two, with a second mirror and dressing table almost hidden behind enough bouquets and sprays to fill a florist’s.
He pointed. ‘Is there anything of yours in the drawers?’
‘Not those, no.’
‘Mind if I take a look?’
‘What for?’
He opened the top drawer and found it empty. So was the other. He crossed the room to inspect the hand basin. ‘Does this ever get blocked?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The plughole. Make-up. Hair and stuff.’
‘Not while I’ve been here.’
He opened the cupboard underneath. No caustic soda. Not so much as a dead butterfly. ‘We’ll leave you in peace, then. Are you performing tonight?’
‘Every night.’
‘Break a leg.’
In the corridor outside, Titus said, ‘Peter, that was a fearful old cliche, if I may say so.’
‘Break a leg? I thought it was what you say to actors instead of wishing them good luck.’
‘It went out with kitchen sink drama, about nineteen sixty.’
‘We’d better get through before I embarrass you some more. Something is puzzling me. This was dressing room eight. One, two and three are on the prompt side. What happened to four, five, six and seven?’
‘Upstairs on the prompt side. And ten and eleven are above us.’
‘Who uses them?’
‘In a small-cast play like
‘Above us, you say. I haven’t been upstairs. Some of my team have.’
‘There isn’t much to see.’
‘But I’ll see it.’
They climbed the narrow staircase to dressing room ten, distinctly less glitzy than the ground-floor rooms. The mustiness testified that it hadn’t been used for some time. Titus informed him it was supposed to take up to four actors and was probably home to more when big-scale productions like musicals and pantomimes were put on. Diamond opened some cupboards and drawers and then asked if there were more rooms on this floor.
Titus shook his head. ‘It’s the only one this side. You don’t want to bother with eleven. It’s up another flight of stairs and hasn’t been used in weeks.’
‘Take me to it.’
‘No one has ever seen a ghost there.’
‘There’s a first time for everything.’
Dressing room eleven, when they got up there, short of breath, turned out to be a barn of a place, with nine mirrors and dressing tables, bare of anything else except chairs and a clothes rail. ‘Fit for the
After a cursory check that included a glance into the WC and shower, Diamond had to admit that Titus had been right – any self-respecting theatre ghost would shun this one.
‘Down all those stairs again?’ Titus said in a superior tone when they stood in the passageway.
‘You said this was the only room?’
‘On this floor? Yes.’
He pointed across the passage. ‘What’s that, then? The cleaners’ store?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’
Whatever the door was for, it needed redecoration.
Numerous scrapes and dents could well have been made by buckets and vacuum cleaners.
Diamond pushed the door open and got a shock. He was looking straight across the dark chasm that was the fly tower. This was the loading bridge, the same catwalk cluttered with counterweights that he’d reached previously by climbing vertically hand over fist from floor level. Why hadn’t he noticed the door then? Because after the white- knuckle experience scaling the ladder he’d given all his attention to Denise’s broken corpse.
‘Should have thought of this,’ he complained more to himself than Titus. ‘The scene shifters need to get access.’ He leaned over the metal railing and reminded himself what a long way down the floor was, but vertigo wasn’t his problem in this theatre. Already his mind was working on new scenarios. A major objection to his murder theory had been the difficulty of getting the body up to this level without assistance. Now he knew how it might have been done.
Equally – to be less fanciful – Denise could have used the back stairs herself in her suicide plan. As an experienced dresser, she would have known all about room eleven and the door across the passage.
‘Peter, I’m lost in admiration,’ Titus said from behind him. ‘I thought I knew this theatre like the back of my hand. I wouldn’t have looked behind that door unless you had.’
