The Glass Ceiling

by Anabel Donald

  She listened impassively to my account of my dealings to date with the Womun in the Balaclava Helmet, looked at the letter that had come with the hamster, now safely inside a plastic wallet in case there were any fingerprints on it, and gave me her transcription of Jordan’s telephone message, with the addresses and telephone numbers of Driscoll and Macarthy. Macarthy lived in West Hampstead (quite expensive, not far), I already knew Slater lived just off Kensington High Street (very expensive, quite near), and Driscoll in Herefordshire, about three hours’ driving away. Her address gave me no clue to her affluence or occupation. Forge House, near Leadington, could be a tumbledown shack or a miniature mansion.

  My main intention was to warn them, just in case there was malice behind the Womun’s eccentricity. I’d only been paid for a day’s work so I didn’t expect to find out much, but I didn’t want to be responsible for a disaster either. Just telling them what had happened might be enough. One or all of them might be able to identify the Womun and warn the others, even if they didn’t want to tell me.

  The obvious place to start was with Melanie Slater. She was closest and I knew her. And, most important of all, she was the first live person on the list. If it was a hit list, chances were she’d be next to be hit.

  I rang her. She was in and she remembered me. She’d see me at four o’clock. She agreed reluctantly, and tried to get me to explain on the telephone. ‘I’d rather not,’ I said. ‘I’m now working as a private detective and I have reason to believe that you’re being threatened.’

  ‘Threatened?’ she said sharply. ‘In what way?’

  It sounded as if I’d hit a nerve. ‘In any way. Have there been any incidents?’

  ‘What kind of incident?’

  ‘Anything at all threatening.’

  ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ she said dismissively, but she clearly did. Something had happened, but she wasn’t going to tell me on the phone.

  ‘I’d prefer to discuss it in person, just in case it’s serious. You might be in a better position to judge that than I am.’

  ‘I hope this isn’t a joke,’ she said doubtfully. I thought I understood her dilemma. She broadcast a lot, mostly on radio, sometimes on television, an instant pundit on Family Life, the Role of Women and the decay of Moral Values in the Younger Generation. The fees must have been sizeable, and the publicity helped her book sales. So she needed to keep in with the media and she had enough experience to know how influential researchers could be. She didn’t want to offend me.

  But she hadn’t liked me, and she didn’t want to waste time, and she had something to hide. So I nudged her a little. ‘Don’t bother, if you’re too pressed. I’ve other contacts I can use.’

  ‘Oh, come, by all means. Can you manage four o’clock at my house?’

  I looked at my watch. No watch. Barty. Oh shit. I looked at the video clock: not yet three. ‘Four o’clock would be fine.’

  I presented myself at the smart stucco-fronted semidetached house in the wide tree-lined street dead on time. I’d left Nick behind: I wasn’t taking her on any interviews until she talked. She soon would.

  It took Melanie a while to answer the bell. I stood on the doorstep, trying to remember the names of her children. I’d met them when I’d interviewed her – a prim little blonde goody-goody girl, sixish, and a lanky dark fifteen-year-old boy who’d been surprisingly good company. Bella and Teddy, that was it. Enquiries about them might break the ice.

  Then she opened the door, unsmiling. She was wearing a shortish straight pale green skirt, a white silk blouse and a semi-fitted dark green linen jacket, shiny black tights (or they could have been stockings and suspenders as part of a Woman’s duty to keep herself Attractive for her Man) and high-heeled black shoes. She had a narrow spindly little body, bony knees, and a slightly scrawny neck which could have done with more disguise than her heavy gold chain afforded. It was impossible to tell what colour her hair was naturally: it was as I remembered, dyed dark blonde with highlights, worn short and brushed upward in moussed, lacquered wings away from her carefully made-up face.

  When I first met her I’d thought her smug. She didn’t seem that today. A gracious hostess on the surface; defensive, perhaps even unhappy underneath. It might be significant, it might not. I expected to be taken to her study on the ground floor, or maybe even downstairs to the kitchen. When I’d been at the house before I’d never been taken upstairs. But she let me up the thickly carpeted stairs towards what she called the ‘drawing-room’ (though judging by her traces of regional accent I’d have bet her mother wouldn’t have used the word – sitting-room, perhaps, or lounge). She sat me down on one of a pair of matching cream sofas that faced each other across a substantial coffee table in front of the fireplace, and perched herself on the other sofa, legs crossed at the ankle, hands folded in her lap, with the light behind her.

  It was a conventionally furnished L-shaped room, decorated in shades of blue and cream. No bookshelves. Plenty of wall space; a display cabinet filled with china shepherds and shepherdesses; some silhouettes, miniatures, and Victorian hunting prints. On the mantelpiece, invitations.

  On a side table between the long windows, family photographs. Teddy from about six to adolescence; Bella from infancy to about eight; a wedding photograph with Melanie as a bride in a cream silk suit, her husband (Nigel? Some name like that – I hadn’t met him, but he’d been quoted a lot) in morning dress, and Teddy as a page, looking rebellious in silk knee-breeches and buckled shoes, evidence presumably of Melanie’s mid-career conversion to the Sanctity of Marriage.

  No sign at all of Teddy’s father I’d wanted to find out about him when I worked on her before but my producer, a pusillanimous idiot called Protheroe, told me not to waste time on irrelevancies. I didn’t think it was irrelevant. If Melanie Slater had been a single mother, then surely her experience had a bearing on her views. If she’d been married and widowed, or if her husband had simply gone to the pub for a rest from GBH of the earhole and, wisely, never come back, why didn’t she mention him?

  Judging from the photographs, Melanie wanted to wipe out all her pre-Nigel past. Maybe Nigel was a jealous man who wanted no reminders. Maybe Melanie preferred to be born-again.

  Contemporary Melanie, looking like an illustration from Hello! magazine, said, ‘Can you get to the point, Alex? My daughter Bella will be home from school any minute now and I want to spend time with her. Tea and hot buttered crumpets and chat. I really think it’s important to be here for her when she comes in, so she feels loved, now the nights are closing in.’

  ‘How are Bella and Teddy?’ I said, hoping for less formality in her manner.

  If anything, it congealed further. ‘They are quite well,’ she said. ‘How can I help you?’

  So I told her about the Womun in the Balaclava Helmet, and passed her a copy of the letter to look at. The sequence of events sounded sillier every time I recounted it.

  Halfway through my account she relaxed, and when she read the letter she gave a knowing insider’s smile. She didn’t react to the hamster, and I found that odd. Perhaps she was expecting it. ‘Do you know who the Womun in the Balaclava Helmet might be?’ I said.

  ‘Heavens, no,’ she said, but not as if she cared if I believed her. ‘Did you really expect me to be frightened of this crackpot?’

  ‘I wanted to warn you,’ I said mildly. ‘And I thought you might know who it was.’

  ‘You’ve warned me,’ she said. ‘I have no idea what prompted any of this nonsense, or who might be responsible. What I do know is that poor Leona died by accident.’

  ‘The names on the list . . . I believe you were all members of a women’s group, in Oxford. The Vestal Virgins. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes. But that was a long time ago, and I have no idea what could have prompted this nonsense.’

  ‘Are you all still friends? Do you keep in touch?’

  ‘Poor Leona is dead.’

  ‘Before she was dead, did you keep
in touch? And what about the other two?’

  ‘I’ve changed my views considerably since Oxford. That was a long time ago.’

  ‘But are they still friends of yours, even if you don’t agree with them politically?’

  She sighed impatiently. ‘Yes, they’re friends, and we meet occasionally. But I have no idea what could have prompted this nonsense.’

  She was stuck in a groove, and I couldn’t shift her. That was her technique. Pick a form of words and stick to them. It made negotiation tedious and progress impossible, but she often emerged from a verbal wrangle on the media apparently victorious because anyone only half listening remembered what she’d said. It was like talking to a politician.

  I’d found it irritating when I first met her. Now the old irritation came back in full flood. I kept going, though. I’d been paid. ‘You can’t think of anyone who might have a grudge against the Vestal Virgins?’

  ‘No. It was a long time ago. Besides, it can’t be serious. Poor Leona died by accident.’

  I heard the front door open and close, admitting a set of footsteps, then a child’s voice called, ‘Mummy? Mummy?’

  ‘Just coming, darling. Teddy? Are you there?’

  ‘What d’you think?’ came a sulky male mumble.

  ‘Take Bella downstairs and put the kettle on. I have a visitor; she’s just leaving.’

  ‘Mummy? Mummy?’ called Bella. ‘Mummy, are we going to have Mopsy’s funeral now? Mummy?’

  ‘In a minute, darling. Go downstairs with Teddy,’ said Melanie with a distinct edge to her tone.

  I made for the door before she could uncross her ankles, went down the stairs two at a time and smiled as winsomely as I could manage at the little girl, a pervert’s dream in her school uniform and white socks, who was swinging on the banisters. ‘Hi, Bella. I’m Alex, remember? We met a while ago. Who’s Mopsy?’

  I was counting on one of Melanie’s central Family Values being respect for your elders. She’d done a good job on Bella. ‘Hello, Alex,’ said the child politely. ‘Mopsy’s my hamster. She died yesterday.’

  Chapter Six

  It was a short-lived triumph which soon disintegrated into a scrum in the hall. Melanie’s Hello! hostess image splintered completely. She came down the stairs at high speed – I’d have broken my neck if I’d tried that in her stilt-like heels – and opened the door ‘Goodbye,’ she said firmly to me, and hissed ‘Downstairs!’ at Bella, whose mouth began to turn down in what I was sure would emerge as a wail. So, probably, was Melanie, because she softened it to ‘Go downstairs for Mummy, please. Mummy wants to say goodbye to her visitor.’

  ‘Poor Mopsy,’ I said to Bella. ‘What did she die of?’

  ‘Over-feeding, I expect,’ said a deep male voice, and Teddy appeared at the back of the hall, presumably from the stairs leading down to the kitchen.

  ‘Teddy!’ warbled Melanie, trying to sound affectionate and indulgent. ‘Please take Bella downstairs and put the kettle on.’

  ‘It’s on,’ said Teddy unhelpfully. He’d grown: he was over six feet now, and his jaw and Adam’s apple were much more prominent. He was wearing shiny black school trousers which hung low on his hips, a once-white shirt half-untucked, and a frayed school tie: no longer smart-looking as he had been, not even tidy, with straggly unwashed hair. When he saw me, he obviously recognized me. The sulky reluctance in his manner disappeared, to be replaced by puppyish self-conscious pleasure. He took a half-step towards me and flapped his hands by his sides as if he wanted to make a physical gesture but couldn’t find an appropriate one.

  ‘Hi, Teddy. I’m Alex Tanner Remember me?’ I said lightly.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, wriggled, and clasped his hands behind his back. ‘You work in television. You were the researcher on that Family Values programme.’

  I was pleased by his evident pleasure, then took a pull at myself and felt a fool. I must be desperate for attention if I wanted Teddy’s.

  ‘Mopsy just died,’ said Bella poutingly. ‘She didn’t die of feeding. It was time for her to go to Hamster Heaven, Mummy said.’

  ‘And where is Mopsy now?’ I pressed on. I thought I knew the answer: under the scalpel of Evans and Wright Veterinary Surgeons.

  ‘Mummy put her in the conservatory until we could have a proper funeral,’ said Bella.

  ‘Show me,’ I said, taking Bella’s hand. The child moved trustfully towards the back of the hall, and I followed.

  ‘Really, Alex, I don’t think—’ began Melanie, but Teddy interrupted.

  ‘Don’t bother, Alex,’ he said. ‘The hamster’s gone. It had gone last night, after the break-in.’ Melanie glared at him. He smiled cheerfully, pleased to have annoyed her, I thought.

  ‘Goodbye, Alex,’ said Melanie, and took my arm. I let go of Bella’s hand and let Melanie urge me towards the front door.

  ‘ ’Bye,’ said Teddy. ‘See you around?’

  I waved to him. He waved back, obviously relieved to find an acceptable and appropriate use for at least one of his arms. It was a long arm, with a large hand and a very bony wrist.

  Still waving, I said to Melanie, ‘The break-in?’

  ‘There is nothing more to discuss. You came to warn me, and you’ve warned me. Poor Leona’s death was an accident. Now please leave.’

  ‘Don’t you think the hamster sent to me was probably yours?’

  ‘There is nothing more to discuss,’ she said, and closed the door in my face. The last thing I saw was Teddy’s basketball-player’s hand spidering his farewell.

  Back in the kitchen of my flat, I watched Nick make us coffee. I didn’t think she’d ground beans before – maybe she hadn’t even made real coffee – but she’d seen me do it earlier and she was coping. A quick learner.

  When she’d finished she sat down at the table and began scribbling away.

  You think she knows who the Womun is. Maybe it’s her?

  ‘I don’t think so. The Womun’s voice didn’t sound like hers, and, besides, she’s not odd enough. She’s very straightforward. I can’t imagine her writing anonymous notes and packing up rodents in parcels.’

  Why did she suddenly decide to get rid of you when the children came back?

  ‘Probably she didn’t want me to know it was Bella’s hamster. Maybe she didn’t want the child upset about her pet. Or perhaps she didn’t want me to hear about the break-in. I’m sure the break-in was what she was worried about when we talked on the phone. She stopped worrying when I told her about the Womun.’

  How involved do you think she is?

  ‘Practically, not at all, I’m sure. And I’m beginning to lose interest, because she doesn’t think it’s a real threat and she obviously knows far more about the Womun than I do. She wants the whole thing covered up, but not out of fear for her own safety.’

  So what are we going to do next? wrote Nick.

  ‘We are not going to do anything unless you stop this bloody silly non-speaking lark. It’s going to slow me down, and I won’t have it. It’s decision time, Nick. You can come back tomorrow on two conditions. One, that you go back to sleep at your foster parent’s place tonight. I don’t want you on the street, it’s dirty.’ It was also dangerous, but I wouldn’t say that.

  I thought maybe I could sleep here? she wrote.

  ‘Absolutely no way.’

  What’s the second condition? she wrote.

  ‘That, tomorrow, you talk.’

  ‘I’ll talk today,’ she said. ‘No problem. I’m quite normal. There’s nothing wrong with me.’

  I wasn’t surprised, but I pretended to be: I’d allow the kid her small victories. ‘Hey!’ I said. ‘You’ve got a voice.’ It was a good voice, too; deep and rich. It sounded like a night-club singer’s from the forties, with a crack in it. The accent was London, but not broad London: there were consonants among the vowels.

  ‘Of course I have,’ she said. ‘I don’t talk to wankers, that’s all. But I’m not going back to the Barratts’ place. I hate it. I hate
them.’

  We stared at each other. ‘OK,’ I said finally. ‘Come to work at eight tomorrow, that’ll give you enough time for a bath.’

  ‘What are we going to do tomorrow?’

  ‘I’ll tell you then.’

  I wasn’t being secretive: I didn’t know myself. I closed the door behind her with relief, went back into the kitchen, turned on Classic FM, listened to three or four bars of a soprano belting out popular opera (Mozart? Puccini?) and switched her off again, mid-screech. I hate sopranos, solo violins and midnight cats.

  I should ring Barty, but not yet. I scribbled some notes to myself and stuck them up on my ‘work in progress’ cork-board, beside Jordan’s article, the photographs of the Vestal Virgins and the Womun’s list.

  Melanie Slater’s break-in?

  Leona Power: accident?

  Ring Macarthy and Driscoll

  I looked at the board. After Melanie’s reaction, nothing seemed so urgent, now.

  When Peter came back, ten minutes later, he brought the wood for my spare-room bookshelves, bought from a friend at a cut rate. He never bought anything from a normal shop, if he could help it. He always knew a man who knew a man who had top quality whatever it was cheap, know what I mean? I didn’t know precisely what he meant and I didn’t ask, though I assumed it had walked from a film set or a building site.

  It was top quality hardwood. It didn’t have any distinguishing marks. I still didn’t like it. I’ll take cheese from a hotel cheeseboard, I’ll pad my expenses, but I don’t steal. It’s one of the lines I draw for myself. And I didn’t much want to receive stolen goods.

  On the other hand, Peter wouldn’t have understood. He thought he was doing me a favour; and I don’t like offending friends, either. I don’t have that many real friends.

  So I thanked him and admired the wood and got out my Black and Decker Workmate from the cupboard under the stairs and showed him where the tools were kept, and went out to buy the ingredients for the spaghetti supper he said he wanted, and plenty of wine.