‘She told Gisella for sure,’ Ingeborg said.
‘And Preston Barnes,’ Diamond said. ‘Find out how they spent the rest of their interval. Did they go to their dressing rooms and stay there? Were they alone?’
‘Fräulein Schneider wasn’t,’ Halliwell said. ‘She had people with her trying to calm her down.’
‘Which people?’
‘Stagehands, she told me.’
‘We can’t ignore any of the crew,’ Ingeborg said. ‘They could have heard Fräulein Schneider panicking about the grey lady.’
‘The wardrobe woman,’ Halliwell said.
‘Not to forget the dramaturge,’ Fred Dawkins added. ‘He was with Schneider towards the end of the interval.’
‘Did you take his statement last night?’ Leaman asked.
‘No. I was Earping.’
‘What?’
‘Marshalling,’ Diamond said, not wanting a bout of wordplay at this stage. ‘Fred was making sure everyone got seen. Who was it who took Titus O’Driscoll’s statement?’
Halliwell raised his hand. ‘He told me the news of the grey lady’s appearance reached him in the Garrick’s Head and he went backstage for a first-hand account.’
‘Do you see what we’re up against?’ Leaman demanded, his hellfire preacher voice soaring. ‘The entire theatre was in on this. Some of the audience always step outside at the interval for a drag on a cigarette, so it was known on the streets as well. Any nutter could have gone up to the box and killed her.’
‘Get wise, John,’ Ingeborg said. ‘They didn’t know Clarion was in the building. Only three people knew that.’
‘And those three are firmly in the frame,’ Diamond said to get on track again. ‘We may be close to an arrest. I’m assigning Keith, Inge and Fred to getting the fullest possible profiles of our three main suspects – everything about them, their past, present and, above all, any link, however remote, to Clarion. And you don’t have to be too subtle about it. They know they’re under scrutiny.’
Fred Dawkins had heard his name and looked as if he’d won the lottery. ‘Which one is mine?’
‘That’s up to Keith.’
‘You can take Binns,’ Halliwell said at once.
‘I shall take him and dismantle him. No portion will go unexamined.’
‘Sounds painful.’
‘Not for me. I’m a fully fledged member of the team now.’
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Diamond said. ‘Let’s see how you cope.’
Then Georgina spoke. ‘Please bear in mind, Peter, that Sergeant Dawkins has a rehearsal tonight.’
He jerked back in disbelief. ‘Rehearsal? For what?’
‘Sweeney Todd. We’re doing a walk-through of the moves in the rehearsal rooms, the entire cast. As our choreographer, he’s indispensable.’
‘He’s on the strength, ma’am. We’re flat out on this murder enquiry.’
‘I appreciate that. I’ll speak to you presently.’
He felt his blood pressure rocket. He could protest, knowing he had right on his side, but it would get him nowhere. He hadn’t asked for Dawkins in the first place. The man was a pain, anyway. Let him do his bloody walk-through – walk through the door and out of CID for good.
With a huge effort, he controlled himself. ‘Let’s not lose sight of the other unexplained death at the theatre. There’s compelling evidence that Denise was not alone in the minutes before she fell to her death from the fly tower. I can’t at this moment see a definite link, but two violent deaths in two days make a double murder more likely than not.’
‘Post hoc, ergo propter hoc,’ a voice spoke up. It was Fred Dawkins.
‘Did you say something?’ Diamond asked, feeling a stronger throb in his veins.
‘Merely a warning to the unwary, guv,’ Dawkins said. ‘It’s Latin.’
‘What’s the use of that? We’re English.’
‘A rough translation would be: after this, therefore because of this. It articulates the fallacy that because one event follows another, it must be caused by the other. If, for example, a man eats some oysters and then gets indigestion, it may not be the oysters that were responsible. It may have been the rhubarb that he had as the dessert.’
‘I don’t what you’re on about.’
‘Perhaps it wasn’t a perfect analogy.’
‘Better shut up, then.’
‘I was trying to inject a note of caution about assuming a link between the deaths of Denise and Clarion.’
‘We heard,’ Diamond said and went back to addressing the meeting. ‘I was starting to say that the investigation into Denise’s death won’t be pushed into the background just because Clarion was a star performer. It’s still high priority. The so-called suicide note has gone for analysis and we should find out if it was genuine. From what we now know about Clarion’s self-harming, it appears Denise wasn’t responsible for the scarring, so she had no reason to blame herself.’
‘A double murder looks likely,’ Halliwell said. ‘Stuff the Latin.’
‘One more thing,’ Diamond said. ‘With all the media interest, we’re all of us liable to be approached by the press, by Clarion’s army of fans and every kind of snoop. Keep it buttoned, okay?’
The briefing over, he followed Georgina from the room and tapped her arm. ‘About Sergeant Dawkins…’
‘I hope you’re not going to make an issue of this, Peter.’
‘Either he’s on the squad or he isn’t.’
‘You’re right, of course,’ she conceded. ‘I spoke out of turn. It’s obvious that you’re fully stretched. But if you can see your way to releasing him for a couple of hours tonight I’ll make it up to you in human resources. We have some bright young bobbies in uniform keen to get CID experience.’
‘I’ll take Dawn Reed and George Pidgeon,’ he said at once.
Georgina looked surprised that he knew any names outside his own little empire. ‘Agreed.’ She moved at speed towards the stairs to her eyrie. She hated being outmanoeuvred.
I Am a Camera was forced to end its run prematurely. The theatre would be dark for the next two nights. Even Hedley Shearman admitted that to have carried on would be insensitive. The actors and crew were asked not to leave Bath, to be available for more questioning if required.
Alone in his office, Diamond studied printouts of the statements made by theatre staff on the morning after Clarion’s face was damaged. Thanks to PC Reed’s speed writing and Fred Dawkins’ faultless typing, they were lucid accounts, but they didn’t yield anything new. Both Shearman and Denise had acted responsibly after the incident, losing no time in getting Clarion to hospital. As for their backgrounds, there was nothing on Shearman and not much on Denise. No doubt Fred Dawkins had done most of the talking. All he’d learned from Denise was that she had been with the theatre six years. More information about previous jobs had come later from Kate in wardrobe, a secondary source, not so dependable. A proper check was a high priority, and best left to Halliwell and his team. More would definitely emerge.
In the calm at the eye of the storm, Diamond’s thoughts returned to his own early life and what lurked there. He’d heard nothing back from any of the police authorities he’d contacted about Flakey White.
He knew the resources existed online to make an identity check. Still uncomfortable using the computer, he knuckled down and found how to search the death registers for White’s unusual set of names. Nothing came of it.
If alive, the man would be in his seventies. Was he known in cyberspace?
When he Googled the full name, it gave several hundred so-called ‘hits’ that he could tell straight away were nothing to do with Flakey. The entire resources of the internet were no help.
Disappointed, his prejudice against computers justified, he sat back and tried thinking of another way of tracing an ex-teacher with a prison record.
Then he remembered something Mike Glazebrook had said. It had barely sunk in at the time, such had been the shock of hearing about White’s court case.