Night After Night (41 page)

‘But she trusted you.’

‘We’d become closer than I’d expected we would. We were never friends. She had many friends. But not many people she could rely on.’

‘You did eventually read the diary?’

‘Some time after her death. I had a decision to make.’

‘I mean, you didn’t think of handing it over to the police? If there was something there to explain the circumstances of her death?’

‘That would’ve helped nobody.’

‘Not even Harry Ansell?’

Poppy Stringer bites her upper lip and then talks to the misted glass.

‘No, it would not. He was my sole employer by then, and he’d always been considerate to me. But she clearly hadn’t wanted him, of all people, to see the diary. It would… not have made him happy. Yes, it did outline the circumstances of her decision to abort her baby. How that was to be done. Secretly. Why she felt driven to it.’

‘Where is it now? The diary.’

‘I destroyed it. That was the decision I had to make.’

Grayle’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. Cindy, she guesses, doesn’t know this.

‘Perhaps it was wrong of me, but I didn’t think that at the time. Mr Ansell was a broken man. I didn’t want to harm him any more.’

But now he’s beyond harm. And the diary’s gone for ever. No wonder Cindy wasn’t getting anywhere with her.

‘Harry Ansell talked to you about it? After she died.’

‘He came to see me twice. He’d never said much before – not his way. But he began to talk about his wife. About the house, mainly. What he thought about the house. How he’d tried to like it but hoped she’d soon grow tired of it. How it eventually came between them. How he once rented a house in the West Indies for them both to live for several months, to get her away. She refused to go.’

‘Wouldn’t leave Knap Hall? She still loved that place?’

Poppy Stringer turns to face her, sorrowful.

‘He told me how much it was costing, simply in repairs. It was rewired twice. Replumbed. It resisted refurbishment. Mrs Ansell didn’t see it. She simply wasn’t used to failure. I doubt she’d ever had the experience of it. So many sure steps. Higher and higher. Thinking she could transform the house the way she’d transformed herself. It wasn’t arrogance, as such. She just…’

‘Thought it was part of her?’

‘That was a delusion encouraged by… some people.’

Grayle remembers Lisa:
We wanted them to go on loving the place. We wanted them to stay. Like I say, it was a brilliant job. We thought Mrs Ansell was turning the place round. Just by being there
.

‘But you… as a local person…’

‘Oh yes. I knew what Knap Hall was.’

‘So why did you want to work there?’

‘I didn’t. Mr Ansell found me. Through his magazine, he knew a lot of people, including a former employer of mine in Cheltenham who sold his hotel to a chain. Which I didn’t want to work for, so I left. When the new Mrs Ansell became obsessed with developing something wonderful out of Knap Hall, my old boss warned Mr Ansell it did not have a good history. In a business sense – that was the only way to get through to him. He was told he should be careful who he employed. Don’t bring in people he didn’t know about.’

‘But local people would know the history.’

‘Some local people know what to avoid. The unwary are the ones most likely to be hurt. Or those drawn to… these things.’

‘So this retired hotelier directed Ansell to you, as a safe pair of hands in, like, an unsafe place.’

‘Well, I lived locally, and didn’t have to sleep there. He paid me extremely well. I said I’d stay for six months, though I didn’t, to be honest, think they’d last six months at Knap Hall.’

‘And the longer they lasted, the longer they stayed…’

‘It isn’t like the films, Grayle. It isn’t names written on the walls in blood.’ Popper Stringer shaking her head in sadness. ‘It’s slower than that. More sly. More furtive. Slow and… cumulative. Not to be understood.’

‘Trust terror. Little else is safe.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Something a friend says. Uh… Harry Ansell was spending time away. Increasingly. I was told that. Business meetings in New York.’

‘The impression I had was that he thought Mrs Ansell was safer in Knap Hall… when he wasn’t there.’

‘Jesus.’

‘He didn’t believe it, in his mind. But perhaps it’s not about the mind as much as the body. A man’s body which he thinks is his to control.’

‘Oh God. What did he do?’

‘I only know what the diary said. At first I tried to tell myself it wasn’t true. An exaggeration perhaps. He was, essentially, a kind man.’

‘You’re saying he wasn’t kind… when they were alone in their apartment at Knap Hall?’

‘We can’t know what mental state Mrs Ansell was in at the time. By then.’

‘And in that room…’

Poppy looks at her. Grayle wants to tell her about the room.

Can’t.

‘And she didn’t seem to think she could have children, you see,’ Poppy says.

‘She told you that?’

‘
He
did. After her death. She’d never been interested in children before. But suddenly decided there should be an heir… to Knap Hall. Madness. Nothing happened. He thought it was his fault they couldn’t. Low sperm count. I think he was glad.’

‘But she did get pregnant. Gossip at the time said it wasn’t his baby.’

‘That wasn’t true. At least, not the way these stupid people thought.’

‘The diary said it was Ansell’s?’

Poppy nods.

‘It described a particular night. A terrible night. Perverse.
Dirty
. That was her word.’

Grayle thinks of the night of the banquet. Trinity all aglow in her Katherine Parr dress, drawing the eyes of every man in
the room, according to Lisa Muir. And Ansell
very much in the background
.

Poppy says, ‘Do you want the details of what he did to her?’

‘I… no. If you had the diary… but you don’t.’

‘She said – wrote – that she couldn’t have a child that was conceived in those circumstances. She said she thought she’d be seeking a divorce. And still didn’t seem to realize…’

‘That it was the house?’

The weather brings a fuzzy shadow-branch bowing low across the misted windshield, scratching at the glass. How could Trinity Ansell be in so much denial? She
believed
, for Chrissakes. She believed in tarot readings. She believed in Cindy Mars-Lewis.

‘When she died,’ Poppy says, ‘Mr Ansell’s grief was smothered by a rage at what Knap Hall had done to them. Never expressed, he wasn’t that kind of man. He was always calm. But it was as if there was a tornado inside him.’

‘I used to see him. In Cheltenham. I’d’ve been scared to approach him.’

‘He hated the house then. Would have demolished it, I think, if it hadn’t been a listed building, protected. I didn’t understand at first why he’d agreed to lease it to the TV people to make a documentary about Trinity. Make a film about what must surely be his worst memories.’

‘I wondered about that a lot.’

‘I didn’t realize until I read the programme schedules that we’d been misled about what kind of programme it would be.
Big Other
?’

‘The location isn’t disclosed.’

‘Where else could it be? It’s the same company. Same people. I checked on the Internet. It’s trash television.’

‘Yeah, we hope it won’t be, but I agree that’s how it looks. That’s how it’ll get the massive viewing figures. And Ansell… told my boss he thought it was haunted by Trinity.’

‘Yes. Yes, he would.’

‘You’re saying this was to be his revenge on the house? Wanted to see what happened in Knap Hall with HGTV inside? Wanted the house he hated thrown open to millions of people? He wanted to watch. Wanted to see it go out. From the gallery – the room where all the pictures come in.’

‘To see what it might do,’ Poppy says. ‘What it might do to other people.’ She pauses as the tip of the low branch flaps against the windshield. ‘People who didn’t matter.’

Now it’s all too clear why she left a message on Cindy’s phone.

‘But he never got to watch, Poppy. He hanged himself. Close to Knap Hall as he could get. Like he was delivering a last message. A warning even. He must’ve been in some screwed-up state. If he felt there was no coming back from it.’

The rain’s drumming furiously on the car roof. It’s too late now for Poppy to attend Holy Communion at Winchcombe.

PART SIX

… night

52

Betrayed?

It’s started and, like a defective rollercoaster, is dangerously unstoppable. You look ahead in panic and want to start climbing down the girders.

‘At least a dozen people phoned in last night to say they could see anomalous lights in the chamber,’ Jo Shepherd tells Grayle outside the reality truck, late that Sunday afternoon. ‘Faint lights. Hazy shapes.’

‘Like orbs?’

‘Probably. I’m told even one of the camera crew thought something odd was happening at one stage.’

‘Where?’

‘A woman, Jess, working behind the false wall. Leo’s considering whether we should get her into the chapel or if that’s underlining the fact that the Seven are not alone. Personally, I don’t like it.’

‘You don’t like the idea of televising someone who’s working on the programme?’

‘Grayle…’ Dark bags of overwork have formed under Jo’s eyes. She’s wearing an extra sweater. ‘I don’t like the idea of anything happening
on our side of it
. Makes me uncomfortable. Makes me think about it as something more than television.’

‘What, like all lunacy should be contained behind a screen? Like there’s some spiritual demarcation line between reality TV and reality? Jo, essentially the camera crew’s in the same room.’

Jo turns away, her shoulders shaking. Muttering what sounds like ‘shit, shit, shit’. She hasn’t asked what Grayle learned from
Poppy Stringer, but she’s promised to try and find a space to get Cindy quietly back into the chapel.

Not going to be easy today, though. Grayle’s barely left her booth in the reality truck since lunchtime. Defford wanted different views on Helen’s Diana revelations, which are airing tonight. Embargoed highlights should now be on their way to the media with a one-minute DVD clip from the show, Helen saying,
Her eyes were looking towards me, but… through me, somehow. And I realized it was a veil. You know the veil she wore with her wedding dress, covering her face…

Tonight’s programme will wind up just before the Ozzy incident, including the first part of Grayle’s interview with Parrish in the chapel, a taster for tomorrow night, which, basically, will be the Ozzy Ahmed show.

Defford’s still trying to get Ozzy into the chapel, but he’s ignoring all entreaties, as he knows he can. Hell, even without the Diana factor, Ozzy’s story will be bigger than Helen’s. How will they ever top Ozzy?

Maybe they won’t need to. His story doesn’t end. He had another restless night, according to Jo. They have shots of him getting up in the early hours, putting on his light then just sitting on his bed, clenching and unclenching his fists, closing his eyes and rocking backwards and forwards. Going to sleep, eventually, with the light on. Jo says she’s never seen a man more afraid of showing fear.

Grayle’s been watching some of the rushes from today. Ozzy talking to Roger Herridge who at first seems miffed at the idea of Ozzy seeing what he can’t. But the truth is this is something he’s had to live with for many years; in the end he’s patting Ozzy on the back, telling him there’s only five days to go. Telling him that at least he’ll leave with something to think about.

Quite a sad person, Roger, but more philosophical than Rhys Sebold – white-faced with fury, according to Jo.

So they pull him into the chapel.

*

‘You feel in some way betrayed, Rhys?’

‘In what way?’

‘By Ozzy?’

Rhys does a loose grin, the old cool restored.

‘I’ll be honest with you. Thought it was a wind-up at first. But then, when it didn’t stop…’

‘A wind-up? You thought Ozzy was lying?’

He just carries on talking, through the question.

‘… I felt surprised and disappointed. I’ve known Ozzy for years. Now, however, I’ll admit to being worried. He’s had some anxiety with his divorce and losing custody of the child. And he’s been working harder than ever, as if he can just ride over personal problems. Provincial shows, six, seven nights a week. Too much. Behind that deadpan delivery, he can be manic.’

‘So you think it’s stress related?’

‘Well, of
course
, it’s stress related. Listen, nobody likes to see a good mate cracking up. So it’s my hope that the viewers will take pity on him and evict him ASAP.’

They’re coming up to the first eviction. Viewers will be asked to vote for the removal from the house of whoever they find the least convincing. Begins to look like Defford’s idea of votes for or against belief in the paranormal might actually work.

‘But they don’t show pity, do they?’ Rhys Sebold says. ‘Too much fun watching a celeb coming apart under pressure.’

‘How do you see the pressure?’

‘All right, look. People like Eloise and Roger Herridge are desperate to prove something. Even Cindy Mars-Lewis doing his wise old owl thing on the side of supernature. It was obvious that in the early stages there’d be an element of excitement and anticipation, before it all falls flat, as it will. As these things invariably do.’

‘Rhys, if I could just point out—’

‘No, let me finish. Ozzy’s an instinctive entertainer. He can’t help himself. He doesn’t believe any of it, but there’s some part of him that’s always committed to giving an audience its money’s worth.’

‘You think he’s fooling himself? That what you’re saying?’

‘I’ve known him a long time. If he thinks he isn’t being funny, he panics. He instinctively creates opportunities. If the real world isn’t funny enough he’ll construct a fantasy world in which he totally believes. Ashley Palk can probably explain this better than me. Personally, I just don’t want to have to see him snap… on television. I’m sure you do, but I don’t.’