Finally, at eleven-thirty, May saw the actors and production crew. At first they politely refused to discuss the other guests, but it only took one of them to crack for all the others to chip in enthusiastically with scurrilous information. This group proved to be the most interesting, but a new problem emerged: May could not tell who was telling the truth, and who was exaggerating for effect. The responses on the questionnaires were colourful but largely constructed from surmise and gossip.
‘Judith Kramer doesn’t love her husband,’ confided Mona Williams, the older lady who was playing the handsome actor’s grandmother in The Two Murderers.
‘They’ve only been married a short while,’ said May. ‘What happened?’
‘She told me that Robert had deceived her.’
‘How?’
‘She was seeing someone else when they met, but Robert was extremely persistent in his attentions. He bombarded her with gifts, turned on the charm, flew her to India to propose. He pushed her to marry him. She says he wanted a hostess, not a partner. Look at her, she’s a classic trophy wife! After they were married he completely changed. Treated her like a servant.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘Judith and I have had quite a few heart-to-hearts.’
‘Why did she go through with the marriage?’
‘She told me her parents divorced when she was seven and her mother was left penniless, and I think she was frightened that the same thing might happen to her. She did what a lot of insecure women do. She married for security and saw someone else for love.’
‘Do you know who this “someone else” was?’
Mona shot a meaningful glance at her old friend Neil Lofting. ‘You might as well tell him, seeing as you’ve gone this far,’ said Neil, with a sigh.
‘So long as it goes no further,’ said Mona. ‘It’s Marcus Sigler, our leading man.’
‘When did she stop seeing him?’
‘That’s the thing. I don’t think she has. I don’t know for sure because she won’t tell me, but apparently the last ASM walked in on them in her dressing room, which we think is why she left the company. She knew too much, couldn’t face seeing them after that.’
‘And Robert Kramer really has no idea?’
‘God no, he’d never have hired Marcus for the play if he had! If he ever found out, I don’t know what he’d do. He has a terrible temper. He was married before but his first wife couldn’t take any more of his bad behaviour and it all ended badly. He never talks about her.’
What would it take, May wondered, for a man to kill his own child? Could Robert have murdered Noah to spite his wife for her infidelity? And if so, how did he do it in his own flat, surrounded by his friends?
‘There’s something else,’ said Mona, always happy to be a harbinger of ill will. ‘Gail Storm, our so-called ASM, was giving our leading man the come-on from the moment she set eyes on him at the party. I’m RADA-trained, you know. I miss nothing.’ May made another note.
The corpulent Alex Lansdale had been a restaurant critic, a film critic, an art critic and now a theatre critic. He explained that he had been born to criticize others for a living, and made more money than any of those he lambasted. His ultimate ambition was to become a TV talent show judge. Lansdale sat back in the sofa, his tiny grey eyes lost in a basin of unhealthy flesh, and held forth to his audience.
‘You must understand, Mr May, that Robert Kramer is a terribly clever man when it comes to money, and an imbecile when it comes to art. He knows what the public wants, but he couldn’t tell Nijinsky from Stravinsky. Basically, he’s a property developer with no taste. Have you seen The Two Murderers? Oh, it’s smartly written, I suppose, but pure sensation, gore and sex for the masses. It’ll make a fortune, but in my opinion it’s meretricious trash.’
‘So it’s safe to say you don’t like Robert Kramer,’ May pushed.
‘I’m not paid to have an opinion about him one way or the other,’ Lansdale replied. ‘I’m paid to cover the show.’
‘You broke ranks to stab the play in the back. Yet you still showed up to the party. Why was that?’
‘I’m as entitled as anyone. My readers expect me to be rude, and I try not to disappoint them. Besides, I had a—’ He stopped himself.
‘You had a what?’
‘Nothing. Please go on.’
May switched tactics. ‘Who do you think killed his son?’
Lansdale puckered his dimples, thinking. ‘It’s usually the mother, isn’t it? Postnatal depression. I think the wife’s positively unhinged. You hear all kinds of rumours about her, how she married him because she’d heard how much money he’d made and found herself stuck in a hellish relationship. Maybe she was pushed to the end of her tether. She’s out of her depth, pretty as porcelain and a lot more fragile.’