Stage Fright

by Christine Poulson

  I got back into bed with Grace and pulled the covers up. Stephen would be home soon. Things wouldn’t seem so bad then. And yet he was still so far away. Perhaps it was best to think of the distance in time, not miles. Every minute that passed brought him closer. I tried to count the hours before he would be here, but I found it hard to calculate. The dregs of the sedative were still clogging my thoughts. Time and space, were they really the same thing? I couldn’t quite think. If only I could go back to sleep until Stephen got here, just to escape back into oblivion once more. I thought perhaps I could.…

  The doorbell rang. The bedroom door was ajar and I could hear the front door being opened. There was a murmur of voices, then the clattering of several pairs of feet coming up the wooden stairs to the study on the floor below. Then a single pair of feet came up the stairs to my bedroom and Stan appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Vickers and Detective Constable Pritchard want to talk to you,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll come down.’

  I heaved myself out of bed and put on my dressing-gown. I went into the bathroom and splashed cold water over my face. When I felt more awake, I went down.

  The study was full of people. Detective Sergeant Vickers was sitting on the swivel chair by my desk. Detective Constable Pritchard was sitting on the little two-seater sofa next to the desk. Stan was standing by the window. There was a tension in the air that I didn’t fully understand. No one spoke.

  Then Stan said, ‘I’ll go up and keep an eye on Grace.’ She disappeared up the stairs.

  Detective Sergeant Vickers said, ‘You’re well enough to speak to us, now, Dr James?’

  ‘Yes,’ I crossed the room and sat on the window seat. ‘I suppose you haven’t heard anything – about Melissa. I mean?’

  ‘Miss Meadow?’ He shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Is Agnes all right?’

  He nodded. There was another little pause.

  He said, ‘There’s no point in beating about the bush, Dr James. Yesterday afternoon one of our officers, Tim Fisher, received a phone call from Mr Kingleigh. It’s logged at about forty minutes before he died. He appeared to be in a state of considerable distress. He claimed that you had taken his baby and were refusing to return her. That you had in effect abducted her.’

  ‘What!’ It came out as a shriek. ‘But that’s exactly the opposite of what happened!’

  ‘Agnes was here with you yesterday, wasn’t she?’

  I felt a chill. There’s was no getting round the fact that the police had turned up to find Agnes sitting in the highchair in my kitchen.

  ‘Well, yes,’ I said, ‘but…’

  Vickers went on. ‘He also claimed that you assaulted him and stole his car keys. He said he was stranded at his cottage.’

  ‘Yes – but – you don’t understand! He threatened Grace!’

  ‘You don’t deny assaulting him and taking his car keys?’

  ‘I had to stop him following me!’

  ‘Can you tell us where you were on the afternoon of Tuesday the tenth of August?’

  ‘What?’ I was bewildered by this change of direction. ‘Last Tuesday? The afternoon before Melissa went missing? Well, let me think. I picked Grace up from the nursery at two o’clock. And then I was at home. That’s right, I stayed at home until I went over to Melissa’s.’

  ‘Any witnesses to that?’

  ‘Well, no, but…’

  Vickers turned his head very slightly and nodded to Pritchard. Detective Constable Pritchard was getting to her feet and stepping forward. She pursed her lips and looked me full in the face.

  ‘Cassandra James, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Melissa Meadow and Kevin Kingleigh.’

  * * *

  ‘Tell me again about the last time you say you saw Melissa,’ Detective Sergeant Vickers said. ‘What time did you arrive at the house?’

  ‘Quarter past nine? Half past?’

  ‘And you left at…?’

  ‘About half past ten, twenty to eleven, something like that.’

  ‘And you don’t remember passing anyone on the road either coming or going?’

  ‘Really – I just can’t remember now.’ I rubbed my forehead. The heaviness of earlier in the day was changing into a headache. It was stuffy in here. I’d seen interview rooms like this on TV a hundred times. I couldn’t believe I was actually sitting in one.

  ‘Do you really think Melissa’s dead?’ I asked.

  Vickers said, ‘We found bloodstains in the bathroom at the cottage. They’d been scrubbed with bleach but there was still enough to get some DNA. We’re testing it right now.’

  He sat back and tapped his ballpoint pen on the table, but his eyes never left my face. Probably he was hoping that when I heard that, I’d break down and confess.

  There were four of us in the interview room. Vickers, Pritchard, me and Rod Loomis, Stephen’s partner in the firm. He was the only solicitor I knew except for the woman who’d done the conveyancing for the Old Granary. He was a short, balding man, rather dapper. Today he was dressed in a linen suit and a bow tie. He didn’t look at home here.

  Vickers went on: ‘Our problem is this, Dr James. We haven’t been able to discover any independent corroboration that you did actually see Miss Meadow that evening. In fact we can’t find anyone who saw her or spoke to her after she collected her daughter from the nursery at two o’clock that day. Several people did ring the house but they only got the answering-machine.’

  ‘I can explain that. She was asleep. She told me earlier that she was going to put the answering-machine on.’

  ‘Strange that she didn’t return any of the calls.’

  ‘But anyway, Kevin said that he spoke to her. The phone company must have a record of that.’

  ‘A call was made from the cottage to the flat in London at ten forty-five. Belinda Roy confirms that Mr Kingleigh answered the phone call at that time. She overheard part of the conversation.’

  ‘Well, then.’

  ‘But we don’t know that it really was Miss Meadow on the other end of the line, do we?’

  I was having trouble focusing on what he was saying. I kept worrying about Grace. I’d been allowed to leave her with Stan, but she’d need feeding again soon.

  ‘Who else could it have been?’ I asked.

  ‘It could have been you, Dr James.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘But it wasn’t.’ I was glad that my voice at least was under control. Under the table my knees had started to tremble.

  Vickers sighed. Then he leaned forward and put his clasped hands on the table.

  ‘We have another problem,’ he said. ‘There’s no real evidence, is there, that you yourself were at home that afternoon?’ His voice was affable but firm. ‘I want to suggest to you, Dr James, that on the day of Melissa Meadow’s disappearance you went over to Journey’s End much earlier than you’ve led us to believe.’

  ‘You can’t really think that I murdered Melissa!’

  ‘Cassandra,’ Rod said. He laid a hand on my arm. ‘Wait. This is a preposterous allegation, Sergeant. My client is happy to help in any way she can, but she cannot submit to this line of questioning.’

  ‘No, no, Rod, it’s OK,’ I said, putting my hand on his. ‘I’ve got nothing to hide and anyway I want to know how Detective Sergeant Vickers thinks I disposed of her body with a six-month-old baby in tow.’ I corrected myself. ‘Two six-month-old babies actually, because I would have had to deal with Agnes as well.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not suggesting that you did it on your own,’ Vickers said. ‘If we don’t take it for granted that Miss Meadow disappeared after eleven o’clock that evening, then we have a gaping great hole in Mr Kingleigh’s alibi. No one appears to have seen him between the time he left his agent in central London at four o’clock and nine o’clock when Miss Roy arrived at the flat in Camberwell. In fact, it’s my suggestion that Kingleigh was the instigator and probably the perpetrator of this
crime. I see Dr James playing a supporting role, assisting him particularly in the establishment of an alibi.’

  ‘But why? Why would I do that?’

  ‘Perhaps you regarded Miss Meadow as a rival for Mr Kingleigh’s affections.’

  I couldn’t take this in at first. When I did, I actually laughed.

  ‘That is a deeply offensive suggestion,’ Rod burst out.

  Vickers said, ‘I don’t think Dr James can deny that she spent the night with Mr Kingleigh at Journey’s End only a few days ago. I myself saw her there.’

  The breath was jolted out of me. I looked at Rod. He was staring at Vickers with his mouth open. He was after all a good friend of Stephen’s as well as his partner. Then he got a grip.

  ‘I would like to speak to my client alone, Sergeant.’

  Vickers looked at me. I nodded. Vickers recorded the break in the interview and switched off the tape recorder. He and Detective Constable Pritchard left the room.

  ‘Cassandra, just what is going on here? You didn’t, did you?’

  ‘What, murder Melissa? Or sleep with Kevin? What do you think!’

  ‘Oh, Christ, I’m sorry, of course I know you haven’t murdered anyone, but did you really spend the night there?’

  ‘It’s not what he’s suggesting. Kevin rang me up. He said he thought Agnes was ill. She was screaming the place down. I went over there with Grace. When I’d got Agnes settled, I was just so exhausted that I fell asleep. Kevin slept downstairs on the sofa.’

  Rod let out his breath in a noisy exhalation.

  ‘Look, Cassandra, I’m not sure that I’m the best person to be dealing with this. I’ve never done any criminal stuff. But I do know enough to advise you that you shouldn’t answer any more questions.’

  ‘Look, Rod, you wouldn’t be human if you weren’t wondering, but I haven’t done anything criminal. Nothing at all. I swear. I’ve got nothing to hide.’

  ‘Nothing? Really nothing?’

  ‘Unless you count stealing his car keys as a crime. And that was self-defence. The bastard had my baby.’

  Rod groaned. ‘I don’t like the way this is shaping up. It’s not just how things are, but how they can be made to look. You know that as well as I do.’

  ‘If I don’t say anything, they’ll keep me here, won’t they?’

  ‘They can hold you for twenty-four hours without charging you. With a serious crime like this they can extend it for another twelve.’

  Thirty-six hours. A day and a half. Grace had never been away from me for more than a few hours. My breasts began to ache at the very thought of it.

  ‘If I do answer their questions, could they still hold me?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘They can really do that? They can separate me from my baby even though I’ve done nothing wrong?’

  ‘You know they can.’ He paused and then said unwillingly, ‘They know that it won’t look good if you turn out to be innocent and anyway they’re not monsters…’

  ‘So they might let me go if I answer their questions?’

  ‘I’m still advising you not to.’

  ‘Tell them to come back in.’

  Detective Sergeant Vickers and Detective Constable Prichard came back into the room and I explained how it was that I had come to spend the night at Journey’s End.

  ‘So you felt sorry for Mr Kingleigh, left alone with his baby?’

  ‘I felt even sorrier for Agnes.’ It dawned on me now how easy it had been for Kevin to get a hold over me through her.

  ‘But you stopped feeling sorry for Mr Kingleigh, didn’t you?’

  I nodded.

  ‘After you found out about his affair with Miss Roy?’

  ‘No! Or at least, yes, but it wasn’t what you’re implying. I felt angry on Melissa’s behalf. I thought that might be why she’d left.’

  ‘I understand you had an altercation with Mr Kingleigh that almost ended in a brawl in the bar at the theatre? What was that about?’

  ‘Kevin was supposed to be driving me home. But then I decided to get a lift from my ex-husband, and Kevin was annoyed.’

  He nodded. ‘Did he have cause to be jealous?’

  Rod opened his mouth to object. I said, ‘No, it’s OK, I want to answer. The answer is no on both counts, Sergeant. Kevin would not have been justified, because I was not having a sexual relationship with either him or my ex-husband.’

  ‘So why was he upset?’

  ‘He liked to manipulate people and he thought he was manipulating me. It wasn’t working any more and he was angry.’

  Vickers flicked over the pages of his notebook. He said, ‘And according to what you told me earlier, Mr Kingleigh came over and swapped your baby for his. When you drove over to remonstrate with him, he threatened you and your baby. You managed to escape and took his car keys with you.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did you know that Mr Kingleigh was allergic to nuts?’

  I bit my lip and nodded.

  ‘Let me tell you what we found at his cottage. The sitting-room was in chaos. The telephone had been knocked on to the floor. A briefcase had been tipped up and papers were scattered around. Books had been pulled off shelves. The kitchen was the same. Worse, even. Stuff all over the floor. Broken crockery, milk, flour. Things had just been swept out of cupboards. Evidence of a desperate search for the adrenaline that could have saved his life. We don’t know yet what he ate – cereal, a biscuit? – that contained nut, but given the strength of his reaction, it’s amazing that he stayed on his feet as long as he did. He was a dead man – maybe even literally – before the train hit him.’

  ‘A biscuit?’ I was seeing myself in the kitchen on the night Kevin had called me over to care for Agnes. My hand was on a tin in the cupboard.

  ‘It must have been an accident,’ I said. ‘Perhaps he got hold of something belonging to the landlord and ate it by mistake.’

  I tried to remember. Had I actually taken that tin out? I didn’t remember doing that, but I’d been so tired … on auto-pilot really …

  ‘There should have been a rescue kit in the kitchen,’ Detective Sergeant Vickers was saying. ‘His GP says that Mr Kingleigh was punctilious about keeping the antidote on hand. When he couldn’t find it anywhere in the house, there was one last chance. There actually was another rescue kit in the glove compartment of the car. We found it there. But he didn’t have the car keys, did he? Because you’d taken them. And by then he didn’t have the strength to smash the window.’ Vickers held my gaze. ‘Can you imagine what that could have been like?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, Christ.’ I was seeing a blind staggering figure, a swollen face.

  ‘The keys weren’t all you took, were they?’ he said quietly. ‘You took the adrenaline from the kitchen, didn’t you? You found out he’d been carrying on with Miss Roy behind your back. You were beside yourself with anger. You’d helped Mr Kingleigh to dispose of his wife because you thought he loved you…’

  Rod raised a hand. ‘Stop there! This is outrageous. Dr James categorically denies that she had any kind of sexual relationship with Kevin Kingleigh or that she was involved in his death.’

  Vickers seemed unperturbed. He nodded.

  ‘Let’s go back, shall we, to the disappearance of Miss Meadow and some of the events surrounding it? This business of the cloaked figure in the dress-circle. I’m not sure what lies behind that, but perhaps you can enlighten me. You and Mr Kingleigh were acting in concert there, weren’t you?’

  ‘Oh, please! I was the one who found the cloak in the costume store. If I was involved, why would I have brought that to Stan’s attention?’

  ‘Did you find it? Or were you discovered putting it back?’

  I stared at him. I seemed to have stepped into a looking-glass world, where everything was reversed. It was all an absurd mistake, of course it was, but the picture he was building up was curiously compelling … I missed what Vickers was saying next and had to ask him to repeat it.

>   He did so with no sign of impatience.

  ‘I said, how do you account for the fact that Miss Meadow didn’t tell anyone except you about the anonymous letter?’

  ‘I can’t account for it. But the letter does exist. You know that. Kevin handed it over to you.’

  He leaned back in his chair.

  ‘Ah, yes, the letter.’

  There was a pregnant pause. The silence lengthened. Then Vickers leaned forward and leafed through the folder on the table between them.

  ‘This letter,’ he said, holding up a piece of paper in a plastic wallet.

  ‘That’s right.’

  There was a theatrical pause. Vickers put the wallet on the table and slipped it across to me. All of a sudden I knew what he had been going to say, incredible though it was. Just in time I stopped myself from saying it for him.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to explain how this came to be written on your computer,’ he said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  SOMEONE must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning. The opening lines of Kakfa’s The Trial, so chilling in their matter-of-factness, kept running through my mind as I sat on the thin police-cell mattress. Joseph K. never did find out who had set in motion the train of events that led inexorably to his execution, but I knew who had been lying about me. I’d been maligned by a dead man.

  The cell was the shape of a shoe box and it didn’t feel much bigger. At least I was alone and I had a lavatory all to myself, even if it was the sort you wouldn’t fancy using without putting toilet paper round the seat. And I did have a book. I’d found it in my bag and had been allowed to keep it with me. I always carry a World’s Classic around with me. They’re so small and light and you never know when you’re going to need something to read. I did wish though that the current handbag book wasn’t Gogol’s Dead Souls. Not that it really mattered: there was no natural light and the central light bulb didn’t give off enough light for me to read. The book’s importance was more as a talisman, a reminder of the outside world and of my real self.