A Theatrical Murder

by David W Robinson

  Joe allowed the information to travel the byways of his mind. “I didn’t know the man, but from what I saw and what I’ve heard, he wasn’t the kind to top himself. I know it’s speculation, but assume for a minute it’s fast acting. Where does that leave you?”

  “Cast or crew firing from the left.” Nichols replied. “And we know where everyone was, but no one is confessing to being on the left.”

  “Could Edgar have done it?” Joe asked. “He was laid on the stage, to Sedgwick’s left, playing dead.”

  “But he’s doolally,” Hinch pointed out.

  Joe tutted. “He is not doolally, as you put it. He’s on some kind of medication and that makes him behave a bit odd. But if he had a beef with Sedgwick, he would maybe have sneaked a hypodermic on stage and jabbed Hamlet during the action scene when everyone’s attention was on the two leads, Sedgwick and Billingham.” Even to Joe, it did not sound satisfactory. “But was he close enough to Sedgwick to do it?”

  “The same applies to your friend, Teri Sanford,” Hinch declared. “She was laid out on the stage and she was to Sedgwick’s left too.”

  “Pity no one’s allowed to video these things,” Nichols complained.

  Joe’s memory clicked into place, but he elected to remain silent. He would need to check his facts first. “In that case, I know nothing more now than I did earlier.” He checked the time. “And I’m due at the Metropole for dinner, so I’ll leave you all to it.”

  Chapter Nine

  It was getting on for six when Joe collected his key from the Metropole reception, but ignoring the advice from the clerk that dinner would be served at seven-fifteen, instead of making for his room to change, he stepped into the bar looking for Sylvia Goodson.

  He found her and Les Tanner tucked into a corner table with Alec and Julia Staines, and Sylvia was doing all the talking. Joe needed no guesses to work out what the subject was. Sylvia’s worried frown told the tale, and when he joined them, she immediately bombarded him with questions on his efforts to clear her granddaughter’s name.

  “I don’t need to clear Teri’s name,” he reported. “The police don’t suspect her.” He went on to give them an abridged outline of the police case, and concluded by saying, “Sylvia, you were using your fancy phone in the theatre, videoing the play.”

  “Oh, I never was, Joe. You’re not allowed to use video cameras in the theatre.”

  Sylvia’s denial prompted cynical smiles from the Staineses and Joe, and even Les shook his head sadly.

  “We saw you, Sylvia,” Julia said.

  “And we’re not going to shop you,” Alec chuckled.

  “Sylvia, I need that video,” Joe said.

  “I didn’t tape it all, Sylvia protested, dropping the pretence. “Just the bits when Teri was on stage. I’m sorry, Joe, but I want that film for myself. Do you know how proud I was when I saw her up there?”

  “I’m sure you were, but I need to see the video. I don’t want to steal it. You can keep your copy of it. All I need you to do is email a copy to me.”

  “I’m not sure I know how to email it,” Sylvia argued, “and how do I know you won’t ruin it?”

  “Because, you… all I need…” Joe trailed off, racking his brains for an argument.

  Les succeeded where he failed. “Joe, will this help clear Teri’s name?”

  “If I’m right, it’ll clear Teri of any involvement in this business. Not,” he hastened to add, “that I ever had any doubts, but the police don’t always see things our way.”

  Sylvia needed no more persuading. “So all we need now is someone who can send it to your email address.”

  “Give it to me,” Alec invited. “I can do it.”

  Joe was not in the least surprised that Alec knew what he was doing with such technology. A year or two older than Joe, a painter and decorator by trade he had often told Joe how so much of his work came via the Web, and how he would send colour or wallpaper samples from his iPhone to customers.

  Taking Sylvia’s phone, he asked Joe for his email address, entered it, fiddled around with various icons on the touchscreen and a few minutes later, handed it back to Sylvia. “There you go. Safely delivered to Joe, and still on your phone.”

  “Thank you, Alec,” Sylvia said tucking the phone in her bag.

  “Cheers, Alec,” Joe said, getting to his feet. “I’d better get moving or I won’t make dinner.”

  “What exactly are you looking for, Joe?” Les asked.

  Standing up in a hurry to be out of the bar and up to his room, Joe shrugged. “I don’t know, but I will when I see it... if I see it.”

  He made his way quickly from the bar to his room, plugged in his netbook and while waiting for it to boot up, showered, shaved and changed. By the time he returned to the escritoire overlooking the promenade, the machine was ready for hibernating.

  And Joe, too, was tempted to hibernate. A day spent out in the cold, with only brief episodes indoors, had taken its toll on his energy levels, and the warmth of the room combined with the near invisible, yet hypnotic flicker of the 100 MHz screen to make his eyelids heavy, and sleep threatened to overtake him.

  He fought it off and downloaded the video from his email. While waiting for the task to complete, he searched for Harriet Deakin and was not surprised to learn there was no trace of her. Plenty of Harriet Deakins, but none resembling the woman he had seen with Nat Billingham.

  Dismissing the problem, he concentrated on the video.

  “I didn’t tape it all,” Sylvia had claimed, but she had recorded an awful lot more than those times Teri was on stage. The whole of Hamlet’s soliloquy, for example. Sedgwick had unwittingly turned it into a comic set piece, with the mobster’s son staring drunkenly into a mirror and reeling off the Shakespeare verbatim.

  Using the timer bar at the bottom of the screen, Joe advanced the video to the final scene, and watched carefully from the moment Laertes pulled the trigger, to the moment the curtain came down. Unable to see anything untoward, he watched it again… and again, and again, and again. The only thing he could be sure of was that up to the time Sedgwick collapsed, Edgar Anderton did not appear to have moved.

  Deciding that he was too tired for such close scrutiny of shaky video recordings, he shut the machine down, and lay on the bed, closing his eyes, waiting for sleep to come.

  It had barely arrived when Brenda knocked on the door and called him to dinner.

  ***

  The ballroom at the Metropole was much larger than the hotel’s modest front would suggest, as Joe discovered when he joined his two companions after dinner.

  With seating around three of the walls, there was a generous dance floor, and a small stage out front, where Winston Emms, a local, middle-aged singer/comedian was already performing when Joe entered and made his way to the bar.

  There were only two people behind the bar, and the usual thirst of the Sanford 3rd Age Club members made maximum demand upon them, leaving the service to others very slow, and Joe waited almost five minutes before ordering a half of lager and drinks for the women. During the wait, he gave half an ear to some of the performer’s jokes and dismissed them as older than most of the club members.

  Then, quite abruptly, the gags ended and Emms began to go through a trivia quiz. Joe noticed that everyone seemed to have an answer sheet but him. “Must have handed them out while I was finishing dinner,” he muttered.

  “Sir?”

  The barman’s query made him aware that the young man was waiting for payment. “Sorry, son. Talking to myself. My dad use to say it was the only way to get sensible answers.” He handed over the money.

  Emms had already begun asking questions when Joe joined his companions. Putting drinks in front of them, he was about to speak when Sheila shushed him to concentrate on listening to Emms.

  “In which film did Bing Crosby first sing the song White Christmas?”

  Joe tutted. “Even Lee could get that.”

  “Joe, be quiet,” Brenda insis
ted. “Go and have a smoke or something.”

  “I haven’t smoked for over a year now. What—”

  “Question fifteen.” Emms’ announcement cut into Joe’s observation again. “Which iconic British female singer of the 1960s had a hit with I Only Want to be With You?”

  Joe gave up any attempt at distracting their attention and sat in grumpy silence through the remaining five questions, then watched while they exchanged answer sheets with the Staineses for the marking.

  Joe waited silently while Emms ran through the answers, and it was only when they got to question fourteen that he was forced to speak out.

  “Which film did Bing Crosby first sing White Christmas? The answer is Holiday Inn.”

  “No,” Sheila argued softly. “That’s not right. It was the film White Christmas.” She gestured at the Staineses’ sheet. “Even Alec and Julia think so.”

  “Then you’re all wrong,” Joe said. “The guy asked which was the first film Crosby sang it in, and the answer is Holiday Inn, which came years before the movie, White Christmas.”

  Sheila frowned. “Are you sure?”

  “When am I ever wrong?” Joe demanded. “You’re guilty of making assumptions, Sheila. The song and the movie have the same name, so the song must have come from the movie.”

  “But it did,” Sheila argued.

  “True, but it wasn’t the first movie. Holiday Inn was a good few years older than White Christmas.”

  With a good deal of muttering, Sheila returned to marking the Staineses’ sheet until, several minutes later, she handed it back with a score of 16 out of 20.

  “Not quite enough for a win, Julia,” she said as Mort Norris stood up to collect a bottle of house white on the strength of 17/20.

  An impasse of several minutes followed, after which Emms declared bingo tickets to be on sale, and Joe’s heart sank again.

  “Where’s this alleged entertainment?” he said.

  “Bingo and quizzes are entertainment,” Brenda replied digging into her purse for money.

  “Not in my book,” Joe said. “It’s enough to make you want to smoke again.”

  “If you’re going to kill yourself, do it quietly while the bingo is on,” Sheila advised.

  His two companions left the table to join the queue for bingo tickets, and Joe wondered how best to keep himself occupied. He had work to do on Sylvia’s video, but having had precious little sleep, he doubted that it would be worth his while.

  With nothing better in mind however, he was still toying with the idea when Teri, Nat and Michelle Arran entered the room and joined Sylvia and Les.

  Sheila and Brenda were concentrating on the forthcoming bingo, and because he would not be taking part, a plan hatched in Joe’s mind. He allowed a decent enough time for the three newcomers to settle in, then excused himself, and sidled over to their table, where he collared Nat.

  “I wonder if I can drag you away from Les, Sylvia and these two ladies for a few minutes.”

  “Sure,” Nat agreed, and they moved off to an empty table nearby.

  “No performance tonight?” Joe asked.

  “There was never going to be one,” Nat explained, “but the police won’t let us leave yet. Tomorrow, maybe.”

  “So how come you’re here?”

  “Sylvia and Les invited Teri, and she invited me. Michelle was at a loose end. She’s fallen out with her by, or something, so we asked her to join us. Is it a problem?”

  “No, no,” Joe assured him. “In fact, I’m glad you’re here. You, er, you won’t be playing bingo, will you?”

  “Not allowed,” Nat said, shaking his head. “Residents only, and we’re not residents. You could play, though.”

  Now Joe shook his head. “I hate bingo. But while the girls are playing, it gives me chance to mull on things which have happened today.”

  “With regard to Sedgwick’s murder, you mean?”

  Joe nodded. “There are a lot of people with the right kind of motive… including you.”

  Nat laughed without any real pleasure. “Do you imagine that taking over this tawdry little production, is sufficient motive to kill Sedgwick? You obviously know nothing of the theatre. If it were that bad, I’d have dropped out.”

  “I’m not talking about Hamlet, and I think you know I’m not. I’m talking about Sedgwick’s sideline in drug dealing.”

  “Ah. So I’m suspected of that, too, am I? Sorry to disappoint you, Joe, but I’ve never done drugs in my life. Haven’t used them, haven’t sold them. And in case it’s escaped your attention, I was in full view of the audience when Sedgwick died. In fact, I had just pretend-shot him. But the police now say I had nothing to do with his death.”

  “That’s true enough,” Joe said. “But when the financial stakes are as high as they are in the drugs game, it’s not too costly to get someone to do your dirty work, is it?”

  Nat’s eyes narrowed. “You really are offensive when you try, aren’t you?”

  “I deal with bolshie truckers every day of the week, so it doesn’t take a lot of effort. Just to demonstrate that it’s not personal, let’s talk about everyone else, huh? It’s obvious that whoever killed Sedgwick could not have been in the audience. He was killed stage-side. So it’s down to either the cast or the crew. Now, can you tell me where everyone was?”

  He frowned. “I was concentrating on Sedgwick,” he said at length. “I can tell you where everyone was supposed to be. Or, at least, I can tell you where the cast members should have been.”

  “Right, ladies and gentlemen, eyes down, look in on your first ticket. This is for any line. And the first number is…”

  With Emms announcing the start of the bingo, Joe nodded to the exit and he and Nat made their silent way through it, into the hotel lobby, where Joe ordered fresh drinks and they took seats in front of a large and ornate, mock fire.

  “If you start yattering away while the bingo’s on, you’ll end up lynched,” Joe advised. “Now, tell me where everyone was or where they were supposed to be.”

  While a waiter delivered their drinks, Nat took a moment to consider his reply. Joe signed for the drinks, Nat sipped the head off his beer, and said, “Sedgwick and I were obviously visible, Edgar was on the floor upstage from Sedgwick. Teri was further away, and Carlton was in the wings, ready to come on once Hamlet killed Laertes. Irma should have been with him. Beyond that, I really can’t say.”

  “Looking past Sedgwick, could you see anyone in the wing?”

  “Yes. There were one or two people moving around, but that’s not unusual, and it’s not a distraction, so I really can’t say who they were.”

  “Well, you must be fairly disciplined if you don’t let it distract you.”

  “Discipline is vital on stage. More so than on film. At least the director can go again if you let your attention wander,” Nat replied. “In the theatre, there are all sorts of potential distractions. From the wings, the audience, even the flies, although you can’t see what’s going on back there. But you can sometimes hear people making their way from one wing to the other. You have to learn to ignore it.”

  “According to the cops, the killer must have been in the wings on the left.”

  “In that case, it could be anyone,” Nat said. “Aside from Irma who had no further part to play, the cast and crew were gathered in the wings, stage left. Chances are Irma was there, too, keeping an eye on Edgar, although technically, she could have done that from either side.”

  “But how could someone raise a pistol and shoot from there without the others noticing?” Joe demanded.

  Nat shrugged. “Search me. Again, it’s down to how closely everyone was concentrating on the stage and how well the killer could disguise his or her actions.”

  “Coming back to Irma, why would she be keeping an eye on Edgar?”

  “You’ve hardly spoken to them, haven’t you? Do you know how ill Edgar is? He could pop off at any time.”

  “I gathered as much,” Joe lied. It was, in fact
, the first hint he’d had of the seriousness of Edgar’s condition. “But why did Sedgwick have him in the play at all?” Joe demanded.

  “Old friends,” Nat replied. “Edgar, Irma and Sedgwick go way, way back. All the way to Newcastle in the seventies. I think Sedgwick was just taking pity on him, Joe, and the part of Claudius wasn’t too demanding. Not in this version, anyway. The same goes for Gertrude, which meant Irma could keep an eye on Edgar for most of the performance.”

  Joe ignored the bulk of Nat’s words. “Newcastle,” he said. “Back in the seventies. When I spoke to Dempster, he insisted he hated Sedgwick as far back as drama school because he reckoned Sedgwick had ideas above his station. The cops reckon it was all down to some car crash.”

  “Can’t say for any arguments in drama school,” Nat said, “but the car crash things is real. Some woman got killed. A personal friend of Edgar and Irma, and whether she had something going down with Sedgwick or Dempster, I don’t know, but the story is, she was driving, they were playing the fool, and she lost control of the car. Ended up in the river. Everyone got out but her. Dempster and Sedgwick have exchanged nothing but insults since. And trust me, the blood between them was bad. I know. I worked with them on Oliver Twist and I saw it then. And if you don’t believe me, ask Michelle. She was a wardrobe assistant on that gig.”

  “I didn’t find Michelle particularly friendly, never mind helpful.” It was throwaway remark, made while Joe let his mind chew on the information Nat had just given him. Eventually, he said, “It does make you wonder if that blood was bad enough to lead to murder.”

  “After all this time? I’m no expert, but I’d have thought if it was that bad, the murder would have happened years ago.”

  “Hmm, you’re probably right. It would be interesting to know what really happened back then.”

  “I should imagine the police will have checked it out.”

  “They have, and they’ve already dismissed any connection. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a connection. Just that the cops don’t think so. I’ll check it out on the web when I get back to my room.” Joe took a swallow of beer. “Any idea when in the seventies?”