Carole saw a potential anomaly in Davina’s explanation. ‘How did you know he’d done a command performance for Hester Winstone?’
‘She told me.’
‘Oh? When?’
‘A couple of days later. She rang to say that she couldn’t continue as prompter, and she told me exactly what had happened.’
‘Before she had her breakdown?’ asked Jude.
‘I didn’t know she’d had a breakdown. Though she certainly sounded in a pretty bad way when she rang me.’
‘But what about the noose?’ Carole insisted. ‘Someone had switched the noose between the first and second times Ritchie had done the routine.’
‘Oh, I assumed Gordon had done that.’
‘Why?’
Davina shrugged. ‘Just so’s his precious gallows would look good. Or because he was making some adjustment to them, I don’t know.’
‘I detect you aren’t part of the group within the company who believes Ritchie was murdered?’
‘Good God, no, Carole. I know there are lots of feuds and back-stabbings in amdrams, but I don’t think anyone takes it that far.’ Davina let out a healthy chuckle and both Carole and Jude were struck by how normal she seemed. In fact, amidst all the posturing of the SADOS crowd, she was a veritable rock of sanity.
But there was still something that, to Jude’s mind, required an explanation. ‘Davina, you remember the evening Ritchie Good died …?’
‘Hardly going to forget it in a hurry, am I?’
‘No, nor me. I was just thinking, though … I was the first person to find his body – that is, the first person after Hester Winstone, who’d actually witnessed his death. I went back because I’d left my bag in the hall. And then you came in.’
‘Yes.’
‘And moments before I’d seen you in the Cricketers working your way through a large gin and tonic.’
‘Sounds like me, yes.’
‘So I was just wondering why you had come back into the hall?’
‘Oh, I suddenly remembered a note I’d meant to give one of the actors. Normally I write my notes down, but I hadn’t and didn’t want to forget it. I looked round, but couldn’t see him in the pub, so I thought maybe he might still be in the hall.’
‘Who’re we talking about, Davina?’
‘Olly Pinto.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
‘Maybe he’d just gone home early,’ suggested Carole in the Renault on the way back to Fethering. ‘Decided to forego the session at the Cricketers.’
‘It would have been out of character for him if he did. Anyway, I saw him afterwards while everyone was waiting around for the police to arrive.’
‘So you’re thinking that Olly switched the nooses?’
‘It’s a possibility, Carole. He very definitely stood to gain from Ritchie’s absence.’
‘Getting the part of Dick Dudgeon?’
‘Exactly.’
‘For which he still doesn’t know the lines.’
‘No, that’s true.’ An idea came to Jude. ‘I think you should set up your “line-bashing” session with Olly as soon as possible.’
Davina Vere Smith’s eruption at the Sunday rehearsal had had the desired effect of putting a rocket up at least one of the Devil’s Disciple cast. When Carole rang Olly Pinto later that evening and suggested he might benefit from a run-through of his lines, he was almost pathetically eager to set up the encounter as soon as possible.
It was agreed that he would come round to High Tor the following day after work (he was employed in one of Fethering’s many estate agencies). Carole said she thought it’d help to have Jude there too, so that she could read the other parts. The real reason for this proposal was that, given the way her suspicions were currently veering, Carole didn’t want to be alone with Olly Pinto.
She had only just put the phone down after her conversation with Olly when it rang. Her son Stephen. Gaby was laid low with another stomach bug. Could Granny possibly drop everything and come to look after Lily in Fulham for a couple of days?
Carole apologized that she couldn’t. She might be able to come up for a couple of hours during the day on the Monday, but time would be tight as she had to be back for a ‘line-bashing’ session in the early evening. And then of course she had a regular rehearsal on the Tuesday.
Stephen said not to worry, he’d sort out one of Gaby’s friends to drop in. But he did sound a bit bewildered by his mother’s reaction. Normally, if it was something to do with Lily, Carole in Granny mode would be in the Renault and on her way the minute the phone call had ended.
Carole herself was a bit surprised at her reaction. She didn’t love Lily any the less, but she couldn’t let SADOS down. It was a measure of how much she had come to embrace amateur dramatics.
Olly Pinto arrived at High Tor about quarter past six on the Monday, not wearing his customary rehearsal garb of jeans and a fleece, but in his work livery of pinstriped suit and something that looked like a club tie but probably wasn’t.
Olly accepted Carole’s offer of coffee and replied to her polite enquiry as to the state of the housing market, ‘Maybe picking up a bit. We usually see an upsurge in enquiries round Easter time. This year’s better than last year at the same stage, though we’re still way off where we used to be before the financial crash.’
Jude was once again struck by the contrast in the lives of these people, plodding through monochrome jobs by day and transforming into the variegated butterflies of amateur dramatics in the evenings.
The sitting room at the front of High Tor was not actually cold, but the austerity of its furniture always made it feel chilly. The pictures had all been inherited from distant Seddon aunts and put up on the walls out of duty rather than enthusiasm. The only positive colour came from a bright photograph of Carole’s beloved granddaughter Lily on the mantelpiece.
Still, the sober appearance of the room seemed to fit the seriousness of the evening’s task in hand. Olly Pinto had brought his copy of The Devil’s Disciple with him, but Carole very soon confiscated that. ‘No cribbing,’ she said in the voice that had silenced many committees at the Home Office. ‘Jude’ll give you the cues and I’ll prompt you when you get things wrong.’ Carole’s lack of confidence in the actor’s memory was emphasized by her use of the word ‘when’ rather than ‘if’.
‘Shall we start at the beginning?’ asked Olly hopefully because, allowing for a bit of paraphrase, he knew Act One pretty well.
‘No,’ Carole replied implacably. ‘It was Act Three you were worst on. We’ll start there, then go back to the beginning.’
He didn’t argue. As Jude patiently fed him the lines, it occurred to her that, beyond the fact of his working for an estate agent, she knew virtually nothing about Olly Pinto’s private life. And maybe for some participants that was the appeal of amateur dramatics, the opportunity to be someone other than your mundane self. Rather like the appeal of acting itself.
The ‘line-bashing’ was a hard and tedious process, but it did work. The one-to-one concentration – and perhaps the embarrassment of showing himself up in front of the two women – actually improved Olly’s grasp of George Bernard Shaw’s words. In rehearsal when he cocked up a line he could sometimes get a laugh about his incompetence from his fellow actors; no such levity was allowed in the sitting room of High Tor. The world did actually lose a good dominatrix when Carole Seddon decided to forge a career in the Home Office.