Peter Lovesey - Stagestruck

‘Progressing, I understand, but we ought to assume she won’t be back this week. Are you okay playing opposite Gisella?’

Barnes gave a shrug. ‘She was adequate last night. Better than Clarion has ever been in rehearsal. Between you and me, we were saved from being savaged by the critics. But the play won’t transfer now. We’ll all be looking for work after Saturday night.’

‘You’ll be snapped up,’ Shearman said.

‘Do you think so?’ Barnes enjoyed that. The vanity of actors is legendary, and he was a prime example. ‘I’ll be glad to get a normal haircut. This silly Isherwood look is too much. I can’t think why he persisted with it for so long.’

‘You look the part, that’s for sure,’ Shearman said, eyeing him.

‘It doesn’t come without years of experience. Character is the actor’s overarching responsibility. I inhabit the role I’m playing and the resemblance is created in the process.’

‘Like one of those TV impressionists?’

Barnes winced at the suggestion. ‘I was thinking of the late Sir Alec Guinness. It’s from inside, you know. It isn’t the hairstyle or the make-up. It’s the self-belief. Speaking of which, I must get to my dressing room and begin my preparation.’

He’d spoken before of his preparation. He arrived early and spent at least an hour in contemplation ‘connecting emotively with the role’, as he put it. His door was closed to everyone.

‘When you arrived last night, was anyone about?’ Shear-man asked.

‘Who do you mean?’

‘Denise, for example.’

‘The dresser? I’ve no idea. She doesn’t look after me. I’m perfectly capable of dressing myself. I wear that grubby sports coat and revolting blue shirt and all I have to think about is changing my tie.’

‘I know that. I was wondering if you remembered seeing anybody.’

‘I expect there were technical people. It was a first night, for God’s sake. I wasn’t registering who was here. I went straight to my room to prepare.’

‘That would have been early?’

‘Five thirty or thereabouts.’

‘Your dressing room is close to Clarion’s.’

Barnes frowned. ‘Does that make me a suspect?’

‘Not at all. You’ve no reason to harm her. Quite the reverse. I was wondering if you heard anyone visiting her.’

‘Certainly not. The walls in this old building are two feet thick. Anyway, I was concentrating on my role and, if you don’t mind me saying so, you should do the same. I don’t think you should play detective. It’s a job for an expert. Let’s hope we don’t have need of one.’

Lately, instead of meeting for pub meals, Diamond and Paloma Kean had taken to going for walks. The suggestion had come from Paloma after Diamond boasted that he hadn’t needed to buy a new belt for some years. She’d pointed out that it wasn’t the size of belt that mattered, but the bulge above it. They still had the pub meals, but now they walked first, on the understanding that they finished at a recommended watering hole. He hadn’t yet given up pies and chips and she was tactful enough not to suggest it.

That evening found them on the Widcombe Flight, which has nothing to do with aircraft. They were walking the towpath of the Kennet and Avon Canal, tracking the seven locks built in the early eighteen hundreds to drive the waterway uphill, out of central Bath and eventually all the way to Reading. Their objective was not so far off: the George Inn at Bathampton.

His friendship with Paloma was still just that. Neither of them wanted to co-habit. They slept together sometimes, finding joy, support and consolation in each other’s company. You could have taken them for man and wife, but you would have been wrong. Diamond’s marriage to Steph had been written in the stars and her sudden, violent death had made a void in his life that no one could fill. He would go to his grave loving her still.

Paloma’s situation couldn’t have been more different: she’d gone through a disastrous marriage to a man in the grip of a gambling compulsion. She had tried all ways to reform him and not succeeded. Through her own efforts at building up a business they had stayed afloat financially and raised a son, but ultimately Gordon had dumped her for an older, richer woman willing to fund his bets. Her son, too, was irreparably lost to her. After the divorce she had immersed herself in her career, amassing a unique archive of fashion illustrations used by film and television companies around the world. The business had become the source of her self-esteem. She trusted it, identified with it. She couldn’t imagine marrying another man.

Their conversations didn’t often touch on business. The history of costume had little in common with crime. But this evening it dawned on Diamond that his tour backstage might amuse Paloma, so he told her about the ghost hunt, quite forgetting that she must have helped the Theatre Royal with research for costume dramas.

He told it well, the story of the grey lady, making it last from Abbey View Lock to the tunnel under Cleveland House.

‘She didn’t materialise, then?’ Paloma said as they entered the stretch through Sydney Gardens.

He laughed. ‘Ghosts don’t appear for me. I’m not psychic.’

‘Good thing. I wouldn’t want to be around you if you were. What were you doing at the theatre?’

‘Didn’t you hear about Clarion Calhoun?’

She’d been working long hours on a major project and missed the whole story, so he updated her. ‘It may come to nothing,’ he said finally, ‘but my boss Georgina has an interest in keeping the theatre going, so…’

‘She’s an enlightened lady.’

He smiled to himself.

‘And you chummed up with Titus?’ Paloma said.

‘I don’t know if “chummed up” is the right way to put it. He offered the ghost hunt.’

‘He must have taken to you.’

That nettled him. ‘If he did, I didn’t encourage him.’

‘I’m teasing. I’ve met Titus. I’ve researched costumes for several of their productions and he always wants to be involved.’

‘As the resident dramaturge?’

She laughed. ‘Right. He takes himself seriously, but then most of them do.’

‘Is his health okay?’

‘My word, you’re sounding serious now.’

‘Now come on. I’m not looking for a date with the guy. The reason I asked is that he fainted in the number one dressing room.’

Her smile vanished. ‘Poor Titus. What is it – his heart?’

They were passing under the first of the cast-iron Chinese bridges. Along this stretch the canal curved through the gardens.

‘I hope not, for his sake. I helped him out of there and back to the Garrick’s Head and he seemed to be getting over it.’

‘Did this happen suddenly?’

‘We were talking normally, as I recall. It was the room Clarion had used, so I was looking to see if any traces of the make-up were left. There was nothing obvious on the dressing table or under it. I went to the window and found a dead butterfly on the sill. I mentioned it to Titus and that was when he passed out.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘I’m not saying the butterfly had anything to do with it.’

Paloma was wide-eyed. ‘I bet you any money it did. What sort of butterfly?’

‘Not rare. Orange and yellow with black smudges. Tortoiseshell, isn’t it?’

‘You’re sure? And it was dead?’

‘Well dead.’ He turned to look at her. ‘Does it matter to anyone except the butterfly?’

‘It explains why Titus fainted. Didn’t he tell you the story of the butterfly and the Theatre Royal?’

‘It didn’t come up, no.’

‘It’s more impressive than the grey lady, take my word for it. And it’s always a tortoiseshell.’