Page 28 of Murder on the Brighton Express
The dancer named Claudine smiled silkily. “So, there’s hope for me yet?”
“I think Sir Garfield would have something to say about that.”
Claudine shrugged her bare shoulders and pouted. “You do know how to deflate a girl.”
“Can we ask you some quick questions for an investigation we’re working on?”
She looked at the other two girls who both nodded. “We have a few minutes before rehearsal starts.”
The three dancers headed back into the room, but Harry held back.
Assuming he was being gentlemanly, I peered inside where a further nine scantily clad women filled the space. “They’re all dressed,” I told him.
He bent to whisper in my ear. “In case you weren’t aware, Claudine was teasing. Sometimes I stop to chat to them if they’re outside getting air between their performances, but I haven’t been back here in months.”
“You don’t have to explain to me, Harry. What you do in your spare time is your business. You said it yourself, we’re merely colleagues.”
The room smelled better than the corridor, thanks to the bottles of perfume on each of the four dressing tables. There were at least two girls sharing each of the dressing table mirrors as they applied color to their lips and cheeks, and kohl around their eyes. A seamstress knelt behind one of the girls, fixing her tail feathers. They paid us little attention until Harry closed the door.
Once they noticed him, they greeted him with smiles. Even the seamstress knew his name. Some cast curious glances at me, and I recognized a few from a previous visit. Harry introduced me.
“Miss Fox and I are investigating the death of a woman on the express train from Brighton. Clement Beecroft was on that train. Do any of you know him?”
“His productions appear at the Laneway Theater,” Claudine said. “I’ve never met him.”
“I have,” one of the others said. “I used to dance there last year.”
“What’s he like?” Harry asked.
“Like all the leading actors. He thinks we should worship him.” She rolled her eyes.
“Is he married?” I asked.
“Yes, but it didn’t stop him from looking.”
“Just looking?”
“Depends whether you believe the rumors or not. Apparently, he always installs his current mistress in the lead female role of his plays.”
In my experience, rumors usually held at least a kernel of truth, and sometimes much more. “Have you met Mrs. Beecroft?”
“No. He used to joke that she didn’t like the theater, and that’s why their marriage worked.” The dancer shrugged. “I don’t know what he meant by that.”
It meant that Mrs. Beecroft’s absence from his workplace allowed her husband to get away with having affairs with his leading actresses.
We thanked the dancers and headed to St. Martin’s Lane, not far away. The posters outside the Laneway Theater announced the upcoming production of a musical comedy starring Clement Beecroft and Geraldine Lacroix. The illustrator had drawn an excellent likeness of Beecroft smiling down at a pretty woman who stared simperingly back at him. According to the posters, the opening night was a week away.
We found the backstage entrance and asked a stagehand carrying a toolbox where we could find Mr. Beecroft. He instructed us to follow him to the stage where more staff were constructing a house without walls over two levels. The only way I knew it would be a house was because the upstairs area had a fireplace painted on the backdrop and the downstairs one had a stove. There was obviously still a lot to be done in the next week.
Clement Beecroft clearly thought so, too, going by the way he shouted at the set designers from where he stood in front of the first row of seating. “I’m not paying you to stand there and stare at me! Get back to work!”
The orchestra in the pit started tuning their instruments. The whine of violin strings set my teeth on edge. It sent Beecroft over the edge, figuratively and almost literally. He clutched his clipboard in both hands and leaned over the barrier to shout at the musicians in the pit.
“Stop that infernal noise! I can’t hear myself think.” He slammed the clipboard down on the barrier.
The men constructing the set stopped and glanced anxiously at one another. The musicians dutifully kept quiet, and a stagehand who’d been hovering nearby, turned and left.
Harry and I brazened it out. Using the theory that he wouldn’t shout at a woman he’d just met, I indicated to Harry that I would do all the talking. Harry hung back.
