Dying Flames

by Robert Barnard

  “That wouldn’t be hard!” said Adam. “He’s not good with people. He gets on better with cars.”

  “How much has he had to do with your mother in recent years?”

  Adam looked surprised. “Nothing. I never remember him having anything to do with her. I’d never seen them together before that meal on Monday.”

  Adam had his hand on the door handle, but Graham suddenly said:

  “You do realize, Adam, don’t you, that this is your home for as long as you want or need it to be? You and Christa, of course.”

  Adam shuffled.

  “What? Oh, I thought maybe, but…I didn’t know. I’m very grateful…. Thank you.”

  And he scooted out of the door.

  Graham immediately turned his novelist’s analytical brain on himself. He couldn’t decide why he had said this now. It seemed to have just come out. But it must have been lurking there somewhere in the back of his mind. He had promised Adam a home until adulthood. It couldn’t have been just his burgeoning love for Christa that had led him to make such a large commitment of himself, his time, his money. He decided he must, in an odd way, feel he had escaped his rightful burden of responsibility with Terry. He had not been told, of course, but would he have taken it up in any meaningful way if he had been told?

  And now he was taking it up with Peggy’s other two children. They had hauled themselves through childhood with no security and precious little love. Now at least he could provide the first, and in Christa’s case the second too. For as long as she would let him. Until some other man took over that duty. He had never yet seen any indication from Christa that she had for a moment considered him in a romantic role.

  Graham left a message at the home of Christa’s friend Josie: he would pick her up at the Jeremy Bentham College at around five o’clock. The next day he drove to Romford, and as long as the country roads lasted, he pondered what he was doing.

  Peggy had “disappeared” sometime during the late evening or night of a week ago Monday. He put the word disappeared in quotes in his mind because she had either been put out of commission in some way (kidnapped, killed, illegally detained), or she had gone off willingly. Considering the note she had left, he rather inclined to the last explanation, but he had to admit that the situation could have developed dangerously later on.

  This meant, surely, that the solution to the mystery had to lie in Romford. Peggy had left Luigi’s intent on searching for Terry and making it up with him. Her intention presumably was to comb the streets of Romford until she found him. While doing this, she either herself decided to disappear (problems, emotional or financial, that only she knew about?), or was persuaded to go away, or forcibly taken. The last solution seemed to him unlikely: the message left in the house in Milton Terrace did not sound like a forced or dictated message. In fact it had sounded typically Peggy, as he, with his creative imagination, had come to see her. And it had been accepted by Christa as having been written by Peggy.

  He realized that he was trying to view the situation as a policeman or a private detective might view it: dispassionately and logically noting all the pertinent features of the case and reviewing all the probabilities. He hoped he might be able to find a policeman in Romford who would view the facts from the same perspective but with more professional expertise and experience.

  His first port of call, using his A to Z, was Ted Somers. He lived—alone now—in a bungalow on Silverdale Street, bought no doubt at the time when Peggy had wheedled the house in Milton Terrace away from him. The bungalow was neat and square, just the sort of manageable place a retired couple liked, and the garden was predictably well cared for. Ted had more time on his hands than he knew what to do with. That was also suggested when he opened the door.

  “Mr. Broadbent! I didn’t expect—”

  “Graham, please. I hope I’m not unwelcome.”

  “Not in the least. Come in. Coffee?”

  “Please.”

  “There’s some brewed. I live on coffee all morning to keep myself awake. What brings you here?”

  “I’m fetching Christa from college this evening. But it’s actually Peggy who brings me here.”

  “I could have guessed. It’s getting worrying.”

  “You felt that too?”

  “I did. Though I don’t see it’s your worry.”

  “It’s the children’s, or should be. Has she gone off with anyone for this long before?”

  “Search me. I’d had nothing to do with her for over ten years, and until recently very little to do with the children. What do they say about her going off unexpectedly?”

  “I’ve tried not to pry too closely. I do get the impression that it’s longer than has happened before, but they’re not too bothered.”

  “Used to it. Of course I gathered she sometimes went off, but I didn’t press them too closely, probably for the same reasons you don’t want to. I said we—Mary, when she was alive, and I—were there if they needed us and left it at that. It looks like driving a wedge between mother and children if you make too much of things that shock you, and we always tried not to do that.”

  “I suppose there was a time, wasn’t there, when you, your wife, and Peggy were all living together? After Terry’s birth and before Adam’s?”

  “All her life up to her marriage with Harry.” Ted sighed as he handed over a large cup of coffee and sat down over his own. “I don’t want to give you the impression it was just one man after another in her life. It wasn’t. But the men in her life were mostly there for a short time. A few days, a few weeks. Between these periods she went on with her life perfectly normally: jobs, learning her parts for the Romford Players, dreaming…She always lived partly in a dream world. Somehow her life was going to be transformed: money, fame, a dream lover. We never really talked about it, never sat her down and told her to get a grip. We were a little bit in awe of her, I think, because she was so different from us, and from anyone in our families. And we knew it would have been hopeless. But she just let fall things that told us what was going on in that imaginative little head: some of the men were ‘fabulously rich’—just ordinary local businessmen; some were ‘fantastically handsome’—pleasant-looking; talent scouts were coming to the plays specially to see her. We recognized it as childishness, and we were embarrassed by it. The wonder is she kept anybody long enough to marry him and stay married for some years.”

  “So in those years she didn’t have any relationship that was in some way special—lasted a while, seemed more serious?”

  “Not that we knew of.” He drank from his coffee. “Mind you, we didn’t know much.”

  “Not even Christa’s father?”

  “We had no idea who he was…” As he thought, his elderly face unexpectedly crimsoned up. “We thought she didn’t know herself.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because she never named anyone or went after him for maintenance.”

  Graham digested this.

  “She never came after me for maintenance.”

  “Probably because she figured there was no chance of getting any. In any case, the baby was adopted almost immediately.”

  “Maybe Christa’s father was also an unlikely source of money.”

  “Maybe. The truth is, we were past caring. Christa’s never showed any curiosity, and we thought—Mary and I—that that was much the best way. She somehow got the idea that you were her father, and we didn’t tell her anything to the contrary, though Mary always said it was just a bit of Peggy’s silliness. So far as we knew, you and Peggy had never met up again.”

  “We didn’t. I was in Mali at the relevant time.”

  “Africa somewhere? Peggy’s never been to darkest Africa, I’m sure. It’s not glamorous enough for her.”

  Graham drained his cup.

  “So what were relations between you like in those years?”

  Ted always thought before replying. He liked to make himself clear.

  “More and more distant. W
e hardly seemed to have any share in her life or her dreamworld. When she teamed up with Harry and went to live with him in a flat near the station, we were surprised and delighted. We put on a lovely wedding for them and were over the moon when Adam came along. It seemed like a replacement for the boy she’d had adopted. He was about two when she first brought up the idea of buying the house from us. You know the rest.”

  “She swindled both you and her brother, didn’t she?”

  “She did. She knew it was best to keep it in the family.”

  It was a sad little story. They talked for a bit longer. Ted was still full of the hole left in his life by his wife’s death. After his beloved daughter had failed him, Mary was his mainstay. Graham promised to keep in touch and told him he was going to the police later, in an attempt to inject a bit of urgency into their concern.

  The next stop was the Halliburtons—obviously Peggy’s best friends in Romford. There were two or three customers in the shop, and Graham felt rather guilty at asking to speak to one or both of the pair.

  “You go, Mike,” said Vesta. “You know her best. Take him in the back room, then I can come in and have my say if we get slack in the shop.”

  So Michael Halliburton took Graham through to a little box of a room, with two easy chairs, a kettle, and a hot-plate-cum-grill. Graham refused more coffee and got down to business.

  “I expect you think I’m causing a stir about nothing.”

  Michael shifted slightly uneasily in his chair. “Well, I don’t want to sound as if I don’t care about Peggy. And she has been away longer than I expected, I’ll admit that. It won’t be long before rehearsals start for Virginia Woolf. But she is after all an adult, and we’re not living in the nineteenth century.”

  “She has responsibilities,” said Graham.

  “Christa and Adam?” Michael gave a little laugh, and a dismissive wave of the hand. “But you’ll have noticed that they’re very self-sufficient, very grown-up.”

  “What I noticed about Adam when I saw him first at Luigi’s was that he is a typical adolescent, full of mixed-up emotions and a lot of resentment.”

  Michael shifted again. “Well, I suppose so. Yes. But he’ll have to learn to cope with that.”

  “He will. On his own, so far as I can see.”

  “I suppose you’re saying Peggy is not much of a mother. Well, you’re probably right, though she must be wonderful fun as well. What I’ve been more interested in is her acting ability, so maybe I have turned a blind eye to what you call her responsibilities.”

  “I suppose you would. No shame in that. But she’s also a friend, isn’t she?”

  “Oh, yes. Absolutely. That’s why we got her working for us here. So we could keep an eye on her.”

  Not much of an eye, Graham thought.

  “Mike, could you come out?” called Vesta from the shop. “We’re busy.”

  Mike pulled himself up from his chair and hurried out. Graham thought he learned more about him from his movements than from his face, which was cleverly controlled. He was a man of energy—not the constant energy of a sportsman or athlete: the purpose and drive was in his shoulders and arms. When you saw the whole man in motion—as Graham now did, watching him serving two customers with notable efficiency and minimum movement—you saw someone who was egocentrically directed toward getting what he wanted, and getting it with minimum expenditure and unnecessary emotion. He must have been a first-rate director, Graham thought.

  “Sorry about that,” Michael said, coming back. Graham decided to chance his arm.

  “You got Peggy working here to make sure no other amateur drama group poached her, didn’t you?”

  Mike smiled disarmingly, though Graham was not disarmed.

  “Absolutely. No harm in that, is there?”

  “None at all. Though it’s not quite friendship, as it is normally understood.”

  “Two birds with one stone,” said Mike airily. “There’s drama groups all over South London would give their eyeteeth to have her as a regular. Much of the reputation we’ve built up here has been due to her. Having her work in the shop, in a job which doesn’t take much out of her emotionally—that’s vital—and having her under our eyes makes her feel safe and us feel safe about her too.”

  Vesta, from the empty shop, poked her head around the door.

  “And you’ve slept with her too, Mike. Might as well tell him, or someone else will. Didn’t mean anything, and I wasn’t jealous, but it happened.”

  The doorbell in the shop signaled a customer, and she disappeared. Graham raised his eyebrows at Mike.

  “Yes, it happened. Well, it’s happened now and again with one or two of our actresses. Like Vesta says, it doesn’t mean anything. Our marriage is based on trust—the trust we both have that I’m essentially hers, and she’s essentially mine.”

  Graham held back a sardonic comment. His own record as a married man disqualified him from making it.

  “I see,” he said. “I never quite managed to create that trust with my own wife.” He chanced his arm on a guess again. “Did the parts she was playing make any difference to Peggy, in her actual life?”

  Mike looked at him, thought, then laughed.

  “Well, let’s just say that playing Lady Windermere didn’t make her into a virtuous, straitlaced wife. It doesn’t work like that.”

  “I don’t remember that playing Saint Joan turned her into a saint either.”

  “On the other hand, you could say that while she was rehearsing and playing Lady Windermere, she became more formal in her manner, more queenly, more…remote. The onstage bearing got into the offstage behavior to that extent.”

  “Yes…. How long has it been decided that her next part will be Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

  “Decided? Only two or three weeks before she took off. It’s been in the air for a lot longer than that—as one of her parts, that eventually she’ll have to play. She’s about the right age now: still stunning when she makes the effort.”

  “I bet you’ve never said that to her.”

  “I certainly haven’t. Why are you interested?”

  “Martha. The woman who is so desperate to have a child that she and her husband create an imaginary son. And while Peggy is getting into the mood to start rehearsals of the play, into her life comes a real son….”

  “That can only be coincidence.”

  “Oh, almost certainly. Though with the current enthusiasm for adoptive children contacting their birth mothers, it was quite likely to happen, and while the child was still young…. What struck me was that, while she’s preparing to play a woman overflowing with maternal love and frustration in having no object for it, along comes a long-lost son. And she is over the moon, all over the boy, eager to share the news with all the world.”

  “Partly in preparation for the role, do you think?”

  “She’s never been particularly maternal with the two children she already has, according to them. And then, perhaps quite soon, the new son sees through the role-playing…”

  Michael looked skeptical. “Did you think he was particularly bright?”

  “I didn’t see enough of him to judge.”

  “And the reason for the bust-up was quite different.”

  “Yes, certainly. But also quite mystifying. Two potential birth fathers. It really calls for a judgment of Solomon, doesn’t it?”

  Graham got up.

  “Where are you going now?” Mike asked.

  “To the police.”

  “Is that necessary? Nothing we’ve said has given any reason why Peggy should have come to any harm.”

  “Maybe not. But a woman with a home, children, a job, a very exciting theatrical role in prospect, should be able to think of someone she should contact if she goes away unexpectedly. You and Vesta would be obvious people. But she hasn’t. I’m just trying to get the police to put some urgency into the case. To do some thing.”

  That proved to be more difficult than Graham h
ad imagined. The duty sergeant on the desk merely feigned interest: he pointed out it was not a child or an adolescent who had gone missing, and that grown adults were not required to register once a week at the police station. Even Mr. Blunkett hadn’t come up with that one. Graham felt inhibited from mentioning Peggy’s children, so he pulled Peggy’s other claim for special attention.

  “She’s a pretty well-known local figure. About the best-known amateur actress in Romford, regularly stars in the Romford Amateur Players’ shows. It will be a newspaper matter if she doesn’t turn up soon.”

  The sergeant looked down at the computer record.

  “Margaret Webster, known as Peggy. That rings a bell. Would that be the lady who starred in Hello, Dolly!?”

  “Very likely.”

  “Brilliant she was. Not the greatest voice in the world, but oodles of personality.”

  “That sounds like Peggy. Do you go to the Romford Players’ shows regularly?”

  “Not regularly, no. But word usually gets around when there’s something really good on. And this was top-notch. Good as the West End any day.”

  And this was enough to get the sergeant into the back room behind him and on the phone in low-voiced consultation with someone in the detectives’ central office. Five minutes later Graham was in an informal interview room talking to a lean, sharp-eyed man, Detective Sergeant Relf, who was taking down details over and above what Ted had given them a few days earlier.

  “Forty-three. Not the usual age for taking off with a bloke, but anything can happen—we learn that in this job. Somers was her maiden name, Webster the married one, is that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Husband no longer around?”

  “No—lives in Stevenage with a new wife who dislikes him having contact with his earlier family.”

  “That’s not unusual. And the children are in their teens, I see. That’s a frequent reason for middle-aged parents just downing tools and going away for a bit. For a bit of a break, you might say. Who’s looking after them?”

  “I am. They’re fine. I’m a sort of stepfather to them.”