by Sarah Rayne
CHAPTER SIX
Trixie Smith was glad when that buttoned-up iceberg, Edmund Fane, rather pointedly consulted his watch, sighed a couple of times, and finally said if she wanted to stay for a while he would leave her to it. He really should be getting back, he said. Was there any reason why Trixie could not pull the door to when she left, making sure that the Yale lock clicked down?
There was no reason at all, and Trixie would far rather make her notes and scout around, working out who had died where, without being watched by Mister Fish-Eyes. So she said she reckoned she could manage to close the door securely.
‘You won’t mind being on your own in here? It’s a bit eerie.’ He glanced round as he said this, and Trixie even thought he repressed a slight shiver. Ha! A gleam of humanity at last. But she said briskly that anywhere would be a bit eerie in the middle of a field on a dark November afternoon. ‘I’m not expecting to encounter any lurking ghosts if that’s what you mean.’
‘Ah. No, of course not. Well, in that case,’ said Edmund, ‘I’ll leave you to it. Goodbye. Good luck with the thesis.’
‘Thanks. Thanks for setting this up, as well.’
‘It was my pleasure,’ he said, which was a whopping great fib if Trixie had ever heard one because it had not been his pleasure at all, in fact he had stonewalled her from the start, and she would just like to know what had caused his change of heart: Edmund Fane did not strike her as a man who would do anyone a favour without first calculating what return he was likely to get. She watched him go out, and heard him close the outer door, and then turned her attention to plotting the exact layout of Studio Twelve. The thesis was going to incorporate a plan showing where the murders had actually happened. Neat and businesslike and informative. Now then. Conrad Kline had been killed in the wardrobe-room; Leo Dreyer in Lucretia’s dressing-room. Better look at both places. Wardrobe-room first.
Liam Devlin had been right about one thing at any rate; the wardrobe-room stank of damp and decay. Even so, Trixie stood for a moment looking into the dark cavernous interior, remembering that this was where Conrad had lain dying and that his bloodied handprints had been smeared over one of the walls. He was supposed to have dragged himself to the wall dividing this room from the baroness’s dressing-rooms, and tapped feebly on the wall, in the hope that someone would hear and come to his aid. But no one had done so because they had all been scurrying around summoning ambulances and police.
Leo Dreyer had been the financier for the film they had been making, and Trixie, reading the reports, had received the impression of a rather calculating man, probably given to patting the bottoms of wide-eyed would-be starlets, and lubriciously murmuring in their ears, I could do a lot for you, my pretty dear…She had not much liked the sound of Mr Leo Dreyer, although you would not wish his death on anyone.
Measuring up so that the plan would be to scale was difficult in the near-dark. There was a faint glimmer of light from the boarded-up windows, but even at high noon they would not provide more than a thread of daylight. Trixie had brought a tape measure, but she had not brought a torch. There was one in her car, but it was still raining hard and she did not fancy trekking back across the mud-fields. She would try to manage with the light there was.
She came back into the main studio and looked around. It really was an appallingly desolate place. Before she set off, Francesca Holland, who was staying with Trixie at the moment, had asked if it was really worth making the journey – all that way, and in the middle of a November rainstorm, Fran had said, peering doubtfully at the weather. Still, if it had really been such a cause célébre…
Trixie had at once said, God, Fran, your accent! at which Fran had replied defensively that it was all very fine for Trixie and her posh education, but not so fine for people who had only attended Brick Street Junior School! She could be a bit prickly at times, that Fran, although there was a definite touch of the spaniel-eyed romantic several layers down.
Here was the baroness’s infamous dressing-room, next door to the wardrobe. It was not quite as dark, but Trixie had to feel around to locate the door handle, and even when she found it and opened the door, she could not see very much. But she set to with the tape measure again, going more by feel this time than anything else.
One of the versions said that Conrad Kline had caught Leo Dreyer making love to Lucretia in here, which in Trixie’s view would have been a mad thing for them to have done, what with people milling around outside and anyone likely to come in. But maybe Lucretia had got a kick out of the danger; Trixie believed some people did get kicks in that way.
But what had really sparked the Ashwood murders had been a version of the eternal triangle, or so the police had finally decided. The story that was afterwards pieced together – the one that was put out as the official verdict – was that there had been a monumental row between the three main characters, with everyone accusing everyone else of any number of debaucheries. Leo Dreyer had apparently said Conrad Kline was a shameful libertine from whom no female was safe – which taunt Kline had not minded – and that his music was rubbish, which Kline had minded very much indeed, retorting that he, at least, stipulated that his women should be over the age of consent.
After this, Lucretia, never one to stay out of the action for long, had flown into one of her celebrated tantrums and had snatched up a stage prop which somebody had left lying around and which unfortunately had been a stiletto or a knife that the props department had not yet blunted. She had gone after Kline, who had stormed off to the wardrobe-room to sulk, and had stabbed him and then returned to Dreyer and stabbed him as well. Then she had slashed both her wrists, either out of an extravagant burst of remorse or as a means of escaping the ugliness of the gallows. Either way, you could not say she had no style, that Lucretia, even if the style was Grand Guignol.
Whatever the truth of it, it all made for a damn good case study. Trixie sat on the floor directly beneath the solitary light and marked the salient points carefully on her plan. One body here, a second there. Cameras and technicians presumably grouped about here – she would take an educated guess at that. And then Lucretia’s suicide here. Lying gracefully on the floor of her dressing-room it had been; trust the baroness to be gracefully arranged, even in a blood-dripping death, thought Trixie, and added a note to explore and if possible analyse the complexities of an ego that cared how its mortal coil looked after it had been shuffled off.
She came back to where the solitary light bulb cast its sullen glow, and sat down to make some notes about the actual studio – the floor was cold and disgustingly dusty, but sitting on it was preferable to burrowing under one of the shrouded piles of furniture to find a chair. She was trying to ignore those pallid shapes under the dust-sheets and tarpaulins, and she was also trying to ignore an increasing sensation that she was not on her own in here. Ridiculous, of course, although it would be a bit of a laugh if she did turn out to be psychic after all! She could just see Mr Edmund Fane’s face if she was able to give him an action-replay account of the murders! Oh sure, said her mind sarcastically.
But there is something here, I can feel that there is. What is it, though? Lucretia von Wolff? The kohl-eyed baroness, still bound to the scene of her crime, resentful of intruders? Suicides did not rest, most people agreed on that.
But the murdered did not rest either. Was it Lucretia’s victims whose presence she was sensing so strongly? Lot of rubbish, all this ghost business, but still—
But still, she was hearing something. Soft creakings and rustlings. Mice? Or even (shudder) rats? Or was it the dying Conrad Kline butchered and mutilated, left to die in the dark, but scrabbling on the wall for help…?
Tap-tap…Help-me…Tap-tap…Help-me…
For a moment this last image was so vivid that Trixie almost believed she could hear him.
Tap-tap-tap…I-am-dying…
Who had really killed Dreyer, and who had really killed Conrad Kline? The question sounded slightly absurd, like the old rhyme about C
ock Robin. How did it go? All the birds of the air/Came a-sighing and asobbing/When they heard of the death/Of poor Cock Robin…
So, who killed Leo Dreyer? Not I, said the baroness, with my stiletto. And all the ghosts of Ashwood/Came a-sighing and a-sobbing/When they heard of the death/Of poor Leo Dreyer…
Except that ghosts did not sob, any more than they existed, and there had been nothing poor about Leo Dreyer, in fact it was Trixie’s guess that no one had especially sighed or sobbed at his death. But the method of his dying, yes, that had been bad. And quite a number of people had probably both sighed and sobbed for Conrad Kline.
The rain was still beating on the roof, sounding for all the world as if somebody was throwing hundreds of tin-tacks on to a metal tray, but beneath it, Trixie caught a sound from beyond the inner door. Someone out in the lobby area, was it? Or perhaps Edmund Fane had not closed the outer door properly and it was the wind. No, she had heard him slam the door herself. But he might have come back for some perfectly innocent reason, or Liam Devlin might have done so. Something to do with the keys or the parking of the cars. But surely they would not creep around out there; they would come straight in, calling out to her.
The sound came again, a little more definitely this time, and Trixie’s heart skipped several beats, because what if there was someone out there – someone who had been watching her as she paced out the murder trail and scribbled her notes, occasionally muttering to herself as you did when you believed you were on your own? Someone who had stolen in after Edmund Fane left, or even someone who had been in here all along. She turned to look towards the door leading to the lobby. Was it moving? As if someone was inching it cautiously open, trying not to be heard?
Trixie set down her pad and pen, got stealthily to her feet, and began to step back because like this, standing directly in the fly-blown circle of light, she was as vulnerable and as exposed as if she had been on a spotlit stage. And the door was definitely being pushed open, she could see that it was.
Before she had taken more than a couple of steps away from the light, the door opened more fully, and for a split-second a dark shape was framed there. And then whoever it was closed the door softly and moved into one of the patches of darkness. Damn! Had he seen her? Yes, almost certainly he had.
She dodged deeper into the shadows, but before she could decide what to do next, there was a sudden darting movement near the door and then a soft click. The friendly illumination from above shut off and the entire studio was plunged into darkness.
This was certainly no spook; ghosts did not switch off lights for goodness’ sake, and she could hear the brush of human clothes against a wall as he – it would certainly be a ‘he’! – began to make his way towards her. She could hear the creak of the sagging old timbers as he trod on them as well: like a hoarse voice saying, I’m creeping across the floor to get to you, my dear…
With her heart pounding and sweat forming between her shoulder blades, Trixie started to back away from the sounds, keeping near to the wall because if she could circle around the edges of the studio, she could get to the door—And if she could do that before his eyes adjusted to the darkness…
On this last thought she dropped down on to all fours so that she would not be in his sightline – ha! he would be searching for her on his own eye-level, and that would fool him! She was shaking with fear, but if she kept her nerve she could reach the door and be out into the night before he realized it. And then across the waste ground – never mind how muddily squelchy it was – and into her car, still parked near the old gates. She began to crawl stealthily towards the door, the wall comfortingly on her left, but she had not got more than a couple of feet when a blurred face suddenly swam up in front of her, the eyes huge dark pits, the hair a grey cobwebby veil.
Trixie gasped and recoiled, her stomach clenching in panic, but she had already realized that it was only her own reflection in an old looking-glass propped against a pile of discarded furniture, her features distorted by the green depths of the mirror’s surface. And now he will know where you are, you wimp! Of all the stupid, uncontrolled things to have done—But it was too late for regrets; Trixie had already felt the sudden burst of triumph from him.
OK, no need to pussyfoot around any longer. She stood up and in a voice sharp with fear called out, ‘Who’s there? What do you want?’ There was just the faint possibility that it was simply someone setting her up: someone laughing quietly to himself, and saying, I’ll take the piss out of that daft old Trixie Smith…One of her own students? One of the middle years who had found out about the thesis and followed her down here? Yes, she could think of a couple of possible contenders very easily! She was gratefully aware of a little curl of anger, and when she caught another of the furtive movements over to her right she took a deep breath and lunged forward. If this really was some malicious joker, he had picked the wrong person to play jokes on!
She was halfway across the floor when a figure with smoky darkness where the face should be stepped out of the shadows, and there was another of those moments of frozen terror – ghosts after all? Before she could recover, he had moved behind her, grabbing her arms and twisting them halfway up her back. Pain shot through her so that she cried out, but she struggled against him because she was damned if she was letting some weirdo overpower her! But he had imprisoned her wrists now, and he was jerking her arms even higher; his hands felt like iron bands and pain was shooting through her shoulders, but Trixie was still clutching on to that burst of anger, and she managed to kick out backwards. She encountered solid bone and flesh – his shin, had it been? Good! But wherever the blow had landed, it had drawn an angry grunt of surprised pain from him as if he had not expected her to resist. Serve you right, you bastard!
But then he pulled her back against him – she felt the hot hard excitement of him pressing against her body. God, this was obscene! One of his arms hooked around her throat, slamming into her windpipe and driving the breath from her body. She gasped, and struggled again but he still had that half-stranglehold on her, and before she could kick out again, he released his hold slightly, and a split-second later something hard and hurting smashed down on her skull. The world exploded in starbursts of light before she tumbled down into a spinning blackness.
Edmund had been careful to open and close the outer door loudly enough for Trixie Smith to think he had gone. In fact he had remained just inside, standing quietly in the shadows of the lobby, his heart racing with anticipation, his muscles taut with nervous tension.
But he was already imagining that Crispin was with him – if he could surround himself with Crispin’s personality, he always felt so much stronger. Like chanting a spell to make you brave. (How flattering, Crispin had said, amused, when Edmund had once tried to explain this. I’ve never been compared to a magic spell before.)
The initial plan had been to use the empty hypodermic syringe on Trixie Smith, as he had done on Aunt Deborah. Quick and simple and relatively painless, and the verdict would be heart failure exactly as it had been with Deborah. It would be a gentlemanly way to commit a murder, if you could have such a thing. A coroner might say that Ms Smith was rather young to suffer a heart attack, but these things did happen; it was very sad, and deeply unfortunate that she should have been on her own at the time, but there you were.
But Crispin, with that devastating logic Edmund could never quite master on his own account, had pointed out a flaw in this plan. Yes, he had said, fine, dear boy, very good indeed, to go for that verdict of heart attack. But here’s the thing, Edmund: mightn’t such a verdict cause people to ask why a young and presumably healthy woman should succumb to a heart attack? In such a place? And how about the danger of tabloid newspapers picking the thing up and speculating as to what, precisely, Trixie Smith might have seen inside Ashwood to terrify her into it? A series of headlines had flashed across Edmund’s mind at this. ‘Death inside haunted studio…’ ‘Ashwood claims another victim…’ Perhaps even, ‘Was schoolteacher frigh
tened to death?…’
It would be very newsworthy indeed, Edmund had seen that at once. It could mean that the whole Ashwood tale would be rehashed all over again, and Lucretia’s name would be splashed across the newspapers once more. People would become interested – worse, they would become curious.
Edmund had been aware of self-anger, because he had not seen any of this – he, who was so methodical and so meticulous, had almost bloody missed the great gaping flaw in his plan!
All right, so you didn’t see it, Crispin had said. But it doesn’t matter, because I saw it for you.
Yes, but what do I do? What do I do instead of shoving a prick into the bloody woman?
There had been the familiar ruffle of amusement from Crispin at the slight double entendre – he loved it when the normally prim Edmund occasionally became risqué – but he had said very coolly that for goodness’ sake, Edmund could surely make it appear that the Smith female had been attacked by a tramp or a drug-addict. Hit her over the head with an empty whisky bottle and leave the bottle there for the police to draw their own conclusions. And then, said Crispin, you can jab needles into her to your heart’s content.
Edmund had taken a moment to weigh this up. Both methods together?
Certainly. Blows to the head are unpredictable things, said Crispin. But this way you’re making sure. The verdict can be heart failure after a severe blow to the head. So set the scene for that, dear boy.
Set the scene. Edmund took off the rain-jacket he had been wearing, and retrieved the empty whisky bottle and the hypodermic from its capacious pockets. He was already wearing gloves, which were important because of not leaving fingerprints on the bottle, but he took a knitted balaclava helmet from the jacket’s inner pocket. A touch dramatic this last, perhaps, but you never knew.