‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Sir?’
‘A narrow blade, about nine inches long and as sharp as hell – I think it fits the bill perfectly, don’t you? But what on earth is it doing here?’
‘You don’t think he did it then?’
‘No, try as I might, I really can’t see Bernard Aubrey sneaking into a railway carriage with this to kill a young girl. Particularly if she was his daughter.’
‘His daughter? How do you know that?’
‘I don’t, but at the moment I’m trying to think of logical connec-tions between the two deaths other than the
know that Elspeth was passed over unofficially between colleagues during the war, so we need to find out from Alice Simmons if Aubrey knew or served with her husband.’
‘Aubrey was a tunneller, Sir, I know that much because Miss Beaumont was just talking about it. That’s why he went upstairs to change: he could never bear to be underground, not even in his own theatre, because he’d had such a dreadful war. We could ask Frank Simmons if they knew each other – Walter Simmons would probably have talked more about his friends and the war to his brother than his wife, and it’d be quicker than waiting for Mrs Simmons to get here from Berwick.’
‘True, but I’d rather not let Frank Simmons know anything about the way we’re thinking at the moment. No, we’ll talk to her alone as soon as she gets here. I’d also like her to take a look at Aubrey’s handwriting: if he sent the letters to Walter each year –
and let’s face it, he was wealthy enough to send the money – she might recognise it from the one she saw. The claustrophobia’s interesting, though. I wonder how many people knew about that?’
‘It didn’t seem to be any great secret, at least not among the theatre lot. But even if he does turn out to be her father, I don’t see why that should get them both killed.’
‘Don’t you? Aubrey was Hedley White’s boss, so the chances are he’ll have heard about Elspeth. Perhaps he even met her and realised who she was. What if he wanted to acknowledge her and get to know her better? That won’t have gone down well with Frank Simmons if he thought he was losing his niece. It seemed to me this afternoon that the whole family has lived in constant fear of Elspeth’s being taken away from them. That’s only natural if the adoption was illegal – they built all that love on very shaky foundations, but who knows what they’d do to protect it? And then there’s White, of course. Aubrey might not have approved of his daughter dating the stage hand. I agree that the motivation is much stronger for his killing Aubrey than Elspeth, but there’s a very fine line between love and ownership, and jealousy can distort where it falls. He wouldn’t be the first person to kill his girl rather than lose her to another life.’
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‘No, I don’t suppose he would, and we know he was hanging about here tonight.’
‘Yes, both he and Frank Simmons were here just before the show.’
‘But Simmons couldn’t get up here, whereas White could. No one would think twice about seeing him anywhere in this theatre, even on his night off.’
‘Don’t forget – Simmons said something about having a mate on stage door who helped him collect his memorabilia. He wouldn’t admit it, of course, but the man on tonight might have turned a blind eye if there was something in it for him.’
‘Tell me again what he said to you, Sir.’
‘Aubrey? He said there was something he wanted to tell me, but the way he said it implied that if he’d talked sooner Elspeth might not have died. It was something like “I’ve got to live with the fact that I’ve waited until now.”’ Archie paused. ‘Of course, if I’m right about the connection, I suppose we can’t rule out suicide.
Josephine said he was upset when she told him who’d been killed and I assumed that was because he felt sorry for Hedley, but it could have been much more than that. If you spend all those years wanting to get to know your child, then have the chance so violently snatched from you, that’s bad enough – but if you know you could have saved her, that might prove impossible to live with. It’s a terrible way to do it, though. Look at his body, Bill: what must those last moments have been like?’
‘You can’t imagine, can you, but I think we
Penrose looked at him questioningly. ‘Miss Beaumont says that the door was locked when she got up here – from the outside.’
‘What? I noticed the key on the outside but I just assumed that Aubrey had used it to get in and not bothered to take it out of the lock.’
‘She says not, Sir. She says she knocked a few times and got no answer, so she unlocked the door herself and found him there on the floor.’
‘What else did she say, Bill?’
‘That he hadn’t made himself very popular lately. Apparently 144
there’s been lots of bickering about contracts and tours and who gets what part. Lots of people seem to have held a grudge against him: he’d fallen out with John Terry particularly badly, and – this fits in well with your theory, Sir – she’d heard he’d been furious with Hedley White about something earlier today, although she didn’t know what. She’d had arguments with him herself lately, too – she was very honest about that.’
‘That’s probably what she meant about his not deserving what he got: he’d made himself unpopular but it shouldn’t have gone this far. Did she mention anyone called McCracken?’
‘Yes, Sir, Esme McCracken – she’s the stage manager. Apparently they have some sort of tradition at the end of the play where three of the cast make a toast, and Miss McCracken has to arrange things. Sounds like another excuse for a drink to me, but Miss Beaumont said it was different today because Aubrey was involved and it got nasty.’
‘She saw it or just heard about it?’
‘Saw it, Sir. It happens just before they all take their bows so she was waiting in the wings.’
