A Theatrical Murder

by David W Robinson

  To truly understand what has been going on, and the nature of our revulsion, we have to go back four decades, to Newcastle upon Tyne in the 1970s. Edgar was a young tutor at the Tyneside School of Speech and Drama, I and my closest friend, Fay Lierman, were his students, and along with two other groupies, Malcolm Sedgwick and Ralph Dempster, we would enjoy extra-curricular get-togethers. Edgar was a magnificent man. Charming, effervescent, commanding, the kind of man who lived life to the full. It was at one such party that he introduced us to the joy of marijuana. Later we would graduate to acid, and from there, had fate not chosen to intervene, it would be a short journey to harder drugs. Sex and drugs and rock and roll, only it was the time of free love, tune in, turn on, drop out. Never dropouts, Fay and I were nevertheless happy to share the love that Edgar gave so freely.

  Fate, however, did intervene. One night in the long, hot summer of 1976 as we drove to one of our favourite riverside spots in Bill Quay. We were stoned. All five of us. Sedgwick was driving, Dempster was in the passenger seat. There was a lot of larking around as the car rushed down that narrow, precipitous lane to the river’s edge. Too much larking around. Sedgwick lost control. The car careered over the embankment and hit the river. It began to sink, and inside, we panicked. We couldn’t get the doors open. We were going to drown.

  But Edgar, that god amongst men, remained calm. He knew exactly what to do. Open the windows, let the car flood as it sank. We would then be able to open the doors, get out and swim to safety.

  And that is what we did. But Fay, that poor girl, panicked. She couldn’t hold her breath long enough. She was convinced she was going to die. Edgar tried to calm her, but as the water filled the car, reached to our necks and slowly submerged us, she threshed wildly in his arms, and he lost her.

  I cannot describe the terror of those few minutes. The darkening sky above, the dark of the river beneath, the images of Fay thrashing, screaming, in absolute dread of her life. They will stay with me forever.

  We survived. That goes without saying. Edgar, Sedgwick, Dempster and I: we all made it to the surface and to the riverbank. Fay did not. We ran along the bank looking for her, calling for her, until we knew it was too late, we knew she must have drowned. Then someone, Dempster, I think, went to call for the emergency services.

  Not, however, before we had agreed on our story. Fay was driving. Taking an impromptu driving lesson from Edgar, the only one who had a licence, she had lost control of the car, panicked, and dumped us in the river. We were lucky to get out. It was all her fault.

  Our lie was accepted. We may have blackened and besmirched Fay’s name, but she saved us from a potential prison sentence. Edgar, naturally, was charged as being in charge of the car, yet he was stoned. He received a fine and an endorsement on his licence. We three received fines for possession of marijuana. Fay’s body was found a hundred yards downstream, and the coroner reached a verdict of death by misadventure. Her young sister, Rachel, protested, but the verdict stood.

  Most of us will know the Biblical quotation on growing up. ‘When I became a man, I put away childish things.’ For most of us that is a gradual process. We are children, and over time, we mature to adults. For Edgar, for me, Sedgwick and Dempster, it was an instantaneous event, and it happened that shocking night in 1976. We made a vow. We swore on the soul of our departed friend, Fay Lierman, that the rest of our lives would be drug free.

  Edgar and I married soon after and we kept our promise. The only drugs we have used in the last forty years, have been issued on prescription. Until a few years ago, we believed that Sedgwick and Dempster had been just as true to that oath.

  Fate intervened once more when the four of us were cast to appear in a production of Oliver Twist. We had not seen them since that awful night. We knew of the public enmity between them. They hated each other. We assumed, as did many people, that it was Fay’s death. Dempster, who by now had become Raif instead of Ralph, was clearly infatuated with Fay, and Sedgwick, too, had more than a passing fancy for her. Neither man knew Fay as we did, neither of them knew that she would never have entertained their courtship, and yet each appeared to blame her death on the other and used that as a basis for their mutual hatred.

  During our work on Oliver Twist, we learned the terrible truth. The hatred was a lie, a front, designed to make their real partnership, the import and distribution of illegal drugs.

  The system relied upon their different lifestyles, and had been developed and refined over a period of about twenty-five years. Sedgwick had established his touring theatre company, and Dempster had gained a reputation as a comedian. Sedgwick’s nomadic life allowed him to develop a network of contacts all over the UK, who were happy to take his filthy wares, and Dempster’s annual sojourn to Spain had helped him establish links with suppliers from Southern Europe and North Africa. Towards the end of his summer seasons in Benidorm, Fuengirola or Magaluf, Dempster would arrange for large shipments to be sent to the UK, where Sedgwick would have them collected in time for the start of his annual tour. He would then feed smaller amounts to his contacts as his show moved around the country. Dempster had a drink problem, and it was not unusual for him to visit Sedgwick’s tour in order to shore up his finances, especially if he did not have a winter production of his own fixed up. Beyond that, Sedgwick would normally settle him up at the end of the tour when all the drugs were sold.

  Edgar and I sat back and watched the sacred memory of our dear Fay ignored, and our frustration grew and grew until we decided that it would be up to us to handle the matter, and again fortune smiled upon us when we discovered that Dempster would be wintering in Mablethorpe and Sedgwick would pass close by with his touring production of Hamlet.

  We contacted our old friend Michelle Arran, who acted as co-writer and booking agent for Sedgwick’s touring productions. We told her that we were resting and it would be wonderful if we could land parts in Hamlet. She spoke with Sedgwick and he agreed. After a brief meeting we were cast, respectively as Gertrude and Claudius.

  The day before we arrived in Skegness, I telephoned Dempster anonymously, and warned him that the National Crime Agency were breathing down his neck and he could expect to be arrested any day. That, I knew, would be sufficient to panic him. He subsequently confronted Sedgwick on the promenade, near the Jolly Fisherman. We were there, in the crowd, Edgar and I, and when we heard the farcical exchange between the two men, dormitories on Ben Nevis, and cash in coke ovens, we knew some kind of coded message had passed between them. Dempster was referring to Benidorm, his favourite summer spot, and Sedgwick’s reference to coke had nothing to do with ovens. Dempster, we believed, needed enough cash to get out of Great Britain. With Dempster panicking, it was up to us to ensure that he received a different kind of payoff, but first we had to deal with Sedgwick.

  Edgar and I had decided on the method many months ago. Curare poisoning.

  A visit to the doctor’s early in the spring had told us how much time Edgar had left. Less than a year. There was nothing more to be done for him. A few weeks later, while we were in South America, we bought a supply of curare. Naturally, we couldn’t bring that through customs ourselves, so we had it delivered by overseas mail, and it arrived a few days after we got back. It was bought for us, not for use as a murder weapon. When the time came, when Edgar’s pain became unmanageable, when he entered a living death dictated by morphine, I would administer a dose of curare large enough to kill him. When he was gone, I would swallow the remainder, and we would take our bow together on the other side of the great curtain.

  Our decision to dispatch both Sedgwick and Dempster indicated a change of plan. We had to go on living. Edgar would go on suffering until the New Year and we had to hope that we would have enough curare left for our own purposes.

  As to the mechanics, it was quite simple. We bought an air pistol and darts in Middlesbrough early in the tour. The script called for Laertes to shoot Hamlet and the percussion caps Nat Billingham used were quite loud. All I had to
do was time my shot to coincide with Nat’s squeezing of the trigger, and Sedgwick would be dead. I practiced and practiced until I became quite lethal with the airgun. At a range of thirty feet, I would not miss, and of course, I did not. Edgar played his part perfectly. When the curtain came down, while others flapped and fussed over Sedgwick, my darling husband removed the dart from Sedgwick’s calf and put it in his pocket. I may say, it was never our purpose to have Nat or young Teri Sanford or Michelle Arran suspected of any involvement, but simply to delay the investigation into the cause of death, and allow us sufficient time to deal with Dempster.

  In that we were ably assisted by Mr Murray. We had never heard of him, but Teri was gushing in her praise for him, and she was right. His visit to Mablethorpe all but sent Dempster over the top. When Mr Murray had done talking to him, he came on the phone almost in tears, saying he had to be out of the country inside twenty-four hours. I reassured him that Sedgwick had left a parcel and it would be delivered to him late that evening.

  I left dear Edgar at our digs and took the late bus to Mablethorpe, where I met with Dempster on the beach, not far from the water line, sufficiently far from the poor lighting to ensure we would not be recognised. He invited me to give it to him, so I did. I pressed the air gun to his neck and pulled the trigger. He barely had time to register what was happening before he was on the sand, dying.

  But I had to leave the dart where it was this time. I could not, for the sake of safety, hang about on a public beach, and I had to get back to Skegness in case Edgar needed me. I took a taxi from Mablethorpe and was safely back in our rented room before midnight.

  Leaving the dart in Dempster’s neck may be seen as careless, but in fact it is not critical. If the North Sea does not take Dempster, his body will be discovered early in the morning, and by then, it will be too late for the law to do anything. Edgar and I will have moved on to a greater audience.

  And now, it is time to relieve my darling husband of his suffering. The cancer which has been eating into his body for the last few years, leaves him in unbearable pain, and it is time to end that agony. He has been a stalwart, a glorious example to the thespian stars of tomorrow, a true champion of the core theatrical value, ‘the show must go on’. It has gone on. Despite the worst ravages this terrible disease could inflict upon Edgar Anderton, the show has never stopped. He has earned his eternal sleep, and although many will disagree with our actions in respect of Sedgwick and Dempster, Edgar and I believe we were right, and that we should be judged only by God. In my humble opinion, Edgar has earned his place in Heaven, and he has more than earned God’s forgiveness.

  I said earlier that our supply of curare may have been short for our purposes. Fortunately for me, when combined with an excess dose of morphine, it did not take much to help Edgar on his final journey, and there is enough left for me. By the time the police discover Raif Dempster’s body on the beach in Mablethorpe, I will have taken my final bow and joined my beloved husband in that great amphitheatre in the sky. If I have any regret it is that I had to go second, and that I had to pass these last few hours alone. Perhaps the agony of losing my darling, living without him for those final hours is the punishment I have to bear for my earthly sins.

  And so, I bid this world farewell. If you are looking for regret, don’t. If you seek remorse, don’t. If you are seeking pity, don’t. If you are seeking the need for self-pity, don’t. I have no regrets, no remorse, I need no pity, and I do not pity myself.

  Irma (Karlinsky) Anderton

  Chapter Twelve

  Joe handed the letter back. “Very nice. Very sweet. I wonder who wrote it.”

  “Well, according to our way of thinking, Irma Anderton. She did sign it.”

  Joe tutted. “Are you married?”

  “Divorced,” Nichols replied. “It’s an occupational hazard.”

  “It was for me, too.” Joe aimed an accusing finger at the printed sheets. “That is bull. All of it.”

  Nichols was surprised. “Sorry.”

  Joe took a look around, passed over the cast of Hamlet twiddling their virtual thumbs as they waited for Nichols to let them leave, and settled on his two friends.

  He snatched the sealed bag back from Nichols. “Here, let me try something.” He tapped Brenda on the shoulder and handed it to her. “Have a read of that, and tell me what you think.”

  Brenda took the letter. “Yes, boss. Will do, boss.”

  “Don’t be sarky.”

  “Then learn to say please.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re getting at, Murray,” Nichols complained. “It all makes perfect sense to me.”

  “It’s supposed to make perfect sense. But the person who wrote it, missed one important detail. Wait until Brenda’s done with it, huh?”

  Joe looked down the rows of empty seats towards the front stalls, where the remaining cast, all apparently in shock, sat talking amongst themselves.

  His suspicions had zigzagged back and forth over the last two days until now all the suspects had been eliminated, bar one, and for Nat Billingham to have done it, he would have needed both a motive and an accomplice. As far as Joe could see, he had neither.

  “You checked out Billingham’s drug record?”

  “He doesn’t have one,” Nichols replied. “As far as we’re concerned, he’s snow white… and the rest of the cast are the seven dwarves.”

  Sheila having read the letter after Brenda, passed it back to Joe. “As impressive as it is unlikely,” she declared.

  “What?” Nichols demanded. “What is it you people can see that we can’t?”

  “Love,” Joe replied. “I only met Irma on Friday, but right away you could see just how dedicated she was to Edgar.”

  “Yeah. Right. Love’s young dream grown old. What of it?”

  “You really think she would have seen Edgar off, then leave him to go walkabout on the seafront where she topped herself?”

  Nichols’ frown deepened. “I’m sorry, I don’t—”

  “She would have stayed with him, Inspector,” Brenda said. “She would have swallowed her share of the poison while she was with Edgar. She wouldn’t have left him.”

  Realisation began to dawn on the policeman. “So you’re saying she was murdered? Is that it?”

  Joe nodded. “We really don’t know who fed Edgar the poison. It could have been Irma, but equally, it could have been the real killer, and Irma may then have realised that she was next and the best way to clear her own name was to insist on leaving Edgar to die alone.”

  “Because the police would realise she would never have done that,” Sheila insisted.

  “Not hard to make up an excuse, I should have thought,” Brenda volunteered. “Perhaps Irma pleaded that she couldn’t bear to watch Edgar expire.”

  “All this presupposes that Irma had intended killing both Edgar and herself,” Nichols argued.

  “She probably had,” Joe said. “She told me herself that they’d been to Peru earlier this year, so the chances are she bought the curare, and according to my knowledge, the medicinal benefits of curare amount only to anaesthesia. But if she and Edgar intended doing away with themselves, it would probably have been at the end of the tour, not in the middle of it.”

  “And why get all hoity-toity about Dempster and Sedgwick dealing in drugs. In fact I’d have thought Irma and Edgar could have used some of the stuff those two were selling.” Brenda indicated the letter in Nichols’ hand. “That makes lovely, romantic reading, but it doesn’t ring true.”

  “So we’re no further forward,” Nichols said.

  “Not quite,” Joe said. “We’ve eliminated three more suspects: Irma, Edgar and Dempster. To my mind, the only one left is Billingham, but he would have needed an accomplice.”

  “Time to question him again, then.”

  But pulled to the rear of the auditorium and questioned, Nat vehemently maintained his innocence.

  “The only people stage right were Edgar and Teri, and according
to you and your video, the dart came from off stage, so it can’t have been either of them.”

  Joe tutted. “Left, Billingham, stage left. We know that the dart—”

  Nat, too, tutted in exasperation as he interrupted Joe. “Your trouble is that you know nothing about the theatre. The stage is always described from the actor’s point of view, not the audience’s.” Half turning in his seat, Nat pointed to the side of the stage to Joe’s left. “That is stage right, and that is where your killer stood to shoot Sedgwick. It was not me. It was not Edgar. It was not Teri. Look elsewhere.”

  Joe had stopped listening. He gawped at the stage, his face registering a level of disbelief which said the whole building had betrayed him.

  Alongside him, Nichols and Hinch continued to press Nat with questions, less aggressive than Joe’s, more about seeking information than trying to trap their suspect.

  “Nichols, could I see the witness statements from Friday night, please?”

  The inspector nodded and Sergeant Hinch led Joe from the auditorium to the manager’s office, where she opened up the box file, took out the sheaf of statements and handed them over.

  “You don’t leave them here overnight, do you?” Joe asked. “I mean surely you keep them locked up.”

  “We bring them with us every morning because this is our temporary HQ, but they’re taken back to our hotel every night.”

  “So no one could have tampered with them?” Joe demanded as he began to read the first.

  “Those are as they were given to us by the witnesses.”

  Joe nodded and immersed himself into his reading.

  The clock moved on and Joe read every word of every statement. Hinch brought him tea, Nichols called in to ask how he was doing, Hinch brought him more tea. She rang and told him time was getting near to their scheduled departure, Brenda came in and told him he had less than an hour, and eventually Nichols returned telling Joe he had to let the theatre company go.