The Mistress of Alderley (17 page)

“Do you have any clout at the Grand Theatre? Could you get me a ticket for the next performance of
Forza
? I'd like to see your daughter.”

“Olivia? For the voice? That's wonderful. Or because she was his last mistress?”

“Or intended to be. That more than anything, I suppose. Saturday was one of the few times that Marius failed to get what he wanted.”

 

Coming back to the station on Wednesday evening after a long and serious interview with the manager of the Shorn Lamb—one of many he had had over recent years about drug dealing in his pub—Charlie pulled up when he saw a smart and substantial car arriving. It was the profile of the woman in the passenger seat that struck him: it reminded him of the picture accompanying a biographical piece on Olivia Fawley that had appeared a couple of days before in the
Times
Arts section. When she got out of the car he was sure: a calf-length fur coat (a touch of bravado, this, under the circumstances) and a handsome but hard face. The driver leapt out, and bustled round to usher her toward the public entrance to the police headquarters; he was a bulky young man whose manner was protective, as if he were professing an exclusive right to the young lady that the lady herself in no way accepted or acknowledged.

When Charlie went through the waiting area she was shaking hands with her solicitor and telling her companion, in the tones people used to use with servants, not to wait.

“The new Callas is awaiting us downstairs,” he announced to Oddie when he got to the detective squad's office. “Come to make a full confession and explanation.”

“Hmmm. Callas went for tycoons too, didn't she?”

“At the highest possible level, of course. But Onassis looked like a toad in smart gear. Fleetwood was a prince beside him…. So why didn't you share your theories about Olivia Fleetwood, eh?”

Oddie looked his sergeant straight in the eye. He was prepared for this one.

“Have there never been times in other cases we've shared when you've hugged a theory to yourself, to bring it out triumphantly when you've had time to test it and find that it stands up?”

“Well, just possibly, from time to time.”

“In those cases it was a young detective earning his spurs by making a bit of a splash with a bold theory. In my case it was an old hand showing that the gray cells haven't entirely given up functioning.”

“You had the distinct advantage of having seen the bloody opera,” grumbled Charlie. “Run it past me, will you? Why is she offstage for so long?”

“She and her lover get separated at the end of the first scene. They each think the other dead, and at the end of the first part, at interval, she becomes a hermit in a cave near a monastery. After that we don't see her until the very end, when she and lover-boy and vengeful brother all meet up again. I checked up on most of the later parts of the opera on CDs. Thirty-five quid they cost me. I can see what they mean about the record companies running a racket.”

“So this Olivia, now awaiting our pleasure, as she waited for Fleetwood's, had—what?—an hour and a half for hanky-panky with him, if he'd turned up?”

“Almost, if you include interval. Over an hour if she left it till the second half before she slipped out.”

“Interesting.”

“Let's go and hear her own account of it, shall we?”

Olivia greeted them with regal aplomb and marched with them to the interview room, leaving her solicitor scuttling along behind them like a stressed-out poodle. Olivia took possession of a chair, slipping out of her fur so that it provided her with a decorative surround. Her lawyer, normally one of the city's more effective and conscientious practitioners, sat nervously beside her, conscious, as were all the others in the room, that nothing he was going to say was going to have any influence over the star of this interview.

“I gather,” said Oddie, “that you want to amend your account of last Saturday night.”

“Yes,” said Olivia in a hard, neutral voice. “Marius and I had a date. He had organized it at the Crescent Hotel. I went along at around twenty to nine. I waited until after half past nine, then I went back to the theater. I was put out, of course. But now I know why he didn't turn up.”

“Maybe you do,” agreed Oddie. “Time of death is still a rough estimate, and will probably remain one. But can we go back a little? How was this assignation set up?”

Olivia gave a magnificent shrug, as if she were about to heave a shot.

“Does it matter? We both knew we were interested, from looks. I was at Alderley regularly from the time rehearsals started and almost always at weekends. There were plenty of looks. It was only a question of who made the first move.”

“And who did?”

“Oh, Marius, of course. It's always best to let the other make the first move. And then if Mother found out and kicked up rough, I'd just point out that it was Marius who propositioned
me.
”

“It didn't worry you, taking your mother's lover?”

“I didn't take him, I
had
him—or would have. It was never going to be anything else than a bit of short-term fun. Why should it worry me?”

“Some people might have been concerned about the morality of it.”

“I don't think it's a sphere where morality enters in.”

Oddie kept hold of his eyebrows, for fear of a stratospheric ascent.

“So tell me about his first move, and how the thing was set up.”

Olivia pouted with boredom.

“The first verbal move was one weekend, three or four weeks ago. We passed each other on the landing, and he just said, ‘When is it to be, then?' I just said I'd let him know. I thought about it, then wrote to him at his office. I said the first night would be appropriate, and gave him an approximate time. Sex during the performance does wonders for my voice—thinking about it before, remembering it afterwards. I said I'd leave all the arrangements to him. He told me the details on the phone: ‘Don't judge by appearances' he said, and well he might! I confirmed them in a note, because he asked me to—typical businessman. After that I was sent a barrage of love letters, including one sent to Alderley when he knew I would be there. He loved living dangerously, that I guessed. Frankly, I wasn't so impressed by the letters themselves, because I suspected he'd sent similar letters to all his women. Some of the phrases didn't seem to apply. I'm not a ‘beautiful and subtle English rose.' And anyway, I don't go for that sort of crap.”

“What do you go for?”

“I'm in it for the sex. If that's good, I'm happy.”

“I see…. Well, that leads us naturally to Saturday night, doesn't it?”

“I've just told you about Saturday night.”

“We need a little more detail than that.” Oddie suspected she had found the evening embarrassing or shaming at the time, and he was glad to force her to go through it again. “Let me take you through it. You say you left the theater at about twenty to nine. By which door?”

“The big side doors used for scenery.”

“So no confirmation from the stage doorkeeper?”

“No. And I came back the same way. There's a small inset door that's usually unlocked.”

“You knew the way to the Crescent?”

“I've got a Leeds
A to Z,
for shopping purposes. I'd looked up North Street. I was surprised when I saw the Crescent.”

“Pretty run-down,” said Oddie.

“That doesn't begin to describe it. Seedy. Scungy. Positively creepy. And the awful jerk in reception spilling out of his suit didn't do much for it. But I remembered Marius's remark about not judging by appearances.”

“So you got the key and went up to the room.”

“Yes. I unlocked the door, then just stood in the doorway and laughed for joy. I heard a stair creaking, and realized that creep was listening to see how I reacted. So I went in and shut the door. It was fabulous—just like a stage set for
Intermezzo
or something like that.” Oddie and Charlie both tried to look as if they knew what she was talking about. “It was so smart, so in period and imaginative. He'd really been clever.”

“I believe he liked to find something rather special for the first time,” said Charlie.

“Did he?” said Olivia, unfazed by being one of a long line. “Only if the circumstances were right, I suppose—if there'd been a bit of a buildup. Mum and he just left the restaurant where they'd met up and were at it in Acton within half an hour.”

“So when you finished admiring it, what happened?” asked Oddie.

“Nothing. I'd been half expecting him to pop his head round the bathroom door, burst out laughing, and then get down to business. I went and opened it, but there was no one there. I even opened the wardrobe. I felt such a fool. Then I sat down. I was beginning to get angry. There was champagne in a bucket. I opened it and had a glass—no more: drink does nothing for my voice. The point is, there was nothing I could do but just sit there getting angrier and angrier.”

“When did you decide to leave?”

“Much later than I should have done. I was a fool. This was a disaster for the voice—not just no fuck, but
absolutely
the wrong frame of mind for the final scene. I only have ten or fifteen minutes in that scene—Verdi was a bloody fool—but they're good ones, and Marius had spoilt it so that everything was just
wrong.
Anger was absolutely the wrong mood for it. I wished I'd had a quickie with Colm in interval. Better than nothing. Anyway, I just banged out of the room, down that creepy corridor and stairs, threw the key to the creep, then marched out into the street and back to the theater.”

“What was going on onstage?” asked Charlie.

“Preziosilla doing her bloody rataplan with the chorus.”

“So you went straight to your dressing room, and saw no one till you got your call for the final scene?” asked Oddie.

“That's pretty much right. I saw one of the stagehands, but I didn't proposition him, if that's what you're interested in. I was too angry for that to do any good.”

“And when you heard of Mr. Fleetwood's death, you decided to conceal the assignation at the Crescent?”

Again she shrugged that field athlete's shrug.

“Nobody's business but mine. I don't like being stood up, and I didn't know when he was killed. Mum's in no position to cast any first stones, but on the whole it was better if the thing didn't come out. Let her live with her illusions. It's what she's always done, until the feller proves to be yet another louse in her eyes.”

“So—no shame?” said Oddie.

“Are you a policeman or a bloody clergyman?”

And that was all they got from her. Charlie escorted her and the solicitor out to the main office and into the public area. She dismissed her legal adviser with a curt “Thanks.” When he had slunk off she turned to Charlie. He wondered whether she was going to proposition him, and didn't know whether to feel miffed or relieved when she didn't.

“Does my mother have to know about this?” she asked.

“She knows already,” he replied.

She nodded, unfazed. “I'd better keep out of her way for a bit,” she commented, and sailed serenely through the glass door.

Outside, Charlie could see the substantial car that had brought her there. As she appeared at the top of the steps, the large young man leapt out of the driver's seat and went to open the passenger door. Charlie slipped outside.

“What the hell have you waited for?” Olivia demanded. “I told you not to. I'm not fucking
help
less. You don't fucking
own
me.”

Thursday morning Charlie had off, and Thursday afternoon was filled with tedious and backbreaking formalities connected with the Fleetwood murder. It was close on seven when he arrived at the Grand Theatre. The audience for the evening's performance was gathering and greeting one another: the atmosphere was friendly because many of them were subscribers, and they saw one another at every performance. Charlie, however, slipped down the side lane that led to the stage door. As he descended the five or six steps he saw that the stage doorkeeper was in close conversation with a gangling middle-aged man in tight jeans and a baby blue sweater. They were both bent forward, and the keeper had been writing something on a piece of paper, which he now handed to the other, who slipped it into the back pocket of his jeans and straightened up.

“My best thanks, as always,” he said to the keeper. “My visits to Leeds wouldn't be the same without you, Syd.”

As he left the window Charlie came forward, flashing his ID.

“Detective Sergeant Peace. It's about the Fleetwood murder.”

He was conscious as he said it that the middle-aged man in the blue sweater had suddenly stopped on the steps leading out. Charlie turned toward the exit onto the street, but only in time to see the man's feet disappearing through it.

“Oh yes, Mr. Peace. I've talked to your boss—Oddie, is it?”

“It is. Before I get down to business, who was that?”

“That? Oh, that's Rick Radshaw. An actor and singer. He's been with us in
The Mikado
and
Yeoman
—with the Doyly Carte and a company that calls itself the Carl Rosa. Nice little tenor voice, they tell me.”

“I see. And the father of Olivia Fawley.”

“That's right. She took her mother's name. More recognition potential, her mother having made a nice little career in television.”

“Never misses a trick, Miss Fawley,” commented Charlie. “Has he been visiting her now? Or did he want her address?”

“No—this was something quite different—personal,” said Syd. “Now, what can I do for you?”

Charlie decided to let the matter slide. For the moment.

“I wanted to talk to one of the stagehands. Nothing too important. Just confirmation of a time—alibis and suchlike, you know.”

The keeper waved his hand toward the theater.

“Be my guest. Be a bit careful where you go, though. Curtain up in five minutes' time. Don't want you suddenly appearing onstage.”

Charlie rather fancied himself onstage—had once considered applying to drama school. Opera, though, didn't appeal. He went into the maze of corridors with caution, through what seemed to be a building site of activity, with costumes being adjusted, stage mechanisms given a last-minute testing, and people rushing hither and yon on missions that no doubt seemed to them important when they set out. Gaining the wings, and treading gingerly as if at any moment he might be whisked up into the flies, he caught a glimpse of a set that looked more like a cartoon than the background for a Verdi opera.

“Isn't
Forza
being done tonight?” he asked a passing stagehand.

“No, not till Saturday. You have to have at least two days' rest between performances, preferably more. It's punishing, that's what all the singers say, and I can believe them. It's
Love for Three Oranges
tonight. A doddle for the voices, a bit of a nightmare for us.”

“I'm looking for one of the stagehands who may have seen Olivia Fawley arrive back in the theater during the first night of
Forza.
”

“Policeman, are you? The one you're after will be Simon Neely. That's him over there, with the fair-to-brown hair. I saw her leave, by the way.”

“You did?”

“Yes—I bet she thought no one did, didn't she? She left about halfway through the interval, when everyone was busy getting the stage ready for the second part, and all the performers were hovering around the stage. I was fetching something, and I saw her slipping out the big doors into the side lane. I suppose that would be about twenty or a quarter to nine.”

“Right,” said Charlie. “That could be useful. And that's Simon Neely, is it?”

“Yes. Wait ten minutes until the opera's started, then he'll be free.”

Charlie nodded. But instead of standing around he slipped away from the stage, found a pay phone in a private area backstage, and rang Oddie's home number.

“Mike? Charlie here…. Backstage at the Grand Theatre. Just waiting to talk to that stagehand. They're not doing
Forza
tonight—something about oranges…. Mike, this is just a hunch—not a brilliant guess based on a sensitive reading of masses of evidence, but a hunch…. Yes, I'm sure you've had them, Mike. Now, didn't you say that when you were talking to the owner of the Crescent you made a joke at the end?”

“Yes” came Oddie's voice. “He could think of nothing that swish room in his dingy hotel could be used for, and I suggested that he let it out as a knocking shop for the highly discriminating. People like the performers at the Grand Theatre, for example. I had a feeling he might have taken me seriously.”

“I have a feeling he did just that,” said Charlie.

Back in the wings Charlie was deafened by brass, but things seemed to be going to plan onstage, and there was a good deal of audience laughter. He started looking around for his quarry, but someone came up behind him and touched him on the shoulder.

“Are you looking for me? I'm Simon Neely. Dick said you wanted to talk to the man who saw Fawley arrive back.”

Charlie registered the brutal use of the surname.

“Yes, I did. Anywhere we can talk and actually hear each other?”

The man nodded and led the way back from the stage area, ending up in a little alcove in the middle of a long corridor.

“It's not really worth your trouble all this,” Neely said. “I could have told you what I know in ten seconds. I saw her coming in through that door over there, the one cut into the big doors for the sets. That was around twenty or a quarter to ten. End of story.”

Charlie nodded, looking at the immense square area through which the sets had come.

“Know what was going on at the time onstage?” he asked.

“The soldiers' moll was doing her number,” said Neely. “They call it rataplan or something like that.”

“Right. Now, where's her dressing room?” he asked. Simon Neely gestured down the corridor in the other direction.

“Five doors down. She's there now.”

“There now? She's not in this opera as well, is she?”

“Good Lord, no!” said Neely, grinning wickedly. “Not her cuppa at all. A bundle of laughs, this one.”

“Why's she here tonight, then?”

Simon looked him straight in the eye.

“You're on this case, mate. Your guess will be as good as mine, if you're doing your job. It'll be exactly the same as mine, though I'm more up on
who
she'll be doing it with. My guess is that it's the cook.”

“The
cook
? Does the theater have a cook?”

“The cook in
Oranges.
He's a fantastic figure about seven feet high (stilts, of course) and he rages about wielding a great cleaver in the second act. I should think he's using his chopper now.”

“I get you.”

Neely looked at him, his face twisted, but apparently in some effort to understand the woman he was talking about.

“She's not subtle or choosy, you know. Her contract gives her the use of the female star's dressing room every night while
Forza
and
Oranges
are on the bill.
Oranges
has no real female star, so no hair has been flying. She can use the room whenever it suits her, and
for
whatever suits her.”

“You don't like her. Did you and she by any chance have words on Saturday night when she arrived back here?”

“Not then.” Neely pulled himself up. “Oh, wait: she muttered, ‘You're bloody useless,' as she went past.”

“Flattering.”

“I'd better explain. She did send out clear signals in my direction a fortnight or so ago, when stage rehearsals started. I just said, ‘I'm sorry, love. I'm gay.'”

“Are you?”

“Oh, I'm a happy chappie most of the time. But no, I'm not gay in that sense. It just seemed—I dunno—more final than saying that I wasn't interested.”

“It certainly worked. Why weren't you interested?”

“Does that need an explanation? You are or you aren't. I just wasn't. I'm not into being eaten alive. There's something—I don't know—unhealthy about her. Twisted. Perverse. I don't know the right word, but she seems consumed with getting what she wants. Anyone who goes with her must feel like a sort of machine. You get a few like her in the theater. In fact, I've been with one or two of them. You don't feel good afterwards, and that's putting it mildly. You feel like a dirty, used rag.”

“What did she say when you told her you were gay?”

“Word for word it was ‘Christ, just my luck to fancy a bloody faggot.' I think political correctness has passed La Fawley by. Though I rather suspected that she didn't actually believe me, but had to pretend to because anything else would be less than flattering to her ego. She preferred not to think I was straight, because then she would have had to work out why I'd knocked her back.”

His eye caught a figure at the other end of the corridor.

“There's boyfriend, or whatever you call him. Use-in-emergency prick is what he really is. It's pathetic, isn't it.”

Charlie looked at the figure skulking at the other end of the corridor of dressing rooms—moody, unhappy, uneasy with himself. Suddenly Colm became conscious he was being watched. He turned with military precision, and they heard the sound of his shoes scuttling off.

“Pathetic,” he agreed. He asked Neely to keep him informed if anything happened he might be interested to hear about.

“I'm all bewildered by these corridors,” he said. “Could you point me in the direction of the stage door? I'd like to have another word with the keeper.”

“Syd's not the keeper. The proper one is in hospital at the moment. Syd's just one of the underlings who's got his two weeks of glory.”

Neely was good at conveying his opinion of people without openly stating it. Charlie looked at him quizzically.

“And Syd's reputation is?”

“A touch on the sleazy side. You want special services, or if you're offering them, Syd's the one to go to.”

Charlie nodded gratefully, and went in the direction the stagehand had pointed.

Business for Syd seemed to be brisk. He was in the middle of another hushed conversation when Charlie arrived back at the stage door. It was with a small, youngish woman, growing into fat, and at the approach of Charlie she ended the conversation and slipped up the stairs to the outside world.

“I seem to have that effect on people,” Charlie said genially.

In fact, he had always found since joining the force that his presence anywhere got round incredibly quickly, presumably due to his color. It was a disadvantage more than an advantage.

“Nothing personal,” said Syd, with an attempt at geniality himself. “That was Sally Lane: chorus member and bit-part player. She'd done her bit in
Oranges
and was off home. As you are, I suppose.”

“All in good time,” said Charlie, his grin especially wide. “I'm not really interested in Sally Lane, but I am distinctly interested in Rick Radshaw.”

“Ah—the one who—”

“Who stopped on the stairs when he heard I was a detective, then scooted out when I turned to look at him.”

“Oh, I think you're making too much of that, Mr. Peace. Everyone here is interested in the murder, naturally.”

“Oh yes, naturally. Especially when your new star singer has been twice interviewed at length by us.”

“Well, I'll not pretend she's a general favorite here.”

“Is she not? Rather ungrateful on the men's part, I'd have said. You just said ‘everyone here' is interested in the murder. But Mr. Radshaw is not ‘here' at the moment, is he?”

“Not at the moment, but like I said, he has been.”

“Yes. And when he has, you've been able to be of service to him, haven't you?”

“Well, we try and be of service to all the players, Mr. Peace. That's part of a stage doorkeeper's function.”

Charlie leaned forward, suddenly intimidating.

“Don't give me all that bullshit, Syd. I wasn't born yesterday. I'm not interested in any pimping you may have done for Rick Radshaw in the past, but I am interested in what you're doing for him at the moment. Tell me, fast.”