‘Aha,’ he said triumphantly. ‘So I’ve come back to life, have I? Not dead at all.’
‘And you got lousy reviews.’
‘Better than you did, dear, for your extremely lousy Amanda.’
‘Dead spiritually and emotionally,’ said Casey.
It looked as though they were about to embark on one of the stand-up fights that had broken their relationship in the first place. They had a fascinated audience all round them, drinking it in. Casey and Gus at it again.
Then Gus held out a hand. ‘Come on, Nelly. Kiss and make up.’
Casey swung on her heel. ‘You ought to have stayed dead.’
John Coffin, walking into the room, thought: Who are these people who are behaving badly? Years and years of knowing Stella Pinero and having a stage-struck sister had not accustomed him to the idea that a scene was words but not deeds and a quarrel was not for ever. Probably not even for the next ten minutes.
Still, this one had looked real.
The girl, tall, beautiful, reddish hair (he liked red hair on a woman but not on a man), a thin and delicately boned face—did he know her face?—was talking to a group of three, then moving on, being hailed, kissed and exclaimed at. Someone asked her if she had ‘brought it with her’. He made his way across to where Stella sat. ‘What was all that about?’
‘Oh, you’ve turned up?’
‘I said I’d be late. So what was it?’
‘They knew each other well once, and were going to be married. May still be,’ she added thoughtfully. Only indefinitely postponed. Owing to injury.
‘What got in the way?’ From the manner in which they assaulted each other he would have said they were a perfect match.
‘Something rather nasty. A death.’
‘Oh?’
‘Don’t prick up your detectival ears.’
‘Bad word.’
Nell Casey finished her tour of the room and ended up by Stella. ‘That was painful.’
‘I should have warned you he was here.’
‘Are we both going to be working in the Festival?’
Stella prudently held back the information that they were cast in the same play, the Rattigan. Wonderful publicity to be got from their pairing, she had to put the show first. ‘Apart from work, you need never meet.’
‘We have met,’ said Casey.
‘Isn’t it about time to call it a draw?’
‘No,’ said Nell. ‘Niet, non, nein. Is that clear? No, no, no. I’ll never forgive that shit. And you heard him just now.’
To Stella’s relief, she turned to John Coffin, and held out her hand. ‘I’m Nell Casey. I know who you are, I’ve seen your photograph in the papers.’
‘Surely not.’
‘Yes, and I saw you on TV. You were over in Los Angeles on some policemen’s conference. You said …’ She stopped there, perhaps she couldn’t remember what he had said. ‘Well, it was about women as victims.’
‘I ought to have had my mouth shot off.’
A tall figure, bespectacled, with greying hair and a small white beard, who had just come into the room, tapped Casey on the shoulder. ‘So you got here.’
She spun round. ‘Ellice! I didn’t expect you.’
Neither did I, thought Stella, a little disconcerted. Ellice Eden was a famous and caustic theatre critic, who had not so far been too kind to her productions although professing undying admiration for Stella herself. ‘Lovely actress,’ he always said. ‘Lovely.’ Unmarried himself, he was famous for a special sensitivity towards actresses, while asking the question if women could ever reach the height of the greatest of men. Garrick, Kean, Olivier, did they stand on their own?
Duse, Bernhardt, goddesses, he said. Among moderns he praised Ashcroft, Redgrave, and Bloom. Nor did he despise the screen. Hepburn, marvellous. Monroe, now there was a talent of a very special kind. Streep? He was still watching and assessing. But the reservation about the supreme greatness of women remained, so actresses were careful with him.
He had shown a special liking for Nell Casey, and true admiration for her professional skills. She was so young, she had a long way to go.
‘Came to see you. It’s been quite a gap.’ He held her at arm’s length. ‘You look more Pre-Raphaelite than ever.’
‘“By the margins willow-veiled, slide the heavy barges trailed.” You always did like the river,’ she laughed.
He pulled her towards the bar. ‘Come and have a drink.’
Stella and Coffin were left alone.
‘What’s the story about the death?’
‘Surprised you don’t know. Casey and Gus were part of a company, avant garde little group called Boxers, they were touring Australia. They were in Sydney for a month. Gus ran a little class within the company, he likes teaching. One of the kids fell for him. A lad, of course, they were pretty bisexual, that company, some tours are. I’ve looked round on occasion and thought: Not a proper man here. Anyway, this lad hung around Gus, that sort of thing.’
‘So?’
‘Gus said he didn’t encourage him. Well, perhaps he didn’t. Two schools of thought about that. And then Nell moved in and kind of mopped him up. So they say. Anyway, it got pretty messy,’ Stella said. ‘He was found dead.’
‘Where?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘It might.’
‘In a car park adjoining the theatre. In a car, from the exhaust. It could have been suicide. But there were bruises, enough for doubts. Was he attacked, or was he not? Brilliant chap. Got all the medals and loads of praise. Gus came in for a lot of criticism, and some suspicion. Was he jealous, people asked, and if so, what sort of jealousy: sexual or professional or both?’ Stella thought a bit more. ‘He and Nell broke up amid tears and blows.’
‘When was this?’
Stella made a guess. ‘Not so long ago, but before Casey went out to Los Angeles and the part in the soap we all know about, and Gus struck it big in Shakespeare. Say a couple of years.’ She shrugged. ‘So one’s sort of forgotten about it, and thinks those two ought to have done. That long.’ She looked across the room to where Gus was ordering himself a drink. She frowned. Back on that again? She would have to keep an eye on Gus.
‘Was the truth about the death ever established?’
‘I don’t think so, I don’t really know.’ Stella sounded faintly surprised she should be expected to know. ‘It was in Australia.’
Far away and long ago.
‘Nothing to do with you.’
‘No, of course not.’
Across the room, John Coffin could see Gus inserting himself into what he clearly hoped was a neutral group, neither on his side nor Casey’s, or who perhaps had never heard the gossip, anyway. Coffin felt sorry for the man. He knew what it was to feel a pariah: all policemen did. Sometimes you felt an alien in a hostile world.
‘I believe you set this up on purpose. Arranged the whole thing,’ he accused Stella.
Stella pursed her lips together. ‘It’s time they made it up. But I wanted Gus. I tried to get him to do a new play about Proust and then Othello. It was going to be a double on jealousy, but he