The Strangling on the Stage

by Simon Brett

  ‘I’ve heard about those, but I don’t know much detail.’

  ‘Oh, they’re part of her power base, those “drinkies” parties. Elizaveta has a level of deviousness in her that makes Machiavelli look like a rank amateur. She’s always been one of those manipulators who likes to “colonize” people. If you’re not for me, you’re against me, that’s her approach to life.’

  ‘Have you ever been to one of her “drinkies things”?’

  ‘Good Lord, no. I can’t be bought by a free glass of champagne.’ The statement, intended to sound rather magnificent, succeeded in sounding petty.

  ‘But if Olly Pinto is part of this charmed inner circle, then why didn’t he join in Elizaveta’s boycott of the production?’

  ‘Interesting point, Carole. I wondered that a bit myself. Then I decided it was for one of two reasons.’ He clearly liked dividing things into numbered sections, another schoolmasterly trait perhaps. ‘Either it was just sheer greed. He saw a socking great part being offered to him, and he thought, “Yes, I’m going to grab that.”

  ‘The other possibility – and I think the one I favour – is that Elizaveta encouraged him to take the part.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  ‘Because she knows he’s not a very good actor. I think what she hoped for first didn’t happen – that her walkout would stop the production stone dead in its tracks. Elizaveta’s not used to playing small parts, you see. Most productions she’s been in for SADOS, if she’d walked out, it really would have been the end. She didn’t realize how easy it would be to find another Mrs Dudgeon.’

  ‘I’m sure Jude would be very flattered to hear you say that,’ Carole observed drily.

  ‘Sorry, that didn’t come out right.’ He was quick to come back with a smooth response. ‘I mean how easy it would be to find another and vastly superior Mrs Dudgeon.’

  ‘Ha-ha. But, Neville, are you saying Elizaveta encouraged Olly to take the part of Dick Dudgeon because she thought he would ruin the production?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past her. Another reason she might have done it is so that she has a spy in the enemy camp.’

  ‘So that he reports back to her everything that happens during rehearsals for The Devil’s Disciple?’

  ‘Once again, I wouldn’t put it past her. Elizaveta Dalrymple is a woman of remarkable deviousness. She deeply loathed Ritchie Good for what he said to her about her past – particularly because he did it so publicly. She’d want to get her own back.’

  ‘Enough to arrange his hanging?’ asked Carole, making the question sound more frivolous than it was.

  ‘Ah. Do I detect I’m with that contingent of the Devil’s Disciple company who believes we have a murder on our hands?’

  ‘I’d never rule out any possibility.’

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘Do I gather, Neville, that you do rule out that possibility?’

  ‘I think an accident is the more likely scenario. As to murder …’ He acted as though he were contemplating the possibility for the first time. ‘Well, if it was, we wouldn’t lack for suspects, would we? Was there anyone in SADOS whose back Ritchie Good hadn’t put up?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ Carole lied. Jude had kept her up to date with everything. ‘I haven’t been with the group for long.’

  ‘No, of course not. Well, someone with an ego the size of Ritchie’s doesn’t really notice whose sensibilities he’s trampling over. I mean, did you hear what he said to cause the big bust-up with Elizaveta?’

  ‘Yes, I got reports of that from Jude.’

  ‘Ah, your pretty friend, yes.’ He said this as though he were a great connoisseur of the feminine gender, and Carole felt an atavistic pang from her childhood, the inescapable fact that she would never be known as ‘the pretty one’.

  Putting such thoughts firmly to one side, she asked, ‘And did Ritchie insult you in the same kind of way?’

  ‘No, he laid off me pretty much.’ The smug smile re-appeared. ‘He recognized that I was a lot more intelligent than he was. And at least as good an actor. So he tended to avoid direct confrontation with me.’

  ‘There was no rivalry between you?’

  ‘Good Lord, no. Well, certainly not on my side. I had no reason to be jealous of Ritchie. I suppose he might well have been jealous of me, though.’ Again it seemed that this monstrously egotistical thought was a new one to him. ‘Yes, he probably was jealous of me.’

  ‘I wondered if there was ever any rivalry between you over women …?’

  ‘Women?’

  ‘Women in the company.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ He spoke innocently, but there was a kind of roguishness in his manner too.

  ‘I just wondered whether there might have been any conflict between the two of you over some woman you both fancied …?’

  ‘Unlikely.’

  ‘I mean, Ritchie Good apparently had a habit of coming on to every woman he met. He even came on to me,’ confided Carole, blushing slightly.

  ‘I don’t think that meant much with him. Just a knee-jerk reaction,’ said Neville, unaware of how offensive his remark might be. ‘Ritchie was all mouth and no trousers. Glib with the chat, but he didn’t follow through.’

  ‘Unlike you …?’ Carole suggested rather boldly.

  Neville Prideaux smiled a wolfish smile. ‘I generally get what I want. And besides, Ritchie was in a different position from me. He was married.’

  ‘And you are not?’

  A thin smile answered the question. ‘I got divorced when I retired. A wife who is excellent as a house mistress at a boy’s public school did not fulfil the requirements I had for the rest of my life. Now I am more of an emotional freelance.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I am not looking for anything long term in a relationship. As long as it’s still fun, I will keep on with it. Once it ceases to be fun, I end it.’

  Carole found that Neville Prideaux’s charm was diminishing by the minute. Otherwise she might not have pushed ahead with her next line of questioning. ‘I heard someone chatting at rehearsals and saying that you’d had a fling with my predecessor …’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Hester Winstone.’

  ‘Huh.’ He looked displeased. ‘You can’t have any secrets with this lot.’ Then he looked defiantly at Carole. ‘So what if I did? We’re both grown-ups.’

  ‘But I’d heard that Ritchie Good came on to her too.’

  ‘I thought we’d already established that Ritchie came on to anything in a skirt. Why, are you suggesting that Ritchie and I were rivals for Hester’s affections, and I murdered him so I could have uncontested access to her?’

  This was so close to what Carole had actually been thinking that she had some difficulty making her denial sound convincing.

  ‘Well, I can assure you that wasn’t the case. Hester and I shared one night of what could hardly be described as bliss and decided mutually that ours was not going to be la grande affaire.’

  ‘Mutually?’

  ‘I decided and told her. She didn’t complain. Hester’s a very unstable woman.’

  Carole didn’t disagree. Nor did she think it was the moment to ask Neville whether he thought his behaviour might have contributed to her instability.

  ‘So,’ he went on, ‘if you’re looking for someone who might have murdered Ritchie, I’m afraid you’re very much barking up the wrong tree with me.’

  ‘And who do you think might be the right tree?’ No harm in asking.

  ‘Well, I actually think you’re stuck in a whole forest full of wrong trees. Because I firmly believe that Ritchie’s death was an accident. That probably Gordon Blaine was playing about with his precious mechanism and left the wrong noose in place. But, if I were going to waste my time playing amateur detectives … I think the question I would ask is: Who has benefited from his death? Who is more relaxed, as if with his decease a huge weight has been lifted off their shoulders?’

  ‘And what
would your answer be?’

  ‘Davina Vere Smith.’

  NINETEEN

  On the Wednesday morning Jude travelled by train for the two stops from Fethering to Fedborough. She felt no guilt in not including Carole in the day’s mission. Jude, after all, was the one who had found Ritchie Good’s body. Maybe that gave her some obscure right to meet his widow.

  On the train she remembered Gwenda saying that she wasn’t very mobile, and wondered about her level of disability. But the woman who opened the door of the terraced house in a road off Fedborough High Street showed no overt signs of illness and seemed to move with ease as she hastened to close the front door once her guest was inside. ‘Sorry, need to keep out the cold,’ she said.

  Jude wouldn’t have thought it was that cold, even a bit above average temperature for April. She herself was only wearing a cotton jacket over a T-shirt and skirt. The two chiffon scarves wound around her neck were statements of Jude’s style rather than for warmth.

  And the minute she stepped inside the house, she was glad not to be wearing more. The place was incredibly overheated, but Gwenda Good was wearing a cardigan over a jumper and fleece jogging bottoms. Over this she had on a plastic apron with a Minnie Mouse image on it. Her hands were in yellow Marigold gloves. She wore her greying hair in a thick plait and had unglamorous black-rimmed glasses.

  Jude found it very difficult to assess the woman’s age, but certainly reckoned she was a lot older than her late husband.

  ‘Very good of you to come,’ said Gwenda Good, and led the way into a small sitting room that faced out on to the street. Wooden Venetian blinds were half-closed and two standard lamps were on to compensate for the gloom. One stood over a small table, on which was a bowl of water, dusters and sponges and some small china figurines. Gwenda gestured to them and said, ‘Wednesday, that’s the day I clean the collection. Oh, do sit down.’

  As Jude sat in a leather armchair, she became aware of the ‘collection’ referred to. And the scale of it. It was clearly no coincidence that Gwenda had a Minnie Mouse on her apron. Because the image was reduplicated literally hundreds of times throughout the sitting room. Shelves covered the two side walls, and on one of these stood rows of figurines of Minnie Mouse in a variety of costumes and poses, dressed as a ballerina, as Santa Claus, as a tennis player, as a doctor, as a schoolteacher and many more.

  A glass-fronted set of shelves was full to bursting of stuffed Minnie Mouse toys, again in a wide range of liveries. Another section featured Minnie Mouse accessories – pencil cases, backpacks, lunch boxes, packs of cards, board games, jigsaws and so on. Above these hung an opened Minnie Mouse umbrella. Jude observed that even the cushion on her chair wore the distinctive image with its spotted red bow. And the two standard lamps had Minnie Mouse shades.

  For once she was at a loss for words. She couldn’t think of anything nice to say about the aggregation of Minnie Mouses and yet to behave as if she hadn’t noticed it would be perverse. She ended up saying, rather limply, ‘Well, you’ve got quite a collection here.’

  ‘Yes, it’s not bad,’ Gwenda agreed, ‘but there’s always so much more out there. It’s hard work just trying to keep up. EBay’s made it easier sourcing the goodies, but you have to keep your eye on the deadlines there, or you could miss something great. And actually,’ she said as if admitting some shortcoming, ‘most of the stuff I’ve got here is post-1968.’

  ‘Sorry? Why is that significant?’

  ‘Post-1968 is modern. Pre-1968 is vintage.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘And the prices are vintage too. You can spend literally millions if you get into that market.’

  Again Jude couldn’t think of anything to say. The question she was burning to ask – ‘why do you collect it?’ – didn’t seem appropriate at that moment. So she fell back on a more fitting expression of condolence. ‘I’m very sorry about your husband’s death.’

  ‘Thank you.’ The words were spoken automatically, without much emotion involved. Gwenda had gone back to sit at her table under the standard lamp, and continued with the cleaning process which Jude’s arrival had interrupted. She put each figurine in the water, swirled it round and then wiped it down meticulously with a cloth. Those whose hollow interiors were accessible were carefully dried inside with a sponge.

  Gwenda appeared almost to have forgotten that there was anyone else in the room. Jude found it a little odd that she hadn’t been offered a cup of tea or coffee. After all, Gwenda was the one who had set up the encounter.

  The silence was extended while the punctilious figurine-cleaning continued.

  Eventually Jude said, ‘You wanted to talk to me about your husband …?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Gwenda, as if being reminded of something she had completely forgotten. She looked a little disgruntled at having her attention taken away from the task in hand. ‘You were the one who found him dead – that’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘I was the one who raised the alarm, yes,’ Jude agreed, again keeping Hester Winstone’s name out of it.

  ‘And he was dead when you found him, not dying?’

  ‘He was definitely dead.’

  ‘And I gather just before that he’d been taking part in a demonstration of how the gallows worked.’

  ‘That’s right. He was part of a set-up with Gordon.’

  ‘Gordon?’

  ‘Yes. Gordon Blaine. He’d designed and built the gallows.’

  ‘Ah. I don’t know the names of any of the people Ritchie did his acting with.’ She said this as if it would have been rather bizarre for her to have known them.

  ‘Did you go and see any of the shows?’

  ‘No.’ Gwenda sounded surprised that the question needed asking. ‘I couldn’t, could I?’

  This was such a peculiar statement that Jude immediately asked, ‘Why couldn’t you?’

  ‘Well, for obvious reasons.’ Which didn’t do much to clarify the situation.

  ‘What do you mean by—?’

  But Gwenda was not about to offer explanations. ‘Ritchie didn’t talk about any of that,’ she said. ‘Except the women, of course.’

  ‘The women?’

  Once again Gwenda just moved on. ‘From what you saw of Ritchie’s body, would you say his death looked accidental?’

  ‘It seems most likely that it was an accident, yes,’ Jude replied cautiously. ‘That is, if it wasn’t suicide. Do you know whether your husband ever had any suicidal thoughts?’

  ‘Good heavens, no. Ritchie had a very happy life. He liked his work at the bank. He enjoyed his play-acting. And then of course we had a very happy marriage.’

  Jude knew it was impossible ever to look inside a marriage and see what’s going on, but she would have loved to know how Gwenda Good defined ‘happy’. She said, ‘You must have been very upset when you got the news of his death.’

  ‘Why?’ Again the strangest of responses.

  ‘Well, because your happy marriage was over.’

  ‘It had run its course,’ said the widow without sentiment. ‘That was when it was destined to end. There’s no point in getting upset over things that are preordained.’

  This sounded like part of some spiritual package, so Jude said, ‘It must be a comfort for you to have your faith.’

  ‘I don’t have any faith,’ said Gwenda. ‘Just a knowledge that everything that happens is preordained.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know that.’

  This was becoming one of the most bizarre conversations Jude had ever participated in, and yet Ritchie Good’s widow did not sound at all unhinged. Everything she said seemed to be entirely logical, at least to her.

  Jude had heard that Ritchie Good’s funeral had taken place the week before and assumed that, since the body had been released, the police investigation into the death had ended. So she asked, ‘Was there a good turnout for your husband’s funeral?’

  ‘I believe so, yes.’

  ‘You believe so?’r />
  ‘Well, obviously I couldn’t be there.’

  ‘Why obviously?’

  ‘I can’t leave the house,’ replied Gwenda, as if this were something that everyone in the world knew.

  ‘Do you mean you are agoraphobic?’

  The woman dismissed the word with a shrug. ‘I’m not too bothered what people call it. I have no interest in psychobabble. I just don’t leave the house.’ This was spoken without any anxiety or self-pity, as a simple statement of fact. Not leaving the house seemed very normal to her.

  ‘Not even to go to the shops?’

  ‘I have everything delivered. I order online. What with that and eBay, I spend quite a lot of time on the laptop.’ Again this was made to sound like the most natural thing in the world.

  ‘A few minutes ago,’ said Jude, ‘you said that Ritchie didn’t talk about his amateur dramatics, but he did talk about “the women” …’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you mind if I ask what you meant by that?’

  ‘Not at all.’ Gwenda seemed pleased that the matter had been raised. ‘The thing is, Ritchie was a very attractive man …’

  Jude was tempted to say, Well, he certainly thought so, but restrained herself.

  ‘… and so, obviously, he had lots of women throwing themselves at him.’ Gwenda looked straight at Jude for the first time in their conversation. ‘Did you throw yourself at him?’

  ‘Hardly.’ Throwing herself at men was not Jude’s style, though she couldn’t deny the initial attraction she had felt for Ritchie Good.

  ‘No, he didn’t mention you.’

  ‘Are you implying by that that he mentioned others?’

  ‘Oh yes. Ritchie told me everything. There are a lot of unattached women in amateur dramatic societies, and quite a lot of them came on to him.’

  ‘Don’t you think he did some of the “coming on”?’ Jude couldn’t forget his automatic ‘Where have you been hiding all my life?’

  ‘Oh no. He told me all about it. A lot of the women were very brazen. They would seek him out and try to get him on his own. Ritchie didn’t give them any encouragement. And then most of them would quite shamelessly try to get him to go to bed with them.’