‘Dressed in grey?’
‘Totally. In a hooded gown of exactly the sort a lady of fashion wore to the theatre two hundred years ago. Most of her face was veiled in some shroud-like material.’
‘She’s round the twist,’ a voice from the back said.
‘You see?’ she appealed, hands outspread.
‘What time was this?’ Diamond asked.
‘I don’t know. I was on the stage in performance. Before the interval.’
‘Was she there after?’
‘I can’t say. I was too petrified to look.’
‘She was not,’ Titus said. ‘I observed the box for the whole of the second half.’
‘Are you doubting me as well?’ Fräulein Schneider said in the voice of a martyr.
‘Not at all, madam. I hate to say this, but I fear that my friend Mr Diamond can account for what you saw.’
‘The dead woman everyone is talking about?’
‘Get with it, love,’ someone shouted from the third row. By now almost everyone knew why they were there.
Diamond didn’t want this potentially vital witness driven into silence or hysteria. ‘What you’ve told us, ma’am, could be important, and I want to hear more from you in a moment.’ While he had full attention from everyone he announced what he could about Clarion, stressing that she’d been wearing a grey scarf and dressed in a grey hooded jacket that if seen from the waist up could conceivably have been taken for a cloak.
Fräulein Schneider gave vent to a great theatrical sigh.
Diamond said he expected a number of witnesses had seen Clarion and he would need statements from all of them.
‘What the hell was Clarion doing here?’ Preston Barnes asked.
He got a dusty answer from Shearman. ‘She wanted to see the play. Perfectly understandable considering she was in it until Monday night.’
To avoid this descending into a free-for-all, Diamond said his officers would start taking statements directly.
‘Did someone murder her?’ Barnes asked.
‘It’s an unexplained death. We have a duty to investigate.’
‘Most of us can’t help you at all.’
‘We’ll be the judges of that. Everyone will be interviewed.’
‘We’ll be here all bloody night, then.’
This prompted quite a hubbub of alarm over personal arrangements.
Diamond ignored that and briefed his team. The key points to discover, he told them, were whether anyone had seen or heard anything about Clarion’s visit. Those unaware of it would be allowed to leave.
‘If one of them killed her, he’s not going to put up his hand and tell all,’ the hard-headed John Leaman said.
‘I’m not expecting a confession tonight,’ Diamond said. ‘We’re collecting facts.’ He named his interviewers and sent them to various parts of the auditorium. He was left with one lost sheep, Fred Dawkins.
‘Am I not to be trusted, guv?’
‘Far from it, Fred. Have you heard of Wyatt Earp?’
He frowned. ‘The sheriff?’
‘I think you’ll find he was a marshal, and so are you, for one night only. Marshal this lot in an orderly way, keep them sweet and send them one by one to whoever is ready to see them. Can you handle that?’
‘Only if I get a badge and a gun.’
The man had a glimmer of humour. Given time, he might fit in.
A massive gap in the sequence of events needed explaining. Diamond took Shearman on one side. ‘You’ve got some explaining to do. You told me you went to the box at the end of the play and found the body.’
The manager had turned pale. ‘That is correct and I called 999 and got the ambulance here.’
‘I’m more interested in what you didn’t tell me. At which point of the evening did you know she was dead?’
His mouth moved without any words being spoken.
‘You heard what O’Driscoll said. No one was visible in the box during the second half. She was already dead, wasn’t she?’
Still he didn’t answer.
‘There she was, your VIP guest. It would be extraordinary if you didn’t look in during the interval to see if she was comfortable. The truth,’ Diamond said.
Shearman sighed and finally found some words. ‘Unless you’ve been in my position you couldn’t possibly understand the pressure I was under. I had a theatre full of people, a performance in progress. To interrupt it would have created mayhem.’
‘You haven’t answered my question. When did you find out? In the interval?’
‘Shortly before the second half started. I knew she’d prefer to remain hidden, so I took her a glass of champagne. I tapped on the door and looked inside and had the shock of my life.’
‘Think hard before you answer this. Are you certain she was dead?’
‘Definitely. I spoke her name several times, and felt for a pulse. Absolutely nothing. I was petrified. The four-minute bell had gone for the second half to begin again.’
‘So you let it run. The show must go on. That’s the mantra, isn’t it? You had a dead woman lying in the box -’
‘No one could see her. She’d fallen on the floor. It looked like an empty box to anyone who didn’t know.’
‘How long is the second half?’
‘About an hour and a quarter.’
Diamond was appalled. ‘You left her lying dead for all that time and did nothing?’
‘What could I do? Empty the theatre? I couldn’t get her out without disturbing the audience. I was in a terrible dilemma. I’m responsible for all those people. She wasn’t visible to anyone, as Titus told you.’
‘You could have got her down the back stairs.’
‘Not without being noticed. You heard what Titus said. He was watching the box and no doubt others would have seen us moving her.’
‘When this leaks out, as it’s bound to, the press are going to hang you out to dry.’
‘I had to reach a decision. It seemed the best thing to do. It was all down to me. Francis wasn’t about.’
‘He’d already left, had he?’
‘I’ve no idea, but he wasn’t taking much interest in Clarion at that stage.’
‘Did you tell anyone? Kate, the wardrobe mistress?’
‘I kept it to myself, I swear. And as soon as the show was over I dialled 999.’
‘If Clarion was murdered – and it’s quite possible she was – we’ll need to know where everyone was during the interval.’
‘I can tell you what I was doing for most of it. I was trying to speak sense into Schneider.’
‘Schneider?’
‘It’s the part she plays. Everyone calls her that. She was ranting on hysterically about the grey lady and not being able to continue. I told her flatly she was a professional actor with a duty to the rest of the cast. She’d obviously noticed Clarion in the box before the interval, but I couldn’t tell her who it was.’
‘Why not?’
‘She’s a blabbermouth. She wouldn’t keep it to herself. Clarion wanted privacy.’
‘Wasn’t she visible from the audience?’
‘She was sitting well back. Only someone on stage would catch a glimpse.’
‘Any one of the actors could have spotted her, then?’
‘They may have seen a figure there. Hard to recognise who it was.’
It was clear to Diamond that anyone in the cast or crew might have learned that Clarion had been in the theatre. Melmot and Shearman knew for certain, and so did the security man, Binns. For a would-be murderer, the opportunity had been there: Clarion alone in the box during the twenty-minute interval.
He’d heard as much as he wanted from Shearman. Binns was next up, all silver buttons and defiant, staring eyes, expecting an attack on his professional competence.
‘How did you learn about Clarion’s secret visit?’ Diamond asked.
‘Mr Melmot.’
‘How exactly – a note, a phone call?’ ‘Personally. He came to the stage door and told me himself.’ ‘This was hot news.’ Binns shrugged in contempt at the obvious. ‘Tell anyone else, did you?’ He didn’t like that. ‘What do you take me for? It’s more than my job is worth to go blurting it out.’ ‘So what happened?’ ‘I carried out his instructions to the letter. Waited out front for her to come in her black limo. Escorted her round to the side door and up the back stairs to the top box. Mr Melmot was already up there and greeted her and my job was done.’