“I don’t believe it,” said Deborah. “Two young office girls? The most they would have plotted was to make Rinkley look a fool when he drew out the wrong dagger and realised he dared not use it on himself the way he had rehearsed. I don’t believe they would have thought even of that, as a matter of fact.”
“Brian had to speak to Bourton about his conduct off-stage. The girls complained,” said Valerie.
“They also complained about Rinkley’s comments on their acting,” said Brian. “Mind you, he was justified, in a way. They made very inferior stooges for a man with his dramatic ability. The fellow ought to be a professional. I don’t believe those girls really had anything against Donald. Girls may get scared and rear up a bit when an older man makes a determined pass at them (although I should hardly think it would worry them nowadays), but they must feel a bit flattered, all the same. The sort of reaction they would have when their reading of the script was unkindly knocked by a chap who, after all, was neither the director nor the producer, would be a very different matter and might go very deep indeed. Don’t you think so, Dame Beatrice? I am referring to Rinkley’s comments on their acting.”
“It might settle the matter if Dame Beatrice would have a word with the girls,” said Valerie. “She may disclaim an ability (which I am sure, all the same, she possesses) to track down the writer of anonymous letters, but I am sure a psychiatrist of her eminence can turn two gormless girls inside out in the space of a single interview.”
“You flatter me, Mrs Yorke,” said Dame Beatrice, “but now that the police have co-opted me officially—I was informed of this a day or two ago—I have my own reasons for finding a talk with Miss Hythe and Miss Frome desirable. I wonder, Mr Yorke, whether you will assist me in a small matter? First, were the properties arranged on the trestle tables in exactly the same way at all three performances?”
Brian assured her that they were. He had tried to have no halts between scenes except for what he called ‘the children’s interval’ during which the fairies were taken out of their costumes, dressed in their own clothes and returned by Signora Moretti and her helpers to their mothers, either to sit out the remainder of the performance or to be taken home.
“So after Bottom returns to Quince’s house (a bit we had to leave out on the last night), the workmen had to snatch up their bits of gear, Pyramus had to make a change of tunic and get his armour on, Thisbe had to get into her skirt and mantle, and the whole set of them had to cross behind the backdrop and get themselves on to the prompt side so that the court party could enter from the O.P. side. Of the court party, only Valerie, as Hippolyta, had to make a complete change of costume out of Diana’s tunic and buskins back to her former Elizabethan trappings, but Emma, Barbara and Deborah were all on hand to help her, and I had done my best to make sure that everything needed was to hand to save delay.”
Rinkley’s props had been given a table to themselves. There was the ass’s head, as well as the gear for Pyramus. Valerie also had her own table in her woodland tent so that her Tudor garments could be exchanged as expeditiously as possible for the things she wore in the hunting scene and back again for the last scene. The only other articles on her table were the dashing boots which Brian, as Theseus, wore in the same scene. The tables in the wings held the rest of the clutter for the workmen’s play.
“I had forgotten the donkey’s head,” said Dame Beatrice.
“Is it important?” enquired Valerie Yorke nervously.
“Not in the least, although, as the child said of a gas mask in the last war, ‘it kind of suits some people, don’t it?’ ” Dame Beatrice replied.
When Jonathan opened the front door for his party on their arrival home that evening, he picked up an envelope which had been pushed through the letter-box. It was typewritten and was addressed to Dame Beatrice. She read the letter inside and observed that it was a cry from the heart. It came from Susan Hythe, and the substance of it was that she and Caroline Frome had read all about Dame Beatrice in the newspapers and would be very grateful indeed if they might come and see her. They were extremely worried by ‘things which are being said about us and the inquest being adjourned and all that, so do please let us come’.
The girls were left in the hall by Emma Lynn, who had brought them along.
“They have been given time off from work to come and see you. So kind of you,” said Emma, her plain face flushing and the colour enhancing her looks. “They are extremely worried, poor things, and no wonder.”
“Anonymous letters?” Dame Beatrice enquired.
“No, telephone calls put through to my husband’s local office where they work as typists. The calls are dealt with now by the supervisor, but the girls are still apprehensive. Their lives have been threatened. Marcus dismisses the threats as coming from what he calls ‘some screwball’, and I expect he’s right, but girls of their age are very impressionable and their alarm is very real. We are all still suffering from the shock of Donald’s death and unfortunately the girls had been heard to say that they wished he would drop dead. Not that they meant it, of course. It is just an expression, but people remember these things.”
“I do not know that I can help them. I have already been approached by Mrs Bourton and Mr Rinkley and have spoken with Mr and Mrs Yorke. There have been some unpleasant anonymous letters, but those are a commonplace under circumstances of this sort. Do the telephone calls come from a man or a woman?”
“It is difficult to say. The supervisor, who has taken two of the calls, thinks that the voice is disguised.”
“What do the girls think?”
“I have not asked them. If the supervisor is right, it means that the girls would recognise the voice if it were not disguised, don’t you think?”
“One of their workmates playing a cruel practical joke on them?”
“I hardly think so. Instant dismissal would be the penalty for that, once the joker was unmasked. I think it must be some member of the cast.”
“It is obviously somebody who knows where the girls are employed, but no doubt a good many people would know that. Cases of murder always throw up these ‘screwballs’, as your husband calls them. They soon give up their fun, but it is very uncomfortable for their victims while it lasts, and young girls are especially vulnerable. I shall be interested to hear what they have to say.”
So Deborah entertained Emma in the drawing-room while Dame Beatrice interviewed Susan and Caroline in the library.
Chapter 13
Cut Down to Size
“So quick, bright things come to confusion.”
« ^ »
Poor kids! It’s a shame that they should be involved. Mind you, they are not the only people to be upset, apart from the recipients of anonymous letters. When the inquest was adjourned, what tickled me was the obvious surprise and displeasure of the coroner. He was all ready with his cosy little verdict of death by misadventure,” said Jonathan. “I don’t suppose this borough has had a case of murder on its books since the old smuggling days, and he didn’t strike me as the kind of man who would want to break the record. Did the girls tell you anything useful at all?”
“No. They suggested—a ploy which must have been agreed on because I interviewed them separately and both of them mentioned it—that I should put them under hypnosis.”
“Whatever for?”
“So that they could convince me that they had no hand in Donald Bourton’s death.”