‘And having paid my subscription, after what almost amounted to harassment from Mimi Lassiter.’
‘Oh yes.’ Gordon chuckled. ‘She does take her job a bit seriously. No, but what I was saying, you wouldn’t know because you’re new, but SADOS without the Dalrymples just doesn’t seem right. I mean, it was bad enough when Freddie passed away, but now with Elizaveta not being involved … well, it doesn’t seem right.’ He couldn’t think of another way of saying it.
‘I heard from Storm Lavelle,’ said Jude, ‘that Elizaveta walked out of The Devil’s Disciple because Ritchie Good was so rude to her.’
‘Well, I think that was part of it …’
‘You mean there was something else?’ demanded Carole, instantly alert. She had now caught on to Jude’s reasons for agreeing to come in for a drink. It was an investigation opportunity.
‘Well, she didn’t seem to be getting on so well with Davina.’
‘Oh?’
‘They’d always seemed to be great mates. You know, Freddie took quite a shine to Davina when she first joined SADOS. He thought she had potential as a director, so he was very helpful to her, and gave her opportunities to get the directing going.’
‘You don’t mean,’ asked Carole, ‘that he “took a shine” to her in any other way?’
Gordon looked puzzled for a moment before he understood what she meant. ‘Oh, good heavens, no! There was never anything like that with Freddie. He and Elizaveta were always the most devoted couple. A lot of the younger actresses in the society kind of hero-worshipped him, but he was never the type to take advantage.’
He shook his head again. ‘No, but something really seemed to have gone wrong between Elizaveta and Davina. I think that may have been the real reason Elizaveta wanted out of the production. Ritchie’s rudeness just gave her a good excuse.’
‘But you’ve no idea what the problem was?’
‘No. Here, Jude, let me top you up.’ She didn’t need more, but he was drinking faster than her and wanted to justify refilling his own glass.
Gordon sat back down again and said gloomily, ‘A rift like that could spell the end of SADOS.’
‘Do you really think so?’
‘Yes. Now Freddie’s gone, Elizaveta is so much the dynamo of the society. Without her, it would be …’ The prospect seemed too dreadful for him to put into words.
‘You’ve been with SADOS for a long time, have you?’ asked Jude gently.
He nodded. ‘Since my mother died. Elizaveta and Freddie sort of took me in. They needed someone with engineering skills and, though I’d never had anything to do with the theatre, I have got quite a practical mind. Till I retired I worked for a firm that fitted kitchen cupboards, so I was quite used to building stuff and …’ He looked very forlorn. ‘If I hadn’t got the SADOS, I don’t know how I’d fill the time.’
‘I was interested,’ said Carole, moving the conversation along, ‘in what you were saying at Elizaveta’s about the two nooses on your gallows …’
‘Oh yes?’
‘… and how they got mixed up.’
There was a new caution in his expression as he said, ‘What about it?’
‘You said you had some thoughts of people who might have switched them round, but then Elizaveta interrupted you.’
Gordon Blaine was silent. He looked from one woman to the other. ‘Are you thinking that what happened to Ritchie might not be an accident?’
‘The thought had occurred to us, yes.’
‘Hm. The police were very interested in that possibility when they talked to me.’
‘But presumably they did come down on the side of accidental death?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Well, they’ve ended their investigation.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I’ve just assumed it,’ said Carole. ‘Jude told me there’ve been no more enquiries. And they released Ritchie’s body for his funeral.’
‘That’s true.’ Gordon spoke as if he hadn’t thought of it before.
‘You sound relieved.’
‘Well, I suppose I am in a way.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the gallows are my work. I built them. If there was anything unsafe about the design, it’d be my fault. And I’ve been worried about the police coming back to me at some point. So if their investigation is really over, that’s quite a relief.’
‘I don’t think you need worry any more,’ said Jude. Gordon looked pathetically grateful. Clearly the anxiety had been weighing on him. ‘Where are the gallows now?’ she asked.
‘People seemed a bit spooked by having them still there in St Mary’s Hall. So I brought them back to my workshop – that was in the brief period when my bloody Land Rover was working. I’ve been doing a bit of fine tuning on them.’
‘Where is your workshop?’ asked Carole.
‘Would you like to see it?’ The excitement in his voice showed that he very much hoped they would.
And indeed, when they assented, there was a trace of schoolboy glee in the way he led them through to the back of his tiny kitchen. And once through the door they could understand why the front two rooms of the house seemed so cramped. The house must originally have had a sitting room at the front with an equally large dining room and kitchen behind it. But this space had been opened out and the wall to the garage taken down to create an extended working area. The slightly makeshift black-painted plasterboard walls suggested that Gordon had done the conversion himself.
The bright overhead lights revealed something on the lines of a mad professor’s lab. There had clearly been attempts to impose order on the chaos. On the walls were rows of neat racks, but the tools that should have been stowed there lay on the floor or on work benches, along with paint pots, piping, rolls of wire netting, offcuts of wood and plastic. There was a musty smell of sawdust, oil and paint.
The Devil’s Disciple gallows were there, but in the midst of a huge selection of other stage props. Papier mâché rat masks had perhaps featured in a SADOS pantomime, plywood battlements adorned a Shakespeare production. And the chairs with cut-out trees on the back were probably the famous ones designed for As You Like It.
Also on the floor were car tyres, jacks and other automobile impedimenta. Clearly this was where Gordon had replaced the engine of his Land Rover. A procedure which, as Carole and Jude had cause to know, hadn’t worked properly. There hung about the workshop the aura of a great many things that hadn’t worked properly.
‘Wow,’ said Jude as they looked around the space. ‘So this is where you work your magic.’
The beam on Gordon Blaine’s face showed that it had been exactly the right thing to say. Carole recognized rather wistfully that it was the kind of thing she’d never have thought of saying in a million years.
‘Would you mind showing us,’ Jude went on, ‘how the noose gets changed on the gallows?’
‘It’s very easy,’ said Gordon, more confident in his own environment. ‘Simple design. I always go for simple, no point in faffing around with stuff that’s more complicated than it needs to be.’
He picked up a noose from a workbench, clattered a pair of metal stepladders over the floor to the side of the gallows and climbed up. There was already a noose in position hanging from the beam. ‘This is the doctored one,’ said Gordon, slicing down on to the loop with his hand and causing the Velcro joint to swing apart. ‘You see, as soon as that takes any weight, it gives way … greatly to the delight of the Health and Safety boyos.
‘But what holds it up, you see,’ he said, reaching to the top of the beam, ‘is this hook … from which the doctored noose can be simply removed –’ he matched his actions to his words – ‘and the real one hooked on … threaded through … and left to dangle … ready for its next victim.’