The Mistress of Alderley

by Robert Barnard

  “The question is,” Sheila said, when they were beginning to slacken, “was she just totty?”

  “Olivia? Just totty as opposed to my successor?”

  “Yes.”

  Caroline thought.

  “I should think that for her it was a matter of a night or two only. For him—I don’t know. I realize now that I never knew him. And I don’t give a bugger!”

  Sheila was silent.

  “OK, that’s silly,” admitted Caroline. “Of course I give a bugger. Several buggers. But I hate them. Hate them for what they were doing, or going to do. Hate them for doing it to me. If you think I’m a raging egotist, so be it.”

  “Oh, but I don’t. I couldn’t. Your reactions are pretty much the same as mine, when I first got to know about his activities. That was quite early on in my marriage.” She looked quickly at Caroline. “I suppose you think I should have left him.”

  “I’m not the one to give marriage guidance. But yes—I think I do. The word ‘farmyard’ keeps coming into my head.”

  “Yes…. I suppose staying with him was a sort of seduction: I let myself come round to keeping the marriage together because I didn’t want to give up the sex, the lifestyle, the security. And I thought the children needed a father, and at that point he seemed a good one. These may be excuses, but there’s lots of truth in them. I do love my children, with all their…weaknesses.”

  “Guy?”

  “Yes, poor Guy. Currently in a custody cell. He’s always felt overshadowed, kept down, undervalued. I shouldn’t have said ‘their’ weaknesses. Helena is fine.”

  “Is Guy in serious trouble?”

  “Yes. Dealing, not just use.”

  “I think that’s what my children suspected.”

  “Typical of Guy that he never got beyond the intention of dealing. Thank God, of course. I intend to be around for him. The fact that he’s weak, trying to make a splash without an ounce of commercial nous, doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference.”

  “No—why should it?”

  “I intend to be around for him,” she repeated.

  “For all I know Olivia may be in trouble too. I intend to do nothing at all for her.”

  “She’s a lot older. You expect some kind of moral sense to develop during their twenties, if it hasn’t before.”

  “Moral sense? She doesn’t know what the term means. I feel such a failure. I can’t even blame Rick, her father. He wasn’t in the picture for more than her first two years. And I don’t believe in bad blood or nonsense like that. It was how I brought her up—though God knows I never went in for conduct like hers, so it wasn’t example that turned her this way.”

  She seemed to be heading back toward her old mood of self-flagellation, and Sheila pushed the cake stand in her direction and said, “Have one of these. You’ll feel better.” Caroline almost laughed at her faith in confectionery.

  “This is the end for me,” she said. “No more men, no more affairs, not even stable ones. That’s what I thought Marius’s and mine was. I thought, ‘I’m lousy at marriage. This suits me better.’ But the truth is, it has nothing to do with marriage. I’m just a lousy picker for any sort of relationship.”

  “I expect you’ll change your mind.”

  “I will not! What about you? Will you marry the baby’s father?”

  Sheila looked at her for a second or two, then burst out laughing.

  “Is that what he told you? That’s a new one! Let me tell you the truth. I have had the odd fling during our marriage, two, to be precise. The last one was ten years ago.”

  Caroline gaped.

  “You mean Marius was—”

  “Of course he was. My baby will be his posthumous child. He wanted another son. I resisted for ages, because I thought it was just disappointment with Guy. Not a good basis for bringing a late child into the world. In the end I gave way. Marius always got what he wanted…. Isay, I do hope it’s a girl.”

  “That will be a slap in the face for him. I think he really despised women, don’t you? Like Mr. Dombey. I once played the first Mrs. Dombey in a television adaptation. I died in the first five minutes of the first episode. But Marius was different from Dombey. He despised us even as he made love to us.”

  “I must say it never showed.”

  “No. But I bet he never thought of a daughter—or of any other woman, come to that—as his successor. I should think you’d be good at running a big firm, though.”

  “I’ve certainly never thought of myself as a business-woman,” said Sheila. “I quite like sitting on the boards of arts bodies: galleries, museums, orchestras, that sort of thing.”

  “Oh God! How can you! All those ghastly people—control freaks on ego trips…Still, if you can bear the sheer awfulness of that kind of person you would probably do well as a High Street tycoon.”

  Sheila shook her head.

  “I’ve got this bulge in my belly to take care of, and for the next few years it will be a full-time job.”

  “We both have burdens. You’ve got a baby—and I don’t pretend to envy you. I’ve got to find somewhere to live, and start sucking up to people to revive my flagging—or currently nonexistent—career.”

  “Did you make any friends around Alderley?” Sheila asked, genuinely interested in the social position of a mistress in the twenty-first century.

  “Oh yes. Best of all, Jack—Sir John Mortyn-Crosse. He is a really good friend, and tried to warn me. Then there’s the rector—well, I thought he was becoming a friend, but I begin to think he was just a time-server.”

  “Is Sir John unmarried?”

  “Widower. But no, there’s no romantic involvement. He would be a financial drain on me rather than vice versa, and he farts the whole time.”

  “I can’t see that’s an insuperable problem. In an age when organs and combinations of organs are transplanted wholesale, flatulence must be curable.”

  “Perhaps none of the great medical minds have taken it up. Anyway, I’ve told you: I’ve done with men.”

  “Then you’d better get your finances in order. What provision had Marius made?”

  “Ten thousand pounds and two months’ rent. That ‘two’ hurt. I never thought Marius a cheapskate.”

  “He was, though—always excepting where his own comfort and convenience were concerned. And, of course, he would never compromise his reputation as a rich and successful entrepreneur.”

  “Oh, if only I had him here, to give him a piece of my mind!”

  “To be fair to him he did take account of inflation. The last one got a payoff of ten thousand too, but the one before that got eight. That’s on a par with the two months as a sign of…let’s be kind to the dead and say ‘caution.’ So you’re going back to stage and TV work, are you?”

  “If I can get any. What other career options are open?”

  “I believe the Little Theatre in Doncaster is looking for a manager.”

  “Manager? Be the big panjandrum? I don’t know if I could do that. It would mean orchestrating all the giant egos into one harmonious whole—draining, I should imagine.”

  “If you don’t have faith in yourself, nobody else will. The point is, you’d be in charge so you could shun the giant egos—not give them engagements.”

  “True. So no job for Rick.”

  “Who’s Rick?”

  “My ghastly first husband. Exists on a diet of self-love. He was around last Saturday: he was at the performance, and he and his awful partner were at the party afterwards. I wonder if the police have been on to him.”

  “Should they be?”

  Caroline thought, clinging to the idea, but not wholly convinced.

  “Perhaps he found out about her and Marius. Though if he bumped off everyone who deflowered—or should that be deadheaded?—his precious daughter he’d be a serial killer of Harold Shipman proportions.” But another thought had lodged in her mind. “You know, a small theater company in Doncaster doesn’t sound such a bad idea. The children
could keep at the same school. And South Yorkshire has quite nice houses within my price range.”

  “Doubtless that was why Marius chose Alderley,” said Sheila dryly. “I’ll put in a word in the right quarters. Can’t promise anything. I’m only a London gadfly in the arts scene. They’d want an actor-manager, of course.”

  “I’d prefer that myself…. Isn’t it odd, us two getting on well like this?”

  Sheila shook her head.

  “Not odd for me. I got on well with all the mistresses of Marius that I met. I was going back and forth in the police station—seeing Guy, his lawyers, various policemen, and I saw you sitting in the waiting area. When you rushed out I was hanging around on the off chance of meeting up with you, after I’d had a not-very-satisfactory talk with Guy. I thought you might have been living with Marius under an illusion—all his women were—and I thought from your look that you might have learned the truth. Since it was unlikely that I’d see you at the funeral—”

  Caroline erupted.

  “Unlikely? Bloody impossible! Since I don’t like making scenes, and since I couldn’t sit silent when hypocrisies were being spouted, I shall stay well away. Actually, I can’t understand why you don’t do the same.”

  “You forget, I loved him.”

  “Once.”

  “Still. Always. Why else would I be having his child at the age of forty-three? Why else would I have stayed with him through all his affairs and adventures? It wasn’t really the stability and the sex and the perks of marriage. I loved him, and I think he loved me. Perhaps it was that, that always made me curious about his women…. Could you do something for me?”

  “I’d like to. You’ve been very kind to me.”

  “Do you have any clout at the Grand Theatre? Could you get me a ticket for the next performance of Forza? I’d like to see your daughter.”

  “Olivia? For the voice? That’s wonderful. Or because she was his last mistress?”

  “Or intended to be. That more than anything, I suppose. Saturday was one of the few times that Marius failed to get what he wanted.”

  Coming back to the station on Wednesday evening after a long and serious interview with the manager of the Shorn Lamb—one of many he had had over recent years about drug dealing in his pub—Charlie pulled up when he saw a smart and substantial car arriving. It was the profile of the woman in the passenger seat that struck him: it reminded him of the picture accompanying a biographical piece on Olivia Fawley that had appeared a couple of days before in the Times Arts section. When she got out of the car he was sure: a calf-length fur coat (a touch of bravado, this, under the circumstances) and a handsome but hard face. The driver leapt out, and bustled round to usher her toward the public entrance to the police headquarters; he was a bulky young man whose manner was protective, as if he were professing an exclusive right to the young lady that the lady herself in no way accepted or acknowledged.

  When Charlie went through the waiting area she was shaking hands with her solicitor and telling her companion, in the tones people used to use with servants, not to wait.

  “The new Callas is awaiting us downstairs,” he announced to Oddie when he got to the detective squad’s office. “Come to make a full confession and explanation.”

  “Hmmm. Callas went for tycoons too, didn’t she?”

  “At the highest possible level, of course. But Onassis looked like a toad in smart gear. Fleetwood was a prince beside him…. So why didn’t you share your theories about Olivia Fleetwood, eh?”

  Oddie looked his sergeant straight in the eye. He was prepared for this one.

  “Have there never been times in other cases we’ve shared when you’ve hugged a theory to yourself, to bring it out triumphantly when you’ve had time to test it and find that it stands up?”

  “Well, just possibly, from time to time.”

  “In those cases it was a young detective earning his spurs by making a bit of a splash with a bold theory. In my case it was an old hand showing that the gray cells haven’t entirely given up functioning.”

  “You had the distinct advantage of having seen the bloody opera,” grumbled Charlie. “Run it past me, will you? Why is she offstage for so long?”

  “She and her lover get separated at the end of the first scene. They each think the other dead, and at the end of the first part, at interval, she becomes a hermit in a cave near a monastery. After that we don’t see her until the very end, when she and lover-boy and vengeful brother all meet up again. I checked up on most of the later parts of the opera on CDs. Thirty-five quid they cost me. I can see what they mean about the record companies running a racket.”

  “So this Olivia, now awaiting our pleasure, as she waited for Fleetwood’s, had—what?—an hour and a half for hanky-panky with him, if he’d turned up?”

  “Almost, if you include interval. Over an hour if she left it till the second half before she slipped out.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Let’s go and hear her own account of it, shall we?”

  Olivia greeted them with regal aplomb and marched with them to the interview room, leaving her solicitor scuttling along behind them like a stressed-out poodle. Olivia took possession of a chair, slipping out of her fur so that it provided her with a decorative surround. Her lawyer, normally one of the city’s more effective and conscientious practitioners, sat nervously beside her, conscious, as were all the others in the room, that nothing he was going to say was going to have any influence over the star of this interview.

  “I gather,” said Oddie, “that you want to amend your account of last Saturday night.”

  “Yes,” said Olivia in a hard, neutral voice. “Marius and I had a date. He had organized it at the Crescent Hotel. I went along at around twenty to nine. I waited until after half past nine, then I went back to the theater. I was put out, of course. But now I know why he didn’t turn up.”

  “Maybe you do,” agreed Oddie. “Time of death is still a rough estimate, and will probably remain one. But can we go back a little? How was this assignation set up?”

  Olivia gave a magnificent shrug, as if she were about to heave a shot.

  “Does it matter? We both knew we were interested, from looks. I was at Alderley regularly from the time rehearsals started and almost always at weekends. There were plenty of looks. It was only a question of who made the first move.”

  “And who did?”

  “Oh, Marius, of course. It’s always best to let the other make the first move. And then if Mother found out and kicked up rough, I’d just point out that it was Marius who propositioned me.”

  “It didn’t worry you, taking your mother’s lover?”

  “I didn’t take him, I had him—or would have. It was never going to be anything else than a bit of short-term fun. Why should it worry me?”

  “Some people might have been concerned about the morality of it.”

  “I don’t think it’s a sphere where morality enters in.”

  Oddie kept hold of his eyebrows, for fear of a stratospheric ascent.

  “So tell me about his first move, and how the thing was set up.”

  Olivia pouted with boredom.

  “The first verbal move was one weekend, three or four weeks ago. We passed each other on the landing, and he just said, ‘When is it to be, then?’ I just said I’d let him know. I thought about it, then wrote to him at his office. I said the first night would be appropriate, and gave him an approximate time. Sex during the performance does wonders for my voice—thinking about it before, remembering it afterwards. I said I’d leave all the arrangements to him. He told me the details on the phone: ‘Don’t judge by appearances’ he said, and well he might! I confirmed them in a note, because he asked me to—typical businessman. After that I was sent a barrage of love letters, including one sent to Alderley when he knew I would be there. He loved living dangerously, that I guessed. Frankly, I wasn’t so impressed by the letters themselves, because I suspected he’d sent similar letters to all his
women. Some of the phrases didn’t seem to apply. I’m not a ‘beautiful and subtle English rose.’ And anyway, I don’t go for that sort of crap.”

  “What do you go for?”

  “I’m in it for the sex. If that’s good, I’m happy.”

  “I see…. Well, that leads us naturally to Saturday night, doesn’t it?”

  “I’ve just told you about Saturday night.”

  “We need a little more detail than that.” Oddie suspected she had found the evening embarrassing or shaming at the time, and he was glad to force her to go through it again. “Let me take you through it. You say you left the theater at about twenty to nine. By which door?”

  “The big side doors used for scenery.”

  “So no confirmation from the stage doorkeeper?”

  “No. And I came back the same way. There’s a small inset door that’s usually unlocked.”

  “You knew the way to the Crescent?”

  “I’ve got a Leeds A to Z, for shopping purposes. I’d looked up North Street. I was surprised when I saw the Crescent.”

  “Pretty run-down,” said Oddie.

  “That doesn’t begin to describe it. Seedy. Scungy. Positively creepy. And the awful jerk in reception spilling out of his suit didn’t do much for it. But I remembered Marius’s remark about not judging by appearances.”

  “So you got the key and went up to the room.”

  “Yes. I unlocked the door, then just stood in the doorway and laughed for joy. I heard a stair creaking, and realized that creep was listening to see how I reacted. So I went in and shut the door. It was fabulous—just like a stage set for Intermezzo or something like that.” Oddie and Charlie both tried to look as if they knew what she was talking about. “It was so smart, so in period and imaginative. He’d really been clever.”