Cool Repentance

by Antonia Fraser

  Christabel, although any minute Madame Arkadina was due to make her last entrance and Trigorin and Masha were already in place.

  It was Julian Cartwright who provided the solution to the mystery of Christabel's whereabouts. He came slowly towards Jemima from the direction of Christabel's dressing-room. Vic Marcovich and Anna Maria, who were waiting to enter, stared at him. The voice of Dr Dorn could be heard on-stage: 'That's strange. The door seems to be locked .. .' Without the benefit of his aged-up appearance, Tobs still sounded oddly young.

  Julian Cartwright moved like a sleep-walker. But his voice when he spoke was as clear and strong as normal. So that a good many members of the audience must have heard him when he said:

  'Get everyone out of here. No, don't go into the dressing-room. Christabel has shot herself

  Inside the star's dressing-room, with all its as-yet-unopened good-luck telegrams and all its sweet-scented flowers from Lark Manor, all the flowers she loved, lay Christabel Herrick. She was still just conscious enough to be aware that she was dying at last, killed by her own hand as she had always intended, shot, immolated, ended.

  Then the person who knew that Christabel could never be forgiven for what she had done, closed her eyes. The person who hated Christabel died together with her, and at the same instant and in the same body. United in death, all her voices, good and evil, ruthless and repentant, found peace at last.

  17

  Obsession and After

  They pieced it together afterwards, all of them. Christabel, the person who had killed three times, once in a sudden fit of murderous jealousy -Filly Lennox, a younger rival; twice to protect herself from the consequences of her crime - Nat Fitzwilliam who had seen something through his binoculars, and Old Nicola who had seen something else from her vantage point at the Royal Stag hotel. Christabel, the schizophrenic murderess. Christabel, the person who hated herself for what she had done, and so in the end thankfully destroyed herself.

  The people who pieced it all together included Jemima Shore, who had reached the truth in a flash of illumination at the end - but too late to save Christabel from her final desperate act; Julian Cartwright, who knew only too well about his wife's unbalance but feared to face its consequences; Gregory Rowan, who had talked so convincingly to Jemima about Christabel's self-hatred - Christabel as her own worst enemy - and yet likewise feared to face the agonizing truth.

  'I think we were both blinded, Julian and I, by the fact of her leaving us,' Gregory told Jemima. 'We were obsessed by her absence, by what she had done by abandoning us. So when she did return, we were determined that everything should be just the same: it had to be. Back to normal. That was our motto. You see, it was our conspiracy to pretend that everything was back to normal, not hers. She was merely acting out what we wanted her to be. And giving a superb performance, too. That extraordinary radiant composure, which the world took for brazenness -acting, all of it. Beneath it all, she was terribly frightened, must have been frightened of going mad, frightened of what she might do if she did.'

  They were once more by the sea, on the beach where Jemima had first met Gregory Rowan and he had told her harshly to go back to London -where television belonged. Behind them rose up the pale Bridset stone of Lark Manor and parallel to it the darker shape of the Watchtower Theatre, but neither Jemima nor Gregory looked back. It was one of those late summer days when you knew that autumn would not be long in coming; a cold wind raked the sea and sent iron-grey shadows scudding across its rippled surface. Jemima dug her hands into the pockets of her elegant red suede jacket and shivered. She was thankful Gregory did not suggest swimming.

  Jemima had come to say goodbye to Gregory Rowan at the Old Keeper's Lodge, and found him surrounded by books and packing-cases. Some kind of move was evidently contemplated. She did not comment on the fact nor did he. He simply said: 'Come, on, let's get out of here and go down to the sea for a breath of good Bridset air. I find the woods rather claustrophobic these days.'

  They were out of the cottage before Jemima remembered about the many photographs of Christabel which had surrounded Gregory's desk on her previous visit; she wondered what he had done with them. That was another thing she would not ask.

  Now she spoke into the wind, in the direction of the sea, without looking at Gregory: 'She told me she was frightened, frightened of being left alone at Lark, the first time we had lunch together. Of course, at that time I thought - I imagined - so many people had good reason to wish her ill, to resent her return—'

  'I can imagine what you thought, Jemima Shore Investigator. Betrayed husband, abandoned daughters, sinister servants, even perhaps menacing playwright.' But Gregory's smile, that odd smile whose sweetness had surprised her on their first meeting, robbed the words of offence.

  'I never suspected you,' replied Jemima, loyally and more or less truthfully, for after all it had been Matt Harwood not her who had put his money on the playwright, and if she had suspected Gregory just for one moment towards the end, then it was only during that strange long-drawn-out process of thought, to the tune of the hotel radio, by which she had reached her ultimately correct solution . ..

  'I suppose she really had her first breakdown when I left her, or anyway didn't want to marry her. I wanted my own selfish solitary life,' Gregory continued slowly; he too preferred to look out to sea. 'Julian rescued her then. He married her and looked after her. She recovered; back to normal, you could say. He thought he could do the same thing after the departure of Iron Boy. That really did drive her mad - Julian told me so himself when he went up to London to fetch her. But he was so sure that she'd be all right when he got her back to Lark - he couldn't see, he didn't want to see that Lark, with all its memories, the daily reminder of what she'd done, cooped up with the resentful girls, condemned to be waited on daily by Barry's own parents, was the worst place for her. Even the dog she adored had been killed in her absence, without her to look after it that must have made her feel so guilty. Her thoughts alone must have driven her mad, the voice of her own conscience.'

  The virtuous mind that ever walks attended

  By a strong siding champion Conscience -

  Jemima quoted. 'Do you remember? Those lines from Comus. I questioned whether Christabel was altogether well cast in the part of The Lady. I was wrong. She did have a conscience, if not a virtuous mind.'

  'Yes, why do we always assume that it's only the virtuous who have consciences? In my injured pride, I was wrong about that too.'

  'That's why she was so keen to get back on the stage I suppose,' said Jemima. 'To blot it out. "I'll be safe," she said to me: she meant safe from herself, and her own terrible instinct towards self-destruction.'

  'But she didn't only destroy herself!' Gregory exclaimed. 'That's the horror of it.' He swung round and looked at Jemima. His eyes were full of tears. 'She drowned that poor little girl, just because I laughed and flirted with her at a beach party and offered to take her to Paris, and because Filly was young and pretty and a good actress and the centre of attention - all the things Christabel herself had once been. Filly was going to play Paulinot in Widow Capet. She would have been sensational in the part too, Christabel knew that. She knew all about the theatre, never forget that, she knew that in the famous confrontation scene between Marie Antoinette and Paulinot, what the late Nat called the 'Old-France-versus-the-New Number' it was not necessarily going to be Christabel who wiped the floor with Filly.'

  'Old Nicola was on to that like a flash,' commented Jemima. 'I think she must have had her suspicions about Christabel from the first and decided to keep them to herself in case they proved profitable. Sitting on the beach and "watching all you naughty boys and girls" as she used to put it, she may even have spotted Christabel taking her surreptitious swim. I suppose Christabel wore one of the other less conspicuous suits and hats unearthed by Mrs Blagge: in the general confusion after the death of Filly no one would have noticed one wet bathing-dress more or less, and of course when Christabel reappeared on t
he beach, she was still wearing that flowing leopard-skin printed robe: it was easy to change back into that. But she had taken off her scarf and combed her hair. I remember it stood out from her head like a golden halo—'

  'Halo!' exclaimed Gregory.

  'Let's get back to Old Nicola,' Jemima hastily steered the conversation away from Christabel's personal appearance. 'She made some rather odd remark, I seem to recall, about a person unknown either "having a cuddle, or else being helpful" in the sea, and then never repeated it, which was unlike her usual style. She was certainly well aware of Christabel's jealousy for Filly - "knowing about the theatre and all its little ways after all these years" - almost the last thing she ever said to me. The professional jealousy of an older woman for a younger was all too easy for her to divine, because she was eaten up with envy of Christabel herself. Christabel pretended to be resting in the inner bedroom on the night of Nat's death: Old Nicola must have spotted her slipping down the service stairs, when she was padding along to that distant bedroom she used to moan about.'

  Jemima stopped. There had been enough grief and guilt. She had no wish to add to Gregory's.

  'It must have been far more difficult for Nat to guess the truth,' she went on, knowing that the subject of Nat was a safer one to raise. 'At first he could have had no idea of the implications of what he'd seen through his binoculars that fatal afternoon on the beach.'

  'Or not seen,' put in Gregory. 'Wasn't that the phrase he actually used?'

  'Exactly. I imagine he found Christabel was missing from her resting-place, the one she said she went back to when the turquoise bathing-dress was missing. You remember the poor fellow had had one of his typical ideas for inspiration - he would gaze at her from the Watchtower and by being at a great distance derive some further insight into Arkadina's character.'

  'Typical indeed,' commented Gregory.

  'The thing about Nat, as we all know, is that he had this incredible persistence. Not for him to desert a plan, and watch Blanche and Ollie, you and Filly, or even Julian and Cherry as Christabel suggested. I dare say he focused on her - or where she should have been resting under the cliffs - quite relentlessly, in his dotty way expecting to understand something more about Chekhov at the end of his binoculars. And once he appreciated that Christabel's statement didn't agree with what he had seen, he would have worked on the problem. He was also - dare I say it now he's dead? - the most frightful little opportunist. He too - like Old Nicola - might even have been contemplating some superior kind of blackmail. Some kind of deal along the lines of: "You help me with my career and I'll keep quiet about what I suspect." He was awfully smug, even gloating to me about his own "investigation" as he had the impudence to call it. I had the distinct impression even then that something nasty was afoot. But Christabel had no intention of leading her professional life for the foreseeable future in the power of Nat Fitzwilliam. Besides, how could she trust him? So she deliberately worked out a way of getting rid of him.'

  'It figures,' was all Gregory said.

  'At least Filly's death was an impulse,' Jemima finished. 'You must never blame yourself for it. It was a murderous impulse from an unbalanced person who lost control. A maniac.'

  'A maniac!' cried Gregory. 'But a maniac who knew exactly how to cover her tracks, how to put on a superb act. Between us, we had written the act for her, hadn't we, cool repentance, and she played it to perfection. I never knew her act better in a part of mine, not even at the beginning, the time of Lombardy Summer, Christabel in her twenties, so fair and little, nothing to her but a pair of eyes and a pair of legs, I used to tell her, both of them beautiful. Oh God, what's the point... ?' It was his turn to stop. 'Those early memories are the worst of all. It's better all round to concentrate on the other side of the picture. All the damage she did, the wanton deaths she caused. She may have been mad at the end, but she was also a murderess three times over.'

  Detective Inspector Matt Harwood of the Bridset Constabulary took very much the same line in his farewell interview with Jemima.

  'We should have got her in the end,' he pronounced firmly. 'We always do, you know. Well, nearly always. We never give up. She wanted to be safe, you say, but she would never have been safe from us. The case would never have been closed.'

  From her experience of the police, Jemima thought that was true. Nobody in the end, not even Julian Cartwright, could have saved Christabel from that thorough remorseless process of police investigation. But by then Christabel herself would surely have been dead - dead by her own hand. She would not have waited for the net of the law to close and tangle her, as the fisherman's netting on The Seagull set had tangled the unfortunate stagehands trying to dismantle it.

  'But I could have saved her!' Jemima exclaimed. 'If only I'd trusted my instinct earlier. I knew she was a terrified woman - she nearly confided in me once, and that was long before she'd killed anyone; I realize now she was simply contemplating suicide, trying to fight down the urge. Then, as she said herself at our second lunch: "It's too late now." She'd already killed once, knew she might have to kill again. It's an awful thing to confess, Matt - but I too was put off by the apparently brazen manner of her return. The gracious hostess presiding at Lark Manor, the unhappily silent daughters, the wronged husband - it all stuck in my gullet rather. And by the time I'd worked it out correctly, trusting my instinct at last, seen that matters were exactly the other way round, well, it was too late, wasn't it? That ghastly night at the theatre. It was too late to save her from herself. If only—'

  'Suicides,' interrupted Matt Harwood in his comforting voice. 'They'll always do it in the end, you know. If they really intend to. And we must believe that the lady in question did so intend.'

  'Yes, but in that frightful way, Matt! Shooting herself with a pistol in her dressing-room, in front of her own husband's eyes.'

  'Ah, but Jemima, she was an actress, wasn't she?' It was not clear whether the Detective Inspector meant by this to explain Christabel's presence in a theatrical dressing-room, or the dramatic manner of her self-inflicted death. In either case, thought Jemima, it was not an inappropriate epitaph for Christabel Herrick.

  She could leave it to Detective Inspector Harwood and the Bridset police to clear up the intricacies of procedure in the wake of Christabel's death: the dropping of charges against Jim Blagge was one priority. It was probably not much satisfaction to Jim Blagge to have his story about the mysterious man in the shadows beside the Watchtower Theatre at last believed, since the police had treated it so cavalierly in the first place. But at least he could point out certain details which explained Christabel's 'Method' as well as confirming her 'Opportunity'.

  The 'man' for example had been wearing a hat and some kind of jacket - hence Mr Blagge's subconscious assumption of the male gender in his reference to the glimpsed figure. The 'man' - Christabel in disguise. It was Jemima who pointed out to the police that Christabel would not have had to look very far for a rudimentary form of masculine disguise that hot night in the suite at the Royal Stag hotel. The memory of Blanche, faintly ridiculous in her man's clothes, was one of those illuminating images which had come to her when she was recapitulating the whole tragic story to herself, on the night of Christabel's suicide. Jemima recalled to the police that Blanche had been wearing her Annie Hall outfit when she left Flora's Kitchen: Ketty confirmed that Blanche had left behind the hat and jacket when she went out to search for Ollie Summertown, ostensibly because she felt too hot, actually because she considered an unbuttoned shirt more seductive. Afterwards, Christabel did not even need to dispose of the garments - she could leave them in the suite and rely on Blanche to pick them up again.

  Then there was the re-examination of the forensic evidence by the Home Office laboratories which would prove - to the police's official satisfaction - what Jemima had seized upon by instinct. According to Locard's exchange principle, traces of Blanche's checked jacket found on Nat Fitzwilliam's clothes, hitherto explained by the fact that Blanche had hugged h
im in the restaurant when she had presented the birthday cake, would now take on a more sinister light. The examination of the evidence relating to the death of Old Nicola had only just started by the time of Christabel's suicide: that too would be thoroughly analysed. Jemima Shore Investigator could set off for London while the Bridset police were still patiently at work.

  'In any case,' added Matt Harwood, at the door of Jemima's Royal Stag sitting-room, 'would you really have wanted to save her? Save her to stand trial? She was a maniac, yes, I'll grant you that, quite a lot about that is coming out too, now - now when it's too late to do anything about the deceased persons - specialists' opinions in the past, when she was in London, before her return to Bridset. But she was a triple killer too, wasn't she? Guilty but insane if you like. But Broadmoor - how would she have stood for that? Christabel Herrick. A woman like that.'

  It was an unexpected view for a policeman and Matt Harwood seemed to appreciate her surprise.

  'I'm speaking quite unofficially, you realize,' he said with a wry twinkle. 'Now don't you go and tell my little brother Gary what I've just said, let alone Pompey of the Yard. Whatever would he think of us in Bridset if he thought we conducted our affairs along those kind of lines? Officially in Bridset, same as anywhere else, the law is the law and murderers must be apprehended and brought to trial and the police are there to do it.'

  Jemima heard his heavy footsteps going down the corridor in the direction of the stairs - the service stairs. Either Detective Inspector Harwood was a discreet man and did not wish to add to Mrs Tennant's distress further by manifestations of police presence, or else he was a busy man, who simply wanted to go about his business as fast as possible in the most convenient way. She thought how Christabel must have twice slipped along that corridor, leaving the bedroom of her suite by its unused outer door, unused, but easily and quickly unbolted. She too had wanted to go about her business as fast as possible in the most convenient way - the business of murder.