‘I wouldn’t say calm. She was in control, but obviously shaken.’
‘So you’re saying the body could have been there some hours without anyone noticing?’
‘Quite possibly. It’s dark up there, as you see.’
‘Nobody goes up between performances?’
‘There’s no reason to. The scenery for this production is all in place and we won’t be changing it this week.’
‘I’m trying to work out when it happened. She wasn’t at home overnight. We searched her house this morning.’
‘Then it’s not impossible she did this some time yesterday. She phoned in about two in the afternoon.’
‘And spoke to you? How did she sound?’
‘Exhausted, really. She said she was sorry but she’d have to let us down because she couldn’t face the evening performance. Denise is not a skiver. I knew it was genuine. I told her to get some rest and we’d cope without her, which we did.’
‘Who was the last person who spoke to her here?’
‘One of yours.’
‘A police officer?’
‘A sergeant in uniform with a policewoman taking notes. He was doing all the talking.’
‘Sounds like Sergeant Dawkins.’
‘With a rather abrasive style of speech.’
‘Definitely Dawkins.’
Shearman was quick to add, ‘I’m not suggesting your sergeant said anything that caused Denise to take her own life.’
Privately, Diamond reserved judgement on that. He’d been driven near the limit by Dawkins. ‘Why did she come in yesterday morning?’
‘It was the obvious thing to do after what happened to Clarion. She felt responsible, being the one who made her up. I don’t think she’d slept much. Neither had I, come to that.’
‘Did she appear depressed?’
‘Anxious, certainly. Depressed, probably. Whether suicidal is another question. I had no inkling of that, I assure you. But I can imagine how it preyed on her mind as the day went on and we had no better news of Clarion. Listen, can’t we bring her down from there?’
‘Not until the pathologist has seen her and photographs are taken.’
‘It’s obvious how she died. She jumped.’
Diamond didn’t comment. He was psyching himself up for a duty he didn’t relish. ‘How would I get up there?’
‘Do you want to get closer?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t be doing it for nothing.’
‘The quickest way is up the iron ladder in the corner.’
He eyed the ladder, close to where the counterweight-carrying arbor moved up and down a track parallel to the wall. A vertical climb with the rungs spaced a foot apart looked a stern test of an overweight detective’s agility. He was in two minds. He could ask Halliwell to do it. In truth he needed to see the set-up for himself.
Shearman said, ‘There’s a little platform at each level, about every ten feet. Do you see?’
He was already having second thoughts. ‘I’ll wait for the paramedics to come down.’
‘It looks as if they’re on their way.’
With mixed feelings, he saw that they were, and so was the police officer. ‘She’s well dead,’ one of the paramedics said on reaching the ground. ‘Her neck is broken. Are you police as well?’
Diamond introduced himself. ‘No indication how long she’s been there, I suppose?’
‘I wouldn’t know. Are you going up to see?’
Duty demanded that he did. ‘I’d better.’
‘How are your knees? We can’t do much for the lady, but we’ll run you into casualty if need be.’
Bloody cheek, he thought. ‘I played rugby for ten years. My knees are as good as yours.’
‘Just asking.’
He was canny enough not to show off by shinning up the ladder like a sailor. By pausing between levels, he got to the catwalk breathing heavily, but without mishap.
Now it was a matter of edging out to view the body, making certain he clung onto the single handrail. What he saw was Denise Pearsall’s body lying face up along the battens, her head skewed into an unnatural angle, the hair red, the face deathly white. Her eyes and mouth were still open, the tip of her tongue protruding, and a line of dried blood running from the edge of her mouth to her jawbone. Traces of eye make-up and lipstick on features that had once been attractive made the death scene more grotesque. Had she prettied herself for her final act?
She’d stood no chance. She’d dropped from the loading bridge where the counterweights were added or removed, a distance at least ten metres higher, and hit the metal hard, snapping her spine at the neck. It would have been instant death, he told himself. But to see where she’d fallen from, he’d need to climb a stage higher.
It had to be done. He hauled his overweight frame up the last set of rungs until, gasping for breath, he reached the bridge, a catwalk with access to the steel cables and pulleys. Spare weights were ranged along the length of it. With only the briefest of glances downwards, he edged out to the position directly above the corpse. She’d have needed to step over the handrail. It couldn’t have been accidental. Presumably she had intended to hit the floor, not the battens below. His blood ran cold.
Over to the other side was the piece of butterfly scenery, a psychedelic monster as tall as he, probably the last thing Denise saw before she died. It hadn’t brought her much luck.
He’d seen as much as he needed. With painstaking care he picked his way down the sets of ladders.
An aroma of coffee wafted upwards. He was thinking he could do with some after that morbid duty. On completing the descent he saw Dr Bertram Sealy, the local pathologist, with his flask open. ‘Should have guessed.’
‘You should invest in one of these,’ Sealy said, holding up the flask. ‘Indispensable in my work. You’re sweating, superintendent. Did you go up to the very top? You want to watch your blood pressure, doing stuff like that in your condition.’
‘Coming from you, that’s rich.’
‘So what did you discover? I’ve heard of corpsing in the theatre, but this is excessive.’ Sealy fancied himself a master of the black humour exchanged between pathologists and policemen to make the job bearable.
‘This wasn’t a cry for help, that’s for sure. If you take a jump like that, you mean to do the business.’
‘Was she a headcase?’
‘Not known to be. But it seems she may have blamed herself for an incident here two evenings ago.’
‘The Clarion what’s-her-name thing? I saw it in the paper. Nasty.’
‘If you can give me an estimate of when death occurred, doctor, that would be useful.’
‘Said he, always the optimist. Do I need oxygen climbing that high?’
‘You ought to make it.’
‘I hope so. My wife knows I’m visiting the theatre and she told me to ask for complimentary tickets. Is it a good play?’
Sealy showing off his self-composure.
‘I haven’t seen it.’
‘You should ask for a ticket. Perks of the trade.’ Pathologists have to be positive, and Sealy lived up to the challenge. He screwed the empty cup back onto the flask and walked over to the ladder. ‘I’ll need someone to carry my bag. Do you want to go up again?’
Diamond snapped his fingers at a young uniformed constable. Then he turned his back on Sealy. ‘Does she have a room of her own somewhere?’ he asked Hedley Shearman, thinking a suicide note might exist.
‘No. Dressers do their work around the dressing rooms. The nearest thing to an office would be wardrobe.’
‘She worked out of a wardrobe?’
Shearman didn’t turn up his nose, but his eyes said a lot. ‘It’s one of the biggest places backstage, where all the costumes and wigs are stored.’
‘Beverages, too?’
‘What?’
‘I’m parched.’
‘You won’t get a drink in wardrobe, but the bars were doing some trade until we sent the audience away.’
‘Show me to the nearest, then.’ He told Halliwell to keep an eye on things and got a moody look back.
‘It’s a jewel of a theatre,’ he forced himself to say to soften up Shearman over a beer in the dress circle bar. ‘Are the finances in good nick?’