“I’ve seen this before,” said May. “In one of your old books.”
“You’ve seen it more recently than that,” Bryant reminded him. “There was one in Ella Maltby’s waxwork dungeon.”
∨ The Memory of Blood ∧
34
Guignol
“You’re enjoying yourself, aren’t you?” said May, watching Dan Banbury at work. The stubby crime scene manager was on his knees between the theatre seats, enthusiastically dusting the arms of the chairs with fingerprint powder.
“I don’t enjoy death, Mr May, you know that. But I do enjoy uncovering the provenance of crime. I like to know what happened. My curiosity always got me in trouble as a nipper. Whenever I saw a dead animal in the woods, I’d always try and find out what killed it. I used to go to strangers’ funerals, just to discover what they died of.”
“That’s the sort of thing serial killers do when they’re young.”
Bryant had slouched down in one of the seats, his huge overcoat riding up about him. “He came in from the back,” he said absently. “She was already sitting facing the stage. You might lift a footprint from the aisle carpet.”
“What makes you say that?” asked Banbury.
“An empty theatre is like a church for her. She feels safe here, she comes here to think. It was preying on her mind, you see.”
“You mean she knew something,” said May.
“She may even have arranged to meet him, to get the matter off her conscience,” Bryant suggested. “Come on, Dan, what happened next?”
Banbury examined the back of the seat for a minute. “OK, he came in, saw her in the seat and dropped the bridle over her head. It’s heavy – she fell back, making the scratches here.” He pointed to two fine channels dug into the top of the wooden seat by the base of the cage. “From the marks I’d say he held her there while he talked to her. Maybe he was just trying to warn her, to frighten her into silence. But she panicked. You can see where her shoes have kicked out at the base of the seat in front. She suffered from excess acidity; there’s a tube of Turns in her bag. She struggled and hyperventilated, then threw up.”
“Check the bridle for dabs,” May suggested. “If he cared about her enough to warn her away, he might have tried to get this thing off her head when he saw she was choking.”
“I already did. I think he wiped it afterwards.”
“No puppet this time.” Bryant was peering under the seats. “Because this was an unexpected development. He hadn’t allowed for it. Colin, go and arrange for Ella Maltby to be brought in, will you? Take someone with you but talk to her personally. Find out if the scold’s bridle is missing from her display. And call in Neil Crofting, the old character actor.”
“Why do you want to see him?” asked May.
“He was Mona Williams’s best friend. If anyone knows why she died, it’ll be him. Colin, get Meera to warn Mr Kramer that there’ll be no performances today. His theatre just turned into a crime scene.”
Bimsley set off for Hampstead, leaving the detectives with Banbury. Bryant beckoned to his partner. “Come and sit down for a minute. Dan doesn’t like us messing up his floor. Besides, it’s relaxing watching other people work.”
For a while they sat talking to and about each other, not always listening, scattering seeds of conversation like an old married couple. May was waiting for his partner to explain his thought processes.
“Come on then, out with it,” he said finally. “How did you know about this?”
“Well, I didn’t at first. I thought it would be the critic.”
“Explain.”
“Alex Lansdale trashed the show, but turned up at Kramer’s party. They were seen talking together. Therefore he must be a friend of Kramer’s. Kramer is under attack. Those he loves and trusts are being removed.”
“Why is he friends with a man who has spoken out against the play?”
Bryant felt in his coat pocket for a sheet of paper. Unfolding it and removing the half-sucked sherbet lemon that had become stuck to it, he handed the page to May. “Read the review again. It’s not what we first thought it was. Look at the key phrases I marked. Read them aloud.”
May read aloud. “‘iPod generation – overmiked sound – no appeal to older audiences – superb Gothic set – drenched in gore – multiplex action movie – soap stars – nudity – teens will flock.’ Kramer didn’t want the usual old-school audiences to attend because he knew they’d hate it. He wanted a younger crowd with plenty of loose money in their pockets. Ray explained that most of the marketing budget for the show has been on social networking sites. That’s what gave me the idea.”
“So he bought his critic and told him what to say.”
“Exactly. At first I thought that if somebody was just trying to stop the production, they’d go after Lansdale. If the critic had died, there’d have been no way to keep a lid on this whole thing. His paper would have told their readers.”
“How did you come to realize Mona Williams was in danger?”
“When I came to see the play, the programme seller said something odd. She said, Some of the older ladies in this cast remember the days when we had a nicer class of people in here. First of all, there’s only one older lady in the show, so she had to mean Mona Williams. Second, We had a nicer class of people in here? But the New Strand is exactly that, a new theatre – there were no days when it had nicer clientele. But of course the clue is in the name. If there’s a New Strand Theatre there might have been an old one. So I consulted my old theatre books, but failed to turn anything up. Then I realized I was looking for the wrong additional word – not the New Strand Theatre but the New Strand Theatre. I tore the pages out to show you.” Bryant handed May yet more crumpled sheets. “There was a theatre here before, right on this spot. The auditorium was boarded over and converted to offices, but I’m guessing it was still intact when Kramer bought it. He realized what it was when he had the survey done, and hit on the idea to open it up again.”
“But why hasn’t anybody else picked up on the fact that it used to be a theatre? And surely it would have been worth more as offices?”
“Not if you get the right audience for a new play. You can license it for different productions all around the world. As offices, the ground floor would have provided a nice atrium, but that’s just wasted space. This one could be packed with 450 people who would pay nightly to be here. Kramer needed the right script to launch the theatre. He wanted to get in a younger crowd, so he commissioned Ray Pryce.”
“Why Ray?”
“Why not ask him yourself?” Bryant pointed behind him just as Ray entered the stalls.
“I got your text, Mr Bryant, although I had trouble understanding it.”
“He doesn’t know how to use predictive,” May warned.
“Oh, my God, what is that?” Ray peered over the corpse’s boxed-in head and leapt back.
“Mr Bryant, can I ask you to keep the public out of this site?” said Banbury.
“I’m afraid it’s Mona Williams. Ray, explain to my partner how you convinced Mr Kramer to stage your play, would you?”