Stage Fright

by Christine Poulson

  Detective Sergeant Vickers explained how long Melissa had been missing, described her car and gave the registration number.

  Then it was Kevin’s turn. He spoke in a low self-possessed tone that suggested reserves of emotion barely kept under control. He said how worried he was. How much he missed Melissa, and how much their baby daughter needed her. He spoke of the stress she had been under, rehearsing for the new production. He knew their life together hadn’t been perfect, he could have been a better husband, but he did love her. If anyone had seen her, or if she herself was listening … He looked down at the table. He seemed too overcome to continue. The camera panned in close. There was a moment of suspense. He lifted his head and looked straight into the camera.

  ‘Melissa, if you can hear me…’ his voice faltered. The policewoman put a hand on his arm. He swallowed and went on:

  ‘I don’t want to believe – I can’t believe – that any real harm has come to you. And I won’t rest until you’re home again with me and Agnes. I’ll never stop looking for you.’

  There was a moment or two of silence, then a barrage of questions. I heard fragments: ‘Any idea at all where…’ ‘true that Belinda Roy…?’ Vickers held up his hand and shook his head. Then the policewoman was helping Kevin to his feet and they were turning to go.

  A number to call if you had information came up on the screen. I switched the TV off. Kevin wasn’t at home, I knew. This had been recorded earlier and he had intended to go back to the theatre for the final dress rehearsal. He might be there until the early hours.

  I went over to my computer and switched it on. It made its usual plangent twang and the screen lit up. As I sat in front of it watching the various icons appearing one by one, a hollow feeling developed in the pit of my stomach. Years and years ago, even before I’d met Joe, someone at university had told the tarot for me. I could remember virtually nothing about it except that she’d warned me about an unhappy love affair and a broken heart. That’s probably pretty inevitable when you’re eighteen, but it had left a shadow over me all the same. I’d steered well clear of any type of fortune-telling ever since. I felt sure there was going to be something sinister about this pseudonym.

  I called up my favourite search engine, Google.com. I keyed in ‘tarot’ and sat drumming my fingers impatiently. A list of references scrolled down the screen. I was spoilt for choice. I called up the first one. The website offered a large range of options: history of the tarot, how to register for a course, where to buy books. I wandered around it for a while, but there was nothing about the meaning of individual cards. I returned to the search engine and typed in ‘King of Cups’.

  This took me straight to a page on a website. At the top was an image of a card similar to a court card in an ordinary pack of playing-cards. It was designed to look like a rather crude woodcut filled in with bright primary colours: red, yellow and blue. It showed a man with a white beard, seated on a throne and holding what I assumed was a goblet though it looked more like a sceptre. I scanned the text below it. ‘This card represents a mature, intelligent man, probably a business or a professional person. A calm and pleasant manner can conceal strong emotions. He can be a source of good advice for the querant.’ That last wasn’t a word I was familiar with, but I guessed that it meant the person whose cards were being read. There didn’t seem to be anything sinster about this. I pushed back my chair with a sigh of relief. It was an odd pseudonym, but a benign one. I wondered why the police hadn’t thought of checking up on it this way. Then it occurred to me that perhaps they had. No reason why they should have told me.

  The phone rang. I picked it up with my eyes still on the screen.

  ‘Joe?’

  ‘Hi. You tracked it down OK?’

  ‘Yep, I am reading about it right now on … let me see…’ I read out the name of the website.

  He laughed. ‘That’s exactly what I’ve got up on my own screen.’

  ‘Then you’ll know this card represents a ‘mature man in authority who gives sound advice.’

  ‘Yeah…’ he said, drawing the word out doubtfully, ‘but didn’t you say it was typed upside down?’

  ‘Does that make a difference?’

  ‘All the difference. If the card’s the right way up, it’s referred to as “dignified”, but if it’s upside down, its “ill-dignified” and the meaning of the card is reversed. You need to scroll down. It’s underneath the part that you’ve heen reading. Can you see?’

  As I moved the mouse, an inverted image of the King of Cups appeared along with a whole block of new text. I read it with mounting unease.

  ‘Deception and underhand behaviour are signified by this card reversed. Now this character combines intelligence and authority with dishonesty and unscrupulousness and represents someone who could be a major threat to the querant. This is someone who is not what they seem. They should be avoided at all costs.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘A thought came over me today as to whether Lady Isabel really was dead,’ said Barbara Hare.

  In the silence that followed you could have heard a pin drop. The tableau on the stage seemed frozen. For an awful moment I thought Clive had dried.

  Then he shook his head, passed a weary hand over his forehead, and said:

  ‘It’s all too true, alas.’

  The curtain came down. As the house lights went up there was a murmuring sound like the rustling of the wind in the trees. It was as if the entire audience had been holding its breath. What was it that Stan had said? Theatre folk are so superstitious. Well, you didn’t need to be very superstitious to feel a frisson at those words. Before the performance began I’d wondered it I’d be able to suspend my disbelief. After all I’d written the script. I’d heard the lines again and again. I knew the actors as real people. But I hadn’t seen the whole thing come together and I hadn’t seen the costumes. I was entranced. The colours of Lady Isabel’s dresses were startlingly brilliant – magenta, lilac, emerald green. The corseted bust, the nipped-in waist, and the breadth of her hips in the crinoline created an exaggeratedly feminine silhouette. As she moved around the stage, the crinoline swayed to the rhythm of her walk and her skirts rippled and surged around her, now and then offering a glimpse of an elegantly laced boot. Archibald Carlyle and Captain Levison wore close-fitting frockcoats and narrow tapering trousers which broadened the shoulders and narrowed the hips. And this was quite right, I thought, because the costumes reflected the contemporary polarization of male and female roles, and anyway East Lynne was in its way one of the sexiest novels of the nineteenth century.

  Joe put his hand on my arm.

  ‘Where was it that Belinda saw the figure in the cloak?’ he asked.

  I pointed out the place. From our box we could see virtually the whole auditorium. It was packed, every seat taken. There was the usual interval bustle, people standing up to let others pass, a buzz of conversation.

  ‘Someone’s down there looking at you.’ Joe pointed to the stalls.

  ‘Oh, that’s Tim Fisher. The policeman.’

  When he saw me looking back he half-raised his hand in a gesture of greeting. I’d spoken to him on the telephone that morning to tell him about the King of Cups and I had felt that he was holding something hack. I had that impression even more strongly now. But I had to admit to myself that this might just be paranoia. The discovery of the meaning of the ‘ill-dignified’ tarot card had disturbed me. I hadn’t slept well. Add to that getting up twice to feed Grace and it was no wonder I was looking at everyone with a suspicious eye. This is someone who is not what they seem. They should be avoided at all costs. But if they weren’t what they seemed, how did you know whom to avoid? And anyway I was surrounded by people who weren’t what they seemed: they were actors, for God’s sake.…

  ‘Sure you don’t want a drink?’ Joe said.

  ‘Don’t think I can face the crush, but if you want one…’ I didn’t admit that I didn’t want to emerge until it was all safely over in case I
overheard a derogatory comment about the play.

  ‘No, I’m fine. But how about an ice-cream?’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  When he’d gone to get them, I rang home to check with Tilly that the babies were all right.

  ‘They’re both asleep,’ she reported. ‘They look so sweet … oh, hang on, one of them’s crying. Honestly, they’re fine. Oh, that’s set the other one off. I’d better go. Please don’t worry, Cassandra.’

  Joe came back with two choc-ices and, as we were unwrapping them, the curtain rose again.

  Lady Isabel in her disguise of Madame Vine was sitting by the bedside of her son. I knew perfectly well that the sick boy was in tact a boisterous twelve-year-old football fan from a stage school in London. I knew that Phyllida was as tough as old boots. Part of me was even aware that she wasn’t word perfect. But, by God, she could act after all and I felt a catch in my throat.

  ‘This cannot be death so soon,’ she said, gathering the small body up into her arms.

  Tears rolled down my cheeks. Joe fumbled for my hand and squeezed it.

  As the play went on, I found myself ever more riveted by Phyllida. Her face had been made up to look hectic and flushed and she had a scar. I had never seen her in her full costume as Madame Vine. She was unrecognizable under the tinted spectacles, the grey wig and the all-enveloping black dress and bonnet. A bizarre thought darted into my head. This could just as easily be Melissa. What if it was? The idea was absurd, but once the idea had occurred to me, I couldn’t shake it off. The figure on the stage flowed from one identity to another like a shape-shifter from Lady Isabel to Phyllida to Madame Vine to Melissa. I tried to get a grip. The truth was that my tired eyes and my tired brain were playing tricks on me and I was seeing Melissa everywhere. Only that afternoon, I’d seen her walking down the street. When I’d caught up with the woman, I realized that she didn’t look remotely like Melissa. There had been something about her walk and her build that was just enough for my eye to fill in the rest and create what I wanted to see.

  All the same it was a relief when Madame Vine was stripped of her disguise and revealed to be Lady Isabel – and Phyllida.

  ‘You’ve been here all this time? As Madame Vine?’ Archibald stammered.

  ‘I could not live away from you and my children. But I’ve suffered the torments of the damned, living in this house with your new wife, watching you caress and kiss her. I’ve never loved you so passionately as I have since I lost you.’

  She fell back on her pillows exhausted.

  ‘Archibald, I am on the very threshold of the next world. Surely you will forget and forgive.’

  ‘I cannot forget. I have already forgiven.’

  ‘Will you not say a word of love to me before I die? Only a word of love! My heart is breaking for it.’

  Even though I knew what Archibald was going to say I was sitting on the edge of my chair.

  He leaned over her and brushed back the hair from her forehead.

  ‘You nearly broke mine when you left me,’ he whispered.

  ‘But you will … you will keep a corner in your heart for me…’

  ‘You’re growing faint. Let me call for help.’

  ‘No, it’s too late. But it is hard to part! Farewell, farewell, my once dear husband. Just one last kiss. Surely that can’t be a sin…’

  Archibald hesitated. Then he bent down and put his lips to hers.

  ‘Until eternity,’ he whispered.

  Her head lolled back on the pillow. It was all over.

  There was a moment or two of silence followed by a tumultuous burst of applause.

  * * *

  ‘You were magnificent, Clive. I think I’ve fallen in love with you myself.’

  ‘Bless you, my darling.’ He hugged me. ‘It all came together in the end, didn’t it? Let me get you a glass of champagne. And, then, alas and alack, I must mingle.’

  Joe and I had joined the cast in the circle bar with the cast for the first night bash being thrown for the patron and friends of the theatre. The room was packed. There had been some debate about the propriety of throwing a party in the circumstances. But Richard had pointed out that without the support of local business people, and above all the Friends of the Everyman Theatre, there wouldn’t have been a production in the first place. It wasn’t fair to deprive them of their treat – and it would be very bad for business. So that was that and here we all were, wolfing canapés and smoked-salmon sandwiches and swigging champagne.

  And looking around it struck me that the performance hadn’t ended yet. Phyllida was talking in an animated way to a large man with a paunch and a pin-striped suit. She caught my eye and gave me an ironic little smile. Clive had been seized – literally, she was hanging on to his arm – by the chair of the Friends. You wouldn’t have guessed from the way he was smiling into her face that the one thing he longed to do was to get into his car and drive back to Hampshire to his wife and daughters. He would be commuting now that the play had opened. When I looked his way, he caught my eye and gave a scarcely perceptible wink. Kevin at the far end of the bar was surrounded by admiring middle-aged women. Jake was hovering beside him with Geoff and his camera in attendance.

  I put my glass down on a bracket on the wall and stifled a yawn.

  ‘Tired?’ Joe asked.

  ‘Fit to drop. And these shoes…’ I slipped one of my shoes off and rubbed my foot on the back of my other leg. Whatever had I been thinking of, buying heels like these?

  ‘Why don’t you let me drive you home?’ Joe had hired a car in preparation for a trip north to see his old supervisor.

  I hesitated. Kevin had given me a lift in, but it looked as if he was going to be quite some time.

  ‘It’d be no trouble, Cass,’ Joe went on. ‘I like driving at night. Less traffic. So I’ll be heading north after I’ve dropped you off. I’ve booked a room at the George in Stamford. Nice old coaching inn, I believe. Just the kind of thing we Americans go for.’

  I fumbled for my shoe and swayed as I tried to slip it back on. Joe put his hand above my elbow to brace me.

  ‘Anyway,’ he went on. ‘I’d rather see you safely home. I’m sure that’s what Stephen would want me to do.’

  There was something disquieting about that thought.

  ‘The new outfit looks terrific,’ said a voice behind me.

  I turned to see Stan smiling at me. Her hair was piled up in a complicated arrangement, and she was wearing what looked like a Lurex tent.

  ‘I want you to meet someone,’ she said.

  My eyes slid past her to the woman standing behind her. My heart seemed to miss a beat. For a instant I thought it was Melissa. It wasn’t, of course. This woman was older, by perhaps as much as five years, nearer to my age than Melissa’s. Her face was fuller, fatter, and her body was heavier. And yet the resemblance was striking: the shape of the nose was the same and the line of the jaw. The effect was disconcerting: it was as if Melissa had become bigger and blurred and out of focus. I realized that I was staring at her and looked away in confusion.

  She stepped forward and held out her hand. I took it.

  ‘You must be Cassandra.’ She smiled at me but I could see that it was an effort.

  ‘That’s right and you must be Maire. Can I introduce you to Joe?’ I said. ‘Joe, this is Melissa’s sister, Maire.’

  ‘Glad to meet you.’ They shook hands.

  Stan was looking Joe up and down with obvious interest. She leaned towards me and lowered her voice.

  ‘Is this Buttons – or is it Prince Charming?’ She gave me a sly smile and I realized that she was a little drunk. ‘You are going to introduce me, aren’t you?’ she said out loud.

  ‘Of course, Stan, this is Joe. Joe, this is Stan, she’s the stage manager, you remember…?’

  ‘Hi.’ He stretched out a hand. I watched with amusement as he switched on the old Baldassarre charm. I knew Stan was wondering why I’d never mentioned him before. ‘Cass has told me all abou
t you. You’ve done a great job. What a fantastic production!’

  I left them to it and turned to Maire.

  ‘When did you get in?’ I asked.

  ‘Just a few hours ago. Couldn’t stay away any longer. I managed to get a cancellation.’ The way her voice went up at the end of every line made her statements seem uncertain and provisional, as though she was testing out my reaction. ‘Came straight to the theatre. Stan’s been great. Managed to find me a seat at the last minute.’ She lowered her voice and put a hand on my arm to draw me closer. ‘You know, I had a hunch that Melissa might show up for the first night? She’s always been such a professional.’

  ‘I somehow thought she might be here, too,’ I admitted. I was fascinated by her. My eyes kept straying back to Maire’s face. I found myself comparing her with Melissa, trying to work out where their features overlapped and where they didn’t. And it wasn’t just that: it was her mannerisms too, the way she had of glancing sideways at me as she spoke. There was something uncanny about it.

  ‘I have a very bad feeling about all this, Cass, very bad. And I don’t mind telling you, I think the police are dragging their feet. Something’s happened to my sister and I’m determined to get to the bottom of it.’ She scanned the room behind me as if she might spot a clue to Melissa’s disappearance – or even Melissa herself. ‘I’ve already rung that police sergeant and I’m going round to see him in the morning. I’m going to give him a hard time.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Kevin?’

  ‘Kevin! Huh!’ She spat the words out. ‘Briefly. He is not pleased to see me, I can tell you that. I never did think he was good enough for Melissa and now I know I was right. Stan here has brought me up to date with what he’s been up to.’ A kind of spasm seemed to pass over her face and her grip tightened on my arm. She swayed a little.