The Strangling on the Stage (9 page)

‘As I say, no problem. Anyone would have done the same.' Jude reckoned she now had the complete text of what Hester Winstone had told her husband. ‘You see someone keel over on a cold evening in Sainsbury's car park, you go and help them. It's human nature.'

‘Well, I'm glad it was you who did it, anyway. You clearly made quite an impression on Hest.'

‘How is she, by the way?'

‘Hest? She's right as rain. Scatty as ever, like I said, but fine. Our boys have got an exeat from school this weekend, so she's looking forward to seeing them. Oh, there's never anything wrong with Hest for long. She doesn't let things get to her.'

Jude caught Carole's eye and could see that the same thought was going through both their minds. Namely, that Mike Winstone didn't know his wife at all. So long as he was secure in his cocoon of cricket and general bonhomie, he could keep himself immune from other people's problems.

‘She mentioned,' said Carole casually, ‘that she's involved in some amateur dramatic group …'

‘Oh yes, the “Saddoes”.' He used the same pronunciation that Ritchie Good had. And clearly, from the darkening of his expression, he wasn't a great enthusiast of the society. ‘Mm, Hest said she'd got time on her hands now the boys are both at Charterhouse and I said, fine, give you a chance to play more tennis, have a serious go at whittling down the old golf handicap. But what does she go and do? Join this bunch of local poseurs in the amdram.'

‘You don't sound very keen on the idea.'

‘Well, to be quite honest, Carole, I'm not. I mean, I remember at school there was a bunch of boys who spent all their time putting on plays and, quite honestly, they weren't the most interesting specimens. I certainly made many more friends among the sporting types than I did with that lot. I mean, you go on enough minibus trips to cricket matches and football matches with chaps and you really get to know them well. I made some damned good chums through sport, certainly never made any from amongst the drama lot.'

‘But presumably they made friends with other people doing drama?' suggested Jude.

‘Oh yes, of course they did.' He flipped a limp wrist and said in the voice all schoolboys use to suggest homosexuality, ‘
Very good friends
.'

Jude made no reaction to this, but said, ‘I gather Hester's going to be prompting for the new production of
The Devil's Disciple
.'

‘Something like that, yes. I don't remember the name of the play. But no, good for her,' he said without total conviction. ‘If that's what Hest wants to do, then I'd be the last one to stand in her way. They say it's important in a marriage for the partners to have different interests. And there's nothing that could be more different from cricket than amateur dramatics!' This was judged to be another guffaw-worthy line.

‘You will give Hester our best wishes, won't you?' said Jude.

‘Oh, absolutely. Course I will.' He coloured again. ‘And, erm, one thing …'

‘Yes?'

‘I'd appreciate it frightfully if you didn't mention anything to anyone about Hester's, erm … little lapse.'

Which both Carole and Jude thought was an odd thing for him to say. And which could have suggested Mike Winstone knew more about what had really happened to Hester than he was letting on. And also maybe explained why he had been so keen to talk to Jude and Carole.

‘S
omething really dramatic's happened!'

‘Oh yes,' said Jude, not holding her breath. She knew of old that Storm Lavelle was capable of considerable hyperbole. In her priorities ‘something really dramatic' could be something that anyone else would have regarded as of very minor significance.

It was the Thursday morning, three days after Mike Winstone's visit to Woodside Cottage. Jude had been quite surprised to have a call from Storm. Knowing the obsessive concentration her friend brought to amateur dramatics, she hadn't expected to hear anything till after
The Devil's Disciple
had had its last performance.

‘It's Elizaveta Dalrymple,' Storm announced.

‘What? Is she ill?'

‘No, it's worse than that.'

‘Why? What's happened?'

‘Oh God, it was at rehearsal on Tuesday night.' Storm left a pause, clearly intending to enjoy the narrative she was about to unleash. ‘I mean, so far things have been going pretty all right with the production. We've spent the first week just blocking, really, and there hasn't been too much tension. Well, a bit between Davina and Ritchie, because, well, she is the director, but he's pretty firm in his opinions about the way he wants to do things, regardless of what she thinks.'

That chimed in with Jude's recollection of her conversation with Ritchie Good in the Crown and Anchor. Clearly he was one of those actors who regarded directors as minor obstacles in the preordained path of his instinctive genius.

‘But, anyway,' Storm went on, ‘it's all been fairly amicable, though there's a bit of resentment of Ritchie … you know, because he's been kind of parachuted into the production, and there are some people who've been members of SADOS for a long time and feel that parts should only go to bona fide members of the society. I mean, Mimi Lassiter obviously, because she's Membership Secretary. But also people like Olly Pinto, who really reckons he should have been playing Dick Dudgeon, because he's kind of served his time in the SADOS, playing supporting parts, and he's thinking it's about time he should get a lead. And he's stuck with being Christy, Dick's brother, who doesn't really have a lot to do, so Olly's still cheesed off about that. But basically everything's been pretty friendly … until last night.'

Jude didn't say a word, allowing Storm to control the drama of her story in her own way.

‘Well, needless to say, it involved Elizaveta.' Jude was not surprised. Clearly the widow of the SADOS' founder thought it her right to be the centre of everything that went on in the society. ‘And, you know, she's playing Mrs Dudgeon, Dick Dudgeon's mother. And she's playing it very well. I mean, Mrs Dudgeon is basically a malevolent old bitch …'

‘Typecasting,' Jude suggested quietly.

‘Well, maybe, yes. But she's only in the first act and she has a bit of a scene with Dick Dudgeon, but not a lot, and anyway a discussion came up on Tuesday night about costume … and I don't know if you know, but George Bernard Shaw is very specific about what he wants his plays to look like.'

‘Oh yes, all those interminably long stage directions.' During her brief acting career, Jude had been in a production of
Caesar and Cleopatra
.

‘And anyway, Elizaveta was saying, like, she didn't agree with how Shaw described Mrs Dudgeon, and she thought the character would naturally look rather smarter than the way he wanted her to be. The stage directions don't say much about her actual clothes, just that she's shabby and cantankerous and she wears a shawl over her head. Anyway, Elizaveta was very much against the idea of the shawl.'

‘Vanity?'

‘I suppose so, Jude. Elizaveta's very proud of her hair.'

‘It's certainly a good advertisement for whoever did the dyeing.'

‘Yes. And she said everyone in the SADOS' audience recognized her by her hair and if it was covered with a shawl nobody would know it was her playing the part.'

‘Don't they have programmes? Couldn't they have looked up the cast list there?'

‘Well, yes, you'd have thought so, but no one mentioned that. Anyway, Davina said it wasn't important at that point, we'd got months to sort out the costumes and we should be getting on with rehearsal. But Elizaveta said it was a point of principle and it should be decided right then.'

‘Sounds like it was a bit of a power struggle between actor and director.'

‘That's exactly what it was. And Davina's fairly biddable as a director – you know, she doesn't really stand up to people, tends to go with the flow. She was certainly doing that with Ritchie. She'd go along with whatever he suggested.'

‘Which no doubt made Elizaveta jealous, and she wanted to be treated the same way?'

‘Spot on, Jude. Particularly as she's always been great mates with Davina and she doesn't take kindly to being sort of shut out of things. So, anyway, then Ritchie gets involved. He starts saying that we're wasting valuable rehearsal time … which is a bit rich coming from him, because most of the interruptions we've had up till that point have been due to him arguing with Davina about how he wants to do things.

‘And of course Elizaveta doesn't like this, and then Ritchie makes things worse – quite deliberately, I think – by saying that we shouldn't be spending so much rehearsal time worrying about the play's
minor
characters. Well, that's like a red rag to a bull to Elizaveta. She goes into this great routine about never having been so insulted in her life, and about the fact that she's generously giving of her time to help SADOS out by playing the
minor
role of Mrs Dudgeon. And pretty soon she's listing all of the major roles she's played for the society, even quoting some of the rave reviews she's had from the
Fethering Observer
and the
West Sussex Gazette
. Then she gets started about Freddie, her ex-husband, and how he started SADOS and how there wouldn't have been any SADOS without him, and how it wasn't the place of “jumped-up actors” who “
weren't even members of the society
” to start criticizing the work done by Freddie Dalrymple.'

‘And how did Ritchie take all this?'

‘Well, by now he's getting pretty annoyed too, and we all kind of realize that what we're witnessing is a scene that's been brewing up since the moment we started rehearsal – that it's a kind of power struggle, Ritchie and Elizaveta fighting over which one of them has more control of Davina. And then it turns out that there's a bit of history between Ritchie and Elizaveta.'

‘Really?' Jude thought instantly of the man's habit of coming on to every woman he met. ‘Surely not an affair or—?'

‘Oh God, no! The history was more between Ritchie's mother and Elizaveta. Apparently his mum was big in local amdram circles, playing lots of major roles, round the time that Freddie Dalrymple was setting up SADOS. And there was some kind of rumpus about Ritchie's mum wanting to join the new society and Elizaveta using her influence with Freddie to keep her out.'

‘Elizaveta not wanting a rival for all the leading parts?'

‘Exactly. So, anyway, last night at rehearsal the argument between Ritchie and Elizaveta is batting to and fro, kind of over Davina's head, and finally Ritchie loses his temper and says, “Oh, come on, forget all your bloody airs and graces. My mother knew you before you managed to trick Freddie Dalrymple into marrying you – when you were plain Elizabeth Jones, serving behind the counter of the fish and chip shop right here in Smalting!”

‘Well, that did it! That really caught the nerve. So there's a lot more from Elizaveta about having never been so insulted in her life. And then she says that, under the circumstances, she can no longer continue in this production of
The Devil's Disciple
– and she walks out!'

‘Flouncing, I dare say.'

‘Very much so, Jude. Flouncing, slamming doors, completely throwing her toys out of the pram. So suddenly we're without a Mrs Dudgeon.'

‘But surely there are lots of people in SADOS who can play it? Amateur dramatic societies may have problems recruiting young men, but there's always a glut of mature women.'

‘I know, but the trouble is they're all on Elizaveta Dalrymple's side.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘The older members of the society are mostly founder members or people who joined in the first few years. They're fiercely loyal to the memory of Freddie Dalrymple. Some of them, I gather, are more ambivalent about Elizaveta. She aced them out of too many good parts for them to support her too much. But once it became known that Ritchie Good had insulted the sainted Freddie …'

‘And how did they know this?'

‘From Elizaveta, of course. She must have spent the whole day yesterday on the phone to the mature women in the society. And she's persuaded all of them to boycott this production of
The Devil's Disciple
.'

‘Ah, has she?'

‘Yes. Davina also spent most of yesterday ringing round every woman in the society who was vaguely the right age – and that became more elastic as she got desperate – but Elizaveta had got to every one of them first. The boycott was unbroken.

‘And it's not just Mrs Dudgeon she's worried about. Elizaveta's got supporters throughout the society. I mean, Olly Pinto for one. He's playing Christy and he's great mates with Elizaveta. I haven't heard whether he's walked out too, but it wouldn't surprise me.'

‘But you're not about to go, are you, Storm?'

‘Oh, good heavens, no. Judith's the best part I've ever been offered. No way I'm going to give that up. Anyway, I've always found Elizaveta Dalrymple a bit of a pain. No, I'll see it through.'

‘And Ritchie will, presumably?'

‘You bet. I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't think what's happened is a personal triumph.'

‘One rival ego removed?'

‘Oh, I wouldn't say that. Ritchie hasn't really got a very big ego. When you get to know him, he's actually quite shy. He just has an accurate assessment of his own talents.'

Oh dear, thought Jude. Storm's defensive words might well indicate that Ritchie Good was the next man she was about to throw herself at. And if she did, there was no question that it would end in tears.

‘Well,' said Jude, ‘exciting times we live in.'

‘Yes.' There was a silence. ‘So, obviously, there's only one question I have to ask you.'