like the word “suspicious”. I would prefer to say “unexplained”.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Jude felt a spark of excitement. She was a great believer in synchronicity. Earlier that day, after her phone call from Inspector Tull, her investigation seemed to have hit a brick wall. Now, out of the blue, she was being offered the chance to speak to the dead man’s widow.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t go out much,’ said Gwenda Good. ‘I wonder if it would be possible for you to visit me at my home?’

  ‘Certainly … that is, assuming you don’t live in the Outer Hebrides.’

  If the woman at the other end of the line was amused by this suggestion, she didn’t show it. ‘I live in Fedborough,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, that’s fine. I’m only down in Fethering.’

  ‘I knew you couldn’t be too far away. We have the same dialling code.’

  ‘Yes. Well, when would be convenient for me to come and see you?’

  ‘Would Wednesday morning be possible? Eleven o’clock.’

  So that was agreed. When she put the phone down, Jude was struck by how businesslike and unemotional Gwenda Good had been. She didn’t sound like a woman who had just lost a much-loved husband.

  EIGHTEEN

  Because the character of Mrs Dudgeon only appeared in Act One of The Devil’s Disciple, Jude was not required for all the play’s rehearsals. But Carole, now indispensable as prompter, had to be there every time. And the following day, the Tuesday, was one of those for which her neighbour wasn’t called, so Carole drove to Smalting on her own.

  Jude had told her about the phone calls from Inspector Tull and Gwenda Good. Though not much information had come out of the first one, Carole was intrigued by what Jude might find out when she visited Ritchie Good’s widow. She was also, not to put too fine a point on it, rather jealous. Now she was embedded in the Devil’s Disciple company as prompter, she wanted to be fully part of any investigating they managed to achieve there.

  So she was determined to use her evening at St Mary’s Hall without Jude to good effect. To Davina’s annoyance, there was a poor turnout that evening, because of a gastric flu bug which was working its way through the Devil’s Disciple company. Still, Carole found the evening rather enjoyable. She managed to rap most of the surviving cast over the knuckles for paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw’s text, and when the cry of ‘Anyone for the Cricketers?’ went up, Carole conceded that she would join the throng.

  She got a strange satisfaction from making that breakthrough on an evening when Jude wasn’t there. Next time they were both present, Carole could go to the pub after rehearsal as if she’d been doing it all her life.

  Because of the driving, she had been intending to drink something soft. But when Davina Vere Smith said, ‘Let me buy you a drink. No prompter should have to work as hard as you had to this evening’, her resolve melted away. She asked for a small Chilean Chardonnay, and Davina bought her a large one.

  Carole lingered on the periphery of a group in the centre of which Olly Pinto was doing his Ritchie Good ‘Life and Soul of the Party’ impression, until Neville Prideaux came and joined her. ‘Sorry, Carole, we haven’t really had a chance to have a proper chat, have we?’ he said.

  She was glad to have the chance to talk to Neville, though she put herself on her guard. Jude had brought her up to date with everything she knew about the retired teacher, so Carole was wary of appearing to know too much.

  ‘You were certainly kept busy today,’ Neville went on.

  ‘I suppose that’s the prompter’s role.’

  ‘To be busy? Yes. But not that busy.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t have to prompt you once.’

  ‘No,’ he responded rather smugly. ‘I felt, since I’m the one who suggested the play, I have to set an example as General Burgoyne.’ A complacent smile, then: ‘Olly was absolutely hopeless this afternoon, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Hopeless on the lines, do you mean, or as an actor?’

  ‘Let’s just stick to the lines for the moment, shall we? He was all over the place. You were having to prompt him on virtually every speech.’

  ‘Yes, but of course he has taken the part over at very short notice.’ Carole was not just being defensive for the young man; she had spotted an opportunity to steer the conversation back to Ritchie Good’s death.

  ‘He’s had a couple of weeks. He ought to be more advanced than he is. Olly’s always been a bit iffy on lines. I directed him as Algy in The Importance, when Elizaveta gave her Lady Bracknell. Oscar Wilde’s lines are so beautifully written, you wouldn’t think anyone could cock them up. Well, Olly Pinto managed it. He was paraphrasing everything. He’s actually not a very good actor either.’

  Neville spoke as if sounding the death knell on Olly Pinto’s theatrical career.

  ‘Then why does he get big parts in the SADOS?’

  ‘Oh, a couple of reasons. One, the eternal problem of all amateur dramatic societies: not enough men. The gender imbalance is so skewed that a young man with a very small talent can go a long way. And someone with a bit more talent – even a glib, meretricious talent like that possessed by Ritchie Good – can cherry-pick any part he wants.’ Even though his rival was no longer on the scene, Neville Prideaux still spoke of Ritchie with considerable venom.

  ‘You said there were two reasons why Olly got good parts …’

  ‘Oh, yes. Well, the other one, of course, is because he’s a creature. And I use the word in the Shakespearean sense of someone created by a more powerful person to whom they are totally subservient.’

  ‘So who fits that role for Olly Pinto?’

  ‘Elizaveta, of course. Elizaveta Dalrymple, undisputed
queen of SADOS.’

  ‘I gathered that her right to that title had been disputed.’

  ‘What do you mean, Carole? Oh, that business of her walking out of this production. That won’t be forever, I can guarantee you that. SADOS is far too precious to Elizaveta for her really to cut her ties with it.’

  ‘But with regard to Olly, you’re saying he owes his success in the society to Elizaveta backing him?’

  ‘Exactly. As I said, he’s her creature.’

  ‘Or poodle?’

  ‘“Creature”’s better,’ said Neville definitively. Carole got the feeling that anything he thought of would always be better than anything anyone else thought of. That was why he’d so enjoyed being a schoolteacher, pontificating to small boys who never dared to question his opinions.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he went on, ‘Olly is very much Elizaveta’s creature. Part of the inner circle who spend all their time going for “drinkies” round at her place. She’s got a nice house on the seafront at Smalting, and I gather she’s been having these little parties for years. She used to co-host them with Freddie and didn’t let his death stop her.’

  ‘When did he die, actually?’

  ‘Oh, I suppose about three years ago.’

  ‘What of?’

  ‘Heart attack, I think it was. He had a flat in Worthing where he used to “prepare his productions”. He was found there, I believe. Still, he left Elizaveta very well provided for.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Freddie made a lot of money. That’s why he could afford an expensive hobby like SADOS.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘You mean how did he make his money? He was a pensions consultant.’ Neville loaded the words with contempt. ‘Nothing even mildly to do with the arts.’ Strange, Carole reflected, how Neville seemed to recognize a hierarchy amongst day jobs. To her mind being a schoolteacher wasn’t that much more interesting than being a pensions consultant, but to Neville there was evidently a big difference.

  ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘Freddie had sorted out his own pension provisions very carefully indeed. Elizaveta is extremely well-heeled.’ He spoke with a degree of resentment. ‘It’s why she can always afford to be giving her “drinkies things”.’