Folly Du Jour - Barbara Cleverly [90]
‘As soon as I can get back up to the lab! Focusing! That could save them a bit of time!’
‘That policeman! Is he still in the building?’
The voice boomed out from the rear of the stage. Urgent. Powerful. Alarmed.
‘We’re up here, Monsieur Derval,’ Simenon called back. ‘Just finishing in the box. I have two inspectors with me – one Police Judiciaire, the other Scotland Yard.’
‘The more the merrier. Bring the Grand Old Duke of York as well if you’ve got him. Quickly! To Josephine’s room.’
The figure exited at speed, stage left, pursued, Joe would have sworn, by all three Furies.
Joe checked his watch.
Their escort turned an anxious face to them and he muttered something abstractedly, indicating that they should follow him. So evident was his concern, Joe speculated that the young man’s relationship with the star was warmer than he had declared. It wouldn’t have been surprising. Josephine was rumoured to enjoy a vigorous and fast-changing series of romantic involvements. But if the reporter had been a fixture in her frantic life for over a year, he must occupy a position of some trust and intimacy.
He led them at an ankle-breaking pace down staircases and along narrow corridors, burrowing always deeper into the vast unseen reaches of the theatre. They swept through gaggles of girls, practising steps and formations in any space they could find, skirted around others standing rigidly enduring the pinning up and repair of flimsy costumes. Someone threw a tap shoe along with a curse at them as they blundered by. Finally, they climbed a spiral staircase which brought them out on the level of the dressing rooms. The first three rooms were crowded with dozens of girls with sweaty towels round their necks, offering greasy faces to over-bright mirrors, dipping fingers into pots of Crowe’s Cremine or peering closely to apply layers of Leichner make-up. They were screeching at each other in English, breaking off to shout louche invitations to the three men as they hurried by. All perfectly normal behaviour. Joe felt he could have been backstage at the London Palladium. Nothing untoward going on here.
At the end of the corridor, a group of three men stood guard in front of the closed door of the star’s dressing room. They were agitated. They did not wait for introductions. One, the director, Derval, who’d boomed at them from the stage, put a hand on the door knob.
‘Come in quietly! No fuss please! We haven’t disturbed or touched anything. We’ll stay outside until you call us. This is Alex, our stage manager. He found her.’ He nodded to one of his companions. ‘He went to check whether she’d arrived yet.’
Simenon frowned and chewed his lower lip but said nothing.
‘You’d better go in with them, Georges,’ Derval added, touching the man’s shoulder gently.
She was lying in the middle of the room, on her front on the floor with the back of her glossy black head to the door. Her high-heeled shoes had fallen off. They were green satin, exactly matching the shining cocktail dress that had slid up, revealing brown thighs and strong calves. Joe at first wondered whether the room had been ransacked. Everything was in disorder. Clothes and stage costumes hung from every picture rail and spilled from open couturiers’ boxes littering the floor, towels were draped on every chair back. There was a stench, overpowering and at first inexplicable. A potent cocktail of death and dung. Joe wrinkled his nose, trying to identify the elements. A farmyard? A zoo? And then he noticed the menagerie. In cages and boxes, small animal faces pushed forward, grunting, growling, mewing, sensing their presence, eager for attention. Dog, cat, two rabbits, a small goat, a leopard cub asleep on a cushion in a cardboard box, and – Good Lord! – a snake, thankfully securely boxed.
Well, that at least explained the trail of cereal of some sort