‘Does that mean you think your chap is a doubtful security risk? Working double?’
‘We don’t know. Have to consider it, though.’
‘Don’t you always?’
Lodge allowed himself one of his rare smiles. ‘Yes. In fact, there is probably a check running on me now.’
‘Oh, you are a lovely lot,’ said Archie Young, drinking deep. ‘Let me know if I’m included, won’t you?’
‘Couldn’t say if you were, but always count on it, that’s my advice.’
Archie looked at him over the top of his glass and saw that he was not joking. ‘What a world. I’ve been told that the most useful terrorist is the one in the humblest position. Not noticed, you see, but noticing everything. I suppose sex comes into it, too: men are probably more useful than women.’
‘Not always,’ said Lodge. ‘Drink up, I’ve got to get home. My wife expects to see me some time.’
‘Mine is away,’ said Archie Young. So Lodge did have a wife; he felt faintly surprised. ‘On a course. Got her own career. Mind you, I respect her for it.’
‘Good for you.’
‘Wouldn’t matter if I didn’t, she’d still go ahead. She’ll end up in the House of Lords, I daresay, with a life peerage – if they haven’t all been abolished by then.’
‘Would that make you Lord Young?’
‘I shall have to think about that.’
Lodge stood up. ‘I’d better get off.’ He was not enjoying working life at the moment and it showed.
‘Funny business for both of us,’ said Archie Young, trying to be helpful. ‘Miss Pinero being dragged in, whether it’s her fault or not, is a bugger. And for you …’ he paused, wondering uneasily what it was that he and the Todger both knew.
Lodge shrugged. ‘Delicately put.’
‘It’s a delicate matter.’
‘Certainly is.’
‘Seems almost a manufactured performance, putting on an act,’ went on Young, ‘using Miss Pinero, using your chap’s underwear, cutting off the fingers of the dead man, and yet choosing someone who is identified without trouble.’
‘A queer sort of show,’ said Lodge.
‘Show?’ said Archie Young, raising his eyebrows. ‘Yes, good word, show it is.’
They had placed their mobile phones on the table in front of them like twins. Now one began to ring.
‘Yours or mine?’ said Lodge.
‘Mine,’ Archie Young sighed. ‘Hello?’ He listened, all the amusement leaving his face. ‘Right, I’ll be there.’ He pocketed his telephone, then turned to Lodge. ‘That show we’ve got on the road, another character has joined it: a body’s been found.’
Chapter 7
‘Let’s go upstairs.’ Coffin released Stella from his embrace and gave her a little push towards the winding staircase. ‘Up, and we can talk.’ And you’d better make sense, because I am in no mood to be played with.
Mixed with the sheer physical relief of having her back, the joy of seeing her, mixed with these was anger. He didn’t want it there, was half ashamed of it, but there it was: a black streak winding through the joy.
‘I ought to get round to the theatre,’ Stella said. ‘Business talk, you know.’
‘We’ll talk first.’ He put his hand firmly under her elbow and propelled her upstairs.
She spoke over her shoulder breathlessly as they went up the stairs, not resisting their progress but a touch reluctant. ‘I really should go to the theatre first, you know. There must be all sorts of problems and so on that need sorting out, even if I wasn’t away very long.’
‘Long enough,’ said Coffin.
Stella smiled. ‘Not that long, darling. But piles of stuff on my desk, you must have seen it, messages from Alice – she’s being very helpful, you gave me a friend there.’
‘Did I?’ He did not want to talk about Alice.
‘I ought to be checking the accounts. Naturally I can’t leave the money side to Alice.’
‘Letty is doing that.’ They had nearly reached the level of the kitchen.
‘Oh.’ Stella did not sound quite pleased.
Oh, yes, thought Coffin. Come on, my lady, I want to know where you have been and why.
One more turn of the staircase brought them to the large, light sitting room. No one had been thinking about Augustus, but he had his own methods with Coffin and was now first into the sitting room. When he got there he turned round to face them, his tail wagging.
‘Hello, Gussie,’ said Stella, bending down to pat him. ‘How’s he been?’
‘Fine. With me all the time.’
‘He always is.’
Coffin pulled up a chair. ‘Sit down, Stella.’
‘Don’t order me about.’
‘I’m not, Stella, but you look tired. In pain, too, I think, from your arm. Yes, I noticed.’
Without a word Stella sank back into the armchair. ‘Aren’t you going to sit?’
‘Presently.’ He walked about the room for a minute, pacing up and down, then he drew another chair towards her, leaned forward and took both her hands in his. ‘What’s up, Stella? Where have you been? Why did you lie about where you were going?’
‘Not exactly a lie. Just a change of plans.’ Her voice was nervous.
‘Oh, come on, Stella, you can do better than that.’
She put her hand to her head. ‘I can’t think.’ Her sleeve fell back, revealing a white bandage, badly applied.
Coffin looked at it, took in its appearance, but said nothing.
‘I really think I should go across to the theatre, even if Letty is there. Very decent of her, I know how busy she is.’ She looked at her watch. ‘The curtain will have gone down if I don’t hurry and they will all have melted away. You know what they are like.’
‘I know,’ said Coffin, somewhat grimly.
‘Letty will have gone, surely, but Alice Yeoman will be there.’ Stella stood up.
‘How’s she doing?’ He wanted to know.
‘Not too bad. Bit of time off here and there.’
‘Not ill, is she?’
‘No, just a spell of menstrual trouble,’ said Stella, with the insouciance of one who had never let that sort of thing trouble her. Actresses couldn’t, could they? You went on regardless.
‘Let’s talk about something else. I don’t think you are ready to tell me where you have been.’ Stella gave him a wide-eyed, shocked look. ‘Do you remember that blue Chanel handbag I gave you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Where is it?’
Stella frowned. ‘I don’t know what this is about … I suppose the bag is in the dressing chest where I keep my good bags. You gave me this one, and I treasure it,’ she said, defensively.
‘Go and get it, please.’
‘What is all this?’
‘Just get it, please.’
He went to the window to look out while she went to the bedroom on the next floor of the tower. From the window on this side he could see across the road to the lights in the old churchyard, now a park, not so long ago the scene of a murder. Augustus came to lean heavily and lovingly on his left leg.
The wait was long enough to make Coffin wonder whether he ought to go upstairs to join Stella. She hadn’t looked well. He was angry with her, but he loved her, the two strands came together strongly in his mind, the one fuelling a fire in the other. Damn you, Stella, he thought.
Presently he heard the door open behind him. ‘You were quiet.’
‘No quieter than you.’
‘I wouldn’t be singing at the window.’ Augustus stood up, scenting disharmony; it did not distress him, as his proprietors may have thought; he found it interesting, even exciting, but a dog had to know where to position himself. ‘Did you find it?’
‘No. It’s not there. I must have left it somewhere or put it away somewhere else. But …’
Coffin interrupted her: ‘Any idea where?’
Stella stopped short with what she had been about to say. She was visibly
angry. ‘What is this? Why does it matter? I am just back, I’m tired, I want a bath and a drink … It could be in the theatre, I might have left it there. Alice Yeoman will know, or Maisie. If I left it there, then one of them will know.’
‘Go and look. Please.’
‘Why the hell should I?’
‘I will tell you when you come back.’
‘I’ll go later. I need to wash, have a drink –’
All the anxiety and anger inside Coffin rose within him: his hand went up, he was as near as nothing to hitting Stella in the face. He had never hit her or any woman. All the violence inside him, and there was plenty, was repressed, controlled.
He took a deep breath.
‘All right, I will tell you now: while you were away, missing, out of touch, so that I did not know if you were alive or dead, the body of what appeared to be a woman with hair your colour, about your size, wearing jeans and a shirt such as you wear was discovered in a bombed house in Percy Street. The corpse’s face was bashed in and the tops of the fingers cut off. By the side of the body was a Chanel handbag with a photograph of you inside it. Not a nice photograph, Stella: you appeared to be eating human flesh.’
He stopped talking, out of words, out of breath. Augustus sidled away.
Stella said nothing, but she threw out her right hand as if to steady herself.
‘I almost hit you, Stella.’
‘I know.’
There was a silence. Augustus shifted himself uneasily round the room.
‘I’ll go,’ she said. She did not look back. Augustus began to trot towards the door, looked at Coffin and thought better of it. Stay here, dog, time to be prudent.
Coffin watched her go.
He was troubled. Why, oh why, this insistence that she had not been gone long? More than a day, Stella, more than you want to admit. She would have to answer questions soon.
The theatre was quietening into silence. The curtain had come down both in the Stella Pinero Theatre and the smaller Experimental Theatre, but the bar and the restaurant were open and would be until midnight; it was a private club when the performance ended, Max knew his customers. In addition, there were always a few people hanging about backstage to talk to friends.
No one recognized Stella as she made her way quietly backstage; she was wearing jeans and dark spectacles with her hair drawn back. She was a beautiful woman and always would be, but everything about her – hair, eyes and make-up – was deliberately soft tonight as if she had turned off an inner light.
It was quieter here in the recesses of the theatre than in the bar, probably because those of the cast of Noises Off who had not fled home were in the bar themselves. The Theatre Workshop was dark this week, and the Experimental Theatre, as she remembered was doing Aylmer’s End together with Shakespeare to music with help from a local school. That would be long since over.
Irene Bow, Jane Gillam, Fanny Burt, Michael Guardian and Tom Jenks, all of whom had been in An Ideal Husband, were also in the current production.
Irene Bow was probably not far away because there was a trace of her scent on the air; her passage through the theatre front and backstage was usually marked by a whiff of her current favourite fragrance. They changed but were always strong and expensive, a bit like Irene herself, as Tom Jenks had said ruefully, having been one of her short-term lovers. Probably all the time he could afford, his friends had said.
Yes, there was Irene at the door of her dressing room talking to Alice Yeoman. Nothing scented and expensive about Alice, who wore tan trousers and a soft linen shirt. No make-up, and no scent.
‘Who is that shouting … ?’ Alice was looking around her.
‘Oh, you’re always hearing shouting,’ said Irene impatiently. ‘Here’s Stella.’
They greeted Stella with pleasure and surprise. Since little gossip or speculation about her had reached the theatre, all was normal as far as they were concerned. In Irene’s case, this meant she was thinking and talking about herself and her part.
‘Oh, Stella, you can help here.’ Irene fixed her large eloquent eyes (hadn’t one disgruntled lover called them ‘pop eyes’?) on Stella, who, having had a painful few days and facing the prospect of further unpleasant hours ahead, reflected that if she had been captured by a remote Indian tribe, kept hidden in a deep cave and now just released, Irene would still have come forward with a complaint about her dressing room.
‘Irene’s not happy about her dress,’ said Alice, her voice calm.
A frown flickered across Irene’s face which both the other women could read: she did not like a junior member of the cast to call her Irene, though she was forced to admit that it was done now. But she could let them see how she felt, delicately, quietly; she could get the message across.
‘There’s a good deal of running around in the first act, indeed all the time, and that dress, besides making me look like a sweet pea, is too tight. I have nearly split the seams as it is,’ she said, in her lovely, rich voice. Ophelia lamenting Hamlet could not have grieved with more eloquence.
‘Irene’s so slight, too,’ said Alice in a level voice.
‘Who made the dress? Was it made here?’
‘Yes,’ said Irene. ‘Here.’
Ah, there’s the rub, thought Stella. Irene wanted one made by her own designer, if she has one, and if she hasn’t then I bet she is in the process of getting one as a prestige symbol. Just for a moment, Stella managed to forget her own anxiety. ‘Get them to let it out,’ she said promptly. All right, I’ve annoyed you, Irene, but so what? This is my theatre. She turned to Alice. ‘I may have left a blue Chanel handbag over here. Have you seen it around?’
Irene bounced away down the corridor, knocking into Mick Guardian.
‘Came back for my car keys … If they aren’t here, then they’re lost. Any chance of a lift?’
Irene ignored this. ‘Stella is hopeless, getting worse. Losing her looks too, getting quite skeletal.’
Not your trouble, old love, thought Mick. You’re going the other way, putting on weight. Could you be pregnant? But no, no embryo could nest happily inside Irene.
He passed on, found his car keys in his pocket, and made his way back to the exit.
Stella and Alice Yeoman were looking for her blue handbag. It was not in her dressing room, all neat, tidy and empty, not in her office, not even in the wardrobe room where no one was around and which was not so neat and tidy. Never was.
‘Wouldn’t be here,’ Stella said.
‘You never know. Maybe someone saw it around, thought it belonged in here, tidied it away. Is it important?’
‘Yes.’
Alice frowned. ‘I think I did see it, but I can’t remember where. What about asking Maisie?’
Stella said, in a low voice, ‘She’s having a few days off.’
‘Oh yes. So she is.’ Alice looked thoughtful. ‘I’m sorry, Stella, I’d like to help.’
‘If you can’t, you can’t. If it turns up, let me know.’
‘Yes, sure. You know, we had a lot of people backstage lately. Guided theatre tours, several of them in.’
‘Brings in money.’ Money for the theatre complex was always on Stella’s mind. Letty’s too.
‘If someone saw the bag and said, “Oh that’s Stella Pinero’s,” and it happened to be a fan of yours, they might nick it.’
‘Or even if they just liked the look of a Chanel bag.’
Alice nodded silently.
‘Right. Well, thank you, Alice. I will be in tomorrow. Plenty to do, I guess.’
‘Miss Bingham has been in.’
It was a probe, and recognized by Stella as such: Alice could tell there was something going on and wanted to know what it was. For her part, Stella could tell the girl was studying her face, taking in the tension, trying to read it. She had probably noticed the bandage wrapped round her forearm, even though her sleeve was drawn over it, and wondered about that too.
‘I expect the Chief Commander is pretty busy, what with t
he bomb – or was it bombs? And the murder. If you’ve been away, you might not have heard.’
‘I had heard.’
‘What a thing. I think there’s a lot in it we haven’t been told about, keeping it quiet. One of Professor Garden’s boy-friends, so the word is.’
Stella shook her head. No answer was the best answer.
When she got back, Coffin was drinking coffee and watching television. Pretending to, more likely.
‘Not there,’ she said. ‘But Alice Yeoman thinks it was once around. May have been stolen, may still be there. She will let me know.’
‘She’s reliable,’ said Coffin, absently. He was her patron and must put in a good word.
‘Letty seems to have been around.’
He didn’t answer but got up and walked towards her.
‘What would you have done if I had hit you, Stella?’
‘Hit you back.’
Coffin looked at her and laughed. ‘Good girl. I do love you, Stella.’
He put his hand on her arm, and stroked the bandage. ‘Now, tell me how you got that, and what you have been up to.’
‘It goes back a bit.’ She turned her head away.
He moved her chin, gently. ‘Look at me.’
‘You know how it is with some actresses – a fresh lover with each play; it’s almost expected. I’ve never been quite like that … but all the same …’
‘It happened?’ he prompted, still gently.
‘Yes, quite a few years ago, before you came back into my life. He was – is – a lot younger than me. I suppose that was part of the attraction, I was flattered.’ She stopped, speech was difficult. ‘Pip Eton, that’s his name.’
Coffin looked at her with love and sympathy. ‘Go on.’
‘It really didn’t outlast that season at Chichester. Shortly after that you and I started seeing each other again. Well, we had already started to meet – you came down to Chichester.’
‘I remember.’
With some pain, Stella said: ‘I think now that may have been a factor in Pip’s attraction to me. He may have been told to take me up.’ She stopped. He could see she was having difficulty in coming out with it.
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