Sicken and So Die (23 page)

The detective was too canny to commit himself to an opinion on the subject. ‘What makes you say that?'

‘Well, when you put what's happened to me – or nearly happened to me – together with Sally Luther's death . . .' DI Dewar did not react. ‘Come on, the two must be connected, mustn't they?'

‘Must they?' He was not giving anything away. ‘Clearly, Mr Parrish, we need to talk to you further.'

‘Yes. When?'

‘Right away.'

‘The problem with that is . . .' Charles Paris looked at his watch ‘. . . it's now five forty-five. I have to be at Chailey Ferrars in three-quarters of an hour to get ready for tonight's performance of
Twelfth Night
.'

‘Mr Parrish, if you're suggesting that a play,' the word was larded over with distaste, ‘should take precedence over a police investigation . . .'

‘I'm not. I'm fully aware of how serious this is. All I'm saying is that if I'm not there for the performance because I'm being interviewed by the police, it will cause very considerable disruption – and will also provide a warning to any guilty person in the company that your investigation is drawing close.'

There was a silence before DI Dewar conceded, ‘You may have a point, Mr Parrish.'

‘So that means you do think someone in the company is guilty?'

But again the detective wouldn't be drawn. ‘What time does your play finish?'

‘It comes down at ten-thirty.'

‘And at that time all of the company members will be around Chailey Ferrars?'

‘Yes. Why, are you thinking of questioning everyone then?'

‘Mr Parrish.' The detective's stock of patience was quickly becoming depleted. ‘We are in the habit of conducting investigations in our own way. And we are not in the habit of providing information to irrelevant members of the public on how our investigations are going. We will speak again soon, Mr Parrish.'

And the phone was put down with some force.

Charles hadn't eaten anything since his poisoning of the night before. To his surprise, when his landlady suggested some scrambled eggs before he went out to the show, the idea appealed.

She was a good landlady, with that quality that more landladies should manifest – unobtrusiveness. She brought his scrambled eggs into the dining room and left him on his own to eat them. From a rack by the fire he picked up a copy of one of the previous day's broadsheet newspapers.

It was, inevitably, full of Sally Luther, but provided a less hysterical assessment of her importance than the tabloids had. Her death prompted a feature on the nature of media celebrity, in which one paragraph in particular caught Charles's attention.

Sally Luther also suffered from the disadvantages of being public property. She received a disturbing sequence of letters from an obsessed male fan, whose infatuation for her soured into violent fantasies. She also inspired the attentions of a young woman, who took to following her around at a distance for some months. Though Sally frequently tried to engage her in conversation, the girl always ran off when approached.

This was a nuisance, but little more. However, the harassment became more worrying when Sally's pet cat was found poisoned. And then the mysterious girl began to stake out Sally's block of flats. The actress was justifiably unnerved by the sight every night of ‘a young blonde woman, her face hidden by the hood of her anorak, standing immobile under the street lamp opposite.' Sally had been unwilling to call in the police before, but the new development changed her mind. Though the police never managed to catch the stalker, their presence ensured that the nuisance quickly ceased.

I wonder, thought Charles Paris. I wonder . . .

The image was vivid in his mind of a young woman hurrying through the rain, and a straggling wisp of blond hair escaping from a Mutual Reliable anorak.

TALYA Northcott was sitting with a cup of coffee at a table in the shade of one of the fine old oak trees at Chailey Ferrars. Now the weather had improved, the Green Room – literally green amidst the trees – had moved into the open air. Evening sunlight dappled through the oak leaves, sparkling on Talya's fine blond hair and the silver brocade of her Olivia's Handmaiden costume.

Charles Paris, in his Toby Belch gear, took a seat beside her. ‘Lovely evening, isn't it?'

‘Oh yes.'

‘Twenty minutes till beginners . . .'

‘Mm . . .'

‘You enjoying doing the show?'

Her mouth twisted into annoyance. ‘Not as much as I should be.'

‘Ah. Yes, of course.' He had momentarily forgotten about her being the passed-over understudy for Sally Luther. ‘No, that was rotten luck. Don't worry, everyone in the theatre's had bad breaks from time to time.' He grinned. ‘Me more than most maybe.'

She gave him a look which suggested bad breaks for someone like him might be justified, but not for her. Mummy's solicitude had certainly produced one very spoilt and self-obsessed young lady.

‘Also, Talya, I mean, you must recognise that Russ Lavery is a
name
, and I'm afraid
names
count for a lot in this business.'

‘That's not the point. I was contracted to play Handmaiden to Olivia and to understudy all the female parts.' She sniffed irritably. ‘I'm going to get on to my agent. I reckon Asphodel's in breach of contract.'

‘I don't know that making a fuss will do much good.'

‘Perhaps not, but
it'll make me feel better
,' she said with considerable venom. ‘And what's so great about Russ Lavery, anyway? All right, he's in the telly series, and he plays that one part OK – not that it's very hard. But it's daft having him playing Viola. It goes absolutely against the text of Shakespeare's play.'

In different circumstances Charles would have agreed with her and joined in a mutual moan about Alexandru Radulescu's massacre of
Twelfth Night
. But this wasn't the moment.

‘You admired Sally very much, didn't you . . .?' he probed gently.

‘Yes. She was a role model for me. She was the kind of actress I want to be – and will be,' she added, then went on resentfully, ‘She would have been much better as Viola than Russ will ever be. I would have been much better as Viola than Russ will ever be.'

Charles was about to ask when she'd first met Sally, but Talya continued on another burst of anger. ‘It's not fair. I should be playing that part. After everything I've done, I should be playing that part!'

‘When you say “everything you've done” –?'

But Talya Northcott was too infuriated to listen. ‘It's ridiculous that Viola should be played by some pathetic male television star with a drug problem!'

‘With a drug problem?' Charles echoed.

Talya Northcott looked sheepish. She'd said more than she intended. But a what-the-hell defiance came into her face. ‘Yes. Russ Lavery's into hard drugs. I know.' A thought came to her. ‘And I've half a mind to tell the press about his little habit . . . That'd sort him out, wouldn't it? Really do something to his “Mr Clean” image.'

‘What do you base your knowledge on?' asked Charles.

‘I've
seen
him doing hard drugs.'

‘When?'

‘The night of the tech. The night Sally died. After his first Sebastian/Antonio scene – Act Two, Scene One – Russ came back into the caravan where I was and he was in a filthy mood – very tense and twitchy.'

‘Was it just you in the caravan?'

‘No, I was there with Vasile and Chad.'

‘And how long did they stay there?'

‘What?' She didn't like having her narrative interrupted. ‘What does that matter?'

‘Please, just tell me.'

An exasperated sigh. ‘All right, let me think . . . Well, Chad went to do his clown bit in Act Two, Scene Three, and then Vasile was there till Fabian's first proper entrance – Act Two, Scene Five. You know that – you're in the scene, for God's sake!'

‘Yes,' Charles agreed meekly. ‘You were telling me about Russ . . .?'

‘Right. Well, as I say, he came in after his scene in an absolutely vile mood, and he twitched around for a little while, and then he stormed out again. And the reason he did that was because he needed a fix.'

‘What makes you so sure?'

‘Because I saw him. Out of the caravan window. He'd stopped under a tree out of the rain and I saw him pull something out of that pouch he has on his costume.'

‘What did he pull out?'

‘It was a syringe.'

‘Ah,' said Charles Paris. ‘Was it?'

THAT NIGHT Sir Toby Belch went through the comic machinations of the first half of
Twelfth Night,
but the actor playing him was on automatic pilot. Charles Paris remained detached, his mind forging links in a new chain of logic.

With Gavin's illness explained, the two remaining crimes had clearly both been aimed at Sally Luther, and Russ Lavery was the one who had benefited most from her death. Alexandru Radulescu, as the current licensed iconoclast of the theatrical establishment, would have got the same reviews if Sally had remained alive. The doubling of Sebastian and Viola was just one more
coup
in a production full of innovation (or perversity, if you shared the Charles Paris view).

But for Russ it was a career-making change. Now, to add to the fame and money brought by television, he had the artistic respectability that only a high-profile theatrical performance can give. The value of that is incalculable, and might well make an ambitious actor contemplate all kinds of criminality.

The more Charles thought about Russ, the more details fitted. He cast his mind back to Gavin Scholes' production of
Macbeth
at Warminster. Fresh out of the Webber-Douglas acting school, Russ Lavery had been callow and naive. He had also attached himself with doglike devotion to an older actress, the somewhat precious Felicia Chatterton.

Was it fanciful to imagine that that was not his first comparable infatuation? At a younger age might not the hypersensitive Russ Lavery have become similarly fixated on Sally Luther?

Because, as Charles watched Russ on-stage as Viola, he was struck again by how superbly the actor played a woman. It wasn't just his mannerisms; he seemed to take on the complete female identity. The ease with which he'd done that, from the first experimental moment of role-swapping in rehearsal, suggested that he had practice in cross-dressing.

And that would explain the incongruity of Sally Luther having been followed by a woman all those months. Surely with stalkers it was a sex thing. In the famous examples of such incidents, the actresses had always been pestered by men.

Mentally Charles kicked himself. He should have thought of this earlier. After nearly a month of Alexandru Radulescu's harping on sexual ambivalence, his mind should have made the jump more readily. It was all there in
Twelfth Night
; the whole plot hinged on the ambiguity of gender.

Charles had planned to confront Russ Lavery at the end of the show, but two factors made him move his plans forward.

The first was his own danger. The confirmation that Charles's half-bottle of Bell's had been poisoned also confirmed that the murderer saw him as a threat. After one failure, another attempt on his life seemed a certainty. And Sir Toby Belch had an uncomfortable amount of booze-swigging to do throughout the play. To poison the contents of his tankard in the wings would not be difficult. Charles gave himself a mental note under no circumstances to let any of the fluid he was meant to quaff touch his lips.

The other pressure on his plans was the appearance of Detective Inspector Dewar backstage during the first half of
Twelfth Night.
Since he was in plain clothes, there was little chance of anyone but Charles knowing his mission. When, however, a message went out during the interval requesting all the company and crew to assemble briefly at the end of the show, Charles reckoned the murderer might become suspicious that someone was on to him.

There was also pride at stake. Charles Paris had got so far down the road of investigation that, for his own satisfaction, he wanted to have his theory proved correct. The police could then move in and arrest the culprit, but Charles didn't want them to upstage him by having their denouement first.

No, he would have his confrontation during the interval.

That August, the evenings remained warm even after the sun had gone down, and few of the cast chose to spend their interval in the stuffy caravans. They sat outside under the working lights in the
al fresco
Green Room or lolled on the grass. The long interval was still a bone of contention. It was hard to keep up concentration, and they looked forward to moving on to the studio theatre in Norwich, where the running of
Twelfth Night
would not be dictated by the demands of picnickers.

Russ Lavery, who, because of his onerous double role, was more concerned about threats to his concentration than most, had formed the habit of sitting quietly in one of the caravans for the full duration of the interval; and it was there that Charles Paris found him.

Russ looked up without enthusiasm. He had a glass of mineral water and an open copy of the play in front of him. ‘I'm concentrating. What do you want, Charles?'

‘I want to talk about Sally Luther's death.'

A sigh. ‘I'd have thought everything to be said on that subject had already been said.'

‘The police are investigating it, you know.'

‘So? They'd be likely to investigate any unexplained death, wouldn't they?'

Russ Lavery sounded very calm, as if he had deliberately damped down his pulse and heart rate to improve his concentration.

‘They think it was murder.' Charles hadn't actually had that in as many words from DI Dewar, but he thought the implication was clear.