Stage Fright

by Christine Poulson

  When Detective Sergeant Vickers told me about the letter, something monstrous had loomed up before me. It had been deleted, of course, but computer experts can retrieve documents that have been thrown way. There’s no doubt about it. It had been written on my computer. I had even found myself wondering whether I really could have written that letter and forgotten about it. That was the first moment that I fully understood I might be charged with murder. One by one, it seemed, the routes of escape had been blocked. The evidence was only circumstantial – could only be circumstantial, for God’s sake – but it was compelling. Even the fact that I was a lecturer in nineteenth-century literature – could there be a more blameless occupation? – was suspect now. Who better to know where to put their hands on a poem by Byron? We’ll go no more a-roving … The irony of it wasn’t lost on me.

  I found myself doing a mental review of prison literature. Someone would surely have written a book on it. Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs … There was a sudden burst of drunken singing and the clanging of a door down the corridor, and I came back to the present. I recognized these thoughts for what they were, a way of distracting myself from the seriousness of my situation, of avoiding the thing I was most afraid of: being separated from Grace. I wasn’t living in a totalitarian state and I hadn’t done anything wrong. So there must be a way out. Stone Walls doe not a Prison make, Nor Iron bars a Cage; Mindes innocent and quiet take That for an Hermitage. I must stop this: literature couldn’t help me now. And yet I couldn’t help trying to bring to mind the rest of the poem.

  When Love with unconfinèd wings

  Hovers within my Gates

  And my divine Althea brings

  To whisper at the Grates:

  When I lye tangled in her hair

  And fetter’d to her eye,

  The Gods that wanton in the Aire,

  Know no such liberty.

  Stone Walls do not a prison make,

  Nor Iron bars a Cage;

  Minds innocent and quiet take

  That for an hermitage,

  If I have freedome in my love

  And in my soule am free;

  Angels alone that soar above

  Injoy such liberty.

  Sir Richard Lovelace, the Cavalier poet, was a more sanguine prisoner than Oscar Wilde or Arthur Koestler. Well, I didn’t think Stephen would be whispering at the grates: getting on the phone to the best criminal lawyer in London would be more his style. But there must be something I could do for myself. Just one loose thread in the tissue of circumstantial evidence and the whole thing would unravel. It struck me then that maybe Lovelace was right in a way. I didn’t have to be in prison. If only I could relax, empty my mind of all this anxious clutter and let it become ‘innocent and quiet’. I lay back on the bed and closed my eyes.

  I saw a hot August day, clouds of wheat dust far out in the fields. I was driving home on the day that Stephen left for the States. It was so vivid that when the dog sprang out in front of me I pressed my head back against the pillow. I went on as slowly as I could, trying not to miss a single impression, trying to see everything as it had happened. Again Melissa smiled at me in her dressing-room, again she handed me the letter, again we leaned over a cot to watch our sleeping babies.

  Tears pricked my eyes. She must be dead. What else could keep her from Agnes? There were bits of our conversation that I couldn’t remember. I hadn’t known I would need to remember them. I pressed on. I saw Joe sitting across the lunch table, felt the coldness on my fingertips as I drew a line in the condensation on my wineglass.…

  The effort of concentration had an unexpected effect.

  I fell asleep.

  I dreamed that I’d lost Grace. I could hear her crying somewhere, but I couldn’t find her. I ran around the Old Granary, bumping into things and looking for her in the most unlikely places, in cupboards, even inside the washing-machine. It was not until I had run back upstairs to my bedroom that I realized. Yes! There was a room I hadn’t searched. The secret room. I must have put her there to keep her safe. Relief surged up in me. But the next moment I realized that my problems weren’t over. Because the secret room wasn’t always in the same place. Where was it today? I examined my bedroom walls carefully, running my hand along them to find the hinge of the door. A phone began to ring and I hesitated, not sure whether to answer it or not. Grace was still crying. I had to find her. But the phone was so insistent and I knew that Grace was safe. And anyway this was a dream. Grace wasn’t really there. And I had to answer that phone before I woke up. I would learn something terribly important if I did. I willed myself to stay in the dream. I went over to the bedside table. The dream was slipping away, growing fuzzy round the edges. I lifted the receiver. It was Joe. His voice was very serious:

  ‘Didn’t you realize, Cassandra, that they are all nothing but a pack of cards?’

  And with that the world of the dream vanished. I was lying on my bed in the cell breathing hard. A phone was still ringing somewhere close by. And it was all all right now. I’d found the loose thread. You could say that it was Grace who got me out of the prison cell. I was rescued by a crying baby. Of course, they would have been bound to release me sooner or later. Wouldn’t they? That’s what I tell myself now, but it wasn’t how I felt at the time.

  * * *

  ‘I can prove that Melissa was still alive at around half past ten that evening,’ I told Detective Sergeant Vickers back in the interview room. ‘My ex-husband rang my mobile phone. I was upstairs changing Grace’s nappy. So Melissa answered it for me! He actually spoke to her. They had a conversation.’

  He considered this. ‘You could have faked that,’ he said at last, but I could tell that his heart wasn’t really in it.

  ‘Oh, come on, Sergeant, I’m one of the few people involved who isn’t an actor. And don’t you think Joe would have realized? I mean, the man used to be married to me.’

  Vickers opened his mouth to speak.

  ‘And no,’ I added hastily, ‘we weren’t in collusion. I hadn’t seen or spoken to him for at least fourteen years before we met up last week.’

  Vickers heaved a sigh. He looked exhausted. I looked past him to Detective Constable Pritchard. She gave a sympathetic little smile.

  ‘So can I go?’ I asked. ‘Or do you have to speak to Joe first?’

  ‘That’s not going to be a problem,’ Detective Sergeant Vickers gestured wearily towards the front of the police station. ‘The professor’s out there along with a posse of others eager to proclaim your innocence. Though eager doesn’t really describe one of them, hangdog is more like it. I suppose it would be stretching a point to charge him with wasting police time by not coming forward earlier, though there’s nothing I’d like better.’

  I had no idea what he was talking about. I looked from him to Detective Constable Pritchard. She got to her feet.

  ‘I’ll go and speak to Professor Baldassarre, shall I, Sarge?’

  Vickers nodded. When she’d left the room, he switched off the recorder and leaned back in his seat. We sat in silence for a bit and then he said:

  ‘Might as well tell you that one or two other things have come to light. Mr Kingleigh’s alibi for that night has collapsed. That young actress – Belinda Roy – has now admitted that she went home around midnight. We found a copy of your house key in a drawer at Mr Kingleigh’s cottage, so he had access to your word processor. He could have typed that letter. And then there’s Mr Harcourt-Greaves…’

  For a moment I couldn’t think who that was.

  ‘The documentary man,’ Vickers explained.

  ‘Jake?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Behind Vickers, the door opened. Detective Constable Pritchard put her head round the door. ‘It checks out,’ she said.

  I was on my feet before she’d had stopped speaking.

  ‘Yes, yes, you can go,’ Vickers said. ‘I’ll need another statement at som
e point…’

  I didn’t hear what else he was going to say, because I was out of the door.

  In the waiting-room there was a crowd of people. There was Stephen with Grace in his arms. Joe was talking to him in a confidential manner, Stephen was nodding. They looked like old friends. Amongst all the emotions jostling for dominance, I found room for a twinge of irritated surprise. Stan was standing off to one side looking uncharacteristically grim and Jake was beside her. I easily recognized the description of hangdog in his drooping shoulders and glum expression.

  The next instant Stephen saw me.

  ‘What an earth have you been up to?’ he enquired. ‘I can’t turn my back for a moment, can I?’ And then I was hugging him and Grace both at once. I felt I could never get enough of them, but I did at last pull free. Grace clung to me and I held her close.

  Through the window I could see the wide green expanse of Parker’s Piece. There was a cricket-game in progress. People were sitting on the grass in little groups. A toddler was lurching uncertainly along chased by his mother. A summer’s day in Cambridge. Had it had ever looked more beautiful?

  ‘Cass,’ Stan said, ‘Jake has something to tell you.’ She pushed him forward.

  ‘I’m sorry, Cassandra,’ he muttered. ‘I really am.’

  ‘What? What’s the matter?’ I asked.

  He bit his lip and looked at Stan.

  ‘Let me give you a clue,’ she said. ‘Who was that masked man?’

  ‘You mean – it was Jake who was dressed up in that cloak!’

  ‘Oh, God, oh, God,’ he moaned.

  ‘I can’t believe it! Why did you do it?’

  ‘It was a joke more than anything.’

  ‘Oh, no, it wasn’t,’ Stan said. ‘You did it to stir up excitement for that bloody documentary.’

  ‘How could you sink that low?’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t really do any harm.’

  ‘No harm! The police thought I was involved!’

  Stan said, ‘And he wouldn’t have owned up even now, if I hadn’t finally realized what the cloak smelled of: that poncy aftershave he uses.’

  ‘If it gets out, it’ll ruin me professionally,’ he whined, ‘and anyway Geoff—’

  ‘You little shit,’ Joe spoke quietly, but the hairs went up on the back of my neck. I knew what was going to happen next and this time I wasn’t going to try to stop him. But as it happened it wouldn’t have done any good if I had.

  Because it was Stephen who stepped forward and sent Jake sprawling.

  Chapter Twenty

  THE blood in the bathroom turned out to be Melissa’s. After a tussle between Maire and the social services, Agnes was released into the care of Maire and Geoff, who had been named as joint guardians in Melissa’s will. Kevin had died intestate.

  ‘Kevin killed Melissa. I’m sure of that,’ Maire told me. ‘And that’s what the police think, too. They’re not looking for anyone else. Of course that’s not enough for the bloody social services. I want to take Agnes home and raise her with my own kids. But they won’t let me take her out of the county until Melissa’s been declared legally dead. Geoff and his wife’ll take care of her until then.’

  We were sitting in my kitchen on an autumnal day in late September. A blustery wind was lashing the trees and now and again a handful of raindrops splattered on the window. Maire’s hair was untidy and she had lost weight. In that respect she looked more like Melissa, and yet now that I’d got to know her better, the resemblance didn’t seem so strong. She was a coarser, but stronger character. Where Melissa had been vague, even a little fey, Maire was blunt and decisive.

  ‘The lying, manipulating bastard,’ she said. ‘They’d have got to him sooner if it hadn’t been for bloody Belinda. What was it with Kevin? He could make even the smartest of women think that the sun shone out of his arse. Not that Belinda is the smartest of women, mind you. You know what, I’m glad he’s dead – prison would have been too good for him. Except now they’ll probably never find Melissa’s body.’ Her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘It’s awful…’ I reached over and rested my hand on Maire’s arm. There was nothing more I could say. Melissa had to be dead. She couldn’t have missed all the media coverage of Kevin’s death in the papers and on the TV; if she was alive, why hadn’t she returned to claim her child? And she hadn’t drawn any money out of her account or used her credit cards.

  ‘He buried her somewhere and she’ll probably never be found,’ Maire said. ‘I won’t be able to lay her to rest, to say goodbye properly. That’s hard.’

  It was hard. How long did I go on hoping even against my rational judgement for news of Melissa – or even that it might be Melissa – every time the phone rang? It’s difficult to say now. In spite of everything life went on in the way that it does. My maternity leave ended and I began teaching again at the beginning of October. East Lynne finished its run with another actor taking the part of Captain Levison. Jake’s black eye recovered, but his reputation didn’t. His documentary was never broadcast and the plug was pulled on the rest of the series. Stan moved on to other productions and other theatres. She sent me a postcard from a theatre in the Midlands, where she was stage-managing The Wizard of Oz. All it said was: This isn’t Kansas, Dorothy. Some days do stand out: Grace’s first Christmas, of course, and my fortieth birthday in December, which was also the day Stephen and I got married at the register office in Cambridge. There can’t be many people who have their first husband as a witness at their third wedding. As Joe remarked, perhaps I should have called on my second husband, too, and made it a hat-trick.

  It was about six months after my conversation with Maire that I drove up the track to Geoff’s smallholding in North Wales. It was a cold March day and I was on my way home after giving a lecture at Bangor University. It was spring now in Cambridge, but here there was snow on the tops of the mountains and little drifts clung to the tussocky grass lower down. The farm was in a sheltered spot in a fertile little valley. I stopped by the side of the track and got out of the car. I took some deep breaths. The air was intoxicatingly fresh and cold. A stream swollen with melt-water ran down the valley, providing a constant background murmur.

  I shivered. It was time to get back in the car and drive on to the farm.

  At first sight the place seemed deserted and I wondered if I were going to be unlucky. As I walked across the yard, I glimpsed a car through the open door of one of the stables. Geoff’s Jeep was nowhere to be seen. But that was all right. It wasn’t Geoff I’d come to see.

  The house was small, built of grey stone with a slate roof, a sturdy four-square building. I rang the doorbell. No one came. I wandered over to the wall by the side of the slope into the valley. A woman was emerging from a sheep-pen with a bucket in her hand. She saw me and stood still for a moment or two. I waved. She waved back and set off up the hill. When she got close enough for me to make out her expression, I saw the polite wariness that one adopts when a stranger arrives at one’s door.

  She unlatched the gate into the yard. ‘Véronique?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes?’ Her eyes flicked over to my car, as if to check whether I was alone.

  ‘I’m Cassandra.’

  ‘But yes! How delightful.’ She was close to me now. She put down her bucket, wiped her hand on her overall and shook my hand.

  ‘I’ve been milking the ewes. It’s very good with coffee, ewe’s milk. You’ll have some, yes?’ The French accent wasn’t strong, but I was very conscious of the caressing cadence. ‘You’ve come to see Agnes, of course.’

  I felt a sudden qualm. ‘She is here?’

  ‘Yes, yes, she is here. She’s asleep. She sleeps always after lunch. I take the chance to do some little jobs. Come, you can see her now.’

  We went up the narrow stairs through the centre of the house and turned left into a bedroom. Like all the rooms in the house it was small and the windows didn’t let in much light. But someone had worked hard to make it bright and welcoming. There was a
sheepskin rug on the floor and yellow plastic crates of toys. The walls were white with a frieze of characters from The Wind in the Willows. I went over to the white-painted wooden cot. The child asleep inside looked less like Grace than she used to do. Her hair was still fair, while Grace’s had darkened. The shape of her face was different. She wasn’t a baby any more.

  Véronique stood next to me looking down into the cot. She leaned in and brushed back the hair from the forehead of the sleeping child.

  ‘And your own little girl?’ she asked. ‘You didn’t bring her with you?’

  ‘No, she’s at home with my husband.’

  ‘Ah, yes, your husband; Geoff told me. I have to congratulate you.’ Her tone was warm. Her formality was only that of someone for whom English is not the first language.

  We went down to the kitchen. There was an Aga, a dresser with willow-pattern plates and a big scrubbed kitchen table. The room was deliciously warm.

  Véronique made coffee with deft and economical movements.

  ‘I’m sorry you’ve missed Geoff,’ she said. ‘This is the first time he’s been away on a job for more than a couple of days.’

  ‘Yes…’

  She turned from the Aga. ‘You know – I think you are not sorry at all. I think you came on purpose. You wanted to check up on me, no?’ She was smiling.

  I found myself blushing. She was right. I’d chosen a time when Geoff wouldn’t be there.

  ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘I understand.’ She put the coffee-pot on the table and sat down opposite me. ‘It’s good that you are looking out for her. And of course you don’t know me. In your position I would feel the same. But, you know, I love her, la pauvre petite. How could one not?’

  I felt almost drowsy in the warmth from the Aga. Véronique pushed her sleeves up her arms.

  I roused myself.

  ‘How long will Agnes go on living here with you?’ I asked.