“Can you give me the precise dates for all this?” Kathy asked.
“I’ll have to send for his file.”
“Thank you. And could you also get any information you might have on one of your former pupils, Angela Hannaford?”
“Angela . . . the poor girl who was murdered a few weeks ago? Oh no!”
The headmistress stared at Kathy in horror. “You don’t think . . . ?”
Kathy saw the idea form in her mind, and saw her accept it immediately as being only too possible.
“He would have known Angela, would he?”
“Yes, there’s absolutely no question of that. Angela was one of the bright girls who were very nearly knocked off the rails by Stafford’s illness. She would have been in the lower sixth during his last year here. Fortunately she recovered her stride and did really quite well in her A-levels in the following year. You’re still looking, are you? For whoever . . . ?”
“Oh yes. We’re still looking.”
KATHY DROVE BACK TO the Orpington station and collected a young uniformed constable to go with her to pick up Stafford.
The house was the oldest and largest in its street, a late-Victorian Gothic mansion which Stafford had inherited from his father, who had acquired it when it was still surrounded by farmland and woods. Now it was an anachronism, standing back darkly in its garden from the jostle of suburban red brick which had long since overwhelmed its rural setting. Its brooding character, reinforced by the outlandish figure of a giant monkey-puzzle tree in the front lawn, gave it a certain notoriety among the local children, which their occasional sighting of the formidably gaunt and abrupt owner had done nothing to dispel.
Ruth and Mary were at the end of the gravel drive, dragging armfuls of costumes out of the open doors of a Citroën parked next to Ruth’s estate-car.
“Kathy! What a surprise,” Ruth cried. “Are you after us, or Stafford? He’s just popped round to the corner shop for a packet of tea. He told us to go on in.”
Although she had been there many times before, there was a distinct diffidence about the way Ruth opened the front door and led them in, as if she wasn’t sure how the empty house, cool and dark, would receive them.
“Stafford said he’d left us a rack downstairs,” she whispered, and opened a door to one side of the large hall. She felt inside for the light switch, and an ancient pendant fitting came to life, throwing a dim amber glow over the interior.
“Ah!” She sounded relieved. The room was crowded with furniture, with barely enough room for the metal clothes-rack on castors jammed just inside the door. Kathy smelled the mouldering fabrics and her heart sank. How could anyone live in this?
They pulled the rack out into the hall and began loading it up with the clothes from the cars. When the last had been brought in Ruth rubbed her hands. “There should be an ironing-board in the kitchen. Maryanne and I will give them a bit of a press, Kathy.”
“Can I do anything?”
“Well, we’re short of hangers. There’ll be some in the attic. And Stafford said we have some old army greatcoats up there. We need one or two to hang behind the door on the set. Black or grey, not khaki, if we have them.”
Kathy nodded and made for the stairs. At the first-floor landing she took her time before going on up to the attic, looking inside each of the rooms. The first, heavy with the smell of mildewed paper, was piled high with stacks of books and boxes haphazardly stuffed with newspapers. The second was a large bedroom, crammed with three differently styled wardrobes and matching dressing-tables, as well as a high, quilted bed. Then came the bathroom, ancient fittings and cracked green tiles, from which Kathy rapidly retreated.
A geriatric, balding rocking-horse stood inside an alcove, guarding a narrow stair leading up to a panelled door above. The door was locked, but the key was in place. She turned it and stepped inside.
A ghostly department store filled the gloomy space beneath the roof. Line upon line of eccentric cast-offs donated by former members of SADOS and their deceased relatives hung from rafters and joists. Flares, plus-fours and tails were suspended alongside overblown ballroom gowns, A-line frocks, and flappers’ beads.
Over to the side, beneath the two dormer windows and extending around the narrow eaves to left and right, were trunks and chests of various types. Kathy opened them one by one, discovering hoards of shoes, hats, umbrellas, and canes.
She was kneeling over a trunk whose lid had been stained by a leak in the slate roof above when she heard a sound behind her. She stood up quickly, almost banging her head on the joists, and turned to face the ranks of clothes. Stafford Nesbit was there, staring at her, something in his hand.
“Have you found what you’re looking for?” he said, his voice harsh.
She said nothing, feeling her heart pounding from the shock of seeing him there.
“My nemesis,” he said, as if to himself.
“What?”
“You, Kathy Kolla. My nemesis. Goddess of retribution and vengeance.”
He raised the thing in his hand, and Kathy held her breath, trying to think which way to jump if he came for her, until she saw that it was only an old wooden coat hanger he was holding. He hooked it on the rack beside him.
“What are you looking for?” he demanded.
“Greatcoats.”
“Ah. I thought you might be hunting for Zoë Bagnall.”
“Is she here?” Kathy said lightly. “You seem to have almost everything else.”
“I’m a hoarder. I keep everything. It’s my way of coming to terms with the past.”
“I’m the opposite.”
“Yes, I know. You keep nothing, I understand. Not even memories. Equally pathological, I should say.”
“Memories?”
“You wiped the memory of your father from your mind. I find that extraordinary.”
“That’s not true . . .”
“Is that because you felt so much guilt? They say that the people whom a suicide leaves behind feel tremendous guilt.”
“Stafford, I’d like you to come back to Orpington police station with me now. There are things I have to ask you.”
“Ah yes.” He didn’t seem surprised. He stared at her for a moment with his big, piercing eyes, slightly watery under the light from the dormer window. Then he stepped back and made a theatrical sweep of his arm.
“No,” Kathy said. “You lead the way.”
When they walked out of the front door on to the driveway, the uniformed policeman stepped forward and grabbed Stafford’s arm. It was an unnecessary, clumsy gesture, which made Stafford suddenly appear awkward and humiliated. Kathy caught the expression on Ruth’s face, horrified.
KATHY WAITED UNTIL BROCK arrived, reluctant to begin. She hoped, in fact, that he would take over the interrogation, but when he bustled in the first thing he said was, “I want you to question him, Kathy. Just you. I’ll stay outside and watch.”
“He respects you, Brock. Don’t you think . . .”
“You have some kind of rapport with him, Kathy. I’ve noticed.”
“You think it’s because I look like them, don’t you? Female, blonde.”
“That could be. Play on that. Pitch it on a personal level.”
Nesbit was clutching his temple in his long bony hands as if in intense prayer, and didn’t look up when she came into the room. She opened the file she was carrying and spread the photographs of Angela Hannaford out on the table in front of him, then sat down.
“We showed you these pictures a few days ago, Stafford, and you said you didn’t recognize the woman. Do you want to change your mind?”
“No.” His head shook, still protected by its cage of fingers.
“Look at them, please.”
He pulled his hands away finally, and stared at the pictures for some time.
“I don’t remember ever seeing her before.” His voice seemed deeper, slightly hoarse, from a cold perhaps, or from shouting at the cast.
“Yet she was a pupil a
t Sundridge Grammar for eight years, and a student of yours from 1984 to ’87. Throughout the first term of ’87 she was sitting in front of you, in your classes, for five hours each week. Do you deny that?”
He frowned and lowered his eyes.
“You marked her essays, discussed the set books with her. She even took part in two school plays you were responsible for. It isn’t possible that you don’t know her, Stafford. Why are you lying to me about it? Why would you want to deny it now, now that we know?”
He kept his eyes lowered, avoiding hers.
“Where did you spot her, on September the eighth, that night you went to the National Theatre? Was it in the foyer? During the interval? Or afterwards, on Waterloo station? Where was it?”
He gave no reply.
“Stafford,” Kathy said quietly, “this is no good. You have to say something. We can’t let you go unless you explain yourself.”
He looked up suddenly in alarm. “I shall have to be at the Three Crowns tonight, Kathy. You know they can’t manage without me.”
“That depends on you.”
He shook his head slowly. “You may be right, about this girl. I don’t know.”
“How could you not know? You saw her almost every day for several years.”
“When my wife died, I became depressed. My doctor gave me pills. As I got worse, he tried different things. Finally”—he sighed deeply—“they put me in hospital for several months. I was heavily sedated for a time, and they tried new forms of treatment. Afterwards, I found I had forgotten things, people, from that period. Sometimes a man or a woman stops me in the street and says ‘You were my teacher’ and I can’t remember them.”
“Are you on medication now?”
“Yes.” He took a small packet out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her.
“How long have you been on this?”
“There have been various things over the years. I tried, a couple of years ago, to stop taking anything, but it upset the balance. We had to start all over again.”
“Her name is Angela Hannaford, and her home is in Petts Wood. You knew that, didn’t you, Stafford?”
He shook his head wearily. “No, Kathy, no. You’re wrong.”
Kathy glanced over at the mirror on the side wall, behind which she knew Brock was watching them. She sighed. “Just now, in your attic, you said you kept everything from the past, but now you’re saying that isn’t so. You’re saying that you’ve been erasing your memories too, like me, is that right?”
“It’s not the same. I had a breakdown, I was on drugs.”
“What about before that? You had a child, by a woman who wasn’t your wife. Is that right?”
He frowned angrily. “Ruth Sparkes’s gossip!”
“She thought it was a romantic story, Stafford. A sad story. I think she’s right. Tell me about it.”
“I shall do no such thing! It’s got nothing whatsoever to do with you, or your case.”
“Have you kept a picture of her?”
“Mind your own business, young woman!”
“Oh, come on.” Kathy smiled at him. “You were poking about in my business, weren’t you? Pumping my aunt? And you were right, I have tried to obliterate my memories of my father. And perhaps I do feel guilty. Perhaps I still hate him for that. Do you hate her?”
“No . . . no.”
“She gave away your child, didn’t she? The only child you ever had. You must feel angry, and guilty.”
Kathy was aware of a squeaking noise. He was rubbing his shoes together in agitation under the table. “I’m not going to discuss this.”
“She must have been quite pretty.”
“She wasn’t quite pretty,” he exploded suddenly. “She was very, very beautiful.”
“Yes. What did she play?”
“Ophelia. She was a wonderful Ophelia.”
“Ah yes. With long hair, I’ll bet. Longer than mine?”
“Yes.”
“But the same colour as mine. Fair.”
“Yes.”
“What was her name?”
“I am not going to discuss this further.”
“If you told us her name, we might be able to trace her. We might even be able to help you find your son. That would be something, wouldn’t it?”
“No! You have no right to talk about this. No right whatsoever.”
“To see your lost child again, Stafford!”
He stared at her with pain in his eyes.
“But to do that, we would have to know how Angela died. You must tell us that, first.”
“I . . . don’t want to see her again.”
“Did you kill her, Stafford? Did you kill Angela, and imagine that you were killing Ophelia?”
“NO!”
Kathy got abruptly to her feet and left the room. It was an uncalculated move which surprised her as much as Stafford. She simply felt an overpowering need to be out of his presence. She stood in the corridor outside, leaning back against the wall, feeling her heart racing unpleasantly out of control. Brock came around the corner.
“All right?”
“I’m not getting anywhere, Brock.”
“Nonsense. You got the colour of the hair. You’re doing fine. Bren’s gone to arrange the search of his house. Change the subject. Talk about the play or something. Just keep him talking.”
KATHY RETURNED CARRYING A tray with mugs of tea. She sat down and offered one to him, but he made no move to accept it.
“That speech of the Captain’s, in the play,” she said. “What you called the ‘all my enemies’ speech. Do you know the one I mean?”
He nodded, eyes heavy, so that she wondered if he’d taken one of his pills while she was out.
“It seemed to me that it was an example of . . . is it hyperbole? Is that the word?”
“Hyperbole . . .” He nodded, sluggish. “Yes.”
“Completely over the top. Exaggeration to the point of caricature. I couldn’t understand anyone feeling like that. Not really. My colleague, on the other hand—a man—seemed to find it perfectly understandable. I wonder if Strindberg would only make sense to a man?”
He gave her a thin smile. “Strindberg had trouble with the feminists,” he said. “They disliked some short stories he wrote about married life, and he believed they were plotting against him. Perhaps he was goading them with an absurd caricature of how men are supposed to think.”
“It’s a speech about men’s hatred of women, isn’t it? My colleague said that the man who murdered Angela probably feels like that. Do you think so?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“Strindberg was quite disturbed himself, wasn’t he? He had periods when he was consumed by insane jealousy. You can see it in that scene at the end of act two—a husband throwing a lighted lamp at his wife!”
Stafford gave her a secretive smile. “It’s considered to be almost impossible to stage that scene convincingly, but we shall see. Strindberg got the idea from England. He understood that it was quite common for English husbands to throw lamps at their wives. In one of his letters he said that this wasn’t surprising, considering what English women were like.”
Kathy smiled, then said very quietly, “Whatever possessed you to put on this play, Stafford? What are you trying to tell us?”
“Do you find it disturbing, Kathy?” He leaned forward suddenly and hissed at her. “Perhaps the title is disturbing for you, if, as you say, you hate your father.”
“I didn’t say that . . .”
“Oh, but you did. And I know why.”
“Do you?” She couldn’t stop herself asking him, “Why?”
“Not because he left you and your mother bankrupt; not because you had to leave your comfortable big house in the home counties and go to live in that miserable little terrace in Sheffield with your aunt and uncle; and not because your mother died of shame within two years of his suicide.”
Kathy stared at him, shocked. Aunt Mary had told him everything.
>
“No, the reason you hate him is because he left without giving you the slightest indication that he cared about you. He left without saying sorry.”
For a moment Kathy was speechless. “That is ridiculous,” she said finally.
He turned in his seat sideways to her, folded his arms, and said, “And now I should like to speak to my solicitor.”
BREN RETURNED IN MID-AFTERNOON, looking flushed, sweat stains darkening his shirt around his armpits and down his back.
“That house is unbelievable. You could be in there for a week and still be discovering things. But we’ve had the dogs go through every room, from cellar to attic, and all through the garden, and we’ve come up with nothing. No Doc Martens, no bayonets, no condoms, and no Zoë Bagnall. Plenty of Leichner make-up materials, but you’d expect that.”
“Did you come across a diary?”
“No, nothing like that. Seems like just about everything else, though. He’s kept everything. National Geographic going back thirty years, scrapbooks of theatre programmes and reviews going back to the 1940s, his dead wife’s clothing, everything.”
“I spoke to some of our medical people about his claim of memory lapses,” Brock said. “The general consensus is that it’s possible he could be telling the truth. Depends on what they were giving him and whose opinion you asked.”
“He could just have forgotten teaching Angela?”
“Especially if she was associated with the most painful period, at the end, just before he was admitted to hospital. Which seems to be the case.”
Bren shook his head. “What do we do, then?”
Brock looked at Kathy. “You haven’t said much, Kathy. What do you think? You know him best.”
“I don’t know.” She was still burning from his words and from the knowledge that the others had been outside the room, listening, recording. “I really don’t know if he would be capable of it,” she said abruptly, but she thought of his rages at the rehearsals, and the look on the headmistress’s face, and knew she wasn’t being entirely honest.
All My Enemies Page 22
