Jude didn’t think there was a lot more she could do. She didn’t want to create any further cause of discord between Hester and her husband. Sorting out what was already wrong with their relationship would involve going back many years into the past – and might only serve to make things worse – so she said she’d better be on her way. ‘But I’ve got your mobile number, Hester, so I’ll give you a call when—’
‘My wife doesn’t have her mobile phone with her,’ Mike Winstone announced.
‘Oh? Don’t the authorities here at Casements allow clients to—’
‘I don’t allow it. Hest is here for rest and recuperation, not for chattering endlessly to all her women friends.’
‘But surely talking to her friends—’
‘Will you allow me to know what is right for my own wife!’ The words were almost shouted.
Jude left. In spite of Mike Winstone’s clear disapproval, she gave Hester a hug and a kiss. Then she went downstairs to Rob’s office. He was interested to hear that Jude had done some healing on the patient, and wanted to know how it had gone. ‘Maybe you could try some more with her?’ he suggested.
Jude grimaced. ‘I don’t think I’d better until it’s been cleared with her husband.’
‘Ah yes. I saw him coming in. Apparently he was just passing. Maybe I should try to persuade him of the efficacy of another healing session?’
‘Good luck,’ said Jude.
‘Well, we have made one big advance,’ said Carole when Jude had finished reporting her encounter with Hester Winstone.
‘Hm?’
‘Assuming that Hester was telling the truth – and there doesn’t seem to be any reason why she shouldn’t be – we know that Ritchie Good caused his own death. He just wanted to show off the gallows to her.’
‘Yes.’
‘Which is quite a relief, in a way.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, trying to create a scenario in which someone actually persuaded him to put the noose round his neck, or manhandled him into doing it or made him do it at gunpoint … well, none of those ever sounded very convincing, did they? But the idea that he put his head in the noose of his own volition, that makes a lot more sense.’
Jude nodded. ‘And then there’s only one thing we have to find out. Who switched the Velcroed noose for the real one.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And why they did it.’
TWENTY-FOUR
It was clear to Carole and Jude the moment they were admitted by Elizaveta Dalrymple on the Saturday evening that the seafront house in Smalting was a shrine to her late husband Freddie. The hall was dominated by a top-lit large portrait of him in the purple velvet doublet of some (undoubtedly Shakespearean) character. The pearl earring and the pointed goatee beard were presumably period props.
Except, as Elizaveta led them up a staircase lined with photographs of Freddie, it became clear that the beard at least was a permanent fixture. Whatever part he was playing, the presence of the goatee was a non-negotiable.
His wife’s hair was the same. Jude remembered the scene reported by Storm Lavelle of Elizaveta not wanting to have her head covered by a shawl when she was still going to play Mrs Dudgeon. In some of the earlier photographs on the wall, before she’d needed recourse to dying, her natural hair did look wonderful, though not always of the same period as the costume that she was wearing. The flamenco dancer look was fine for proud Iberian peasants, but it didn’t look quite so good with Regency dresses or crinolines.
But clearly that was another unwritten law of SADOS. Freddie and Elizaveta Dalrymple had set up the society, so it was as if everyone else was playing with their ball. Whatever the play, Freddie and Elizaveta would play the leads, he with his pointed goatee and she with her long black hair.
There was further proof of this at the top of the stairs, in one of those large framed photographs which are textured to look like paintings on canvas. Their crowns, Freddie’s dagger and the tartan scarf fixed by a brooch across Elizaveta’s substantial bosom, left no doubt they were playing Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. With, of course, the goatee and the long black hair.
The space into which Carole and Jude were led showed exactly why the house’s sitting room was on the first floor. It was still light that April evening and the floor-to-ceiling windows commanded a wonderful view over Smalting Beach to the far horizon of the sea.
The sitting room demonstrated the same decorative motif as the hall and stairs. Every surface, except for the wall with the windows in it, bore yet more stills from SADOS productions, again with the goatee and the black hair much in evidence. Presumably the plays in which Freddie and Elizaveta Dalrymple took part featured other actors in minor roles, but you’d never have known it from the photographs.
‘Welcome,’ Elizaveta said lavishly as she ushered Carole and Jude into the sitting room, ‘to your first – but I hope not your last – visit to one of my “drinkies things”. Now I’m sure you know everyone here …’
They did know everyone, except for a couple of elderly ladies who had ‘retired from the stage, but as founder members were still massive supporters of SADOS’. Otherwise Carole and Jude greeted Olly Pinto, Storm Lavelle, Gordon Blaine and Mimi Lassiter. All had glasses of champagne in their hands. Storm’s hair was now black and shoulder-length (hair extensions at work – there was no way it had had time to grow naturally to that length).
‘Now,’ said Elizaveta. ‘Olly’s in charge of drinks this evening, so you just tell him what you’d like.’ On the wall facing the sea, space had been made among the encroaching photographs for a well-stocked bar. Olly apologized that there was no Chilean Chardonnay – he knew their tastes from the Cricketers – but wondered if they could force themselves to drink champagne. They could.
A lot of glass-raising and clinking went on, then Elizaveta said, ‘Now, Carole and Jude, the agenda we have for my “drinkies things” is that we have no agenda. We’re just a group of friends who talk about whatever we want to talk about … though more often than not we do end up talking about the theatre.’
‘In fact just before you arrived,’ volunteered Olly Pinto, ‘we were discussing the wonderful Private Lives the SADOS did a few years back, with Freddie and Elizaveta in the leads.’
‘Oh, we’re talking a horribly long time ago,’ said Elizaveta coyly.
‘Sadly I never saw it,’ said Olly, ‘but I did hear your Amanda was marvellous.’
‘One did one’s best.’ This line was accompanied by an insouciant shrug. ‘And of course I was so well supported by Freddie. So sad that Noel Coward was never able to see the SADOS production. He would have seen the absolutely perfect Elyot. The part could have been written for Freddie.’
‘I think it was actually written for Noel Coward,’ Carole ventured to point out. The information was something that had come up in a Times crossword clue. ‘He played the part himself.’
Elizaveta Dalrymple was only a little put out by this. ‘Yes, but Noel Coward was always so mannered. I’m sure Freddie brought more nuance to the role.’
Not to mention a goatee beard, thought Jude. And a barrel-load of impregnable self-esteem.
‘It was a very fine performance,’ said Gordon Blaine, as if he wanted to gain a few brownie points. ‘And of course your Amanda was stunning.’
‘Thank you, kind sir,’ said Elizaveta with a little curtsy. ‘Freddie always had such a touch as a director too. Very subtle, he was. Not one of those bossy egotists. He let a play have space, let it evolve with the help of the actors. “A gentle hand on the tiller” – that’s how Freddie described the business of directing.’