‘No, but it’s certainly suspicious.’
‘Yes.’ Carole nodded slowly, but with mounting enthusiasm. ‘Suspicious, hm …’
‘Well, come on, there is something odd about it. The doctored noose was definitely changed for the real one. I suppose it’s possible Ritchie himself might have done that, but it doesn’t seem likely.’
‘So you reckon someone in the Devil’s Disciple company did it?’
‘Seems the most likely possibility, yes.’
‘Hm.’ Carole tapped her steepled hands together in front of her mouth as she tried to control her racing thoughts. A spark of excitement had been ignited in her pale-blue eyes. ‘Ooh, it’s frustrating not to know all the people involved.’
‘Well, there’s a very good way of getting to know them,’ said Jude teasingly.
‘What, you mean if I took over from Hester Winstone as prompter?
‘Exactly.’
‘Oh, I don’t think that’s for me,’ said Carole Seddon, in characteristically wet blanket mode.
It was only half an hour later that the phone rang in High Tor.
‘Is that Carole Seddon?’
It was a female voice she didn’t recognize. ‘Yes,’ she replied cautiously.
‘Good afternoon. My name’s Davina Vere Smith.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘I gather Jude’s asked you about taking over as prompter for the SADOS Devil’s Disciple.’
‘Yes. And I told her I’m afraid I can’t do it.’
‘I wonder if you could be persuaded.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Carole.
It was pure curiosity that had made her agree to meet Davina Vere Smith in the Crown and Anchor that evening. Ted Crisp greeted her in his customary lugubrious style. ‘On your own, are you? No Jude?’
Carole had been intending to have a soft drink, but Ted had already started pouring a large Chilean Chardonnay, so it seemed churlish to tell him to stop. ‘I’m meeting someone.’
‘New boyfriend?’
‘No,’ came the chilling reply. Carole knew that Ted’s words had reminded both of them of their brief and unlikely affair. The thought that it had happened still gave her a frisson of disbelief … and excitement.
‘Do you know the best way to serve turkey?’ asked Ted.
Carole, not expecting a culinary question at that moment, replied that she didn’t.
‘Join the Turkish army!’ said Ted heartily.
It took Carole a moment to register that it was one of his jokes. ‘Oh, really,’ she said, with annoyance that was only partially feigned.
‘Excuse me, are you Carole?’
She turned to face a short woman with blond (almost definitely blonded) hair bunched into a pigtail. She wore grey leggings and a purple cardigan, unbuttoned enough to reveal an extremely well-preserved cleavage. A star-shaped silver pendant hung around her neck.
‘Yes. You must be Davina.’
‘Mm. I saw you in the Cricketers when you brought over Jude’s chaise longue.’
‘But we weren’t introduced then, were we?’
‘No.’ Davina pointed to the wine glass Ted Crisp had just placed on the counter. ‘Is that yours?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll pay for it.’
‘Oh, there’s no need for you to—’
‘Of course I will.’ Davina grinned at the landlord. ‘And I’ll have a large G and T, please.’
When they were settled into one of the alcoves, the director said, ‘Feels odd to me, being here on a Tuesday.’
‘Oh? Why?’
‘Tuesdays are always SADOS rehearsal days. But today … well, did Jude tell you what happened on Sunday?’
‘Yes. I was very sorry to hear about it.’ A conventional expression of condolence, though even as she said it, Carole wondered why she felt obliged to say the words. She had only met Ritchie Good once and she hadn’t taken to him then.
‘It was a terrible shock for everyone.’ But Davina’s response also sounded purely conventional. She didn’t appear to feel any grief for her lead actor’s demise. ‘And it’s going to cause a lot of readjustment in my production of The Devil’s Disciple.’
‘I’m sure it will.’
‘Which is why I wanted to meet you, Carole.’
‘Yes, you said.’ The words came out more brusquely than intended.
‘Jude thought you’d make a really good prompter.’
‘I’ve no idea whether I would or not. I’ve never had anything to do with amateur dramatics.’ Still a bit frosty.
But Davina Vere Smith persevered. ‘I’m sure you’d enjoy it if you did agree to join us. The SADOS are a very friendly bunch.’
Bunch of self-dramatizing poseurs, was Carole’s unspoken thought. What she said was, ‘As I told Jude, it’s really not my sort of thing.’
‘Then why did you agree to meet me? If you’ve already made up your mind to say no?’
It was a good question. Carole was forced to admit to herself that she was more than a little intrigued by the whole SADOS set-up. Particularly now there was an unexplained death in the company. She decided to change the direction of the conversation to a little probing. ‘Going back to what happened to your actor on Sunday … What was his name?’ she asked, knowing full well.
‘Ritchie Good.’
‘Yes. Presumably it was some kind of ghastly accident …?’
‘Oh, it must have been, yes. Not that you’d think that from the theories some of the Devil’s Disciple company are coming up with.’
‘You mean some of them think it wasn’t an accident?’
‘From the texts and phone calls I’ve had in the last twenty-four hours you’d think they’re all auditioning for the part of the detective in an Agatha Christie thriller.’
‘Some of them think it was murder?’
‘And how!’ said Davina Vere Smith.
Which was what persuaded Carole Seddon to take over the role of prompter in the SADOS production of The Devil’s Disciple.
When Jude was informed of the decision, she didn’t think it was the moment to bring up her neighbour’s previous assertion that ‘The day I get involved in amateur dramatics you have my full permission to have me sectioned.’
SIXTEEN
It was striking to Jude how little Ritchie Good was mentioned after the Thursday rehearsal following his death. Carole hadn’t been there that evening, but she noticed the same once she started attending rehearsals. The Thursday, only four days after the tragedy, had witnessed a lot of emotional outpourings (some of them possibly even genuine), as members of the Devil’s Disciple company expressed their shock at what had happened.
Very little actual rehearsal got done that evening, which was annoying for the director because prurient interest had ensured that, for the first time, every member of her cast had turned up. But whenever Davina Vere Smith tried to focus their attention on the play, someone else would have hysterics, or go into a routine about how they ‘couldn’t do the scene without imagining doing it with Ritchie’.
Even Olly Pinto did a big number about how dreadful he felt. This wasn’t the way that he had wanted to get the part of Dick Dudgeon. He was going to suffer every time he said one of the lines that rightfully belonged to Ritchie Good. But, nonetheless, he would pull out all the stops to match up to Ritchie’s performance. He would do his best ‘for Ritchie’. In fact, he asked Davina at one point during that emotional Thursday evening rehearsal whether they could put in the programme the fact that he would be ‘dedicating’ his performance to ‘the memory of Ritchie Good’.
But that was it, really. One evening of unfettered emotion and then everyone wanted to get on with doing the play. The members of the Devil’s Disciple company returned to their default preoccupation: themselves. The surface of SADOS had closed over, as if Ritchie Good had never existed.