‘No, but he always asked after her. When he found out we were courting, he looked out for us. The train ticket was typical of him –
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not just the money but the thoughtfulness. He’s always doing small kindnesses for people – well, they’re small to him but they mean so much to the people he does them for. He gave me the theatre seats as well – top price for Saturday night.’
Penrose would come to Aubrey’s death in a moment, but he was interested to note that there was no giveaway past tense in anything White had said so far. ‘Did you send anything else with the train ticket?’ he asked.
‘Yes, a note and a lily. The lily was from Miss Beaumont’s dressing room; she has so many flowers that she’s always giving them to us. So I put that in with the train ticket and a note. Well, it was just a line from the play, really – ‘Lilies are more fashionable’ – but it was one of Elspeth’s favourite scenes and I knew she’d recognise it and be thrilled when I told her where the lily came from.’
‘Are you sure it was a lily? It couldn’t have been another flower?’
‘I do know what a lily looks like. I ought to – we have enough of them on stage every night.’
‘But nothing else? No magazines or souvenir dolls?’
‘No, nothing else.’ He looked down at his hands. ‘I was going to give Elspeth one of those dolls – she so wanted one – but I hadn’t got round to it.’
If Hedley was telling the truth, someone had been very prepared when that train pulled in. Penrose asked if anyone else had known about the arrangements.
‘Uncle Frank, of course – I told him all about it. And Mr Aubrey. I told Rafe because I knew he’d be pleased for us – it was him that encouraged me to ask Elspeth out in the first place – and he teased me about keeping the noise down at night, not that he sleeps here that often. Oh, and Miss McCracken knew. She saw me putting the flower and the note in an envelope backstage, and asked me what the poor girl had done to deserve a night out with Richard of Bordeaux.’
‘When was the last time you spoke to Elspeth, or heard from her?’
‘The last time I actually spoke to her was ten days ago. She tele-210
phoned me at the theatre as soon as she got the note and ticket, just to say how thrilled she was. Then she phoned again on Thursday, but I was out getting some more candles for the play so I missed her. She left a message at stage door, confirming when she was arriving and saying she couldn’t wait to see me.’
‘Was the message written down?’
‘Yes. I collected it from the pigeon holes when I got back.’
Where anybody could have seen it, presumably. Penrose decided to change tack slightly; he was interested in relations between Hedley and the Simmonses.
‘How did her family react when you and Elspeth got together?
Were they pleased about the relationship?’
Hedley shrugged. ‘They seemed to be. Certainly we never had any problems seeing each other. I’ve never met her mother, of course. We’d only been together eight weeks and I didn’t have enough time off to go up to Berwick. Mrs Simmons never comes down here. Elspeth’s Auntie Betty was always perfectly polite, but Uncle Frank’s been fabulous, really friendly.’ Hedley pointed towards the photograph on the bedside table. ‘He took that and got three copies framed, one for each of us and one for himself. He and Elspeth were always really close. I suppose it’s because they had so much in common.’
Penrose hadn’t seen the photograph anywhere in the Simmonses’ flat. He wondered again about the nature of Simmons’s feelings for his niece. It wouldn’t surprise him if Frank turned out to be Elspeth’s real father, although where that left him with Bernard Aubrey and Arthur he couldn’t begin to work out.
‘What about your own family, Hedley? Tell me about them.’
‘I don’t see what they’ve got to do with any of this.’
‘Humour me. What does your father do?’
‘He died when I was a baby, just before war broke out, but he was a blacksmith. My mother was left on her own with six children, but she remarried a few years later, to a farmer, and we moved in with him. He had three children of his own, but we all got on really well. Still do. Most of my brothers and sisters stayed in or around the village, helping on the farm or teaching at the 211
local school. I missed them when I first left home to come here, but I go back as much as I can. I was planning to go in the summer and take Elspeth to meet them. They would have loved her.’
‘Did any of your family serve in the war?’
‘No. We were lucky. My dad was already dead, like I said, and none of my brothers were old enough. My stepfather was con-sumptive, so he was excused military service. It must have been terrible, though. Elspeth talked a lot about her father as we got to know each other better. His illness really upset her.’
‘Did she ever talk about what happened to him or anyone else he served with?’
‘No, just how bad it got towards the end. I think she and her mother both felt guilty for being so relieved when he died.’
‘Let’s go back to Saturday, Hedley. It was your night off, but did you get things ready for the evening performance before you went off duty?’
‘As much as I could, yes. We re-plotted for the first scene right away, but it doesn’t take long now because we’re so used to it.
Miss McCracken likes to check everything before the evening performance, so I was finished quite quickly.’
‘I’ve heard there’s a drinking tradition that goes on after the show. Were you involved in preparing that?’
‘It doesn’t happen after the matinees, but I put the stuff at the side of the wings ready for the evening.’
‘Can you tell me exactly what you did?’
White was beginning to look concerned. ‘It was slightly different on Saturday because Mr Aubrey was taking part, so I made sure there was an extra chair. I fetched the decanter from his office, added a tumbler to the other glasses and checked there was a corkscrew for the wine. Then I stood the whole lot on the shelf ready for Miss McCracken to take down at the curtain-call. It gets in the way otherwise.’
‘Did you take the lid off the decanter for any reason?’
And now concern had turned to fear. ‘Of course not. Why are you asking me about this? Elspeth was dead by then. Has something else happened?’
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Penrose ignored the question. ‘Are you absolutely sure that you didn’t touch the contents of that decanter? Or see anybody else go near it?’
‘I swear nobody touched it when I was there. Tell me what’s going on!’ He was on his feet and shouting now, and there was no doubt in Penrose’s mind that he knew nothing about the second death. Gently, he put a hand on Hedley’s shoulder and sat him back down.
‘I’m sorry, Hedley, but Bernard Aubrey died late last night.
We’re treating his death as suspicious, and I have to ask you again
– apart from Aubrey, did you see anyone near that whisky decanter while it was in your care, or did you touch it yourself?’
Hedley’s self-control evaporated at the news of Aubrey’s death, and he was unable to suppress his grief any longer. ‘How could I be so ungrateful?’ he said at last. ‘I let him down so badly, and then last night, when I was standing outside the theatre in the rain and I realised that Elspeth wasn’t going to turn up, I blamed him for her death. I thought if he hadn’t arranged that ticket, she might still be alive. And I hated him. I wished it was him dead and not her. Now they’re both gone.’
Penrose looked up and wondered why Fallowfield had slipped quietly from the room. He turned back to Hedley and spoke more sympathetically than ever. ‘How had you let Aubrey down, Hedley? Why was he angry with you?’
‘I did something really stupid and he found out about it. Elspeth’s uncle collects theatre stuff, autographs and all sorts of memorabilia. So I stole some of the props from the play to impress him and Mr Aubrey caught me with them. I don’t know why I did it. Frank didn’t ask me to and the really daft thing is that Mr Aubrey would have given them to me after the run if I’d just asked, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I wanted to make Elspeth happy and I knew I could do that by making her family happy. I was supposed to go and see Mr Aubrey after the matinee, but by that time I was too worried about Elspeth and I just left the building as soon as I could.
And I’m sorry, I did lie to you earlier when I said I hadn’t taken the lid off the decanter.’