The Strangling on the Stage Read Free Page A

who was about to be the recipient of Storm Lavelle’s full-on adoration.
    Her friend was on the way to the door when she stopped and said, ‘Ooh, one thing, Jude …’
    â€˜Yes.’
    Storm looked around the cluttered room, whose furniture was all covered with rugs and throws. ‘I just wondered if you’d still got …?’
    A wry smile came to Jude’s full lips as she said, ‘You mean the chaise longue?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    Jude moved across to remove a light-blue woollen blanket she’d bought in Morocco and reveal the article under discussion. The chaise longue had come from a little antique shop in Minchinhampton, picked up when she’d been on a trip to the Cotswolds with her second husband. It had been a stage of her life when Jude had been moving away from the husband and towards the idea of becoming a healer. She had thought the chaise longue might possibly do service as a treatment couch, but when she’d got it home she found it to be too low for such a purpose. She had hung on to it, though, and it had moved with her from address to address when other pieces of furniture had been abandoned.
    She didn’t know how old it was, and the antique dealer who sold the thing to her had been pretty vague on the subject. ‘Mid to late Victorian, possibly Edwardian’ was as specific as he had got. The base, he said, ‘might be mahogany’, though Jude thought it was probably a cheaper wood stained to look like mahogany. The upholstery, he felt sure, was not original, but Jude had become quite fond over the years of the purplish flowered print, even though it was usually covered with the Moorish drape. She liked using the chaise longue in the winter months, moving it near the fire, making sure she had an adequate supply of tea, crumpets and books before snuggling under the cover.
    Many chaises longues have a supporting arm along one side, but Jude’s didn’t. And this had proved of great benefit in its life outside Woodside Cottage.
    Because her chaise longue was a much borrowed piece of furniture. And it was always borrowed by the same kind of people – amateur dramatic groups. A chaise longue was so versatile. Any play set in any historical period looked better with a chaise longue as part of its setting. And Jude’s armless chaise longue was much loved by directors, because they could set it facing the audience on either the right- or the left-hand side of the stage.
    Not even counting the times it had been borrowed before, since Jude came to Fethering her chaise longue had featured in most of the church halls of the area in a variety of thespian endeavours. It had been a shoo-in for a part in
Robert and Elizabeth
, the musical about the poet Browning and his wife, and appeared in more than one stage version of
Pride and Prejudice
. Jude’s chaise longue had also taken the stage in
The Winslow Boy
,
Arsenic and Old Lace
(twice) and virtually the entire
oeuvre
of Oscar Wilde. It had even, tarted up in gold foil, provided a suitable surface for the Egyptian queen to be poisoned on by an asp in
Antony and Cleopatra
.
    And now, Jude intuited, it might be about to make an appearance in George Bernard Shaw’s
The Devil’s Disciple
.
    So it proved. Storm wondered tentatively whether it might be possible for the SADOS to impose on Jude’s generosity to borrow …? The permission was readily given. Jude’s sitting room also contained a sofa which could be moved near the fire for the tea, crumpet and book routine, so the chaise longue would not be missed. The only questions really were when would it be needed, and how should it be got to where it needed to be got to.
    The answer to the first was as soon as possible, because when Davina Vere Smith was directing she liked to use all the furniture and props right from the beginning of rehearsals. And the chaise longue needed to be got to St Mary’s Church Hall in Smalting. Once