The Strangling on the Stage (3 page)

‘Well, I don't have a car myself.'

‘Of no, of course you don't. Sorry, I'd forgotten. But you haven't got a friend, have you? A friend you could ask to …?'

‘Yes.' A smile played round Jude's lips. ‘Yes, there is someone I could ask.'

‘I
've never had any time for amateur dramatics,' announced Carole Seddon. ‘Or indeed for the people who indulge in them.'

‘I'm not asking you to indulge in anything,' said Jude patiently. ‘I'm just asking you to help me deliver a chaise longue.'

‘Hm.'

‘It's only in Smalting. Early evening Sunday. The whole operation will take maybe an hour of your time.'

Carole looked dubiously at the uncovered chaise longue. ‘I'm not sure that'll fit in the Renault.'

‘Of course it will. If you put the back seats down.'

‘I don't know. It's quite long.'

‘That's possibly why it's called a chaise longue.'

‘Oh, very funny, Jude,' said Carole without a hint of a smile.

‘I happen to know that it will fit in the back of the Renault. It has had such a peripatetic life since I bought it that it has on occasions fitted into the back of virtually every vehicle that's ever been invented – except a Smart car, which would be a squeeze too far. But if you'd rather not do it, just say and I'll get someone else to—'

‘Oh, I didn't say I'd rather not do it.' This was classic Carole Seddon. Jude knew her neighbour very well and was used to the obscure processes that had to be gone through in making arrangements with her. Carole may have disapproved of amateur dramatics, but she still had a very strong sense of curiosity. So long as she was accompanied by Jude, the opportunity of invading the stronghold of the Smalting Amateur Dramatic and Operatic Society was not one that she would readily forego. She'd never actually met any amateur thespians. If she were to meet some, they might well provide justification for her prejudice against them.

‘So you will do it?'

Carole let out a long-suffering sigh. ‘Oh, very well.' Having made that concession, she now deigned to show a faint interest in the SADOS. ‘What play is your chaise longue going to feature in?'

‘
The Devil's Disciple
.'

‘Doesn't mean anything to me.'

‘George Bernard Shaw.' Carole's grimace didn't need the support of words. ‘Not your favourite, do I detect?'

‘I once spent a very long time sitting through
Heartbreak House
. I've known shorter fortnights.'

‘Yes, he can be a bit of an old windbag. But there are still some good plays.
Pygmalion
,
Major Barbara
,
Saint Joan
… they still just about stand up.'

‘I'll take your word for it. And what about
The Devil's Disciple –
does that still stand up?'

Jude shook her head. ‘Haven't seen it. Never actually heard the title until Storm mentioned it.'

Carole could not restrain herself from saying, ‘Is your friend really called “Storm”?'

‘Whether she was actually christened it, I don't know. But “Storm” is the name by which she's known.'

‘Oh dear. Well, I suppose it goes with the amateur dramatics.'

‘Yes,' agreed Jude, suppressing a giggle at the Caroleness of Carole.

‘And will the good burghers of Smalting really come out in their thousands to see a minor work of George Bernard Shaw?'

‘That,' said Jude, ‘remains to be seen. But it doesn't matter a lot to us, because our only involvement in the production will be delivering a chaise longue.'

Little did she realize how wrong that assertion would prove to be.

Following Storm's instructions, relayed by Jude, Carole nosed the Renault into the car park by the church, within walking distance of a fairly new Sainsbury's Local.

The hall next to St Mary's in Smalting was a clone of thousands of other church halls throughout the country. Built in stout red brick towards the end of Victoria's reign, it had over the years hosted innumerable public lectures, wedding receptions, jumble sales, beetle drives, children's parties, Women's Institute coffee mornings and other local events. More recently its space had also accommodated, according to shifting fitness fashions, classes in Aerobics, Swing Aerobics, Pilates and Zumba. The hall, as Carole and Jude had cause to know from the time when they were investigating the discovery of some bones under a beach hut in Smalting, was also the regular venue for the Quiz Nights of the Smalting Beach Hut Association.

Like others of its kind, St Mary's Hall had been in a constant process of refurbishment, though it was never refurbished quite as well as it should have been. The most recent painting of the doors and windows in oxblood red had not been enough to counter the institutional feeling of its cream walls. And nothing seemed to remove the hall's slightly shabby aura or its enduring primary school smell of dampness, disinfectant and dubious drainage.

Storm's instructions to Jude had been exact. If they arrived at six, the read-through of
The Devil's Disciple
would definitely be over by then. And so it proved. The two women had manhandled the chaise longue out of the Renault, but once they were inside the hall, they were encumbered with help. Storm came swanning across to greet them with a shriek of ‘Jude,
darling
!', which made Carole's face look even stonier. For the read-through Storm's hair had undergone another transformation. It was now black, centrally parted and with little curls rather in the manner of Betty Boop. She scattered introductions over Carole and Jude like confetti, far too quickly for the information to be taken in, and organized a couple of men to take the chaise longue into the storeroom.

‘Can't thank you enough, Jude darling. We will look after it very well, I promise.'

‘I'm sure you will.'

‘And now, look, since we've finished the read-through, we were all just about to adjourn to the pub. You will join us, won't you?'

‘Well, I don't think—'

Cutting across Carole's words and ignoring the semaphore in her expression, Jude replied, ‘Yes, we'd love to.'

They only knew one pub in Smalting, the Crab, and that wasn't really a pub. It was far too poshed-up to be the kind of place that a local could drop in for a pint. It was almost exclusively a restaurant, and the tiny bar area was designed only for people sipping a pre-prandial aperitif.

But fortunately it wasn't the Crab that Storm Lavelle led them to. Almost adjacent to St Mary's Church was a pub called the Cricketers (though why it was called that nobody had ever thought to ask – it was miles from the nearest cricket ground), and it was clear as soon as they walked in that the SADOS members were familiar guests. And welcome guests. The landlord, a perky, bird-like man called Len, seemed to know most of the amateur actors by name. Given the declining numbers of visitors to pubs, the Cricketers was glad of any group who would fall in regularly after rehearsals on a Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.

Early that particular Sunday evening the amdram crowd seemed to account for most of the pub's clientele. Or maybe, just because they all talked so loudly and flamboyantly, they gave the impression of having taken over the place.

Carole Seddon felt extremely old-fashioned. She hadn't wanted to come to the pub and now she was there all she wanted was to be back in her neat little house, High Tor. Also, although she would never admit to being ‘a slave to the television schedules', there was a programme on Sunday nights that she didn't like to miss. About midwives, it combined the unrivalled ingredients of contractions and nuns. Carole sneaked a look at her watch. Only twenty past six. Too early to use the show as an excuse for an early departure. Not of course that she'd ever have revealed the real reason why she wanted to get back.

Jude had moved forward to the bar and just ordered two large glasses of Chilean Chardonnay when she was intercepted by a large man with a ginger beard, whom they'd been vaguely aware of overseeing the transfer of the chaise longue to the storeroom.

‘Let me get those,' he said in a voice with a trace of Scottish in it. ‘A small thank you to you for sacrificing your furniture to our tender mercies and bringing it over here.'

He thrust a twenty-pound note at the barman and the two women thought they were justified in accepting his generosity. He turned to a young woman also queuing at the bar. ‘Let me get you one too, Janie.'

‘Oh, you're always buying me drinks.'

‘And it's always my pleasure. What're you having?'

‘Vodka and coke, please.'

‘Your wish is my command. Add a vodka and coke, Len.' The barman nodded. ‘And a predictable pint of Guinness for me, please.'

While the bearded man was getting their drinks, the girl introduced herself as ‘Janie Trotman'. She was slender, dark, quite pretty, dressed in shiny leggings and a purple hoodie. ‘I'm playing Essie,' she volunteered.

‘Sorry. I don't know the play,' said Jude.

‘It's the only young female part, so I suppose I'm lucky to get it.'

‘You don't sound too sure about that.'

‘Well, I'm certainly not sure about the play. Having just sat through the read-through, it all seems a bit long-winded to me.'

At that moment a short, dumpy woman with improbably red hair bustled across to them. ‘Hello, you two look new,' she said to Carole and Jude. ‘I'm Mimi Lassiter, Membership Secretary. Also part of the crowd in Act Three, you know, one of the Westerbridge townsfolk.'

‘Nice to meet you. I'm Jude. And this is my friend Carole.'

‘Ah, good evening. We've got quite a lot of new members in for
The Devil's Disciple
, because it's such a big cast, though Davina has cut the numbers down a bit. And I'm just going round, checking with the newcomers that they are actually members of SADOS. Now I know you're fully paid up, Janie.' The girl nodded. ‘The subscription rate for acting members is—'

‘Let me stop you there,' said Jude. ‘We're nothing to do with the production.'

‘No, we certainly aren't,' Carole endorsed.

‘Oh?'

‘We've just been bearers of a chaise longue which I'm lending to be part of the set.'

Mimi Lassiter looked seriously disappointed. ‘So you're not even in the crowd scenes?'

Jude assured her that they weren't.

‘And does that mean,' asked Mimi almost pathetically, ‘that you don't want to join SADOS?'

‘Certainly not,' replied Carole, as if she'd just been asked to do something very dirty indeed.

‘Oh.' Discomfited, the Membership Secretary drifted away.

By now the bearded man had got their drinks which he handed round with old-fashioned gallantry. He introduced himself to Carole and Jude as ‘Gordon Blaine – I'm in charge of the heavy backstage stuff for the SADOS – building sets, that kind of thing.'

‘Oh yes, Storm mentioned you,' said Jude. ‘Your Land Rover's broken down.'

He looked a little affronted by that. ‘It's more in a process of refurbishment. I'm putting in a new engine. Haven't quite finished yet. So thanks for the use of your car.'

‘It's my car actually,' said Carole tartly.

‘Sorry. Then thank
you
,' he said without rancour.

Jude noticed that Janie Trotman was kind of lingering on the edge of their group, as if she wouldn't mind getting away. But maybe she thought, having accepted a drink from Gordon Blaine, she must stay with him for at least a little while.

‘Sorry,' he was saying, ‘didn't get your names.'

They identified themselves and Jude, to compensate for Carole's frostiness, asked, ‘So, Gordon, will you be building the set for
The Devil's Disciple
?'

‘Oh yes.'

‘And designing it too?'

‘No, no. I'm not given the name of “designer”,' he replied with careful emphasis. ‘Lady over there is “the designer”.' He gestured to a thin woman in her thirties, whose short blond hair was dyed almost white. ‘I merely interpret the squiggles she puts on the page and turn them into a practical set which won't fall over. And from all accounts,
Disciple
is going to be a real bugger to build.'

‘Oh?' said Jude. ‘Why? I'm afraid I haven't read the play.'

‘Nor have I,' said Gordon with something approaching pride. ‘I only arrived at the end of the read-through. I never read the plays we do. Just do as I'm told and get on with whatever I'm instructed to do by the director and the designer.'

‘So why is
The Devil's Disciple
going to be such a bugger?' asked Jude, not feeling she was sufficiently part of the SADOS to abbreviate the play's title to ‘
Disciple
'.

‘Well, apparently it's got lots of sets. There's the Dudgeons' house and then the Andersons' house … which aren't too bad because you can use one basic structure and differentiate the two locations by a bit of set dressing. But then in Act Three there's also the inside of the Town Hall and the outside of the Town Square where the scaffold is set up. Logistical nightmare.'

‘So how are you going to manage it?'

‘Don't worry, I'll manage it,' he replied with almost smug confidence. Jude had readily identified Gordon Blaine's type. He was the kind of man who would build up the difficulties of any task he was given and then apply his miraculous practical skills to succeed in delivering the impossible. In her brief contact with the professional theatre, she had met a good few characters like that, mostly involved in some backstage capacity.

‘I think the only way it can be done,' Gordon went on, ‘whatever fancy ideas the designer may have, is for me to build a basic box-set structure and then—'