The Final Curtain

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘OK.’ She took a last glance at the still figure. ‘I’ll get back to Butterfield then. See you later, Matt.’ He merely grinned at her and raised his hand.

  As she drove out through the city of Stoke on the A53, passing through Endon and Stockton Brook, she reflected. In the old days she would have called in the station and informed Chief Superintendent Arthur Colclough of events, filled him in on the lines of enquiry they were pursuing and anything else that might have a bearing on this major investigation. But these were not the old days. Rumour had it that Chief Superintendent Gabriel Rush was to start on April 1. Not only a Sunday but April Fools’ Day, she thought, as she took the congested road through the town passing the roundabout, which was currently the subject of furious debate to the citizens of Leek who were resisting change. They wanted their dear and unique town to stay exactly the same. There had been a few noisy demonstrations and one or two of the more impassioned demonstrators had camped on the roundabout, but so far the police had not been involved and certainly not DI Joanna Piercy. She drove past the station, continuing through the town and out the other side to take the Ashbourne road towards the Peak District and eventually Butterfield Farm.

  The minute she passed the millstone and entered the Moorlands she was aware of her environment. It was as though the purity of the atmosphere seeped into her car. It was a crisp, clear day, as clean and fresh as any winter’s day can be, cleansed by a sharp overnight frost and the blessing of a cool winter’s sun all day. Sheep wandered around baaing aimlessly, the winter wool heavy on their backs. They looked perfect against the snowy hills, like a painting by Hunt or Morland. But when she reached the ridge which overlooked the farm and looked down she decided that no one could be deceived into thinking that this was a tranquil place. As the light of the dying winter sky, slate grey with a tinge of pewter, began to fade, lamps were being switched on all over the house. And outside stood a car park full of vehicles: forensic vans, police cars, private cars. Arc lights illuminated the front of the house like an urban factory besieged by burglars. It was unmistakably the centre of great drama. A rogue thought entered her mind. Timony would so have loved this.

  Joanna parked in the yard and walked into the barn, brightly lit, the warmth from the heaters at last making the temperature bearable. In fact, she felt as cosy as a cow. She sniffed. The barns had obviously not held animals for a long time and the place was swept as clean as a kitchen. But now she did catch an underlying scent of long-ago cattle, of a dairy, of milk and cow feed and cow dung too that made it both authentic and comfortable. Probably the scent lingered from the cottage long ago, soaked into the stones and the fabric of the site. She couldn’t imagine Timony doing any milking herself. She sat down at a makeshift desk, slid the USB stick into the computer and opened the file, My Story. She began to read and was absorbed. An hour later she was nibbling her thumbnail and staring into nothing.

  She heard the door opening – and closing, looked up to see Korpanski watching her. ‘Jo?’ he asked uncertainly.

  She looked up and gave a half smile. ‘This is the oddest autobiography I’ve ever read,’ she said. ‘Timony Weeks must have been a schizophrenic. It’s almost as though it was written by two people.’

  ‘How so?’ He hunkered down beside her, focused too on the computer screen.

  ‘Well, look at this. “I was born in a Midlands town of working-class parents. This is what they told me, that my mother and father were ambitious for their pretty daughter and enrolled me in a stage school.”’

  ‘So?’ Korpanski looked puzzled.

  ‘For a start, it’s not strictly the truth. She was spotted in an ordinary school play. And then it tells you nothing. No specific place, no names, no details. Not even her date of birth.’

  Mike still looked puzzled so she explained. ‘I mean, as an autobiography it’s terrible. It doesn’t tell you anything.’

  ‘Had she already been paid for it? A what do you call it, had an “advance”?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’ll check with Diana Tong. But more worryingly, Mike …’

  Korpanski’s spine stiffened as he regarded her,

  ‘… it’s the bits later on in the book. Look at this. Nineteen sixty-five. She would have been about thirteen years old. “Filming all day. It was tiring as I was supposed to be looking after a baby lamb, covering it with my coat. But it kept running away. I was running after it but I couldn’t catch it up. I ended up falling over in the muddy field and dirtying my pinafore. The wardrobe mistress …”’ Joanna met Mike’s eyes. Underneath, in italics, was written,

  ‘“Right in front of everybody Sandra pulled my knickers down and smacked me really hard, told me I was nothing but a spoilt brat and a nuisance. That she hated me. I ran to Gerald and he told me not to worry, that he’d look after me. I LOVE GERALD.”’

  Korpanski frowned. ‘Thirteen years old?’

  Joanna nodded. ‘This, presumably, is Sandra McMullen, with whom she lived and who had the daily care of her.’

  Korpanski was silent so Joanna continued. ‘There’s worse,’ she said.

  Korpanski’s shoulders twitched. ‘Not sure I want to hear it, Jo. Does it have any bearing on her murder?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ she answered simply. ‘I only know that some of these actions taken against a child would be considered abusive nowadays.’

  ‘Her parents?’

  ‘Father in prison. There’s no mention of her mother; apparently access visits were discouraged or indeed any contact at all. It appears that both Sandra McMullen and James Freeman acted in loco parentis.’

  ‘And then Gerald marries her when she’s seventeen? Seems a bit incestuous to me.’

  ‘And to me.’

  ‘Does she mention any threats or coercion?’

  ‘It’s odd, Mike, but it’s almost as though she operates on two levels – the sweet, public image of Butterfield and this darker, unsavoury undercurrent.’

  ‘Is that possible?’

  ‘I’ve read something,’ Joanna screwed up her face. ‘Some article I read some time ago. I think they called it Replacement Memory Syndrome.’

  Korpanski waited.

  ‘It describes a certain psyche which replaces unpleasant memories with a sort of fairy-tale story. As an actress Timony Weeks would have been an ideal subject for that. Writing her memoirs was a potentially dangerous experience for her. It was unleashing a beast. It’s possible that even she doubted these events could possibly be true. She must have tried desperately to bury the bad bits but each time she went back to the book they bubbled up again. No wonder she was confused about the difference between fantasy and reality.’

  Korpanski suddenly twigged. ‘So might that be a reason for someone wanting to suppress the memoirs?’

  She nodded.

  Korpanski ventured further. ‘Stop their publication?’ He paused, watching the expression on her face. ‘Try and frighten her into submission?’

  ‘I think you’re getting there, Mike.’

  ‘I think we’re getting there.’

  They looked at each other. So naturally attuned, voicing the next logical question was unnecessary.

  Who?

  ‘I’ve left someone off the list,’ Joanna said. ‘Freeman, the producer of Butterfield Farm. He may be elderly now but he would still want to guard his reputation, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Suppose so,’ Korpanski agreed.

  She looked at her watch. It was five o’clock. ‘I’ll be talking to Diana Tong again in a minute,’ she said. ‘Want to join me?’

  ‘Wild horses wouldn’t keep me away, Joanna.’

  She put a hand on his arm. ‘There were a couple of things,’ she said, ‘that came up in the post-mortem.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘At some point she’d had a child.’

  ‘What? Was Matthew sure?’

  She nodded. ‘And it had gone full term. She’d given birth. It wasn’t a miscarriage.’

  ‘But she said …’


  ‘I know what she said, Mike, but the evidence was there. And,’ she continued, ‘she’d broken her right arm at some point. Matthew thought that it had probably happened when she was about ten but it looks as though she didn’t receive medical attention.’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Korpanski said.

  She waited for him to draw his own conclusions. And he did, his face grim. ‘So she was both neglected and abused.’

  ‘It would appear so.’

  ‘Crikey,’ he said. ‘Her autobiography would have been a hot potato.’

  ‘Exactly. Shall we?’

  They crossed the icy yard and entered the house, found Diana Tong sitting on the sofa, quite still. Logs were burning in the grate, giving out a sweet, smoky scent. As they opened the door a billow of smoke puffed into the room adding to the hazy look. After the chill of the outside and the half warmth of the barn the room was warm and the woodsmoke welcome. At a guess Diana had been sitting, without moving, for some time. She moved her head stiffly as they entered.

  Joanna murmured more polite condolences before she and Mike settled themselves into the two adjacent armchairs and opened up the questions. ‘For now, Mrs Tong,’ she said, contrasting the careless appearance of the companion with her erstwhile employer’s carefully manicured public image. How must it feel always to be the ugly sister, second fiddle, the understudy instead of the star? ‘We’ll just stick to the facts. There’s a lot you haven’t told me, isn’t there?’

  The companion’s lips tightened and she said nothing. Joanna gave Mike a quick glance. This was going to be a long haul. She leaned forward. ‘You don’t mind if we record this?’ Mrs Tong looked as though she would love to have refused the request. As it was she contented herself with a very negative-looking shrug. Joanna glanced across at Korpanski, who was sitting in the adjacent chair, his thighs apart, watching eagle-eyed. She was glad he was there and looked forward to his feedback later. She knew she could trust him not to interrupt unless it was called for and she also knew that he wouldn’t betray by look, words or gesture the information she had just fed him.

  ‘You were born in …?’

  ‘Nineteen forty-four.’ She seemed to feel that something extra was called for. ‘I was eight years older than Timony.’ Her mouth twisted but it didn’t look anything like a smile. ‘Twenty when I began working for and with her.’

  ‘And you joined the staff of Butterfield Farm in?’

  ‘Nineteen sixty-four.’ Again, she seemed to think that she should add something so said, uncomfortably, in her gruff voice and without apology, ‘I was a school-leaver. Not very academic. More practical.’

  Joanna nodded. ‘What exactly did you join Butterfield as?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘What was your title?’

  ‘I – I didn’t really have one. I was a sort of gofer.’

  ‘But as regards Timony? You were employed to look after Timony?’

  ‘Well, ye-es.’

  ‘And it worked?’ Joanna prompted.

  ‘Obviously,’ she retorted stiffly, ‘otherwise I wouldn’t still be here, would I?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘We became friends, I suppose. Naturally we became close.’

  ‘Was it you who was encouraging her to write about her experiences?’

  ‘Not really. But—’ Here she stopped herself abruptly.

  ‘But …’ Joanna prompted her gently.

  ‘Timony lived a lavish lifestyle,’ Diana said. ‘And her series ended a long time ago. They didn’t pay that much in the sixties.’

  ‘But Timony told me there was plenty of money left. She told me she was worth a few million.’

  Diana’s response was a wry smile. ‘I’d have thought you would have realized that Timony was a fantasist.’

  Joanna gave Korpanski a swift look.

  ‘Her divorces didn’t come cheap either. Bloody scumbags took her to the cleaners.’

  ‘Which particular scumbags do you mean?’

  ‘Brannigan, MacWilliam and Rolf. The damned lot of them,’ she said. ‘Timony was a soft touch. Even Rolf, that toad. What I’m saying is that there wasn’t that much money left.’ Diana spoke reluctantly, every word dragged out of her as though it pulled at her flesh. ‘So she approached some publishers to see if they were interested. Initially they weren’t and then they were.’ Something in Diana Tong looked proud. ‘She decided to reject the offers of a ghost writer and write it all herself. I could tell the publishers were a bit sceptical. Actresses, particularly child stars, aren’t known for their writing skills. Anyway, they said they’d take a look when she’d finished. They warned her it wouldn’t be quite as easy as she thought but she got on with it. They’d promised her a “generous” advance on delivery and acceptance of the manuscript. I assume the word acceptance meant if it was publishable and there was a market.’ She attempted an explanation. ‘The grey brigade, you know. There’s a lot of nostalgia for the sixties. The publishers thought there would be a demand providing it gave away enough secrets.’ She smiled and looked directly at DS Mike Korpanski, who did not return the smile but beetled his eyebrows together as though evaluating her ‘story’. His eyes were dark enough to be unfathomable and after a moment or two Diana Tong looked away. Joanna watched his face and wondered what he was making of all this. She’d know later. Korpanski wasn’t one for concealing his feelings.

  Diana Tong absorbed the snub with a toss of her head. ‘It’s always hard,’ she insisted, ‘to know what to buy the over-sixties as presents for Christmas and birthdays. They have everything. What they want is nostalgia. They want their past back. And so you give it to them as a book or a DVD. You give them back their memories of when they were young.’

  Joanna nodded. ‘I’ve been reading bits of it,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure her readers would be expecting some of those “secrets”’.

  Diana Tong sat so still it was as though she was frozen into a solid block of ice. Joanna knew why. She was wondering what bits the detective had read. Joanna returned a bland smile. Diana Tong cleared her throat, licked her lips. ‘The trouble was,’ she said slowly, ‘the publishers made it clear that they wanted what they called “the dirt”.’ Her gaze drifted upwards to stare into Joanna’s face as though trying to convey a message without actually speaking the words. She licked her lips again and ploughed on. ‘They didn’t want some bland, jolly sixties thing, all hair ribbons and pretty frocks.’

  ‘Let me get this quite clear,’ Joanna said slowly so there could be no mistake about her question. ‘Are you saying that Timony might have …’

  ‘Embellished her story? I suspect so, though I haven’t read all of it.’

  ‘But you’ve read most of it?’

  Oddly enough, Diana Tong didn’t appear to know how to answer this. She opened her mouth. Nothing came out.

  Joanna took note and changed the course of the questions. ‘You are married, Mrs Tong?’

  Diana did not like the question and tried to fend it off with one word. ‘Briefly.’

  ‘Your husband’s name was …?’

  ‘Colin. Colin Tong. We weren’t married for long. Less than a year.’

  ‘And when you joined the cast in nineteen sixty-four you say you were twenty and Timony nearly thirteen.’

  Diana Tong nodded warily, obviously anticipating an awkward question.

  ‘So you were there when she was assaulted.’

  ‘I’ve already told you, I wasn’t with her that night.’

  Joanna smiled. ‘So you have. I understand that after the assault she took some time off.’

  ‘Naturally.’ Even this silky answer was guarded.

  ‘Her parents didn’t keep in touch?’

  ‘I don’t think so. It was better they severed contact. It was discouraged.’

  Funny, Joanna thought. It would be the exact opposite in today’s climate.

  Father in prison + living in a slum + morphs into a successful actress = Great Story.

  Diana
seemed to think she needed to say something more. ‘I really have no idea whether her mother attempted to make contact and was discouraged by the studio or if she simply let her go,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you ask James Freeman? He’d know. All I know is I never met her parents.’

  ‘Why exactly were you taken on?’ Korpanski put in.

  Diana Tong looked astonished by the question. She tilted her head on one side and regarded Mike Korpanski who returned her gaze steadily.

  ‘I don’t understand, Sergeant,’ Diana said.

  ‘Well. When she was younger, eight, when she first joined the set, Sandra McMullen looked after her, didn’t she?’

  Joanna knew he was thinking about the broken arm.

  And Diana Tong understood. ‘Sandra left,’ she said, ‘I took her place.’

  ‘As?’

  ‘You mean was I engaged as a chaperone?’

  Joanna nodded.

  Diana Tong seemed to have to think about her response to this one. She drew in her breath. ‘No. I was engaged more as a companion,’ she said, ‘and general dogsbody.’

  And here you’ve stayed for nearly fifty years, Joanna thought. She wanted to ask so much more, more about the ‘long-lost sister’, about the fan, about the multiple marriages, about relationships between cast members, about the ‘secrets’ which Timony had supposedly embellished. But she decided to hold back. She didn’t want to antagonize the companion.

  Keep something up your sleeve, Piercy, and better to have a card up it than just a handkerchief. She smiled. It had been one of her father’s favourite sayings.

  So instead of pursuing the subject she veered off towards the practicalities. ‘Will you be dealing with her funeral arrangements?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You realize we’ll have to wait for the coroner to release the body?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Had she no family?’

  ‘Not that I know of. None that she was in touch with.’ But her words were said dismissively, without conviction, her eyes flickering along the floor. Diana Tong was considering her situation. Joanna waited, watched her face for clues and wondered whether she was about to volunteer some information but after a pause, Diana looked up and met her gaze with a steady stare. And Joanna knew she was going no further. Not today, at least.