Death in the Spotlight

by Robin Stevens

  ‘Even her,’ said Daisy. ‘She’s being nice to Rose because she’s the star, but Rose’s complaining is beginning to wear thin. Just you wait and see.’

  That day, the tension at the Rue could be cut with a knife. The spring flu had knocked out the actors playing Benvolio and Peter, and so Miss Crompton ordered everyone to take on a second understudy role. Martita continued to snub Rose constantly, Simon and Rose clearly could not stand each other – and I kept on seeing Inigo and Simon speaking together in hushed tones, breaking off whenever they saw someone coming by. They seemed as thick as thieves. Lysander was also continuing to be very cold with Rose, all his flirting frozen into bitterness.

  The threats to Rose kept on coming that week. That morning there was a single rose, its petals cut in half, and a slash in one of Juliet’s ballgown costumes, right across her heart. On Thursday there was a single peacock feather, terribly unlucky in a theatre, sitting on her dressing table.

  Rose was absolutely furious about it all, and Daisy and I were bewildered. There was only one thing we knew: these latest efforts could only have come from within the theatre. Jim kept rigid watch on the stage-door entrance, and front of house was locked up tight (Daisy checked). There was simply no way in, and no possibility that anyone not part of the company could have had the opportunity to leave these things for Rose.

  And then, on Thursday afternoon, Theresa fainted clean away in the middle of a rehearsal, and had to be rushed off to hospital by the actor playing Tybalt. She had the flu, and she was prescribed bed rest.

  ‘Ah, poor Theresa!’ cried Simon when we were all told that she would not be coming back that day.

  ‘The problem is, she’s been worked too hard,’ said Lysander, scowling. ‘She ought to be part of a union!’

  ‘We all work too hard, Mr Tollington,’ said Miss Crompton. ‘And we are all part of the same union.’

  ‘The workers ought to rise up,’ said Lysander, his face flushing. ‘That’s what this country needs. A revolution!’

  ‘If there was one, wouldn’t your parents be in trouble?’ asked Rose. ‘Your father’s an admiral, isn’t he? Didn’t he put you through acting school?’

  I remembered how Lysander had accused Daisy of only getting her part because she was a member of the aristocracy. I glanced at Daisy now, and saw her watching Lysander with interest. Rose had spoken as though the thought had only just occurred to her, quite innocently, but Lysander’s face flamed furious red.

  ‘At least my parents are alive!’ he growled.

  Rose hissed.

  ‘Do be quiet, all of you,’ said Miss Crompton, frowning. ‘I need to think. With Theresa ill, there’s going to be a lot of extra work to do.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Miss C., it’ll be OK,’ said Simon in his warm, kind voice. ‘We’ll all pull our weight.’

  ‘That’s good of you, Simon darling,’ said Miss Crompton. ‘But I was in fact wondering whether Martita could help me while Theresa is away. She knows the theatre well, and she has seen us both work.’

  Martita flushed, and looked pleased and upset at the same time. I thought I understood why. To be singled out by Miss Crompton showed how much she trusted Martita; but the work she would have to do was hardly glamorous. ‘Oh,’ she said, her brows drawing together, ‘I – I— Oh, all right.’

  But I reeled from the poisonous look that Rose gave her. The hatred, I realized, truly was on both sides.

  Over the next few days, Martita spun around the Rue Theatre, ordering sets to be moved, asking for costume changes, coaching actors through their lines and speaking her own in double time. Her Nurse was young and beautiful but over-worked, pretending with a cross voice and a friendly wink at the audience to be bowed down with cares that made her older than her years. I saw Martita whirling in and out of the stage door, fetching and carrying, staggering under the weight of enormous boxes of old programmes and posters, fabric and sandwiches, and grumbling cheerfully about it. I thought that in some respects at least, real life imitated the play.

  The others helped, in their way – or rather, Simon good-naturedly fetched and carried whenever Martita asked, Lysander declaimed about cooperation in villages in Russia and then did nothing at all, and Rose only helped when people were looking at her.

  Much to my surprise, Daisy, the girl who never does a thing she does not think important, was more useful than all the rest of them. After the third time I found her dragging a heavy crate through the Rue’s corridors on Friday afternoon, I had to say something.

  ‘Daisy,’ I said. ‘Do you think Martita’s the one who’s been threatening Rose? Is that why you’re following her like this, to watch her?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Daisy, straightening up abruptly, her face quite red with effort. ‘Yes, that’s exactly it. I’m watching Martita in case she’s the person behind those threats. If you could just help me get this to Miss C.’s office, I will tell you more about my plans presently.’

  We passed Martita in the corridor as we shoved the crate along. I stared at her to see if she looked in any way guilty, but all I saw was a person who was harassed and annoyed. Her cheeks were flushed and her thick dark hair was escaping from its pins.

  ‘I’m off to collect another delivery from the printer’s,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Posters. I’ll be gone for twenty minutes. Daisy, make sure everything’s ready for Act One, Scene Five, will you?’

  ‘Yes, Martita,’ said Daisy briskly. ‘Of course I will.’

  ‘I don’t believe you about Martita,’ I said once she had gone. ‘You aren’t just pretending to help. You really want to!’

  ‘Of course I don’t! You should know perfectly well by now, Hazel, that I am acting, and, as I tell you repeatedly, you need to practise it.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ I said. The way Daisy spoke – the pink in her cheeks and the gleam in her eyes – gave away the lie behind what she was saying. ‘You’ve been behaving so oddly around Martita, ever since we met her. I think you—’

  ‘If you say another word, I shall scream,’ snarled Daisy. ‘I don’t want to talk about it, Hazel. I don’t! Leave it, will you?’

  ‘All right!’ I snapped back. ‘But – you’re being horrid!’

  The contents of the crate were bundles and bundles of programmes, and we piled them up in the corner of Miss Crompton’s chaotic office, next to groaning heaps of old play scripts, dead flowers in chipped vases, loose pens leaking ink across screeds of paper and several three-legged chairs. We did it crossly, catching each other’s eyes and glaring.

  ‘Oh, I wish something else would happen soon!’ said Daisy at last. ‘Everyone’s so on edge!’

  What neither of us knew was that it was already happening.

  13

  Martita came hurrying back from the printer’s with a thick tube of posters under her arm, sealed up with the printer’s mark.

  ‘Here,’ she said to a passing stagehand. ‘Put these up outside, will you? I must get onstage.’

  The stagehand nodded and took the roll – but ten minutes later he was back. He hovered downstage, beside Theresa’s empty prompt corner, a puzzled expression on his face.

  The company was rehearsing Act One, Scene Five. Romeo and Juliet had just touched hands at the party for the first time, and now Juliet was learning from her Nurse that Romeo was really the son of her family’s enemies. Daisy and I, our cues done, sat at the edge of the stage, watching. Martita was mid-line when she saw the stagehand.

  ‘The only son of your great enemy— What is it? What do you want?’ she called, spinning round and putting her hands on her hips.

  ‘Not again!’ cried Inigo from his seat in the stalls. ‘This is too distracting. Frances, I need Miss Torrera to focus on her role! She really can’t be the stage manager as well as the Nurse. Stop, stop!’

  Rose sighed and threw up her arms. ‘I haven’t gone wrong once!’ she complained. ‘It’s always Martita.’

  ‘What is it?’ Martita asked the stagehand again.

  ‘I
t’s the posters,’ he replied apologetically. ‘You’re sure that they were the right ones to be pasted up on the side of the theatre?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure! Haven’t you put them up yet?’

  ‘I think you ought to come and look at them,’ said the stagehand. He seemed nervous now. ‘It’s not right, it really isn’t.’

  ‘Has something been misspelled?!’ called Miss Crompton, striding up the aisle between the stalls. ‘All right, show us what the trouble is.’

  Miss Crompton, Inigo and Martita hurried away after him, and there was a lull, while onstage Rose stretched and hummed and muttered her next lines to herself. She was quite alone in the spotlight, but she moved as though she knew she was being watched, tilting her head upwards and shaking back her hair. I looked around and saw Simon standing in the wings, stage left, his arms folded, waiting for his next scene at the beginning of Act Two. Lysander had just come offstage and was half hidden behind a flat, and Annie had come down from Wardrobe with a bundle of Act Two costumes and was hovering upstage.

  A shrill whistle cut through the air. I was startled, heart beating, and looked upwards automatically. Daisy, next to me, tensed like a cat. It is very unlucky to whistle onstage, for someone up in the flies might hear it and mistake it for the cue to lower a sandbag or piece of scenery.

  ‘Who did that?’ cried Rose. ‘Who was it? You idiots, that’s dangerous!’

  ‘Hey, it wasn’t me!’ Simon said, shaking his head. Lysander crossed his arms and Annie shrugged, her hands draped in deep swags of material.

  Then Miss Crompton came storming back through the stage door. I had almost forgotten those posters. I assumed, rather vaguely, that the lettering must be blurry, or had perhaps been printed back to front. But I was clearly wrong. Miss Crompton’s face was grey with fury.

  ‘Come outside at once, all of you!’ she cried. ‘I have been forgiving of whichever one of you has been playing these pranks on Rose up to now, but this is too much. Come outside – perhaps seeing it will make the culprit own up!’

  We all glanced at each other in confusion, and then rushed off the stage, through the corridor, past Jim (who shouted in annoyance that we had not signed his book) and out into the brisk spring evening air.

  London as the sun is going down is lovely. All its bright signs are flickering on and the lights on omnibuses and motor cars are glowing. That day the sky was still blue and white high above the tops of the buildings, but down where we were the air was dim and dark.

  We turned left out of the stage door, onto the quick-moving street, and Miss Crompton led us all to the place where a chain of round lights like crystal balls lit up the Rue’s outside wall, covered in posters. There was the whole history of the Rue in peeling paper – fading and half-covered advertisements for a hundred closed plays. And there, at the very top of them, where the new playbills for Romeo and Juliet should have been, was a row of simple black-and-white posters that gave me chills as I read them. They each said the same thing:

  DING DONG BELL

  ROSE’S IN THE WELL

  WHO PUT HER IN?

  ONLY TIME WILL TELL …

  Below the words was a crude sketch of a well, with a pair of feet wearing little slippers poking out of it.

  I felt Daisy give a little shiver of excitement beside me. ‘Watson!’ she breathed.

  And then Rose screamed. It was an unearthly sound, threading itself demonically above the noise of car horns and tyres.

  ‘WHO DID THIS?’

  Everyone froze in place, staring at her like a tableau.

  ‘WHO?’ Rose screamed again. She was crying, I saw – really crying. I didn’t blame her. Coming after all the other threats and that whistle, this must have felt like the final straw. I had a pang of sympathy for her once again.

  ‘Rose darling, stay calm,’ said Miss Crompton. ‘It’ll be all right. We’ll get to the bottom of it.’

  ‘THEY ALL HATE ME!’ shouted Rose, her voice cracking.

  ‘I’m sure they don’t,’ said Miss Crompton. Her voice was soothing, a mistress talking to a sobbing shrimp. Then she turned on the rest of the company. ‘If the culprit does not reveal themselves, I shall dock the pay of everyone here,’ she said. ‘Own up immediately!’

  But everyone was silent.

  ‘We shall get to the bottom of this!’ declared Inigo.

  ‘And we shall have the posters taken down immediately,’ said Miss Crompton.

  ‘Now, now, we mustn’t be hasty,’ said Inigo, drawing himself up and shaking out his cloak. ‘We will have new ones made, of course, at the printer’s expense, for this is clearly their fault … but do we really need to remove these straight away?’

  His eyes met Miss Crompton’s, and a flicker of understanding passed between them.

  ‘Well …,’ said Miss Crompton slowly. ‘Well now. Let me think.’

  ‘Of course you have to remove them!’ cried Rose, pointing at the posters. ‘You can’t possibly leave them up. I am being threatened! Someone did this to ME!’

  An expression crossed Inigo’s face. It was almost – delight? But then it was gone, replaced by magnificent concern.

  ‘They did indeed!’ he cried. ‘And it is dreadful, Rose. Of course it is! But you must have heard that there is no such thing as bad publicity? These playbills are intriguing. Perhaps they may draw more of an audience.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Miss Crompton. ‘I believe I know someone at the Evening Standard who may be able to run a piece. I can call him – would Monday suit for interviews, do you think?’

  ‘This is impossible!’ cried Rose. ‘You can’t be serious, Frances! I’m the star! Does no one care that I’m being threatened?’

  But, although the company seemed fascinated by the posters, no one seemed to care much about Rose herself. The actors who played Lord and Lady Montague whispered excitedly. Simon was grinning, while Martita flicked back her hair and smirked. Lysander leaned forward and muttered something in Rose’s ear that sounded very much like, ‘Getting your comeuppance at last, eh?’ At this, Rose gave an angry shriek.

  Only Annie looked troubled. She turned to me and Daisy and said, rather unhappily, ‘They all do seem to hate her, don’t they?’

  ‘That’s because she isn’t very nice,’ said Daisy. ‘I don’t blame them!’

  ‘Oh!’ said Annie. ‘I suppose she isn’t. She always seems to appreciate me, though. Do you really think she’s so unpleasant?’

  She was staring at Rose as if she was seeing her for the first time. And, as I looked around at the company, I had a thought that worries me even more now. Everyone knew how to play a part. How could I be sure which of their emotions were real, and which were for their audience?

  There on the street, staring at that horridly creepy posters, I knew that the mystery at the Rue Theatre had taken a new and darker turn.

  1

  As Rose burst into angry sobs once again, it was the stagehand who spoke. ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he insisted, holding his hands up. ‘Just so long as everyone knows that. I don’t want to get into any trouble for this. Just doing my job. It was her who told me to put the posters up!’ he added, pointing to Martita.

  ‘Ah!’ cried Rose, whirling round to face Martita. ‘Then it’s YOU who’s behind this! It must be! You’ve been jealous of me ever since I got the part of Juliet, Martita. Admit it!’

  Suddenly everyone was shouting, and I felt I was drowning in the chaos.

  ‘But I wasn’t the one who ordered the posters. And I never even opened the parcel!’ cried Martita. ‘I went to get them from the printer and I gave them straight to you. I never knew what was on them!’

  ‘That’s true!’ Daisy whispered. ‘I saw the seal!’

  I had too, but all the same I knew that we were in a theatre, where nothing could be counted on to be what it seemed.

  ‘We have to check, Daisy,’ I whispered back. ‘We can’t just take Martita’s word for it.’

  ‘All right,’ said Daisy. ‘The thing to d
o is telephone the printer. I can do it, but I shall need you to distract Miss C.’

  ‘How?’ I asked, panicked.

  ‘Hazel, honestly! I won’t even answer that question. Just trust yourself!’

  By this time, several passers-by were pausing on the street outside the Rue to look curiously at our group, and at the furious figure of Rose.

  Inigo seemed to come to a decision. ‘Enough of this! Everyone, BACK INSIDE IMMEDIATELY!’ he bellowed, flapping his arms like a multicoloured bird.

  In the chaos, while everyone was piling back into the Rue, I stopped Miss Crompton next to Jim’s signing-in book.

  ‘I’m – I’m frightened,’ I said to her. I realized as I said it that I was, rather. Those posters were going round and round in my head, horribly.

  ‘Now, come along,’ said Miss Crompton sensibly. ‘Buck up, dear child. There’s nothing to be afraid of at all, just some silly person playing pranks. Actors do this to each other all the time – needle each other, try to upset each other. It’s part of stage life, not frightening at all, only annoying. At least, if we manage to get some press out of this, it’ll be all to the good in the end.’

  ‘Can you get publicity from this?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course we can,’ said Miss Crompton. ‘You mustn’t look so shocked – it’s show business. We all care for each other deeply, but the play’s the thing.’

  ‘THE PLAY’S THE THING!’ bellowed Inigo, catching her words as he came striding up to us. ‘WHEREIN I’LL CATCH THE CONSCIENCE OF THE KING!’

  ‘Wrong play, darling,’ said Miss Crompton. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, Hazel, I must go and telephone—’

  ‘No!’ I cried. ‘I – I— Can’t you wait? I feel faint—’

  And, to my great embarrassment, I could think of nothing to do but sway forward and nearly fall into Miss Crompton’s bosom.

  Inigo caught me, and I was fanned and patted and talked to like a baby – which ought to have been infuriating, but was in fact quite gratifying. I had faked a faint, just like Daisy! Perhaps I wasn’t such a bad actress after all.