Play Dead

by Peter Dickinson

  He had spoken slowly in his low, grating voice, talking, Poppy realised, as much to her as to his wife. Was what he’d said true? Probably, she thought, though it couldn’t be as simple as that. Did it make any difference, apart from making everything more difficult … ?

  ‘You really think it will work?’ said Mrs Capstone.

  ‘Until this other business came up I would have said the chances were very good. Even the bankers, I believe, would have considered it a satisfactory result. Now, of course, the outcome is less certain. It depends, I suppose, on where Constantin was the night before last.’

  ‘You don’t know?’ said Poppy.

  ‘He was supposed to be with you,’ said Mrs Capstone at the same moment.

  ‘I believed he was in Portsmouth,’ said John, ‘staying with a woman called Bronwen. I had arranged for them to meet, a few weeks ago. Bronwen has worked in a hotel, and expresses a longing to live in Crete. I pay her a small retainer. I told you he wasn’t at heart a loyal servant of the regime. On occasions when I don’t need him to operate the voice-lock he has been dropping me at the airport and then driving on to Portsmouth. If he was with Bronwen then he couldn’t have been in London, murdering this woman …’

  ‘Nobody has told me why he, or you, or anyone should want to kill somebody else’s nanny,’ said Mrs Capstone.

  ‘In a minute,’ said John. ‘It’s very important to me that my employers shouldn’t learn that on some occasions I’ve been leaving Constantin behind. On this last trip, for instance, I was meeting the people who I hope are going to see that his sisters are safe, when the time comes. That could put our lives at serious risk, as well as ruining my plans. As for our supposed motive, I too would be glad to have that explained.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Poppy. ‘Well, you see, the man in the park, I’m almost sure it was him who followed you that evening, after we’d come back here for supper. You were very excited at first, then you pretended not to be interested. You thought you’d shaken him off, but he recognised you. He lived in a squat at Sabina Road. There was a photograph of you both on the notice-board. He was a rather hopeless, stupid young man. He wanted to impress the people at Sabina Road by finding out something important about Mrs Capstone. He’d have done just what he did here, gone and hung around your house and watched. Then perhaps he saw Constantin washing the car or something, and tried to get into conversation with him, pretending to know more than he did—the people at Sabina Road held briefing sessions on their political opponents, so he’d have some idea. And then Constantin might have decided he was dangerous, and simply got rid of him. Pretended to be friends, followed him back to Sabina Road, found out about the set-up there, and so on. But you see Laura knew the man—I think he’d been one of the babies she’d looked after. She was telling him things she’d picked up at the play centre—I mean the girls do talk, and she’d suddenly become much more friendly—and he must have told her about you visiting me. She was terribly upset when he died, and she started making all these accusations, and she asked Peony and Deborah to tea and I expect she said things then, and Peony would have told … oh! That’s important. Is Peony all right?’

  ‘As far as I know she’s in Runcorn,’ said Mrs Capstone. ‘She was extremely upset by this woman’s death—as you say she’d been to tea with her only a few days earlier. Then she came to me and told me her mother was ill. I didn’t believe her, but she was upsetting Deborah, so I packed her off home. She was in any case having the weekend off. I expect her back on Monday. I hope you are not planning to involve her in this tiresome business.’

  Oh, God, thought Poppy. She glanced at John, and had the impression that he’d looked away as she did so. She felt at the end of her strength. She couldn’t face the prospect of outraging Mrs Capstone still further with the possibility that her nanny was having an affair with her chauffeur, who’d then used her to get Laura to let him in at Barnsley Square.

  Mrs Capstone rose.

  ‘John, do you believe any of this?’ she said.

  ‘I suppose it’s a possibility. There are certainly members of the Securitate who would kill under such circumstances. In fact I don’t believe it of Constantin. I’ve been watching him for over a year now, remember, and though I don’t know what his exact orders are I don’t think he would kill anyone in this elaborate fashion. He isn’t stupid, but he’s vain and lazy. He must be equipped with several simpler methods of assassination. Or he might simply strangle the woman and fake a break-in. So I don’t believe it. On the other hand …’

  ‘Well, I don’t believe a word of it,’ said Mrs Capstone. ‘It’s all supposition. I would like to go home. Are you coming? I have the car.’

  ‘I’ll make my own way,’ said John, as easily as if discussing arrangements after a lunch-party.

  ‘You can go now if you want,’ said Poppy.

  He shrugged and followed his wife into the hallway. There was a murmur of voices as the door opened and closed, and she thought he’d taken her at her word and left without even a goodbye, but he came back.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘It’s too late for that. I don’t think there’s anything to say.’

  ‘About you and me? No. Not now. One day perhaps. But listen. I want to ring Bronwen. Now, on your telephone. You can listen on the extension. She may not be in, of course, but if she is I shall try to find out from her as unobtrusively as I can whether Constantin was with her on Wednesday night. If he wasn’t, that’s that. I shall have to tell the police what I know. It will be a risk to me and my family, but I’ll do my best to counter it. It will prevent my carrying out my plans in Geneva, but I may at least be able to tie the funds up in such a way that the Ceausescus are unable to make use of them until a legitimate Romanian government is in place. If, on the other hand, Constantin was with Bronwen …’

  ‘Then everything’s all right and he can tell the police.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I don’t want. The danger is that it will get back to his employers and they will realise that he’s no more to be trusted than I am. So I’ll have arrangements to make. They won’t be exactly straightforward …’

  ‘I don’t want to know.’

  ‘I don’t propose to tell you. But I will ask you, if you are convinced by what she says, and that therefore Constantin couldn’t have done what you suspect him of, that you should keep to yourself everything I’ve told you this evening.’

  Wearily Poppy tried to think it through. If Constantin … all that … yes, but there was something else …

  ‘I still think your wife should tell them what Laura said about the drugs.’

  ‘She was half mad, rambling.’

  ‘Everything else meant something.’

  ‘All right. I’ll talk to Clara. Otherwise … ?’

  ‘She’s in your pay?’

  ‘Bronwen? And I could have known about all this, and arranged in advance for Bronwen to provide an alibi? Yes, I could. You’ll just have to make up your own mind.’

  ‘All right.’

  The ringing tone went on and on. The woman wasn’t in. Nothing would be resolved. Or he’d dialled a different number, where he’d known there’d be no one there …

  A voice snapped, ‘Better be good. I was in the bath.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said John.

  The voice changed tone. No Welsh lilt. Sharp, but lively.

  ‘Oh, it’s you. Had a good trip? Get what you want?’

  ‘I think so. I tried to ring Constantin on Wednesday night, latish …’

  ‘Wednesday? Day before … Oh, we were in. We were in all right. I’d of taken the phone out.’

  She chuckled at the memory.

  ‘Fancies his food, doesn’t he?’ she said. ‘Good thing I like garlic too. When’s next time?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know. How’s the cash holding out?’

&nbs
p; ‘Not a lot left.’

  ‘I’ll send you some more.’

  ‘Ta. That all?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘OK. See you soon.’

  Poppy put the telephone down. Constantin had been in Portsmouth on Wednesday night, then … and, yes, before he’d left he must have said something to Peony, told her (brutally, perhaps—he was the type) where he was going, and why … Not just brutally? Deliberately? Was he organising an alibi, while some colleague of his disposed of Laura? Did John know that too? Was that why he’d gone abroad so suddenly? But in that case why muck around pretending to be in Geneva … ?

  No. The missile had come to earth, detonated, caused the predictable ruin all around. Only the target had been elsewhere.

  8

  There was a mystery about Saturdays which Poppy had never resolved. Some streets nearly emptied themselves of parked cars, every household having migrated to some country retreat, causing whole urban vistas to change as the original proportions between road, pavement and buildings came back into uncluttered view. That was explicable. But why should other streets, not much different in apparent wealth and social level, actually fill up, with inconsiderate double parking, leaving the owners of imprisoned vehicles to start the neighbourhood’s day with flurries of honking as they tried to draw the attention of whoever had jammed them in? Poppy’s street was one of those. She woke to the infuriated sound and lay looking up at the ceiling. The fury had existed in her sleep, an apoplectic staff officer with a panto-size syringe, farcically phallic now but full of menace in the memory, injecting drugs into a window-dresser’s naked dummy, which then began to twitch with life.

  No one will ever love me again, she thought. I shall never get a job. Janet will get into Parliament and I shall go on looking after Toby till he’s too old, and then I’ll become like one of his cuddly toys, once loved and depended on, now, though still in a vague way thought of as loved, irrelevant.

  She got up and went into the kitchen. Twenty to eight, a soft, calm morning by the look of it. A good day for a country walk. Elias was attentive, but only in the hope of food. You couldn’t call that love. She drank pineapple juice, ate muesli, made strong tea. Poppy Tasker, she thought. Idiotic name. Lot of idiotic names about. Why do women marry people and give themselves idiotic names? Clara Capstone for God’s sake! Mrs Gally! The Hon. Mrs … of course the Hon. made a difference to some people—maybe you’d be able to stomach a bit of stupidity for an Hon. Now if Hugo had had an Hon. would Janet … ?

  In the middle of these ramblings the name slipped into Poppy’s mind. Mrs Ogham-Ferrars. Just like that, without the style or husband’s name. Somebody had said it. She was having a party. They didn’t want a lot of kids rioting through. Sue. Little Sue. ‘I’ve got Mrs Ogham-Ferrars staying—Pete’s gran …’

  The scene swam back into memory, the clamour inside the play-centre hut, Toby experimenting with ribbon and the plastic engine, Deborah glorying in her scream, Nelson coming for the ravished tortoise, the clatter from the Lego table, even the odour of that longed-for rain on the parched turf outside. Sue coming up and giving her message to Nell. And earlier to Big Sue, with Laura listening. And Laura’s face.

  They’d called him Jonathan at the Sabina Road squat. It sounded right. Jonathan Ogham-Ferrars. And Mrs Simpson was his sister. Quite a bit older. Jonathan had been an afterthought, like Pete (how such patterns run in families). Laura had been hired to look after him. Her first baby.

  And the scene in the playroom at Linen Walk, when Laura had looked as if she was about to burst out to Mrs Simpson with some dotty grievance of her own … Not dotty. Not at all.

  Idiotic names have their uses. There weren’t even any Oghams in the London telephone directory, let alone Ogham-Ferrarses. But she was staying, Sue had said—up from the country for a few days, presumably, and seeing some London friends. Quarter past eight. The library wouldn’t be open for an hour. She washed up, dressed and did some perfunctory housework. I won’t tell anyone till I’m sure, she thought. I’m not going to be a missile this time, ruining lives and hopes and loves, because of a few wild guesses. But it was strange how much better she felt.

  Climbing the library stairs to the reference section she remembered the Hon. That meant they’d be in Debrett. No need to work through the complete set of telephone directories … .

  Yes …

  ‘Surnames of Peers and Peeresses, where different from title, in order of final names.’ … ‘Ogham-Ferrars: Blissege, B.’ (B for baron.)

  BLISSEGE, BARON (Ogham-Ferrars)

  Bevis Wibbley Fallowen Ogham-Ferrars, 7th Baron: b. 18 Sept. 1949.

  (Much too young. And he lived in Montreal.)

  SONS LIVING … DAUGHTER LIVING … SISTERS LIVING.

  UNCLE LIVING (Son of 5th Baron)

  (Ah.)

  Hon. David Fallowen b. 1918; ed. Cheltenham Coll., formerly Capt. Rifle Brig. (Prince Consort’s Own); m. 1950 Brenda Elizabeth da. of Hon. Gerald Penton (see Cussington, V.) of Threep Park, Wagley, Salop and has issue Jonathan Fallowen b. 1967; Rosemary Ida (14a Mells Parade, Bath) b. 1952; Marigold Elizabeth (27 Addison Crescent London W11) b. 1954, m. 1976 Giles Robert Simpson and has issue Robert Fallowen b. 1976, Hugh Michael b. 1978, Christopher James b. 1981; Susan May b. 1956 …

  1956! What … ? Oh, it was all right. A whole generation in a semicolon. Susan was Marigold’s sister. What had happened to little Pete? Poppy looked at the spine of the volume. 1988, but it would have gone to press the year before, so Pete wouldn’t have been born yet. And the Simpsons had been living in Holland Park. Addison Crescent—beautiful houses, selling for a million and a quarter at the height of the boom. They could have cleared more than a million moving to Linen Walk, and they still hadn’t had the roofs there fixed. Private education for three boys ate your money up, and so did running a yacht in Turkey and not having a proper job, but not that fast, surely.

  Poppy ran her eye down the rest of the paragraph. Susan had married Captain John Tollery and had produced two daughters and a son, and Diana, born in 1958, had married Count Alessandro Fernandez-­Boiardelli and was living in New York, apparently childless. The entry ended by returning to the living uncle, the Hon. David Fallowen:

  Residence—9 Winchester Road, Abbots Charity, Hants.

  Dutifully, then, a succession of daughters, at neat two-year intervals. (What had been Mrs Ogham-Ferrars’s recompense in the off years? Skiing, probably. Or sailing, or both.) And then a nine-year gap, and the girls off to school, nannies dispensed with, nursery become a bedroom and then—what a trick of fate it must have seemed—she was almost forty for heaven’s sake—this late, unwanted pregnancy. But behold, a boy! Fourth in line for the title! He must bear the full family name, he must have a new, young nanny … And Mrs Simpson was Marigold. Rosemary hadn’t married, apparently.

  Poppy photocopied the page on the library machine and then found a road atlas. Abbots Charity was about five miles from Winchester. She looked out of the window. Still a pleasant, soft-seeming day. It was not yet half-past ten. She put the atlas back and found the railway timetable

  Confidence had evaporated well before the train reached Winchester, and been replaced by the sour awareness that all she was doing was trying to run away from what had happened yesterday. What could she possibly do? Knock on the door? ‘Excuse me, but have you got a son you’ve lost touch with? Disowned, maybe? You have! I just thought you’d like to know he’s dead.’ Ridiculous. Much better simply wander round Winchester, look at the cathedral, or perhaps take a bus a few miles out and walk along lanes for a bit, since she’d brought the shoes and clothes for that.

  There were taxis waiting, empty. Other passengers took the first three. While Poppy stood hesitating the driver of the last one sized her up.

  ‘Lost then, love? Winchester not what you expected?’

  ‘I just wanted to go for a walk somewhere.
’

  ‘Run you to the edge of the town. Three quid.’

  ‘Oh, all right. Can we go towards Abbots Charity?’

  ‘Any way you want, love. Drop you where you can walk along the river a bit, shall I? It’s going to rain, mind you.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll be all right.’

  He was fatherly, despite being half a generation younger than her. He took her well beyond the last houses and dropped her off in a lane where a footpath led down to the river. It was early afternoon now. She sat on the trunk of a fallen willow and ate the salad roll she’d bought at Waterloo. The river was about fifteen yards across, shallow all the way, with tresses of dark green weed streaming in the clear, quick water. Trout, or grayling perhaps—she didn’t know the difference—moved in the open patches, shadowy, unhurried, as though the current had no effect on them. They didn’t have to thresh against it or scurry with it—they just willed their place above the gravel and stayed there. It was like time, Poppy thought. You don’t usually feel time streaming past you. You seem to be staying where you want, the same person in the same place for as long as you want, only you aren’t, you aren’t.

  When she moved on she found that the path didn’t follow the river all along the bank but twisted away between fields. Where the tractors had used it there were wallows of deep mud she had to pick her way round. The valley air was close and heavy. There was no one about. Too soon after Saturday lunch, probably. About a mile more and it started to rain, lightly at first, but soon a fine but dense, almost stifling, downpour. Not good. Her anorak, though bought as rain-proof, was proof against only the right sort of rain—light, and lasting not more than ten minutes. This rain was clearly going to last all afternoon. She wondered whether to turn back. It shouldn’t be more than a mile on into Abbots Charity. There must be a call-box. She could ring for a taxi from there.