A Capital Crime (26 page)

He’d patted her on the shoulder, then stepped back. ‘Why don’t you think about it, hmm?’

Relieved, she’d gabbled, ‘All right, yes. I’ll think about it.’

She had thought about it. In fact, she’d thought of little else for the next three weeks, during which Benson didn’t come anywhere near her, so that she wondered if he’d forgotten about it or gone off the idea. Perhaps he hadn’t liked her not saying yes immediately. He certainly seemed to assume that she’d find him irresistible – but that, she supposed, was because women did find him irresistible. And when he’d finally asked her to come out to dinner, she’d agreed.

In the end, what had persuaded her was thinking about
Tilly
. Of course, it was only a film, but all the same, if something as physically serious as paralysis could be shown to be all to do with
the mind and therefore conquerable, surely something that was emotional might respond to the same treatment? Going out for the evening with Raymond Benson wasn’t like jumping into a river to save someone from drowning, but in this situation it seemed, as an incentive, to be on a par with it. And he could have chosen
anybody
, couldn’t he? But he hadn’t. He’d chosen her, Monica Stratton, lowly make-up girl.

Fluffing up her hair, Monica put on her coat and gloves and set off down the causeway towards the main gate. Even at this late hour there were lorries and things rumbling up and down, so she didn’t hear anyone come up behind her and the shout of ‘Monica!’ somewhere near her ear almost made her jump out of her skin.

Turning, she saw that it was Mrs Carleton, standing under one of the roadside lamps and looking pale, but – if possible – more lovely than ever. She’d been working in the Design department for the past year, which meant that Monica hadn’t had to avoid her because she’d seen very little of her anyway. Now – especially after what had happened with Mr Carleton – she couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘I thought it must be you,’ said Mrs Carleton. ‘I recognised your coat.’

For a second, Monica experienced a sensation of mad happiness that she’d committed such a detail to memory – but then she realised that, working in the design department, Mrs Carleton would be bound to notice what people were wearing, even if it wasn’t good quality or anything. After all,
she
noticed those sorts of things, didn’t she? In that way, they were alike … Staring into the beautiful blue eyes, she was lost until Mrs Carleton, frowning slightly, said, ‘Is there something wrong, Monica?’

‘Oh, no, no … I’m sorry … Sorry about Mr Carleton, I mean.’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Carleton, in a matter-of-fact way. ‘So am I. Are you going home now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Let’s walk, then – it’s freezing out here. I’m going home, too, but I’ve got to go back to Design first.’

‘He was really good,’ said Monica, after they’d walked in silence for a moment. ‘Everyone thought so. And everyone liked him.’ Percival Addington, who wasn’t half so good as Carleton, had taken over the reins.

‘I know,’ said Mrs Carleton. ‘But these things happen.’ She sounded tired.

‘It wasn’t really his fault,’ said Monica. ‘The picture was behind schedule, but there were lots of other reasons—’

‘No, Monica. It’s very kind of you, but it isn’t true and we both know it isn’t. While we’re being honest,’ she smiled wistfully, ‘I don’t know how much longer I shall be working here myself. So I just wanted to say – in case I don’t see you again – that it was nice meeting you, and do please give my regards to your father, won’t you?’

‘Yes. It was nice meeting you, too.’ As she said this, they reached the turning for the Design department.

‘Goodbye, Monica,’ said Mrs Carleton, ‘and good luck.’

‘Good luck to you, too,’ said Monica, with more daring than she’d thought she possessed.

‘Thanks.’ Mrs Carleton walked off at a fast clip and Monica stood watching until she merged with the darkness.

Monica supposed that Mrs Carleton must be leaving because of Mr Carleton, which seemed pretty rotten. She hadn’t told Dad about what had been going on at Ashwood. Even though the incident at the Festival of Britain was almost two years ago, it was still, in her mind, excruciatingly vivid – the clumsy, fumbled handshake, the way his eyes had never left hers, the fact that his behaviour seemed to mirror, so exactly, the turmoil inside her … Just thinking about it made her squirm with embarrassment. But she ought to pass on Mrs Carleton’s regards, really, if she could bring herself to do it. It would be so much easier, she thought, if Dad had met somebody else, but his heart wasn’t in it, any more than hers was.

Still, there was time enough to worry about that. Now, she must put Mrs Carleton right out of her mind and concentrate on the evening ahead of her. Stomach churning with apprehension, she continued walking towards the main gate, and Raymond Benson.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

‘That’s the way to do it!’ Inside the red-and-white-striped booth, Punch, with his glazed pink face, hooked nose curving down to meet jutting chin, battered Judy about the head with his cosh.

We should be laughing, thought Diana, shoving her hands deeper into the pockets of her coat in an attempt to keep warm. The bright weather promised for the end of April had failed to materialise, and the Brighton sky and sea were the matching dull grey of old saucepans. It was mid afternoon and, but for a solitary child running aimlessly about while her mother stood by and a couple of scruffy-looking donkeys with drooping heads, the beach was deserted.

In front of the booth, deckchairs were scattered about at odd angles, some upside down, giving the al fresco auditorium a dismal, abandoned air. Apart from the attendant, who was lying in one, apparently asleep despite the puppets’ distorted shrieking, she and James were the only audience. It had been he who’d wanted to see the show, not her. He’d persuaded the Professor, a lugubrious individual who’d been packing up his wares when they’d arrived, to perform for them, with a story about scouting for a Punch and Judy show for his next film. Judging from the racket and the vigorous jerking of the figures, the man was giving his all, but there was, in fact, no next film to cast. Although James had made light of her reaction when he’d told her, all that time ago, that he was born several drinks behind the rest of the world and was doomed to spend his life trying to catch up, Diana knew now that
it was no more and no less than the truth. No matter how much he drank, he never could catch up, and his intake had increased to such a degree that he was not only bankrupt but unemployable.

Shivering on the damp deckchair, Diana recalled, as she often had in the last six months, the demeanour of the barman at the studio when she’d gone to fetch the brandy in that first week. She’d assumed that the man’s comment about thinking the sobriety couldn’t last was aimed at Anthony Renwick, but now she knew that wasn’t wholly the case. After all, who would know better than a barman? It was certainly true that James had encouraged Renwick to drink because he needed to finish the film, but it was also because he was slipping off the waggon himself and wanted an excuse. She remembered, too, what Alex McPherson had said to her in the restaurant, about warning Mr Vernon. Now, she understood that what he – and probably others, too – had warned Mr Vernon about was putting two drunks on the same picture, but she hadn’t known that at the time. Or had she? Perhaps her subconscious had known it, but being in love, she’d failed to acknowledge that anything could be wrong. And it was certainly true that the highly visible nature of Renwick’s problem had masked James’s, because he held his drink well, and it was only in the last few months that he’d started slurring words and lurching unsteadily into the furniture. This, and the covert nature of his drinking, and the fact that, apart from that terrible last week at Ashwood, he’d never become aggressive – and, she had to admit, her own tendency to deny that the problem existed – were the reasons why it had taken her so long to face up to the extent of it. Anyone who’d worked at the studio for any length of time had known but, because James was well liked, they’d covered up for him repeatedly. And none of them had warned her. But then, she thought resignedly, I wouldn’t have listened even if they had.

Despite the initial appearances, a mocking chime in the back of her mind had been telling her for some time that this was
history repeating itself. It was Guy, her first husband, and then Claude Ventriss, all over again. She’d been impetuous, rushing headlong into love, refusing to let her feet touch the ground and never stopping to reflect, and pain and shame had followed. How much, in the past year, had she hung onto the memory of her whirlwind romance with James, even as it had become – first slowly, and then with escalating speed – as destructive as a hurricane that raged about them both and would not set them free? Drying out had only resulted in shaking hands and hallucinations so bad that they’d led, at one stage, to a straightjacket. The doctors hadn’t let her see him then, but she remembered all too well his terror of the huge cockroaches that crawled over his skin and the hideous crippled lobster that followed him around, dragging one giant claw along the floor.

As Punch gleefully hurled the baby out of the window and massacred Judy in a rain of blows, Diana felt as though she was in one of those hallucinations now. Beside her, James was rapt as a child, revelling in the anarchy of the performance.

He’d been the one who suggested coming to the coast. A spot of sea air to blow away the cobwebs, he’d said. They’d arrived the previous day and spent the evening wandering up and down the promenade, too cold and dispirited to talk. Besides, what was there to talk about any more? They couldn’t even find refuge in a hotel bar, because James was in a ‘drying-out’ period, aided by some medicine that was supposed to make him sick if he so much as smelt alcohol. Diana found these times actually worse than when he was drinking – the wait for the inevitable fall off the waggon, hoping against hope and against experience, was agonising. She’d stayed because, in spite of everything, she still loved him – and even if she hadn’t, the burning shame of having to admit another failure at marriage was too terrible to contemplate – but she was beginning to wonder if she actually had any choice in the matter.

She knew, now, that the drinking wasn’t his fault. At first, she’d been angry – wasn’t she, on her own, with her gift of love, enough
to make him stop?
He
had thought she would be. He’d told her that, but it seemed, after all, that the urge to drink was stronger. Then she’d tried drinking with him. It had seemed easier than the torment of watching, coldly sober, while he destroyed himself. That had been a disaster – she’d lost her wonderful job in the studio’s design department, and with it, their only income and the flat which had been her pride and joy. She’d tried to get other work, but every time she declared this intention, James, sodden in the armchair in their pokey, chilly new home, a blanket round his heaving shoulders, had groped for her hand and sobbed, ‘Don’t go, darling, don’t leave me.’ If she did go out, he’d manage to scrape together enough to buy more to drink, and, in the end, she’d given up and they’d settled into a dreary, never-ending game of hide-and-seek as she searched the place for hidden bottles and emptied their contents down the sink, while James alternated between defiance and remorse.

She’d gradually lost touch with Lally and Jock and her other friends, so that they were now marooned, a wrecked island of two, afloat in a sea of alcohol. Lally and Jock had given her enough help already, and such pride as she had left would not allow her to call on them yet again.

How Evie would love this, she thought. She’d heard through the grapevine that Guy’s mother finally had the grandson she’d always wanted – the one Diana hadn’t been able to give her. If Evie could see her now, she’d think she’d got her come-uppance, all right.

The hangman was fixing the noose around Punch’s neck. ‘It’s the end for you, Mr Punch. Say your prayers.’

Punch ducked his head and, cackling in gleeful self-satisfaction, sent the hangman flying with one swipe of his cudgel. ‘That’s the way to do it!’

Diana closed her eyes to block out the sight of the malevolent doll as it twirled and flailed in a triumphant dance. The small amount of money raised by the sale of Hambeyn Hall and what she’d managed to save from the allowance Guy had given her –
and which had stopped when she remarried – was gone, much of it on ‘cures’ for James, and such inheritance as she had, that she’d thought might buy a flat for them, had been plunged, instead, into a disastrous film that had never, in the end, been completed. Why the hell, she thought, didn’t I have the sense to hold onto it – or at least to keep some of it back? Now – she groaned at the thought – they were already weeks behind with the rent and the landlady was growing restive.

Diana clapped half-heartedly as the puppets took their bows. James did not join in, and when she turned to look at him she saw that he was sitting quite still with tears coursing down his cheeks.

‘What is it, darling?’

He shook his head. What had started him crying? The sausages, the policeman, the crocodile? Lost in the tangle of her own thoughts, she hadn’t noticed. The Punch professor, emerging from behind his booth, looked first mystified and then downright annoyed when James, noticing him, rose from his deckchair and walked hastily off down the beach. ‘What’s his game?’ he asked Diana. ‘He might have told me himself if he didn’t like it. I’ve gone to all this trouble …’

‘It’s not that,’ Diana assured him. ‘He’s always like this when he’s working. When he gets an idea he needs to think about it immediately. Doesn’t want to break his concentration. You’ve obviously given him an idea.’

‘Oh.’ The professor sniffed, but seemed to accept this. ‘I suppose that’s all right, then. Now,’ his tone became wheedling, ‘seeing as I did it special for you, shall we say—’

‘Two shillings,’ said Diana quickly, naming the smallest sum she felt would be acceptable. She’d thought that James’s story would suffice but the man clearly expected payment for the show and she didn’t feel she could refuse. She looked around for James, but he was heading down the beach towards the flight of steps that led up to the esplanade. The man stiffened, his doleful face
becoming taut with angry disgust. She had no idea how much he usually got from holidaymakers, but he’d obviously hoped for a lot more from film people. He looked her up and down – the tight-fisted bitch in the fur coat. He wasn’t to know that nowadays the thing often did duty as a blanket as well as a garment.