Death in the Stars Read online

  Beryl bit her lip. ‘They probably thought me a queer old bird when I rang the hospital again during the interval. Just to be sure. First the news from Mrs Shackleton, and then Mr Brockett rang back to make sure and then me. Billy was so well, you see.’

  Why hadn’t I already decided what to say? In danger of being induced into a stupor, I took in the drapes of velvet and silk. It struck me that theatre people are particularly partial to buying glamour by the yard, the glamour that must sometimes seem in short supply when the curtain goes down and theatre lights dim. Yet all the silk and velvet in the world would not soften the harsh reality of Billy’s death.

  ‘I wish it were wrong, or a mistake. But I sat with him. He didn’t regain consciousness.’

  Selina closed her eyes and crossed herself, as if now she finally believed the truth. I have seen before what happens to a person as bad news slowly sinks in. Something invisible detaches and floats away. Whatever it is can’t be seen. The person sits in almost the same way, moves in almost the same way but breathes a little differently and is somehow diminished.

  The air felt sucked from the room. Ceiling and walls moved closer. The dark red silk and velvet throws cried blood.

  Selina’s breathing was suddenly a kind of rasp, a chasing after air. Beryl poured her a cup of black tea from a flask. It smelled of lemon and honey.

  Selina pressed her hands on the dressing table. ‘I should have stayed with him.’

  I said nothing. How strongly had I dissuaded her from staying? Too strongly perhaps, but at that moment the events of the morning became a blur. The image blotting out all else was of Billy, lying forever still.

  Beryl chipped in. ‘By all accounts there’s nothing you could have done. Billy wouldn’t want you to upset yourself.’

  Selina shrugged off Beryl’s remark. ‘How do you know what Billy would have wanted? How do any of us know?’

  Beryl stood. ‘There’ll be a crowd out there. I’ll send them packing.’

  ‘Don’t! They also loved Billy.’

  Beryl spoke somewhat sharply. ‘They think they do. They didn’t know him, no more than they know you.’ She picked up some autograph books, checked that they had been signed, and moved to go.

  ‘Don’t send them away.’

  ‘It’s started to rain.’

  ‘They won’t mind the rain.’

  Mr Brockett chose that moment to knock and come in. ‘Are you ready, Selina? Shall I fetch the car?’

  ‘Trotter, let me alone for now. Let me talk to Mrs Shackleton.’

  ‘Of course! I’ll leave you two ladies together.’ He closed the door gently as he followed Beryl into the corridor.

  Selina looked down at the spilled powder on her dressing table. ‘Now I’ve upset Beryl. She’s known Billy as long as I have.’ She then turned to me. ‘I don’t understand. What happened? How could he just die?’

  I chose my words carefully. ‘I don’t know. There’ll be a post mortem.’ I did not want to share my suspicions. She should give me a clue, a hint as to how much she wanted to know at this moment. ‘He was made comfortable. The ward sister let me sit by his bed. That was unusual. It was kind and I appreciated it.’

  ‘Did he know you were there?’

  ‘I like to think he did. I held his hand, spoke of you, said you cared for him.’

  ‘I should have been with him.’

  ‘You couldn’t. He would have known that.’

  ‘Did he respond? Did he know you were holding his hand?’

  ‘I’m sure even in the depths of unconsciousness a person can be aware of not being alone. He showed no distress.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Taking off my hat, I rubbed my fingers through my hair. The action might bring my brain back to life.

  She repeated her words. ‘I don’t understand. Trotter arranged for Jimmy Diamond to stand in. Did he know about Billy before I did?’

  ‘I believe he arranged for a replacement when he knew Billy had been taken into hospital. I expect Beryl telephoned Mr Brockett when you arrived back from Giggleswick alone this morning. I suppose that’s when he made the arrangement with Jimmy Diamond.’

  I avoided saying what time I had given news of Billy’s death to Beryl. Beryl had used her judgement and let Selina sleep before she told her.

  ‘Trotter makes sure that everything and everyone works to the show’s advantage.’ She picked up a hairbrush and put it down again. ‘I can’t believe it. I knew when I saw him on that stretcher that he wouldn’t be performing just yet, perhaps for a long while, but he’s a bouncer-back. I told the airmen that. Billy bounces back. I felt sure he’d be on his feet again.’

  Not having known Billy, except recently, I wondered how right she was. He had struck me as one of those people who are high as the sky or in the dumps and what helped him to fly high might be what caused his downfall.

  Selina closed her eyes. ‘Billy, poor Billy. He came through the war, and there was never a day when he was without pain, but he would have kept on keeping on. I know that.’ With closed eyes, she leaned forward, holding her jaw. ‘What happened? It couldn’t have been whatever was in that damn pillbox, could it?’

  ‘No. You were right that it contained antacid tablets. The doctor will issue a death certificate. Before that we’ll be just guessing.’

  ‘Did you have to stay to make some arrangements?’

  ‘Not arrangements, no. It’s too soon for that.’

  ‘What then?’ She looked at me, full of sympathy. ‘You’d been up all night and then sat with him. Did you go home and rest?’

  She was calculating the time, and remembering that I had encouraged her to go back in the aeroplane.

  ‘We’re both tired. Shall we talk about this tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m sorry. You haven’t slept. Was it difficult to get back, the trains and so on?’

  ‘Not very.’

  ‘Then there’s something else, something you’re not telling me. You’re a nurse. You were with him, talked to the doctor. What is it? What are you keeping back from me?’

  It was bad enough that her friend had died, and annoying that Ernest Brownlaw had not been in touch about having tested the cigar.

  ‘I asked the head boy to show me the spot where he and his friends found Billy, that’s all.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘He said that Billy joined in for a few minutes when they were dancing a fandango, and then he took out a cigar and went round the side of the chapel.’

  ‘That explains why he walked away. He knows I hate cigar smoke.’

  She pressed her face in her hands. Either she had forgotten that she had taken off her make-up, or had not done it to her own satisfaction. She picked up a piece of cotton wool and wiped her mascara. ‘You know I have my suspicions about Dougie Dougan’s and Floyd’s deaths. Am I going mad or is there something suspicious here too?’

  ‘When you called on me, you only asked me to arrange the flight. You were very vague when you said that something bad might happen.’

  ‘Yes I know.’

  ‘It was only later that you mentioned suspicions regarding other deaths. I’ll look into everything if that is what you wish. When and if there is something to tell you, I won’t hold back. But please don’t ask me to say more now.’

  ‘But I must, at least about Billy. He took morphine for the pain. Might it have been that?’

  ‘There will be a post mortem.’

  ‘You said that. But I have to know. You see, he would ask me to inject him sometimes. He did on that morning. We found a spot in the school where we weren’t seen.’

  ‘You made the injection in the neck.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘There was a mark.’

  ‘But it was his usual injection, nothing more, nothing less.’

  It was not up to me to advise her to keep quiet about the fact that she injected him. Instead, I said, ‘If you had not, he would have done it himself, wouldn’t he?’


  ‘Yes.’

  It was sometimes difficult to be precise in measuring, or the morphine may have been stronger than usual but I kept those thoughts to myself. If she was asked to speak about the events of that morning in a coroner’s court, that would be the time to admit to administering morphine.

  ‘If he asked you to do it, and that was what he usually took, then don’t reproach yourself.’

  ‘I can’t help thinking I could have killed him. But we all stood around for ages after that, shivering and waiting for the clouds to part. Why did he just walk away? He could have said he was going for a smoke. Perhaps he felt ill then.’

  ‘We can’t know.’

  ‘I knew he had a cigar in his pocket. He was going to light up as a celebration when the sky stayed cloudy and everyone else was disappointed. But he had nothing to celebrate. He hoped for failure, because that would be sad funny.’

  ‘Did he often smoke cigars?’

  ‘No, he was a gaspers man. He stuck to the cigs he’d always smoked, but never near me.’

  ‘I wonder where he picked up a cigar?’

  ‘Who knows? Trotter dishes them out occasionally.’

  Later there might be a way of finding out. If I asked now, my question would screech suspicion.

  Now that I thought about it, away from Giggleswick and the excitement, horror and exhaustion of the day, I realised that it would be a difficult matter to explain my actions to a coroner’s officer.

  All the worst possible outcomes flitted through my mind. I would be an interfering female, tampering with evidence, or a crank. In the event of even a cursory investigation, there would be a no-smoke-without-fire scandal for Giggleswick School, the disciplining of the head boy if our laboratory capers came to light, and a shadow cast on the day’s achievements.

  She sighed. A look of enormous sadness and pity came into her eyes. ‘I didn’t think it would be Billy.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s not right. Something isn’t right and I can’t say what.’

  ‘Selina, that’s why I’m here. But I can’t help unless you talk to me.’

  ‘Jarrod will have to know about Billy.’

  ‘Jarrod, your husband?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where is Jarrod?’

  ‘I don’t know. But he was here, in the theatre. He left something for me.’ She slid several sheets of folded paper from under a box of powder and pushed them towards me.

  At that moment, Beryl came back into the room. She took her coat from the hanger. ‘Trotter has brought the car round.’ She turned off the gas fire. She unplugged the iron before walking round the room, picking up a scarf and a shawl which she placed on hangers. Selina had dropped a piece of cotton wool. Beryl put it in the waste basket. ‘I’ll be downstairs.’

  ‘We’ll be down in a minute, Beryl.’ Selina turned to me. ‘Come back to the house with me, Kate. There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.’

  Eighteen

  Shadows in Limelight

  I agreed to go back to Selina’s house. Apart from being intrigued by whatever she wanted to tell me, and needing to know just what was going on, my car was still on her drive from the evening before when I had driven to her eclipse party.

  While Selina changed, I picked up the pages that she had pushed towards me and that were folded and refolded until the whole was a tight little square. I unfolded the sheets of paper slowly, in the way you might release a cut-out newspaper doll if you suspected you had snipped in the wrong place.

  She fastened her dress. ‘Only he would fold something so small, as if trying to make it disappear, as if pretending it almost didn’t matter.’

  I smoothed the pages on the dressing table, blowing away the dusting of face powder. ‘Read it, Kate. Tell me what kind of person would write that.’

  It was written on graph paper such as a mathematician might use. The writing was tiny, fitting into the squares, forming a neat pattern. At the top of the page were drawn little scenes, matchstick men, women and children, street lamps, an ice cream cart. The pictures followed on from each other, comic strip style. There was a title, Shadows in Limelight.

  The opening was in the form of a verse.

  From shadows into light

  Brightness follows night

  You slide from me collide with me

  Never ever to let me be, let me be

  There were more verses. Though cramped writing made them difficult to read, I was drawn in by the language and the images. It was a story of love and loss. I turned the pages, trying to get the gist of the piece. More poems followed, numbered but out of order, as if they were meant to fit somewhere. A boy meets girl narrative unfolded. The lovers lose each other, not when he goes to war but when he returns. One needed a magnifying glass for this. I began simply to look at the headings of paragraphs. Hardship. Separation. War. Injury. Reconciliation.

  Selina, now dressed and ready to go, was watching me.

  I handed the papers back to her. ‘You asked me what kind of person wrote it, but since it was left by your husband it must be by him. Is he a poet? An author?’

  ‘They are songs. Jarrod writes the music and lyrics of all my songs, the ones that are credited to me.’

  The penny dropped. She was known for songs about working-class girls and women and their lives and sang these with great conviction because she knew the struggles and the laughs at first hand. She could cross over from romantic to vulgar with a toss of her head. Everyone thought she wrote the songs herself.

  ‘Then this is a play with music?’

  ‘Yes. He has already written the music. He told me so last night.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘At the party. Oh, he didn’t come in to meet people, not wanting to talk to strangers. He was staying the night, tucking himself away in my sitting room to write a clean copy and leave this one for me.’

  ‘The songs are wonderful and the story is a classic. Even though I only looked at it quickly, I could see it coming to life before my eyes. It’s just that it’s presented in this very odd way in such tiny writing on graph paper.’

  ‘It will all make perfect sense.’ She gave a slightly scoffing sound. ‘His writing and his compositions will make sense. Nothing else will.’

  She need not have shown me this material now, not unless there was some connection between this and her distress at Billy’s death.

  ‘Is this a musical play?’ I wondered whether it was the piece that Trotter Brockett hoped to bring to the London stage, with Billy starring opposite Selina.

  ‘Shall we go? I’ll tell you about it at the house.’

  I picked up my coat.

  She switched off the lights as we left. ‘I wonder if Jarrod knows about Billy, or if he knew that Billy was going to die?’

  ‘How could he have known?’

  We walked along the dimly lit corridor. ‘He and Billy were great friends from a young age. They served together in the Leeds Pals regiment. Billy was best man at our wedding.’

  My brain ticked over slowly. Either she believed Billy had confided that he would commit suicide and make it look accidental, or she believed that Jarrod had a hand in Billy’s death. Or she simply thought Jarrod needed to know.

  She walked ahead of me down the flight of stairs. ‘Are you still willing to help me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Jarrod was badly hurt in the war. He was disfigured and left with a lot of pain. He has had very good treatment and kept his humour all the way through. Recently, he’s changed, changed utterly. It’s almost a Jekyll and Hyde thing where some other angry, vicious creature inhabits his soul, and then departs.’

  Trotter Brockett and Beryl were waiting in the stage door area. Brockett embraced Selina and kissed her cheek. He escorted her to where her fans waited by the Swan Street door. Beryl and I followed in the slipstream of her glory. With practised professionalism she exchanged words and accepted condolences on Billy’s loss.

  ‘Does Bill
y leave a family behind?’ someone asked.

  Selina sighed. ‘No, and that is both a sadness and a blessing.’

  With that, she was ushered by Beryl into the Bentley.

  A silent figure in black appeared from the shadows and climbed into the front seat beside the driver. It was Sandy Sechrest.

  Mr Brockett wished us goodnight and set off to walk to his hotel.

  Selina slid across the wide back seat to make room for me. Beryl went round to the other door and climbed in, she and I sitting on either side of Selina.