Cuthbert's Way (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #17)(57)

Phillips nodded.

“If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. Life isn’t all black and white. We can hate what she did, and still feel sorry about the fact she went off her chump.”

MacKenzie felt laughter bubble up in her throat. “Frank?”

“What’s that, love?”

“Never change.”





CHAPTER 29


After an abortive attempt to locate Andrew Duggan-West in his college rooms, they finally caught up with him at the university’s Student Theatre, which was based from the Assembly Rooms on North Bailey, a street running directly parallel to Palace Green and within spitting distance of the cathedral. The theatre itself was over one hundred and fifty years old, but it had been modernised during the intervening years to create a performing arts space for the bright young things who came through its doors and was now a trendy arts venue boasting comedy, drama, dance and more.

Lowerson and Yates made their way inside and, finding the foyer empty, carried on through to the auditorium, following the sound of crashing seas and wailing voices through a door marked, ‘STALLS’.

“Now, would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground, long heath, brown furze, anything. The wills above be done! But I would fain die a dry death…”

They listened to a young man who had been dressed to look older, complete with false beard and sixteenth-century seafarer’s costume, prance about the stage, gesticulating wildly.

“Wonder what he’s tryin’ to do,” Lowerson whispered.

“I think he must be Gonzalo, from Shakespeare’s The Tempest,” Yates whispered back.

“I know that—I was wondering whether he was trying to murder it…”

She gave him a sharp jab in the ribs.

“I haven’t seen you treading any boards, lately,” she said.

Shh!

A young man in his mid or late twenties shushed them, and then, with an irritable clap of his hands, called the rehearsal to a halt.

“Stop! Everybody stop!” he called out, and the actors came to an abrupt halt, peering through the glare of the stage lights to see what had caused the disruption.

“Uh-oh,” Lowerson said, and wondered if they could make a speedy getaway.

The young man moved swiftly along the row of red velvet seats and the two detectives braced themselves to receive the brunt of an artistic temperament.

“It’s the height of rudeness to interrupt a dress rehearsal,” he raged. “Even worse to talk through it. Who the hell do you think you are?”

They might have felt suitably chastised, were it not for the distracting nature of his apparel—dressed in tight black jeans, a billowing white shirt and leather blazer, complete with a silk headscarf and black fedora hat, they might have been talking to a Cap’n Jack Sparrow lookalike.

Lowerson was tempted to ask him where all the rum had gone.

“We’re very sorry to have disturbed your rehearsal,” Yates said, reaching for her warrant card. “Unfortunately, it can’t be helped. DC Yates and DC Lowerson, Northumbria CID. We’re here to speak to Andrew Duggan-West. Can you tell us if he’s here, please?”

The young man went very pale.

“I—I’m he. Him. I mean, that’s me.”

Yates smiled, indulgently.

“Do you have five or ten minutes to spare us, please?”

“Ah—can’t it wait? No, no, I suppose not,” he muttered. “Just a sec, let me wrap this up and I’ll be with you.”

Lowerson and Yates made themselves comfortable on a couple of theatre seats, and watched him hurry off down the aisle to disband the company, at least for the present.

A moment later, he returned, and the sound effects reel was turned off.

“What did you think of it?” he asked, unwisely.

Lowerson scrambled about for something to say that wasn’t scathing but, thankfully, Yates came to his rescue.

“The Bard is always great material to work with, isn’t it?”

This non-answer seemed to appease him, for Andrew broke into a wide smile and nodded vigorously.

“I always say, ‘less is more’ when interpreting Shakespeare,” he said, without any irony whatsoever. “In fact—”

They judged it a wise moment to forestall a lengthy discussion on the topic of Shakespearean interpretation.

“Thank you again for making time for us, Mr Duggan-West,” Lowerson interjected. “We appreciate your time is precious, so we’ll come straight to the point. We’re investigating a number of serious crimes pertaining to the relics of St. Cuthbert and, in the course of our investigations, your name has come up in relation to the renovation works that were undertaken at the Cathedral three years ago. Do you know why that might be?”

Andrew raised his eyebrows—or would have done if he’d had any, for they had been shaved off and all that remained was the vague shadow of where they might once have been.

“Well, I suppose it’s to do with my research about the Deanery,” he said, settling down to an in-depth chat. “I read History of Art at undergraduate level, and I went on to write my postgraduate thesis about the twelfth century frescoes of St. Cuthbert and King Oswald in the cathedral. My postdoctoral research was an extension of that, really; exploring the pomp and pageantry of the Dean’s residence from around the twelfth century, which was much more impressive than was traditionally the case. Originally, the prior would have had a bed in the communal monks’ dormitory, you see. No more and no less than the rest of his brothers, in accordance with the Rule of St. Benedict. But, after the mid-1200s, the Dean must have decided that he preferred his own residence and, judging from some of the fifteenth century frescoes we uncovered beneath years of ordinary emulsion, successive deans had even more lavish notions.”