‘Are you doubting me as well?’ Fraulein Schneider said in the voice of a martyr.
‘Not at all, madam. I hate to say this, but I fear that my friend Mr Diamond can account for what you saw.’
‘The dead woman everyone is talking about?’
‘Get with it, love,’ someone shouted from the third row. By now almost everyone knew why they were there.
Diamond didn’t want this potentially vital witness driven into silence or hysteria. ‘What you’ve told us, ma’am, could be important, and I want to hear more from you in a moment.’ While he had full attention from everyone he announced what he could about Clarion, stressing that she’d been wearing a grey scarf and dressed in a grey hooded jacket that if seen from the waist up could conceivably have been taken for a cloak.
Fraulein Schneider gave vent to a great theatrical sigh.
Diamond said he expected a number of witnesses had seen Clarion and he would need statements from all of them.
‘What the hell was Clarion doing here?’ Preston Barnes asked.
He got a dusty answer from Shearman. ‘She wanted to see the play. Perfectly understandable considering she was in it until Monday night.’
To avoid this descending into a free-for-all, Diamond said his officers would start taking statements directly.
‘Did someone murder her?’ Barnes asked.
‘It’s an unexplained death. We have a duty to investigate.’
‘Most of us can’t help you at all.’
‘We’ll be the judges of that. Everyone will be interviewed.’
‘We’ll be here all bloody night, then.’
This prompted quite a hubbub of alarm over personal arrangements.
Diamond ignored that and briefed his team. The key points to discover, he told them, were whether anyone had seen or heard anything about Clarion’s visit. Those unaware of it would be allowed to leave.
‘If one of them killed her, he’s not going to put up his hand and tell all,’ the hard-headed John Leaman said.
‘I’m not expecting a confession tonight,’ Diamond said. ‘We’re collecting facts.’ He named his interviewers and sent them to various parts of the auditorium. He was left with one lost sheep, Fred Dawkins.
‘Am I not to be trusted, guv?’
‘Far from it, Fred. Have you heard of Wyatt Earp?’
He frowned. ‘The sheriff?’
‘I think you’ll find he was a marshal, and so are you, for one night only. Marshal this lot in an orderly way, keep them sweet and send them one by one to whoever is ready to see them. Can you handle that?’
‘Only if I get a badge and a gun.’
The man had a glimmer of humour. Given time, he might fit in.
A massive gap in the sequence of events needed explaining. Diamond took Shearman on one side. ‘You’ve got some explaining to do. You told me you went to the box at the end of the play and found the body.’
The manager had turned pale. ‘That is correct and I called 999 and got the ambulance here.’
‘I’m more interested in what you didn’t tell me. At which point of the evening did you know she was dead?’
His mouth moved without any words being spoken.
‘You heard what O’Driscoll said. No one was visible in the box during the second half. She was already dead, wasn’t she?’
Still he didn’t answer.
‘There she was, your VIP guest. It would be extraordinary if you didn’t look in during the interval to see if she was comfortable. The truth,’ Diamond said.
Shearman sighed and finally found some words. ‘Unless you’ve been in my position you couldn’t possibly understand the pressure I was under. I had a theatre full of people, a performance in progress. To interrupt it would have created mayhem.’
‘You haven’t answered my question. When did you find out? In the interval?’
‘Shortly before the second half started. I knew she’d prefer to remain hidden, so I took her a glass of champagne. I tapped on the door and looked inside and had the shock of my life.’
‘Think hard before you answer this. Are you certain she was dead?’
‘Definitely. I spoke her name several times, and felt for a pulse. Absolutely nothing. I was petrified. The four- minute bell had gone for the second half to begin again.’
‘So you let it run. The show must go on. That’s the mantra, isn’t it? You had a dead woman lying in the box –’
‘No one could see her. She’d fallen on the floor. It looked like an empty box to anyone who didn’t know.’
