The Strangling on the Stage (11 page)

A little later on in the pub she was approached by Mimi Lassiter, her hair an even less likely shade of red. ‘Now, Jude,' she said, ‘now that you're playing Mrs Dudgeon, you can't deny that you're an Acting Member of SADOS.'

‘I wouldn't attempt to.'

‘So I'm afraid you have to join the society and pay a subscription.'

‘I'm very happy to.'

‘Everyone who acts in a SADOS production has to be a member.'

‘Except Ritchie Good.'

‘Hm.' An expression of displeasure crossed the little woman's face. ‘Yes, I'm still arguing with Davina about that. Now, as an Acting Member, your subscription will be …'

Jude paid up.

‘T
hough I say it myself,' announced Gordon Blaine, ‘I'm not unpleased with the result. Obviously it did present various engineering challenges, but none I am glad to say that proved beyond my capabilities.'

A month had passed. It was a Sunday at the end of March. They'd reached the stage where Davina would have liked all of the cast to be ‘off the book' – in other words, knowing their lines. Some of them had achieved that milestone, others were still fumbling. Hester Winstone was kept busy in her role as prompter.

Jude was a member of the virtuous group; she was ‘off the book'. She had been surprised how easy she had found committing Mrs Dudgeon's lines to memory. And of course, given the old lady's early departure from the action, there weren't too many to learn.

Though they usually worked on the stage of St Mary's Hall, on this particular Sunday the rehearsal was taking place in the auditorium. The curtains were firmly closed, but from behind them various thumps, hammerings and muttered curses had been heard in the course of the afternoon. Gordon Blaine was building his gallows.

He'd been hard at work since the Saturday morning. Though all the components of the device had been made in his workshop at home, he was actually assembling them in situ. And, assuming he got it finished in time, the structure was due to be dramatically revealed to the
Devil's Disciple
company at the end of the afternoon's rehearsal.

With this coup de théâtre in prospect, there was around St Mary's Hall an air of excitement mingled with a bit of giggling. Gordon Blaine, the SADOS Mr Fixit, was clearly something of a joke amongst the members, and Jude could understand why. Though it was Carole rather than she who had received the full blast of Gordon's monologue the first evening they had gone to the Cricketers, that did not represent a permanent escape from him. Gordon Blaine was around quite a few rehearsals and he was very even-handed in the distribution of his conversation; he made sure that no one evaded their ration of it. And Jude, being new to the society, had certainly got her share.

The SADOS Sunday rehearsals started at three (so that those who needed to could enjoy their family lunch) and finished on the dot of six. Then everyone rushed to the Cricketers. Maybe this schedule had been established in the time of fixed licensing hours, but it had continued into the era of all-day opening.

That Sunday afternoon, as six o'clock drew nearer, the level of giggliness increased. Davina Vere Smith was facing an uphill battle, trying to get some concentration out of the actors involved in the opening scene. Jude was rock solid on her lines, but Janie Trotman as Essie, along with the actors playing Anderson and Christie, kept breaking down and cracking up with laughter. At about five to six, Davina gave up the unequal struggle and declared the rehearsal over.

As if on cue, Gordon Blaine had then appeared through the curtains to make his announcement. Having duly patted himself on the back for completing his task in the face of insuperable difficulties, he continued for a while talking up his prowess as an engineer.

Jude looked around the assembled company. There was still a level of excitement there, but as Gordon began to speak, the giggles were threatening to take over. Nearly everyone seemed to have stayed for the forthcoming revelation. Glancing round the room, the only significant absentees Jude was aware of were Ritchie Good and Hester Winstone.

The former's disappearance was explained as soon as Gordon Blaine, with an inept attempt at flamboyance, went into the wings to draw back the curtains. Onstage stood a very convincing-looking gallows, beneath which was a small wooden cart. On the cart, with the noose around his neck, stood Ritchie Good. The
Devil's Disciple
company let out a communal half-mocking gasp of appreciation and started a small round of applause.

Stepping back onstage, Gordon Blaine beamed at this appreciation of his talents. ‘Thank you,' he said. ‘Yes, not a bad bit of work, though I say it myself.'

From behind his back he produced a noose identical to the one hanging from the arm of his gallows. One end was neatly tied in a loop; at the other was a metal ring, clearly designed to hook on to something. Gordon stretched the noose with his hands, demonstrating its strength and solidity. ‘Simple piece of equipment, really, isn't it? But very effective for ridding the world of undesirables.' He chuckled a little, indicating that what he'd just said was a Gordon Blaine joke.

‘Still, we don't want to have any accidents in our
Devil's Disciple
, do we? Particularly to a fine actor like Ritchie Good. So just in case we have any Health and Safety inspectors in the building, let me give you a demonstration of the means by which, in the use of this apparatus, unpleasant accidents may be avoided.'

He moved ponderously across the stage and took up the T-shaped pulling handle of the wooden cart. ‘A few words, did we agree, Ritchie?'

‘Yup. Ready when you are.' And the man with the noose around his neck went into Dick Dudgeon mode, though preferring his own words to the ones George Bernard Shaw had written for this dramatic moment. ‘“It is a far, far better thing that I do now …” Oops, sorry, wrong play. That's
A Tale of Two Cities
. No, what I want to say to you all is that I've been through everything in my mind over and over again and I've decided –' he gestured to the noose around his neck – ‘that this is the best way out.'

There was a ripple of laughter at his melodramatics. Ritchie Good, ever the showman, was enjoying his moment in the spotlight.

‘Also I'd like to say that public hangings used to be one of this country's most popular spectator sports, until some wet blanket of a do-gooder decided that they weren't an appropriate divertissement for the Great Unwashed to gawp at. So you're very honoured, ladies and gentlemen, fellow members of SADOS, to have this much-loved entertainment re-created for you, here in St Mary's Hall, Smalting. And with that – let my hanging commence!'

At what was clearly a prearranged cue, Gordon pulled the cart away from beneath his feet. Ritchie Good's hands shot up to grasp the strangling rope around his neck, and for a moment he swung there, choking and kicking out into the nothingness.

The gasp which followed this had no element of irony in it. People rushed forward to the stage.

But before he could be rescued, Ritchie released his grip on the noose and dropped down to the floor, as neat as an athlete finishing a gymnastic routine. His mocking laughter revealed that the whole thing had been a set-up, and he looked boyishly pleased with the trick he had played on everyone. ‘Not bad, is it? Full marks to Gordon!'

Mr Fixit glowed and did a half-bow to acknowledge the rattle of applause. Then he moved across to demonstrate the cunning secret of his handiwork. The noose was no longer a loop, but two parallel pieces of rope. ‘Oh, the magic of Velcro,' said Gordon, as he pressed the two ends together and reformed the circle.

‘Very clever,' said the sardonic voice of Neville Prideaux, ‘but in fact unnecessary. In the text of Shaw's play the cart never gets moved. Dick Dudgeon may have the noose around his neck, but he's in no danger of ever getting hanged. Then he's saved by the arrival of Pastor Anderson.'

Gordon Blaine looked almost pathetically nonplussed at having his moment of triumph diminished. But Ritchie Good came quickly to his rescue. ‘Well, speaking as the person who actually has the rope around my neck, may I say I'm very pleased about the sensible precautions Gordon has taken. Accidents do happen. I could black out while I'm up there, or the cart could break or somebody could push it away by mistake. No, thank you very much, but I'm happy to stay with my Velcro rope. And I'm equally happy that General Burgoyne is unable to see through his plan of getting me hanged.'

Though he was talking entirely in terms of
The Devil's Disciple
, Ritchie Good still managed to make his last sentence sound like a criticism of Neville Prideaux, and a point scored in the ongoing rivalry between the two men.

As she watched the action, Jude had been standing next to Mimi Lassiter, who looked seriously shocked by the scene they had just witnessed. ‘Are you all right?' asked Jude.

Mimi didn't answer the question, just announced in an appalled voice, ‘He said “fellow members of SADOS” – and he hasn't even paid his subscription.'

Clearly she took her duties as Membership Secretary very seriously.

Over by the stage, where the curtains had once again been closed, there was much clapping on the back for Gordon Blaine, along with congratulations on another feat of stagecraft and offers to buy him a drink. He said he and Ritchie would join the others after he'd made a couple of adjustments to his precious gallows.

And the rest of the company, predictably enough, adjourned to the Cricketers.

As Jude crossed the car park towards the pub, she saw Hester Winstone standing by the side of a flash BMW, in heated conversation with someone through the driver's side window.

‘I just want to stay and have a drink,' Hester was saying.

‘And I just want you to come home.' The voice was recognizably her husband's. ‘Look I've already had to rush my Sunday lunch to get you here for the beginning of the bloody rehearsal. Then I come into the rehearsal room and see some idiot showing off pretending to be hanged – and I see no sign of you. And now you're here and I'd have thought the least you can do is come home now the bally rehearsal's finished.'

‘You go home. I'll get a cab.'

‘Well, that's a waste of money when I'm here to give you a lift. I'm already stuck with paying the insurance excess on the repairs caused by you pranging your bloody car. On top of that …'

Jude couldn't hear any more of the conversation without becoming too overt an eavesdropper, so she continued her way into the Cricketers.

T
he macabre demonstration they had seen had lifted the spirits of the
Devil's Disciple
company. This was partly due to the jokey double act which Gordon and Ritchie had just presented for them, but also to the feeling that they were finally making progress on the production. They were around halfway into their rehearsal schedule, some of the cast were actually ‘off the book', and now they were being shown how bits of the set would work.
The Devil's Disciple
was beginning to gather momentum.

Jude had found that sessions in the Cricketers had become considerably more relaxed since the departure of Elizaveta Dalrymple and her cronies. Elizaveta was one of those women who not only needed always to be the centre of attention but who also carried around with her a permanent air of disapproval. And, given her place in SADOS history, though she didn't voice it in so many words, there was an implication of disdain for everything the society had done since the demise of its founding father Freddie Dalrymple. And yet, despite this inevitable decline in standards, Elizaveta Dalrymple had appeared magnanimous enough to offer her services and do what she could for SADOS.

So, without her condescension and prickliness, without everyone kowtowing and worrying about her reaction to things, the atmosphere in the Cricketers after rehearsals had improved considerably. The inevitable glass of Chilean Chardonnay in her hand, Jude found herself looking round quite benignly at her fellow actors. She had come to recognize that most of their flamboyance and ego derived from social awkwardness and, as ever attracted to people by their frailty, she realized that she was getting fond of most of them. To her considerable surprise, she discovered that she was enjoying her involvement in amateur dramatics. She giggled inwardly at the thought of breaking that news to Carole.

Feeling it was her turn to buy a round for the small circle she stood with, Jude looked for the African straw basket which contained her wallet, and realized to her mild irritation that she must have left it in St Mary's Hall.

To joshing cries about ‘the Alzheimer's kicking in', Jude left the Cricketers and made her way back to the rehearsal room. The March evening was comfortingly light, finally promising the end of the miserable weather that seemed to have been trickling on forever.

Security at St Mary's Hall was not very sophisticated. The keys were kept behind the bar of the Cricketers and one of Davina Vere Smith's duties as director was to open the place and lock up at the end of rehearsals. Frequently, because cast members were slow to leave the hall, Davina didn't do the locking up until when she was leaving the pub to go home.

So it proved that Sunday evening. Jude slipped in without difficulty and went through the foyer area to the main hall. She switched on one row of lights and noticed, without thinking much of it, that the stage curtains were almost closed, with just a thin strip of light showing.

The straw bag was exactly where she thought she'd left it, propped against the wall by the trestle table on which the kettle, coffee mugs and biscuit tins were kept.

Jude was about to leave the hall when she thought she should perhaps turn off the stage working lights. Though not obsessive about green issues, she tried whenever possible to save electricity.