An Expert in Murder (19 page)

‘I wouldn’t be. If I didn’t like it I’d say so, but even then it would just be the comments of a friend. It’s your novel.’

‘Yes, it is. For better or worse, it’s certainly that.’

There was a rustle of satin from the corridor. ‘You know, one night I think I might shock them all and simply refuse to die,’ said Lydia as she came into the room and collapsed onto the sofa in a heap of pale pink. ‘Can you imagine the look on Johnny’s face if I suddenly rallied and stole his best scene? It’s almost worth it.’ She took an appreciative sip of her wine. ‘How is everyone?’

‘Fine,’ said Marta, laughing as she removed Lydia’s flowered head-dress and ran her fingers affectionately through her hair.

‘Yes, your plan for us to get to know each other better has worked beautifully,’ said Josephine drily. ‘In fact, I was just trying to get my hands on this manuscript that I’ve heard so much and so little about.’

Lydia raised an eyebrow questioningly at Marta, who held up her hands in defeat. ‘All right, all right,’ she said. ‘I’ll hand it over.

But be gentle – that’s all I ask.’

As the final scene got underway, Esme McCracken placed four chairs around a small table which stood in the wings, just to the right of prompt corner. Through the flats, she had a fractured view of the playing area and the first two rows but she did not need to look at the audience to know that it would be gazing, as one, at John Terry as he sat alone downstage, a tray of food untouched beside him. She sighed heavily. God knows why, but this scene, with all its cheap sentiment, did it for them every time. In a minute there would be a stifled sob from the auditorium as Richard’s fate in the Tower became too much for someone: she could predict it almost as accurately as she could the knock from the rear of the set which served as a cue for Aubrey’s cameo appearance. When it came, he pushed past her, dressed in a guard’s suit of string mail, and she caught the scent of alcohol already on his breath, as tan-131

gible as the felt from his costume which brushed against her skin.

Grumbling to herself, she carefully polished three wine glasses and a whisky tumbler and placed them on the table in readiness for the ridiculous private ritual about to take place. They were like schoolboys, the lot of them: as if she didn’t have enough to do without preparing little tableaux to which only the chosen few would be privy. Sneering at the bottle of claret – such expense when she was paid so little – she put it next to the corkscrew.

Finally, she lifted the crystal decanter down from the shelf and added it to the tray, where the light from the stage sparkled on the glass and gave a rich, amber colour to the liquid inside. There wasn’t much left but, judging by his breath, Aubrey had had quite enough already, although that was no excuse for how beastly he’d been to her earlier. Looking round to make sure that no one was watching, she removed the glass stopper and spat into the decanter.

She moved away from the table just in time. Fleming strode purposefully into the wings from the stage, his character having made his last exit. He tossed a role of parchment – the prop for Richard’s abdication – to McCracken, then set about easing the cork sound-lessly from its bottle, the first duty in the Ricardian ceremony.

Aubrey, as his soldier, followed him offstage, his minor role in the play’s climax soon over. As he walked past Fleming, the actor grabbed his arm.

‘Not joining us?’ he whispered sarcastically. ‘But we’re such a happy company. It would be a shame not to toast our success, don’t you think?’

Aubrey shook him off and seemed about to retaliate, but suddenly stopped himself. McCracken turned round to see what the distraction was and found Lydia just behind her, waiting at the side of the stage to take her share of the applause when the curtain fell. The actress smiled at Aubrey, who appeared to calm down and satisfied himself with a glare at Fleming as he took the lid off his decanter. Meanwhile, the next actor off poured the wine into three glasses, not oblivious to the tension among his colleagues but at a loss to know what had caused it.

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Then Terry’s distinctive voice cut through the atmosphere.

‘How Robert would have laughed,’ he said, delivering his famous closing line with a hollow amusement which was all the more powerful for its restraint, and the curtain dropped. As the applause broke out – louder than ever, if that were possible – he left the stage, a glint of triumph in his eyes, and raised his glass for a new toast.

‘To memorable exits,’ he said, his eyes fixed on Aubrey, and drank the wine in one go. His defiance shocked even McCracken, whose acts of rebellion were always less overt, but Fleming simply laughed and replaced his glass untouched on the tray. As the cast assembled round them, ready for the first of many curtain-calls, McCracken watched Aubrey pour the last of the Scotch into his glass, down it with a grimace and head for the stairs to his office.

Penrose waited impatiently at stage door for Aubrey to keep their appointment, and tried not to show how irritated he was by the doorman’s constant chatter. ‘I haven’t seen fans like this for twenty-five years or more,’ he said, looking in wonder at the crowds that had gathered in the passageway outside as though it were his first night on the job. ‘Of course, it was different back then – all hansom cabs and evening clothes, bunches of flowers and black canes with silver tops. Now they come dressed as they like and ask for signed photographs. Still, it’s almost like the old days. A bit of the old magic’s come back, that’s for sure.’

While privately wondering what sort of man was happy to do a job that involved sitting in the same chair for years on end, Penrose smiled and nodded. There was no denying the truth of what he said, though: his drone only just carried over the noise outside, where an undisciplined but good-natured crowd of enthusiasts waited for their respective favourites to appear. Terry was the first to brave the adoration, plunging into the noise and notice-ably drawing the schoolgirl contingent away from the rest of the bunch. Fleming soon followed, and Penrose was amused to note that his rougher good looks appealed almost uniformly to the housewife market. He must remember to compliment Aubrey on 133

his shrewdness in casting someone for all possible tastes: it must have helped ticket sales tremendously.

‘The number of times I’ve been offered a small fortune just to run downstairs with a note,’ the doorman continued, oblivious to any lack of interest on Penrose’s part. ‘Take Miss Lydia, for example: she’s always been popular. When she was here a few years ago, there was one gent who’d come every night and insist on reciting a poem to her. Terrible, they were – even I could tell that – but she smiled through the lot of them. A real lady, she is.’

Not entirely comfortable in a world where an immunity to bad verse was a sign of moral rectitude, Penrose was relieved to be distracted by the sight of his sergeant. Fallowfield pushed his way steadily through the crowds, which were building again as
Sheppey
drew to a close at Wyndham’s, the proximity of the two theatres doubling the bustle and confusion in St Martin’s Court.

‘Give me a nice film any day, Sir,’ he said as he moved a couple of gentlemen out of the way to reach the comparative calm inside the building. ‘None of this nonsense – just home for a cup of tea.’

He greeted the stage doorman politely, then – recognising the type

– moved to one side to talk more discreetly to Penrose. ‘No sign of White at his digs, Sir. Maybrick called in to say that Simmons got back home about half an hour ago, but he was alone and there’s no one else at the house. Any luck here?’

‘No, but I’m hoping that might be about to change.’ He brought Fallowfield quickly up to date and shared his hopes for the imminent interview with Aubrey. ‘It might be nothing to do with this, but he’s not the type to make something sound more important than it is. Whatever he’s got to say, he seems to have taken White under his wing so it’s the most promising thing we’ve got to go on at the moment.’

A renewed murmuring at the door signalled the end of the wait for the male stragglers in the crowd. Lydia signed all the autographs that were requested of her, graciously accepted more flowers, then collected the handful of letters and cards that had been left with the doorman, while Josephine introduced Marta to Archie and Fallowfield. ‘I don’t suppose you know if Bernard Aubrey is on his 134

way, do you?’ Penrose asked. ‘I gather he’s meeting you for a drink, but I need to talk to him first.’

‘I’ll go and hurry him up,’ said Lydia, overhearing. ‘God knows what he’s doing at this time of night, but he always has to be forcibly dragged away from his desk. The man’s obsessed with work.’ While Marta and Josephine exchanged a look that silently spoke the words pot, kettle and black, the Motleys came in from the passage.

‘Sorry we’re late but we got stopped in the foyer by that
lovely
young couple who got their tickets outside at the last minute,’

Lettice said, unwrapping her last toffee and handing the empty box to the doorman with an apologetic smile. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody so excited.’ She turned to Josephine. ‘They asked me to tell you . . .’ but she was unceremoniously interrupted by her cousin before she could deliver the message.

‘What did you say?’ asked Penrose.

Lettice looked at him, surprised. ‘Nice to see you, too, Archie. I was just saying that this couple were over the moon to have seen the play at last. They’ve just got engaged, you see, and . . .’

‘No, no – what did you say about the tickets?’

‘I said they got them at the last minute. Someone outside was selling two that he couldn’t use. His girlfriend was ill or something.’

‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me that before?’ Penrose asked, more than a little unreasonably, and Ronnie glared at him.

‘Because we left our crystal ball and our police uniforms at home tonight,’ she said tartly. ‘If we’d known we were working under-cover, we’d have issued a full statement during the interval.’

Ignoring her, Penrose scowled at Fallowfield. ‘I thought Bravo was supposed to be watching out the front?’ he barked. ‘If I find out he’s left his post for a second and missed our prime suspect, I’ll personally make him wish he’d never been born.’ He turned back to Lettice. ‘I’m sorry. Will you take Sergeant Fallowfield back to the front of the theatre and see if you can find this couple?’

‘Of course I will,’ said Lettice, who always remained admirably untouched by her family’s sparring. ‘How exciting!’

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The Yard’s newest recruit had been gone only a moment or two when the others heard footsteps coming quickly down the stairs and Lydia reappeared, paler than she had ever been when dying on stage. She gripped the handrail as if it were the sole thing holding her upright and stared at the small group below, seemingly at a loss to understand how they could all be so calm. It could only have been a matter of seconds but it felt like an age before she spoke, and Penrose had the odd sensation of being cast in a bad melodrama, waiting for the next line to be delivered and knowing only too well what the gist of it would be.

‘For God’s sake, come quickly,’ she cried, confirming his worst fears but soon departing from the expected script. ‘He didn’t deserve this.’

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Ten

Bernard Aubrey’s body lay just inside his office and Penrose silently acknowledged the truth of Lydia’s words: surely no one deserved this. There was nothing restful about the finality of the moment, no indication that the man at his feet had found in death a peace from which the living could take comfort, and he imagined the absolute horror that Lydia must have felt on encountering the aftermath of such suffering. In truth, despite his years of experience, he was not entirely immune to it himself.

A dress suit was draped over the back of the settee but Aubrey had not had time to change after the performance, and the stage clothes lent an artifice to his death which might have been convincing had his face and neck not been visible, clearly showing the signs of poison which no amount of make-up could simulate.

Penrose considered the possibilities. Antimony, perhaps, or mer-cury; arsenic, of course, and he had seen cases of boric acid which looked similar. The most obvious symptoms in front of him could be attributed to any of these substances, but the post-mortem would provide the answers. Whichever it was, the attractive features that age had not been able to undermine were altered almost beyond recognition by the agony of those final moments. Aubrey’s eyes, glazed and unyielding, stared out from sockets which now seemed barely able to contain them and their blank expression, coupled with parted lips and sagging chin, gave the face an ugly stupidity which it had never possessed in life. The upper part of his costume, a tunic of false chain mail made from felt, had been violently torn away from his chest and neck, and his throat was covered in raw scratch marks where he had clawed at his clothes and 137

skin, presumably in a desperate struggle for air. One hand remained clenched at his chest, the other reached towards the door, fingers outstretched and palm upwards, as if begging for a little more time.

The expensive but well-worn Persian rug on which Aubrey had collapsed had been caught up in his convulsions, and Penrose stepped carefully over its rucks and past several books and a small card table which had been knocked to the floor. The force of his struggle with death must have been quite incredible: he was a strong man, tall and heavily built and, even now, his limbs seemed to strain towards life, but he had not been able to withstand whatever had invaded his body. Kneeling at his shoulder, Penrose put his hand lightly against Aubrey’s cheek. His skin was cold to the touch, unnaturally so for someone in whom life had only very recently been extinguished, and there was a brownish, salivary substance about his nose which mixed with the vomit around his mouth and ran in narrow lines down his face and onto the carpet.

The stench of urine and diarrhoea was unmistakable. Even to Penrose, who had encountered the effects of poison many times, it was sickening, almost intolerably so, and just for a second he had to turn away. Looking back, he was struck by how the squalid physicality of Aubrey’s death was made all the more humiliating by the bizarre state of his dress: the false armour might hint at the nobility of a soldier fallen in battle, but there was no dignity here; for all man’s emotional and spiritual aspirations, Penrose thought with sadness, it was invariably the body that decided his fate in the end.