‘You found you couldn’t leave.’
‘I couldn’t even set a foot outside the door.’ She shook the memory from her head. ‘I looked up at the sky and felt sick. Had to sit on the step to stop myself from vomiting. The sun burned my eyes. The cars, the traffic, the noise. I didn’t know there was a word for it.’
‘Agoraphobia. It’s hardly surprising, the amount of time you spent in this dimly lit building.’
‘Then the war started. The blackouts. Everything went quiet. Everything was dark. I felt it more with each passing performance, the pressure to leave, it stalked me through the building like a living thing, daring me to go outside. I took my first steps out of the Palace in seventeen years, and was violently sick. Everyone else was in the shelters. The bombers passed overhead but they kept on going. You’ll think this is strange, but it was so peaceful.’ She exhaled sadly. ‘Then they sounded the all-clear and people came out onto the streets again. But the lights stayed off. I knew that if I was ever going to get out of the Palace and back into the world, I would have to leave soon, before the war ended and all the lights came back on.’
She looked at Bryant pleadingly. ‘But I couldn’t go. How could I go? A new show starting, I’d never missed a performance, never let anyone down in my life. The rehearsals were beginning, they were relying on me. There was no one to take my place. I’m the only one who knows where everything is. There’s Stan Lowe, of course, he’s been here as long as me, but he’s fond of a drink, the place could burn down and he wouldn’t notice. So long as the show stays open, I have to be here.’
‘So you decided to close the show.’
‘It was my boy, Todd. I called him that after Todd Slaughter, the star of Maria Marten—The Murders in the Red Barn. That was the show his father had been in. Todd was growing up fast. He took a shine to Tanya Capistrania, watching her from the wings while she practised. I thought he might try to do something cruel, something bad. I thought, history’s going to repeat itself if I don’t do something, he’ll become like his father, and I won’t be able to control him. He’s too big for me now. He’s seventeen. He’s already started to slip out during the air-raid warnings, moving under cover of the dark, while everyone’s off the streets. I didn’t want to see Tanya raped and left pregnant with some awful— I thought, if she dies, there’ll be a scandal. They’ll shut the place down and I’ll have to go. I’ll be forced out. It was the only way I’d ever be able to leave.
‘No one liked her, no one was close. I didn’t want her to suffer, so I poisoned her. I thought it would just put her to sleep. The hemlock was the easiest thing to get hold of. It grows on the bomb sites, you see. I put it in a sandwich and gave it to her. I thought she’d be able to tell if there was something funny about the flavour, so I got quail, something she’d never eaten before. She trusted me. Everyone trusts me. The hemlock made her fall down, but she wouldn’t die. Todd saw she was sick and got very angry. He tried to pull her out of the lift, and, God forgive me, in my panic I pressed the call button.
‘He went crazy when he saw what the lift did to her. He threw the severed parts out of the window in a rage. He wanted me to be caught. They rolled off the canopy and landed somewhere below. When I went to look for them they were gone. Tanya’s body was discovered, and I thought the show would be shut down at once. But no, Mr Renalda kept it going. I’d met Mr Renalda at the start of rehearsals, and instantly disliked him. I read about his family in the papers, all that stuff about him being raised to believe in Greek myths, and I thought, this is perfect.
‘A theatrical mind, you see. Plot mechanics. I see them every day of my life. Plots and puzzles and murder mysteries. Faking the way things look, it was second nature to me. I thought, I’ll just keep going until they close us down and someone puts the blame on him. Todd had helped me once, so I got him to help me again. I’m his world, Arthur, he’d do anything for me. I told him to watch certain people and to look for opportunities, things he could do that would make everyone get out of our house.
‘I made him wear gloves, the same gloves his father had worn on the stage in his role as a murderer. He knows the theatre better than anyone. He cut through the cable holding the globe, and he pushed the boy over the balcony, and he jammed the stage revolve so that Valerie Marchmont died. I knew if he acted during the raids, no outsiders could come into the theatre and discover him. But whatever he did, it seemed that everyone just became more determined to stay. The Blitz mentality, it’s infected everything.’