Roots of Evil(20)

‘What’s over there?’ said Edmund, abruptly.

‘Doors to the dressing-room section, I should think.’ Liam’s footsteps echoed uncannily as he walked to the far side, threading his way through the dust-sheeted shapes, and moving around the jumbled piles of furniture. After a moment he called back, ‘Yes, I think they are dressing-rooms – there’re four, no, five of them. Two fairly small ones – star dressing-rooms, I should think – and three large ones. Probably communal. Loo and washroom in between. Oh, and there’s what looks like an abandoned wardrobe-room as well, but I wouldn’t recommend going inside that unless you feel like being sick: the smell’s appalling.’

‘Mice and damp, I daresay,’ said Trixie briskly. ‘Especially if there’re any clothes still stored in there.’

‘You’re probably right,’ said Liam, coming back. ‘Listen now, I’m going to leave you to it if that’s all right. You’ve got the address of my office, haven’t you, in case you need it? It’s only a couple of miles from here.’

‘I’ll bring the keys back,’ said Edmund.

‘No need. It’s a Yale lock, so you can slam the door when you leave.’

‘You don’t suspect us of having a van parked discreetly outside to load the entire contents on to it and flog them in a street market?’ asked Edmund.

‘I hadn’t thought about it. Do you have contacts within street markets?’ inquired Liam politely, which was a remark Edmund chose to ignore.

‘How late can we stay?’ asked Trixie.

‘You can stay here until the last trump sounds for all I care. But it’ll start to get dark around four, and you won’t be able to see much at all then.’ He moved to the door. ‘Also,’ said Liam, ‘I’m reliably informed that the ghosts come out when the darkness closes down.’





CHAPTER SIX




Trixie Smith was glad when that buttoned-up iceberg, Edmund Fane, rather pointedly consulted his watch, sighed a couple of times, and finally said if she wanted to stay for a while he would leave her to it. He really should be getting back, he said. Was there any reason why Trixie could not pull the door to when she left, making sure that the Yale lock clicked down?

There was no reason at all, and Trixie would far rather make her notes and scout around, working out who had died where, without being watched by Mister Fish-Eyes. So she said she reckoned she could manage to close the door securely.

‘You won’t mind being on your own in here? It’s a bit eerie.’ He glanced round as he said this, and Trixie even thought he repressed a slight shiver. Ha! A gleam of humanity at last. But she said briskly that anywhere would be a bit eerie in the middle of a field on a dark November afternoon. ‘I’m not expecting to encounter any lurking ghosts if that’s what you mean.’

‘Ah. No, of course not. Well, in that case,’ said Edmund, ‘I’ll leave you to it. Goodbye. Good luck with the thesis.’

‘Thanks. Thanks for setting this up, as well.’


‘It was my pleasure,’ he said, which was a whopping great fib if Trixie had ever heard one because it had not been his pleasure at all, in fact he had stonewalled her from the start, and she would just like to know what had caused his change of heart: Edmund Fane did not strike her as a man who would do anyone a favour without first calculating what return he was likely to get. She watched him go out, and heard him close the outer door, and then turned her attention to plotting the exact layout of Studio Twelve. The thesis was going to incorporate a plan showing where the murders had actually happened. Neat and businesslike and informative. Now then. Conrad Kline had been killed in the wardrobe-room; Leo Dreyer in Lucretia’s dressing-room. Better look at both places. Wardrobe-room first.

Liam Devlin had been right about one thing at any rate; the wardrobe-room stank of damp and decay. Even so, Trixie stood for a moment looking into the dark cavernous interior, remembering that this was where Conrad had lain dying and that his bloodied handprints had been smeared over one of the walls. He was supposed to have dragged himself to the wall dividing this room from the baroness’s dressing-rooms, and tapped feebly on the wall, in the hope that someone would hear and come to his aid. But no one had done so because they had all been scurrying around summoning ambulances and police.

Leo Dreyer had been the financier for the film they had been making, and Trixie, reading the reports, had received the impression of a rather calculating man, probably given to patting the bottoms of wide-eyed would-be starlets, and lubriciously murmuring in their ears, I could do a lot for you, my pretty dear…She had not much liked the sound of Mr Leo Dreyer, although you would not wish his death on anyone.

Measuring up so that the plan would be to scale was difficult in the near-dark. There was a faint glimmer of light from the boarded-up windows, but even at high noon they would not provide more than a thread of daylight. Trixie had brought a tape measure, but she had not brought a torch. There was one in her car, but it was still raining hard and she did not fancy trekking back across the mud-fields. She would try to manage with the light there was.

She came back into the main studio and looked around. It really was an appallingly desolate place. Before she set off, Francesca Holland, who was staying with Trixie at the moment, had asked if it was really worth making the journey – all that way, and in the middle of a November rainstorm, Fran had said, peering doubtfully at the weather. Still, if it had really been such a cause célébre…