They had reached the fly floor, the area immediately behind the stage, where the peeling walls, old props, unwanted arc lamps and looped cables were in sharp contrast to the plush public areas of the theatre. Above them, the steel-framed fly tower, with its intricate single-purchase counterweight system of grids, lines and pulleys, rose eight metres clear of the rest of the building.
‘The lighting isn’t so great here, but if you look straight up, you’ll get a sight of the lucky butterfly right at the top.’ He pointed upwards with his left hand and at the same time curled his right over her shoulder. ‘Do you see it?’
Gisella tilted her head back and didn’t flinch when Shear-man touched her. She was taller than he, but he didn’t mind that. As he sometimes said when he’d got a woman into bed, the length that mattered wasn’t from head to foot. He’d moved so close that he could feel her hair against his cheek. The sensation pleased him. He wasn’t looking up at the damn butterfly. He knew where it was.
Suddenly she tensed and her whole frame shuddered.
He jerked his hand away from her shoulder. ‘It’s okay,’ he said.
‘It isn’t,’ she said in a shocked voice. ‘Can’t you see what I can? It’s anything but okay.’
8
Apolice car and an ambulance were parked in front of the triple-arched theatre entrance in Saw Close. The whole area was congested with people arriving for the matinee.
‘The stage door,’ Diamond said to Keith Halliwell, and headed along the paved passage, past the tables outside the Garrick’s Head. His negative feelings about entering the theatre had to be ignored. When you get the shout in CID you can’t stop to think. Up the steps into the dim interior, they found their way through the backstage honeycomb and emerged under the fly tower, where an assortment of actors and technicians were gazing upwards at two paramedics and a uniformed police officer who had made their way along a narrow catwalk close to where a body was jackknifed over a pair of battens suspended from the grid under the roof. One arm hung down. The other must have been trapped.
‘Do we know who it is?’ he asked a stagehand.
‘It must be the dresser. She went missing earlier.’
Missing no longer. He hadn’t met Denise Pearsall and wouldn’t have recognised her. All he could make out was that whoever was up there was dressed in jeans and black trainers. There was no indication of life.
He stood for a moment in silence. Violent death of any sort is a desecration, deserving of pity. A fall on to steel battens, almost certainly fracturing the spine, was chilling to contemplate. Here was a woman who had been in the prime of a useful, creative life. Who could say what hopes, memories, disappointments had been prematurely ended by this act?
A short, stout, self-important man in a striped suit came over and put an end to compassionate thoughts. ‘Plainclothes police, are you? I’m the theatre director, Hedley Shearman. I made the emergency call.’
‘Was it you who found her?’
‘I was with Gisella, one of the cast, and we happened to look up and had the shock of our lives. That arm, hanging down. Dreadful.’
‘Are you certain who she is?’
‘It has to be Denise, Clarion’s dresser. You can’t see her face from here, but some of her long red hair is visible. I knew she was upset by what happened on Monday. She phoned yesterday and told me she couldn’t face coming in for last night’s performance. God forgive me, it didn’t cross my mind that she was suicidal.’
Diamond turned to Halliwell and asked him to pass the news to Manvers Street, making clear that although the missing person enquiry would shortly be called off, the dead woman’s car still needed to be found. ‘Where does she park?’ he asked Shearman.
‘The nearest is right across the street, but it’s so small you hardly ever get in there on a weekday. Most of us use Charlotte Street or the multi-storey in Corn Street.’
Halliwell used his personal radio.
‘When did you spot her?’ Diamond asked Shearman.
‘Twenty minutes ago. Gisella – who is playing Sally Bowles now – had just arrived for the matinee and I wanted to point something out to her in the fly tower. She looked up and saw the arm. She’s profoundly shocked, as I was. She wants to go on, though. I’m not planning to cancel the performance.’
‘We’ll see about that,’ Diamond said.
‘It’s all right. Nothing is visible to the audience,’ Shearman added in earnest support of his decision. ‘There are no scene changes. The set is all in place. You and your officers can remain at the back here throughout and you won’t disrupt the show.’
A cancelled performance was anathema to theatre people. And from a police point of view it might suit to have the minimum of fuss. Yet how bizarre to have an audience enjoying the play while a corpse was behind the backcloth.
‘No. Send them home.’
Shearman was appalled. ‘What – cancel, at this late stage? Impossible. Denise wouldn’t have wanted that.’
‘Denise is out of the equation. It’s my decision.’
‘I don’t know about that. I’m in charge here. What can I possibly say to people?’
‘Unforeseen circumstances. The truth will have leaked out anyway. They’ve seen the ambulance and the police cars as they came in.’
‘We’ve got coach parties coming in from miles around.’
‘Bath isn’t short of other attractions. They’ll think of something else to do. Teashops, pubs, shopping. I suggest you make the announcement now if you want us out before the evening performance.’
Red-faced and angry, Shearman caved in and used his phone to issue instructions.
‘Make sure the staff don’t leave as well,’ Diamond told him. ‘I may need to question them.’
For all his bluster, Shearman wasn’t going on stage to announce the cancellation. He delegated that thankless task to his front-of-house manager.
‘Did anyone see Denise arrive this morning?’ Diamond asked.
He shook his head. ‘Someone would have told me. I was trying to contact her.’
‘So when do you think this happened?’
‘I’ve no idea how long she’s been up there. People are walking through here a lot, but you don’t look up unless you have a reason.’
‘What was your reason?’
‘I told you, I was with Gisella. She’s the understudy who took over from Clarion. I wanted to show her the lucky butterfly – as encouragement.’
Diamond’s interest quickened. ‘Butterfly, you said?’
‘Not a real one. A piece of scenery from way back. You can see it yourself right up near the roof if you stand in the right place. A dusty old thing more than sixty years old, but we value it as an emblem of good fortune.’
‘Show me.’
Shearman moved a few strides to the left and pointed upwards, across the tower and at a higher level from where the corpse was lodged. A flashlight would have helped. Fortunately the thing suspended among other strips of scenery was colourful enough to make out. Red, purple, green and yellow and with scalloped edging, it didn’t look like any species of butterfly known to biology.
‘The scene painter enjoyed himself by the look of it.’
‘It was for a pantomime.’
‘Ah, I heard about this from someone else. So you looked for the butterfly and saw the body?’
‘Gisella spotted it first. To her credit, she didn’t scream. I almost did myself when she pointed.’
‘Gisella stayed calm?’