The Glass Ceiling

by Anabel Donald

  When I went out to the car it had begun to rain. The traffic was clotted up across the Harrow Road. I inched my way along, tried all the settings on the Golf’s windscreen wipers and de-mister, and tapped my hand on the steering wheel. Fun fun fun. I tried the radio. Bosnia. I turned it off. I tried some cassettes: none of them were right. I groped in Polly’s glove-compartment for more.

  All I came up with was a large bottle of perfume. Mitsouko. Expensive. What the hell. I sprayed myself with it and groped some more.

  Earrings. Large, dangly, jade earrings. I took out my sleepers and hooked the earrings in, and swung my head from side to side experimentally. The jade caught me a great crack across the jaw. I looked at myself in the wing mirror. Quite good. I’d keep them on.

  The driver behind me was tooting. I’d missed a light. I turned and gave him two fingers, then repented. It wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t Grace. I gave him an apologetic smile and he tooted again, so I stopped appeasing and settled for concentrating on the traffic.

  It should have taken twenty minutes. It took forty. When I parked outside Grace’s house and got out it was raining really hard, bouncing up from the pavements and gurgling along the gutter. Most of the windows in the house were lighted; very few had closed curtains. I wondered which room we’d have her drink in, and how many of her hangers-on would join us.

  I went up the steep steps to the front door, dodging the cracks and holes, and rang the doorbell. Then I retreated down two steps because a steady stream of water, probably from a broken drainpipe, was drenching the door-step.

  The front door opened. I looked up. Someone was standing there, back-lit, in jeans and a sweatshirt. Female. Built like Grace, but not Grace because she had short hair. The shadowed face looked half-familiar: a bit like Grace’s.

  It must be the daughter, I thought.

  ‘Hi, come in, you must be Alex,’ she said. ‘I’m Fennel. Grace is my ma. She wants you upstairs, OK?’

  I followed her in and up the stairs. Fennel. The early seventies had plenty to answer for, name-wise; she’d escaped fairly lightly. It could have been Garlic, or Basil.

  Behind us I could hear Tad and Fred practising in the kitchen. Above us, the wailing of Billie Holiday. I thought we were going to Grace’s study, but we passed it, and went up the next flight. Billie Holiday began to recede: her song was coming from the room next to Grace’s study, possibly Fennel’s room.

  Now I could hear Abba, from above.

  Another flight. Abba got louder Fennel opened a door and stuck her head in. ‘Alex, Ma,’ she called loudly. Then she turned to me. ‘Go on through,’ she said. ‘She’s in the bath.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The first room was a bedroom. Quite big: about fourteen feet by twelve. Quite bare. A big low double bed, with white sheets and pillows and a white, possibly linen, duvet-cover. Fitted dark wood cupboards. A dark, polished wooden floor with sheepskin rugs by the bed. Small dark wood bedside tables, with Art Deco lamps that looked original. Very like Barty’s.

  A door to the right led to what must be the bathroom. Abba were singing from there, and steam was drifting out.

  I looked at the bed again. ‘Hi, Grace,’ I called. ‘How long have you lived in this house?’

  ‘Twenty years,’ she called back. ‘Why?’

  Twenty years. That covered Barty, before he married and after. Had the duvet covered him, here?

  ‘No particular reason,’ I said.

  ‘Come through, get yourself a drink. It’s Kir Royale or Kir Royale.’

  ‘I’d like Kir Royale,’ I said. What was it?

  ‘Well, come in and get it,’ she said in the sudden silence after the end of ‘Super Trouper’. ‘I never mind being seen naked.’ (Chuckle.) ‘In certain lights.’

  I went in. A big bathroom, obviously a converted bedroom. A large corner bath, big enough for two people, now filled only with bubbles and Grace. Soft, pinkish light. Mirrors, a basin, a toilet, a bidet, a shower, and a long tiled shelf by the side of the bath holding piles of books, a cassette player now launching into ‘Waterloo’, champagne-glasses and an ice bucket with a silver flask in it.

  She stopped the tape, reached for the flask and poured me a drink. I kept my eyes away from her body, took the drink and sipped it. Champagne with some sweet syrup base. Rather good.

  ‘Look at yourself in that,’ she said, pointing at an ornate brass-framed mirror in the corner. ‘Over there.’ I did. I looked terrific. ‘It’s the mirror from heaven,’ she said. ‘I found it in a junk shop in Camden High Street, years ago. I always look at myself in it, last thing before I go out. Then I know I’m beautiful. It takes me through.’

  ‘Takes you through what?’

  ‘Everything. Because I know when people look at me, that’s what they’re seeing.’

  ‘But they’re not,’ I said, interested despite myself. ‘Only you did, in that particular mirror.’

  ‘What I see, they see,’ she said. ‘Great truth of life. D’you want to join me?’ She swished water and foam over her breasts, lifted one long and elegant foot and waggled it in the air.

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Why not? I’d have thought you were a bath person. That’s why I asked you for half-past five, because I’m out to dinner at seven-thirty. You’re late. I waited as long as I could.’

  ‘Do you often ask people for drinks in the bath?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Why, does it annoy you?’

  This was impossible. I was jealous. I was sick with jealousy. It was so bad I couldn’t suppress it or distract myself or even concentrate on the work questions I had to ask her. All I could see was a happy, randy Barty beside her in the bubbles.

  ‘Who is it?’ she said.

  ‘Who is what?’

  ‘Who is it you’re seeing? With me. Who did you see on the bed in there, with me, when you asked how long I’d had the house?’

  ‘If you’re so clever, can’t you guess?’ I said. I couldn’t stop myself It was game, set and match to her I sounded like a spiteful child; I could hear it.

  She chuckled. ‘Sorry, no chance. I’ve been about a bit, you may have heard. Give me a clue. Is the person male or female?’

  ‘Barty O’Neill,’ I said. I know when I’m beaten. Mostly.

  ‘Barty . . . When did you meet him?’

  ‘Five years ago.’

  ‘I haven’t slept with Barty in the last five years, so you can stop feeling jealous. Unless jealous is what you like to feel. I’m jealous of you now. Not much, just a little. Barty’s top of my list.’

  ‘Top of what list?’

  ‘Good men who got away,’ she said. ‘Now look in the mirror again, top up your drink, take your clothes off, and get your ass in here, there’s a good girl. You’re missing fun. You’re missing the Grace Experience. Strong men have killed for less.’

  The Grace Experience was giving me a very soggy notebook, but she was right, it was fun. Sipping the drink, warmed by the bath and the bubbles and the entirely unsexual strength and warmth of the pressure of her long body, I felt exhilarated and weightless and powerful. ‘Are you going to tell me about the Womun in the Balaclava Helmet?’ I said.

  ‘Whatever I can. It won’t be much more than you know already. You ask, I’ll answer. Watch your feet, I’m topping up with hot water.’

  I moved my feet obediently.‘Do you think Elspeth is the Womun?’

  ‘I did,’ she said. ‘I knew it wasn’t me. I didn’t think Melanie would bother. It had to be Elspeth, although I didn’t know why.’

  ‘But now you don’t think it is?’

  ‘No. I checked the timings with Nick. Nice kid, Nick.’

  ‘The timings?’

  ‘Elspeth couldn’t have dropped the package off at your house last Sunday night. About ten o’clock, wasn’t it? Well then. It couldn’t have been her.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She was with me. We both went to lunch with Melanie, left there about four, went to the cinema, ca
me back here about eight, ate a takeaway Chinese and nattered until the small hours. She went home on Monday morning. How’s your drink?’

  I let her top me up. ‘It still could be,’ I said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘You could be lying.’

  She chuckled. ‘How true. But I know I’m not.’

  ‘Or she could have an accomplice.’

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Who?’

  ‘Edward Webb,’ I said.

  Silence. I’d surprised her She flapped water over her breasts: a delaying tactic, I supposed. She couldn’t hope it would distract me. ‘Tell me what you know about Edward,’ she said.

  ‘I know he was Teddy’s father. I know he lived with Melanie. I know he walked out, and as far as Teddy knows, he disappeared. And I think he stays with Elspeth under the name of Edmund Wilson.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said. A relieved ‘Ah’? A delaying ‘Ah’? I didn’t know.

  ‘I also think he was involved with all four of the Vestal Virgins, somehow, in your Finals term at Oxford.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’ she said.

  ‘Because Janet Wilson told me,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘She certainly hinted at it,’ I said.

  ‘I can believe that. I don’t think Janet’s told anybody anything in her whole life. Not without irony.’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘Is what true?’

  ‘Is it true that you were all involved with Edward at Oxford?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he take the photograph of all four of you in a punt? The one you gave Jordan for the Leona Power tribute?’

  ‘No.’ Chuckle.‘That was taken by someone else entirely. Nothing to do with your investigation.’

  Fine. I didn’t want to get sidetracked on to her colourful past. I pressed on: ‘Will you tell me what happened in your Finals term?’

  ‘No. Most of it isn’t my story to tell. And I won’t discuss it any more. How’s your drink?’

  I held out my glass. ‘What will you tell me about Edward?’

  She thought. ‘Edward isn’t well.’

  ‘How not well?’

  ‘He had a car accident. Broke his back and fractured his skull. He has brain damage.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘When he left Melanie. He was depressed. It was a suicide attempt, I think. He drove his car into a tree. But not fast enough.’

  ‘And Melanie didn’t know about it?’

  ‘I won’t go into that. All I’ll say is that Elspeth was living and working in London then. She visited him in hospital. Then she took him home with her. And when she left her job and moved down to Herefordshire, he went too. Most of the time.’

  ‘Can he function now?’

  ‘Within limits. I wouldn’t have thought he could be anyone’s accomplice, if that’s what you mean. I certainly wouldn’t use him, he’s completely unpredictable.’

  ‘Unpredictable enough to kill one of Elspeth’s dogs?’

  She was surprised – maybe even shocked – into stillness. ‘When did this happen?’ she said.

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘Tell me all about it.’

  Grace was rattled by the dead dog. Not enough to give me much information, but enough to agree that she would speak to Elspeth as soon as possible and find out what was going on, and then tell me. She knew Elspeth’s neighbours; she’d ring them and ask them to get Elspeth to call back later that evening, about ten.

  ‘But you’re going out to dinner. You’ll have to come back early. Won’t that spoil your fun?’

  Chuckle. ‘Not at all. I’ll bring him back with me.’

  ‘Can’t you leave it till tomorrow?’

  ‘No can do. Tomorrow, early, I’m off for the weekend. A literary festival down Bristol way. Readings, signings and pre-publicity for my new book. But we’d better have a contingency plan. In case I don’t get her tonight. When can I reach you tomorrow?’

  ‘Just leave a message on the answering machine.’

  ‘But when will you pick it up? Will you be in tomorrow?’

  I wondered at her insistence. Was she genuinely anxious about what Elspeth might do? But, if so, why did she have to involve me? Surely she could deal with Elspeth herself. No harm, though, in her knowing my movements. So I told her.

  ‘I’ll be out in the morning, back to the flat by about twelve-thirty at the latest, and then probably out again in the afternoon from about two until . . . say, six.’

  ‘Right,’ she said, and after that she wouldn’t talk about the case at all. We talked about Nick, and Janet Wilson, and what it was like being a private investigator, and I enjoyed myself. Unthinkingly.

  I caught a bus home. I was well over the limit for driving, and I wasn’t going to risk my licence. Plus I like buses.

  I’d been outmanoeuvred, of course. Grace had told me exactly what she wanted me to know, no more; and she’d charmed me, which was presumably what she’d set out to do. But unlike most charmers, she didn’t leave me feeling ripped off, even as the champagne and whatever it was ebbed and left me semi-sober.

  And I felt a lot better about Barty.

  Friday, 1 October

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I was up and running at six. It was a dull, overcast morning; the sun was presumably somewhere up there, but it was losing the battle against the dense, threatening London clouds. It might rain, any minute, I felt as I breathed the damp air.

  I didn’t care. I felt wonderful. At one o’clock, Barty’d be at Quaglino’s.

  And so would Nick, with a message from me.

  But I had plenty to do first.

  By seven o’clock I was in a taxi, going over to Grace’s to pick up the car. She hadn’t rung the night before to tell me that she’d spoken to Elspeth. Maybe she hadn’t managed to get her, or maybe she’d ring me this morning and leave a message. Whatever had, happened, Elspeth was Grace’s responsibility, for the moment, and I only had one bit of outstanding business in London.

  Teddy Webb had rung back the evening before, while I was at Grace’s, and left a message. He wanted to speak to me, urgently. He thought he could help me. He’d ring back at half-past eight this morning.

  I’d hesitated over that. Should I wait for his call? I wanted to ask him something, too. I wanted to ask him why he hadn’t mentioned, when he told me about his parents’ lunch party last Sunday, that Grace was there. We’d been talking about her, and he knew I was interested in the details of the lunch; was it just a casual omission? Or deliberate? And if deliberate, why?

  But I was short of time. I couldn’t rely on getting down to Oxford and back in time for lunch if I hung about in London until half-past eight.

  So I was on my way to pick up Nick, with a hammer and screwdriver to open Kinross’s tea-chest, and a competitive desire to find out what Grace was so determined to conceal from me about the Finals term, 1971.

  I paid off the taxi and looked up at Grace’s house. Most of the curtains were drawn. As I watched, Fennel came to a first-floor window and opened it. She must just have got out of bed; she was wearing a long T-shirt and she looked young, and sulky. Probably she wasn’t a morning person.

  I looked away before she noticed me, and unlocked the car I must be getting old, I thought as I started up and drove away. All young people were beginning to look alike to me. Fennel looked a little like Nick: the same long face. And both of them looked like Teddy.

  I made good time to Oxford until I had to slow down for Summer-town, and then it was only ten minutes to Norham Gardens. Nick opened the door to me, and went straight back to the table to work at the computer print-outs. There were much fewer of them on the table, now. Kinross, still in his suit, was asleep on the camp bed in the corner. The remains of last night’s Chinese takeaway were stacked neatly on the draining-board, with two empty litre bottles of Strongbow beside them.

  ‘Nick – come and help me,’ I said, fishing out the hammer and screwdri
ver from my bag. ‘I want this information, and it’ll be quieter if we open the tea-chest together’

  She shook her head without looking up. ‘Uh-uh,’ she said. ‘He won’t wake. I think his liver’s shot. A little Strongbow and he was well gone. I want to finish this. He has some computer-time later today, and I’ve got to plot the program.’

  I could have asked her who she thought she was working for, but why bother? I knew the answer.

  I heaved the Blue Filing Cabinet tea-chest from the hall into the kitchen and started levering away at the nails on the lid. ‘Did you get any sleep?’ I said.

  ‘Sleep?’ she asked, astonished.

  ‘Any chance of a cup of coffee?’

  ‘Forget it,’ she said.‘This is the most exciting thing that’s happened to me. Ever. In my whole life.’

  Two nails out, eight to go. The screwdriver slipped and gashed my left hand. ‘Ouch,’ I said. ‘More exciting than Grace?’

  ‘Do shut up,’ she said. ‘I’m working.’

  I sucked the blood from my hand and kept levering. I was working, too.

  The last nail was the hardest. They always are. But finally I removed the lid, propped it against the wall, and looked in. Stacks of old green filing cabinet suspension folders, still labelled with their little plastic tabs. I took them all out and sorted them in piles. Wine Committee. Appointment of Master Steering Committee. Proceedings of the Royal Society. Fellowships, Awards and Prizes. I flicked through those, curious. He’d collected them like beermats. Including a share of the Nobel Prize, in the fifties.

  ‘Nick, he got the Nobel Prize for Physics!’ I said.

  ‘Did he?’ she said.

  ‘What do you suppose it was for?’

  ‘His work, on group theory, I expect. Or vector spaces. I don’t know the physical applications. Do shut up.’

  I looked at the pink and white old man on the bed, gently snuffling in his cider coma. ‘They should look after him better. They should treat him with respect.’