by Helen Smith
‘Elise!’ called Emily.
Elise came over. She said, ‘I need your help in a matter of the utmost importance.’
Emily said, ‘I need your help, Elise. It’s about the knife throwing. Can I ask you a few questions?’
Elise stood still and held up one finger. She looked at Emily. ‘Could you help me get the suitcase to the gentleman?’ she asked.
‘Well...’ said Emily.
‘My name is Elise. I need to get a message to our friend but I’m being watched. I have information that is vital, vital, to the success of our joint endeavour.’
‘What’s the message?’ asked Emily.
Elise looked surprised at the question. ‘Why, the message is in the suitcase.’
‘OK, then. Who’s it for?’
‘The message is for the gentleman who is waiting for it, of course.’
‘But Elise, seriously – if that is even your real name – it’s very neat that you’re answering in character but this is really real. Zsa-Zsa was your friend, wasn’t she? Don’t you want to help her?’
Elise said, ‘Actually, no-one liked her.’ She said it in the same breathy voice she used for everything.
Emily looked at her for a while and then she said, ‘If I help you get the suitcase to the man, will you answer a few of my questions?’
Elise brightened. She even looked grateful. She said in a very low voice, ‘I have to get the suitcase to the gentleman by the end of the evening. If there’s no-one to help me, I have to keep on asking.’
‘So,’ said Emily, ‘let me get this straight. Your performance ends when you get the suitcase to the gentleman. And if I help you do that, you’ll be off duty and maybe you’ll answer some of my questions. OK, so where’s the suitcase? Where’s the gentleman?’
‘The suitcase is in the nursery in the attic. The gentleman will be waiting down here, in the grand hall.’
‘OK. I’ll go up and get it. And what about him? Will I recognise him?’
‘Yes,’ said Elise. ‘But be careful with the suitcase. The contents are very fragile.’ Then she whirled off, very fast, running up the nearest of the two staircases in dainty dancer’s shoes, presumably so she could prepare the suitcase, or at least spy on Emily to make sure she went up to the attic to keep her part of the bargain. Emily took the other staircase – why not – and headed up to the attic.
When she got to the first floor, she looked into the bedroom where she had first seen Zizi and Zsa-Zsa – how simple it would have been to have found them there and questioned them. But the place was empty. She went in and walked around, she went into the bathroom. What had Midori seen, if anything? Was it anything that someone would have poisoned her to keep her from repeating, and spoiling their secret? Emily looked around the bedroom and saw only what she had seen the first time – the dressing table with the make-up and hairbrush. The bed. She looked into the cupboards and saw five identical blue-grey spangly costumes – some shabbier than others – and four pairs of matching shoes, and found that she approved that they had spares; it must make doing the laundry less stressful.
When she reached the attic she found two doorways. One door was shut – she tried the handle but it was locked. The other door stood open to reveal a small room in the eaves, with clean bare floorboards and an empty crib in the middle of the room. Next to it, she saw a large suitcase. It was brown leather with a metal trim. She took the handle and found that it was very heavy – she’d have been liable for an excess baggage charge if she’d tried to take it onto an aircraft, that’s for sure. Before she tried to move the suitcase, she paused to take stock of her murder investigation. It was following rather a circuitous route. Still, perhaps Elise would have a useful clue. She was the only performer Emily could really talk to. Chris was sardonic and rude. Joe was... Joe was possibly implicated in covering up whatever had happened. Yes, Elise was her best chance.
Emily dragged the suitcase across the wooden floor. The sound of the metal edges of the suitcase on the wooden floor was a loud groaning protest, as if she was trying to dig a wood sprite from the knots in the floorboards. After she had managed to move the case to the doorway, she rested. After this, all she had to do was get the suitcase along the corridor and down two flights of stairs, and into the grand hall in front of various assembled neighbours – and bingo, she’d be there. She put her hands on the handle and strained again to move it. She got it level with the locked door of the room next to this one. The door opened, its occupant no doubt intrigued by the dreadful noise.
‘Emily?’ Chris was leaning in the doorway to a sparsely furnished bedroom, legs crossed, arms folded, smiling like a model on a knitting pattern. In spite of herself, Emily peered into the room to see whether he was hiding Zsa-Zsa or Zizi in there, dead or alive. She saw a single mattress on the floor, made up comfortably with clean white sheets, a beige blanket and two fat pillows on it. She saw a straight-backed dining room chair with a pair of men’s trousers and a pale blue T-shirt slung over it; a laptop computer on a very small table; and next to it, a lipstick in a gold case. The room was purely functional, a cell to sleep in – a cell for Chris to sleep in – not part of the performance space.
Chris said, ‘At last! A volunteer. You’re plucky taking on the task yourself. It’s heavy, isn’t it? You want me to help you?’
‘No thank you,’ said Emily with great dignity. When she was at school it had always been implied that heavy lifting should be avoided because it might damage a woman’s uterus. Now she hoped that if she came to grief from ignoring this advice, and the blasted thing shot out of her as she heaved at the suitcase, that at least it might land on Chris’s head and choke him, mythical giant squid-like, with fallopian tentacles.
Chris smiled. He locked the bedroom door behind him and walked off down the stairs.
‘Ems?’ Now here was Victoria just behind Emily, doing her quizzical owl head pose and standing in the way. ‘Why don’t you leave that for one of the men?’
‘No, well. You see it’s a kind of performance.’
‘Ooh! How clever. So it’s not really heavy?’
‘Well, no. It is really heavy. But I said I’d get this suitcase downstairs for Elise. The one in the raincoat?’
Fair play to Victoria, she bent down and tried to help. With both of them tugging on the handle of the suitcase, they made some progress down the corridor till they reached the top of the staircase – but it was slow.
Why don’t you get your hateful progeny to help? thought Emily.
‘You know what?’ said Victoria. ‘Why don’t we get the boys to help?’ She put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. Then she shouted: ‘Tommy! Jolyon! Kim!’ With names like that, presumably she was hoping to get the whole bunch of them into Parliament.
‘It’s a question of physics,’ said Emily as the boys appeared. ‘Or is it geometry? Angles and levers and–’
‘Why don’t we just push it down the stairs?’ said the middle one, Jolyon. ‘Let gravity do the rest. That’s physics.’ He put his hands on the upturned edge of the suitcase.
‘No!’ said Emily. ‘The contents are fragile. I have to get the suitcase to a gentleman. It’s a matter of vital importance.’
‘Yeah,’ said Kim from behind his wolf mask. ‘She told us that ‘n’ all. You know it’s only a game?’
‘If we put the boys in the front as buffers,’ said Victoria, ‘and we hold on for dear life behind...’ She motioned Jolyon and Kim to take up position, and looked round for the third of her buffers, and there he was, skateboarding along the corridor in his habitual insolent pre-teen boy way.
‘Well, with the skateboard,’ said Emily. ‘We can improvise.’
They put the skateboard, wheels up, on the banister. They laid the suitcase on the skateboard, using it like a tray. They held on and slid the thing down two flights of stairs, then they flipped the skateboard over and used it like a dolly to get the suitcase to the gentleman in the grand hall.
Emily was very gratefu
l for the assistance of Victoria and her sons – she couldn’t have done it without them – but still, it had been a tougher job than she’d bargained for when she accepted it, and she was sweating horribly by the time they arrived. She looked around for the ‘gentleman’, expecting to see the young man in the top hat with the rouged cheeks who had rushed past her when she first arrived at the party – or any kind of theatrical, dressed-up, amusing type. Anyone but Chris.
‘Aha!’ said Chris, when he saw her.
‘I was looking for a gentleman,’ said Emily, primly.
Chris said, ‘Well you’ll have to make do with me.’ He bent down and tapped at the suitcase, very gently, almost tenderly, as if its delivery really was a matter of vital importance. ‘Shall I do the honours?’ he said. ‘Or will you?’
Emily shook her head. Really, she’d got the thing this far – why couldn’t he open it? But he took a key from his pocket and handed it to her with a bow, and by then a small inquisitive crowd had gathered, so she had no choice but to smile and play her part.
She bent and put the key in the lock, Chris and Victoria and the boys arranged behind her, smiling, arms on shoulders like the Von Trapp family, and as she flipped open the lid of the suitcase, all of a sudden something lithe and large and unexpected reared up at her like a jack-in-a-box. It was Elise. She had removed her raincoat and contrived to fit her body into that suitcase – it wasn’t that big – and had made the journey with them. She was wearing a lovely, slinky, silver 1930s dress with a tasselled fringe at the hem and at the bust. ‘Thank you,’ she said to Emily. She stepped over the edge of the suitcase, fitted a cigarette into a holder, lit it, and prepared to walk away.
‘Wait!’ said Emily. She really didn’t want to go through her questions in front of Chris – but she did want an answer.
Elise knew what she wanted. She said to Emily, ‘Do you know your Chekhov?’
‘The Seagull?’ Emily had seen the same production of The Seagull at The Barbican in London three times in 2003. A friend of her boyfriend had had a small part in it.
‘No.’
‘The Cherry Orchard?’ Emily was not sure that she had seen The Cherry Orchard. She looked out in the direction of the garden and remembered the small orchard with its apple, pear and cherry trees. Perhaps it was somehow relevant? Zsa-Zsa was buried down there at the bottom of the garden under a cherry tree?
‘No.’
Emily was getting uncomfortable. She saw the faces of one or two of her neighbours in the crowd – the young black man who was always repairing his car. The Indian woman with the disabled parking space and the herb garden at the front of her house. Emily hoped they would think it was part of the show. She said to Elise, ‘You’ll have to give me a clue.’
‘You really don’t know?’ Elise gave Emily a look of such contempt. Then she walked away.
‘Do you need me to help you?’ asked Chris.
‘I really don’t,’ said Emily. Then she walked away too.
‘Don’t miss the parade,’ called Chris. ‘We’re burning a witch.’
Somebody laughed. Then behind her, she heard the small crowd break into polite applause. Someone whistled – the chap who was always repairing his car, perhaps. Emily didn’t look back.
Emily wanted to find Joe. She went out into the garden and saw him standing there, tall and handsome, easy to spot in the crowd. She went towards him as quickly as she could. Joe and Emily. With their very English names they could have been toddlers playing up while their mothers had a natter in Starbucks, except that Joe was so tall and so handsome and so Hungarian, and Emily was... Emily was sweating like an adult woman who has just lugged a suitcase containing a contortionist down two flights of stairs.
‘That was mad,’ she said. She meant the knife-throwing but she could have been talking about any of it.
Joe smiled, as though it was a compliment. ‘They’ve lit the bonfire,’ he said. ‘Come and sit over here, or you’ll smell as though you’re forged in a volcano.’ He took her hand and led her over to one of the wooden benches. They sat there for a moment. Joe seemed as exhausted as if he had personally raised Zsa-Zsa from the dead. If only that was a legitimate possible explanation. Emily looked around at the other guests in the garden, trying to decide what she wanted to ask him. Was she really going to ask him if he had just covered up a death? Perhaps the knife had slipped, and out of loyalty...
‘Wait here,’ Joe said. She must have looked as though she hadn’t said what she’d come out here to say because he put his hand on her shoulder and said, ‘I won’t be long. I’ll come back.’
‘Do you know your Chekhov?’ said Emily.
‘What can you mean?’
‘It’s something Elise said. It’s about Zsa-Zsa. I need to know the names of the plays.’
Maybe he looked at her strangely and maybe he didn’t. It was hard to see in the darkness with the smoke from the bonfire blowing in their eyes.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t know anything.’ He walked away.
Emily sat and waited. Not far from where she was sitting, the little stall was still going, serving roast pig straight from the spit. Emily spotted a very elderly lady she knew heading for the front of the long queue of people waiting to be served with a slice of pork. Emily only knew this lady as ‘Auntie’. It was a term of respect rather than an acknowledgement of familial ties because Auntie was originally from Jamaica and Emily had never even been there on holiday. Auntie was small but she was mighty. She was fierce. She stood in her slippers at the gate post in front of her house most days, and greeted the world as it passed by. The gate post was only a few feet from her front window, so there was no doubt that she stood there not because she’d get a better view but because she wanted to hail the passersby and get a greeting in return.
Seeing the long queue for the roast pork, rather than wasting time trying to evaluate how long it would take her to wait and whether or not she should stand in line or come back, Auntie had taken the sensible decision to press her suit as one of the oldest people there, and had walked to the front and held out her plate. ‘Hello, Auntie,’ called Emily. Auntie gave a queenly wave, but she didn’t look back. She was concentrating on her plate as the meat piled up on it. ‘A liccle more,’ she said to the man in the chef’s hat, each time he paused. ‘A liccle more.’
Now Dr. Muriel was heading in Emily’s direction, her cane in one hand, a cup of punch in the other. ‘I wonder if it’s true,’ Emily said to her, ‘that roast pork smells like roasting human flesh.’
She’d thought Dr. Muriel would say something obvious like, ‘Let’s hope we never find out!’ Instead she said, ‘When is something “true”, Emily? Is it when you read about it or hear about it, when you see it with your own eyes – or is there some other term of reference for you?’
‘In this case,’ said Emily. ‘I’d have to smell it with my own nose, wouldn’t I?’
Dr. Muriel sat down next to Emily, as though Emily had been waiting for her. So Emily took advantage of the situation to expound her theories about the knife throwing.
‘No-one has seen Zsa-Zsa since the knife throwing. Did she die right in front of me? Was she stabbed afterwards? Or is she alive?’
‘It might have been an accident,’ said Dr. Muriel. ‘Seems like a night for mishaps. A girl just set herself on fire over there by the house. One of the performers. A silly girl with a cigarette holder and a silver flapper dress. The fringe of her dress went up, whoosh! Luckily for her your friend whatshisname, Sonny Jim, he was there to smother the flames.’
Was he? Emily thought of Joe, heroic and strong, wrestling Elise to the ground to save her from burning– and hopefully bruising her a bit in the process.
She said, ‘It could have been anyone at the party who threw that knife.’
‘But if Zsa-Zsa died, then who was it who came back again to show us that it was a prop? To show us that she hadn’t been killed with a knife? You’re not saying they did something with mirrors? Or videotape
? I was watching and I saw that girl come back, large as life.’
‘So we have suspects,’ Dr. Muriel said. ‘But no murder. That’s interesting. That’s a conundrum. ‘Remember, remember, the 5th of November. Gunpowder, treason and plot.’ How very apt that you should be investigating a murder that may not have happened, on Bonfire Night, a night which celebrates a regicide that never happened. You need a motive, don’t you? Though before you start with that, I’d say you need to have a murder.’
‘I’ve got a murder – I’ve just got to convince everyone else.’
‘Alright then, m’dear. You need a body. If there’s been a murder, there will be a body.’
‘You’re right. I need to find one. And if I can’t find one, I can at least look’.
‘Flower beds? Anything recently dug up.’
‘It’s just a tangle of weeds everywhere. Nothing has been touched for twenty years.’
‘The bonfire? You couldn’t really tuck a body in there without the whole lot falling down like a pile of fiddlesticks.’
‘Let me think.’ Emily closed her eyes to concentrate and instead of seeing where they might have hidden the body, she thought of Jessie. Even at the end, when everything else had gone: sight, hearing, back legs and sphincter, Jessie could smell a gravy bone across the kitchen. She’d have enjoyed the game of hunting for Zsa-Zsa, even if it was rather a ghoulish game. And, as Emily thought of Jessie, it was almost as though the dog was helping her with her enquiries (only almost, because of course she didn’t believe in ghosts), and she thought about that cellar with the poor dog in a cage down there. A dark cellar would be a very good place to hide a body.
She opened her eyes and looked towards the side of the house where the cellar was situated. She could see Joe arguing with Chris and Zizi up by the locked side door to the house where Midori had vomited.