[Berkeley Brigade 10] - Shadow of Murder Read Free Page A

I’ll have to tell — that is, discuss it with my fiancé. I’m sure he will be as thrilled as I am. Sean knows how hard it is to get work.”
    The gents who had made their selection from the actresses began leaving the Green Room, jostling them as they stood talking. “We can’t discuss it properly here,” Reg said. “Come to my house tomorrow morning.” Again that doubtful little frown flitted across her lovely face. “Bring Sean with you,” he said, to quiet her fears that he might molest her.
    “Oh thank you, Sir Reginald! Sean will be so excited. What time should we come?”
    “Say, tennish?” He gave her the address and they parted.
    Reg was thrilled with his find. “Lovely, is she not?” he said in wonder. “I could hardly believe my eyes when she walked in, and then when she said she was an actress ...”
    “Very pretty girl. Even ladylike.”
    “And innocent. Exactly what I was hoping for, and she wasn’t even trying for the part. Luck is like love, Coffen. You find it when you aren’t looking.”
    “You were looking. That’s why we were there.”
    “I’m speaking of Miss Chalmers!’
    “So am I, but I don’t think she loves you, Reg. She mentioned a fiancé.”
    “I don’t love her. That’s not what I meant at all. My meaning is simply that Miss Chalmers found a role when she wasn’t looking. Why must you always confuse things? Let us go. I still have to find a hero and a villain.”
    He didn’t find either at Covent Garden, but he wasn’t long in finding his hero. Chloe’s fiancé, Sean Everett, might have been created for the role. Tall, dark haired, broad-shouldered, fairly well-spoken, and with some acting experience. His face, perhaps, did not bear close inspection. A hero ought to have a finely chiseled face, like Luten. Sean’s face was rather a common face with a roundish, blunt nose. But such details were permissible when he had the all-important air of rectitude of the stage actor down to a tee. In real life he also had a kindly way of looking after his Chloe.
    Chloe told him she and Sean had met during that Romeo and Juliet tour. He had played not Romeo but Mercutio. When the tour was over, they had both decided to try their luck in London. Chloe managed to make clear that while they lived in the same building, they were not sharing living quarters.
    “It’s a rough sort of place,” Sean explained. “I worried about Chloe being there alone. There’s noise, drinking and so on, especially on a Saturday night. She has only to tap on the wall if anyone bothers her and I’ll be there.”
    The financial terms were accepted so eagerly that Reg felt he might have offered less, but then he liked his actors, and that was important. They knew of a fellow they thought would do for the villain and would speak to him.
    Prance was impatient to get on with the rehearsals and went that afternoon to put his request to a friend at Drury Lane who had just the fellow for the job.
    “Vance Corbett,” he said. “He’s not working at the moment and could use the blunt. I’d like to keep him around, which I won’t do if he don’t get some work soon. A dashed good actor. He’ll go far. He was born to play the villain. You’d swear he was one of Lucifer’s tribe, a fallen angel. A menacing face, yet handsome along with it. I’ll send him around for you to have a look at.”
    Vance came to Berkeley Square later that same day, just before dinner, and was exactly as described. Tall and well built, dark hair, rather dark complexion. It was the slight beetle brow that gave him that menacing air. Along with the aquiline nose, the square jaw and deep voice, he was the very epitome of the stage villain. He agreed to present himself the next morning at ten. Notes were sent off to Chloe and Sean, and it was arranged that they would all meet at Prance’s at that time, then go next door and be introduced to Lady Luten before beginning rehearsals.
    Reg’s valet, Villier, was busy all that day