by Joan Smith
Loretta was puzzled. She took down the book, and turned to the inside cover. The French critic Roland Barthes, the blurb began, had remarked that ‘to give the text an Author is to impose a limit on that text’.
The pioneering work of structuralist critics [it went on] has demonstrated the exciting possibilities that flow from this courageous refusal to privilege the text. But it is to the deconstructionists that we must look for the ultimate challenge to the authority of authorship. In this subversive new book, Toby MacGregor, Professor of Nineteenth-Century Texts at the University of Arkansas, commits the final act of insubordination with his challenge to the patriarchal rule of Dickens.
Loretta turned the book over and regarded the photograph of Professor MacGregor on the back cover. So this was the chap who thought he knew better than Dickens, she thought, staring at his angular young features. She’d back Dickens any day.
She was about to return the book to its place when she started in horror, dropping it as she did so. She could hear a scrabbling noise somewhere in the flat. Had the murderer come back? Where could she hide? She looked wildly round the room. A tiny creature scuttled across the floor and disappeared under the sink. It was only a mouse. Loretta fell back into the chair, berating herself for her foolishness. She reached down to retrieve the book, and noticed a piece of paper next to it. Picking it up, she recognized it as a compliments slip from the publisher. The book’s publication date was three or four weeks hence, she noted, and the publisher asked to receive a copy of any review written by the recipient.
It took her a moment to realize the significance of what she was holding. This was a brand-new book, so new that it had not yet been published. It must have been sent out very recently - she knew from her own limited experience of reviewing that copies went out about a month ahead - and been brought to the flat in the last few days. Its literary merit might be questionable but it was, without doubt, a clue. Concealing the slip inside the front cover, she put the book into her overnight bag. She opened the front door, glanced round quickly to make sure no one was in sight, and closed it behind her.
Chapter 2
Loretta arrived back in London late the following night. She was tired and depressed, convinced now that she had done the wrong thing. Even her arrival at her flat, an airy maisonette on the top two floors of a four-storey house in Islington, failed to cheer her. Once inside, she dumped her bags in the hall, carried her post into the drawing-room, and dropped into an armchair. As she looked through the letters, she reflected that her attempt to give an anonymous tip to the French police had been a dismal failure. Either they were not used to being offered information on a Sunday afternoon, or the relevant department closed down at weekends. Whatever the reason, the switchboard operator had been unhelpful to the point of obstructiveness, refusing to put her through to anyone of importance unless she supplied her name and business, which Loretta (cravenly, she now admitted) had refused to do.
After several minutes of fruitless argument, she had tried to pacify her conscience by telling the man he ought to send an officer to take a look at the flat marked Gardner at 18 rue Roland. She doubted very much whether he had done any such thing. Where did that leave her? she asked herself, wondering whether there were any aspirins in the flat. She possessed only one clue to the identity of the man in the flat, which she had no idea how to interpret, and she had not the least idea what to do next.
This gloomy mood persisted throughout the next day. Stuck in the London traffic on her way to Gillingham, Loretta had little to do other than turn over the weekend’s events in her mind. What she needed was someone with a clear head in whom she could confide - and a lot more information. Perhaps she had missed one simple little fact capable of transforming what had seemed like a nightmare into something relatively commonplace. She cursed the fact that Andrew was going to be away, if she remembered rightly, until Friday. Not that he was the ideal confidant. Far from it. If events in Paris turned out to have the innocent explanation she longed for, he would relish the chance to spread the story of her discomfiture at the college where they both taught. She had no difficulty in imagining how he would handle it: ‘Our poor Loretta seems to have a secret desire to be a Gothic heroine,’ he would murmur into the telephone. ‘All those bloodstains and vanishing corpses. Very Mysteries of Udolpho, don’t you think? Who would have thought it of her?’ One of the problems with having a reputation as a feminist was that people were always on the lookout for evidence that you were fainthearted and feminine underneath it all.
But a conversation with Andrew, handled carefully, might at least give her a clue to the identity of the man she’d seen at the flat. It might be that one of the other tenants had phoned to warn him that a friend intended to use the place, and Andrew had forgotten to pass on the message. He had been so full of his holiday plans that this explanation seemed perfectly possible. Loretta wondered if there was any way of contacting Andrew in Greece. She had an idea that he’d let out his cottage in Oxfordshire - being a part-time lecturer, he was able to indulge the luxury of living outside London - for the weeks he was going to be away. It was just possible that he’d left a phone number for emergencies. She decided to ring his house in Charlbury that evening.
Loretta arrived in Gillingham to find her mother, predictably, in a state of nerves. It was just as well she had arrived early, she reflected, taking over the packing of Mrs Lawson’s small suitcase. It took two cups of tea and half an hour of persuasion to get her mother into the car, and Loretta was guiltily thankful to hand her over to a sympathetic nurse when they arrived at the hospital. After an hour of sitting about, she was allowed to visit Mrs Lawson in a small gynaecology ward where she had already made friends with a woman who was recovering from the same operation. Loretta guessed the introduction had been effected by one of the nurses, and silently congratulated the hospital on the quality of its staff. She took her leave with a clear conscience, reminding her mother that her father and younger sister were due to visit that evening.
She was relieved that Mrs Lawson had settled in so well but, as she drove back to London, she gave free rein to feelings of irritation towards her sister. Jenny lived just outside Gillingham, and could perfectly well have taken their mother to hospital; as usual, she had got out of it with a vague reference to her other family responsibilities. Since Jenny’s only daughter had a place in a nursery, and Jenny herself obdurately refused to work, Loretta could not imagine what these duties were. What it boiled down to, she thought angrily, was that Jenny considered her role as a wife and mother excused her from anything she didn’t feel like doing, and Mrs Lawson happily went along with her. If her operation had taken place in term-time, even in the middle of examinations, it would still have been Loretta who was expected to accompany her to hospital. It was quite unfair. Loretta braked sharply as the car in front of her made an unexpected stop at a zebra crossing.
At ten o’clock that evening, after half a dozen fruitless calls to Andrew’s cottage in Charlbury, Loretta began to wonder whether she had imagined the existence of his tenants. She decided to look through the Guardian for the third time that day, although she had to admit that the possibility of whatever had happened in Paris finding its way into an English newspaper was remote. Glumly, she asked herself whether she shouldn’t go to the English police. The idea held no more attraction than the notion of reporting the matter to the French authorities before she left Paris. And now there was the added problem of having to explain why she hadn’t done something about it at the time. It occurred to her that she had probably committed an offence, and might even be dragged back to Paris to face questioning there. And all for something that might not be worth the trouble. However she looked at it, she didn’t like any of the options open to her. She decided to sleep on it.
Next morning, she tried the Charlbury number again. An American voice answered at the third ring. When Loretta said she was trying to contact Andrew, the woman began to explain that Mr Walker was away in Greece.
Loretta interrupted to ask whether he’d left an address or phone number in case of emergencies, and was told that he hadn’t. The friend with whom he was staying wasn’t on the phone, and he’d said it wasn’t worth leaving an address as a letter would take at least a week to reach him. If anything went wrong at the cottage, he’d told the American woman to speak to the cleaning lady who came in three days a week. She knew all the local people, including a very good plumber. Loretta thanked her, and rang off. It was just as she’d expected, but it was frustrating to come up so quickly against a dead end.
She looked at her watch, and her hand hovered over the phone again. Coming to a decision, she dialled the number of the Sunday Herald office in Holborn and asked to speak to John Tracey. She was half relieved and half disappointed when he answered his extension; as often as not when she called the paper he would turn out to be dodging shells in the Lebanon or looking for criminals in Nice.
‘John, it’s Loretta,’ she began nervously. She never knew how he was going to react to her.
‘My dear Laura, I’m always glad to hear from my lovely wife,’ he replied cheerfully. To what do I owe this pleasure?’
Loretta took a deep breath and stifled the reply she wanted to make. Tracey was one of the few people outside her family who knew that she had changed her name from plain Laura to exotic Loretta in the course of the train journey that took her from home to university for the first time. It was a piece of knowledge he used when, as now, he was in an impish mood and wanted to tease her. Although it never ceased to irritate her, she recognized it as a signal that he was feeling well disposed towards her.
‘There’s something I’d like to talk to you about,’ she said hesitantly. ‘If you’re not busy, that is.’ She knew Tracey would not let her get away with telling only half the story, and she was aware of a reluctance to describe events in Paris to someone whose job was asking questions. She recognized that she was afraid of her theories being ridiculed or of their being taken seriously in about equal measure. But she needed Tracey’s help, so she ploughed on. ‘I had an extraordinary experience over the weekend,’ she said. ‘Something happened to me in Paris. I can’t really talk about it over the phone. Can I buy you lunch and discuss it?’
‘It or him?’ Tracey teased her. ‘Don’t tell me you’re still going to Paris for your dirty weekends? Is it fond memories of me that does it?’
Loretta lost patience. ‘Look John, I need your help,’ she said urgently. ‘Will you meet me or won’t you?’
Tracey’s tone changed. ‘All right, I’m at your disposal. I’m supposed to be having lunch with the features editor today, but if it’s as serious as it sounds, I’ll put him off.’
Loretta felt slightly guilty. She might, after all, be placing an unnecessarily sinister interpretation on what had happened. On the other hand… ‘I’ll meet you at the Greek restaurant in Great Titchfield Street,’ she said. ‘Will one o’clock do?’
The weather was still stiflingly hot, just as it had been in Paris. Loretta could not remember a September like it. She had suggested meeting in Great Titchfield Street because it was a stone’s throw from her office in the English department, and she had not been there to collect messages and post for several days. Not that there was likely to be much correspondence during the long vacation, but it was as well to keep an eye on things. She also needed to pick up some notes she had made for the book she was working on, a critical assessment of Edith Wharton. Work on the project was going well, and she hoped to be able to complete the manuscript by spring next year. If the book was a success, it would considerably strengthen her chances of getting tenure, a slender hope for most academics, particularly women, in these straitened days.
As she emerged from the department into the street, a few large drops of rain fell on to her yellow lawn dress. The sky had darkened dramatically - and unexpectedly - during her half-hour visit to her office. She wished she had brought her umbrella; her bobbed blonde hair tended to curl uncontrollably when it got wet. But the rain didn’t get any heavier, and she arrived at the restaurant almost as dry as when she had set out.
Tracey had got there before her, and had stationed himself at one of the three outdoor tables that made the place popular in summer. ‘Just like Paris,’ he said, gesturing towards the other tables. Loretta smiled and sat down. Their marriage had been over for five years, time for most of the bitterness to have receded and be replaced by an easy-going friendship. The arrangement was so amicable that, in spite of affairs on both sides, they had not bothered to get divorced. It seemed unlikely, in any case, that either of them would choose to marry again. Tracey’s hectic way of life was much better suited to the single state and Loretta had come to the view that, for women, marriage was at best an irrelevance and at worst a shackle. She found it hard to remember that she was, legally, still married to the man sitting opposite her. And yet Tracey had really changed very little over the years since they had met at university. Then he had been a mature student, his appearance unexpectedly youthful in spite of his prematurely grey hair. Regarding him now, in his crumpled denim suit, she would have been hard put to guess his age - actually forty - if she had not already known it.
Tracey had been reading that day’s Times while he waited for her. ‘I’m thinking of going to Manchester to follow this up,’ he said, pointing to a brief news item on the back page about an investigation into alleged brutality at an old people’s home. ‘Damn good story.’
Loretta marvelled at his undimmed enthusiasm for his job. He had started on a provincial newspaper straight from school, and returned to journalism as soon as he left university. ‘Don’t you ever get tired of it?’ she asked. ‘Isn’t one crook much the same as any other?’
‘That’s not the point’, he answered earnestly. ‘If it wasn’t for a few journalists who are willing to take risks, there’d be twenty times the number of villains waiting to take money out of the hands of old-age pensioners. A free press …’ He stopped, holding up his hand to prevent her speaking. ‘I know. You’ve heard this speech before, and it didn’t impress you much last time, either. Have you decided what you want to eat?’
As the waiter took their order, the threatened rain arrived with a vengeance. The diners at the other outdoor tables hurriedly took themselves indoors but, when they were offered a table inside the restaurant, Loretta and Tracey refused. The canopy over the tables on the pavement protected them, just, from the downpour; they felt like observers on a film set as they watched tourists, shoppers, and lunchtime drinkers scuttle for shelter. An old lady hurried into the video rental shop opposite, peering round in surprise when she found herself confronting a collection of soft porn films, and a young man in jeans dived for cover in the doorway next to the kebab house.
Loretta had decided to forgo a starter to give herself plenty of time to recount what had happened in Paris, and as Tracey tucked into broad beans and artichoke hearts she gave him a bald account of everything she remembered about the weekend. Apart from a rather feeble joke about the Fem Sap conference - Tracey found any manifestation of organized feminism positively terrifying - he heard her out in silence. When she finished, he pushed away his empty plate and thought for a moment. Above their heads, the rain still drummed on the canvas of the canopy and splashed off on to the pavement.
There really was a lot of blood?’ he enquired at last. ‘Too much for the sheets to have been used to clean up after an accident? More than if someone had been having, er, a period?’ He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
Loretta suppressed an urge to smile. ‘Much more,’ she said.
Tracey took out a cigarette, and lit it. He inhaled deeply. The trouble is, Loretta,’ he said at last, ‘that the alternative explanations are so far-fetched. I know what you’re afraid of. You think you spent the night with a dead body, a murder victim in fact, and narrowly escaped being done in yourself.’ Loretta felt her stomach muscles contract. Tracey certainly wasted no time in getting to the heart of things. ‘But, assu
ming you’re right, what happened to the body after you left the flat on Saturday morning? Did the murderer come back for it? And why did he, or she,’ he added, catching her expression, ‘why did he or she leave it there in the first place?’
‘All right, I don’t have answers to any of those questions,’ Loretta admitted. ‘I’ve thought and thought, and I haven’t come up with more than wild guesses. But I am certain of two things. There was a man in bed at the flat on Friday night when I arrived, and the next evening the sheets on that bed were saturated with blood. That’s what I can’t get away from.’
‘Well, Loretta, I have to say that if I’d heard this story from anybody else, I’d take it with a large pinch of salt,’ Tracey admitted. ‘I’d assume you were exaggerating the amount of blood, or even that you’d had too much to drink on the first evening and had imagined the chap in the bed. But, whatever I think about your feminism, I do trust your powers of observation. So let’s consider other explanations first to make sure we haven’t missed anything. My idea about an accident, for instance. This water heater you told me about, isn’t it possible that it exploded and wounded the man who was staying there on Friday night? After you left on Saturday morning, I mean. He could have used the sheets to stem the blood while he went for help.’
There was no sign of any accident,’ Loretta insisted. ‘Remember, I did have a look round before I left. The water heater couldn’t explode without leaving some trace that it had happened. Anyway, an explosion would be more likely to produce burns than wounds.’
‘Fair enough,’ Tracey said, but persisted, ‘How about this? Your stranger, call him X, is at the flat for a rendezvous with a woman. She visits him while you’re at the conference, and they take part in some sort of sado-masochistic ritual. It goes wrong, and he carts her off to hospital.’