The Lady of the Lake

by Peter Guttridge

  ‘Bumped into her?’ Grace said suspiciously, her face hardening.

  ‘Genuinely,’ Gilchrist said. ‘I told you last night I was checking in there for the duration of this investigation. She was coming out of breakfast as I was dumping my bags.’

  ‘Loose lips sink Kip,’ Grace murmured. ‘OK – what did she say?’

  ‘That you’ve got voice tapes of vile threats including death threats. And she repeated the thing she said last night about you both having fallen for violent, arrogant men.’

  Grace’s face relaxed. ‘Only a couple such men, but two is more than enough.’ She sighed. ‘It’s more that they’re controlling men.’ She took a sip of her coffee, eyes closed.

  When she opened them, Gilchrist was surprised that Heap abruptly said: ‘May I ask about that scar by your ear?’

  Grace gave him what Gilchrist could only describe as a look. ‘You’re asking if I’ve had plastic surgery? What possible relevance can that have to your murder inquiries?’

  Heap flushed, though not so much as Gilchrist expected he would. ‘I’m certain you’ve not had plastic surgery, Ms Grace, and that wasn’t why I was asking. I think you’ve had a relatively recent injury.’

  Grace looked at Gilchrist. ‘This one’s a keeper, isn’t he?’ Grace gave them both a searching look then raised her arms above her head and took an extravagant breath. Gilchrist couldn’t help but observe that she did still have great breasts.

  ‘It’s a few years ago, actually. A man turned up at the door not long after I moved in here. I was wary of everyone because this monster had been leaving vile death threats on my phone and ranting on about sending hitmen for me who would film my slow death on their phones for him to enjoy for ever. My eyes bugging out of my head as I was strangled, that kind of thing.’ Grace looked off into the distance.

  ‘And this unknown man turned up. I tried shouting through the door to him to ask him what he wanted and when he didn’t reply I didn’t open up. But he kept hammering on the door. He just wouldn’t go away.’

  ‘Was he the man who had been making the death threats?’

  ‘No – as I said, this one was unknown. A ferrety man.’

  ‘You mean you knew the man making death threats?’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes. But please let me tell this my way. At right angles to the door there are a couple of old, leaded windows. I could see him standing at the front door, his hands in his coat pockets. I opened a window a bit and shouted to him that I wanted him to go away, that I wouldn’t open the door for him. He was startled as it took a moment for him to locate where my voice was coming from but then he dashed towards the window, taking something from his pocket as he got nearer.

  ‘It was a small glass bottle. I started to close the window and then he threw something from the bottle at me. Pretty much all of it hit the window but a drop or two caught me near my ear and on my shoulder and arm. The pain was worse than any pain I’d ever felt and I knew immediately what it was. You’ve got to realize this was years before the spate of acid attacks perpetrated by pathetic, cowardly men happened.

  ‘But as a child actor I’d done one of those Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes things very early in my career before I hit the movies and in that the villain used acid to ruin the features of the women he used then discarded. Apparently acid attacks were all the rage in Victorian times, although, I’m sorry to say, it was, in those days, usually a woman’s weapon of revenge.

  ‘Anyway I knew what to do to try to limit the damage. I managed to call for an ambulance but by the time it arrived what damage there was to be done had been done. They took me to hospital and dressed my wounds and kept me in overnight. I agreed to stay, more to handle the shock of what had happened than the happening itself. It took a while to heal but I wasn’t going out of the house much so nobody knew what had happened.’

  ‘You didn’t report it?’

  ‘What was the point? I knew who was behind it but they’d never get him for it. I was just relieved nobody in the hospital tipped off the press. But I use Vivien Grace as my name on everything and people don’t always twig.’

  ‘The police could have warned him off if you’d reported it.’

  ‘Who? The perpetrator or the man behind the attack? There was no way of tracing the perpetrator. He disappeared. And the other guy? Yeah, right – like he’s scared of the police. He’s rich and untouchable.’

  ‘Nobody is untouchable,’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘I really wish that were true,’ Grace said. ‘Especially in Hollywood. The money-men there aren’t just in it for the money you know. You know from this whole Me Too thing, money-men can be in it more for the beautiful women, whether the beautiful women like it or not. And most of the women endure it unless it gets really degrading. And, even then, some of them endure it in return for seeing their name in lights …’

  ‘Is this man one of the money-men?’

  Grace shook her head.

  ‘But I’m not going to tell you who he is, so you can stop asking.’

  ‘That could be interpreted as obstructing the police in the performance of their duties – not to mention hindering a murder investigation,’ Gilchrist said, but without much strength in her voice.

  ‘Oh, please. I don’t for a moment think he had anything to do with Richard Rabbitt’s death.’

  ‘That’s for us to decide. Is he the man you thought you had seen at your window?’

  Grace nodded.

  ‘Have you met William Simpson?’ Heap said.

  ‘Name rings a bell but I meet a lot of people and remember hardly anyone. The nature of the social side of my business. When I was in the business. And had a social side to me.’

  ‘You still work though?’ Heap said.

  ‘But as out of the spotlight as possible if that doesn’t sound paradoxical coming from an actor.’

  ‘But you need to act to be, I don’t know, complete?’ Heap said.

  Grace laughed a full-throated laugh. ‘I need to act to pay the mortgage on this place. I’m determined not to lose it but it costs me a bloomin’ arm and a leg. The outgoings are relentless. If I had enough money I’d never act again.’

  ‘What would you do?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind having a go at being a potter. Or painting in acrylics.’

  ‘No offence, Ms Grace,’ Heap said shyly, ‘but the world is full of potters and painters. I’m sure you’d be very good at both but you have a rare talent for acting and, if I may, you still have a lot to give.’

  Grace looked at him for a long moment without speaking. He blushed. Naturally. She smiled softly. ‘Why, Detective Sergeant Heap, I feel quite overcome.’ She reached out and touched his hand. Gilchrist saw him try hard not to flinch. He didn’t much like being touched. Grace didn’t notice. ‘That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me for quite some time.’ She looked round the room. ‘I’m out of the habit of receiving kindnesses.’

  ‘It wasn’t kindness, Ms Grace. It was the truth.’

  ‘I believe you. But I’ve lost the enthusiasm for acting, truth be told. Had it beaten out of me.’

  ‘Who did the beating?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘The man who issued the death threats. Before then it had been a long-sustained low-key attack that increased in tempo from someone who should have been my support. OK, he was a fellow actor. So, listen to this. My first night as Cleopatra on Broadway. Wanting to be taken seriously as an actress because I’ve always felt I am a serious actress but the Daily Pustule and the other tabloids had other ideas.

  ‘I was a wreck through most of the rehearsals but the director was marvellous, the rest of the cast were impossibly patient with me. They were proper actors and I was Naughty Nimue, better known for being the sexual predator in the film that got me that nickname than for her acting.

  ‘We’d been having our ups and downs, me and this anonymous man, which wasn’t helping. But he turned up in New York for the first night. I was so thrilled. We hadn’t seen each
other for a month. I didn’t see him before the show but he sent flowers to the dressing room, the whole thing.

  ‘I remember that I was sick before I went on stage. The first and only time but I was so nervous. I had a lot to prove. But once I was on stage I flew. I could feel it. You know that phrase we use now: “being in the zone”? Well, I was definitely in the zone. I stayed in it during the interval and I really enjoyed the second half. Now New Yorkers are a tough audience but when the curtain went down and then back up for our call, the place erupted.’

  ‘I remember reading the reviews,’ Heap said.

  ‘But this was before the reviews. This wasn’t the critics. This was the audience response. Although the critics in New York have the power to close a show I only care about what the audience thinks. So there was this standing ovation that went on and on. So many bows. When I finally went backstage I thought he’d be in the dressing room but he wasn’t.

  ‘Didn’t matter. There was a party afterwards at a nearby restaurant and I knew he’d be there. So the cast popped a couple of bottles backstage and we told each other how wonderful we’d been and how we’d nearly fluffed this and thought we had messed up that and hugged and kissed and all loved each other. And we did love each other – a company of actors working together forge such strong bonds – at least for the length of the run and, with luck, long after.

  ‘So I go to the party and we have to pass through the downstairs restaurant and I hear chairs scraping back and when I look every person at every table is standing and I get a standing ovation from the customers in there too. So I get upstairs quite breathless. And I’m getting hugs and kisses and more congratulations as I edge slowly into the room and all the time I’m looking for him. He’s tall, I’ll tell you that much, so he’s easy to spot.

  ‘And finally as I reach the middle of this crowd of people I see him at the back of the room. He’s looking at me with a big smile on his face. He raises his hands beside his head and gives me a little clap and a nod. I beckon him over but he shakes his head, gestures to all the people trying to get at me to say how wonderful I was and taps his watch, which I take to mean we’ll have time later. All night, in fact.

  ‘So I let myself be congratulated and there are brief speeches saying how wonderful I am and how long that lasts I have no idea. And if you’re wondering how much acclaim one actor can take I can tell you – a limitless amount. It’s never enough. But there’s plenty more to come for me. Except that he suddenly appears in front of me and lifts me up at the waist – he’s strong as well as tall – and throws me over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift and says to those around us: “she’ll wave goodbye as she leaves”.

  ‘And to me: “I can’t wait any longer.” And I find this a mixture of exciting and romantic and I-don’t-know-what so as a way parts through the crowd, with everyone laughing and smiling, I’m waving at people from halfway down his back and saying “I have to go” and all sorts of inanities and then we’re out in the street and he deposits me in the back of a waiting taxi.

  ‘As we set off I start to say that was unexpected and fun but I hadn’t actually finished thanking people but he puts his finger against my lips and says a line from the play: “Other women cloy the appetites they feed but she makes hungry where most she satisfies.” Then he kisses me and, of course, everything goes from my head until after we’ve reached my room and had sex together for the first time in a month.’

  She pauses in her headlong story.

  ‘And then, after, we’re lying side by side – he was never a cuddler, which I didn’t notice at the time but is a signifier, I believe – and I said again that I hadn’t finished at the party when he so romantically carried me away. “Couldn’t you have curbed your lust a little longer,” I clearly remember I said in a half-teasing, half-serious way. “It was nothing to do with lust,” he growled, “I just couldn’t stand any more people crawling up your ass complimenting you on a performance that was so false and contrived and so utterly crap in every way.”’

  Grace looked down.

  ‘The reviews said otherwise,’ Heap said after a silence. Grace smiled.

  ‘Everybody said otherwise. But whose voice am I going to listen to? The voice of a man I think I’m in love with – because I’m confusing lust with love – who I think is a tremendously talented actor. Largely because he has told me that he is, I realize with hindsight, since all he can actually play is the psychopath that he is.

  ‘But his is a voice that chimes in with my own secret fear that I’ve only got the parts and the acclaim because of my looks. Well, and, in one case, because my pubic hair proved I am a genuine redhead when I did the infamous bottomless rather than topless scene in one movie. Though on that occasion I was wearing a merkin as well so I wasn’t actually doing a Sharon Stone.’

  ‘What happened in the rest of the run,’ Heap asked gently.

  ‘The reviews came out the next morning and were uniformly glowing for me. But for the rest of that week I kept chopping and changing how I did it, much to the confusion of my fellow cast members. But each performance I was imagining he was in the audience judging me – and his approval of me was the only thing that mattered. By the Friday he’d given grudging approval for a flabby performance that scarcely earned me a curtain call. On the Saturday we had a row – or rather he rowed with me – and he left New York for Los Angeles. On the Sunday I quit the production citing ill health.’

  Grace sat quietly, clasping and unclasping her hands.

  ‘If you don’t mind my asking,’ Heap said, ‘was he a less successful actor than you?’

  Grace smiled at him.

  ‘You are a clever copper! Only later did I realize he was seething with jealousy at my success. Always had done but I hadn’t realized it because his putdowns were so subtle. He was a talented actor within a narrow range. But he had no genuine warmth on camera. The camera saw that – it really doesn’t lie. He has made his living playing sociopaths really well, except, of course, I realized later, as I said, that he wasn’t actually acting – that was him. He couldn’t convincingly manufacture genuine emotions and he couldn’t summon them from within himself using the Method he wanked on about all the time because his only true emotion was – is – narcissism.’ She sighed. ‘Is that even an emotion? He used to travel everywhere with a punching bag. Took it with him to wherever he was filming. He said it was the best way to keep fit but it was just to push this macho image.’

  ‘So to pump himself up he needed to pull you down,’ Gilchrist said. ‘And did he destroy your career?’

  ‘Pretty much, I’m angry to say. I was traumatized by him and associated him with Hollywood and couldn’t go back. But that’s what he set out to do.’ She sat back and spread her hands. ‘I may as well tell you. His name is George Bosanquet.’

  ‘The South African actor?’ Heap says. ‘He does always play psychopaths.’

  ‘The very same – except, as I said, he isn’t playing. He is a psychopath.’ Grace leaned back. ‘I’ve just shared my biggest secret with you. And now you have the story the tabloids would pay a fortune for.’

  ‘Your story is safe with us,’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘Tell that to Cliff Richard,’ Grace said.

  ‘We are not those police,’ Gilchrist said.

  Grace smiled. ‘I believe you. I hope I don’t live to regret that, as I have so often.’

  ‘You won’t,’ Heap said. ‘You have our word.’

  ‘You don’t strike me as the kind of woman who’d let that happen without fighting back,’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘You can fight back or you can go round,’ Grace said.

  ‘So do you mean you did that and now you don’t feel beaten?’

  ‘I mean I’ve learned better how to be the self I want to be.’

  ‘Perhaps you could teach the rest of us,’ Gilchrist said with a grin.

  ‘Ha. I think it would only work for me. Not that it’s made me a better judge of men, which is why I keep away from them.
I can’t afford to lose my heart again.’ She looked down.

  ‘You say you’ve never had children …’ Gilchrist started cautiously.

  Grace looked up and scanned her face. ‘In Hollywood having children is complicated. There are those women who won’t have children at all because their bodies are their livelihood and they don’t want to mess up their perfect breasts or put on weight they won’t be able to lose or, and this is remarkably prevalent, mess up their vaginas with the birth. On that latter point, as one actress said to me – who, I admit is one of those who takes her own casting couch to auditions: “Which of those guys want to put their little Johnsons in the Grand Canyon?”’

  ‘And in your case?’

  Grace wrinkled her nose. It was very distracting. ‘I thought I was pregnant by Bosanquet. It went something like this. I tell him that and he says: “I don’t want a fucking kid with you.” I say: “Then why did you have unprotected sex?” He says: “It’s not my job to protect you. That’s your problem. Real men don’t wear condoms. And anyway you didn’t seem to mind me riding you bareback.” I say: “I thought we were making a baby.” He says: “I have no memory of that conversation.”

  ‘We did have that conversation. He was desperate to have a child with me and my hormones were raging and I was in lust with him. He was the chosen one because the time was right. But I realized why he was so keen for me to have a baby when I took refuge here and he got my number. He didn’t know if I’d had a baby or not. But he left me vile messages saying my career was over now because I only got work because of my body and now everything would be bloated then saggy and who would want to fuck me?’

  ‘Bastard,’ Gilchrist muttered.

  ‘As I said, a sociopath and a narcissist,’ Grace said. ‘Hollywood attracts the most charming ones. But he didn’t just say vile things when I told him about the pregnancy. He beat me up and kicked me in the stomach.’

  ‘So he didn’t want kids?’

  ‘Au contraire. As I said, he liked the idea of me being pregnant because he thought it would fuck up my career and my figure and it would take me off the table, so to speak. He was a jealous guy. He raged: “I’m supposed to believe it’s mine. A whore like you putting out for every actor in Hollywood and I’m supposed to think it’s mine?” Well, I wasn’t exactly a nun but I wasn’t that either.’