Stage Fright

by Christine Poulson

  ‘That would be in her handbag,’ Kevin said. ‘But there’s a calendar with appointments on it. In the kitchen.’ He got to his feet. He was back a few moments later, shaking his head. ‘There’s nothing on it. And anyway I know what she was supposed to be doing this afternoon. She was supposed to be rehearsing.’

  ‘And the baby,’ I said. ‘Even if she did have an appointment I just can’t believe she’d go off and leave Agnes like this.’

  We looked at her. She had slumped sideways and her mouth had fallen open. She was sleeping with that total abandon that you only see in babies and small children.

  ‘OK,’ Stan said. ‘What if Melissa needed something from the shops and just popped out to the nearest one, thinking Agnes would be OK for half an hour.’

  ‘But she’s been a lot longer that. Why hasn’t she come back?’ Kevin objected.

  ‘I don’t know…’ Stan shrugged. ‘A flat tyre? An accident?’

  ‘But wouldn’t she have rung us on her mobile?’ Kevin said.

  ‘If she had it with her,’ I said. And if she was capable of using it. I had a momentary vision of a car bonnet buckled against a tree or the boot of a car sticking out of a ditch – or even worse – out of the water. The drainage ditch.…

  Stan’s eyes met mine and I wondered if she was thinking the same thing.

  ‘Why don’t you go and check it out? Take my car,’ Stan said. She reached for her bag, pulled out the keys and tossed them to Kevin.

  When he’d gone, Stan said, ‘I suppose it’s better for him to feel he’s actually doing something.’

  ‘But you don’t think that’s what happened?’

  ‘Well, do you?’

  I busied myself with Grace. She had dropped off my breast and had fallen asleep with her head back and her arms hanging down. I wiped her mouth and settled her down in her carrier. I didn’t really want to think about what might have happened to Melissa. I was concentrating on the present, going with the flow. Any moment Melissa might turn up safe and sound and I would just have wasted time and energy worrying about her. And if she didn’t, well.…

  I buckled Grace into the carrier and got to my feet.

  ‘How about a cup of tea?’ I said.

  ‘Couldn’t hurt.’

  Agnes had woken up and was making little mewing noises. Stan picked her up and took her into kitchen.

  ‘What a mess!’ I heard her say, as I followed her. ‘And what a stink!’

  The stale atmosphere had sharpened into something that was nose-wrinklingly fishy. A couple of flies were buzzing around a dirty plate. There was broken glass on the window sill, the draining-board and the floor. Stan fastened Agnes into her highchair at the table. She found a dust-pan and brush and began to clear up the broken glass. I began slotting cups and glasses into the dish-washer. I was scraping a gluey conglomeration of fish-skin and bones into the bin, when the telephone rang in the sitting-room.

  Stan and I looked at each other. I was closest.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ I said. I went into the sitting-room, my heart beating fast. Please, I thought, let it be Melissa – or Kevin saying that he’s found her.…

  I picked up the phone. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Cass?’

  ‘Stephen?’

  ‘Are you all right? I’ve been trying you everywhere. I rang home and then the theatre. Fred told me you were here.’

  Stan had appeared at the kitchen door. Stephen, I mouthed. She nodded and turned away.

  ‘Why haven’t you been in touch,’ I said. ‘And where have you been? I rang the hotel and they said you’d cancelled your room.’

  ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry. It’s just been one thing after another. There were problems landing, we were circling for ages. Then when Bob met me at the airport, he insisted that I stay at his place. He’s got a guest-house attached to his home and he’s putting me up there. And there was a pile-up on the freeway, we were stuck in this jam, and then it was so late…’

  ‘It’s OK. As long as you’re all right.’

  ‘A bit jet-lagged, but I’m fine otherwise. You should see this place, Cass, it’s up in the hills, there’s an enormous swimming-pool. You and Grace will have to come next time.’

  ‘Next time!’

  He laughed. ‘Are you both OK?’

  I glanced over to where Grace was tilted to one side in her carrier fast asleep.

  ‘We’re fine.’

  ‘I gathered from Fred that there’s a bit of a panic on.’

  ‘You could say that. Melissa seems to have disappeared.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘She didn’t turn up for rehearsal and she’s not at the cottage. Agnes was here on her own, crying. I had to break in through the kitchen window.’

  It took a moment or two for him to take this in.

  ‘But what’s happened? Has she done a bunk, do you think? I can’t believe it. Not Melissa.’

  On the other end of the line I heard something in the background, perhaps a door opening, then the murmur of a voice. Stephen said, ‘Just a moment’ to someone and then he turned back to the phone.

  ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ he asked me.

  ‘Yes, really, Stan’s here now and Kevin.’

  ‘Bob’s waiting to drive me into the office. Look, I’ll ring you very soon, OK?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ There was a pause. Then Stephen said in a different tone of voice:

  ‘We’ll be all right, won’t we?’

  ‘’Course we will.’

  ‘Love you.’

  ‘And you.’

  ‘Give Grace a kiss for me. I’m sure Melissa will turn up soon.’

  It wasn’t until he had hung up that I realized that I still didn’t have a phone number for him. And there was no point ringing 1471 for an overseas number.

  In the kitchen, Stan was filling the teapot with hot water. Agnes was banging the tray of the highchair with a plastic spoon. When I went in, she paused and fixed her eyes on my face. Her gaze slid past me to the open door. She was looking for Melissa. Her face creased into a frown and I felt a pang of sympathy. I brought my face down to hers and nuzzled her cheek. She grabbed my hair and rubbed her face against mine. Stan put the teapot on the scrubbed pine kitchen table and set out mugs. I lifted Agnes out of the highchair and joggled her up and down. She grinned and blew a raspberry at me; I blew one back. Stan was just about to pour out the tea when we heard a car drawing up. She froze with the teapot in her hand. All three of us looked towards the kitchen door, and Agnes began to wriggle in anticipation. From where I sat, I could see through the sitting-room to the front door. As soon as Kevin came in I could tell from the set of his shoulders that he hadn’t found Melissa. He looked at me with a mute appeal in his eyes: please, please, tell me that she rang while I was out, tell me that this nightmare is over.

  I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry.’

  His face fell. He came into the kitchen and, with a groan, sank into a chair opposite me.

  ‘No sign of her?’ Stan asked.

  Kevin shook his head. ‘Nothing. They didn’t remember seeing her in any of the shops she might have gone to. And I didn’t see any sign of the car. I’ve kept on trying her mobile. It’s still switched off.’

  Stan put the teapot down with the tea still unpoured.

  ‘Well, then, it’s obvious what we’ve got to do next,’ she said.

  * * *

  Forty-five minutes later, Constable Tim Fisher was listening to Kevin’s account of how Melissa had failed to turn up for rehearsal.

  ‘I was worried right away,’ Kevin said. ‘She’s never late.’

  We were ranged around the coffee table in the sitting-room, Fisher and Kevin in the two cane chairs, Stan and I on the sofa opposite. Mercifully, both babies were asleep now and we’d put them upstairs in the cot.

  I’d expected someone young, but Fisher was around my own age, forty or so, and his brown hair, cut short, was evenly flecked with grey. He was leaning forward now, head a little on one
side, nodding from time to time, occasionally glancing at Stan and me to see if we agreed with what Kevin was saying. For a moment I saw us all through his eyes. Kevin was wearing a tightish white T-shirt that showed off his muscular body, and jeans with a heavy belt with a big buckle. He was too olive-skinned to look pale, but his face was sallow and there were dark shadows under his eyes. Stan was wearing a dress like a long black T-shirt, which went down to her calves. Over it she wore a vivid fuchsia shirt with the ends knotted under her breasts; it should have clashed horribly with the scarlet of her lipstick – a little smudged now – and the henna of her hair, but somehow it didn’t. She was fidgeting in a way that I knew meant she wanted a cigarette. They both looked larger than life, appropriately theatrical. And what about me? I was suddenly conscious of my own dishevelled hair and damp armpits. That morning I’d put on a smart white linen shirt in honour of my lunch with Joe. It was creased now and there was a long narrow smudge of dirt down the sleeve. That must have happened when I climbed in through the window.

  I looked at Fisher. He was wearing dark-blue trousers and a pale-blue short-sleeved shirt that showed off tanned forearms. It was a uniform, I suppose, but a discreet one. He was like an envoy from another world, somewhere slower and calmer – and, I realized, he was looking at me. Kevin had reached the point where he had rung me and asked me to check up on Melissa. I took up the story.

  When I’d finished, Fisher said;

  ‘I’ll need to take some details.’ He picked up his clipboard from the coffee table and took a biro out of his shirt pocket.

  ‘Her full name…?’

  ‘Melissa Meadow,’ Kevin said.

  ‘Is that her real name or her stage name?’

  ‘Her stage name. She was originally Melissa Godwin.’

  No reason why I should have known that, I suppose, but I was mildly surprised all the same.

  ‘Age?’ Fisher continued.

  ‘Thirty-three.’

  ‘Description? Height? Hair? Eyes?’

  ‘She’s about five-foot eight inches, has shoulder-length blonde hair and blue eyes. I can give you one of her publicity shots if that would help.’

  ‘Yes, it would. Any distinguishing feature? Birthmarks? Scars? That kind of thing?’

  Kevin thought for a moment and shook his head. ‘Don’t think so.’

  ‘What about her arm?’ Stan said. ‘There was something. I noticed it yesterday when I was helping her out of her costume. A red mark. Looked like a burn.’

  ‘Oh that,’ Kevin said. ‘Yes, she did that a few days ago. Getting something out of the oven.’ He looked at Fisher. ‘I thought you meant something permanent.’

  ‘I’ll make a note of it all the same.’ Fisher was scribbling on the form. ‘Right or left arm. And whereabouts on the arm?’

  ‘Now let me think. Right arm?’ Stan said, looking at Kevin. He nodded and she went on, ‘Yes, just below the elbow. On the inside.’

  I found myself thinking that it was the kind of detail you’d need to identify a body. I pushed the thought away.

  ‘So: she took her handbag,’ Fisher went on. ‘And mobile phone, yes? But it’s switched off whenever you try to ring her. I’ll need the number and details of her car.’

  ‘It’s a red Renault Clio,’ Kevin said.

  ‘Fairly distinctive. Good. OK. Number plate?’

  Kevin told him.

  ‘And Dr James here was the last person to see or speak to Miss Meadow?’

  ‘Sorry, no, that’s not right. Didn’t I say? She rang me at the flat in London. It must have been just after Cass left. About quarter to eleven, something like that.’

  ‘Tell me a bit more about the flat in London.’

  ‘The flat? Well, it’s in Camberwell Grove—’

  ‘Is that your permanent home, would you say?’

  ‘Well, yes, it gives us a base and it’s convenient for the West End. I had a meeting with my agent – and I needed to go to the flat to collect our post. It seemed easiest to stay overnight.’

  ‘Could your wife have gone there?’

  Kevin stared at him. ‘But surely … I mean, I was there myself…’

  ‘What time did you leave the flat to come up to Cambridge?’

  ‘About seven.’

  ‘I’d like you just to check that she isn’t there.’

  Kevin got up and went over to the phone. He punched in a number. The three of us sat in silence.

  Kevin shook his head.

  ‘It just rings,’ he said. ‘I must have forgotten to put the answering machine on.’

  He sat down again.

  ‘Any relatives she might have gone to?’

  ‘Her parents are dead – oh, not recently,’ Kevin said, answering the question on Fisher’s face. ‘There’s a sister, but she’s in Australia.’

  ‘A close friend she might have gone to?’

  Kevin hesitated. ‘I can’t think of anyone in particular. She has friends, of course, but … no, I can’t think who…’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘To go back to that phone call. What did she say?’ Fisher asked.

  ‘Nothing special, really. She wanted to know how I’d got on with my agent. She said Cassandra had been over and that she was tired and about to go to bed.’

  ‘She wasn’t angry or upset?’

  Kevin frowned. ‘We didn’t have an argument, if that’s what you mean. She seemed just as usual.’

  ‘And was that your impression, Dr James?’ Fisher turned to me. ‘Any sign of depression, would you say?’

  I thought back to the previous evening. I saw Melissa’s pale face, the weary way she had brushed her hair back.

  ‘Not depressed, exactly, but she did look tired. She found the play a bit of a strain. I know that.’

  ‘She did get a bit upset earlier in the day,’ Stan said. ‘She was having problems with her costume, nothing that couldn’t be sorted, but she did get a bit emotional.’

  ‘Any post-natal depression?’ Fisher was looking at Kevin now.

  Kevin pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘Not really. It was a worrying time, of course, Agnes was six weeks premature. Had to spend a week or two in an incubator. But she’s fine now. Melissa was coping all right.’ He appealed to me. ‘Don’t you think so, Cass.’

  ‘Better than me to tell you the truth. She was much better organized.’ I wondered why I was speaking in the past tense. I hoped Kevin hadn’t noticed.

  ‘So, nothing else out of the ordinary in the last day or two? Apart from the upset over the costume?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘there was something.’ I told him about the anonymous letter. The expression on Fisher’s face, sympathetic, concerned, didn’t change, but still I got the impression that his interest had been aroused.

  ‘An anonymous letter containing a poem by Byron,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘What did you make of it, Mr Kingleigh?’

  Kevin shrugged. ‘Not much, really. Actors get a lot of letters from cranks and people with a screw loose. There’s nothing in it, usually.’

  So Melissa had told him after all? Kevin glanced at me and quite suddenly I knew that she hadn’t. I saw the four of us as people sitting down at a game of poker, each wondering what cards the others held. And Kevin, I thought, was bluffing, though I couldn’t imagine why.

  The telephone rang. We looked at each other, then Kevin sprang up. He snatched up the receiver.

  ‘Yes?’

  We watched the hope die in his face.

  ‘Oh, Richard. No,’ he said. ‘She’s not back yet. I’m talking to the police at the moment, can I ring you back? Yes, yes, Stan’s here.’ He held the phone out to her.

  ‘Tell him I’ll ring him back on my mobile.’ She looked at Fisher. ‘Do you mind? It’s the theatre manager, I think I’d better…’

  Fisher nodded and Stan disappeared into the kitchen. Kevin sat down wearily.

  ‘I need to know what Miss Meadow was wearing last night,’ Fisher said.

  I thought for a moment. ‘A long
, floaty dress. Pale yellow, I think.’

  ‘Ghost,’ Kevin said. Fisher and I stared at him. ‘Ghost,’ he said again. ‘It’s the name of the designer. She never wore the same thing two days running, so she won’t have been wearing that. Unless…’

  His voice trailed off. He leaned forward and put his head in his hands.

  Unless she never took it off, and that would mean that she had been gone for – how long? It was nearly six o’clock now, so it was around nineteen hours since anyone had seen or spoken to her. How long had Agnes been alone here?

  Stan came quietly back into the room and sat down next to me.

  ‘And you’re sure you can’t think of a friend she might be with?’ Fisher asked Kevin. ‘There’s usually someone—’

  ‘No! No! No! What have I just told you! I can’t think of anyone. Don’t you think I’d have already rung them if I had any idea who she might be with! I can’t believe she’s done this!’ He was half-rising from his seat. The force of his anger was such that I found myself leaning back. He clenched his fists and I thought for a moment he was going to jump up and grab Fisher by his shirt.

  ‘Kevin!’ Stan spoke sharply.

  He looked at her as though he didn’t know who she was. Then the anger left his face. He sat down again.

  No one spoke for a few seconds. Then Kevin said:

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m beside myself with worry. I can’t imagine what can have happened. It’s so unlike my wife, leaving Agnes like this. And there’s the play as well. I just don’t know how we’re going to manage.’

  Fisher had stopped writing, but his pen was still poised over the form. ‘That’s all right, sir.’ He spoke with equanimity, but he didn’t look up from his clipboard. ‘However I will still need whatever names you can give me. And I think it’s time I had a look round. Mr Kingleigh, I’d like you to look in the wardrobe and see if the dress is there. And perhaps, you will be able to tell if anything appears to be missing.’

  ‘I always helped Melissa choose her clothes so I’ve got a pretty good idea what should be there.’ Kevin stood up. His shoulders were drooping. Now that his anger had subsided, he seemed meek and anxious to please.

  The two men went upstairs together. In silence Stan and I collected the teapot and cups and took them into the kitchen. We sat down on either side of the kitchen table.