Stage Fright (28 page)

‘Oh, Christ.' I was seeing a blind staggering figure, a swollen face.

‘The keys weren't all you took, were they?' he said quietly. ‘You took the adrenaline from the kitchen, didn't you? You found out he'd been carrying on with Miss Roy behind your back. You were beside yourself with anger. You'd helped Mr Kingleigh to dispose of his wife because you thought he loved you…'

Rod raised a hand. ‘Stop there! This is outrageous. Dr James categorically denies that she had any kind of sexual relationship with Kevin Kingleigh or that she was involved in his death.'

Vickers seemed unperturbed. He nodded.

‘Let's go back, shall we, to the disappearance of Miss Meadow and some of the events surrounding it? This business of the cloaked figure in the dress-circle. I'm not sure what lies behind that, but perhaps you can enlighten me. You and Mr Kingleigh were acting in concert there, weren't you?'

‘Oh, please! I was the one who found the cloak in the costume store. If I was involved, why would I have brought that to Stan's attention?'

‘Did you find it? Or were you discovered putting it back?'

I stared at him. I seemed to have stepped into a looking-glass world, where everything was reversed. It was all an absurd mistake, of course it was, but the picture he was building up was curiously compelling … I missed what Vickers was saying next and had to ask him to repeat it.

He did so with no sign of impatience.

‘I said, how do you account for the fact that Miss Meadow didn't tell anyone except you about the anonymous letter?'

‘I can't account for it. But the letter does exist. You know that. Kevin handed it over to you.'

He leaned back in his chair.

‘Ah, yes, the letter.'

There was a pregnant pause. The silence lengthened. Then Vickers leaned forward and leafed through the folder on the table between them.

‘
This
letter,' he said, holding up a piece of paper in a plastic wallet.

‘That's right.'

There was a theatrical pause. Vickers put the wallet on the table and slipped it across to me. All of a sudden I knew what he had been going to say, incredible though it was. Just in time I stopped myself from saying it for him.

‘Perhaps you'd like to explain how this came to be written on your computer,' he said.

Chapter Nineteen

S
OMEONE
must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.
The opening lines of Kakfa's
The Trial,
so chilling in their matter-of-factness, kept running through my mind as I sat on the thin police-cell mattress. Joseph K. never did find out who had set in motion the train of events that led inexorably to his execution, but I knew who had been lying about me. I'd been maligned by a dead man.

The cell was the shape of a shoe box and it didn't feel much bigger. At least I was alone and I had a lavatory all to myself, even if it was the sort you wouldn't fancy using without putting toilet paper round the seat. And I did have a book. I'd found it in my bag and had been allowed to keep it with me. I always carry a World's Classic around with me. They're so small and light and you never know when you're going to need something to read. I did wish though that the current handbag book wasn't Gogol's
Dead Souls.
Not that it really mattered: there was no natural light and the central light bulb didn't give off enough light for me to read. The book's importance was more as a talisman, a reminder of the outside world and of my real self.

When Detective Sergeant Vickers told me about the letter, something monstrous had loomed up before me. It had been deleted, of course, but computer experts can retrieve documents that have been thrown way. There's no doubt about it. It had been written on my computer. I had even found myself wondering whether I really could have written that letter and forgotten about it. That was the first moment that I fully understood I might be charged with murder. One by one, it seemed, the routes of escape had been blocked. The evidence was only circumstantial –
could
only be circumstantial, for God's sake – but it was compelling. Even the fact that I was a lecturer in nineteenth-century literature – could there be a more blameless occupation? – was suspect now. Who better to know where to put their hands on a poem by Byron?
We'll go no more a-roving
 … The irony of it wasn't lost on me.

I found myself doing a mental review of prison literature. Someone would surely have written a book on it. Oscar Wilde's
The Ballad of Reading Gaol,
Arthur Koestler's
Darkness at Noon, The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs
 … There was a sudden burst of drunken singing and the clanging of a door down the corridor, and I came back to the present. I recognized these thoughts for what they were, a way of distracting myself from the seriousness of my situation, of avoiding the thing I was most afraid of: being separated from Grace. I wasn't living in a totalitarian state and I hadn't done anything wrong. So there must be a way out.
Stone Walls doe not a Prison make, Nor Iron bars a Cage; Mindes innocent and quiet take That for an Hermitage.
I must stop this: literature couldn't help me now. And yet I couldn't help trying to bring to mind the rest of the poem.

When Love with unconfinèd wings

Hovers within my Gates

And my divine Althea brings

To whisper at the Grates:

When I lye tangled in her hair

And fetter'd to her eye,

The Gods that wanton in the Aire,

Know no such liberty.

Stone Walls do not a prison make,

Nor Iron bars a Cage;

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an hermitage,

If I have freedome in my love

And in my soule am free;

Angels alone that soar above

Injoy such liberty.

Sir Richard Lovelace, the Cavalier poet, was a more sanguine prisoner than Oscar Wilde or Arthur Koestler. Well, I didn't think Stephen would be whispering at the grates: getting on the phone to the best criminal lawyer in London would be more his style. But there must be something I could do for myself. Just one loose thread in the tissue of circumstantial evidence and the whole thing would unravel. It struck me then that maybe Lovelace was right in a way. I didn't have to be in prison. If only I could relax, empty my mind of all this anxious clutter and let it become ‘innocent and quiet'. I lay back on the bed and closed my eyes.

I saw a hot August day, clouds of wheat dust far out in the fields. I was driving home on the day that Stephen left for the States. It was so vivid that when the dog sprang out in front of me I pressed my head back against the pillow. I went on as slowly as I could, trying not to miss a single impression, trying to see everything as it had happened. Again Melissa smiled at me in her dressing-room, again she handed me the letter, again we leaned over a cot to watch our sleeping babies.

Tears pricked my eyes. She must be dead. What else could keep her from Agnes? There were bits of our conversation that I couldn't remember. I hadn't known I would need to remember them. I pressed on. I saw Joe sitting across the lunch table, felt the coldness on my fingertips as I drew a line in the condensation on my wineglass.…

The effort of concentration had an unexpected effect.

I fell asleep.

I dreamed that I'd lost Grace. I could hear her crying somewhere, but I couldn't find her. I ran around the Old Granary, bumping into things and looking for her in the most unlikely places, in cupboards, even inside the washing-machine. It was not until I had run back upstairs to my bedroom that I realized. Yes! There was a room I hadn't searched. The secret room. I must have put her there to keep her safe. Relief surged up in me. But the next moment I realized that my problems weren't over. Because the secret room wasn't always in the same place. Where was it today? I examined my bedroom walls carefully, running my hand along them to find the hinge of the door. A phone began to ring and I hesitated, not sure whether to answer it or not. Grace was still crying. I had to find her. But the phone was so insistent and I knew that Grace was safe. And anyway this was a dream. Grace wasn't really there. And I had to answer that phone before I woke up. I would learn something terribly important if I did. I willed myself to stay in the dream. I went over to the bedside table. The dream was slipping away, growing fuzzy round the edges. I lifted the receiver. It was Joe. His voice was very serious:

‘Didn't you realize, Cassandra, that they are all nothing but a pack of cards?'

And with that the world of the dream vanished. I was lying on my bed in the cell breathing hard. A phone was still ringing somewhere close by. And it was all all right now. I'd found the loose thread. You could say that it was Grace who got me out of the prison cell. I was rescued by a crying baby. Of course, they would have been bound to release me sooner or later. Wouldn't they? That's what I tell myself now, but it wasn't how I felt at the time.

*   *   *

‘I can prove that Melissa was still alive at around half past ten that evening,' I told Detective Sergeant Vickers back in the interview room. ‘My ex-husband rang my mobile phone. I was upstairs changing Grace's nappy. So Melissa answered it for me! He actually spoke to her. They had a conversation.'

He considered this. ‘You could have faked that,' he said at last, but I could tell that his heart wasn't really in it.

‘Oh, come on, Sergeant, I'm one of the few people involved who isn't an actor. And don't you think Joe would have realized? I mean, the man used to be married to me.'

Vickers opened his mouth to speak.

‘And no,' I added hastily, ‘we weren't in collusion. I hadn't seen or spoken to him for at least fourteen years before we met up last week.'

Vickers heaved a sigh. He looked exhausted. I looked past him to Detective Constable Pritchard. She gave a sympathetic little smile.

‘So can I go?' I asked. ‘Or do you have to speak to Joe first?'

‘That's not going to be a problem,' Detective Sergeant Vickers gestured wearily towards the front of the police station. ‘The professor's out there along with a posse of others eager to proclaim your innocence. Though eager doesn't really describe one of them, hangdog is more like it. I suppose it would be stretching a point to charge him with wasting police time by not coming forward earlier, though there's nothing I'd like better.'

I had no idea what he was talking about. I looked from him to Detective Constable Pritchard. She got to her feet.

‘I'll go and speak to Professor Baldassarre, shall I, Sarge?'

Vickers nodded. When she'd left the room, he switched off the recorder and leaned back in his seat. We sat in silence for a bit and then he said:

‘Might as well tell you that one or two other things have come to light. Mr Kingleigh's alibi for that night has collapsed. That young actress – Belinda Roy – has now admitted that she went home around midnight. We found a copy of your house key in a drawer at Mr Kingleigh's cottage, so he had access to your word processor. He could have typed that letter. And then there's Mr Harcourt-Greaves…'

For a moment I couldn't think who that was.

‘The documentary man,' Vickers explained.

‘Jake?'

‘That's right.'

Behind Vickers, the door opened. Detective Constable Pritchard put her head round the door. ‘It checks out,' she said.

I was on my feet before she'd had stopped speaking.

‘Yes, yes, you can go,' Vickers said. ‘I'll need another statement at some point…'

I didn't hear what else he was going to say, because I was out of the door.

In the waiting-room there was a crowd of people. There was Stephen with Grace in his arms. Joe was talking to him in a confidential manner, Stephen was nodding. They looked like old friends. Amongst all the emotions jostling for dominance, I found room for a twinge of irritated surprise. Stan was standing off to one side looking uncharacteristically grim and Jake was beside her. I easily recognized the description of hangdog in his drooping shoulders and glum expression.

The next instant Stephen saw me.

‘What an earth have you been up to?' he enquired. ‘I can't turn my back for a moment, can I?' And then I was hugging him and Grace both at once. I felt I could never get enough of them, but I did at last pull free. Grace clung to me and I held her close.

Through the window I could see the wide green expanse of Parker's Piece. There was a cricket-game in progress. People were sitting on the grass in little groups. A toddler was lurching uncertainly along chased by his mother. A summer's day in Cambridge. Had it had ever looked more beautiful?

‘Cass,' Stan said, ‘Jake has something to tell you.' She pushed him forward.

‘I'm sorry, Cassandra,' he muttered. ‘I really am.'

‘What? What's the matter?' I asked.

He bit his lip and looked at Stan.

‘Let me give you a clue,' she said. ‘Who was that masked man?'

‘You mean – it was Jake who was dressed up in that cloak!'

‘Oh, God, oh, God,' he moaned.

‘I can't believe it! Why did you do it?'

‘It was a joke more than anything.'

‘Oh, no, it wasn't,' Stan said. ‘You did it to stir up excitement for that bloody documentary.'

‘How could you sink that low?' I said.

‘I didn't really do any harm.'

‘No harm! The police thought I was involved!'

Stan said, ‘And he wouldn't have owned up even now, if I hadn't finally realized what the cloak smelled of: that poncy aftershave he uses.'

‘If it gets out, it'll ruin me professionally,' he whined, ‘and anyway Geoff—'

‘You little shit,' Joe spoke quietly, but the hairs went up on the back of my neck. I knew what was going to happen next and this time I wasn't going to try to stop him. But as it happened it wouldn't have done any good if I had.