‘I think he just complimented us, John. That’s a first. I had no idea you were capable of pleasantries, Raymondo.’
‘I don’t see why not, I was well brought up. Some of the older ladies in our family—’
‘Oh, my Lord! Older ladies!’ Bryant sat up suddenly, catapulted by his chair.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Older ladies! I’m a total idiot!’ He climbed onto his desk and began pulling at a dusty leather-bound volume at the top of the bookcase.
‘Do you want me to get that?’ asked May, concerned.
‘What did I say?’ asked Land, but nobody was listening to him now.
‘Why did I not think of it at the time? Somebody take this from me.’ Bryant passed Land the volume and toppled off his desk, just in time to be caught by May. The book was Twentieth-Century British Theatre, Volume 2 by A. A. Gingold. Bryant began feverishly searching it.
‘What on earth’s he so excited about?’ Land asked May, bewildered.
‘I really have no idea,’ May admitted.
‘Here it is,’ Bryant announced. ‘Of course. It all fits together perfectly. But we may be too late.’ He squirmed around in his chair, trying to get his arms into his coat.
‘For goodness sake, let me do it.’ May threaded one of his partner’s arms into a sleeve.
‘Have you got your car here?’
‘No, I got the tube in today, why?’
‘Then we need a cab. Hurry.’ With half of his coat still trailing on the floor, Bryant was pulling him toward the door like a dog that had been offered a walk.
Out on the street it was just starting to rain. ‘Damn, the taxis will vanish in seconds,’ Bryant complained. ‘Wait, there’s one.’ He threw himself into the street, slipped in front of the taxi and nearly disappeared under it.
‘Where to?’ asked the driver.
‘The New Strand Theatre, Adam Street. Fast as you can.’
‘Are you going to tell me what this is all about?’ asked May as they fell back in the seat.
‘Echoes,’ said Bryant enigmatically. ‘There are echoes everywhere. I thought there was something vaguely familiar about that blasted play when I saw it. Then when Raymond mentioned the older ladies in his family—you see, I was coming out of the performance and bumped into Ray Pryce. He mentioned that Ella Maltby kept wax dummies. And Maltby told us that the talent had always been in her family. Then I went to get a programme and had a bit of a row with the seller—’
‘Why am I not surprised at that part?’
‘—and she said the older ladies in the cast remembered the days when the theatre had a nicer class of clientele—then I remembered the book.’
‘Arthur, I struggle to make sense of you at the best of times, but you’ve completely lost me.’
‘And I thought older ladies? There’s only one older lady in the cast—Mona Williams, the one who kept flirting with me during the interviews—and the programme seller must mean her. So I was wrong, it’s not Alex Lansdale, he’s not the one.’
‘He’s not the one what?’
‘The one who’s in danger. It’s Mona.’
‘Why are we going to the theatre?’
‘Because according to Janice’s notes, that’s where she is this morning.’ The taxi got stuck in traffic halfway down Gower Street, but the driver turned off sharply and gunned his way through Holborn, coming into the other end of the Strand in record time.
‘That was a nifty piece of driving,’ said Bryant, throwing a note at him. ‘You’ll go far.’
‘Not if it involves going south of the river,’ said the cabbie with a laugh, roaring off.
‘Stick!’ said May. ‘You’ve forgotten your walking stick!’
As they watched, the cab screeched to a stop, reversed, stopped and Bryant’s walking stick was thrust from the open window. The pair raced into the theatre.
The foyer of the New Strand Theatre was unlit, and the doors to the main auditorium were locked.
‘There must be someone here,’ said May, ‘otherwise the front doors would have been closed. There’s probably a cleaner.’ He looked at the stairs, and realised that Bryant would have trouble getting up them quickly. ‘Stay here and keep an eye out. I’ll go up.’
He took the stairs two at a time. Theatres, by their nature, are buildings largely contructed without windows. Moments later, May found himself in oppressive darkness. The air in the closed theatre was still and dead. All sound was muffled. He stopped to listen. In the distance, an ambulance siren seesawed along the Embankment. Nothing in here, though.