A Decent Interval (15 page)

‘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.

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 …'

‘Peri Maitland?'

‘Yes. Peri was helping carry things.'

I
t was perhaps symptomatic of Charles Paris's career that he didn't receive one of Peri Maitland's business cards. The Personal Manager had sprayed them around lavishly at the
Hamlet
read-through and during subsequent encounters with the company, giving a card to anyone who might need to make contact about Katrina Selsey's career, anyone who might at some stage, in some circumstances, be important. Charles didn't qualify.

He didn't have any difficulty finding one, though. Peri, whose entire business as a public relations consultant was predicated on her being instantly contactable, had thoughtfully pinned a card up on the Green Room noticeboard.

Charles copied down her number on a scrap of paper. Calling her straight away was not an option. When dressed in full armour as the Ghost of Hamlet's Father he tended not to carry his mobile.

In fact he didn't want to contact Peri Maitland straight away. He tried to persuade himself he didn't need to contact her at all. So, Katrina Selsey's Personal Manager had lied about when she left the Grand Theatre, which train she had got from Swindon back to London. She no doubt had reasons of her own for doing that. Did those reasons have anything to do with Charles Paris?

Dennis Demetriades had also lied to the police, but Charles wasn't about to expose him to Detective Constable Whittam. Nor did he particularly want to get Peri Maitland into trouble. He couldn't help being intrigued, though. If he hadn't been the one who found Katrina Selsey's body he might not have cared. But somehow that unhappy discovery made him feel inextricably caught up in the investigation of her death. Charles couldn't detach himself. He needed to find out anything there was to be found out.

Don't do anything till the interval, he decided. The Ghost of Hamlet's Father still had his appearance to make in Gertrude's closet, and he'd feel a fool putting in a call to Peri Maitland in full armour. Maybe he'd wait till after he'd played both his parts, till he'd finished his stint as the First Gravedigger. But even as he had the thought he knew he was just procrastinating. If he waited till the end of the evening he wouldn't phone Peri; he'd convince himself he'd left it too late. No, if the deed were going to be done, it should be between his exit as the Ghost and his entrance as the Gravedigger.

One decision made, Charles was faced by another uncertainty. Was phoning Peri Maitland actually going to be the best way of contacting her? If he got through, identified himself and she didn't want to talk to him, it could be a very short conversation. He didn't really have any firepower, or threats with which he could keep her on the line. The only advantage he did have was private knowledge, the information he'd been given by Dennis Demetriades. But he didn't want to tell her that straight away.

While he was mulling this over, the interval came and the dressing room was suddenly full. All the young actors who shared with him immediately started doing what all young actors did at any break during rehearsal or performance: getting out their phones and texting.

Texting? Charles didn't do it much. He knew how to, but he found the process very laborious and cumbersome. His fingers felt too big for the tiny keys. On the rare occasions he did send a text, it took ages, holding the phone with one hand while a single finger of the other pecked away at the keyboard, making frequent mistakes, constantly having to delete and rewrite, getting confused by the outlandish suggestions thrown up by predictive text. He struggled … while the younger generation seemed to rattle away two-handed with the ease of an infinite number of monkeys typing up the
Complete Works
of Shakespeare.

Particularly the girls. When they were texting, their fingers were just a blur in front of the screens of their phones. Maybe, Charles wondered, it was because they tended to have longer fingernails. Yes, longer, pointy fingernails painted in garish colours must limit the number of errors and make the whole process much simpler.

On the other hand, when he thought about it, despite the deficiency of his skills he could see the advantages of texting Peri Maitland. The main one was that he felt pretty certain she didn't know his mobile number and wouldn't be able to guess who the text had come from. Which, if he phrased the message right, would be an advantage.

He did the deed straight after the interval. The dressing room had emptied again as the other actors got ready to swell the ranks of Fortinbras's army in Act IV Scene iv. Charles Paris had got out of his Ghost of Hamlet's Father kit. The armour wasn't all actually metal, thank God, except for the helmet, a mighty coal scuttle with a lot of interior padding. But the chain mail (silver-painted knitted tunic and leggings), small bendy bits (silver-painted leather) and big rigid sections like the breastplate, vambraces, greaves, etc. (fibreglass) still made it a lot to lug around for any length of time. It was a costume he always removed with some relief.

He hadn't yet donned the muddy habiliments of the First Gravedigger, but sat cooling himself in just his black briefs. (Charles Paris hadn't ever made the move to boxer shorts; he liked to feel that everything was nice and secure under his clothes.)

So, nearly naked, he composed his text to Peri Maitland, not straight on to the phone, but with a pen on the back of an old rehearsal schedule. He did it very slowly, wanting to get the wording exactly right. What he came up with, after considerable rewriting, was: ‘I HEAR THAT YOU HELPED KATRINA MOVE HER STUFF INTO THE STAR DRESSING ROOM THE NIGHT SHE DIED. IF YOU'D LIKE TO TALK ABOUT IT, CALL THIS NUMBER.'

He was quite pleased with what he'd done, but still not convinced he'd got the tone right. He didn't want to sound too threatening. The suspicion that Peri Maitland might have killed Katrina Selsey had not entered his head. But he felt sure the Personal Manager knew more about the circumstances of the girl's death than he did. He was after information. All he wanted from his message to Peri was that it should prompt her to call him back.