“This is your first time. When it’s over you’ll miss it, and the next time round it’ll be this that gives you the buzz.”
“There won’t be a next time, Brock.”
“How about our friend? How’s he coping?”
“He was strange last night. There was one disaster after another, but it didn’t seem to bother him at all. He sat through it all, clapped and left. It was almost as if he’d already moved on.”
“I suppose he knows that there’s no more he can do. It’s up to you lot now.”
Partly to take her mind off things, Kathy made a call to Effie, her aunt’s neighbour in Sheffield. It had been more than a week since Di had rung from Canada, and there had been no further contact regarding Mary’s flight.
“How’s Tom?” Kathy asked cheerfully.
“Like death warmed up,” came back the gloomy reply. “You should see him, you really should. Dr. Skinner’s been three times now.”
“Really?”
“Oh aye. Three times.”
“What’s the problem?”
“He’s lost the will, love, hasn’t he? The will to live.”
It seemed to Kathy that Effie was laying it on a bit thick.
“Oh rubbish! He wouldn’t give up his will for anyone.”
“Don’t be so sure, Kathy. Dr. Skinner’s worried about a thrombosis. You tell Mary that!”
Kathy put the phone down with a groan. She could imagine Uncle Tom in his chair making a pitiful spectacle of himself, calling out the doctor at all hours, driving them all mad until they made Mary come back and apologize. Kathy was damned if she’d tell her.
STAFFORD WAS BACKSTAGE AT the theatre when she arrived that evening. He was wearing a dark-purple velvet suit, ruffled white shirt, and large bow tie, and carried himself with an air of such dignity and calm that everyone who saw him was inspired with confidence. He spoke briefly to each in turn, to the actors in the two dressing-rooms dabbing feverishly at their faces with make-up sticks and pencils, and the technical people checking the backstage arrangements for the last time, and the front-of-house ladies in their new frocks.
He spoke also to Kathy. “I dare say you think this will be a disaster,” he said, “and that you will be responsible. Well, you’re wrong. At the end of the day, you will look back and reflect that no one could have done the job any better than you.”
She couldn’t help being impressed as he strode off, head held high, and disappeared through the black door which gave access to the stage.
“Fifteen minutes, everyone!” Ruth bustled through.
Kathy took a deep breath and followed her down the corridor towards the black door. As she passed the women’s dressing-room the door opened and Bettina stuck her head out. Her hair was auburn.
Kathy grinned. “That looks good, Bettina. It really suits you.”
The girl gave her a grim little smile and closed the door.
Kathy settled herself in the bentwood chair they had placed for her downstage right, behind the side curtain. One of her nightmares in the small hours of the previous night had been that this rather elderly chair would somehow fall apart beneath her. She was reassured that it felt more solid than she’d remembered.
Taped music was playing in the auditorium, an excerpt from Grieg’s Holberg Suite to establish the Nordic atmosphere. She watched the actors as they filed in through the stage access door, holding themselves stiffly, as if their faces, exaggerated like dolls by the make-up, might crack. A couple exchanged whispered remarks, but most preferred silence, breathing deeply, eyes unnaturally wide. Edward was close by, looking as if he faced execution. She smiled at him, smelling the spirit gum from his mutton-chop whis kers and bushy moustache. “OK?”
He nodded and swallowed. “Matter of controlling the heartbeat,” he said. “Be all right once it starts.”
“One minute,” the stage-manager whispered. “Places openers.”
The Captain, in cavalry uniform and spurs, paced silently on to the stage and sat himself carefully on the leather sofa. The black-clothed Pastor followed, sat beside him and began sucking on a pipe. To her left, offstage, Kathy saw Svärd the Orderly take up position behind the door.
The Grieg gently died away. The house-lights dimmed. There was silence, and then the curtain rose. Mouth dry, Kathy watched Edward lift the bell on the small table at his elbow and ring it loudly. Svärd counted to three, smoothly opened the door and stepped out into the light.
“You wanted something, sir?”
“Is Nöjd out there?” Edward replied, and they were away.
IT WAS A TRIUMPH.
Their performances were impeccable. Kathy had to give only one prompt, a soft couple of words to the Nurse, who picked them up and recovered before the audience realized that anything was wrong.
Above all, the lamp-throwing scene worked to perfection, and had the audience on its feet for a standing ovation at the end of act two, an unpre ce dented tribute.
After the final curtain the company was in a state of elation. Not only had the whole thing, incredibly, come off, but everybody had played their part without fault. They gathered on the stage, eagerly ploughing into trays of plastic beakers of champagne, whispering excitedly, for the stragglers of the audience were still in the auditorium on the other side of the curtain.
“Where’s Stafford?” someone asked, and Ruth came on carrying bundles of envelopes and said, “He’ll be here soon. Here are his cards.”
This was a tradition, so Kathy learned. On the first night of each of his productions every member of the company would receive from Stafford a personal card, with a message written with his fountain pen in a flowing hand, along the lines, “Vicky darling, Wonderful as always. Thank you, Stafford.”
Kathy noticed that the envelopes bearing their handwritten names were identical, except for Ruth’s and, to her embarrassment, her own, which were both larger than the rest. She watched Ruth’s face flush with pleasure as she took a large floral card out of her envelope.
Kathy stepped back from the throng and opened hers, and saw that the reason for its size was not a card, but a 7 × 5 black-and-white glossy photographic print inside. It showed the head and shoulders of a woman, whom she recognized immediately as the missing Zoë Bagnall, photographed under a harsh light. Zoë’s eyes were open, but she could see nothing, for her throat was cut with a gaping wound from ear to ear. On the back of the photograph, written in the same flowing ink line, was the message, “Kathy, I am responsible. I am so sorry. Stafford Nesbit.”
Kathy stuffed the picture back into the envelope before anyone else could see it, and stood for a moment trying to think, to clear her head of the unexpected shock of the picture.
“Are you all right, dear?” It was Ruth, beaming at her. “Excitement too much? You have visitors. They’re waiting at the foot of the stage steps.”
Kathy felt in her bag for her radio. “Ruth, where is Stafford?”
“Well, that’s the odd thing, Kathy. No one seems to have seen him since the act one interval.”
“Could you check again with everyone for me? It’s important I find him.”
Kathy hurried across the stage and came out at the head of the steps leading down into the auditorium. A group of people were standing talking, Bren among them. Aunt Mary was behind him, and another woman had her arm through his.
Bren saw her and winked, then, seeing her face, “You all right, Kath?”
She shoved the envelope into his hand, aware of the other people’s curious stares. “Has anyone seen Stafford Nesbit?” she said, and for a moment her eyes met those of Bren’s wife, who was examining her closely.
Mary said no, and then Bren in a low voice exclaimed, “Hell! Where did this come from?”
“I’m going to check the car park,” Kathy said.
He caught up with her outside.
“His car’s not here,” she said, breathless. “Where’s Brock, do you know?”
“Not far away,” Bren said. “Half of
Orpington CID was at the performance tonight.”
“We’ve got to get them back. Nesbit’s disappeared. We’ve got to find him before he kills somebody else.”
There was no sign of him in the area of the theatre, and they returned to the Orpington station, taking Ruth with them because she seemed the one most knowledgeable about Stafford, and also Mary because Kathy didn’t know what else to do with her.
They were sitting together in the canteen over a cup of tea when Brock came down to tell them that a Citroën BX with Stafford’s number had been reported involved in an accident on the M25 two hours before.
“Or rather,” he said, “not an accident. Eye witnesses in two following cars say the Citroën suddenly swerved across all three lanes and drove into the supporting concrete structure of a bridge crossing the motorway. They say it looked as if he aimed for it quite deliberately. He was killed instantly.”
“Oh no!” Ruth gasped. “Blithe Spirit!”
“Sorry?”
“Originally we had been going to do Blithe Spirit this time instead of The Father. In the Coward play one of the characters is killed by an arranged car accident.”
But Kathy knew otherwise. She stared at her aunt, who had gone very pale, and said nothing. Only later, when they were in the car and heading home, did she ask the question. “You told him, didn’t you, Mary? When he was asking you about my past, you told him how Dad died?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“And he chose to do it the same way.”
“But why? I don’t understand, Kathy. Why would he do that?”
“THIS TIME THE GARDEN’LL have to come up.” The following morning Bren was organizing the second search of Stafford Nesbit’s home for the remains of Zoë Bagnall. “There are underfloor cavities in some areas beneath the house, and yet the house doesn’t appear to have a cellar, and there’s any number of places where there could be sealed cupboards. We’re having plans drawn up as we work through.”
The M25 crash had made the morning news bulletins, and a carefully worded press release had been issued, linking Nesbit’s death with the investigations into the murders of Angela Hannaford and the other three women. Two photographs of the man had been provided, and these pictures accompanied a report in the afternoon and evening editions of the London evening paper on that Thursday, which also carried a police appeal for information from the public.
THE COMPANY SEEMED NUMBED that evening. Kathy sensed that they wanted to ask her questions about what had happened to Stafford, but they held back, and she didn’t encourage them. They had discussed whether they should abandon the play, and had decided that Stafford would have wished them to continue. Edward was nominated to make an announcement at the start of the performance, paying tribute to Stafford and dedicating the production to his memory.
The performance was again faultless, but subdued compared to the previous night, as was the audience. In act two, Kathy was struck by some lines which made her think of Stafford’s house. Bertha, the daughter, was speaking to the Nurse about the upper floor of their home.
“I daren’t stay up there all alone, I think it’s haunted.”
“There now, what did I say?” the Nurse replied. “You mark my words, there’s a curse on this house. What did you hear, Bertha?”
“Well, actually, I heard someone singing up in the attic.”
“In the attic? At this time of night?”
“Yes, it was such a sad song, the saddest song I’ve ever heard. And it seemed as if it came from the box-room—you know, on the left, where the cradle stands.”
From that point, Kathy kept hearing passages whose meaning seemed transformed by Stafford’s death. Later in the same act, Laura was to say to the Captain,
“You say that you’ll kill yourself. You’ll never do that.”
To which he replied,
“Are you sure? Do you think a man can live when there’s nothing and no one to live for?”
She could imagine Bren’s objections to attaching any retrospective significance to such lines, and yet her skin crawled as they were spoken, and she underlined them in her book.
One other thing turned her stomach that evening. Towards the end of the second interval she stood near her place in the wings and looked through the pin-hole in the screen wall facing the audience, watching them return to their seats. She was stunned to see Tom and Muriel Gentle working down the fourth row and taking seats directly in front of her. He was grinning contentedly, a basset-hound with a new bone. She assumed he had read the newspaper reports and had come to be seen and to gloat. Innocent or guilty, she still found him loathsome. She wondered if he might have his little Minolta camera up his sleeve, photographing them all.
BREN’S TEAM HAD FOUND nothing at the house on the first day of their search, which resumed on Friday. Kathy went to Orpington, and discovered on her desk a copy of the local weekly paper, which had come out that morning, opened at a glowing review of The Father from the theatre critic. It had been written immediately after the first performance and so made no reference to Stafford’s suicide, a gaffe made more excruciating by references to “Producer Stafford Nesbit’s brimming vitality” and his “underlying optimism.”
As she was reading, a phone call came in from a solicitor at the city firm of Baker Bailey Rock. The name rang a bell, but she couldn’t place it.
“I thought I’d better contact you,” the woman said. “It’s probably not relevant, but I read the report in the Standard last night about that crash on the M25, and your appeal for information about the man, and what with your officer calling on us a couple of weeks ago, I thought I’d better follow it up.”
Kathy was lost, but didn’t say so. “Oh yes? You knew Stafford Nesbit?”
“I met him, yes. He came here to our office. I spoke to him.”
“When would that have been?”
“Well, that’s the point. I checked in my diary. It was last year, July. Which was the same month that Janice was killed, you see.”
“Janice?” Kathy felt at sea. Who’s Janice?
“Janice Pearce. She worked for us. You remember?”
“Oh, of course. I’m sorry, I was lost there for a minute. Janice Pearce.”
The legal secretary, the earliest murder, the one we decided had no connection with the others. “Maybe I could come up and see you?” Kathy said.
“All right. This morning?”
“That would be terrific.”
Kathy put the phone down and realized that her heart was thumping.
She decided to take the train. It was almost five weeks now since she had first travelled on this line, following Angela’s route home. The weather was almost identical to how it had been then, even though it was now early October, and she had an acute sense of time suspended, of travel without destination. Discoveries had been made, facts uncovered, people implicated, and yet she felt no closer to understanding the reality of Angela’s death than when she had first settled back in a Southern Region compartment and watched Angela’s London unroll outside the window.
As advised by the solicitor, she got off at London Bridge and caught the tube up to Moorgate. A couple of minutes later she was sitting in a small, cluttered, modern office with a cup of coffee and a chocolate biscuit.
“I wouldn’t have contacted you,” the solicitor said, “except for the way the newspaper report was phrased, linking Nesbit to the four murders. Was he a suspect?”
“Let’s just say that, if he was alive, he’d be presently helping us with our inquiries.”
“I see. I’ve never actually come face to face with a serial killer before. Family law is my area. Something of an oddity in this practice, which is mainly commercial. A spin-off really, for when our commercial clients’ home lives run into trouble.” She fixed Kathy with a penetrating smile, as if inviting her to confess that she too might need these services. “I should have thought that he might have been a bit old for violence. Though he was very intense, as I remember.”
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“He was a client, was he?”
“In a way, yes.”
“Was it on a family law matter that he saw you?”
“It was unusual, actually. That’s why I remembered his visit so clearly. Not at all the normal divorce business.” The solicitor paused to smooth the immaculate sleeve of her grey linen suit. Italian, Kathy guessed. “He wanted to talk about an adoption.”
“He wanted to adopt someone?”
“No. He wanted to trace someone. His own child, who had been put out to adoption at birth.”
“Ah, yes.”
“I rather gathered that his wife was not the mother. I had to establish that in order to advise him, you see. It affected the circumstances of the case. The reason why he came to us was that he had, over a number of years, had dealings with this firm concerning the child. I’d better explain this.”
The solicitor smiled and eased back in her chair, holding its arms firmly in her slender hands, speaking the way she did to her divorcing clients when she had to explain a point of law that would be central to the outcome they wanted, and, incidentally, to their continuing faith in her. “The law stipulates that it is not lawful to make or give a person any payment or reward for, or in consideration of, adoption. However, the court may permit a scheme of allowances, balancing all the circumstances with the welfare of the child as first consideration against the degree of taint of the transaction.”
“A scheme of allowances?”
“Yes. Let us say that a person had a child in circumstances where he could not openly acknowledge the child, but nevertheless wished to contribute to its well-being even after it was adopted. He could apply to the court to allow him to provide an allowance to the child or its family by some scheme approved by the court. In this case, Mr. Nesbit paid a monthly allowance into a special account held by a neutral third party—this firm of solicitors—who paid this money each month, less a small fee for service, to the adoptive mother. Neither the natural father nor the adoptive mother knew who the other was, thus avoiding taint. Their only connection was through this firm. At one time we specialized in this sort of thing. Mr. Bailey, one of the founding partners, was himself adopted, and had a close relationship with a number of the adoption societies and agencies that used to flourish in London.
All My Enemies Page 24