voice to be heard, but Helena did not wish to shout back. She knew how easily panic could infect a cast facing a deadline under already difficult conditions, but she was going to make sure that the Windmill wasn’t the only theatre to stay open throughout the war.
“It’s difficult for all of us,” she explained with feigned sufferance. “You’ll just have to do the best you can. I’m out of gaspers, darling, would you light me?” Benjamin touched a match to a Viceroy and passed it to her. “These gentlemen are detectives, and hope to have the whole thing quickly sorted out. You know how easily these girls fall in with the wrong types.”
“Perhaps we should continue this discussion in Miss Parole’s office,” May suggested. “I think we’re in the way here.” He looked back at Bryant and followed his partner’s gaze to the stage. Bryant’s attention had been drawn away by the arriving dancers, half a dozen long-legged girls who stood whispering and giggling in the shadows of the wings.
Bryant was captivated by what he saw. The theatre held a special fascination for him. When John looked at posturing actresses angling their best sides to the audience, he saw nothing but mannequins and painted flats. Arthur saw something fleeting and indefinable. He saw the promises of youth made flesh, something beautiful and distant, a spontaneous gaiety forever denied to a man who couldn’t open his mouth without thinking.
In Helena’s office May raised the window behind the battered oak desk and looked down into Moor Street, where men in black heavy rescue and white light rescue helmets were clearing sections of charred wood from a blackened shop front.
“Am I right in thinking that, as the company’s artistic director, the production’s success lies in your hands?” Bryant asked.
“Absolutely.” Helena looked tense and angry. She brushed at the cigarette ash smudged in the cleavage of her tight white blouse. “I have a board of directors to answer to if
The thin November sunshine threw slats of light across her make-up as she unfurled a plume of cigarette smoke into the coils of her coppery hair. The exhalation softened her harshly painted eyes. Bryant realized that she was probably his new partner’s type, firmjawed, full-busted, full of life. She had presence, like an expensively upholstered piece of furniture, a reminder of more luxurious times.
Helena knew that it was important to care about the members of her cast. They weren’t actors, Benjamin had once told her, they were her children. But she had no children. What she had was a failed three-year marriage to her agent which had foundered over the argument of raising mixed-race infants in a land where black skin was still seen as a peculiarity. Now, because of the war and the lack of jobs in the theatre, she and her former husband had been forced into each other’s company again.
“We have to find a way of keeping it out of the press.” Helena joined May at the window. “Although the story would do wonders for the box office.” She closed the window. Smoke still loitered in her hair, momentarily recalling an image of the Medusa. “This show represents a massive commitment of time, energy and money. It’s going to brighten up London and raise the morale of thousands of people every week.” She turned to the detectives. “The board has been planning it for years, setting
“Don’t you think you owe her something, Helena?” asked Benjamin. “Suppose somebody has a grudge against the performers? What about the safety of the rest of the cast? The safety of the audience?”
“You know as well as I do that the audience is always separated from the stage.”
“Is that really true?” asked May.
“Backstage and front of house are two entirely different worlds. You can get from one to the other only by going through the groundlevel pass doors. There are just two of those, and one has been locked for so many years I don’t think anyone knows where the keys are.” She ground out her cigarette. “It was probably someone from the cast of
“I can make a case for press restriction if you really think the play is in the interests of the city’s morale,” Bryant offered.
“It’ll be tough keeping things quiet this end. So long as an actor’s near a telephone, word always gets out. Death poisons the atmosphere in a place like this.” Helena knew that performers were sensitive to the slightest undercurrents rippling the still air of an auditorium.
“How are we going to explain that our dancer has disappeared?”
“She had no friends.” Helena stole another cigarette. “Nobody who pushes that hard ever does. She told me she was getting weird letters, Mr May. Sex-crazed men wanting her to walk on them with stilettos, that sort of thing. People were drawn to her aggression. It could be any one of them. They follow the movements of performers in the papers and turn up in the front row every night applauding in the wrong places, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“There is something,” said May. “The telephone bookings for which you mail out tickets, we can cross-check the addresses of all the reservations so far.”
“And what are we supposed to do in the meantime?” asked Benjamin.
“Resume rehearsals,” said Bryant, taking his partner’s cue. “Behave as if nothing untoward has happened.”
“You could make an announcement to the effect that Capistrania has been taken ill and has been placed in quarantine,” added May. “Scarlet fever perhaps.”
“Thank heaven someone around here is ready to take charge.” Helena gave May a reassuring smile. “I already feel safer in your capable hands.”
Bryant made a face behind Helena’s back, and was caught in the act when she turned round. He transformed his grimace into a cough as, somewhere far below, an oboe hit a warning note.
“I thought you were jolly impressive with La Parole back there,” said Bryant, bouncing along the corridor to the box office as they left. “We make a bloody good double act. Perhaps we should take to the stage: Bryant and May, detective duo, some juggling, a patter song and a sand dance, what do you think?”
“I think you’re completely loopy,” answered May truthfully. “It’s a murder investigation. I don’t have the training for this.”
“You’re young enough still to have an open mind,” said Bryant, laughing. “That’s all the training you need.”
? Full Dark House ?
15
SOMETHING POISONOUS
“Hello, Oswald, something’s different in here, have you had the place decorated? I’m rather partial to the smell of new paint.”
“Very funny, Mr Bryant.”
Oswald Finch, the pathologist, sat back from his desk notes and cracked the bones in his wrists. His team had been forced to disinfect the department at West End Central after Arthur had presented him with a cadaver so slippery with infesting bacteria that it had reacted with their usual chemical neutralizers, causing the entire floor to reek of ammonia and rotting fish. This was no problem for Finch, who had the occupational advantage of being born without a sense of smell, but Westminster’s health officer had threatened to shut them down unless they did
