We didn’t get any more rehearsing done that day. People were too gripped by the real-life drama to even think about acting. Besides, the police wanted to take detailed statements about exactly who had been doing what, when and where. No one was allowed to leave the building until they’d finished, so we had a long afternoon ahead of us.
Graham and I had seen a few corpses in our time but we’d never had anyone poisoned right in front of us like that. We were both pretty shaken. Everyone was. It was now blindingly obvious that Tiffany’s stalker hadn’t been making empty threats – he really did want her dead. When Geoff was carried away on a covered stretcher, Tiffany’s lower lip started wobbling. You could almost see the thought bubble floating above her head that if she hadn’t spilt his tea it would have been her lying there with a sheet over her face.
What was less clear was how the poison had got into her cup.
“It must have been one of us!” Cynthia cried dramatically after Geoff’s body was removed from the building. “Somebody here, on the stage, right now.”
“Oh I don’t think so! No! Surely not!” protested Tiffany, looking around at everyone.
“A stranger couldn’t have got in,” insisted Cynthia. “Maggie wouldn’t have let anyone through the stage door!”
“But the fire escape was open when I went to make another cup of tea,” said Tiffany. “Didn’t you notice?”
Cynthia blinked and looked at her. “Was it?”
Tiffany nodded.
“Well, yes…” Cynthia frowned as she tried to remember. “I suppose it must have been. I wondered where the draught was coming from. The stalker must have put the poison in your tea when I went to ask Geoff to help me carry the trays. It’s so awful!”
Awful as it was, Cynthia visibly relaxed. Everyone did. The prospect of having a killer in the theatre was too much to bear. Before they started talking to the cast and crew, the police examined the fire escape door and confirmed it had been jemmied open from the outside. So everyone in the theatre seemed to be Off the Hook.
The police began by interviewing Tiffany in her dressing room. We were allowed off the stage into the auditorium, where at least the chairs were comfy. The shock of Geoff’s death suddenly hit Cynthia like a sledgehammer. One minute she was crooning “We’ll Meet Again” to herself and the next she was crying her eyes out while Elizabeth – who was looking pretty near the edge too – patted her arm helplessly. In between convulsive, snorting sobs Cynthia wailed, “Poor Geoff. He was retiring next year. What will his wife do now? They were planning to go on a cruise. Oh dear. It’s too ghastly!”
“It is,” agreed Peregrine. “He was a good man as well as a good technician. We’re going to miss him.”
“A premature exit. A role cut short. It’s utterly tragic,” sighed Rex.
I listened to the grown-ups talking while my brain ticked over. Personally, I wasn’t convinced about the fire escape and said so to Graham.
“There are stairs all up the side of the building,” he said, shaking his head. “It would be easy for someone to get in that way.”
“But the door could just as easily have been opened from the inside,” I replied.
“It’s a valid theory,” he conceded.
I combed my fringe down over my eyes and peered out from under it, examining each and every face in the rows of seats. Most people looked worried, or tearful, or shocked, or a combination of all three. One or two of the kids were actually quite excited – they didn’t know Geoff personally and having him drop dead was pretty sensational. Nothing like that had ever happened to them before and their eyes were shining with the unexpected thrill of it. Peregrine’s face had gone grey and his hands were shaking while he tried to make notes on his script. Timothy and Brad looked pretty rattled but Rex was beginning to look more bored than upset. He gave a big yawn and complained to no one in particular, “All this hanging around waiting. It’s worse than being on a film set.”
As for Hannah: she didn’t seem to be suffering from any excess of grief but she was certainly troubled. She was sitting four seats away from us with a newspaper across her lap that was open at the Sudoku page. Her forehead was creased into a frown as if she was concentrating hard and every so often she’d fill in one of the boxes in the square grid.
Eventually it was our turn to be interviewed by the police. Graham and I got up and edged down the row of seats to where Cynthia was waiting to accompany us. Hannah had her legs stretched right out and her bag was blocking the way. She moved so we could squeeze past her and it was then that I glanced down at her paper. With a prickle of unease I noticed that she hadn’t been writing down numbers at all.
She’d filled all the boxes of the puzzle with tiny little skulls.
“The show must go on.” That’s what Peregrine told us just before we were finally allowed to go home. “Tiffany is absolutely determined to go ahead,” he said, holding out his hand to his leading lady. She took it and gave him one of her scared-but-determined smiles. “And I wholeheartedly support her. This production must succeed.” I noticed that his eyes had taken on a slightly fanatical gleam.
“Told you he was worried about money,” Rex muttered to Timothy out of the corner of his mouth. “He can’t afford a flop.”
“He’s got too much at stake,” Timothy hissed back.
“We can’t let one crazed madman stop us doing our job,” declared Peregrine to his cast and crew. “Geoff wouldn’t have wanted that. The police are stationing men right here in the building so we’ll all be perfectly safe. There’s no way on earth the stalker will get in again, I have Inspector Humphries’ personal guarantee of that. We’ll call it a day now – you can return to your homes. But be back here bright and early tomorrow morning. I expect to see you at 8.30 a.m. sharp to start blocking.”
“What’s blocking?” I whispered to Graham.
“No idea,” he said. “I suppose we’ll find out.”
Blocking turned out to be extremely tedious.
What happened was that Peregrine told everyone where to stand and when to move, and the actors read out their lines. We had to walk through the basic dance moves without the music and everyone had to scribble things down on their scripts so they’d remember what to do next time. It was all very slow and boring. Of course, Graham and I didn’t have to do much more than sit at the back of the stage so after an hour I was beginning to wish I’d paid more attention to him and we’d never auditioned in the first place.
But then Jason turned up and things started to get interesting.