‘Thanks. Thanks for setting this up, as well.’
‘It was my pleasure,’ he said, which was a whopping great fib if Trixie had ever heard one because it had not been his pleasure at all, in fact he had stonewalled her from the start, and she would just like to know what had caused his change of heart: Edmund Fane did not strike her as a man who would do anyone a favour without first calculating what return he was likely to get. She watched him go out, and heard him close the outer door, and then turned her attention to plotting the exact layout of Studio Twelve. The thesis was going to incorporate a plan showing where the murders had actually happened. Neat and businesslike and informative. Now then. Conrad Kline had been killed in the wardrobe-room; Leo Dreyer in Lucretia’s dressing-room. Better look at both places. Wardrobe-room first.
Liam Devlin had been right about one thing at any rate; the wardrobe-room stank of damp and decay. Even so, Trixie stood for a moment looking into the dark cavernous interior, remembering that this was where Conrad had lain dying and that his bloodied handprints had been smeared over one of the walls. He was supposed to have dragged himself to the wall dividing this room from the baroness’s dressing-rooms, and tapped feebly on the wall, in the hope that someone would hear and come to his aid. But no one had done so because they had all been scurrying around summoning ambulances and police.
Leo Dreyer had been the financier for the film they had been making, and Trixie, reading the reports, had received the impression of a rather calculating man, probably given to patting the bottoms of wide-eyed would-be starlets, and lubriciously murmuring in their ears, I could do a lot for you, my pretty dear…She had not much liked the sound of Mr Leo Dreyer, although you would not wish his death on anyone.
Measuring up so that the plan would be to scale was difficult in the near-dark. There was a faint glimmer of light from the boarded-up windows, but even at high noon they would not provide more than a thread of daylight. Trixie had brought a tape measure, but she had not brought a torch. There was one in her car, but it was still raining hard and she did not fancy trekking back across the mud-fields. She would try to manage with the light there was.
She came back into the main studio and looked around. It really was an appallingly desolate place. Before she set off, Francesca Holland, who was staying with Trixie at the moment, had asked if it was really worth making the journey – all that way, and in the middle of a November rainstorm, Fran had said, peering doubtfully at the weather. Still, if it had really been such a cause célébre…
Trixie had at once said, God, Fran, your accent! at which Fran had replied defensively that it was all very fine for Trixie and her posh education, but not so fine for people who had only attended Brick Street Junior School! She could be a bit prickly at times, that Fran, although there was a definite touch of the spaniel-eyed romantic several layers down.
Here was the baroness’s infamous dressing-room, next door to the wardrobe. It was not quite as dark, but Trixie had to feel around to locate the door handle, and even when she found it and opened the door, she could not see very much. But she set to with the tape measure again, going more by feel this time than anything else.