Payment in Blood (Inspector Lynley, #2)(81)

BY FOUR O’CLOCK that afternoon, the company assembled at the Agincourt Theatre had, after seven hours of politics and debate, settled on a playwright for the theatre’s opening production: Tennessee Williams, a revival piece. The play itself was still open to discussion.

From the back of the auditorium, St. James observed the group on the stage. They had narrowed the field down to the relative merits of three possibilities, and from what St. James could tell, things were swinging in Joanna Ellacourt’s direction. She was arguing strongly against A Streetcar Named Desire, her aversion to it rising, it seemed, out of a quick calculation of how much stage time Irene Sinclair would have if, however incongruously, she played Stella. There appeared to be no doubt at all as to the casting of Blanche Dubois.

Lord Stinhurst had been displaying a remarkable degree of patience for the quarter hour that St. James had been watching. In an unusual display of magnanimity, he had allowed all the players, the designers, the director, and the assistants to have their say about the crisis facing the company and the pressing need to get into production as soon as possible. Now, he got to his feet, kneading his fingers into the small of his back.

“You’ll have my decision tomorrow,” he told them. “We’ve been together long enough for now. Let’s meet again in the morning. At half past nine. Be ready to read.”

“No hints for us, Stuart?” Joanna Ellacourt asked, stretching languorously and leaning back in her chair so that her hair fell like a shimmering gold veil in the light. Next to her, Robert Gabriel affectionately ran three fingers down its length.

“None at all, I’m afraid,” Lord Stinhurst replied. “I’ve not quite made up my mind.”

Joanna smiled up at him, moving her shoulder to disengage Gabriel’s hand from her hair. “Tell me what I can do to persuade you to decide in my favour, darling.”

Gabriel gave a low, guttural laugh. “Take her up on it, Stuart. God knows our darling Jo excels at persuading.”

No one spoke for a moment in answer to that remark, fully laced though it was with innuendo. No one even moved at first, save for David Sydeham, who raised his head slowly from the script he was examining and levelled his eyes on the other man. His face was deadly, rife with hostility, but Gabriel did not seem the least affected.

Rhys Davies-Jones threw down his own script. “Christ, you’re an ass,” he said to Gabriel wearily.

“And I once thought Rhys and I would never agree upon anything,” Joanna added.

Irene Sinclair moved her chair back from the table. Harshly, it abraded the stage floor. “Right. Well. I’ll be off.” She spoke agreeably enough before making her exit down the main aisle of the theatre. But when she passed St. James, he saw how she was working to control her face, and he wondered how and why she had ever endured a marriage to Robert Gabriel.

While the other players, the assistants, and the designers began to drift off towards the wings, St. James got to his feet and went to the front of the auditorium. It was not overlarge, perhaps seating only five hundred people, and a grey haze of stale cigarette smoke hung over its open thrust stage. He mounted the steps.

“Have you a moment, Lord Stinhurst?”

Stinhurst was having a low-voiced conversation with a spindly young man who carried a clipboard and wrote with knotted concentration. “See to it that we’ve enough copies for tomorrow’s read-through,” he said in conclusion. Only then did he look up.

“So you lied to them about not having your mind made up,” St. James observed.

Stinhurst didn’t reply to this at once. Rather, he called out, “We’ve no need for all this light now, Donald,” and in answer the stage leaped with cavernous shadows. Only the table itself was illuminated. Stinhurst sat down at it, took out pipe and tobacco, and laid them both down.

“Sometimes it’s easier to lie,” he admitted. “I’m afraid it’s one of the behaviours a producer grows adept at over time. If you’ve ever been in the midst of a tug-of-war of creative egos, you’d know what I mean.”

“This seems to be a particularly inflammable group.”

“It’s understandable. They’ve been through a bit of hell these past three days.” Stinhurst packed his pipe. His shoulders were stiff, a marked contrast to the weariness of his voice and face. “I don’t imagine this is a social call, Mr. St. James.”

St. James handed him the stack of enlargements which Deborah had made from the photograph taken at Geoffrey Rintoul’s inquest. On each new photograph appeared a single face and occasionally part of a torso, but nothing else. There was nothing to indicate that the people had once all been part of one group. Deborah had been particularly careful about that.

“Will you identify these people for me?” St. James asked.

Stinhurst fingered through the lot, turning each one slowly, his pipe ignored. St. James could see the marked hesitation in his movements, and he wondered if the man would actually cooperate. Stinhurst was no doubt well aware of the fact that he was not obliged to reveal a thing. Nonetheless, he also appeared to know exactly how a refusal to respond would be interpreted by Lynley if he learned of it. So St. James only hoped that Stinhurst believed he was here in some official capacity at Lynley’s behest. After a thorough perusal, the man laid all the photographs out in a line and indicated each as he spoke.