wings, just to the right of prompt corner. Through the flats, she had a fractured view of the playing area and the first two rows but she did not need to look at the audience to know that it would be gazing, as one, at John Terry as he sat alone downstage, a tray of food untouched beside him. She sighed heavily. God knows why, but this scene, with all its cheap sentiment, did it for them every time. In a minute there would be a stifled sob from the auditorium as Richard’s fate in the Tower became too much for someone: she could predict it almost as accurately as she could the knock from the rear of the set which served as a cue for Aubrey’s cameo appearance. When it came, he pushed past her, dressed in a guard’s suit of string mail, and she caught the scent of alcohol already on his breath, as tan-131
gible as the felt from his costume which brushed against her skin.
Grumbling to herself, she carefully polished three wine glasses and a whisky tumbler and placed them on the table in readiness for the ridiculous private ritual about to take place. They were like schoolboys, the lot of them: as if she didn’t have enough to do without preparing little tableaux to which only the chosen few would be privy. Sneering at the bottle of claret – such expense when she was paid so little – she put it next to the corkscrew.
Finally, she lifted the crystal decanter down from the shelf and added it to the tray, where the light from the stage sparkled on the glass and gave a rich, amber colour to the liquid inside. There wasn’t much left but, judging by his breath, Aubrey had had quite enough already, although that was no excuse for how beastly he’d been to her earlier. Looking round to make sure that no one was watching, she removed the glass stopper and spat into the decanter.
She moved away from the table just in time. Fleming strode purposefully into the wings from the stage, his character having made his last exit. He tossed a role of parchment – the prop for Richard’s abdication – to McCracken, then set about easing the cork sound-lessly from its bottle, the first duty in the Ricardian ceremony.
Aubrey, as his soldier, followed him offstage, his minor role in the play’s climax soon over. As he walked past Fleming, the actor grabbed his arm.
‘Not joining us?’ he whispered sarcastically. ‘But we’re such a happy company. It would be a shame not to toast our success, don’t you think?’
Aubrey shook him off and seemed about to retaliate, but suddenly stopped himself. McCracken turned round to see what the distraction was and found Lydia just behind her, waiting at the side of the stage to take her share of the applause when the curtain fell. The actress smiled at Aubrey, who appeared to calm down and satisfied himself with a glare at Fleming as he took the lid off his decanter. Meanwhile, the next actor off poured the wine into three glasses, not oblivious to the tension among his colleagues but at a loss to know what had caused it.
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Then Terry’s distinctive voice cut through the atmosphere.
‘How Robert would have laughed,’ he said, delivering his famous closing line with a hollow amusement which was all the more powerful for its restraint, and the curtain dropped. As the applause broke out – louder than ever, if that were possible – he left the stage, a glint of triumph in his eyes, and raised his glass for a new toast.
‘To memorable exits,’ he said, his eyes fixed on Aubrey, and drank the wine in one go. His defiance shocked even McCracken, whose acts of rebellion were always less overt, but Fleming simply laughed and replaced his glass untouched on the tray. As the cast assembled round them, ready for the first of many curtain-calls, McCracken watched Aubrey pour the last of the Scotch into his glass, down it with a grimace and head for the stairs to his office.
Penrose waited impatiently at stage door for Aubrey to keep their appointment, and tried not to show how irritated he was by the doorman’s constant chatter. ‘I haven’t seen fans like this for twenty-five years or more,’ he said, looking in wonder at the crowds that had gathered in the passageway outside as though it were his first night on the job. ‘Of course, it was different back then – all hansom cabs and evening clothes, bunches of flowers and black canes with silver tops. Now they come dressed as they like and ask for signed photographs. Still, it’s almost like the old days. A bit of the old magic’s come back, that’s for sure.’
While privately wondering what sort of man was happy to do a job that involved sitting in the same chair for years on end, Penrose smiled and nodded. There was no denying the truth of what he said, though: his drone only just carried over the noise outside, where an undisciplined but good-natured crowd of enthusiasts waited for their respective favourites to appear. Terry was the first to brave the adoration, plunging into the noise and notice-ably drawing the schoolgirl contingent away from the rest of the bunch. Fleming soon followed, and Penrose was amused to note that his rougher good looks appealed almost uniformly to the housewife market. He must remember to compliment Aubrey on 133
his shrewdness in casting someone for all possible tastes: it must have helped ticket sales tremendously.
‘The number of times I’ve been offered a small fortune just to run downstairs with a note,’ the doorman continued, oblivious to any lack of interest on Penrose’s part. ‘Take Miss Lydia, for example: she’s always been popular. When she was here a few years ago, there was one gent who’d come every night and insist on reciting a poem to her. Terrible, they were – even I could tell that – but she smiled through the lot of them. A real lady, she is.’
Not entirely comfortable in a world where an immunity to bad verse was a sign of moral rectitude, Penrose was relieved to be distracted by the sight of his sergeant. Fallowfield pushed his way steadily through the crowds, which were building again as
‘Give me a nice film any day, Sir,’ he said as he moved a couple of gentlemen out of the way to reach the comparative calm inside the building. ‘None of this nonsense – just home for a cup of tea.’
He greeted the stage doorman politely, then – recognising the type
– moved to one side to talk more discreetly to Penrose. ‘No sign of White at his digs, Sir. Maybrick called in to say that Simmons got back home about half an hour ago, but he was alone and there’s no one else at the house. Any luck here?’
‘No, but I’m hoping that might be about to change.’ He brought Fallowfield quickly up to date and shared his hopes for the imminent interview with Aubrey. ‘It might be nothing to do with this, but he’s not the type to make something sound more important than it is. Whatever he’s got to say, he seems to have taken White under his wing so it’s the most promising thing we’ve got to go on at the moment.’
A renewed murmuring at the door signalled the end of the wait for the male stragglers in the crowd. Lydia signed all the autographs that were requested of her, graciously accepted more flowers, then collected the handful of letters and cards that had been left with the doorman, while Josephine introduced Marta to Archie and Fallowfield. ‘I don’t suppose you know if Bernard Aubrey is on his 134
way, do you?’ Penrose asked. ‘I gather he’s meeting you for a drink, but I need to talk to him first.’
‘I’ll go and hurry him up,’ said Lydia, overhearing. ‘God knows what he’s doing at this time of night, but he always has to be forcibly dragged away from his desk. The man’s obsessed with work.’ While Marta and Josephine
