‘I don’t know. Let’s see, the whole chorus was on stage when he collapsed, everyone is at the end of the act. The wings are always full of people coming and going – stage crew and technicals and dressers and actors.’
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‘And what do you think about the ghost?’
Selwyn’s countenance, which had been pale, bleached.
‘She’s here. I’ve seen her. She seems to be singling me out for attention.’ He laid his long artistic fingers flat on the dressing table to still their trembling. ‘I don’t know if she was behind the poisoning, I can’t imagine why, but she’s been taking Leila’s gloves and I’ve seen her – Charles and I both saw her. Eh, Charles?’
‘If you say so, Sel,’ agreed the dresser. Phryne looked at him. His hands were deft as they arranged the hair and pinned it. He was short and paunchy and had some stiffness in his left side and arm. His face was round and his eyes blue and the remains of what had been fine blond hair were cut very short, like a tonsure around a shining scalp.
His mouth was pursed in a scowl.
‘Dammit, man, you saw her! A week ago, when we were rehearsing
Ruddigore
. In the corridor –
at the end of the corridor nearest the stage, Miss Fisher. A woman in costume, and the scent of hyacinths so strong it almost knocked us over. Black eyes, she had, angry black eyes.’
‘What do you think she wants?’
‘I went to a spiritualist. I don’t think that one can ignore these things. If she’s come back after thirty years then she must have a reason.’
‘What did the medium say?’ asked Phryne, watching the dresser who was exuding disapproval from every pore.
‘She said to come back next week – that is, 103
tomorrow. Will you come, too? No one else believes in these things and I’m sure that there are mysteries beyond the veil which are hidden from us. Bradford thinks I’m mad. He now says he didn’t see anything. But I saw him when she appeared. He was as white as a sheet and shook like a willow. Didn’t you, Bradford, eh?’
Selwyn was suddenly the dominant melodrama villain. His moustache bristled and his voice had dropped half an octave. Even though Bradford must have been used to these demonstrations of acting, he backed a pace.
‘I saw a bright light and got a shock,’ he muttered. ‘And the rest is your imagination, Mr Alexander.’
‘Oh, to hell with you,’ snarled Selwyn Alexander. ‘Get out! Out!’
He drove the small man out of the dressing room and slammed the door.
‘What about Miss Esperance, then?’ asked Phryne quietly. Selwyn Alexander flushed brick-red.
‘I won’t have her brought into this. I like your impudence!’
‘I like it too, it’s my best asset,’ said Phryne, not at all abashed. ‘Do resume your seat, you are dripping hair dye on your dressing gown. Now, would you like to talk to me or the cops?’
Mr Alexander coughed in outrage and then began to laugh. ‘You are a remarkable young woman. All right. What about Miss Esperance?
I . . . want to marry her.’
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‘And?’
‘She hasn’t made up her mind yet,’ he said wretchedly. ‘There’s me and that bounder Evans and Dupont the chorus master with his French accent and frankly, Miss Fisher, I don’t give much for my chances.’
‘Do you want her that much?’
‘Oh yes, she is utterly beautiful. Utterly. And she threw herself into my arms the other night when she could have had Gwil. That’s a hopeful sign. I don’t know how Evans works on all the women.
To me he seems transparently a scoundrel.’
‘He is, transparently. Therein lies his attraction,’
said Phryne.
‘Oh, not you, too!’
‘No, not me. I admire his talent, that’s all.’
Selwyn Alexander barked a scornful laugh. ‘Being a scoundrel is a talent,’ Phryne explained. ‘I’ll join you tomorrow and we’ll see what the spirit world has to say.’
‘Oh, Miss Fisher . . . ’ Selwyn stumbled over the words. ‘Miss Fisher, you don’t need to tell anyone, do you?’
‘About what?’
‘About the crowning glory,’ his mouth quirked.
Phryne promised on her honour not to tell anyone that he dyed his hair, and went out.
It was getting late. Not enough time for the chorus, but they could wait until tomorrow. Just time for a word with Agnes Gault and Mollie Webb if she was quick. Then she had to catch, somehow, the chorus master, Mr Franklin, who 105
played Old Adam, and, of course, the much feted Leila Esperance.
She was spared the labour of choosing when an elderly woman shot out of a dressing room with a star on the door and grabbed her by the arm.
‘Miss Fisher, do see if you can talk to her. She’s working up to a fit of hysterics and she has to go on in an hour. I’m Mrs Black, her dresser. She won’t put on her costume and she’s refusing to make-up. Come along, dear, do.’
Phryne went where she was pushed and came into a large dressing room, festooned with telegrams and mascots and garlanded with flowers. It smelt like a hothouse. Roses appeared to be Miss Esperance’s favourite tributes.
‘Here’s Miss Fisher, dear, now control yourself,’
ordered the elderly woman. ‘You talk to her, Miss,’ she added to Phryne.
Miss Esperance was slumped whimpering over the table, her hair trailing down and hiding her face. Phryne observed that Rose Maybud’s sunbonnet was screwed into a ball in one corner, where it had evidently been thrown. She touched the actress on the shoulder and she shrugged away from under Phryne’s hand.
‘Sit up,’ said Phryne in a sub-zero voice. ‘I know that you are feeling persecuted but you will not impress me with tantrums and you will damage your performance.’
This brought Leila up with a jerk and Phryne looked at her.
She was indeed utterly beautiful.
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It was a beauty bred in the bones. Her face was heart-shaped, her complexion, bare of make-up, was mingled milk and roses. Her eyes were as brown as topaz, her mouth a soft pink cupid’s bow, her throat and bared bosom smooth and sculptural. She put up a perfectly formed hand and shoved her black hair back from her unmarked forehead.
‘I always give a good performance,’ said Leila petulantly. ‘Don’t I, Ursula? Always.’
‘Yes, dear, you do. Now take a deep breath and I’ll brew some of that coffee you like while you talk to Miss Fisher. She’ll sort it all out.’
‘Tell me about Walter Copland,’ said Phryne, feeling uncharacteristically plain. ‘Have a gasper.’
Leila accepted a cigarette, saying, ‘I shouldn’t, they’re bad for the voice,’ and fitted it into a long holder. There was grace in her every movement and Phryne had to admire her. She was as liquid and smooth as a black cat.
‘Walter? He wanted to marry me. They all want to marry me, except Gwil. Gwil hasn’t got marriage in mind.’ She preened briefly.
‘And have you decided?’
‘Me? Marry? Copland was a has-been, Gwil is a rotter, Selwyn is on his way out and Dupont wants to keep me in a cage. I don’t want any of them. But it has been diverting.’
‘Yes, you have offended or slighted almost everyone in the cast. All the women in love with Mr Evans are heartbroken and Selwyn Alexander is a nervous wreck and Walter Copland is dead.
107
Robbie Craven is still in hospital with opiate poisoning. Do you find spreading ruin and destruc-tion amusing? Was it you, perhaps, who brought Dupont and Evans to your dressing room at the same time? You would have found a fight for your affections diverting.’
‘If I had done that I would have been there to watch,’ Leila giggled. ‘I always liked fairy stories where the princess sends the suitors out on quests.
That would have been fun.’
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Phryne, disliking the actress quite profoundly. ‘And then they could all have got killed fighting dragons and climbing glass mountains and you could have started again with a new set.’
‘You don’t like me,’ said Leila Esperance in a wondering tone. ‘Do you?’
‘What gives you that idea?’ asked Phryne. ‘Now, talk to me. Did you know that Walter was drinking? You said he had no smell of booze on him.’
‘Yes, but I didn’t want to ruin his reputation.
He was alive then. Actually, he stank of brandy –
positively stank. And had been for a week, I hated getting close to him. Poor Walter. It’s a testing part and he was getting on. Sir B’s production is all movement and he runs us ragged.’
‘And you didn’t see what he did with the bottle?’
‘I think he gave it . . . ’ she caught her lip between white teeth. ‘No, I didn’t see what he did with it, but he must have had one. He might have given it to Hans, that creepy dresser of his. How he hates me, to be sure!’ she said complacently.
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‘He glared at me as if I was going to kidnap Walter and sell him to the white slavers. Hans was in the wings with a towel and powder and some water, all the usual things. Walter used to sweat like a pig under the lights. Hans probably has it.’
‘And what about the other things? The gloves, the missing bag, the ghost?’
‘I’m afraid that it is her, Dorothea Curtis. She played Rose Maybud first, you know. And Sir B
says she looked like me. She’s come back, she’s haunting us. I’ve seen her.’ Miss Esperance began to shudder as though she had been dipped in cold water. ‘I saw her at the end of the corridor, at the stage entrance. She’s smaller than me, but she had Rose’s costume on, the bride’s dress from the last act, shining white and her hair was curling all down her back. She does look like me, you know.
She was famous in her day.’
‘Why has she come back?’ asked Phryne quietly.
Leila shook her head violently and gasped, ‘She’s envious of me. I’m playing her part, wearing her clothes. She wants to take me over. She wants to possess me.’
Phryne detected real fear. The young woman’s hands were clenched in the soft hair and she was tugging it with force enough to hurt. Her movements were still graceful but that was nature, not art.
‘No,’ said Phryne decisively. ‘I don’t believe it.
I’ve just been reading about ghosts. They are phantasms – that’s what the Society for Psychical Research calls them – and they are re-enacting past 109
events or they come to reveal something important. Ghosts can’t possess the living,’ she stated with conviction, suppressing her memory of various case histories when that had been what they seemed to be trying to do. ‘Even if it is Dorothea Curtis come back from the dead she can’t harm you, Miss Esperance.’
‘Are you sure?’ Phryne could not see the face under the shadowing hair but the voice was a child’s, desperate to be told that she was safe in her bed.
‘Yes, I’m perfectly sure.’
Mrs Black brought a cup of inky coffee and said bracingly, ‘Time to get dressed, Leila.’
Unexpectedly, Leila Esperance embraced Phryne, pressing her soft flower-scented cheek against her neck. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured. ‘I trust you.’
Phryne, a little shaken, released herself, muttered something about another appointment and found her way into the corridor again. Interesting. The ghost had appeared as Rose Maybud both as maiden and as the last-act bride.
‘Miss Gault, do you have a moment?’ she called into the next room, where Agnes Gault and Mollie Webb dressed.
‘Yes, do come in. How is the investigation going? Sit down, do, I’ve got to draw on Dame Hannah’s lines.’ Miss Gault was solid, plump, and had a merry face which she was presently transforming into an old woman’s as she talked.
‘I tell you, dear, I’ve been in theatre since I was 110
a tot – first appearance as a babe in the woods at the age of three – and I’ve never known such a blighted season as this.’
‘What’s the cause of it?’ asked Phryne, watching as the actress smiled and frowned and sketched in the resultant wrinkles with eyebrow pencil.
‘Combination of factors. There’s having Leila and Gwil in the same cast. Leila breaks hearts for fun and Gwil does the same, so that’s the men and the women accounted for. Gwil’s not cold like Leila, though. He’s like the defendant in
Trial By
Jury
.’ She began to hum and then to sing: But joy incessant palls the sense And love unchanged will cloy.
And she became a bore intense
Unto her love-sick boy.
With fitful glimmer burned my flame And I grew cold and coy.
At last one morning I became
Another’s love sick boy.
‘That’s Gwil. No harm in him but as self-centred as a gyroscope. People will keep falling for him and then when he’s tired of them he is surprised that they just don’t go away and find another lover like he does. Leila is cold – she doesn’t understand love. And she finds that being so very beautiful, people just do as she wants. Whole world’s a sideshow to Leila. Then there’s this theatre, which is ill-maintained and hard to work in, as cold as charity in the winter and boiling 111
in summer. There’s the orchestra leader quarrel-ling with Dupont the chorus master who is French and dispassionate, and in love with Leila as well. Then there’s this ghost thing. Actors are very superstitious. That’s what’s pushed us over the edge.’
‘Have you seen her?’
‘I saw something. Just a light and a scent.’ An old woman’s mask turned to Phryne and Miss Gault’s nervous smile appeared ghastly. ‘Hyacinths. A pale shape. At the stage entrance. I haven’t mentioned it to anyone. I’d be obliged if you wouldn’t, either. Hello, Mollie,’ she said as someone came in. ‘Just in time.’
‘Miss Fisher, I’m glad you’re here. Hello, Agnes.’ Mollie Webb began to shed her outer clothes. ‘It’s starting to rain again. Where’s Jill?’
‘Miss Webb,’ said a funereal voice. Jill Collins, sister of Kitty, came in and wrapped Miss Webb’s shoulders in a towel. ‘Sit still now, you’re late.
Where have you been?’
‘Been to see Robbie. He’s getting better but he still can’t talk. The cops have got a policeman sitting by his bed. Poor Robbie, he looks awful. I saw that nice Dr Fielding there, too. I’m having supper with him tonight.’
‘Oh, are you?’ teased Agnes Gault. ‘Getting tired of the stage, are you, Nurse Webb?’
‘Pretty tired,’ admitted Mollie, taking the question seriously. ‘I’m never going to get much more than this kind of part and I’m twenty-five. Time to think about settling down. And he needs 112