Phryne peered across the stage, but could not see into the matching wings, partly because of the angle of the sets and partly because of the brightness of the stage lighting.
She looked up. A gantry held the lights; a double rank of metal spotlights, hung on a metal frame which boxed in the whole stage. She wondered how anyone knew which lights were on or off, and how they could be changed in performance from the sunlit village to the gloom of the Ruddigore castle. To make the floor of the stage a real death-trap, along with the sandbags and brackets it was festooned with important-looking electrical cables, some of which were taped in place.
The wings also held a bevy of bridesmaids, three dressers, and Leslie Franklin, Old Adam. He had not straightened out from his arthritic crouch.
Considering his real age, Phryne thought that this 133
showed a commendable devotion to his part.
The ghosts ritually cursed Sir Ruthven, and then began to torment him. The circle of ancestors in wigs and caps hid the writhing young scion from sight, and Phryne, along with the whole popula-tion of the wings, found she was holding her breath. Evans clutched his head and rolled on the floor-cloth, whimpering in what seemed to be real pain.
Had the curse really landed on another Sir Ruthven?
Then he struggled to his knees and cried his line,
‘Stop a bit! Stop it, will you? I want to speak,’ and clambered to his feet.
There was a general exhalation of relief.
‘Fellow’s too good an actor,’ said Sir Bernard, gettting out his lighter, catching Mr Loveland-Hall’s eye and putting it back in his pocket.
Old Adam received instructions to kidnap a maiden and exited again. He stood still while Jessie mopped his face, powdering thickly over the sweaty greasepaint.
‘Phew!’ said Leslie Franklin, observing Phryne,
‘I thought he was gone as well. Good actor, isn’t he? Pity he’s such a bounder – but what a performance he is giving!’
His voice was young, light and incongruous.
When this accomplished young man had a little more experience then Gwilym Evans would have some competition.
After completing the patter song and stating with deep feeling that the title was too dear at the 134
price, Sir Ruthven staggered into the wings, straightened immediately, and was supplied with a drink of water and a towel by his dresser John Rhys. Phryne overheard him say in an ecstatic whisper ‘Oh, Shonni, it’s going well!’ as his face was repowdered.
Despard and Margaret were taking the stage, exchanging their lines with effortless facility.
Selwyn Alexander, without the cruel competition of Evans’ brash Dick Dauntless, looked younger and more in control, and Miss Wiltshire was sedate and calm in sober Victorian black.
Gwilym took the stage again. When Margaret threw herself into his arms and he handed her politely to Selwyn, some sort of pact seemed to have been made. Phryne was fascinated. By the time they launched into the patter trio, they were in accord. Proceeding at an inhuman pace, they carolled that it really didn’t matter, and it seemed not to.
Agnes Gault was dragged on stage, fighting Old Adam, and the play proceeded. Miss Gault finished her ballad about the little flower and the great oak tree, the whole cast emptied onto the stage, and the finale began.
Robin/Sir Ruthven abandoned villainy and barony and reclaimed Rose. Dick Dauntless took hold of Zorah. They launched into ‘Happy The Lily’ with a collective consciousness that this had been a very good performance of
Ruddigore
, which might have brought a smile even to the face of Mr Gilbert himself.
135
Applause washed over them and crashed like a tide. Phryne had not realised how loud it was, up on stage. She saw tired faces enlivened as curtain call after curtain call summoned them back to be loved and appreciated. No wonder actors could not bear to leave the stage, she thought. She felt elevated, although she had had nothing to do with it.
Finally the red curtain descended and did not rise. The cast sighed, sagged a little, and began to break into groups to leave the stage.
A sudden, earth-shattering crash deafened them.
Dust billowed and the stage shook and rang like a drum. The curtain counterweight, which weighed a quarter of a ton, had broken its rope and fallen.
Phryne, holding her ears, spun around.
She saw through the blinding miasma of a hundred years’ dust the leaden ingot, the size of a bale of wool, which was sewn into a huge wooden frame with a canvas cover. She stumbled on a trailing line snaking across the floor and fell to her knees in a pool of blood.
Shaking, coughing and sick to her stomach, she realised that there was someone underneath it.
136
CHAPTER EIGHT
GROSVENOR: A curse on my fatal beauty, for I am sick of conquests.
Patience
, Gilbert and Sullivan THE CAST screamed, cried, or went blank, depend-ing on temperament. Miss Esperance fainted and was borne away, and the stage manager, after swallowing to regain his hearing, banished them all to the wings, driving them out like a flock of chickens. Only Gwilym Evans remained.
‘You’ll want to lift it,’ he said shakily. ‘The stage crew will have gone home. I can help. Shonni, we need to rig a line.’
‘Leave it,’ ordered Detective Inspector Robinson.
‘No one could be alive under that. Someone fetch Dr Fielding out of the audience, will you? John, go and get him. Tell him he’ll get to sup with Miss 137
Webb tonight, I promise. Miss Fisher, are you all right?’
Phryne found herself leaning on Gwilym Evans, at the same angle as he was leaning on her. His arms were holding her up, and his forehead was on her shoulder. He was drawing shallow breaths, and Phryne was rubbing at her eyes and suppressing shudders which shook her whole body.
‘No,’ she said, hearing her voice trembling. ‘I’m not. I’m going to sit down,’ and she led Gwilym down the stage steps into the empty orchestra pit, where she found the table next to the timpani and lowered herself and the actor down. There they clung to each other as if for warmth.
Phryne looked down at the head which bur-rowed into her shoulder. Dust coated his make-up and greyed his hair. His arms around her waist were muscular and he seemed to exude a grateful human heat. Phryne became aware that she was shaking as if she was desperately cold.
She held the actor closer and clenched her teeth.
This was shock, she was familiar with it. The clin-ically shocked became deathly chill and she was aware that what she needed was an infusion of fluids and a blanket, but somehow she could not loose her hold on Gwilym.
John Rhys the dresser clattered down into the pit, draped them both with what appeared to be a quilt and observed, ‘Don’t let go of him, Miss.
Always been high-strung, Gwil has.’ He had a lilting accent and kind brown eyes.
‘Yes, all right.’ Phryne began to warm in the 138
embrace of the covering. ‘Get us some tea, hot, lots of sugar. My God, did you see it?’
‘Yes, missed you by a whisker. Missed Gwil by a hair. I’ll get the tea.’
‘You aren’t affected,’ observed Phryne rather resentfully.
‘Come from a mining town, I do. It’ll hit me in a few hours then I’ll cry my eyes out. Delayed, see? In case we have to rescue someone. Back in a jiff.’
Phryne and Gwilym began to warm and relax. He shifted to get closer to her. Phryne felt no sexual attraction. She reflected that this must be instinctive – something like the clinging together of apes and pre-hominids back in the aeons when cave-dwelling creatures had been attacked by vol-canoes and sabre-toothed tigers. Her own shock was lessening. Her shivering was coming under control and she freed one hand to wipe the tears and dust from her face.
Gwilym had not uttered a word. His thigh was aligned with hers, his arms locked around her, and she felt the heat of his breath in the hollow of her throat. She slid a grimy hand onto his chest and felt his heart beating wildly under Sir Ruthven’s torn frilly shirt.
He raised his head and kissed her, smearing her with greasepaint and dust, and she was instantly flooded with heat. His fist clenched in the hair at the back of her neck and she strained to get closer, closer, locked mouth to mouth.
This would not do. She had no intention of 139
being listed as yet another of Gwilym Evans’ conquests. Phryne drew away with a great effort, kissed him lightly on the cheek, and said ambig-uously, ‘Well, that was close.’
‘It was,’ he agreed. He sat up out of her embrace and ran both hands down his body, flexed his fingers, wiggled his toes, and shook his head. ‘I’m alive,’ he announced.
‘And so am I.’ Phryne brushed at the greasepaint coating the breast of her Russian blouson and combed her fingers through her hair, shedding dust.
‘Thank you,’ he said soberly, the blue eyes deep as pools. ‘I meant no disrespect, Miss Fisher. It was . . . it was that . . . ’
‘That you are alive,’ she said. ‘The contemplation of death is a great aphrodisiac but I am not minded to join your harem.’
‘Oh, God, my harem!’ he said sadly. ‘That was a kind kiss,’ he added. ‘God, I thought I was dead.’
John arrived with two mugs of very hot tea.
Phryne, who usually hated sweet drinks, was not aware that it was sugared until the second last mouthful. Warmth and certainty sprang in her insides and she stood up and shook herself.
‘I’m going back on stage,’ she said.
‘Wait – Miss Fisher – ’ Gwilym touched her arm.
‘Sup with me tonight?’
He was floured with dust and his make-up was runnelled with tears. He was shaking with reaction, and white where he was not grey, yet he was still exceptionally attractive.
140
‘All right. If I can,’ she said, resolving to get a wash first. ‘See you then.’
The stage contained Mr Loveland-Hall, picking bits of set out of his beard, three policemen, the bruised stage carpenter Mr Brawn and Dr Fielding.
‘What do you want me to do?’ Mark asked plaintively.
‘Certify death,’ replied Jack Robinson, and Mark looked at him. ‘Yes, I know it’s silly under the circumstances but we still have to do it.’
‘All right, I certify that the poor fellow under that weight is deceased. He could hardly be alive, could he?’
‘Good,’ commented the policeman. ‘Haul away, Naylor.’
The weight rose, revealing a crushed form underneath. Phryne looked away. She made it her policy not to see horrible things that she did not need to. Her sleep was haunted enough with the mouthing dead.
‘It’s Prompt,’ exclaimed the stage manager.
‘Miss Thomas. Poor girl.’
‘You seem unmoved,’ said Robinson, who was trying not to observe the puddle of ruined flesh and splintered bone which had been Miss Thomas.
‘I was a stretcher bearer in Loos,’ said Mr Loveland-Hall. ‘Dead people are just dead. Poor Prompt! No one could have had anything against her. What a dreadful accident! Sir B, we have to inform her parents.’
‘Give the details to my sergeant,’ said Robinson.
141
‘We’ll handle it. Now, Doctor, we don’t need you any more. Thanks for coming.’
Mark Fielding walked off the stage and down the stairs to wait for Miss Webb. He hoped that the doorkeeper might have a few swallows of port to spare. Even doctors, he reflected, are not immune to horror.
‘Is the ambulance coming, Sergeant?’ asked Robinson, watched for the nod from a shell-shocked Alias, and observed, ‘After they scrape her off, we’ll have all that gear down and bagged for the examiner, Naylor.’
‘Jack, really!’ exclaimed Phryne. ‘You are a callous beast.’
‘I am not allowed the luxury of being shocked,’
said Robinson tersely. ‘That’s for civilians. Mr Loveland-Hall, can you tell me who was standing near Prompt when the weight fell?’
‘Mr Evans and Miss Fisher. Excuse me, I should inform the doorkeeper to expect the press and to keep them out.’ The stage manager exited rather precipitously.
‘So, it was either meant to kill that poor girl,’
reasoned Robinson ‘or . . . ’
‘Me,’ said Gwilym Evans, still draped in his quilt, who had come up unnoticed from the orchestra.
‘Or me,’ concluded Phryne, resisting the urge to join the actor in his covering to still her renewed shivering. ‘You don’t think it was an accident, Jack?’ she asked hopefully.
‘Not a chance,’ said the policeman, holding up 142
an end of rope which had been cleanly cut. ‘No sign of fraying and good solid hemp.’
Phryne could think of no further objections.
Someone had tried to remove either herself or the charismatic Mr Evans from the world and she did not know what to make of it.
Someone touched her shoulder and she turned.
‘Come on, Miss Fisher, bit of a wash, eh? Gwil’s all right here for a bit. Mrs Pomeroy says she can get the face-paint off your blouse and our dressing room has hot water laid on. The women are all still screaming and fainting and you don’t need to go into that sort of carry-on.’
‘Thank you.’ Phryne accompanied the compact Welshman to a large room with a sink and tap.
She stripped off the soft velvet top and unaffectedly removed her stockings, which were bloody at the knees. Shonni supplied her with a washcloth, a towel and a cake of expensive soap before he left. She stood on a mat and looked at herself in the mirror.
Her hair was capped with dust and her face was white under the smears of greasepaint applied when she kissed Evans. She slathered on cold cream from a big pot and wiped it off with cotton wool, glad to see her own features emerge unscathed.
Hot water was a wonderful invention, she thought, as she rinsed off dust and blood and brushed her hair vigorously with one of the actor’s brushes. She rubbed hard with the towel and restored her circulation, then applied a flick of 143
powder, a dash of rouge, and a sprinkle of Gwilym’s eau-de-Cologne.
It was a Phryne Fisher cleansed of adventure who sat down in Evans’ chair and lit a gasper.
Shonni tapped and entered with a new pair of stockings, her own in a paper bag, and the blouse. There was a sticky patch on the shoulder but it was passable under her coat. Phryne reflected that she had been restored by someone else’s charity twice in two days and decided to stop doing this.