Read Online The Strangling on the Stage by Simon Brett - Free Book Online

complacent smile. ‘Sooner or later they all need me to help them out.’
    â€˜So you audition for all of them in turn, do you?’
    He chuckled. ‘I don’t do auditions. I get asked to play parts.’
    â€˜Is that usual in the world of amateur dramatics?’
    â€˜Not usual. But it’s how I work. All amdrams have a problem with gender imbalance. There are always more women available. That’s why they’re always looking for plays with large female casts. Getting enough men’s always tough. Getting enough men who can actually act is harder still. So no, I don’t audition. I wait till I’m asked to play a part.’
    Jude hadn’t been aware that there was a star system in amateur dramatics, but clearly there was. And, at least in the Fethering area, Ritchie Good was at the centre of it. The original big fish in a small pond. She almost winced at the conceit of the man.
    â€˜Anyway,’ he said, ‘we don’t want to talk about me.’ A statement which Jude reckoned might be one hundred per cent inaccurate. He brought the practised focus of his blue eyes on to her brown ones. ‘I was really bowled over by meeting you last night, Jude.’
    â€˜Were you?’
    â€˜Yes, it’s not often that I see a woman and just … pow! You had a big effect on me. I kept waking up in the night thinking of you.’
    â€˜Oh yes?’
    â€˜Would I lie to you?’
    â€˜You really shouldn’t set up questions like that for me, Ritchie. They’re too tempting.’
    â€˜Are you saying you think I would lie to you?’
    â€˜I’m damn sure of it.’
    â€˜Oh.’ He looked a little discomfited. Perhaps his chat-up lines usually got a warmer response. ‘Anyway, I thought it would be nice to meet.’
    â€˜And here we are – meeting. Is it as nice as you anticipated?’
    His face took on the hurt expression of a small boy. ‘You’re a bit combative, Jude.’
    â€˜I wouldn’t say that. I just have a finely tuned bullshit detector.’
    â€˜Ah. So you reckon I’m a bullshitter?’
    â€˜Isn’t self-knowledge a wonderful thing?’
    â€˜And the possibility doesn’t occur to you that I might be sincere?’
    â€˜You have it in one.’
    â€˜I do find that a bit hurtful,’ he said in a voice that was playing for sympathy. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just that I’m a creature of impulse. I see someone I fancy, I want to get to know that person, find out more about them.’
    Jude was silent. She believed his latest statement as little as she had believed his previous ones. Ritchie Good was not, in her estimation, ‘a creature of impulse’. She reckoned everything he did was a product of considerable calculation. And she was interested to know the real reason why he had arranged this meeting. His implication that, on first seeing her in the Cricketers, he had experienced a sudden coup de foudre did not convince her.
    â€˜So,’ she said, taking the conversation on a completely new tack, ‘first proper rehearsal for
The Devil’s Disciple
tomorrow?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Is it going to be good?’
    â€˜Dick Dudgeon’s a very good part,’ said Ritchie Good. It was the archetypal actor’s response. Never mind about the rest of the production, I’ve got a good part.
    â€˜Have you worked with Davina before?’
    â€˜Oh yes, a few times. I like her as a director. She’s very open to everyone’s ideas.’
    Jude didn’t think she was being over-cynical to translate Ritchie’s last sentence as: she listens to my ideas and lets me play the part exactly as I want to.
    Time to home in on what she really wanted to ask him. ‘I was having a chat with Hester last night …’
    â€˜Oh?’ There was a slight tension in him, a new alertness at the mention of the name. ‘What, in the