Dying to be Famous (3 page)

I looked around the stage, trying to match up the actors with the names on the script. Rex Butler was standing quite close to me and I could hear the catty conversation he was having with Timothy North and Brad Slater. They were complaining about young actors and their lack of Proper Theatrical Training.

“Television,” Rex said, “that’s all they’re interested in these days. Money for old rope, I say. Call that acting? Five minutes on the box and they think they’re stars. The problem with these soap operas is that they’re about
ordinary
people. Dull, boring, everyday types. Which is precisely the opposite of what one wants in a musical.”

“Lord alone knows how Miss Webb will shape up,” sighed Timothy. “She has no experience of live theatre. None whatsoever. Can she sing? Can she dance? I very much doubt it. I can’t imagine how they think she’ll fill the role.”

“Did you hear how much Peregrine is paying her? A small fortune!” grumbled Rex.

Timothy sighed, “And it’s not like the company is terribly secure financially, is it?”

“I heard he had to borrow a whole pile of cash to pay for this production,” chipped in Brad. “If this doesn’t work we could all be out of a job.”

“Things aren’t what they used to be,” moaned Rex.

“Indeed,” agreed Timothy.

Tiffany hadn’t arrived yet, which was probably just as well given the way her fellow actors were going on about her, but her understudy was there, biting her fingernails in the opposite corner of the stage. When I looked at Hannah I thought I’d never seen anyone who looked less like Dorothy. I mean, she’s supposed to be an innocent farm girl from Kansas, but Hannah had dark hair gelled into savage spikes and wore lashings of purple eyeshadow and thick, black lipstick. I heard Cynthia whisper to Rex, “She’s a pretty girl underneath all that. Look at that bone structure. I can’t think why she wears so much slap.”

“My darling Cynthia,” he replied in a voice that boomed out of his chest as if he kept a loudspeaker in his vest, “how can we possibly fathom the workings of young people’s minds? The youth of today are an utter mystery.”

There was an air of breathless anticipation among the kids while we waited for Tiffany to arrive. When she finally swept on to the stage – two bodyguards shadowing her like menacing guardian angels – I happened to be looking at Hannah.

If I hadn’t been staring right at her I’d have missed the flash of hatred that contorted the understudy’s face. It was only for a second – she got her expression under control almost immediately – and then her features were impassive beneath her mask-like make-up.

I glanced at Tiffany to see if she’d noticed but of course she hadn’t. She was scouring the stage for Peregrine and when her eyes fell on him she turned her smile on. It was like a searchlight. Our director received a thousand-watt blast that almost knocked him off his feet. He was instantly besotted. Satisfied with the effect, Tiffany bestowed a smile on the other actors. The Tin Man, Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion were also dazzled by its brilliance. But the lesser actors like Aunt Em and Uncle Henry were given dimmer versions. Hannah was only sent a small, tight grin that didn’t even crease Tiffany’s eyes and clearly Munchkins and Fantastical Flowers didn’t rank highly enough to deserve anything. She looked over our heads as if we weren’t there.

Tiffany thumped her huge designer handbag – bright pink with lots of gold buckles and monogrammed with her initials – down in the wings. Then Peregrine introduced her to everyone, including Cynthia, Elizabeth and Geoff, the technician who’d been putting out the chairs. Once they were finished and without further ado, the grown-ups and the kids with speaking parts sat around the table with their scripts in front of them. The rest of us sat on the floor to listen and the read-through began.

It wasn’t what you’d call riveting stuff. Although some of the actors – like Rex Butler – really threw themselves into it, making the air vibrate with their ringing voices, some just spoke their lines as if they were saving their energy for later.

Tiffany was one of them. And when she got to the bit where she was supposed to sing “Over the Rainbow” she gave a little cough and said, “I won’t sing just now if you don’t mind, Peregrine. I have a slight cough. I don’t want to strain my voice.” She smiled winsomely and he was powerless to do anything but gape and nod obediently. I glanced at Hannah to see her reaction. She wasn’t glaring with hatred at Tiffany, she was doing something far stranger: smirking with a malicious kind of satisfaction. I nudged Graham and jerked my head in Hannah’s direction.

“What?” he muttered.

“Hannah looks pleased.”

“So she does,” said Graham. “Do you think that has some sort of significance?”

“Don’t know. It’s just a bit weird.”

The actors plodded on through the script without anything else happening that was even remotely interesting. We were within one page of finishing – we had nearly reached the bit where Dorothy clicks the heels of her ruby slippers together and says, “There’s no place like home” – when Tiffany let out a strange, strangled gasp. Her face went a sickly yellow and her eyes practically popped out of her head.

“Is something wrong?” asked Peregrine anxiously.

“Why can’t he leave me alone?” Tiffany whispered. She held up her script and turned it round to show the director. Over his shoulder I could see that the last page had been torn out. And scrawled across the inside back cover in scarlet ink were the words Y
OU
H
AVE
B
EEN
W
ARNED
!

There
was a big, dramatic pause and then everyone burst out talking. “Her stalker!” “That’s got to be the same guy!” “But how did he manage to…?” “How could he…?”

Peregrine cut through the rising hubbub of voices. “Keep calm, everyone, I’m sure we can get to the bottom of this. Perhaps it’s just someone’s silly idea of a joke. Geoff, would you go and ring the police? They ought to be informed.” He turned to Elizabeth. “Darling, when did you give Tiffany her script?”

“She asked for an advance copy. I posted it out to her agent two weeks ago,” Elizabeth replied.

“And did you check it through beforehand?” Peregrine asked.

“Well, no,” confessed Elizabeth. “It never occurred to me that anyone would tamper with it.”

“It can’t have been done before you sent it,” Tiffany said softly. “I read it as soon as it arrived. I wanted to be prepared, you know?”

“Very commendable,” soothed Peregrine. “When did you last look at it?”

Tiffany frowned. “Let me see… Yesterday, I think. Yes. I read it through in bed. But I fell asleep before I got to the end.”

“So it could have been tampered with before then?” he asked.

Tiffany nodded. “Yes. I’ve been carrying it around with me since I got it. It was all right in the morning because I looked through it before I went out for lunch with my agent. But the restaurant was very crowded. I suppose anyone could have slipped it out of my bag.”

Peregrine looked around at the assembled cast. He was clearly thinking the same as I was – that anyone in the theatre could have done it. I mean, she’d left her bag in the wings while Peregrine had been doing the introductions. While she’d been dazzling everyone with her high-voltage smile someone could have grabbed her script. It would have been difficult to scrawl on it without being noticed: difficult, but not impossible.

So we were all suspects. The thought seemed to occur to everybody at once. Suddenly we were eyeing each other up nervously. Everyone that is except Hannah, who was staring at the floor, and Rex, who was regarding Tiffany with ill-concealed disdain.

“Tea,” said Cynthia briskly. “That’s what we need. Strong, sweet tea. It’s good for shock.”

“Oh, yes please,” said Tiffany weakly. “That would be wonderful. I left my cup in the green room on the way in. It’s the one with my initials on.” It was just as well she was sitting down because she looked quite faint.

A few minutes later Cynthia’s singing (“Tea for Two”) signalled the return of her and Geoff. Both were carrying trays stacked high with tea for the grown-ups, orange squash for the kids and biscuits for everyone. Geoff started to rip open the packets and hand them round. There was a bit of a scuffle for the chocolate ones. The plain wholewheats got left on the table.

Tiffany fetched her bag and groped around inside for her sweeteners. She dropped a couple into her mug – an elaborate pink creation with
TW
painted in gold on the side – and I noticed how badly her hands were shaking as she stirred her tea. She was trying hard not to show it, but Tiffany was very upset. In fact she was so rattled that when Geoff offered her a biscuit she jumped about a metre in the air and knocked the cup he was holding out of his hands. Scalding hot tea splashed all down his front.

“I’m so sorry!” Tiffany gasped, frantically dabbing at his shirt with a tissue from her bag. “How awful! Here, you’d better have mine.” Flushed with embarrassment, she thrust her full mug into his hand. “I’ll go and make myself another.”

She leapt up and ran off to the green room so quickly that her bodyguards had to sprint across the stage like a pair of bulky shadows.

Geoff watched Tiffany leave then started on her tea. Once he’d drained the last dregs from Tiffany’s cup, he put it down. Two seconds later, he was clutching at his throat and his face had turned a violent shade of purple. There was this ghastly wheezing noise as he struggled for breath. And then he collapsed, crashing onto the table, smashing the cups and saucers, and crushing the unpopular packets of plain biscuits. Cynthia was screaming for someone to do something, but before anyone could even ring for an ambulance, Geoff was dead.

We
didn’t get any more rehearsing done that day. People were too gripped by the real-life drama to even think about acting. Besides, the police wanted to take detailed statements about exactly who had been doing what, when and where. No one was allowed to leave the building until they’d finished, so we had a long afternoon ahead of us.

Graham and I had seen a few corpses in our time but we’d never had anyone poisoned right in front of us like that. We were both pretty shaken. Everyone was. It was now blindingly obvious that Tiffany’s stalker hadn’t been making empty threats – he really did want her dead. When Geoff was carried away on a covered stretcher, Tiffany’s lower lip started wobbling. You could almost see the thought bubble floating above her head that if she hadn’t spilt his tea it would have been her lying there with a sheet over her face.

What was less clear was how the poison had got into her cup.

“It must have been one of us!” Cynthia cried dramatically after Geoff’s body was removed from the building. “Somebody here, on the stage, right now.”

“Oh I don’t think so! No! Surely not!” protested Tiffany, looking around at everyone.

“A stranger couldn’t have got in,” insisted Cynthia. “Maggie wouldn’t have let anyone through the stage door!”

“But the fire escape was open when I went to make another cup of tea,” said Tiffany. “Didn’t you notice?”

Cynthia blinked and looked at her. “Was it?”

Tiffany nodded.

“Well, yes…” Cynthia frowned as she tried to remember. “I suppose it must have been. I wondered where the draught was coming from. The stalker must have put the poison in your tea when I went to ask Geoff to help me carry the trays. It’s so awful!”

Awful as it was, Cynthia visibly relaxed. Everyone did. The prospect of having a killer in the theatre was too much to bear. Before they started talking to the cast and crew, the police examined the fire escape door and confirmed it had been jemmied open from the outside. So everyone in the theatre seemed to be Off the Hook.

The police began by interviewing Tiffany in her dressing room. We were allowed off the stage into the auditorium, where at least the chairs were comfy. The shock of Geoff’s death suddenly hit Cynthia like a sledgehammer. One minute she was crooning “We’ll Meet Again” to herself and the next she was crying her eyes out while Elizabeth – who was looking pretty near the edge too – patted her arm helplessly. In between convulsive, snorting sobs Cynthia wailed, “Poor Geoff. He was retiring next year. What will his wife do now? They were planning to go on a cruise. Oh dear. It’s too ghastly!”

“It is,” agreed Peregrine. “He was a good man as well as a good technician. We’re going to miss him.”

“A premature exit. A role cut short. It’s utterly tragic,” sighed Rex.

I listened to the grown-ups talking while my brain ticked over. Personally, I wasn’t convinced about the fire escape and said so to Graham.

“There are stairs all up the side of the building,” he said, shaking his head. “It would be easy for someone to get in that way.”

“But the door could just as easily have been opened from the inside,” I replied.

“It’s a valid theory,” he conceded.

I combed my fringe down over my eyes and peered out from under it, examining each and every face in the rows of seats. Most people looked worried, or tearful, or shocked, or a combination of all three. One or two of the kids were actually quite excited – they didn’t know Geoff personally and having him drop dead was pretty sensational. Nothing like that had ever happened to them before and their eyes were shining with the unexpected thrill of it. Peregrine’s face had gone grey and his hands were shaking while he tried to make notes on his script. Timothy and Brad looked pretty rattled but Rex was beginning to look more bored than upset. He gave a big yawn and complained to no one in particular, “All this hanging around waiting. It’s worse than being on a film set.”

As for Hannah: she didn’t seem to be suffering from any excess of grief but she was certainly troubled. She was sitting four seats away from us with a newspaper across her lap that was open at the Sudoku page. Her forehead was creased into a frown as if she was concentrating hard and every so often she’d fill in one of the boxes in the square grid.

Eventually it was our turn to be interviewed by the police. Graham and I got up and edged down the row of seats to where Cynthia was waiting to accompany us. Hannah had her legs stretched right out and her bag was blocking the way. She moved so we could squeeze past her and it was then that I glanced down at her paper. With a prickle of unease I noticed that she hadn’t been writing down numbers at all.