A Decent Interval Read online

  Milly Henryson, of course, looked absolutely wonderful on stage. Somehow her black hair and blue eyes suited a Jacobean setting. She was not very different in shape from Katrina Selsey, so the Ophelia costumes had needed the minimum of adjustment. And she looked particularly wonderful onstage with Sam Newton-Reid. The contrast between her dark colouring and his blondness brought something extra to their scenes together. The pair looked even more beautiful onstage than off.

  From his vantage point in the stalls, Charles Paris quickly came to the conclusion, though, that their talents were not equally matched. The star quality that Sam Newton-Reid had was something which his girlfriend would never share. Though Milly Henryson might have a successful career in the theatre – given her looks, probably a very successful one – she would never be as remarkable as Sam.

  But they clearly loved working together. Seeing them in rehearsal, teasing out the meanings of lines, adjusting to each other’s performances, Charles could see that they were enjoying the reality of a long-held dream.

  And Milly, of course, was a much less disruptive figure in the company than her deceased predecessor had been. From the point of view of the Tony Copeland Productions’ Hamlet, both pieces of recasting had been bonuses.

  Milly Henryson was ecstatic to be playing Ophelia. There was a buzz about her right through the Friday’s rehearsals. Some of it was just sheer euphoria, but Charles Paris could detect another quality in her behaviour. Could it be an air of triumph?

  TWELVE

  The scenes featuring Ophelia in the Saturday matinee of Hamlet at the Grand Theatre Marlborough were a little tentative, but by the evening Milly Henryson had overcome her nerves and the general view among all the cast was that they had given their best performance yet. So a large number of the company (though not, Charles noticed with regret, Geraldine Romelle) adjourned to the nearest pub to celebrate. Again the landlord’s relaxed approach to the licensing hours allowed them to fit in an hour’s drinking.

  When time was finally called, Charles Paris floated from the pub to the bottle of Bell’s in his digs. As he sat in front of the television, cradling a glass and watching yet another catch-up on the progress of the current Top Pop series, he started to feel maudlin. Plaintive words formed in his mind. Where have you gone, Geraldine? Where is it you go after every rehearsal, every performance? Why don’t you join me here? We’d really get on, you know.

  He woke cold and cramped at a quarter to four, staggered to his bed and managed a few more sweaty, restless hours of sleep.

  He didn’t feel good when he woke at quarter to nine. Thank God, he thought, that the place where he was staying was self-catering. The idea of facing a landlady over breakfast was more than he could bring himself to contemplate.

  On the other hand, ‘self-catering’ did carry with it the implication that he should cater for himself. And he hadn’t got in much in the way of supplies. Except for the bottle of Bell’s … which bizarrely seemed overnight to have emptied itself.

  Charles Paris felt grouchy and self-pitying. Eating something, he knew, would help, and he was sure Marlborough must boast cafés that would be open on a Sunday morning – indeed, he’d seen a plethora of them along the High Street. And yet the thought of sitting in public and …

  The pubs would be open at twelve, no doubt offering deals on Sunday Roasts. And after a few drinks he’d be able to eat more easily. But twelve o’clock seemed an awfully long way away.

  A shower would help. Stop him feeling so sweaty, at least; get rid of the sense of dampness around the collar of the shirt he’d slept in.

  But no. First he needed to ring Frances.

  Yes, of course. Once he’d had the idea, he couldn’t think why he hadn’t had it earlier.

  Frances would cheer him up. She was still his wife, after all. And she’d be free, no school on a Sunday. Charles knew there hadn’t been a railway station in Marlborough since the Lord Beeching cuts of the 1960s. But he could get a cab to Swindon, then the train from there to London only took about an hour. He and Frances could meet for lunch. Or maybe she’d cook for him. Wow, Sunday lunch with his wife – how nostalgic would that be?

  Alternatively, she might offer to drive down to join him for lunch in Marlborough. They’d find a nice pub – there were plenty of those, they weren’t all like The Pessimist’s Arms – then, boozed-up and randy, they’d come back to his digs.

  Her number was in the memory of his mobile. Some silly psychological block – or perhaps his natural innumeracy exacerbated by age – prevented him from remembering what he still thought of as her ‘new’ number. Though it was many years since Frances had moved from the house they’d shared into a flat.

  He pressed the relevant keys to call her. The ringing tone went on. And on. She must be out. He was about to ring off when the call was picked up. ‘Hello?’ Frances’s voice was muzzy and a bit resentful. Oh shit, he’d woken her up.

  ‘Um, it’s … er, Charles.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What do you mean – why?’

  ‘Why are you ringing me now?’

  ‘Well, er …’

  ‘You know how knackered I get during the week. I thought you might have remembered how much I count on my lie-in on a Sunday.’

  He did remember now. He also remembered sharing those lie-ins with. Waking slowly to lazy, unhurried fondling and …

  ‘What do you want, Charles?’

  ‘I just … I just wanted to hear your voice.’ As he said the words, he knew how corny they sounded.

  ‘Don’t be trite. Look, if there’s something you want to say, say it quickly and then there’s a chance I might be able to get back to sleep. I got to bed very late last night.’

  Why? What were you doing? And with whom? But fortunately Charles managed not to vocalise the questions.

  ‘Well, Frances, I just … wondered what you were doing today?’

  ‘I cannot begin to imagine why it’s of any interest to you, but I have a lunch date. And if that’s all you wanted to ask me—’

  ‘No, I was just thinking it’d be nice if—’

  ‘Goodbye, Charles.’

  God, what an idiot he was. Why on earth had he rung her? He had hoped for reassurance from the call, but all it had done was to unsettle him. Also to make him jealous. Who had Frances been with last night, the person who had kept her up so late? And who was her ‘lunch date’ with? He knew the younger generation used the word ‘date’ in any number of contexts – ‘play date’, ‘spa date’ and so on. But when someone of Frances’s generation said ‘lunch date’ surely there was some overtone of a romantic assignation …?

  The knowledge that he had long ago forfeited any rights to know anything about his wife’s love-life didn’t make him feel any better.

  Miserably, grabbing a grubby towel, Charles Paris made his way towards the shower.

  The weekend didn’t improve. Many of the Hamlet company had taken the opportunity of a day and a half free to visit friends and lovers in London, where no doubt they would gossip with more speculation than information about Katrina Selsey’s death. But there were probably a few still around Marlborough. Charles had the contact sheet the stage management had given to all the cast; he could easily call someone to see if they were free for lunch. What might Geraldine Romelle be doing, he wondered wistfully.

  But he didn’t make any calls. His loneliness was too deep to want company. Instead, to chime in with his mood, on the dot of twelve he pitched up at The Pessimist’s Arms. After a couple of pints by way of rehydration, he ordered a glass of red wine to accompany his gristly beef and leathery Yorkshire Pudding. When he went up to order his third red wine, the barman told him unhelpfully that it would have been cheaper to buy a bottle.

  More solitary drinking took place on the Sunday evening and Monday lunchtime. At that evening’s performance of Hamlet, the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father and the First Gravedigger both stumbled over a few of their lines.

  Charles Paris was woken on the T
uesday morning by a call on his mobile. The move he made to sit up and answer it was far too sudden. His head felt as though steel knitting needles were being pushed into it from a variety of angles.

  ‘Good morning, is that Mr Paris?’

  ‘Er, yes.’

  ‘This is Detective Constable Whittam.’ A female voice. So the surname he didn’t catch during his Good Cop/Bad Cop interview in his dressing room was ‘Whittam’.

  ‘Oh, good morning. How can I help you?’ He knew his voice sounded unnatural, overeager to please. Why was it that he always felt guilty in the face of authority figures?

  ‘I just wanted to check something about the evening of Katrina Selsey’s death.’

  ‘Fine. Check away,’ said Charles, clumsily insouciant.

  ‘You remember we talked about your visit to what you called “the star dressing room”?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you said that you weren’t expecting to find Katrina Selsey in there?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, from what we’ve heard from Mr Newton-Reid, it seems that she only moved into the dressing room during the performance that evening, just before her death.’

  ‘Really?’ Confirming what Dennis Demetriades had told him. But Charles didn’t volunteer that information. He’d wait to see which way the questioning was leading.

  ‘I just wondered whether you knew that, Mr Paris?’

  ‘I’ve already told you I didn’t. But you say that Sam Newton-Reid did?’

  ‘Well, he kind of deduced it. He had been using it as his dressing room at the beginning of the performance … you know, he had changed into his costume there, then left it when the play started and wouldn’t have got back there till the interval.’

  ‘No, Hamlet’s one of those parts that doesn’t give you much opportunity to loll about in your dressing room.’

  ‘And, of course, he never did get back to the dressing room because by then you’d discovered Katrina Selsey’s body …’

  ‘And the place was a crime scene.’

  ‘The scene of an unexplained death,’ Detective Constable Whittam corrected him formally.

  ‘Of course. So Sam didn’t actually know she was planning to take over his dressing room?’

  ‘Not before it happened, no. Why do you ask, Mr Paris?’

  ‘Well, I was just wondering whether there’s some other explanation for why Katrina moved her stuff.’

  ‘What explanation?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was just exploring the possibilities.’

  ‘We know that Katrina Selsey had announced her intention to take over the dressing room.’

  ‘Really? Who did you hear that from?’

  ‘Her Personal Manager. Peri Maitland.’

  Instantly, suspicion blossomed in Charles’s mind. ‘Was she with Katrina when the move actually took place?’

  ‘No. She told us she caught a train from Swindon back to London that evening before the performance started. But as Peri Maitland was leaving the theatre Katrina Selsey told her what she planned to do.’

  ‘Didn’t Peri try to dissuade her?’

  ‘I asked the same question, Mr Paris. Peri Maitland said that she had given up arguing with Katrina Selsey. I got the impression the girl was a client she wouldn’t be sorry to lose.’

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘So, Mr Paris, we know what Katrina Selsey intended to do, but we don’t have a witness who saw her actually doing it. I was wondering whether perhaps another actor might have been backstage and seen her taking her belongings into the star dressing room …?’

  Something told Charles to be cautious. It was possible that the police hadn’t questioned Dennis Demetriades. But if they had and the young man, for reasons of his own, had not revealed what he had seen, then Charles didn’t want to land him in it. ‘Someone may have done,’ he said, ‘but no one’s mentioned it to me.’

  ‘Really?’ Detective Constable Whittam sounded disappointed.

  ‘Have you asked the rest of the company about it? Because, as you say, someone may have seen—’

  ‘We’ve asked them.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Obviously. Because, of course, it would be very helpful if we had a witness to her entrance into the dressing room.’

  ‘I can see that. Then you’d know whether she had gone in on her own or with someone.’

  ‘Who did you have in mind?’

  ‘Well, whoever it was who murdered her.’

  ‘This is not a murder enquiry, Mr Paris. We are still awaiting forensic reports on what killed Katrina Selsey.’

  The frostiness in her voice certainly put him in his place. He waited, tense for the next direction of her interrogation, but all Detective Constable Whittam said was, ‘Thank you very much for your time. Goodbye, Mr Paris.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  The call left him thoughtful. If, as she said they had been, all of the rest of the company had been asked the same question, then why had Dennis Demetriades been unwilling to tell the police what he had so readily told his fellow actor? Did the young man have something to hide?

  Dressed as the Ghost, his false beard ‘a sable silvered’, Charles Paris came offstage at the end of Act I Scene v with Sam Newton-Reid’s words ringing in his ears.

  ‘The time is out of joint. O, cursed spite,

  That ever I was born to set it right!’

  Charles wandered through to the Green Room in search of coffee. He still felt ropey, but was determined not to let tonight’s performance be as bad as the previous day’s. He hadn’t fluffed any lines in his first scenes. An injection of caffeine might help hold him together for the rest of the evening.

  Serendipitously, there was only one other person in the Green Room. Dennis Demetriades, busy as ever with the buttons of his mobile.

  No time like the present, thought Charles. ‘I had a call today from Detective Constable Whittam.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ The young man looked up from the phone, his dark eyes wary.

  ‘She said she’d talked to everyone in the company …’

  ‘So?’

  ‘… which I assume includes you?’

  ‘I had a call from her, yes.’

  ‘She told me she’d asked everyone if they’d seen Katrina Selsey moving dressing rooms …’

  ‘Ah.’ If Dennis Demetriades hadn’t worked out before where Charles’s questions were leading, he knew now. But he didn’t volunteer anything, just waited.

  ‘And nobody had. Which rather surprised me. Given what you told me the other day.’

  ‘Yes.’ The young man looked confused and conflicted.

  ‘Why did you lie to the Detective Constable, Dennis?’

  ‘I didn’t want anyone to know I was up on that floor, you know, where the star dressing room is.’

  ‘When you say “anyone”, are you talking about the police?’

  ‘Well, partly them, but, even more, people in the company.’

  ‘Oh? You realize this does make your behaviour seem rather suspicious, Dennis.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I can see that.’ Now it was Charles who waited. Finally, the young man went on, ‘Look, the fact is that my dressing room is on the basement level.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So I might come up to the ground floor to go to the Green Room or onstage, but there’s no real reason for me to go up to the floors above.’

  ‘Exactly. So why did you on Thursday night?’

  Dennis Demetriades looked very cowed. Charles Paris reckoned his Ghost of Hamlet’s Father costume was helping. There would be something awe-inspiring for most people about being interrogated by an avenging spirit in full armour.

  ‘I … Look, the fact is, Charles … Up at the top of the theatre there’s a kind of attic floor.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yeah. No one goes up there much. It’s used as a kind of store room, full of old props, broken bits of sets. Some of it been there for decades, you know the kind of stuff.’

 
‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, since we’ve been here, I’ve kind of got in the habit of going up there …’

  ‘Why?’ Charles’s mind flooded with possibilities. Was Dennis Demetriades using the attic as a kind of love nest, an impromptu knocking-shop? And if so, who was he knocking? Was it possible that he and Katrina had had a sexual thing going on?

  This flow of conjecture was quickly stemmed as the young actor said, ‘Fact is, I tend to go up there for a smoke.’

  ‘A smoke?’

  ‘Yes. As we keep being told, the Grand Theatre is a “non-smoking” building. We’re not allowed to go outside in costume, so the Stage Doorman’d see me if I went out the back. And there’s no way I can get through the whole of Hamlet without a smoke.’

  ‘When you say “smoke”,’ hazarded Charles, ‘are we talking “wacky baccy”? Cannabis? Pot?’ He was uncertain what term the younger generation might use.

  Dennis Demetriades looked affronted at the suggestion. ‘No, just an ordinary roll-up.’

  The more he thought about it, the more Charles believed the explanation. Fortunately, he’d never got into cigarettes, but, as a practising alcoholic, he could still empathize with the resentment of smokers at the increasing nanny-state restrictions of their pleasures. Dennis Demetriades hadn’t been worried about the police knowing of his clandestine smoking room; he was afraid of some self-righteous, mineral-water-swigging, gym-frequenting member of the Hamlet company finding out about it. And then grassing him up to the Company Manager. His reason for keeping quiet on the subject to Detective Constable Whittam made perfect sense.

  Charles Paris grinned. ‘Don’t worry, Dennis. Your secret is safe with me.’

  The young man grinned back.

  ‘But what you told me before was true? You did see Katrina moving her stuff into Sam’s dressing room?’

  ‘You betcha. I saw both of them.’

  ‘Both of them?’

  ‘Katrina was with that Personal Manager of hers …’