Death on the Pier, page 7
‘The actor Arthur was filling in for?’ asked Hugh with realisation.
Robert confirmed with a nod. ‘That’s the one.’ He realised that Hugh was unlikely to accept his handshake and let his arm drop back by his side. ‘Don’t know what happened really.’ He talked at a volume that was entirely inappropriate to his distance from Hugh. He was one of those actors whose voice appeared to stay at the same level, whether they were performing on the stage or talking to someone standing next to him. ‘Felt absolutely awful earlier on. Bloody terrible, actually. But now it seems to have passed. Still not feeling top-notch again, mind you, but certainly, I’m well enough to show up and give it a go.’
‘That is apparent,’ said Hugh.
‘What’s happened? Everyone looks so serious,’ said Robert, looking around the room. ‘And who are you?’
‘I’m afraid it is serious,’ came Hugh’s reply. ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Hugh Chapman. I’m afraid to inform you that Miss Celia Hamilton has been shot.’
‘Good Lord! You mean just like in the play?’
Everybody had been relocated to the studio at the front of the building on the top floor. A number of local policemen, accompanied by a police doctor, had arrived to help manage the crime scene. Several constables were left guarding the stage as the audience were shepherded out of the auditorium. Another joined them in the studio to take the fingerprints of the cast members while they were waiting to hear what would happen next.
Hugh had suggested that they may be more comfortable up there. Bertie wasn’t so sure. On a sunny day, the large windows that dominated one wall of the room would have flooded the studio with light. You would have had a clear view back along the pier and of Brighton itself. In the distance, you would be able to see the yellow and mahogany cars of the Volk’s Electric Railway, happily trundling back and forth.
On a cold, dark evening like this one, the view was not quite as hospitable. An inky blackness was the only sight through the large windows tonight.
The darkness of the night sky had the effect of transforming the windows into large mirrors. Slightly wavy imperfections in the glass distorted the image a little. It wasn’t as extreme as a funfair mirror, but it created an unflattering look, nevertheless. They reflected back the gloomy expressions of the figures waiting in the room.
Teddy, Arthur, Constance and Robert sat on some dusty wooden chairs with nothing to do but wait until they were told what would happen next. Wait and wonder how the battered upright piano, that sat on its worn castors, had ever got into the studio. It certainly wouldn’t have fit up the tiny staircase they’d just climbed themselves. A constable, who had finished the process of taking their fingerprints, was quietly keeping watch over them all.
Bertie and Charlie had remained on stage while Hugh went to negotiate with the sergeant in charge. Bertie strained to hear the conversation, although couldn’t make out much of it. They remained in awkward silence while they waited for it to conclude. Hugh still had some questions to ask about the events of the evening and asked if anyone would have a thorough overview of what had happened during the show that night. Bertie told him that it would be the stage manager.
Eventually, the sergeant left to give instructions to the other nearby policemen and Hugh approached Bertie, giving him a surreptitious thumbs up. ‘They’ve agreed to let me handle the case,’ he announced, ‘because of my reputation for working on high-profile cases and being here, on the scene, when it happened. It took a bit of buttering up, but I think I convinced them. We have to keep the local police fully informed of our progress, but for now, they’re letting me lead the investigation.’ Hugh allowed himself a smile in Bertie’s direction. ‘As I’m in charge, that means me and you.’
Turning his attention back to Charlie, Hugh took his place at the stage manager’s desk on the tall stool sat in front of it. On the sloped surface was a copy of the script, lit by the faint glow of a bulb. In pencil, neatly written, were all the cues for the play. Cues to raise and lower the curtain, lighting changes and sound effects were all clearly marked. In a second column next to them were all the moves the actors made during the show. Sometimes they were accompanied by a small diagram of the stage with arrows and initials illustrating the movements. At the top of the desk, where the slope became flat again, a telephone for calling the various parts of the theatre sat on its surface.
The desk was placed against the back of the proscenium. If there hadn’t been a wall there, Charlie would have been looking directly out towards the auditorium. Using his feet, Hugh swivelled on the stool to face to his right, where there was a tall gap between the proscenium arch and the wall of the set. Through it, he could see a thin slice of the stage and a decent portion of the drawing-room set. The view was mainly the area downstage of the sofa; the rest remained obscured. Turning further around on the stool, until he was facing away from the desk, he could see a trestle table. It was positioned next to the doorway that led into the set through the supposed “hallway”. On it were placed all the different props used in the show. Underneath each prop was a label, in the same neat handwriting he recognised from the script.
Sitting guiltily above its own label was the gun. It was currently being attended to by a policeman who was using a small kit from a tin to dust for fingerprints.
‘And you can keep an eye on everything from here?’ Hugh asked, turning on the stool to face Charlie.
‘Yes, pretty much. All the comings and goings,’ he replied.
‘Even though, to follow the script, you have your back to the props table and that entrance?’
‘I’m not sitting there for the entire show,’ explained Charlie. ‘I’m the only person working backstage on this show, so I have to run around doing all the different jobs. I might have to go here to operate the curtain,’ he said, indicating a loop of rope that descended from the ceiling to the right-hand side of the desk. The rope went around a pulley bolted to the stage floor and then disappeared back up into the void above them. ‘It’s counterweighted, so it’s not a lot of effort. And then I might have to go over there to change the lights at different points during the play. This one is relatively simple, though. Lights up and lights down at the start and end of each act.’
The “there” that Charlie indicated was a panel with switches and levers that poked out the front of it. The panel stretched a short distance along the wall. Each lever, Charlie explained, was attached to a “dimmer” which controlled the voltage and subsequently the output of each light.
Next to the desk, there was something that Charlie called a panatrope. It looked like a large record player, but with two turntables. He explained how this was used to play music and sound effects during the show. A white button, with an etched label marked “Go”, was riveted on the front by each turntable. When the button was pressed, the needle would drop onto the record from its pre-set position and play the required sound effect.
‘But you have practical sound effects on this show as well, don’t you?’ commented Bertie. ‘You and Teddy were operating them in the dress rehearsal.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Charlie. ‘I think Arthur prefers the traditional way sometimes. Besides, it can be a lot easier to time things correctly when you’re doing it manually, like a crash of lightning. Those panatropes can be fiddly things to work. If you’re just a touch out when you pre-set the needle, you might end up accidentally playing, say, a car backfiring instead of the gentle birdsong that you actually want. You can see how that doesn’t always go down well with the actors and the director, even if the audience finds it hilarious.’
‘Where are these practical sound effects?’ Hugh asked, looking around.
‘On the other side of the stage,’ Charlie said. ‘Would you like me to show you?’
Hugh nodded.
Charlie led them round to the opposite side of the stage. ‘There’s a wind machine and a thunder sheet. They’ve got to be on that side, so it sounds like the noise of the wind comes through the French doors. I’ve also got to be on that side to push the doors open with a broom handle as well,’ added Charlie, as they arrived. He nodded in the direction of a broom handle that was propped up next to the French doors on the back of the scenery.
‘A broom handle?’ said Hugh, surprised.
‘Sometimes the old ways are the best,’ Charlie replied with a smile. ‘I just knock them open with it.’
Hugh chuckled. He had no idea that such a dramatic effect would have been created by such simple means.
Next to the French doors, there was another props table. It was much smaller than the one on the other side and contained far fewer props. A small garden trowel and a potted plant sat waiting for their entrance, things that Hugh assumed must have been used in the second act, as he didn’t recognise them from the first half of the performance.
The wind machine was a sheet of canvas stretched over a wooden drum that had thin wooden ribs attached to the outside. A large handle on the side allowed the operator to turn the drum, which simulated a wind noise as the ribs rubbed against the canvas. It was positioned behind a cloth that was painted to look like a garden, hung just beyond the French doors. Some fake shrubbery in pots sat in front of the canvas – an attempt to disguise where the cloth met the floor and make it look more convincing. Next to the wind machine hung a large, thin metal sheet. This produced the sound of thunder by giving it a sharp shake, as Charlie skilfully demonstrated.
Hugh looked over the two pieces of equipment. ‘So, who did what?’
‘I did the wind machine. Teddy did the thunder.’
‘After you pushed open the doors,’ Hugh clarified as he stepped through the doors onto the stage. He swung one of the French doors on its hinges. It moved effortlessly, without a sound.
‘Yes, that’s right. Then I’d run back round to the other side – we swapped and Teddy kept the wind machine going. I needed to do the lighting change and bring in the curtain. That’s the end of the act.’
‘That seems like a lot of work,’ Bertie commented with amusement. He wandered over to Hugh, who was still inspecting the other side of the French doors.
‘You get used to it. It was complicated and it took a lot of rehearsing, I can tell you that,’ said Charlie. ‘But we got it right in the end.’
‘And there was no one else around here,’ asked Bertie, ‘while you were doing the sound effects? Other than Teddy, I mean.’
‘No, everyone else is on stage.’
Hugh put his arm through one of the empty window frames on the door and punched Bertie on the arm, lightly.
‘Where’s the glass?’ Hugh asked.
‘There is no glass,’ said Bertie. ‘You can get unwanted reflections from the lights. Cheaper too. The bonus is that you never have to clean them and there’s no risk of them ever getting broken.’
‘What about the shooting scene?’ said Hugh. ‘Would anyone be around here?’
‘No,’ replied Charlie. ‘As you know, everyone else is on stage at that point during the show. You saw it for yourselves.’
‘But you wouldn’t know for sure, would you?’ said Bertie. ‘You said yourself, you only come over this side of the stage for the end of the act.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ confirmed Charlie.
‘So, someone else could have arrived, without your knowledge, during that scene?’ Bertie continued.
‘Yes,’ Charlie said. ‘At least I suppose that’s possible. But who would—’ Charlie broke off, without being able to finish the thought.
‘Robert?’
‘That’s a bit of a stretch isn’t it, Bertie?’ Charlie said in disbelief.
‘Perhaps, but perhaps not,’ Bertie pondered. ‘It’s the easiest thing in the world to fake an illness. He is an actor, after all.’ He turned to the inspector. ‘What do you think, Hugh?’
Hugh was still mulling his own thoughts over. ‘So far, we have a few possibilities. Someone else could have shot through the French windows, making it look like Jenny did it. There’s no glass to be broken by a bullet and the angle would work. That actress could have done it in plain sight of the audience—’
‘Jenny?’ Bertie clarified. ‘Seems like a pretty bold move to me!’
‘Quite. There’s also the possibility someone in the theatre swapped the bullets in the gun without her knowledge.’
‘If someone else shot from here, that means we could be looking for a second gun, doesn’t it?’ asked Bertie.
‘That’s exactly right,’ said Hugh. ‘See, I told you that you’d be good at this.’
Bertie felt flattered – slightly – and rather proud of himself. Then he remembered that an actual murder had been committed, and his excitement faded a little.
‘But wouldn’t we have heard two shots?’
‘That wouldn’t necessarily be the case,’ said Hugh.
‘You mean if there was a silencer?’ said Bertie enthusiastically. ‘On the gun?’
Hugh smiled. ‘A silencer, in the way that you refer to it, doesn’t really exist,’ he explained. ‘That’s just something you read about in thrillers and fiction. What a silencer really is, is a suppressor. The reason it’s not called a silencer is that you can never silence a gun completely, only make it a lot quieter. There’ll always be some sort of noise produced by a firing gun; it can’t be eliminated altogether.’
‘But if two people fired a gun, with the sound of one of the gunshots suppressed, at the exact same time, you’re saying that it would be hard to distinguish one shot from the other?’ Bertie asked.
‘It would take unbelievably precise timing, of course, but something that’s not impossible,’ Hugh nodded. ‘Once we’ve had the police surgeon retrieve the bullet, we’ll know more about the type of gun we’re looking for.’
‘So, Robert might have been able to do it?’ said Bertie, feeling queasy.
‘He is one potential suspect,’ he replied. ‘But there are others I can think of right now. Like you,’ he said, looking at Charlie.
‘Me?’
‘Yes,’ continued Hugh. ‘There’s no one who can vouch for your movements during the show. Like you said earlier, you’re the only person back here. There’s no reason why you couldn’t have come round here during that scene and fired through the window with a second gun. There’s also no reason why you couldn’t have swapped the bullets in the original gun.’
‘But I’ve got no cause to kill Celia,’ Charlie protested.
‘But, of course, you would say that,’ said Hugh with the hint of a smile.
‘I would have thought,’ said Charlie, in an attempt to prove his innocence, ‘if Robert came back here to shoot Celia, it would be the easiest thing for him to drop the gun off the side of the pier. It was, what, fifteen or twenty minutes after we finished before Robert showed up? He could have done anything in that time.’
‘He’s right, Hugh,’ said Bertie. ‘If Robert did come here with a second gun, it’s probably lying somewhere at the bottom of the English Channel right now.’
‘Well,’ said Hugh, ‘in that case, maybe we should look at the one gun we do have.’
As they headed back to the props table in the other wing, Bertie observed the rear of the set. It was formed by frames of wood with diagonal bracing, covered in canvas. The back of each flat was stamped with the name Brunskill. He recognised the name of the scenic workshop that had built the set. More faded black text read Dinner at Eight – Tour, confirming his suspicion that this was indeed a recycled set.
As they walked around it, he noticed that, because of the way the box set was designed, there really was no other entry point into the room or any way that you could see inside it. The view from Charlie’s desk provided the best view and, even then, it only permitted you to see a thin slice of the action.
When they reached the props table, the constable was packing up his fingerprinting kit.
‘Any luck?’ asked Hugh.
‘We’ve got a couple of clear prints and a few other smudges,’ the constable replied.
‘Great, well, let’s see if we can match them up to anyone upstairs or to Charlie here.’
‘Yes, Sir.’ With a sharp nod of the head, the constable set off up the dressing room steps at the side of the stage.
Hugh picked up the gun from the props table. It was a small, semi-automatic pistol – small enough to fit in the palm of his hand.
‘An interesting choice,’ he commented.
‘Is it?’ asked Charlie. ‘Not really my thing, I’m afraid.’ He gave an apologetic shrug. ‘I suspect Arthur chose it more for the look than anything else. A practical decision, too. It needed to be small enough to fit into Jenny’s purse. That’s important for the way it gets used in the show.’
‘There were others to choose from?’
‘Yes, not a huge collection,’ Charlie recalled. ‘There was a revolver, an old starting pistol, I think, and this one.’
‘Well, a starting pistol would have certainly made things easier,’ said Hugh.
‘It would?’ asked Bertie.
‘For a start, it’s impossible to fire real bullets from a starting pistol,’ said Hugh.
‘So, this is a real gun?’ Bertie sounded surprised.
‘Oh yes,’ Hugh replied, ‘this is definitely a real gun and very much capable of firing very real bullets.’
‘But we’ve only got blanks,’ said Charlie in defence. ‘We wouldn’t have a real bullet anywhere near the building.’
‘I’m sure you wouldn’t,’ said Hugh, slipping out the gun’s magazine. From it, he ejected three shiny, brass-coloured cartridges on the table one by one. He clicked open the top of the gun and dropped a fourth out of the firing chamber. ‘Four cartridges remaining’ He turned to face Charlie. ‘How many does it hold?’
‘Six,’ he replied.
‘So, two were fired.’
‘That would be one from the dress rehearsal, one from tonight.’
