An Expert in Murder

Alice – that’s my sister-in-law, Elspeth’s mother – she’s not so keen on plays as we are, but she asked me to thank you for your kindness. There’s not much that can console her at the moment, but when I told her what the Inspector said about you making friends with Elspeth so quickly, that helped a bit, I think.’

At the top of the stairs they were met by a small, birdlike woman, dressed immaculately in a sober but well-cut suit.

Comparing her with her husband, Josephine would have considered her to be in her early forties but she had that sort of face which had never been truly young and which had probably changed very little over the years. Never in all her life could she remember seeing anyone quite as neat as Betty Simmons: her clothes, her dark auburn hair, the way she stood were all judged with a careful precision that was reflected in her manner of speech; not a word was out of place in those frugal sentences of welcome.

How Elspeth’s exuberance had fitted into this small house with its tidy containment, Josephine could not imagine.

She could, however, envisage the pleasure that the girl would have found in the eccentric streak which drove Frank Simmons to acquire every bit of theatrical memorabilia he could lay his hands on. When Elspeth had spoken about the collection on the train, Josephine had imagined it to consist of nothing but pile after pile of theatre programmes and magazines gathering dust in a corner. On 86

the contrary, what drew her attention almost as soon as she entered the Simmonses’ sitting room was a vibrant pocket of history which told the story of the stage for the last fifty years or more. All along one wall of the room, in a series of glass-fronted cases originally designed to protect precious books, hundreds of small objects were proudly displayed. While Betty disappeared into a tiny kitchen to make tea, Josephine took advantage of a pause in the formalities to look at them more closely. Each was carefully labelled like an exhibit in a museum, and certainly as valuable to anyone with a passion for theatre: the items were laid out chronologically, beginning with a property book used by Ellen Terry as Portia in 1875

and, next to it, a pair of the invisible spectacles which her leading man, Henry Irving, had worn. On the wall in between the first two cases, the mirror from Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s dressing room reflected a wax figurine of Edith Evans as Millamant in The Way of the World, but so evocative was the setting that the glass still seemed to hold echoes of the extraordinary character make-up that Beerbohm Tree had created for the likes of Fagin and Falstaff. The new stars of the stage were well represented, too; next to a 1925

edition of The Sketch, which showed Noel Coward on the cover breakfasting in bed, there was a flask in the form of a book, one of several which the playwright had given to the cast of his operetta, Bitter Sweet, on its opening night.

It really was an extraordinary display and, in spite of the som-bre nature of the afternoon, Josephine and Archie could not help but be fascinated. Simmons, gratified by their interest and pleased to grasp at any distraction from the real world, joined them by the cases and showed them the intricate workings of a silver plate cruet in the shape of Grimaldi which came to pieces to reveal salt and pepper pots in his pantaloons and a glass bottle for dressing in his chest; as the goose-heads appearing from his pockets were revealed to be the handles of spoons, Archie momentarily forgot his profession and exclaimed in delight. ‘This must have taken you years to build up,’ he said. ‘Where on earth did you get it all from?’

‘It’s a labour of love, Sir,’ Simmons replied. ‘I’ve been lucky in that an old pal of mine got a stage door job when he came out of 87

the army, and he always keeps his eyes open for me. You’d be amazed at what people chuck away – some of this stuff didn’t cost me a penny. And when people start to know you collect something, they get in touch with you if they’ve got something of interest. Come and look at this – it’s too big to keep in here.’

Penrose followed Elspeth’s uncle into another room to view the pride and joy of his collection – the drum which Irving had used to create the sound of many a battle at the Lyceum. Josephine, who had never had the remotest inclination to open herself up to strangers, nevertheless admired the natural way in which Archie found a common ground with everyone.

‘I still can’t believe she’s dead,’ said Betty Simmons, returning with the tea tray and pouring four neat cups without spilling a drop. ‘She just wasn’t the sort of girl that things happen to. When she was little, she’d make up stories about herself. Alice used to say it was because she was adopted – there was always something that she couldn’t know, so she invented it differently every day.

They wondered if they’d done the right thing in telling her, but you can’t keep that sort of thing secret forever, can you? The shock of finding it out later might have destroyed her, and it wasn’t as if she was unhappy with Alice and Walter. She was such a sweet girl to them, so kind and thoughtful. But not knowing who she really came from made her curious about everything.’

‘When was she adopted, Mrs Simmons?’ asked Penrose, as he came back into the room and sat down.

‘It was just before the war ended. Walter had come back in a dreadful state – not physically, you understand, but it had done terrible things to his mind – and Alice was trying to hold everything together for both of them, working all hours of the day and looking after him as well. We did as much as we could, but they were so far away up there. Alice didn’t want to come down to London because all her family were in Berwick and that’s where the business was. We thought she was mad at the time to take on a baby as well, but we were wrong. It was what she’d always wanted and she coped beautifully.’

‘So it was the Berwick authorities that handled the adoption?’

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The Simmonses looked at each other doubtfully. ‘It wasn’t exactly done through the proper channels, you see,’ said Frank after a pause. ‘Walter arranged it privately when he was in the army. Someone he served with had a child he couldn’t bring up himself – I don’t know why – but it seemed like the answer to all Walter’s prayers. He and Alice couldn’t have any of their own, you see, and being without kids was eating up Alice with grief; she made herself quite ill with it at one stage, and Walter was in despair. They were so in love when they first married; I’ve never seen a man so happy. He would have done anything for her, and a baby was what she wanted most in all the world. When Elspeth came along, it seemed too good to be true. She couldn’t have been more loved if she had been their own.’

‘It changed them, though,’ his wife added. ‘The end of the war and Elspeth’s arrival all happened at the same time, so somehow she seemed to get caught up in what the fighting had done to him.

He was never the same towards Alice when he came back; she said so herself. But the baby transformed her life. Elspeth was the making of Alice, but sometimes I think she destroyed Walter. They might have got through it if it had been just the two of them.’

‘Betty! You can’t say that about an innocent little baby.’

‘It’s true though, Frank, and it’s nobody’s fault. Don’t get me wrong,’ she continued, turning back to Josephine and Archie. ‘I don’t mean that Walter didn’t love Elspeth. Of course he did. It wasn’t that he resented her or that