The Strangling on the Stage

by Simon Brett

  She shrugged. ‘Sometimes the fates are generous. No, I can’t pretend I shed many tears when I heard of his demise. Apart from being appallingly rude to me, he showed no respect for anything that Freddie and I had achieved in SADOS.’

  ‘And the death was easily engineered,’ Carole continued. ‘All that was required was for somebody to change the doctored noose on the gallows to the real one.’

  ‘I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I think you are. Because Gordon Blaine explained the workings of his gallows in exhaustive detail at your “drinkies thing” the night before Ritchie’s death.’

  ‘Goodness me. You have been doing your research, haven’t you?’

  ‘Do you deny it?’

  ‘No, of course I don’t. One thing I would like to know, though. If either of you think I was responsible for Ritchie’s death, I’d love to know how I did it. The hanging – or strangulation – happened, I gather, in St Mary’s Hall. Now I have not been in St Mary’s Hall since I was forced to leave the production of The Devil’s Disciple, neither to sabotage a gallows nor for any other reason. I’d be intrigued to know how I am supposed to have engineered this fatal accident.’

  ‘You planned it,’ said Jude. ‘You got someone else to switch the nooses for you.’

  ‘How remarkably clever of me. What, so I had a private meeting with someone, did I? I took them on one side and said, “I wonder if you’d be kind enough to bump off Ritchie Good for me?” And they said, “Terrific idea, Elizaveta. Regard it as done.” Is that how it happened … roughly?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t as overt as that,’ said Carole. ‘At that same party –’ (she couldn’t bring herself to say ‘drinkies thing’) – ‘when Gordon Blaine described the mechanism, you said to everyone how pleased you’d be if Ritchie Good was accidentally hanged.’

  ‘Well, I may have said that, but only as a joke.’

  ‘But did everyone present realize it was a joke?’

  ‘I assumed so, but …’ She seemed rather attracted to the idea as she articulated it. ‘Do you think there really was someone who took what I said seriously enough … who cared enough about me to take the hint and do what I’d asked for?’

  ‘I think that was what you were hoping,’ said Carole.

  ‘Really?’ Elizaveta was still intrigued. ‘But who might have done it? A few years ago I would have thought it was Olly Pinto. When he first joined SADOS, he was, I have to say, totally besotted with little moi. Then he would have done anything for me. Now … I don’t know what’s happened to him, but whatever he once felt for me has been … well, to put it mildly, diluted. Now I think he only comes to see me because he’s lonely.’

  Jude was surprised to see a tear gleaming in Elizaveta Dalrymple’s eye.

  ‘I think that’s why most of them stay around me …’ the old woman went on. ‘Because they’re lonely. I think with most of them, it was Freddie they were really loyal to, not me. When Freddie was around, our “drinkies things” were legendary. Just had to mention we were having one and people’d be falling over themselves to get here. Now I have to ring round those who are left and virtually beg them to come along.’

  The tears were really falling now, streaking mascara down on to Elizaveta’s heavily made-up cheeks. ‘My life really stopped,’ she went on, ‘when Freddie died. Oh, I’ve tried to maintain a front. I’ve acted hearty, bitchy, thick-skinned. It’s been the toughest performance of my life … and I don’t know how much longer I can keep it up. The effort of preparing to see people, of being a hostess, it just gets harder and harder. And after everyone’s gone, I just sink back into total black despair. I just can’t go on like this.’

  Carole and Jude exchanged looks. Though Elizaveta was, as ever, self-dramatizing, they could both recognize the core of genuine suffering. And both wondered how big a blow it had been to her when she had discovered that Davina Vere Smith had also been given a star-shaped pendant. It must have brought home – probably not for the first time – the knowledge that the much-vaunted marriage to Freddie had not been as perfect as its mythology might suggest.

  But Elizaveta’s personality was not one to stay down for too long. She perked up with her next thought. ‘So you do really think that someone took what I said seriously enough to act on it? To switch the nooses? Somebody actually cared for me enough to do that?’

  Without commenting on the woman’s strangely skewed sense of values, Carole replied, ‘We think it’s possible. But nobody said anything to you about having done it?’

  ‘No. Why should they?’

  Jude shrugged. ‘To report back: Mission Accomplished?’

  ‘No. Nobody has. And I think in a way that’s rather splendid. Whoever it is did something purely out of love for me, and then didn’t want to crow about it.’

  They could see Elizaveta Dalrymple transforming before their eyes. A moment ago she had been the sad, neglected, wronged widow. Now she was moving into the role of charismatic inspirer of others. She was eternally recasting herself, but the scenarios in which she appeared all had one thing in common: Elizaveta Dalrymple was playing the lead in all of them.

  ‘So,’ she said, now rather magnificent after her grief, ‘who do I have to thank for my revenge on Ritchie Good? What is the name of my guardian angel?’

  ‘We think it was probably Storm Lavelle,’ said Jude.

  ‘Oh,’ said Elizaveta, basking in glee. ‘I always thought that young woman had something about her. She’s very talented, too. You know, I can see in little Storm something of myself at the same age.’

  THIRTY

  ‘Well, we didn’t exactly get confirmation, did we?’ said Carole as they left the house.

  ‘We got confirmation that Elizaveta did kind of “issue the challenge”. Say she wanted Ritchie Good dead.’

  ‘Which presumably was enough to prompt Storm to take action.’

  Jude’s full lips wrinkled with scepticism. ‘It just seems out of character for her.’

  ‘Again you’re only saying that because she’s your friend. From what I’ve seen of her, she’s pretty volatile – not to say unstable.’

  ‘I agree. She’s passionate. I mean, OK, if Ritchie had done something directly to hurt her, I can see Storm taking revenge on him in a fit of fury. I can’t see her in this sort of “one-remove” scenario, exacting vengeance on someone else’s behalf. It’s not in her nature to be so unspontaneous. I’m sure there’s some other explanation.’

  ‘Well, it’s not an explanation you’re about to hear, if Storm continues refusing to answer your phone calls, is it?’

  ‘No,’ Jude agreed limply. Then, suddenly, noticing they were passing a little general store, ‘Oh, I’ve just remembered I haven’t got any eggs! Could you pick me up here when you’ve got the car?’

  Carole watched her neighbour rush into the shop with some censure. Her own organized shopping routine would never allow High Tor to run out of eggs. Then she looked at her watch and realized sourly that they had only needed one hour’s parking.

  Jude got her eggs, then realized she needed soy sauce and noodles too. Which meant she had to buy another ‘Bag For Life’. If all the similar ones she’d got in her kitchen were counted up, they’d provide her with more lives than a full cattery.

  She stepped out between two parked vehicles and looked towards the car park. The white Renault was coming towards her. She stepped out a bit further, so that Carole could see where she was.

  It was only when the car was almost upon her that Jude realized it wasn’t going to stop. In fact it was accelerating and aiming straight for her.

  She tried to leap backwards, but was too late. She felt a thump that shuddered through her whole body. Then she seemed to be lifted up in the air and smashed down.

  Everything went dark.

  THIRTY-ONE

  When Jude came to, she looked up to find herself surrounded by a circle of curious holidaymakers. Amongst the concerned faces looking down at her was Carol
e’s. A confusion of voices commented on what had happened.

  ‘I think we should phone for an ambulance.’

  ‘There’s a doctor’s surgery just along the road.’

  ‘Should be the police we call for. That car was going way over the speed limit.’

  But it was Carole’s voice saying, ‘How do you feel?’ that cut through the others.

  ‘Not too bad, I think,’ said Jude, trying to assess the extent of her injuries. ‘Give me a hand and I think I could try standing up.’

  Ignoring opinions from the growing crowd that ‘she shouldn’t be moved until the ambulance is here’, Carole’s thin arms hooked themselves under Jude’s chubby ones and got her, first to a sitting position, then upright on her two rather tottery legs.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Think so, Carole. Just a quick check for damage.’

  There was quite a bit. The wing of the car had turned her escaping body and flung her face down on to the edge of the road. Her arms had taken the brunt of the impact. Though that had protected her face, the encounter with the tarmac had shredded the palms of her hands. Blood was just starting to well from rows of little scrapes there. Her knees were in a similar state. They were the kinds of wounds that were too recent to have started hurting, but would be agony when they began to heal.

  ‘Let go of me, Carole. See if I can stand on my own.’

  She could. Just about. Not confident, stable standing. More the wobbly, determined kind.

  Another voice from the crowd expressed the opinion that an ambulance should be called.

  ‘No,’ said Carole firmly. ‘Be quicker if I drive her to the hospital.’

  Her Renault had stopped in the middle of the road, with the driver’s door open. Carole must have stopped when she saw the crowd around the injured Jude.

  Ignoring protests from people who all clearly saw themselves as ‘good in a crisis’, Carole collected up the ‘Bag for Life’ (the eggs inside it all sadly smashed). Then she manhandled Jude into the passenger seat of the car, ignoring her insistence that ‘I’ll bleed all over your upholstery.’

  The fact that she said, ‘That doesn’t matter’ was a measure of how seriously Carole viewed her neighbour’s predicament. Normally nothing would be allowed to sully the pristine cleanliness of the Renault’s interior.

  They drove a little way in silence, till they had turned off the seafront road. Then the car drew to a sedate halt in a vacant parking space.

  ‘We’re not going to the hospital, are we, Carole?’

  ‘No, of course we’re not. We’re just going to get you patched up a bit first.’

  It was entirely in character the Carole Seddon would have a well-stocked first aid box in her car. And the efficiency with which she mopped up and dressed the grazes on Jude’s hands and knees suggested that her Home Office training might at some point have included a course in first aid.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘You’ll do. Sure you didn’t suffer any blows to the head?’

  ‘No, I was lucky in that respect. Just the hands and knees … and the general feeling of a rag doll who’s just been thrown against the wall by a particularly belligerent toddler.’

  ‘You’ll survive,’ was the unsentimental response from Carole.

  ‘Yes, I’ve no doubt I’ll survive. Now, who are we going to get the address from?’

  ‘Elizaveta’d know it.’

  ‘Undoubtedly, but I’m not sure how good our credit is there. What about Davina?’

  ‘Do you have her number?’

  ‘It’s in the “Contacts” in my mobile. But you’d better ring her. I don’t think I can manage the keyboard with my hands like this.’

  Carole got through to Davina and the required information was readily supplied.

  ‘It’s in Fethering,’ she told Jude.

  The house was one of the oldest in the village, in a row of small cottages whose original owners had worked in what was then the only industry, fishing. Once regarded as little more than hovels, they were now highly sought-after second homes for wealthy Londoners. Many of them had been refurbished to within an inch of their lives, but there were still a few that had been passed on within families for generations. On these there were fewer window boxes, hanging baskets and quaint cast-iron nameplates.

  The house that matched the address Davina had supplied was one of the untarted-up variety. Carole drew up her white Renault behind the already parked white Renault and looked across at Jude. ‘Ready for it?’

  Her neighbour nodded and the two women got out of the car with, in Jude’s case, some discomfort. Even in the short journey from Smalting, as the shock of the impact wore off her individual injuries were starting to give her a lot of pain.

  Carole knocked on the door, which was promptly opened. Mimi Lassiter looked unsurprised to see her visitors, though perhaps a bit disappointed that one of them was Jude.

  ‘I think you know why we’ve come to see you,’ said Carole, very Home Office.

  ‘I think I probably do. Come in.’

  The sitting room into which she led them reminded both women of Gordon Blaine’s. It was not just the small dimensions – in this case due to the original builder rather than the owner’s DIY conversion – but the furniture, the ornaments and the pictures on the walls were all from an earlier era. The house had been decorated in the time of Mimi’s parents and she had either not wanted to – or not dared to – change a thing.

  It wasn’t an occasion for pleasantries or offers of coffee. Mimi Lassiter sat in a cracked leather armchair, set facing the television, and her guests in straight-backed chairs either side of the box.

  ‘Rather rash of you this morning, wasn’t it?’ said Carole. ‘Making a public attack on Jude by driving straight at her? There’d have been lots of witnesses on the seafront at Smalting. I’m sure someone would have taken note of your registration number.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking very straight this morning,’ said Mimi, sounding as ever like a rather pernickety maiden aunt. ‘I was upset.’

  ‘Do you often get upset?’ asked Jude.

  ‘Not very often, but I do. My mother used to look after me when I got upset, but since she’s passed, I’ve had to manage it on my own.’

  ‘And,’ said Carole, ‘do you regard trying to run someone down in cold blood as “managing it on your own”?’

  ‘It made sense. I couldn’t see any other way out. And when I heard from Elizaveta that you two were actually investigating Ritchie Good’s death … as I say, I wasn’t thinking very straight. It probably wasn’t the most sensible thing to do.’

  To Carole and Jude this seemed like something of an understatement.

  ‘No,’ said Mimi. ‘I’ve been very foolish. My mother always used to say, “At times, Mimi, you can be very foolish.” And she had ways of stopping me being foolish, but now she’s gone …’

  ‘How long ago did your mother die?’ asked Jude.

  ‘Nine years ago. It was just round the time when I was retiring from work.’

  ‘What did you do when you were working?’

  ‘I trained in Worthing as a shorthand typist. I was very good. I got a diploma. I could have got a job anywhere, even in London. But I didn’t want to leave Fethering. Mummy needed help with Daddy. He was virtually bedridden for a long time. So I got a secretarial job at Hadleigh’s. Do you know them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Big nursery, just between here and Worthing. Lots of glasshouses. Well, they were made of glass when I started there. Now they’re mostly that polythene stuff. Still a very big company, though. I did very well at Hadleigh’s. They very nearly made me office manager. But I wasn’t as good on the computers as I had been on the typewriter, so they appointed someone else. I never really took to computers in the same way I took to the typewriter. So they kept me on at Hadleigh’s, but there was never any more chance of promotion. Then they opened up a Farm Shop and they suggested I might work in there. But I didn’t like it. Some members of th
e public can be very rude, you know.’

  ‘So,’ Jude recapitulated, ‘your mother died around the time you retired. That must have been a very big double blow for you.’

  ‘Oh, it was. Two days before I left Hadleigh’s. And it wasn’t real retirement. I mean, I hadn’t served all the time that … They gave me my full pension, but it was really …’

  ‘Early retirement,’ suggested Carole, whose experience of the same thing still rankled.

  Mimi nodded. She looked shaken by the memory. ‘I was in a very bad state round then, I remember. I know it’s wrong, but at times I did think about ending it all. I just felt so isolated.’

  ‘Are you saying you attempted suicide?’

  ‘No, not quite. But I thought about it. I even started stockpiling paracetamol, but then things got better.’

  ‘In what way?’ asked Jude. ‘Was it because you’d joined SADOS?’

  Mimi nodded enthusiastically. ‘Fortunately that happened fairly soon after Mummy passed. That’s what really got me out of the terrible state I was in. Elizaveta Dalrymple used to come to the Farm Shop while I was still working there. And she said how the society was always looking for new members and she persuaded me to come along to a social meeting. She can be very persuasive, Elizaveta.’

  ‘Yes,’ Carole agreed drily.

  ‘So that’s how I started with SADOS. As a very humble new member … little knowing that I would one day end up at the dizzy heights of Membership Secretary.’ Clearly the appointment was one that meant a great deal to Mimi Lassiter.

  ‘I’d never wanted to act,’ she went on. ‘I couldn’t act to save my life, but they found things for me to do backstage. And occasionally I’m in crowd scenes … like I am for The Devil’s Disciple. Elizaveta always makes me feel part of the company, though, and she even started inviting me to parties at her home.’

  ‘Her “drinkies things”?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course. Where we saw you on Saturday.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what about Freddie? Did you have much to do with him?’