four

Rex caught the inspector likewise eying the actors, and the distraught young man in particular. Taking advantage of the fact that Fiske was not currently speaking to anyone, he sauntered up to him, hands resting in the pockets of his brushed cotton jacket.

“How was his acting?” the inspector asked, without withdrawing his gaze from the man who had played Henry Chalmers.

“He hardly had any lines in the first act. He just had to act moony. He’s after Lady Naomi’s fortune, by all accounts, and is a bit of a dandy, but she is naïvely and hopelessly in love, and won’t listen to reason. That’s about the gist of it.”

“I don’t think it required a lot of acting on their part. They were going steady in real life.”

“Ah, I did wonder.” Rex nodded thoughtfully. “That would explain his state of mind now.”

The young man, as though sensing he was the topic of conversation, glanced up from his spread hands which had covered his face. He was possessed of regular, if rather sharp, features and lightly freckled fair skin, the whites of his eyes stained red from tears. The lilac silk cravat hung loose about his slender neck. Rex followed the rest of his costume down to his burnt-orange brogues buffed to a mirror shine.

“Trey Atkins, twenty-seven, works in an architect’s office,” Fiske filled Rex in from his notebook. “I’ll give him a couple of minutes to collect himself.”

“I have a son close in age,” Rex said pensively, hoping for sentimental reasons that the young actor was not responsible in any way for Cassie Chase’s death. However, he knew that Trey’s close relationship with the victim would make him a prime suspect in a murder investigation. The depth of emotion the lad was displaying was revealing, as well as affecting. That there was a love parallel between the play and real life made the case doubly intriguing.

Rex spotted Helen talking to Penny in a back row of seats, her chair turned sideways in the aisle. Leaving the inspector to get on with his work, he went to join the two women. Those spectators who had been questioned by police were trickling through the double doors, and the crowd in the hall was thinning out slowly. The sound of voices had dwindled to a steady hum, emanating mainly from the far corner of the hall, where the main witnesses were still being interviewed at length.

“Cassie was an only child and her dad passed on when she was eight,” Penny was telling his wife, who was good at lending a sympathetic ear.

Rex sat down beside Penny and waited for a pause in the conversation. “Inspector Fiske told me Cassie and Trey Atkins were an item,” he said, with a slight query in his voice.

Penny gazed down at the twisted wad of damp tissues in her hands. “I guessed as much, but they played it down, at least during rehearsals.”

“Nice lad?”

“The best. The sort you’d want your daughter to be going out with. Trey got on with everybody involved in the play.”

“Did everyone else get on?”

“Oh, yes. There wasn’t any friction, if that’s what you mean; at least not between the cast. I’m sure a lot of backstabbing goes on in the professional acting world, but not here. I wish you could have seen the rest of the play,” Penny told Helen. “We video recorded the dress rehearsal, if you’d like to watch it.”

“I’d love to.”

“So would I,” Rex said, significantly more interested in the play in the wake of the tragedy, much as he wished the outcome could have been different. The recording might help give him a better feel for the case. “You said there was no friction between the cast, yet you implied there was some elsewhere …”

Penny gave a light shrug of her shoulders, clad in the black cocktail dress, which Rex could not help but reflect could be one of mourning. “It was nothing, really,” she answered. “Just a bit of tension between Ron and Tony Giovanni, the director.”

“The tall man in the bow-tie who announced the accident,” Rex stated for the sake of confirmation. “I haven’t seen him around since.”

“He looks rather like an actor, I thought,” Helen put in. “And such an operatic name!”

“A lovely man,” Penny agreed. “But too shy to perform onstage.”

Rex recalled that Tony Giovanni had appeared very flustered, but he had put it down at the time to shock rather than nerves.

“He teaches art at the local primary school,” Penny told them, and then confided, “He invited me to dinner once, but nothing came of it.”

“Why?” Helen asked, always curious about personal relationships. “You have teaching and drama in common.”

“I’m not sure, exactly. He’s charming and well-mannered, and all that, but very much a bachelor. I can’t really understand why, with his looks. In any case, he didn’t ask me out again. I think, if truth be told, he was rather sweet on Cassie, understandably enough. She was a beautiful young woman, without any of those airs that sometimes come with beauty. But it would have been a May-September romance, as Tony is almost fifty, and as Rex mentioned, it seems Cassie was involved with Trey, which was a far more suitable relationship.”

“Getting back to his working relationship with the producer … ” Rex intervened before the women could become too sidetracked. “What happened there?”

“Oh, nothing much. Tony, as director and prop-master, was responsible for the creative side of things. Ron took care of the business end, but there was some overlap. For instance, Tony designed the posters and programmes, but Ron had them printed. In fact, Andrew—Andrew Forsythe, who plays Lord Peter Wimsey—he helped with that as he works in a publishing firm. Ron and Tony have been a huge asset, and I was able to give each a small stipend from the grant I received from the arts council.”

“Penny won a prize for Peril at Pinegrove Hall and was awarded funds to mount the production,” Helen explained proudly to Rex on the playwright’s behalf.

“It wasn’t much,” Penny hastened to add. “Just enough to cover expenses, like the printing, and costume rental, and such. I was the official costumier. Much of the furniture you saw was donated or borrowed. Ron is a master scrounger, bless him. But he also wanted to have his say in the aesthetic elements, such as the scenery, which Tony helped paint, and he’d make suggestions on the way the lines were delivered. I have to say I found it a bit irksome myself. After all, I wrote the sodding play. So, I can imagine how Tony felt when he criticized his artwork, like the window in the parlour scene, which I thought was very realistic but Ron said was architecturally inaccurate. But, really, the audience isn’t going to know if Pinegrove Hall is Regency or Georgian. The window is in keeping with the mantelpiece, which is all that matters.”

“So, you’re saying there was a bit of bad blood between them,” Rex prompted.

“I suppose,” Penny admitted. “But they were mostly civil about their differences, although I think if they weren’t being remunerated for their time, one or other of them would have stormed off. Of the two of them, Ron has the more forceful personality, and Tony preferred to avoid a direct confrontation. I’m sure that’s why he invited me out that time, so he could vent about Ron. And, I think, to sound me out about Cassie.”

“Did you ever have to referee between the two men?” Rex asked, feeling there might be more animosity than Penny let on.

“It never actually came to that. Tony would just roll his eyes behind Ron’s back, and sigh, and hum and do all those passive aggressive things. But he never trod on Ron’s turf, even if Ron trod on his.”

Rex had yet to clap eyes on Ron Wade. He found it surprising, in view of what Penny had divulged, that the producer had not been the one to go onstage and deliver the news of the “accident.”

“Ron does what for a living?” he asked.

“He’s a sales executive for a pharmaceutical company.”

“And the others?” Rex pulled the programme from the pocket of his jacket, fully noticing for the first time the artistic motif on the burgundy cover depicting, in black outline, two halves of an antique goblet shattered by a plunging dagger. He turned to the cast of characters and clicked the top of his ballpoint pen in readiness. Helen took her phone from her handbag and shifted away on her chair.

“Ada, who plays Miss Marple, is a librarian,” Penny informed him. “Dennis Caldwell, a.k.a. Hercule Poirot, works in insurance. Andrew Forsythe—Lord Wimsey—is in publishing, like I said. Rodney Snyder, our Sherlock Holmes, owns a flower shop, which he advertises in his bio. Something about a rose.”

“‘A Rose by Any Other Name,’” Rex supplied, leafing forward to the brief bios, which mainly listed the actors’ dramatic training and prior productions. “And Timothy Holden who plays Father Brown? The bio doesn’t give his job. It’s a bit spare, only two lines.”

“I don’t think he has much of a curriculum vitae. He came to us last-minute as a replacement for Darrell, who quit the play to pursue his acting career in LA. Not really sure what Timothy does, but he rode to rehearsals on a push bike. That could be because he’s trying to get fit, I suppose, but I don’t think he makes much money. That’s all the detectives. The man who plays the butler is Christopher Ells, a medical technician at Royal Derby Hospital. Paul Reddit, the solicitor, is a solicitor in real life, and Trey is a trainee architect. Clara Grove,” Penny continued, twisting around in her chair, “the woman in purple trousers over there talking to the inspector, is Susan Richardson. She’s a stay-at-home mum with three teenage kids. Who am I missing?”

Rex reviewed the list of characters. “Her companion in the play, Robin Busket.”

“Oh, yes. That’s Bobbi, short for Roberta. She’s Paul Reddit’s niece and works for his law firm in some administrative capacity. They’re all very nice people. It’s certainly not one of them.”

“And those two men in casual clothes, being interviewed by the detective sergeant? Stagehands?”

“Bill and Ben, the Flowerpot Men, as we dubbed them. Remember Watch with Mother?” Penny made a wry face. “Showing my age there. They do props, lighting, and sound effects. Bill works at a sign shop and Ben is a sound engineer for a local radio station.”

Rex finished his round of scribbling. “Does the play become a murder mystery?” he enquired. “I mean, it starts off as a mystery surrounding a stolen heirloom.”

“Yes. Peril at Pinegrove Hall evolves into a murder case and the five detectives are on hand to solve it.”

“Who is the culprit?”

“Don’t tell me!” interrupted Helen, who had been busy texting without apparently missing much of the conversation. “I want to watch the recording and try to guess for myself.” She slipped her phone back in her handbag. “I was texting Julie to let her know what’s going on. She planned on seeing the play tomorrow.”

Julie, Helen’s best friend since university, taught geography at her old school. Helen had arranged to let out her house to her, and Rex and his wife had spent the afternoon packing boxes in preparation for her permanent move to Edinburgh.

“Well, I’d like to know who the killer is,” he countered. “In case it’s a question of life imitating art.”

“Penny can tell you, but please don’t tell me.”

Rex looked expectantly at Penny. Turning away from Helen, she whispered a name in his ear.

“Interesting.” He winked at Helen. “I would never have guessed.”

DI Fiske came over to where they were sitting. “Ms. Spencer, you can leave, if you wish. We’ll ring you if we need further information.”

“I’ll take Penny home,” Helen proposed to Rex. “If you’re staying awhile.”

“Aye.” He turned to the inspector. “If you have no objection, I’ll wait around until my wife returns.”

“What about my car?” Penny asked.

“We can collect it tomorrow,” Helen assured her. “You shouldn’t be driving after the shock you’ve had.”

The women left with the last of the spectators, Rex being the exception.

“Staying to play armchair detective?” Fiske asked blandly.

“Armchair detection has proved quite effective in the past,” Rex said, holding up the programme. “Witness Miss Marple and Poirot.”

“That’s just fiction.” Fiske smiled briefly, or it could have been a smirk; it was hard to tell with his crooked mouth. “You have an impressive success rate in your private cases, I hear.”

Rex shrugged in genuine modesty. “I just hope this is not the case that proves to be my Waterloo.” He gave a heartfelt sigh. “It’s always worse when death involves a young person so full of promise and who will be missed by so many.”

Fiske nodded solemnly and mumbled, “Indeed. This one’s got a lot of attention, and I don’t see it letting up. It’ll be round-the-clock grind for all concerned.”