eight

“I’m trying to remember what I did with the DVR player,” Helen said as they unpacked the foil-lidded cartons of Indian food in the kitchen.

“I put it in one of the boxes,” Rex told her. “I’ll hook it back up.”

“I’ll see to this. You know, if you are going to pursue this case, we’ll never get the packing done.”

“Och, so what? Julie’s not going to be using our bedroom, is she? Why not store up there what we’re not taking with us back to Edinburgh until we’re next down for a weekend?” In Rex’s view, Julie’s judgment could not be trusted when it came to men, and piling the room with boxes would help keep her out while freeing up some of their time.

“That’s called procrastinating,” Helen said with a smile.

“I believe it can sometimes be referred to as sensible time management.”

With the DVR set up in the entertainment unit, and the coffee table spread with a late supper, Rex loaded the disc and installed himself on the sofa beside his wife.

“Ready?” Taking up the remote, he started the DVD.

The familiar red bi-parting curtains opened on the parlour scene and the group of detectives began speaking in turn. Fortunately, the recording, both video and audio, proved of adequate quality.

He took up his bowl of aromatic curry and rice. “At least Cassie’s mother will have this to remember her daughter by.”

“One day, when she can bear to watch it.”

“Did Penny say when the dress rehearsal was held?”

“The day before yesterday. Wednesday.” Helen nodded towards the spinster detective in the blue silk dress and dainty lace-up boots. “My money’s on the elderly lady wielding her evil knitting needles,” she whispered darkly, in an attempt to lighten the mood.

“Are we talking Jane Marple or Ada Card?”

“Well, I suppose either could have concealed the murder weapon in that black bag beside her. The dagger in Miss Marple’s case, the gun in Ada’s.”

The handbag on screen was the same one Ada had taken home with her as she escorted Trey out of the hall. “It’s not Miss Marple,” Rex divulged to Helen. “I can tell you that much.”

“You’re not supposed to tell me, remember,” Helen remonstrated, chucking a piece of poppadum at him.

“I may just be misleading you.”

“You’re incorrigible, you know that?”

“Aye, you’ve told me often enough. You said it was the main reason you agreed to marry me.”

“Ri-ight,” his wife responded with playful sarcasm. “Anyway, if I were Cassie and didn’t intend to kill myself, I wouldn’t be holding a loaded gun. But then, I’m petrified of guns,” Helen stated, tearing off some naan bread and spooning a dollop of mango chutney on it. “Penny said theirs was a relatively light replica. If it was switched at the last minute, Cassie would surely have noticed.”

“Maybe she did notice, but it was thrust into her hand and she had no time to react, needing to get on with the next scene. Though I agree it’s more likely she was standing onstage with the prop, and the killer substituted it for the real gun after he shot her, no doubt having wiped off any fingerprints first. Let me just check something.”

Rex fast-forwarded to the attic scene and paused the disc on Lady Naomi pointing a revolver in her right hand. He got up from the sofa and crouched in front of the television screen but still couldn’t make out any details, even with the aid of his reading glasses. From what he could see, however, the gun in the dress rehearsal looked like the one he had seen in the play earlier that evening. He pressed play and the red velvet curtains closed on Lady Naomi maintaining her pose. Behind the joined curtains came a scream. And then silence. He replayed the attic scene without pausing.

“Did you notice that Cassie holds her pose for a shorter duration than she did tonight?” he asked Helen, who nodded in agreement. “In the dress rehearsal someone must have closed the curtains on cue.”

And something else: if Cassie had been using the replica gun tonight, where was it now? Rex wondered if Inspector Fiske would mind very much if he rang him to find out if it had been found, but when he consulted Helen on the subject, she categorically advised against it. The inspector might be asleep, she argued, or else eating a late dinner with his wife, just as they were. Rex informed her that Fiske was divorced from his third wife, and Helen retorted that she could see why: the poor man was probably beset by calls at all hours.

Rex capitulated. He didn’t want to make a nuisance of himself and ruin the rapport he had built with the inspector. It would have to wait until tomorrow. He rewound the DVD to where they had first left off, with Miss Marple wittering on about the attic as a possible place for the thief to have hidden.

By the end of the first act he had gleaned nothing further with regard to the murder, except the order in which the actors had left the parlour. This he had missed at the theatre when he nodded off after Henry Chalmers was called away by the butler to take a phone call offstage. Aunt Clara had then retired to her room with a headache, accompanied by Robin Busket. The solicitor had followed on their heels, presenting his excuses to the detectives and saying he needed to ring his office. And Lady Naomi, with a dramatic sigh of impatience, had taken herself off to the attic. The scrim had then descended on the five sleuths discussing the case in the parlour.

Helen sat back on the sofa with a satisfied and knowing expression. “Aunt Clara’s companion, Robin Busket, is really a man. He’s the murderer in the play.”

Rex smiled and nodded. “I’m impressed, and we’ve only seen Act One. Penny told me it was Robin. How did you know?”

“The first clue is the name. Bosquet is French for ‘grove’. Robin Busket has to be related to Naomi and Clara Grove of Pinegrove Hall, presumably built when their aristocratic ancestors fled France during the revolution and resettled in England, bringing their most treasured possessions with them. And the solicitor mentioned an indiscretion. The Marquis de Bosquet presumably had an illegitimate son, Naomi’s half-brother, who has ingratiated himself with Aunt Clara and become a member of the household so he can find an opportune moment to steal the goblet and murder the heiress.”

“A bit of a cheap trick if you don’t know French,” Rex contested.

“Well, there are other clues. Robin’s manly gait, for instance. She said she’d been thrown by a horse, a stallion, no less, and had sprained her ankle, but she looks able-bodied enough to me. And she over-compensates as a woman in her mannerisms. ‘Oh, my dear this!’ and ‘Oh, my dear that!’”

“I thought it was just bad acting.”

“There’ll be other clues in the rest of the play. Shall we?”

They continued watching, and Rex tried to follow the complexities of the plot to its conclusion whilst focused on the actors and their demeanour. Henry Chalmers, on whom suspicion of the theft had fallen in Act I, was exonerated when Robin Busket was finally unmasked by Miss Marple for the very reasons Helen had enumerated, helped along by Hercule Poirot’s little grey cells. Contributing, too, were Wimsey’s airily astute observations, Sherlock’s keen powers of deduction, and a dose of divine intervention, thanks to Father Brown, in the form of Lady Naomi’s ghost. Aunt Clara had felt “chills” when Lady Naomi’s avenging spirit was in the room, the spirit ultimately tripping up the aunt’s companion by placing a footstool in her path, resulting in jewels from the stolen goblet spilling from the imposter’s riding boot and ultimately forcing Robin’s confession to the heroine’s murder. “Under our roof the whole time!” Aunt Clara had exclaimed in a fit of vapours.

Henry Chalmers, whom Naomi had valiantly sought to protect right up to the end, was not only spared the hangman’s noose but inherited her estate through a secret will she’d had drawn up, and which the solicitor revealed in the final scene, whereupon Henry declared he would forever stay true to the memory of his dear, departed betrothed. The vying detectives refused any reward for their services. As Hercule Poirot put it, having the last word, “Noblesse oblige.”

“Some of the acting was a bit wooden, but, overall, a pretty flawless production, I thought,” Rex said at the end. He lifted his tea mug. “Kudos to you, Mrs. Graves, for solving the mystery before the second act.”

“You might have done, too, had you been paying more attention the first time around.”

Rex had hoped she had not noticed his lapse at the theatre. “I’ll try to redeem myself by solving the real mystery,” he told her with a sheepish smile. “And you were right when you said it was never the butler. But could it be in real life? Dorkins never reappears in the first act after he summons Henry Chalmers into the hall for the phone call. Inspector Fiske relayed to me that Christopher Ells saw the director in the storage area, but who saw what Ells was up to?” Other than Rodney Snyder, a.k.a. Sherlock, who had reportedly seen him downing some liquor during the interval, as Rex recalled the inspector telling him.

“I’m sure you’ll get to the bottom of it.” Helen planted a loving kiss on his lips. “But kudos really to Penny and everyone involved. It’s no mean feat to pull off a play like this, especially on a shoestring. It must have been very satisfying to see it all come to fruition.” She gazed back at the TV. “It’s a shame the actors never got a real curtain call.”

The screen was frozen on the eleven players strung across the front of the stage, hands linked, in the process of taking a bow, with Lady Naomi in the middle, Henry Chalmers to her right, and Poirot to her left, emphasizing the disparity in their heights. Cassie was close to five nine in her heels, judging by Trey Atkins, whom Rex had stood beside earlier and estimated to be at least six foot tall, whereas Dennis Caldwell, who played the Belgian detective, did not top five five.

“What are you staring at?” Helen asked.

“I’m wondering why they placed a short man beside a tall girl. In fact, all the women are tall except for Miss Marple. It might have looked better if Poirot and Father Brown had stood on each end.”

“Poirot was probably given a prominent place because he’s the funniest actor.”

“By virtue of being so ham? He’s no David Suchet.”

Helen yawned into her hand. “Well, either way, he got a lot of laughs this evening.”

“Yesterday evening,” Rex corrected, glancing at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece. “It’s hours past our bedtime.” He stretched his arms above his head. “I’ll clear the dishes. I’ve kept you up long enough.”

It had been a long day for them both. When they had set out from Edinburgh, he had never entertained the prospect of a real murder.