Ten Down (3/3)

“Well?” I said.

My daughter Maureen marched in and put a big fat folder on the kitchen table.

“Five.”

We exchanged a glance. I was shocked, she was triumphant.

“Tea?” I said, picking up the teapot with the knitted-flower cosy on it. The tea leaves had been steeping in the pot since I got her text five minutes earlier.

“Please. So,” she said, sitting down and opening the folder. “All five of them auditioned and were turned down for The Death of a Salesman. All five kicked up a fuss and at least two are as weird as they come.”

“Well, that’s not exactly surprising. I mean, we have our fair share of eccentrics in this town.”

“Joan Firth, the director’s assistant, sat in on all the auditions and was responsible for filing everything away. I said I wanted copies of the files and she said it wasn’t strictly allowed but she’d look the other way because she’s that fed up with the situation. As you’ll see, she was having trouble with this lot even before the murders started.”

I realized something.

“If she was auditioning people—isn’t she in a dangerous position?”

“Exactly,” said Maureen. “She’s terrified she’ll be the next victim. In fact, part of the reason she gave me access to the file is that I offered her our cottage in Karitane. She’s living there now.”

“Good girl,” I said. Maureen always was practical.

“So who do we have on that list? Anyone I know?” I asked.

“First up there’s Tilda Hoff. Quite young, about thirty. Joan says she’s really a very talented actress and originally did get the part. Unfortunately, though, the week before opening night she had some kind of an episode—I’m not totally clear what—and had to be hospitalized for two months. She was extremely upset at losing the part because it was her biggest role to date. She sent some very nasty letters to Rosie. She did later apologize for that, though.”

“Sounds like a likely candidate. Who else is there?”

“A man named Jeremy McKinney. Again, Joan said he’s an excellent actor but didn’t quite fit the bill. In the end they were relieved they didn’t give the part to him because he made a royal pain of himself afterwards—unbearably arrogant and entitled. He wouldn’t let the matter rest and even threated to take the case to court.”

“What for?”

“Oh, he was arguing that he’d been overlooked and ought to have been hired instead of the principal. Obviously, he didn’t have a leg to stand on. There was one occasion where he confronted Rosie in sight when Joan was in the room—hands closed up into fists and him looming over her. They were both afraid it would get physical. He appeared very angry, out of control.”

“He didn’t actually hit her?”

“No, but her tyres were slashed shortly afterwards and they both thought it was him who’d done it.”

“Go on.”

“Next on the list is a disappointed starlet named Yasmin Sugarlump. Not a trained actress but a raging extrovert. She likes to be front and center of anything public. Can’t paint worth a damn but holds art exhibitions, can’t sing or play but plays the ukulele on George Street in outlandish outfits, can’t act but…you get the picture. Flamboyance personified.”

“Oh yes, I know the woman you mean! I see her in the paper sometimes.”

“She did her audition in a bright-yellow ballgown and Rosie was rather abrupt with her. Told her she was wasting their time. Yasmin didn’t like that and retaliated in an underhand way. She spoke to the theater manager and accused Rosie of sexual harassment, which was blatantly ridiculous. Nothing came of it, but it was unpleasant. It got Rosie down even more than the Jeremy McKinney business. She couldn’t stand bullies, you see, and to be accused of that was hard for her.”

“OK. So we have number one Tilda Hoff who had a breakdown and wrote poison-pen letters, number two Jeremy McKinney the overbearing gorilla and number three Yasmin Sugarlump the drama queen who resorted to slander as a weapon. Two to go…”

“The next one’s a strange one. Stuart Forbes. In his fifties, painfully shy. According to Joan he seemed never to have acted before. God knows what made him come to the audition. Apart from the fact that he looked like Humpty Dumpty, he read in a monotone, flubbed his lines and was just generally dreadful. Joan said they had enormous trouble keeping a straight face through the whole thing. They’d joked about what had made him come in the first place—had his mother made him do it? He did seem like the sort of bachelor whose elderly mother still did his ironing for him.”

“Did he get upset at Rosie too?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“And one more?”

“Yes, that’s Tim Gupta. He was definitely bitter about being turned down, which we know because he’s since become a big soap star in Australia. He gave an interview about being turned down for a role in Death of a Salesman and that’s why he moved to Australia in the first place. He called it a blessing in disguise, though obviously it rankled quite a bit if he’s telling journalists about it.”

“Wouldn’t he have been in Oz when the murders happened?”

“I checked. He was back home here visiting his family.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. So far, from the practical point of view, it could have been any one of them really. Pending alibis.”

“We have to tell Doug about this,” I said.

“He’s still mad at you isn’t he? I doubt if he’ll like us sneaking around behind his back being amateur sleuths.”

“What about if we just sent him an anonymous tip-- ‘concerned citizens’ sort of thing?”

Maureen looked doubtful.

“I don’t know mum, I suppose it’s better than you going around shooting special tactics guys?”

“Oh, that boy’s all right,” I snapped. “Flesh wound. I sent him flowers, anyway.”

“I guess we could send Doug a letter,” she said at last. “I’ll pop it in the post today.”

Two days later I was woken from an afternoon nap by someone ringing the doorbell for far too long. I thought it was the nextdoor kids playing silly buggers again. I threw my dressing gown on and grabbed a super-soaker that I always keep at the ready for such occasions. The bell was still ringing when I threw the kitchen window open and let loose at the culprits with a good strong jet of water.

I heard a deep voice swear loudly and that gave me pause. Not the kids, then. A bit embarrassing. Ah well, my mailbox did say ‘No solicitors’…

I went to the front door, pulled the blinds open a bit and was dismayed to see Doug standing there, shirt so wet it was transparent, beard dripping, face like thunder.

I took a deep breath and opened the door.

“Is violence your answer to everything now?” he snapped.

“Come in, I’ll get you a towel,” I said. “I didn’t know it was you; I thought it was those kids.”

“So you’re in the habit of assaulting children too...Why does that not surprise me?” He took off his shoes.

“Come into the bathroom, I’ll bring you one of Hal’s old shirts.”

When he was back out in the kitchen I had tears swimming in my eyes and my chin was quivering. I was overcome with emotion.

“I just want to say up front,” I said, “I’m so sorry and really glad to see you. I was afraid you’d never forgive me.” I patted his hand cautiously.

He drew his hand back.

“Of course I forgive you Deborah. That’s not the point. You put a man’s life in danger, you could have cost me my job, you could have spent the rest of your life in jail.”

“I know, I know,” I nodded. “Believe me, I know what a fool I was. There’s no excuse.”

“I hear you say that,” he shook his head, “But what’s this I find this in the mail today?” He held up an envelope and I immediately realized it must be the suspect profiles that Maureen had sent him.”

“What is it?” I said, pretending innocence.

“Well,” he said, staring at me, “It looks like some anonymous member of the public has taken it upon herself to do my job for me.”

“Oh,” I said. “You guessed it was me then.”

He waited. I threw my hands up in the air.

“All right. I thought I owed it to you to help.”

“After I explicitly asked you not to.”

“This is different. I’m not hurting anyone, just getting some information.”

I told him about my hypothesis—that the murders were connected to the Penguin Players somehow and that Rosie was the main target. I argued that the fact that these actors all had a beef with her about casting seemed significant enough to follow up. I said that he shouldn’t dismiss it out of hand just because he was annoyed with me.

The silence after my speech was deafening. Finally, he cleared his throat.

“Deborah, are you aware that I am a police detective?”

“Of course darling,” I patted his hand.

“Just how long you have considered me to be a helpless moron? Do you think I got this job because the superintendent took pity on me?”

“No, no, no! Of course not. Don’t take it the wrong way. It’s just that you’ve got a lot on your plate and, you know, there are always things that the best of us miss. Every little bit helps,” I added feebly.

He sighed.

“I’m going to share something confidential with you and the onlyreason I’m sharing it is so that you will stop interfering in this matter once and for all. Is that clear?”

“But—”

He raised his eyebrows in a warning.

“Yes, it’s clear,” I said.

“Good. It may surprise you to know that since the day of the second murder we have suspected that the killer has a link to the Penguin Players. We have identified a person of interest and we are following their movements. This is what we have to do in the interests of building a legal case. It takes time.”

“Oh!” I said. “Phew. Who is it?”

“I’m not going to tell you that. It is very importantthat that person does not know they are under surveillance. Do you understand?”

“Yes of course.”

“Maybe you’d like to go away for a holiday for a little while?”

“Where to?” I asked in surprise.

“Literally anywhere else would be good. The Chatham Islands maybe?”

“OK,” I nodded. “I get it. Thanks Doug. I appreciate you coming here. And, um, I’m sorry for everything.”

“Apology accepted.” He stood up.

“There’s just one thing,” I said.

“Nope,” he held up his hand. “Not going to listen. Goodbye Deb. I’ll see you later OK.”

He left.

The thing is, when someone tells you not to think about something it quite often has the opposite result. Something had occurred to me: as far as I knew, Joan hadn’t shared her files with the police. At least she’d never mentioned it. So where had they got the information?

“Probably from Rosie’s partner Dr. Pat,” said Maureen when I called her about it. “She’d have told them about the tyres being slashed, the sexual harassment accusation, the nasty letters—all that.”

“But then they might not know about that odd Stuart Forbes man. He didn’t threaten them, did he?”

Maureen was looking at me.

“What?” I asked.

“You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Obsessing.”

I rubbed a hand over my face.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said forlornly. “I don’t have the money for a holiday and, besides, I can’t very well leave my garden, can I? It’s a shambles right now.”

“You know what might help?” said Maureen. “They have some free classes going at the community center. You need something to occupy your mind. Why don’t you sign up for a course there?”

That’s how I ended up in the oil painting class.

Our teacher, Uwe, was a Hungarian man, very thin and tall with a gloomy face. There were five students—all women and, believe it or not, I was the youngest. Every session we had a fifteen-minute break, probably to give Uwe time to wonder where his life had gone wrong. He was so talented he could easily be running a fashionable gallery in Budapest but here he was at the ends of the earth showing grannies how to read a colour wheel.

I can’t say I learned a terrible lot about painting but the classes did take my mind off things for a time. The girls were a hoot and we all enjoyed a good chinwag. Uwe eventually gave up shushing us and became resigned to his fate, poor man. One of the ladies Dora, in her eighties, was a bit quieter than the others and kept herself to herself more or less, I believe she was deaf because she spoke too loudly. But during the break she liked to do the crossword and that brought us together. She was a dab-hand at cryptics, though occasionally her lording it over me rubbed me the wrong way.

Now and then we’d talk about our families. She was a widow and she had an adult son who lived with her. To hear her talk, you would have thought that he was a demi-god—he was extremely handsome, a wonderful singer, very clever with words, a good handy man, wonderfully strong, an attentive son. When she found out that my daughter was single, she got it into her head that I should set Maureen up with Stewie.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maureen isn’t really looking for a partner right now,” I hedged.

“Nonsense. A young woman needs a man, for protection! She wouldn’t do better than my Stewie. Why don’t you just set up a meeting for them? Just so they can get to know each other. Nature will do the rest!”

She was rummaging around in her handbag and I was consciously stopping myself from saying something rude. Really, even if I knew Dora was a strange old bird, I felt she was breaking normal social boundaries. I was about to say something when she produced a photograph and suddenly the penny dropped.

“Here he is, isn’t he handsome?” she gushed.

The specimen in the photo was very far from being handsome. He was sitting on a faded brown armchair wearing a stained singlet. He was looking at the camera with a curiously blank expression. Apart from being an eyesore, he was closer to my age than Maureen’s. And he looked exactly like Humpty Dumpty. I realized that ‘Stewie’ was none other than Stuart Forbes.

“Oh! Do you know, I think I may have met him once,” I said, fibbing. “He didn’t try out for a play did he?”

“Why yes he did, as a matter of fact! There was a version of Death of a Salesman put on last year and it’s my favourite play so I said to Stewy that he ought to try out for it because he is so, so talented. Of course he wasn’t properly appreciated. I was very upset with the way he was overlooked. Absolutely shocking.” Indeed, her hands started shaking with rage—only a minute before they’d been as steady as a rock.

“That’s him, then,” I said. “Do you know, my daughter’s an actress and she tried out for the same play and she mentioned someone of the name of Stuart whose acting impressed her very much. She mentioned him several times.”

“You see?” Dora grasped my wrist with a cold claw, “It must be fate!”

“Yes,” I said, “It must be.”

***

“You what?” Maureen exploded.

“I set you up for a dinner date with Stuart Forbes.”

“Aaaarrghgh. WHY?”

“Don’t you see? This is the perfect opportunity. When Dora Forbes showed me that photo with the dead-eyed stare, the tomato sauce stain on the grubby singlet, I got the chills. It was like that moment when Philippa Langley stood in the carpark and knew right away that Richard the third was buried there.”

“Right. So you saw a serial killer and your first thought was that I should have a romantic dinner with him?”

“Maureen Dorothea, you listen to me. That man has been terrorizing this town and no matter what Doug says, nobody’s come any closer to putting a stop to it. We can perform a valuable public service here. It’s time to show some guts.”

“Didn’t you promise Doug not to interfere anymore?”

“Yes I did. And I’m holding to that promise. The fact that Mrs. Forbes came and offered up a chance to talk to her son to me is an Act of God. As for you, all you are doing is looking for companionship with a nice man. There’s no harm in asking someone to dinner. It certainly doesn’t count as any kind of interference.”

“Mum, this is twisted.”

“I’ll be in the room with you in case anything happens.”

“How is that going to work, exactly?”

“I’ll hide in that wardrobe there, listening in.”

“Great. Well, it’ll be more grist for my therapy sessions I guess.”

“You’re in therapy?”

“Yes mum. It’s normal these days.”

“What are you telling them about me?”

“Nothing. Forget I said anything. What am I going to talk about with this munter?”

“Butter him up, get on the subject of acting, Death of a Salesman. Encourage him to air any complaints he might have. That sort of thing. Hopefully something might slip out.”

“Hopefully it doesn’t.” She grimaced.

***

Saturday night rolled around. I’d given Dora my home address and Stuart was to arrive at six o’clock on the dot. I’d prepared a big roast for them and the table was nicely laid with the best china and new candles.

I’d was hiding in the wardrobe in the hall where I could hear everything in the dining room clearly.

“Hi Stuart! Come in,” said my daughter in her stage voice. “Flowers! Oh you shouldn’t have. Thank you very much. Please come in.”

A man mumbled something.

“Oh no, don’t bother putting it in the wardrobe. I’ll put it on the coathanger here.”

“Nice place,” he said. I couldn’t get a good sense of his personality yet.

“Yes. Thank you. I try to keep it nice.”

“Ah you do cross-stitch?”

“Pardon?”

“Cross-stitch. My mother does cross-stitch too.”

“Ah, yes? It’s a good hobby. Relaxing. Do you have any hobbies?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you like to do in your spare time?”

“Watch the footy.”

“Beer?”

“Yep I drink beer too. Is that a hobby?”

“I mean, would you like some beer now?”

“Yeah. Not too much though. My mother only lets me drink one glass usually.”

“What about your friends? Do you play footy too?”

“No, I don’t have many friends. Don’t like playing sports.”

“Hmmm. So, I don’t know if your mother told you this but I saw you at the audition for Death of a Salesman.”

“Yeah. She said you fell in love with me.”

“She did?”

“Don’t be embarrassed. I don’t care. You seem nice.”

“Uh, thanks. Yes well, I wouldn’t maybe express it that way exactly, but you did…catch my eye.”

“You thought I was a really good actor.”

“Yes. I thought it was a shame they didn’t cast you as Willy Loman.”

“I didn’t care,” he said.

“Oh but you must have thought it was unfair!” Maureen exclaimed.

“No but my mum said it was outrageous. She said they didn’t know anything.”

“Your mum is certainly a big fan of yours, huh?”

“Yeah, she is.” He giggled. “You don’t want to make her mad though.”

“Why’s that Stuart?” Maureen asked, and I could hear the tension in her voice.

“She teaches them a lesson.”

“What sort of a lesson?”

He must have made some kind of gesture.

Maureen’s voice was loud and a little strained when she said.

“Kills people? Come on, don’t be silly!”

“Not being silly. She doesn’t like it when anyone bullies her wee man.”

“You mean she tells them off of course,” said Maureen.

“No! She teaches them a lesson. She taught Rosie a lesson.”

“A little old lady?”

“She’s strong. Uses a knife. Makes them sharp. That lady on the cliff she got with the knife before she pushed her.”

“Would you like, ah, some potatoes?”

“Yeah. The crispy ones.”

“Here you are. Oh look, that curtain isn’t closed properly. Let me just go over there and fix it up…”

A minute later I heard the front door open and close and a familiar voice filled the room.

“Right there lad, I’m Detective Inspector Doug Brown. I’d like you to come for a ride in the police car.”

“But, I haven’t had my potatoes yet!”

“Maureen here will make you up a plate, won’t you Maureen.”

“Sure.”

And, just like that, the two of them were out of the door.

I emerged from the wardrobe, bewildered. Maureen was pouring herself a pinot noir.

“One for you too?” she asked. I nodded, shaken, and collapsed into my favourite armchair.

“Dora!” I said.

“Apparently,” said Maureen.

“Where did Doug come from?” I said.

“Er, OK. Don’t be mad with me but I told him about our plan and I said I was worried we’d both end up buried in the cabbage patch. So he put a wire on me and waited outside until I gave the signal.”

Just for half a second I felt huffy. So my own daughter didn’t trust me!

“There’s something else,” she said.

“What now?” I said.

“Doug and I’ve decided to start seeing each other again.”

“When did that happen?”

“Well, after you shot that guy he said he wanted to look out for me because you were a danger to yourself and others. It was something we had in common, so things grew organically from there.”

“I see,” I said. “Well. Glad I could be of use I suppose!”

She kissed me on the cheek. I pursed my lips and picked up that day’s crossword.