‘Maybe they were afraid that she’d seen them – decided they couldn’t risk leaving her alive.’
There was a silence as they pictured the scene. When he thought they’d had time enough, Scott said, ‘It’s not the only theory, of course. It’s quite possible that Marina actually was the intended target. We know she was the target of some bullying at school – nothing violent as far as we’ve been told, but we’re checking the school records to see what other pupils were out of school that afternoon.’
‘I wanted to ask, sir,’ the same persistent DC said, ‘what she was doing leaving school at one o’clock. Was it a half day or something?’
‘No, she went home early because she was concerned about her mother, who she thought would be at home with her sprained ankle. She did this quite often, apparently.’
‘And the killer could have known that.’
‘They could.’ Now was the moment. He turned to Paula Powell. ‘Paula, you’ve got an issue about the teacher who gave her permission to go home, haven’t you – Eleanor Gray?’
Powell coloured. ‘I did wonder if she might have been involved. At first I thought she’d been just slack in sending Marina home without checking that there was anyone at home, but then we heard about the supposed phone call from René Deakin and I thought, well, she’s a drama teacher and she might have put on the voice and made the phone call. She’s got an alibi – she was teaching all afternoon – but she was the only person who knew that Marina would be home in the early afternoon, so I thought she could have let the killer know.’
‘I sense a but coming, Paula.’
‘Yep. She was speaking in school assembly at nine o’clock on Wednesday morning – when that phone call was made – seen by about fifteen hundred people, and her mobile phone record shows no calls made later that day, except one text.’
‘Who to?’
‘Her mother.’
There was a ripple of laughter, over which Scott said, ‘She failed to follow guidelines in sending a child home to an empty house and the headmaster’s got her on temporary suspension, but are you saying she’s not in the frame as far as we’re concerned, Paula?’
Powell looked him directly in the eye. ‘I think we focus on finding the killer, don’t we?’ she said.
‘Right,’ he said briskly. ‘Then this is how it stands. The theory that the mother was the intended victim sounds farfetched but it makes more sense than a thirteen-year-old girl being the target. There’s the timing for a start: no-one could predict that Marina would leave school early and be home at that time. And the caller expected Glenys Carson to be there that afternoon.’
‘Except, sir,’ Sarah Shepherd said, ‘Glenys Carson said she decided to go to London because of that phone call. When she spoke to Renée Deakin and realised it was a hoax, she thought someone was out to get her and left the house.’
‘You’re right, Sarah,’ Scott said, ‘and if the killer was someone close to the family, someone who knew them well and could guess how Glenys would react, they could probably guess, too, that Marina would stay at home or go home early because of her mother’s accident. There’s the access too. They seem to have got in through the back door – either it was left unlocked or they did the old arm through the cat flap trick. Again, it points to someone who knew they could get in that way. OK, so we’re looking at people close to the family. We need to talk to relatives, neighbours, friends – including the children’s friends. Edmund Carson’s a weekly boarder at The Abbey. Paula, why don’t you go and see him? Find out if he brings friends home with him at the weekends. Let’s find out who comes to the house, if anyone else works there. And check on Renée Deakin’s contacts. Find out if she gossips about life at Charter Hall. I need a picture. I need to know what went on in Marina Carson’s life. Let’s get into it.’
9
SATURDAY 25th SEPTEMBER
O had I but followed the arts!
Today being Saturday, I’ve arranged to meet Eve for coffee. We’ve agreed on The Pumpkin, the fair-trade, organic café where you can get dandelion tea and muesli biscuits if that’s your inclination, but you can also get excellent coffee and whisky-soaked fruit cake, which is ours.
Eve is smaller and plumper than I am, which is always a comfort. She arrives today sporting a plaid cape, which she bought in Ireland, and vibrantly red hair. ‘I thought it needed spicing up,’ she says as she settles herself in a comfortable heap at a bamboo table in the window. We watch the Saturday shoppers for a bit before she asks, ‘How’s Ellie doing?’
‘Not great. She’s really upset about Marina, obviously, but then there’s this other thing – suspension. I think Tom Urquhart’s taken leave of his senses.’
‘You have to understand all head teachers are running scared these days. Anything at all can bring parents down on them with a law suit. He’s just watching his back.’
‘I suppose. It’s just not like the Tom I used to know.’
‘The Tom you used to know didn’t have a school to run, four teenage children with expensive tastes and a holiday home in the Algarve.’
‘How’s Colin?’ I ask. When I suggested this meeting, it was on the pretext of wanting to talk about Ellie, but I need to work round to Colin.
‘Oh, you know,’ she says. ‘He doesn’t say much, but he’s quite shaken up. He’s not sleeping, which isn’t like him.’
‘It must have been awful finding her like that – even for a doctor.’
‘Yes.’
We sit and munch our cake for a while, until Eve says, ‘Come on, spit it out.’
For a moment I think she means the large bite of cake that’s wrapping itself round my molars, but she doesn’t. ‘I’ve known you forever, Gina,’ she says, laughing, ‘and I’ve never known you this quiet. You’ve got something you want to say and you don’t know how to say it, so come on – just spit it out.’
I finish my mouthful and take a swig of coffee. ‘I just wondered,’ I say tentatively, ‘how Colin came to be there on Wednesday afternoon. I mean, I know it’s none of my business and you’ll think I’m just being nosey but –‘
‘You, nosey!’ she hoots. ‘Now why ever would I think that you were nosey, Gina Gray?’
‘Well, all right, I know, but it just seems odd. I mean. I’m sure there’s a perfectly sensible explanation, but…’ I tail off because, quite honestly, I can’t think of a sensible explanation.
‘Colin is Glenys’s GP, Gina. She rang him and asked him to call.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she was in a state.’
‘She was lucky to get a house call, wasn’t she, for “a state”? GPs don’t do those any more unless you’re dying.’
‘Well, Glenys expects house calls and it’s probably too late for Colin to try and retrain her now. She gets into states and she rings Colin.’
‘What sort of states?’
‘Anxiety, panic attacks, the screaming abdabs. You name it, she has it. Anyway, she rang on Wednesday and Colin went. After morning surgery. She told him she couldn’t stay in the house and he drove her to the station so she could go up to London. On the way to the station, she remembered she hadn’t left a message for Marina, telling her where she was, so Colin went back to the house to leave a message.
‘Couldn’t she have phoned her – or sent her a text?’
‘Marina didn’t have a mobile. OK?’
‘OK.’
Only it’s not OK actually, not at all. I sit with my coffee trying to swallow my objection, and then somehow the words are out of my mouth. ‘But Eve, if she was going to see a matinee, she must have caught a train round about one o’clock. Renée Deakin said it was about three when Colin found Marina. Isn’t that odd?’
‘And who’s Renée Deakin?’
‘She’s the cleaner at Charter Hall. I talked to her yesterday and she said –‘
I wouldn’t have believed that Eve’s face could acquire hard edges; I’ve never seen it anything but soft and smiling. But now it’s all angles. ‘You ha
ve to leave this, Gina,’ she says. ‘Stop talking to people. Stop thinking you know better than the police. All you have to go on is hearsay, and I must tell you I resent being invited for coffee to be told that you think my husband is a murderer.’
‘I don’t think that,’ I stammer. ‘Of course I don’t. I’m sorry Eve, it’s just –’
‘Just that you always have to know better than anyone else. Well, you don’t. Colin’s not a murderer, and I think you know that, but if you’re in any doubt, then you’d better ask him yourself what he was doing on Wednesday afternoon. I think the coffee’s your treat, don’t you?’ And she goes.
I beat myself up all the way to Sainsbury’s. How could I have been so stupid? Stupid, insensitive, blundering, thoughtless, arrogant, intrusive I berate myself. Eve is the best friend I have and I may have lost her for good. I can’t believe I sat there telling her, not that I thought her husband was a murderer – I never thought that – but that I didn’t trust him, that I didn’t believe his story. How could I have done that? Because you don’t believe his story a small voice mutters in my head. Because you are stupid, insensitive and all the rest of it, and you also think you’re right. But there’s nowhere to go with my suspicions now. I can’t talk to Colin himself – not now I’ve blown it with Eve – and I suppose I’ll have to trust David Scott to get onto it. He’s still holding me at arm’s length at the moment but I’ll keep working at it. I’m not easy to shake off.
I stumble round Sainsbury’s, throwing the usual stuff into my trolley pretty randomly, and Annie picks me up. Annie now has a car, a Smart car – the kind everyone says you can park sideways. Her father bought it for her as a birthday present. The college authorities won’t let her take it up to Oxford with her so it will sit outside my house unused for weeks at a time. Andrew will be happy though: Andrew thinks a house is not a home without a flashy vehicle sitting in front of it. In the meantime, before being parted from it, Annie is driving it on every possible occasion, today even condescending to drive the shopping home.
It’s just as well I’m getting this lift because I have a plan for this afternoon. I’m going up to London to see Amy. I shall hate it, of course, but that’s not the point. The trip is by way of research. All these falls downstairs at Charter Hall and Amy Robsart’s death at Cumnor Place: there must surely be a connection, and the show seems the place to start. I got a ticket quite easily: people have been returning their tickets, apparently, because they don’t want to see the understudy play the lead. The price was eye-watering – about as much as I’ve just spent at Sainsbury’s – but it gets me out of the house, away from Annie’s frenzy and Ellie’s gloom.
At The Duchess of York’s Theatre, I pick up my very expensive ticket and present myself to be herded with a thousand other people up endless flights of stairs to the balcony, from which I gaze down on the tiny stage below and settle back to spend three hours looking at the tops of actors’ heads. The show rises to meet all my worst expectations. The music is just unremarkable: trite, derivative, repetitive. I can bear that. I would like better but I can bear it. It’s the words. Oh God, the words! The lyrics have not been so much composed as spewed out – banal chunks of language arbitrarily chopped up into lines and sung with inexplicable dramatic fervour. There’s not an arresting image, a telling phrase, a clever epithet in the whole interminable show.
I would like to go home at half time but I need to be in at the death – that’s what I’ve come for. I nod off in the second half, but I’m woken by the sudden cessation of noise, a moment of blessed silence. I survey the stage and find that we’ve reached the crucial moment. A vast sweeping staircase dominates the set and at the top of the stairs stands Amy, a tiny figure in scarlet silk. This is her moment, the show’s great climax. She opens her mouth and sings. And what does she sing? Let me tell you. She sings
Why doesn’t he love me?
Why is he never here?
Why is my young life blighted,
A life of grief and fear?
Once, I know, he loved me
How different it might have been,
But he gave his heart to another
And chose to love the Queen.
I know now he doesn’t love me.
God give me strength, I pray,
To end this life of sadness.
Oh let me die today.
These are, quite truthfully, the words. I remember them because they are branded into my brain in all their awfulness and may never be excised. The poor girl does her best with them: she pumps and plumps the lines with throbbing, plaintive yearning. She is young, pretty and touching, and she is giving it her all. That’s what I mind most, I decide – the way all these actors are driving themselves on, pushing themselves to the limit in the service of this garbage, as though the sheer power of their conviction can get the dead words to stand up and walk.
Well, I’ve seen what I came to see. The line the show takes is that, though Amy is contemplating suicide, it’s the husband who actually does for her. He appears, Robert Dudley, gorgeous in black and gold, behind her. He raises his arms; she gives a terrible scream; there is a blackout; the music rises to a frenzy; the lights come up to reveal her spread-eagled in her scarlet dress at the foot of the stairs. Robert Dudley and the Queen (in matching black and gold) sing a duet from the top of the stairs and – curtain! Tumultuous applause, cheers and whoops, several curtain calls, exeunt.
On the way out, when I am finally disgorged into the street, I see that the theatre is making the best of the temporary loss of its big name. Two large photos of the understudy adorn the front of the theatre, and splashed across them are review quotes. “A star is born!” says the Daily Mail critic with startling originality; “genuine youth and freshness” says The Telegraph; “Move over Glenys” says The Mirror. If Glenys Summers has read these – and no doubt she has – I’d guess she’ll be back on stage on Monday, come what may.
My rage at the sheer badness of the musical has evaporated, leaving space for a wave of sadness to come surging in and take me unawares. And I can’t any longer avoid the image, which I’ve been at such pains to keep out, of the crumpled little body in its school uniform lying at the foot of the stairs. I’ve kept my busy mind on Ellie’s problems, on Colin and Eve, on David Scott, on anything but that, but now it’s in there like a virus, invasive and consuming, and I’m shaky and nauseous under its attack. So shaky, in fact, that as I’m walking past the stage door on my way to the tube, I almost miss a familiar back in the clutch of autograph-hunters. I know the line of the hair and the set of the shoulders really, but it’s only as he turns to say something to the young woman following in his wake that I recognise David Scott. I raise a hand to wave but his gaze slides past me. He puts a protective arm round the young woman and elbows a path to the stage door. I take a few deep breaths and head for the tube and my solitary journey home.
10
SATURDAY 25th SEPTEMBER
17.45. INTERVIEW FOUR: THE UNDERSTUDY
Glancing through The Independent as he chomped his breakfast toast – why was it he could never organise fresh bread for Saturday mornings? – Scott noticed an article about the cast change in Amy. “Justine Todd,” the reviewer wrote, “at half Glenys Summers’ age, endows the part of Amy Robsart with a fervent, youthful passion that was missing from the older actress’s portrayal. Where Summers’ Amy was a victim from the start, a pale, timid, doomed creature, too easily swept aside by her husband’s ambition, Todd, with her remarkable Piaf-like voice, goes down fighting all the way.” He didn’t read the rest but the old adage of CID training came into his head: cui bono? To whose advantage? If Glenys Summers was the intended victim (and he was veering in that direction) then you had to ask who would have benefited from her death. They hadn’t asked yet about the contents of her will, if she had made one, but if everything would have gone to Hector, he would hardly have gained anything more than he enjoyed at the moment, unless the team came up with evidence of a double life for h
im; unless he wanted to get away and start again with someone else. It seemed improbable, but you learnt to expect the improbable, and quite often the impossible too.
One person who stood to benefit from Glenys’s removal – who had benefited already from her fall – was Justine Todd; twenty-two years old, new out of Drama School, a complete unknown a week ago, now a hot property. She must have sat night after night watching the show on the monitor, seeing a woman old enough to be her mother playing the twenty-something Amy, ready to explode with the force of her own energy and ambition. Night after night, she saw that push from behind, saw the crumpled figure at the foot of the stairs.
‘It sounds like something out of the ballet stories I used to read,’ Paula Powell said, when he rang and told her why he wanted her to drive to London with him. ‘There were always wicked girls in the corps de ballet booby-trapping the prima ballerina so they could dance Giselle or whoever it was.’
‘All the same,’ he said, ‘I’d like you there. Have you talked to Edmund Carson yet?’
‘I’m seeing him this morning. They have Saturday morning school at The Abbey, so I’ve arranged to see him when they finish. I’m taking Sarah with me.’
‘I’ll pick you up at two.’
Paula and Sarah waved their warrant cards and waited as the porter grudgingly raised the barrier to the staff car park, an oddly-shaped enclave between Marlbury Abbey school and the great abbey itself, which loomed above the school, baring its Reformation scars – its ancient, ruined choir – to the sky. Paula looked about her. ‘I don’t know about you,’ she said, ‘but my comp wasn’t anything like this. This doesn’t look like a school at all to me.’
‘Me neither. Nothing the matter with Stoke High, but we didn’t run to cloisters.’
Accosting a lad in a purple academic gown, they asked for directions to the office of the Head of Sixth Form and found him waiting for them, seated protectively on a sofa with Edmund Carson beside him. He stood up to introduce himself as Marcus Bright, but returned to the sofa, directing them to armchairs some distance away. Paula looked at Edmund. When she had interviewed him briefly on the day of Marina’s death, he had been intensely pale, the light spread of freckles standing out on his cheeks like coffee grounds. Today, he looked better but his face was still pale against his dark hair.
All the Daughters Page 9
