“But it’s something special, dear. A surprise.”
“Oh . . . well, that’s lovely. I’ll get back as soon as I can, but it may be nine.”
NINE
KATHY SPOTTED HIM STRAIGHT away, nondescript as he had claimed, sitting alone at a corner table in the saloon bar reading a well-thumbed paperback. She went first to the bar and bought herself a lime soda, watching him while she waited to be served. He was frowning at the book as if he was struggling with it, and it was several minutes before he looked up and noticed her. He gave a tentative little wave and she smiled at him, pocketed her change, and went over to his table.
“Mr. Quinn? I’m DS Kathy Kolla.”
“Hello. Sit down, please.” Mid-forties, bit overweight, tired from a day on the road.
“Ruth Sparkes got in touch with you, then,” Kathy began.
“Yes. She said you wanted to speak to me about Zoë.” He looked at his watch. “I’ve got about fifteen minutes before I’m needed upstairs. Stafford, our producer, is not happy with people who are late for his rehearsals.” He gave an apologetic little smile.
Kathy nodded at the paperback. “Is that the play you’re doing?”
“The Father, yes. Know it?”
Kathy shook her head.
“Not exactly a bundle of laughs,” he said.
“Have you got a big part?”
He nodded. “With lots of lines, unfortunately, which I should have learned ages ago. Anyway, what about Zoë? Have you discovered something? Is there any news?”
“No, I’m afraid not. We’re reviewing a number of cases at present. She’s one of them.”
“Why come to me?”
“We’ve only just learned that you were lovers.”
He frowned at his book but said nothing.
“I couldn’t help wondering why that didn’t come out at the time.”
“We weren’t any more, not at that stage. It was over.” He sounded weary.
“Tell me about it.”
“Oh . . .” He sighed. “Look, it isn’t relevant, believe me.”
He caught the look on her face and shrugged. “All right. But I’ll need another one of these.” He pointed at his glass. “How about you?”
Kathy shook her head and waited while he took the empty half-pint glass up to the bar and returned with a full pint one. While he was away she turned over the opening pages of his book and began to read the introduction.
The Father, A Tragedy in Three Acts, 1887.
Strindberg wrote this play at the time when his marriage with Siri von Essen was finally breaking up. Much of the torment of those unhappy years has gone into it; though, as always, a great deal of the suffering was bred out of Strindberg’s own dark imaginings.
“We started rehearsals for The Lady Vanishes late October or early November last year,” Quinn said, settling back into his place. “Do you remember the Hitchcock film?”
“I’m not sure. Who was in it?”
“Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave—those were the parts Zoë and I played. It’s about an old lady who mysteriously disappears on a train journey across Europe in the late thirties. Anyway, that doesn’t matter, except that Zoë and I were in it, and we were having an affair at the time we started rehearsing. We reckoned it would give us opportunities to see more of each other, of course. But as the weeks went by it turned into one of those messy situations.”
“In what way?”
“Well . . . I think, in point of fact, that the thing had run its course by the time we started on The Lady, only we didn’t realize it at the time. Zoë was getting impatient with the precautions I had to go through to avoid my wife finding out about us, and I was beginning to wonder if it was all worth the trouble. Then, towards Christmas, my wife did finally discover what was going on.” He winced. “Which was ironic really, because Zoë had just let me know that she was now interested in someone else.”
“Who?”
“I’ve no idea. She didn’t elaborate. Anyway, we were left in the impossible position of having to continue rehearsing and finally performing on stage together, even though we now found it embarrassing to be together, and family dramas were raging all around us. It was the Christmas holidays, I mean . . . can you imagine?”
“Your wife let you go on with the play?”
“Sergeant, you obviously haven’t met Stafford Nesbit, our producer. He would never let some trivial domestic life-and-death problem get in the way of one of his productions. By that stage, if I dropped out, the whole thing would fold—we don’t have understudies, and it was too late for someone else to learn the part. So he persuaded her that it would be best to let me continue. God knows how he did it, but she agreed, and we decided to patch things up.”
Edward Quinn gave a grim little smile. “It was pretty gruesome. We had six performances in the theatre—technical dress rehearsal, dress rehearsal, and four public performances from Wednesday through to Saturday, and my wife came to every one. Every moment I was on stage with Zoë I was conscious of Rosemary out there in the audience, watching. It was a great relief when we got to the end of that week, believe me. We went to the party after the final show, but it was just for the sake of Rosemary putting on a front. We didn’t stay long. That would have been the last time I saw Zoë, although I didn’t say a word to her there, not with Rosemary at my side every inch of the way.”
“Was Zoë with anyone at the party?”
“No, it was just a general celebratory booze-up for the cast and their partners. I think you lot established that she didn’t stay long either—got a lift home with a couple who were leaving early.”
“Yes, they were the last people we were able to find who had seen her.”
“But it took the best part of a week to discover that, didn’t it? It was only when the people at her work started ringing her mother . . .”
“You say you found it embarrassing to be in Zoë’s company. Was it more than that? Did you come to hate her, perhaps, going off with someone else?”
Quinn shook his head wearily. “No, no. Nothing like that. I suppose she was my mid-life crisis. When I first fell for her she seemed exciting, glamorous. But we were completely wrong for each other. She needed someone to give her a good time, and to be honest, I just didn’t have the stamina. Not any more. I was relieved when she said she’d got someone else, dead relieved.”
“What was your reaction, when it seemed she’d disappeared?”
Quinn hesitated, taking a sip of beer. “I’ll tell you what I thought. I thought that that was exactly what Zoë would do. She decides to run off with some bloke, so instead of telling people in the normal way, she says nothing, goes through her performances in The Lady Vanishes, and then promptly vanishes herself. Melodramatic, see? That was her. It was her way of making a big exit.”
“Is that likely? What about the man, did you ever meet him?”
“No. I was curious—we all were. But I don’t think she showed him off to any of us in the society.”
“Did you have any ideas about him?”
“Married, if she stuck to form. Rich, if she thought him worth running away with. Someone who didn’t want her kid tagging along.”
“You think she would have abandoned her little boy?”
“Well, she probably didn’t think past a month or two. Probably told herself she’d come back for him when the time was ripe. Her mum could cope.”
“And you’re sure you never saw her with anyone? Wouldn’t he have come to see her in the play?”
He shrugged. “If he did, she never let on.”
Kathy reached in her bag for Gentle’s picture. “Ever seen this man before?”
Quinn peered at it. Kathy wondered if he needed glasses and wasn’t doing anything about it.
“No. Don’t know him. Is he Zoë’s boyfriend?”
Kathy shook her head. “It’s just someone we’re checking on. There’s probably no connection. You’re sure you wouldn’t have seen this man in the audien
ce for your play?”
“I was in the cast—you don’t see the audience. They’re just a terrifying presence out there in the darkness. You’d be better to ask someone doing front-of-house, you know, tickets or refreshments. Ruth perhaps. She’s upstairs with the others. Why don’t you come up and ask her?”
“Right.”
“One thing.” Quinn paused as they were getting to their feet. “The thing between me and Zoë . . . my wife’s still pretty prickly about it. You’re not going to have to resurrect it, are you?”
He looked at her sheepishly. Kathy wondered what sort of actor he was on the stage. He didn’t seem to be much good in real life.
He led the way to the door of the saloon bar and up a flight of carpeted stairs. At the top he pushed through a pair of doors into a large function room and was welcomed by a loud cry of “At bloody last!”
The room had a bare timber floor and was almost unfurnished, apart from a number of old bentwood chairs and one small table behind which the man with the voice was standing. Two women were poised alone in the centre of the room, and half a dozen other people sat around the perimeter, watching.
“Sorry, Stafford. Have you reached me, then?”
“We have indeed, Edward. While you were downstairs in the bar, doing whatever you were doing”—he looked pointedly at Kathy—“we reached you.”
Stafford Nesbit seemed to Kathy exactly what a theatrical producer should be, tall, gaunt, expressively featured with hollow cheeks and temples, and punctuating each phrase with flourishes of his extended claw-like fingers. The long locks of hair which swept back from his skull and the thin beard clinging to his chin were grey, an elderly lion’s head on a stork’s body.
“This is a detective sergeant from Scotland Yard, Stafford. She’s following up Zoë’s case.”
The producer froze, staring at Kathy with surprise. In the instant that their eyes met, Kathy felt almost as if he recognized her, or had been expecting her.
“DS Kathy Kolla, sir,” she said, and he replied, after a dramatic pause, “Well, yes. Kathy Kolla.” Then he roused himself and gave her a little stiff bow. “And I am Stafford Nesbit. Do you wish to address us? Do you have news of Zoë?”
“No, I’m afraid not, sir. I would like to have a word with your secretary, Ruth Sparkes, if she’s here.”
“She is presently in the ladies’. Please take a seat, she won’t be long, I’m sure. Is it all right for us to continue, then? Good. We are at the bottom of page forty-nine, Edward, your scene with the nurse.”
“Right, Stafford.” Quinn hurried round the edge of the room turning the pages of his book, slipped off his jacket and threw it on to a chair, ran his fingers through his hair, took a deep breath, and then stepped forward into the centre of the space.
“Are you still up?” he said to the older of the two women. The other, a stocky girl with short blonde hair, walked away and sat down, eyeing Kathy with a frown. Kathy thought there was something familiar about her, but couldn’t place it.
“Go to bed.”
“Two things, Edward.” Stafford Nesbit stopped him with a tone of exaggerated forbearance. “Where has the Captain just come from, might one inquire?”
“He’s been out all evening with his orderly, Stafford.”
“Exactly. Then one does rather tend to wonder how he managed to enter the sitting-room from stage left, which is the door from the other rooms of the house, instead of downstage right, which is the door from the outside hall.”
Edward seemed untroubled by the producer’s sarcasm. “Oh yes. Sorry. Wasn’t thinking. The other thing?”
“What is that”—he pointed his long forefinger—“in your hand?”
“The book, Stafford.”
“But we were supposed to get rid of our books two weeks ago, weren’t we?”
Quinn shrugged. “I’m nearly there. I’m still a bit weak on act two.”
Nesbit sighed theatrically, and turned as the doors opened and a woman came into the room. “Ruth. This is Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla, and she wants to speak to you.”
“Ah yes, of course.” The woman flashed a smile at Kathy.
“You knew?” Nesbit snapped, with exaggerated pique. “You knew she was coming? What is going on here? Am I the only one who wasn’t informed?”
“Of course not, Stafford,” she replied briskly, clearly used to his tantrums. “Sergeant Kolla phoned me this afternoon . . .”
Her words were cut off by Nesbit, who swept his arm in a wide curve. “No matter! Let’s get on for pity’s sake. We’re going to be here all night at this rate.”
The woman smiled at Kathy and sat down beside her. “Hello,” she whispered, while Edward Quinn started his scene again. “Did you get what you wanted from Edward?” Her eyes sparkled bright and inquisitive through her wire-rimmed glasses.
“I’m not sure, Mrs. Sparkes.”
“Ruth, please.”
“Ruth. Were you at the party they had to celebrate the last performance of The Lady Vanishes, last January?”
“Yes, of course.” She glanced up at Nesbit, who was glaring at them pointedly. “Look, let’s go over to the corner. We can talk more easily there.”
They moved out of earshot of the others, and Ruth gave Kathy her version of what had happened during the final rehearsals and the performances of The Lady, which corresponded well enough with Quinn’s account.
“It must have been pretty painful,” Kathy said. “Especially for Edward’s wife.”
“I’m afraid it isn’t an uncommon feature of amateur theatre,” Ruth said, with some relish. “There is a sense of . . . bonding, I suppose, with fellow-actors in the excitement of it all, perhaps of normal rules suspended . . . which leads to accidents. Remember poor Simone Signoret in Room at the Top . . . And sometimes they aren’t accidents.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, some people are attracted to the theatre for this very reason. Perhaps Zoë was. And then again, some producers have been known to select their cast with an eye to throwing certain people into each other’s arms, so to speak.”
“Why?”
“For the sake of the electricity, the excitement it generates.”
“Stafford Nesbit?”
Ruth looked across the room at him, gesticulating like a conductor in time to the phrases of the pair rehearsing in front of him. “Oh, I never said that, did I?”
“Is he doing it with this one?”
Ruth laughed. “Well, to tell you the truth, this one could really do with a bit of spicing up. I mean, The Lady was fun, but this . . .” She shook her head. “Why Stafford chose this play is beyond me. We were going to do Blithe Spirit, which he would have done splendidly, and we’d certainly have got reasonable audiences. But then he decided we should get our teeth into a tragedy, and came up with this. Goodness knows how we’ll fill the theatre. I ask you, who in their right mind would put themselves through an evening of gloomy, misogynous rubbish like this?”
Kathy smiled. “You’re involved in ticket sales, are you, Ruth?”
“Yes. I’m in charge of all that.”
“Would you have a list of the people who bought tickets for The Lady Vanishes?”
“Oh dear me no. A few people would have written directly to me for tickets, and I suppose I might still have a record of them, but the great majority of tickets were sold by the cast, or through the theatre box office and at the door on the night.”
“I see.”
“You look disappointed. Were you after something in particular?”
“Edward mentioned that Zoë had a new boyfriend, and obviously I’d like to speak to him. I thought he might have come to see her in the play.”
“Ah!” Ruth Sparkes nodded. “Yes, no one seemed to know who he was. But I doubt if my records could tell you.”
Once more Kathy brought out Gentle’s photograph, again without success. “He looks a nice man,” Ruth said, a little wistfully. “Rather sad.”
“What
about the name ‘Gentle,’ or ‘Jordan?’ They mean anything to you?”
“Not offhand. Do you want me to check my books when I get home?”
“Yes. I’d appreciate that.”
The secretary made a note in her diary. There was another bellow from Stafford Nesbit as she replaced it in her handbag, and she rolled her eyes, turning to watch the players. Quinn, the Captain, was speaking to his old nurse.
“Margret, who was the father of your child?”
“Oh, I’ve told you time and time again: it was that scamp Johansson.”
“Are you sure it was he?”
“You’re talking like a child! Of course I’m sure, seeing he was the only one.”
“But was he sure he was the only one? No, he couldn’t be, even though you were sure. That’s the difference, you see.”
Stafford Nesbit brought his hand crashing down on to his table. The actors stopped and looked at him.
“Edward, my dear chap, it may come as a shock to learn that Strindberg was not thinking of James Dean when he created the character of the Captain. You are a soldier, a scientist of original opinions, and you are in the process of being driven to the brink of despair and madness by the women who surround you, especially your wife. You can relate to that, can’t you?” There was the faintest snigger from some part of the room. “When I asked for angst, I didn’t mean the moodiness of a sulky teenager, for God’s sake.” Nesbit’s voice rose to a roar. “I want anguish of the soul!”
Quinn nodded, unfazed.
“Strindberg didn’t like women?” Kathy whispered to Ruth.
“In the space of three acts, spanning only twenty-four hours,” Ruth muttered dryly, “this admirable Captain is reduced from apparent normality to a gibbering wreck by the fiendish machinations of the wicked women in his household, and in particular his wife, who encourages his doubts over his paternity of their daughter. I mean, it isn’t just implausible, blatantly sexist and thoroughly depressing, it’s also bad theatre. The whole play takes place in this one setting, and most of it is in the form of static dialogues between pairs of characters.”
“Oh, I thought it was a classic.”
All My Enemies Page 13