Death in the Spotlight Read online

  Uncle Felix laughed, and smiled at me, and Aunt Lucy smiled too. And I wondered, at that moment, whether this was not another of Aunt Lucy’s unusual lessons.

  I am still not sure. But, whether it was supposed to be or not, that is why Daisy and I joined the Rue Theatre Company.

  4

  As Daisy, Bridget and I stood in front of the Rue Theatre after lunch the next day, I felt rather queasy, as though I was still on the boat that had brought us back from Hong Kong. I had been in agonies all morning, while Daisy danced about the flat in raptures. I could hardly bear the thought that I would have to act – and in front of people!

  But I had to admit that the theatre itself was a gloriously impressive place. The Rue is set to one side of a roundabout near Leicester Square, and it is a red-and-white-brick cliff of a building, studded with shiny windows. It looks rather like a castle, and it even has four slender turrets shooting up the front of it like battlements. The noise of battle surrounds it too, for the roundabout in front sends up constant noise, all the howls of brakes and horns and shouts that are the sounds of London in a hurry.

  London ought not to feel so different from Hong Kong, but it does. Although it is spring here, just as it was in Hong Kong, in London that means sun mixed up with chilly, windswept days, rushing grey skies and pattering rain, with only a few small, sad flowers drooping in pots on windowsills.

  I miss Hong Kong’s generous heat, its wide, bright skies and blooming jungle. I even miss its spiders. And I miss the feeling of being at home. In Hong Kong I could breathe out, but now we are back in England I have to go back to being wary. It’s as though being in Hong Kong removed a layer of my skin, and now I have to grow it all over again.

  But, all the same, I am not quite as different in London as I am at Deepdean – or rather, there are more people here who are different like me. I have seen several faces on buses and on the London Underground just like our friend George, and even (my heart jumps with excitement every time) a few faces like mine.

  As I was thinking all this, Bridget ushered us through the main doors of the Rue, and we found ourselves in a hallway that swept upwards in gold and black and red. It was empty, and there was a wonderful hush as the doors swung shut behind us and cut off the noise from outside. Light glittered from chandeliers and shone darkly off marble, and the very air smelled warm and rich. At the sight of all that magnificence, Daisy expanded, eyes shining in the lights. It was so beautiful, so magical. I found myself smiling.

  ‘Now, remember what your aunt said,’ Bridget told us firmly, her wide, freckled face and dark eyes frowning. ‘Be on your best behaviour or, despite everything, Miss Crompton will send you straight back home. Is that clear?’

  Bridget is very no-nonsense. She says this is because she grew up in Dublin.

  ‘Crystal,’ said Daisy, rolling her eyes.

  ‘Best behaviour, Daisy,’ said Bridget, swatting at Daisy’s shoulder. ‘You shan’t get anything past me.’

  She winked at us both in a way that was clearly a warning, just as someone came down the stairs towards us.

  This person was wearing a shapeless brown dress, and she moved heavily, thumping her feet down on each step and squeezing the gold railing so hard I thought she might leave dents in the metal. She was old, even older than most of our mistresses at Deepdean, and her hair was grey and close-cropped. She was built as solidly as her footsteps, and the round glasses that sat on her nose looked tiny on her large face.

  ‘What are you three doing here?’ she barked at us. ‘We’re closed, you know!’

  ‘Good afternoon!’ said Daisy, bobbing a curtsey. ‘You’re Miss Crompton, of course – I’ve seen your picture. We’ve come to be in your play.’

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said Bridget, standing up straight. ‘I’m Bridget O’Connell. I believe you spoke to Mrs M. on the telephone about these two girls?’

  ‘Yes, all right, very good, but why are you here? This is the public entrance. Theresa – that’s my stage manager – left it unlocked in error. My actors go through the stage door at the back, no exceptions. Do you think you are more important than them?’

  My heart sank. Miss Crompton did not seem very friendly.

  Daisy blinked. ‘We made a mistake,’ she said, squaring her shoulders and standing as upright as she could next to Bridget. ‘It won’t happen again.’

  Miss Crompton narrowed her eyes. ‘It certainly won’t,’ she said. ‘I was just coming to lock up – this entrance won’t be in use until opening night itself. All right, girls, follow me, if you please. Your aunt has arranged that you are to be in my play, no matter how dreadful you are, but, all the same, I’m curious to see what you’re made of.’

  I had been to plays before, and sat in the nice dusty darkness of the stalls, but I had never been on a stage. I had not realized how very big a theatre is, the way the circles of seats rise up in front of you like mountains, the way the lights get in your eyes and the greasepaint smell gets in your nose, the way your legs go wobbly and you want to sink through the floorboards and never be seen again. That afternoon, standing on the vast, empty stage alone, even my breath seemed to echo around me.

  ‘State your name!’ boomed Miss Crompton from somewhere in the stalls.

  ‘Er,’ I said stupidly. ‘Um …’

  ‘Does not know her own name,’ said Miss Crompton. ‘Excellent. Begin your recitation, if you please.’

  Daisy and I had discussed this, just in case we were asked to audition. I had spent the previous afternoon learning a very sensible speech by Juliet’s Nurse. But when I opened my mouth I froze. The words slipped out of my mind, and all I could think of was part of ‘Ode to a Nightingale’.

  ‘Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!’ I gabbled.

  It was such a schoolgirl thing to recite, a poem that everyone learns when they are little shrimps.

  ‘Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

  Through the sad heart of Ruth when, sick for home,

  She stood in tears amid the alien corn …’

  Then, of course, I realized why I had chosen it: I have often felt like Ruth in that poem, and I did at that very moment. I staggered on to the end, melting under the lights and frying with dreadful shame, for I had let out more of myself than I had meant. Then I stopped and there was only a ringing silence. I felt as though every empty chair was staring at me.

  ‘Unique,’ said Miss Crompton’s voice from the stalls. I knew she did not mean it kindly. ‘Off the stage, if you please. Next!’

  I scrambled down the little set of steps to the right of the stage as quickly as if it had tipped me off. I sank down into a plush seat next to Bridget, who was making deft squiggling notes in a small code book, just as Daisy came waltzing on.

  Safe in the stalls, I suddenly felt the dazzling excitement of the theatre again. The golden arch over the stage shone like a promise and the velvety darkness of the wings was heavy with the most thrilling mystery. In the middle of it all, Daisy seemed to glow. She stood with her hands clasped and her feet positioned as though she was about to do ballet, and she was beaming.

  ‘Good afternoon!’ she trilled. ‘I am the Honourable Daisy Wells. May I begin?’

  ‘You may,’ said Miss Crompton – and did I imagine it, or was there a chuckle in her voice?

  Daisy threw herself into a kneeling position and reached forward. Her face changed to an anguished mask.

  ‘What’s here?’ she cried. ‘A cup, closed in my true love’s hand? Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end … I will kiss thy lips!’

  She leaned forward and made a very small motion with her lips, as though she was being forced to kiss her Great-aunt Eustacia at Christmas. I tried not to giggle. Daisy and romance do not get on.

  ‘O happy dagger!’ screamed Daisy, leaping upright and waving her fist in the air. ‘This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die!’

  She plunged her hand into her stomach and doubled over, gasping. She slowly crumpled to the
ground, making small whimpering noises, twitched twice and then lay still.

  I waited. Bridget turned a page in her notebook and sighed to herself. At last Daisy rolled over and opened her eyes.

  ‘I’m all right really,’ she said to Miss Crompton.

  ‘I had guessed as much,’ said Miss Crompton. ‘Well, well. That was wonderfully tasteless. You clearly have no formal training and a very active imagination, but I commend your enthusiasm.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Daisy, curtseying. ‘Who will I be playing?’

  Miss Crompton sighed. ‘Since you are joining the Rue out of necessity, and at the request of your aunt, I shall make the most of the situation. You will be playing two small roles: Paris’s Page and also Rosaline. The second is a wordless and usually unseen part, of course, but she will be a vision in this production. And both have great potential for drama.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Daisy. ‘I accept. What about Hazel? After all, I can’t possibly act without her.’

  ‘Miss Wong, are you sure you would like a part?’ asked Miss Crompton. Without stopping her scribbling, Bridget turned to stare at me, lips pursed. I wanted to sink down into my seat, but then I saw Daisy up on the stage. Her arms were folded and she was trying to look commanding, but she only succeeded in looking at me rather pleadingly.

  Daisy had travelled halfway across the world for me, I thought. To me, stepping onto a stage felt almost as enormous a journey. But I decided that I could do it, and I would, for her.

  So I swallowed down the rushing terror in my throat and said, ‘Yes. Please.’

  5

  ‘Really!’ said Daisy later. ‘Isn’t this wonderfully exciting? Miss Crompton has made the Rue famous. Her run of Hamlet with Archibald Duke lasted almost three months, and Hilda Dove says she owes her career to her!’

  ‘Who are these people?’ I asked. ‘Is Hilda Dove her real name? How do you know all this, Daisy?’

  ‘Hilda Dove wasn’t born Hilda Dove, of course. Most actors choose better names when they go on the stage – who’d go and see a leading lady called Bertha Jones? And I know because of Bertie,’ said Daisy, waving her hand airily. ‘He’s quite obsessed, and I steal his theatre magazines. After all, you never know what knowledge may turn out to be useful – and so it has proved.’

  ‘But you never bother to learn codes!’ I protested.

  ‘That is information you are taking care of,’ said Daisy. ‘If I spent time learning it too, I would simply be wasting the space in my brain. Anyway, Hazel, that’s why I know all about Miss Crompton and the Rue. She’s quite brilliant – she bought it up twenty years ago when it was failing and she’s absolutely made it the place to see Shakespeare. She’s worked with Inigo Leontes and Linda Torrence – and now she’ll be working with Daisy Wells! And Hazel Wong, of course. Really, though, I do think she could have found you a better part than the silly servant Potpan!’

  ‘It’s all right!’ I said. ‘You know I’m not an actress, Daisy. I don’t mind at all.’

  But, although I couldn’t say so to Daisy, I did. Potpan, my part, was one of the Capulets’ servants, at the Capulet mansion during the scenes at the party where Romeo and Juliet first met. It was a tiny role – but not quite as tiny as I had hoped. For I had discovered that it had lines.

  “ ‘We cannot be here and there too …”,’ said Daisy, grinning, as though she had read my mind. ‘I should think even you would be able to manage that. Oh, this really is amusing. Just wait until I tell George—’

  ‘If you tell George or Alexander anything about this, I will never speak to you again,’ I said breathlessly.

  The thought of Alexander finding out that I had been forced to pretend to be a boy called Potpan made me feel shaky and rather ill. Of course, one of Daisy’s parts was a boy part too, but I knew that Daisy would look simply wonderful as Paris’s Page in leggings and a jerkin, not boy-like at all.

  I told myself, for the tenth time, that Daisy needed this. In Hong Kong, although she tried to deny it, her world had been overturned. In Hong Kong, I had been the important one. I had been famous, and I knew it had taken everything in her to bear it. The Daisy of two years ago could not have managed it. So I owed it to her to prove that I could be a true friend too – even if it meant that I had to spend the next few weeks pretending to be Potpan while Daisy was the beautiful Rosaline, who glided across the stage like a jewel. Rosaline, I thought, would have been an Honourable if she was English. It was very clear from the parts we had been given which one of us was the President of the Detective Society and which was her Secretary.

  ‘All right!’ said Daisy, putting up her hands in mock horror. ‘I won’t tell anyone! Detective Society honour. But, really, it’s not as though I have it any better. I have to learn plenty of lines for the Page, and I have to be ogled by a horrid old man when I’m Rosaline.’

  ‘Romeo isn’t old, is he?’ I asked.

  ‘He could be,’ said Daisy darkly. ‘We’ll meet the rest of the company tomorrow.’

  When we came back to the Rue the next day, Bridget escorted us through the stage door, as directed. This was a little black door set into a red-brick wall at the back of the theatre, almost hidden until you went looking for it. It was like stepping into the Secret Garden, only far more unnerving.

  Daisy pushed the door open, and we found ourselves in a warm, wood-panelled little space where an old man was sitting in a cubbyhole to the right of us, just the way the porter had at Maudlin College last winter. He had flyaway white hair and a scrubby little beard that looked as though he hadn’t trimmed it for several days.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, training his beady blue eyes on us. ‘Who might you be?’

  ‘We’re company members,’ said Daisy, drawing herself up. ‘I’m Rosaline, and also Paris’s Page. And who might you be, if you please?’

  ‘I’m Jim Cotter,’ said the old man, narrowing his eyes at Daisy. ‘I’m stage door. I’m always here, night and day, and if you want to get into the Rue, you’ve got to go by me and sign my book. I live here, I sleep here and I’ve got eyes in the back of my head. Sign in here, if you please.’

  Daisy wrote her name in flowing letters and then handed the pen to Bridget.

  ‘Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong,’ said Jim, his gaze flicking between us. ‘All right. You’re in …’ He glanced down at a clipboard in front of him. ‘Dressing room seven. Up those steps on your left and then up the stairs by the lift. Don’t use it, mind – it hasn’t worked all month and there isn’t the money for the repairs at present. You’ll see a whole line of dressing rooms on your right. Won’t be hard for you to find yours. Off you go, and don’t mess about.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I whispered.

  I was suddenly overcome with awkwardness. Jim was so business-like, and I realized that being part of the Rue was going to be quite grown up, in rather an intimidating way. Daisy had turned fifteen in April, but my birthday was not until the summer, and at that moment the difference felt enormous.

  Daisy strutted past Jim as though she was walking into the most marvellous party, and I scuttled after her.

  We pattered up some steps, and then turned left into a twisting flight of stone stairs. They stretched away both above and below us, wrapped round a narrow lift. Up and up we went, and came out on a low, narrow, gas-lit corridor with lots of doors opening to the right of us. My heart lifted a little, for this reminded me rather of the smaller Deepdean corridors, dark and full of bits of old furniture.

  Dressing Room 7 turned out to be almost at the end of the row. It was very small, and lit inside with a gas jet that sputtered, and it had a funny smell, strong and rather like paint. There were two mirrors surrounded by flaring gas-lamps, and a rack for costumes. But make-up was scattered in front of one of the mirrors, and there were several dark robes hanging on the rack. It looked as though someone was already using this room, and they had just gone out for a moment.

  The feeling of not belonging came back to me, stronger than ever, and I stepped b
ackwards into Bridget, who grumbled and pushed me forward again.

  ‘I think this room already belongs to someone, Daisy,’ I whispered nervously. ‘There must have been a mistake. What’s that smell?’

  ‘Oh, that’s the stuff you use to get off greasepaint,’ said Daisy knowledgeably. ‘It smells horribly strong, doesn’t it? And don’t be silly – we won’t be sharing. This must all be left over from the last production. I think it was Measure for Measure. No, we’ll have our own dressing room, I’m sure of it.

  ‘Now, Hazel, I have to tell you something important. I looked at that sign-in sheet and I believe I’ve seen who’s playing Juliet. Rose Tree! Not her real name, of course, a rather silly stage one – but she’s famous! She only left RADA last year, but all London’s going wild for her already. Bertie went to see her in Happy Families at the Lyric, and he raved about her in a letter. Ooh, and she’s got a fascinating past too. She lost her parents when she was only thirteen! Fancy, what bliss.’

  ‘Daisy!’ I said.

  The dressing-room door had swung shut behind us, but at that moment it creaked open again. I glanced into the mirror in front of us and saw a young woman reflected in its frame. She was almost as tall as Daisy, with dark brown hair swept back off her face and large brown eyes, and she looked hardly grown up at all. In fact, I realized, she looked only old enough to be at university, perhaps even a little younger than Bertie. She had a wide mouth that pursed up as she caught sight of us, and dramatic dark eyebrows.

  ‘What are you doing in my dressing room?’ she asked. Her accent was subtle, not quite English, and I couldn’t place it.

  ‘I beg your pardon! This is our dressing room!’ cried Daisy, spinning round to face her and gasping in shock. ‘Dressing room seven. We were told so by Jim.’

  ‘Frances! Now there are children in my dressing room!’ the girl shouted, leaning out into the corridor. ‘Frances! Frances! This is too much!’

  I could feel myself gaping. Daisy was frozen with indignation, and tinges of pink had appeared high up on her cheeks. She does not like to be called a child.