A Ghost in the Machine

by Caroline Graham

  Karen picked up the Standard, blew some ash off a picture of Phil Collins and turned to Entertainments. She started to read down the theatre column: Adelphi, Albery, Aldwych, Ambassadors, Apollo, Arts, Astoria…Then paused and read backwards, running her nail carefully past each name lest she had missed one out.

  “Ava?”

  Ava made an impatient yet regal gesture, like a pasha swatting some importunate insect. Karen, having taken the risky decision to speak added boldly: “It’s not in here.”

  “What?”

  “The theatre.”

  Ava looked up and sighed. “What are you on about?”

  “The Almeida.”

  “Let me see.”

  Ava snatched the paper, folded it, brought it up to her eyes and squinted. Karen watched as alarm flickered over her mother’s face. The corner of her eye twitched.

  Ava said. “If they’re rehearsing I expect it’s closed.”

  “But don’t they put the number in anyway,” asked Karen, “in case people want to book for shows and things?”

  Ava had by now got to Wyndhams and was anxiously retracing her steps. It was true. The Almeida was not listed. That bitch of a girl – that so-called actress – must have been stringing her along. She started furiously flicking the pages, turning them back, reading around the listings.

  “There!” Ava was so relieved she almost choked. Her finger stabbed the Standard so hard it went through the paper. “See?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “There is such a thing as fringe, darling. Though you wouldn’t know – not being in the business.” She frowned at the clock, then at Karen, now lolling about in the chair opposite with all the time in the world at her disposal. And she’d be doing it for the next six weeks. Whoever invented school holidays, thought Ava bitterly, couldn’t have had any kids.

  “We must get on. There’s a lot to do today.”

  “I haven’t finished my breakfast.”

  “Don’t whine, dear. Whining’s for wimps.”

  Karen scraped at her cereal bowl, licked up the last of the grey metallic-tasting milk. “Could I have some toast?”

  Ava sighed again and adopted one of her put-upon looks. The child had been like this since the day she was born. Want, want, want. Never satisfied. Hoping that silence meant yes Karen found a heel of bread in the bin and put it under the grill.

  “I expect you’ll be out most of the day with a friend?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Stay with them for lunch. And tea,” suggested Ava. “Eat someone else out of house and home for a change. That’s what friends are for.”

  Karen had no idea what friends were for. She had never made one. Never come even close. Ava had taught her that. Don’t trust anyone, then you won’t be hurt. Karen saw the sense in this; saw indeed that it was true. Of course she would never know how much hurt she’d been saved but tried to believe it was an awful lot as this made never having a friend easier to bear.

  “Alternatively,” continued Ava, “the lounge could do with a good going over.”

  A short while later, when Karen was washing up, the telephone rang. Ava answered and in next to no time was engaged in quiet but rather frenzied conversation with George Footscray. He had called to say that her revelations at the conclusion of yesterday’s meeting had struck him as so sensational that he had contacted the Causton Echo. They very much wanted to do an interview. Should it be convenient a reporter and photographer would come to Rainbow Lodge that very afternoon. As her representative he would naturally be present to support and advise her.

  Ava put the phone down with great care. She sat still, breathing very slowly, calming her nerves. It would never do at this stage to go to pieces. Not that there was much chance of that – she could cope with Fame; had been training for it all her life. Of course, George would have to go. Setting up an interview with the local rag was one thing. The nationals, radio and television, the media as a whole was something else. Ava made a careful note of the name Max Clifford.

  Kate was gradually feeling more and more at home in Appleby House. It was over a week now since Dennis had died and yesterday his ashes had been interred, at Benny’s request, in the churchyard of St. Anselm’s. The Lawsons had been surprised at the turnout. Most of the village had been present and all the staff from Dennis’s office. His partner’s wife, Gilda Latham, organised everything and also put a notice in The Times, which probably explained the presence of quite a few mourners strange to the village. For such a private person Dennis seemed not to have been as short of friends as was generally imagined.

  Of course, Kate’s main concern was Benny – how she would cope with such a painful occasion so soon after her traumatic experience at Kinders. So Kate was relieved, if a little surprised, when Benny said she was not going to the funeral but would pay her respects in her own time and in her own way. Benny was continuing to hold herself together with what seemed to Kate a determination bordering on the manic. Her pursuit of “justice for Dennis” remained both fiery and constant and she wrote more and more letters, though Kate could not help noticing there were still no replies. Perhaps Benny had given up hoping, for she no longer stood at the gate at ten o’clock looking out for the postman.

  This morning, thought Kate, watching her help to clear the table, Benny appeared to be listening for something. As she handed cups and cereal bowls to Mrs. Crudge at the sink her head was cocked on one side, like that of a bright bird. Something was going on between those two. Kate had noticed complicitous smiles. Lips tightening with satisfaction, raised eyebrows, whispered conversations that stopped if anyone happened by. They were like two children bursting with a secret.

  The telephone rang. Still attached to a toast rack Benny shot across the room and snatched up the receiver. She listened briefly, said something barely audible and hung up. Her face was burning quite red with excitement as she stared at Doris.

  Doris’s eyebrows went up so high they almost disappeared into her hairline. She stuck her thumb up in the air and cried, “What’d I tell you?”

  Benny gave a choked-up little squeal and ran from the house.

  Well, if they think, thought Kate, I’m going to ask what it’s all about they can think again. Even at school she had never wanted to join any of the supposedly secret societies. She picked up her clipboard and pencil and went off to finish listing Aunt Carey’s furniture. An antique dealer from Aylesbury was coming that afternoon to value what she and Mallory wished to sell.

  To Kate’s surprise this was nearly everything, for Benny, offered whatever she would like, had chosen a single picture that had always hung over Carey’s bed, a small but beautiful oil painting of a pewter jug holding rich, creamy roses and a tangle of honeysuckle resting on a highly polished table. You could see reflections of the flowers, their outlines wavery and indistinct as if underwater, the colours subdued but still full of life. Benny, stammering out her gratitude, had pressed it to her heart.

  Kate had worked her way through the attics, all the bedrooms and the two large rooms on the ground floor. The ones with french windows that opened on to the terrace where she and Mallory had sat drinking Pimm’s and dreaming their dreams and waiting for Dennis to come to dinner. But that was all behind them now, or would be once Benny had given up this mad crusade. Kate wondered how long that would be. She hoped not too long. It was painful to watch Benny, as Kate saw it, deliberately wounding herself afresh every day. Fighting to prove something that had already been disproved beyond any shadow of a doubt.

  While Kate had been checking out the furniture, Mallory had been reading the very last book in the very first bag. Kate was trying not to get disheartened about the future – heavens, the company wasn’t even registered yet. But hours of wading through leaden prose, duff syntax and jokes unfunny when they were first cracked over a thousand years ago had left her feeling she never wanted to pick up a book again – hardly an ideal position for someone about to start their own publishing house. Kate was chas
tened to realise just how much sifting must have been done before her monthly bag of reader’s manuscripts arrived. They didn’t call it the slush pile for nothing.

  She found Mallory stretched out on one of the old steamer chairs in the conservatory, seemingly engrossed. For a moment Kate stood quietly, watching him through the glass. Unaware, as relaxed as she had seen him for some little while, Mallory frowned, quickly turned a page and read on. It was a relief to see him really involved in something, if only temporarily. Over the last few days he had sorted through his aunt’s papers, visited the offices of Pippins Direct and met and talked with their workers in the orchard. He had done a fair amount of tidying in the garden and been welcoming and sociable if people called, but Kate knew that all these activities occupied him only tenuously. Always at the back of his mind she sensed a growing anxiety and assumed it was to do with Polly. Where she was, how she was, what she was doing, who she was doing it with. Kate longed to share the anxiety – indeed, had quite a bit of her own after discovering Polly had been in trouble – but her concern was mixed with considerable irritation. After all, their daughter was grown up. She’d probably just gone off somewhere for a break with some friends. Why couldn’t Mallory ever let go?

  “Mal,” she moved down the black and white steps, “I was just wondering…”

  “Mmm.”

  “What you think about—”

  “Hang on a sec.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve found something worth reading.”

  There was a cry from the kitchen. Then another. Two voices joined in overlapping jubilant conversation. Someone (it sounded like Doris) started to screech with excitement. Kate hurried to see what the matter was.

  She discovered Benny sitting at the kitchen table with Doris leaning over her shoulder. They were reading a newspaper. Both became silent as Kate entered, staring at her with expressions she could not quite fathom. Defiance perhaps, on Benny’s part. Doris seemed to be struggling to express nothing at all and succeeded in looking merely constipated.

  “What is it, Ben?” asked Kate. “What’s happened?”

  “This has happened,” said Doris, leaning over and tapping a black-and-white photograph. “That’s what.”

  “Can I have a look?”

  Benny hesitated, not passing the newspaper straight across as Kate had expected.

  Kate said, “For heaven’s sake,” reached out and took it. She saw the picture of a woman excessively made up with shoulder-length black hair and heavy lidded, dark eyes. She had on a black dress with long sleeves and a lowish scoop neckline. A large jewelled cross rested on the solid shelf of her bosom. Her name was Ava Garret and she could have stepped straight out of a Dracula movie. Kate, immediately inclined to giggle, sobered as she read: “MEDIUM MURDER SENSATION. THE TRUTH FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE.” Suddenly uneasy she pushed the Causton Echo back across the table.

  “I think you should read it, Mrs. Lawson.” Doris, vindication personified, swelled visibly. “It’s about poor Mr. Brinkley.”

  “Dennis?” Reluctantly Kate dragged the Echo back. Read the rest of the article. Folded the paper so the relevant page was on the inside and crammed it into the waste bin. More disturbed than she was prepared to admit she said, “How can people believe such nonsense?”

  “Well, I’m very sorry,” said Doris, un-sorrily, “but it’s not nonsense. She described the room that the machines were in, all the details. Everything.”

  “So you see, Kate,” said Benny, “the police will have to listen to me now.”

  “Benny.” Kate reached out and took Benny’s hand. Little swellings, shiny knobs of incipient arthritis were developing on the knuckles. Kate stroked them gently. How could she make her affection clear without colluding in this extraordinary fantasy? “Can’t you let go of all this?”

  “Oh! why won’t you believe me?”

  “It’s not that I don’t believe you,” lied Kate, “I’m just afraid you’ll make yourself ill.”

  Benny stared stubbornly at the table. Doris turned to deal with the congealing dishes in the sink. Kate went away to gather early windfalls for an apple charlotte. Later on, putting the russet peelings in the bin, she noticed the newspaper had disappeared. And so had Benny.

  “That mad woman’s here again,” said Sergeant Troy.

  “What mad woman’s that?” asked Barnaby. He never seemed to meet any other sort these days. Recently he had successfully concluded a case featuring a poet who wore only latex, lived on liquorice allsorts and worshipped a horse she believed to be the reincarnation of Radclyffe Hall. And she was the straight man.

  “The one who thought her friend was murdered, remember? Those weird machines?”

  “I thought we’d sorted that.”

  “She’s now got proof.”

  “So talk to her. Find out what it consists of.”

  “She wants to see you.”

  “Everybody wants to see me. Joyce asked what the chances were only last week. She was quite rude, actually.”

  “It won’t take long.” Troy paused. “We’ve got an easy day.”

  “The first since Christmas.”

  “She’s terribly excited.”

  “That makes one of us.”

  “Could be she’s really on to something.”

  “Oh God. What was her name again?”

  Benny came in confidently, holding her embroidered bag, a smile all across her earnest pink face. She sat down facing the chief inspector and said, “I knew you’d understand how important it was.”

  “I believe you have some vital information for us, Miss Frayle.”

  “Absolutely. Cutting the flim-flam, chief inspector, and coming straight to the point, here is proof positive,” continued Benny, opening the Causton Echo, “that my dear friend, Dennis Brinkley, was murdered.”

  Troy perched on the wide windowsill and flipped open his notebook. He listened. Barnaby listened. Benny finished reading. The DCI turned his head and glared at his unfortunate sergeant. Troy closed his notebook and prepared to show Miss Frayle out.

  “You do understand what this means, I hope?” Benny, now sounding slightly less confident, got out of her chair.

  “I do, Miss Frayle,” said Barnaby and thought he spoke the truth. He understood that she had loved Dennis Brinkley and that his death had left her deeply disturbed. He wondered briefly about her family. If someone was supporting her at home and if she was seeing a doctor. Thankfully it was none of his business.

  “You’ll look into it now?” cried Benny over her shoulder as Troy eased her firmly through the door.

  “Don’t worry, Miss Frayle,” replied Barnaby. “We’ll do everything that’s necessary.”

  15

  Andrew Latham leaned back in Dennis’s office chair. His long legs were crossed at the knees, his arms crooked in the air, hands linked behind his neck. He was staff-watching through the open door and deriving much pleasure from the process. He was used to barely concealed animosity from the men. Now the women too seemed to have turned against him. Even Gail Fuller, whom he had had every which way across the photocopier after hours. But Andrew enjoyed their resentment, the quick ceasing of conversation when he came into the room. He knew what they’d been talking about for all their maudlin pretence at sorrow. What happens now? Are our jobs safe? Will we get another? That was until today. Today they were passing round the Causton Echo, agog with amazement, amusement, derision, distress.

  Gilda appeared to take the article very seriously. At breakfast, moodily forking a lard omelette to and fro, she had announced an intention of getting in touch with the medium in question straightaway.

  “What on earth for?” Andrew addressed his remark to an undercooked sausage. He had no stomach for looking directly at his wife without protective lenses, especially first thing in the morning. A blubber mountain draped in gingham, a moon face nodding and wobbling on a column of fat so soft and loose it was corrugated, like a squib. Only her coarse, beige hair, confined by several large roll
ers, pleased the eye, giving the charming impression of young hedgehogs at play.

  “To see if Daddy comes through, of course.”

  “Of course,” repeated Andrew. “It would be interesting to see how he’s getting on up there. What the scrap iron situation might be.”

  Gilda looked at her husband sharply. This was not the first “take it two ways” remark he had made lately. She hoped he was not getting above himself. Then hoped he was, because it would be such a pleasure yanking him down again.

  “Anyone can be sarky, Andrew.”

  “Can they, darling?”

  “It’s the lowest form of wit.”

  He decided not to essay any higher form of wit. It might just strike her on the funny bone and Gilda had a laugh like a machine gun. He forced himself to look across the table and smile. How typical of her to home in on a really disturbing item of news and immediately translate it into something relevant only to herself. The alarming suggestion that someone they had both known well had possibly been murdered seemed to have passed her completely by. Andrew pointed this out.

  “They who live by the sword shall die by the sword.”

  That was the Reader’s Digest talking. She was always writing down pithy sayings to toss into the conversational pool on the rare occasions they had guests. It made her very unpopular. No one loves a know-all.

  “If you say so, dear.”

  Gilda immediately contradicted herself. “Of course, it’s all made up. We’re not the sort of people to know people who get themselves murdered.”

  “Why go and see the medium then?”

  He should have known better. The next twenty minutes was filled with a lecture on how those who depended on others for their bread and butter should know better than to keep picking those others up or putting them down all the time. And she was there to tell him that the patience of those others was not inexhaustible. But years of this had left Andrew indifferent. By the time he had backed his Punto out of the double garage Gilda’s onslaught was not even a memory.