‘To lose one fairy godmother may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose two—’
‘Oh for God’s sake, Wally, shut up! Show some respect for the dead, won’t you?’
Bessy Jones, the understudy, glowered at Wally Ransom as the cast and crew of Cinderella gathered around the body of Isobel Baxter, otherwise known as fairy godmother number two. Bessy then put her arm around the sobbing Peggy Rose and led her away.
Isobel lay like a broken rag doll in her glorious white gown. Her neck was twisted at an impossible angle, and, without closer examination, it appeared to Clara that she had died of a severed spinal cord. Clara looked up to the likely place from which she had fallen: a private box, stage left. If she had fallen directly downwards, she would have hit the carpeted floor and quite possibly survived. But it looked like she had not fallen straight down but had travelled a few feet in the air first, ensuring that her final destination was the edge of the orchestra pit, hitting the hard wooden guard rail before landing where the bassoonist usually sat.
The theatre manager announced that he was off to call the police while Tubby called for everyone to remain calm. Clara edged closer. Isobel’s eyes were wide and void, her false eyelashes sticking out like the spines on a porcupine. Clara noticed that she hadn’t yet taken off her stage make-up but where her dress had slipped, exposing more of her neck and chest than it would have, her skin was red with a raging rash.
Clara whispered to Tubby: ‘You’ll have to keep everyone here until the police arrive – they’ll want to question you all – but I need to go to Isobel’s dressing room. I’ll tell you why later.’
‘All right,’ said Tubby. ‘Jonny, can you show Clara where it is?’
Jonny and Clara slipped away from the rising tide of hysteria surrounding the death of Isobel Baxter.
‘What do you think happened?’ asked Jonny, as he led her onto the stage, into the wings and then backstage. ‘Do you think she jumped?’
‘She could have just fallen.’
‘All the way into the orchestra pit? She would have needed a bit of a jump – or a shove – to travel that far.’
Jonny of course was right, and Clara had been thinking along the same lines, but she was reluctant to fuel speculation without evidence. ‘Those are all scenarios the police will need to look into.’
‘And you?’
‘Yes, I’ll be following them too. Those are the three scenarios I’m looking at with Sybil: accident, suicide or murder.’
‘And you’re leaning towards …?’
Clara smiled at Jonny. He was no fool. She shouldn’t treat him as one. ‘I do not think Sybil killed herself. I haven’t ruled out accidental death quite yet, but I’m not completely sure it’s murder – in a legal sense. It might have been manslaughter. Death without intent. I do believe there were other people involved in her death. And I’m trying to prove who.’
Jonny turned to Clara as they stood outside a dressing room door. ‘Do you think the same person – or people – are involved in Isobel’s death?’
‘I do,’ said Clara. ‘Wally was crass and out of place with his joke, but what he said was true. Two fairy godmothers dying under mysterious circumstances? It can’t be a coincidence. That’s why I want to search her dressing room. Did you notice the rash on Isobel?’
‘I didn’t, no.’
‘Well, she had one. Sybil reportedly had one before she died too. It started when she began using a new face cream. That’s what I want to get from Isobel’s dressing room. To see if it’s the same cream Sybil used, and if so, what’s in it. Shall we?’
She pushed open the dressing room door. The lights around the mirror were still blazing, illuminating an array of cosmetics and grooming paraphernalia. Isobel had clearly been in the dressing room between the end of the show and her death: the Marie Antoinette wig she’d worn during the performance was on a mannequin head.
‘Can you look for her wand please, Jonny? And don’t touch anything. If you find it let me know – I have gloves and sample bags in my handbag I can use to retrieve it.’
Jonny grinned. ‘A lady ought never to leave home without them!’
Clara smiled back. ‘In my new line of work, no. I normally have my satchel with fingerprinting kit and camera in it too, but I thought that might be over-egging it for a night at the theatre. I did not expect to be investigating yet another suspicious death!’
Jonny saluted Clara and set to work, using a coat hanger to poke around. Meanwhile, Clara turned her attention to the dressing table. She knew exactly what she was looking for and it didn’t take her long to locate a jar of cream with the same packaging as that used by Sybil. She slipped it into a sample bag and put it in her handbag. Then she scanned the dressing table for anything else of interest. There was a half-drunk cup of tea, still warm. She sniffed and detected a curious floral smell, strange for tea, and similar to that of the face cream. Or was she just smelling residue of the cream on the cup, not in the tea? She thought it prudent to bag it. She had a small, sterilised sample jar – Uncle Bob would be proud – and poured the tea into that. The cup – a potential source of fingerprints – was wrapped in a handkerchief and squeezed into her handbag.
Of course, she realised, the whole exercise might be a waste of time, but she’d had a hunch with Sybil that could not be confirmed until the toxicology report came back in York after Christmas – possibly the new year – but here was an opportunity, with Isobel, to do some of the analysis herself. What she had refused to be drawn on when questioned by both Tubby and Jonny – whether or not Sybil had been murdered – was becoming clearer. She just needed the evidence to prove it. As Wally had said, to lose one fairy godmother …
‘Have you found a wand?’ she asked Jonny.
‘No, I haven’t. It might be up in the box from where she fell?’
‘It might,’ said Clara. But she didn’t think it was likely. There was a definite pattern emerging. And the pattern spelled murder.
By the time Jonny and Clara arrived back in the auditorium the police had arrived. And with them the part-time pathologist, Dr Charlie Malone. Charlie and Clara’s eyes met. We need to talk, was wordlessly communicated between them. But for now, Charlie had work to do. He was accompanied by Detective Chief Inspector Sandy Hawkes, whom Clara had met after she had solved the case involving her uncle’s death. It was on that case that she had learned to wait as long as possible before presenting her evidence to the police. She had confided in someone too early – a senior officer on a neighbouring force – and her case had nearly been scuppered when the officer turned out to be corrupt.
Hawkes though, as far as she could tell, was as straight as a die. He had a grudging respect for Clara and the work she had done on her previous case, but he was still uncomfortable with private detectives – particularly female ones – being involved in police business. Both he and Clara knew that if it weren’t for Charlie Malone and the soft spot he had for her as a friend of her uncle’s, she wouldn’t get quite as much slack.
‘Good evening, Miss Vale,’ said Hawkes, his eyes narrowing as she approached. ‘Mr Brown here tells me he has already secured your services. I cannot prevent a private citizen from hiring a private detective, but as I have already told him, there are limits to what you can and cannot do. I am in charge of this investigation. I expect you to remember that.’
‘Understood,’ said Clara. ‘As I have done before, I will hand over any pertinent evidence I find – once I have determined that it is evidence.’ Clara was aware that the teacup and jar were burning a hole in her handbag. Hawkes would be volcanic if he knew she had them. But as she had just said, she would hand them over when she determined that they were in fact evidence – and figured out how it fitted into her investigation so far into Sybil’s death. She knew that if she handed them over now, any forensic examination would be delayed a day or two because of Christmas. She could do what needed to be done in her laboratory at home within the next few hours. So no, she would not be handing them over yet.
However, for now, Clara wisely stepped back and quietly watched as Dr Charlie Malone examined the body and Hawkes searched the vicinity, measuring the height of the box and the distance Isobel had fallen. It was something she would have done too if the police weren’t there. A police photographer photographed the scene.
Meanwhile, the cast and crew were corralled to the back of the auditorium by a sergeant and his constable. Names were recorded and initial statements taken. Clara listened in as best she could, without appearing to eavesdrop. As far as she could tell, it was Juju and Peggy Rose who had heard Isobel scream, ran to see what had happened and then discovered the body. They did not see the actress fall. They had then immediately run to call Tubby Brown and Clara. By the time they returned to the auditorium, the other cast and crew had gathered. No one claimed to have seen Isobel fall. In fact, everyone denied seeing her at all after the last curtain call.
This piqued Clara’s attention. If no one had seen her, who had brought her tea? There had been no kettle or primus stove in the dressing room so Isobel could not have brewed it there. She made a mental note to ask Tubby who might have brought her tea. Who normally did that? And if there was someone, why had they said they hadn’t seen her?
But Clara, under the suspicious eye of Sandy Hawkes and his men, couldn’t get near the witnesses to ask. She would have to do it later. Once Clara’s statement had been taken – she had been in the bar, heard screaming, came when summoned, and then seen the body along with everyone else – she was told to go home. Inspector Hawkes had given orders that the theatre was to be cleared so his men could do their work. Only Tubby Brown and the theatre manager were allowed to remain. Everyone else was told not to leave the town and that they would be contacted again.
‘We’ll need to leave on Boxing Day,’ Tubby announced. ‘The day after at the very latest. We open in Leeds on Saturday.’
Hawkes fixed his stare on the troupe manager. ‘No one will be going anywhere until I get to the bottom of what happened to Miss Baxter.’
‘But—’
‘But nothing!’ bellowed Hawkes, in a voice worthy of a concert hall baritone. ‘Now, clear the theatre!’