Murder Takes the Stage

by Amy Myers

  ‘Including Sandy’s name?’ Peter asked.

  ‘I’m not that stupid, but then neither is she. She’s highly intelligent in some ways, and I now realize that from what I did tell her she could guess who I thought was responsible for Tom’s death. I’m not proud of myself.’

  ‘It could have happened anyway,’ Peter replied. ‘At least this way she’ll be in safe custody. There’ll be plenty of evidence that she killed Sandy, whereas there would be difficulty in proving she killed Joan Watson.’

  ‘I tried to warn you.’ Harold looked helplessly at Georgia.

  ‘It was her who set fire to the barn?’ she exclaimed in horror. ‘I thought it was Sandy who organized it.’

  ‘No. I suspect she got the idea into her head and told herself she was doing it for Tom.’

  Georgia shuddered. ‘I suppose we were lucky it wasn’t Medlars.’

  ‘It might have been next time.’

  Pamela had been very quiet. ‘How did she kill my mother?’ she asked Peter. ‘I need to know. I liked Cherry.’

  Peter looked as if he had no taste for this, but it had to be done. ‘She probably thought Tom would be pleased at what she had done. From her viewpoint she had solved their problem so that Tom and she could get married. She might not even have realized that Tom would be blamed. She was entirely focused on her own desire to be with Tom. Joan probably made fun of Cherry as she did her husband, and even if Cherry had gone with the purpose of pleading with Joan, that could have been the last straw. She seized the knife and poured out all her hate on the unsuspecting Joan, who had no doubt dismissed her as a nonentity.’

  ‘Mistake,’ muttered Harold.

  ‘My theory is that she had deliberately sent Tom to another pub so that he would wait for her there. If they’d gone to the Black Lion and she had then made an excuse to leave early, then Tom would have gone home straight away. Instead, she put in a brief appearance at the Black Lion, then made an excuse and left. When Tom came home, he found her waiting at the foot of the steps to tell him all about it. He rushed up to the flat with her following him and found Joan’s body. She told him that she had done it for him, so he believed that he was to blame. How could he give her away to the police? Cherry was probably still looking at him with those trusting, hopeful eyes, even though she had committed terrible murder – for him. Tom felt he had to go into action on her behalf, however repelled he was by what she done. He probably gave her one of Joan’s coats to hide any blood spatters on her that her parents might spot and bundled her down the steps to the yard. That’s when his neighbour spotted Joan, as she thought. Then he called the police. He’d done what he could. He took the knife out of the wound so that his prints would be on it. The blood might have begun to coagulate by then, but even if not, it wouldn’t matter if the blood spattered him. He realized he had no alibi, because if he asked the people at the pub he’d been in to confirm his presence there, it would be clear that Cherry had not turned up, which would automatically put her under suspicion. So he said he had been in the Black Lion and awaited the inevitable – which he might have thought was only right, as he had been the cause of her actions. Tom was acquitted but then realized that his love for Cherry had completely vanished because of her actions. He had no wish to marry her. He decided instead to find a new life and returned only once on Pamela’s birthday. Meanwhile, Cherry waited on in vain.’ Peter paused. ‘Is that right, Harold?’

  ‘Nearly,’ Harold replied, stony faced.

  ‘And the rest?’

  He sighed. ‘I’ve told you most of it. What I didn’t include was that Tom came to me in London not only to ask about Sandy but about Cherry’s whereabouts. He’d found out that she’d married me but that we were divorced. He seemed worried when I said she had returned to Broadstairs. He didn’t want to run into her by chance. After we were married, I began to suspect she might have killed Joan, and once that idea was in my head, it killed the marriage. I couldn’t stand her, but I still felt an obligation towards her. I still did – up until today, and perhaps even now. I wanted to warn you off with my letter to you, Luke, because I knew she wasn’t functioning on all cylinders. When Ken died, I was terrified she’d been responsible, but that isn’t the case, is it?’

  ‘No, Sandy organized that because he was getting too near the truth of Tom’s return and murder, and once she had guessed that Sandy had killed Tom, there’s no doubt in my mind at least that she murdered him in revenge.’

  ‘You didn’t have it right, Peter. Nor you, Georgia,’ Harold continued. ‘Cherry’s not a soft little thing with a blind spot: she’s dangerously amoral. You two were safe until it looked as if you might get too inquisitive. Then I think the idea of burning down your barn, Luke, seemed a great idea to her.’ A pause. ‘I blame myself. I couldn’t have stopped the death of your mother, Pamela, but once I realized, perhaps then I should have spoken. Salvaged Tom’s name if not his life.’

  ‘It’s not your fault, Harold,’ Pamela said.

  He looked at her sadly. ‘It’s Nobody’s Fault. Isn’t that what Dickens was originally going to call Little Dorrit? When does nobody become somebody?’

  ‘Come to Medlars for dinner, Peter,’ Georgia urged on the way home. Luke had gone back in his own car, but now that she felt up to driving, she could take Peter back. ‘Stay overnight if you prefer.’

  ‘You know, I think I will,’ Peter said. ‘I’m exhausted.’ He looked very drawn. ‘But you look all in too, Georgia. Finding Sandy’s body like that was a shock that takes time to get over. You and Luke would be better on your own.’

  ‘No. We don’t have to talk it about this evening, but we should all be together. Luke agrees with me.’

  Peter quickly gave in, so thankfully it was clear where his preferences lay. ‘Let me pick up a bag then, if you don’t mind the detour to Haden Shaw.’

  She drove along through the village and parked outside his house. All seemed dark and quiet, and she longed to be safely at Medlars. She watched as Peter swung himself out of the car and into his wheelchair. He was beginning to move towards the door when she saw a figure crossing the road.

  ‘Someone seems to want you,’ she called to her father as the smartly dressed woman hurried towards them.

  ‘Mr Marsh? I’ve been waiting for you in the pub, hoping you’d come back. My name is Josephine Mantreau.’

  ‘Mr Marsh? I’ve been waiting for you in the pub, hoping you’d come back. My name is Josephine Mantreau.’

  EPILOGUE

  A summer’s evening, a garden in Prague and Mozart’s music. Not 1994, but today, although Georgia found it hard to remember that. In this glorious setting with Josephine, Peter, Luke and Janie around her, it was easy to believe that it was 1994 and that Rick was but a puff of wind away. Mozart had composed and played his music here in the gardens of Bertramka; he had played skittles on the grass with his friends the Dušeks, relaxing in this tranquil green place, where sloping lawns and shading trees formed almost a theatre in themselves.

  ‘If we could meet in Bertramka,’ Josephine had said to them on that evening at Medlars two weeks earlier, ‘I would hope to know the ending of the story. Rick and I spent our last evening together there. We made arrangements to meet again, but he did not come. Your letter to me told me why at last. I still do not know the whole truth, but I shall shortly. Please, please come to Bertramka. It would give me great happiness and I hope spare you a little of your sadness.’

  And now they were here.

  ‘Come,’ Josephine said as the last notes of the orchestra died away in the Bertramka gardens. ‘The audience is leaving and I think it is time.’

  ‘Do you know the end of the story now?’ Georgia asked.

  ‘I believe so.’ She led them through the house to the Sala Terrena, which overlooked the terrace and gardens. ‘It’s warmer inside and I have arranged for us to sit there for a while.’

  Of course. Josephine Mantreau was one of the most famous sopranos in the world now, but looking at her
delicate features and sensitive face, Georgia saw only the young French girl on the brink of her career whom Rick had known.

  ‘I always think of Rick as Tam.’ Josephine flushed. ‘Jokes are always so silly when you look back at them later. I was Pamina, he was Tamino – Pam and Tam. I knew his name was Rick, but not his surname or exactly where he lived. That seems strange, I know, but we had little time together and spoke only of the future. He was not a trained musician, but Tam had such love for music. He understood it, and he understood what it meant to me. Our time together was very short. We had perhaps four days together in Brittany and fell in love. Do you believe that?’

  Oh yes, Georgia did, now that she had met Josephine.

  ‘I had a singing engagement in Prague,’ Josephine explained. ‘I wanted Tam to see Bertramka, for it is still possible to believe that Mozart was here, although two hundred years have passed.’

  Georgia could see she was speaking with an effort, but when she made a sympathetic move towards her, Josephine shook her head. ‘Do not think of me. It is I who should think of you now. I had many appointments in Prague, but Rick wanted to see more of Carnac, so we agreed to meet in a week’s time in Prague.’

  ‘And he came?’

  ‘Of course. We were in love,’ Josephine said simply. ‘I’m married now, as you perhaps know, but then I was twenty-two and single. You love differently at that age. Intensely and forever, or so you believe, and perhaps it is true. Tam and I had three days, three nights together, the most magical of my life.’

  Georgia was remembering her brother. Rick of the bespectacled and gentle face, and a smile she would never forget.

  ‘And then?’ Peter asked, his voice choked.

  ‘It was all so foolish,’ Josephine continued. ‘I had to fly to Venice for the next stage of my training. Rick said he needed to return to England to look for a job and also –’ Josephine put her hand out to Georgia – ‘because it was his sister’s birthday and he had promised to be there. He felt guilty because he had not telephoned as he usually did. Everything else went from his mind, he said. It was the music – and, I think and hope, me.’

  Georgia was appalled. She’d forgotten that. How could she have done so? She had been expecting Rick to be present at her birthday. Her surprise, her shock, when he had not come back, the first suspicions that something was wrong. The intervening years had wiped out that memory, but now the misery flooded back in full force, even though it brought a sharp happiness that he had been thinking of his family.

  ‘So we parted. Where shall we next meet? I asked him,’ Josephine continued. ‘But this is the worst part, although then it was fun. We were Pam and Tam. Let’s do this properly, he said. Let’s really be kitsch. Let’s meet at the top of the Empire State Building, like the Ingrid Bergman film An Affair to Remember. America was far too expensive to fly to, I objected. Then where? he asked. Together we thought of all the silly places we could imagine and decided that nothing would be more kitsch than meeting at the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.’

  Just like Rick, Georgia thought. Oh, just like him. He thought the Eiffel Tower a monstrosity, a blot on a lovely city.

  ‘So we fixed a day in September,’ Josephine continued.

  ‘But Rick wasn’t there,’ Georgia filled in for her.

  ‘No.’ Josephine looked at them helplessly. ‘I cannot tell you how dreadful that was. First disbelief, then the thought that there had been a mistake in the day and then the awful truth. He wasn’t coming because he did not really love me; it had been a holiday romance. He had not been serious, and that is why An Affair to Remember had been in his mind, because one of the lovers did not arrive. Rick was letting me down lightly. I was furious, you see. So unhappy.’

  ‘In the Bergman film there was good reason for her not to arrive,’ Luke pointed out.

  ‘Yes, but I did not think of it that way. All I thought was that Tam did not love me. I was so unhappy. I went back to Venice, but he did not contact me there.’

  ‘You didn’t try to trace his address in England?’ Georgia could not help asking.

  ‘I was too proud. I was miserable and angry and hurt. I vowed that never would anyone betray me like that again. I closed my mind to Tam and concentrated only on my singing, and then I met Henri, who became my husband. When you are young and in love, you think only of yourself and your love. You do not think of the other person’s view. That comes only with time and confidence; it is love on a different level.’

  ‘So you never knew . . .’ Peter looked unable to take all this in.

  ‘Not until your letter came. Then I realized at last that something had happened to Rick. He did love me. So these past two weeks I have been very busy. I have looked up all the air accidents and road accidents that he might have been involved in, even though they would surely have led to his identification. I had to help you find out what happened – I owed that to you, and to myself. But then I came across the sinking of a boat on the Danube. Many lives were lost, and some bodies not found or identified. Then, only then, I remembered Rick saying idly that he had never been to Salzburg, and I thought that instead of flying home immediately he might have hitch-hiked down to Austria across the Danube at Linz and taken a boat trip while he was there.’

  ‘Have you followed it up?’ Georgia’s voice didn’t seem to be her own; she was somewhere else, with Rick. A boat trip sounded so like him.

  ‘Not yet.’ Josephine spread her hands out towards them as if she could embrace them all. ‘You might have been my family had Rick lived. So I dared to hope we might take that last journey together, just as we have here tonight. I would like that. He would like that.’