mugging. It seemed strange to Charles that in a large company of actors, who are the most superstitious of people, no one had spoken of bad luck or a jinx on the show. Perhaps he was too close to it. If it hadn’t been for his unconventional recruitment, he probably wouldn’t have found anything odd himself.
But at least this could be investigated. If Winifred Tuke had been slipped something, the chances were it had happened in the theatre. So, in the dead time between the matinee and evening performance, Charles took a look around.
The silence of empty dressing-rooms is almost tangible. He could feel the great pull of sentimentality which has led songwriters to maunder on about the smell of grease-paint, the limpness of unoccupied costumes, the wilting flowers, the yellowing telegrams of congratulation and all that yucky show business rubbish. Distant sounds from the stage, where the indefatigable Spike and his crew were going through yet another flying rehearsal, served only to intensify the silence.
Fortunately, Winifred’s hasty exit had left her dressing-room unlocked. Inside it was almost depressingly tidy. A neat plastic sandwich-box of make-up, a box of tissues and a Jean Plaidy paperback were the only signs of occupation. Someone with Winifred’s experience of touring didn’t bother to settle in for just a week.
What Charles was looking for was not in sight, but it didn’t take him long to find it. His clue came from the smell on Winifred Tuke’s breath during rehearsals and, more particularly, performances. It was in the bottom of the wardrobe, hidden, in a pathetic attempt at gentility, behind a pair of boots. The middle-aged actress’s little helper, a bottle of Gordon’s gin.
The investigation was an amateur detective’s dream. It was so easy Charles almost felt guilty for the glow of satisfaction it gave him. He opened the bottle and sniffed. Gin all right. He took a cautious sip and immediately felt suspicious. It wasn’t the taste, but the consistency, the slight greasiness the drink left on his lips.
He poured a little into a glass and his suspicions were confirmed. Though it didn’t show through the dark green of the Gordon’s bottle, in the plain glass it was clear that the liquid had separated into two layers. Both were transparent, but the one that floated on top was viscous and left a slight slime round the glass. He dabbed at it and put his finger to his tongue. Yes, he wouldn’t forget that almost tasteless taste in a hurry. It was his prep school matron’s infallible cure for constipated boys — liquid paraffin.
He was excited by the discovery, but controlled his emotions while he washed up the glass. The slime clung on stubbornly and he had to wipe at it with a tissue.
A doubt struck him. If he had discovered the doctoring of the drink so easily, why hadn’t Winifred noticed it? But the concealment of the gin bottle in the wardrobe answered that. If she kept her drinking a secret (or at least thought she did), then probably she would only whip the bottle out for a hasty gulp and pop it straight back to its hiding place. And if she’d been drinking during the show, she would probably put the greasy taste down to make-up on her lips.
Charles felt breathlessly excited. Here at last was evidence. Though every other apparent crime could have been an accident or the work of a vindictive outsider, the bottle was evidence of deliberate misdoing, committed within the company.
He had to keep it. In a case where facts were so thin on the ground he couldn’t afford not to. Winifred Tuke was far too genteel to report its disappearance and, considering the bottle’s contents, he was doing her a favour by removing it.
His holdall was in the green room, so he set off there, gin bottle in hand. Stealth was unnecessary; nobody would be in for the evening performance for at least an hour. He trod heavily on the stairs, awaking the echoes of the old building. He pushed open the green room door with a flourish and realised that he had forgotten the stage staff.
Spike and some others were slumped on sofas, reading newspapers. Charles made an involuntary movement to hide the bottle.
He needn’t have worried. Spike was the only one who stirred. He looked up mildly and said, ‘Didn’t think that was your usual tipple, Charles.’
Charles made some half-joke about ringing the changes, put the bottle in his holdall and went out to the pub. He gave himself a mental rap over the knuckles for bad security. It didn’t really matter, because only Spike had seen him. But it could have been someone else and it was his job as investigator to keep a low profile.
Still, he’d got the bottle. Perhaps a diarrhoea weapon lacked the glamour of a murder weapon, but it certainly warranted a large whisky.
Now all he had to do was find a link between the bottle and his chief suspect. Difficult. Dickie Peck had returned to London that afternoon. Never mind, the investigation would keep until he rejoined the company.
Significantly, with the agent away, in spite of occasional flashes of temper from Christopher Milton, there were no more incidents while Lumpkin! was in Leeds.
PART III
CHAPTER NINE
Charles was glad to get to Bristol. He hadn’t enjoyed the previous few days. Investigations apart, Leeds had ended in scenes of cynical recrimination with Ruth. After a final fierce coupling on the Sunday morning and a silent drive to the station, he had had a long slow journey to King’s Cross for her unspoken accusation to fester in his mind. He couldn’t just laugh it off. As many times before, he cried out for the ability to say, that was good while it lasted, or that didn’t work, oh well, time to move on. But he was bad at the sort of insouciance that should have accompanied his style of sex life. Feelings kept snagging, he kept feeling sorry for people, kept feeling he was using them. And, as always, lacking the self-righteousness necessary for anger, he ended up feeling self-disgust.
A half-day in London hadn’t helped his mood. The bed-sitter in Hereford Road had not got less depressing in his absence. With the change in the weather it was as cold as a morgue when he opened the door. Nor did Sunday papers he’d bought offer any cheer. Bombs in London restaurants and the continuing apparent hopelessness of the Herrema siege led to fears of the imminent collapse of society, that terrible plunging feeling that tomorrow everything will stop and animal chaos will reign.
He rang his wife Frances in an attempt to shift the mood. But her phone just rang and rang and he stood, his finger dented by the twopence in the coin-box and his mind drifting, trying to remember what she had said in their last conversation about this new man she was seeing, forming silly fantasies of her with the new man, even of her upstairs in their bed with him, hearing the phone and saying, ‘Shall we answer it?’ and him saying, ‘No’. It was stupid, childish; it was as if he were again a sixteen-year-old, his stomach churning as he asked his first girl out to the pictures. And this was Frances, for God’s sake, Frances whom he knew so well, who was so ordinary he had left her. But his feelings swirled around, unanchored. He put the phone down.
Back in his room (the telephone was outside on the landing) he had turned immediately to the obvious solace, a half-full (or, in his current mood, hall-empty) bottle of Bell’s. He drank with the kamikaze spirit of self-pity, sadly identifying with Everard Austick.
So Bristol, by comparison, was pleasant. He got a lift down on the Monday morning with a couple of the dancers who lived in Notting Hill and, apart from the fact of being in company, the staged sparkle of their camp chatter put him in a good mood. Then there was where he was staying. Julian Paddon, an actor friend from way back, was a member of the resident company at the Old Vic and had issued an immediate invitation when he heard Lumpkin! was coming to Bristol. His wife Helen was charming and had the enormous advantage after Ruth that Charles didn’t fancy her at all (and even if he had, she was eight months pregnant and thus satisfactorily hors de combat).
Julian, whose nesting instinct, always strong, had been intensified by regular employment and the prospect of an addition to his family, had rented a flat in a Victorian house in Clifton and Charles was made to feel genuinely welcome.
