Home through the Dark (8 page)

I stirred uneasily. “Marcus, what is your job? What do you do?”

“Changing the subject? All right. Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but there's nothing mysterious about it. I'm a building consultant. I draw plans for extensions, new houses, all that kind of thing, and see them through from the drawing board to the planning department and beyond. Satisfied?”

“Which is why you went to Culpepper's?”

“Of course, and Freeman's, and Jones, Henry. Why? Had that appeared sinister in some way too?”

“You work from home?”

“I do. It's easier and cheaper than paying for office premises. Next question!”

I smiled reluctantly. “I'm sorry. I have been a bit jumpy lately.”

“I've noticed. But you're not going to tell me why?”

“Not at the moment, anyway. Heavens, look at the time! I must go.”

I met Sarah that evening as I was walking back from garaging the car.

“What did you think of M.M.?” she demanded. “I bet he only came because of you. He'd seen you before somewhere, hadn't he? He seemed pretty attentive – you'd better watch him!”

I laughed. “Relax, Sarah, he's not in the microfilm business after all!” Briefly I told her of his joining me for lunch and the explanation of his job. She looked rather disappointed.

“Well, he certainly seems interested in you, whatever he does. How's your job going?”

“Okay. Having just got used to Miss Davidson, she's off on a fortnight's holiday today and on Monday I have to start getting to know the other girl.” Who, I added privately, might well be a likelier bet for my purposes than Isobel Davidson had proved.

Looking back on that week, it is obvious that I was treating the whole rigmarole as a sort of game, a mental stimulant in the same vein as a crossword puzzle. As time passed without any further development and the seeming mysteries surrounding Marcus were peeled innocently away, the initial uneasiness I had felt faded and I was far from convinced that anything untoward had actually taken place.

“How about you and Andy coming round for supper tomorrow evening?” I suggested impulsively. The weekend stretched emptily ahead and I wanted to avoid at all costs the danger of allowing myself time to brood over Carl.

“That would be super! I'd like him to see how the other half lives!”

It passed through my mind that Marcus would have made up a foursome, but I dismissed the idea at once. He wasn't much given to small talk, I didn't feel that he and the Fosses would find very much in common, and, most important to my way of thinking, it seemed wise not to become too involved with Marcus myself.

The following morning I met Kitty at the supermarket. “Have you been along to the theatre this week?” she asked, as we trundled our baskets side by side.

“No, have you?”

“A couple of times. Actually, I volunteered to go along and cook them some lunch tomorrow. They're rehearsing like mad all day and Laurence doesn't like going out for lunch – it breaks the continuity, he says. They've been living on sandwiches all week so I thought I'd rustle up something on the little stove at the theatre – nothing complicated, just a change from sandwiches.”

Sunday was completely clear, a potential Carl-trap. “Like any help?”

“I certainly would!”

“What lines are you thinking along?”

“Oh, spaghetti Bolognese or something. I've bought a few tins of mince as a start.”

“How many will be there?”

“About a dozen or so, I imagine, plus the stage manager, stage director and possibly some of the lighting people. I don't know how far they've got.”

“What play are they doing?”

“
Twelfth Night.
They double up some of the minor parts, though.”

“Suzanne Grey isn't in this one, is she?”

She glanced at me quickly. “No, which should make life easier.”

“Is she temperamental?”

“Well, you presumably heard her at the party.”

We joined the queue at the cash desk. “If you come along about eleven-thirty,” Kitty said, “that will give us plenty of time and we can stay on and watch for a while if we feel like it.”

It was a pleasant evening with the Fosses. Sarah as usual chattered incessantly and several times I caught her husband's amused eyes on her. He was a few years older than she, quiet and studious-looking with his dark-rimmed glasses. I gathered he was a junior partner in a firm of accountants over the other side of Westhampton.

“You realize,” I remarked during the meal, “that I have been in the flat for one whole week?”

“Pamela and Stephanie will be arriving back sometime this weekend,” Sarah said. “I hope they won't crash around too much overhead! I'm sure we must make a dreadful row, but Moira never complains. I suppose she's used to noise, living with the boys.”

“I won't mind a bit of noise; it'll stop me feeling lonely,” I replied, and then regretted the admission tacit in the remark.

“Do you get lonely, Ginnie? You seem very self-sufficient to me! I'm sure I couldn't bear to live alone.”

“I'm sure you couldn't, darling,” Andrew agreed with a laugh. “If you'd no one to talk to, you'd wilt away!”

“Not only that, I'd be scared stiff, specially sleeping on the ground floor.”

“Don't be silly, Sarah!” Andrew's voice sharpened as he threw me an anxious glance.

“It's all right, Andy, Ginnie's not going to be put off by my prattling. I know it's silly, but the fact remains if I slept downstairs, I'd stay awake all night listening for footsteps!”

“You've made me feel a lot better!” I commented ruefully.

“I'd never given it a thought before.”

“I
told
you to shut up,” Andrew said accusingly.

I smiled. “I was only joking. More coffee, Sarah?”

But that night after they had gone I made sure that all the windows except the bedroom ones were firmly closed, and even so I lay awake longer than usual listening to the wind in the trees just outside.

At eleven-thirty the following morning I parked the car in the usual position and swung through the quiet streets to the Little Theatre. It was a dull day with a cool breeze which lifted my hair as I walked and made me glad I had decided to wear a trouser suit rather than a summer dress. I ran up the steep stairs with my shopping bag and turned into the kitchenette, where Kitty was unloading her own contributions onto the table.

“I bought some mushrooms and tomatoes to liven up the tinned mince,” I said. “Also a green pepper I had left over from last night.”

“Gorgeous, and I've brought some French loaves. We should have quite a feast. Remind me to pay you back for what you bought out of the petty cash. Is this pan big enough for the spaghetti, do you think?”

“Barely. We'd better do it in two batches.” I hung my jacket on the back of the door and pushed up the sleeves of my sweater.

“We're getting a bit low on coffee,” Kitty remarked, peering into the huge tin. “They must have been living on it this week. There's only just enough left for today.”

“I could drop some in after work tomorrow if you like. It's no bother when I have the car.”

“Thanks, that would be a great help. I'd certainly have trouble fitting it on my handlebars!”

Lunch was very informal, with some people sitting on the chairs round the walls of the foyer and the rest on the floor. Talk was mainly of the play and I drank it in avidly though I was perfectly content in my role of onlooker until Stephen, with a malicious gleam in his eye, drew me into the conversation.

“Well, Ginnie, aren't you going to give us the benefit of your opinion? I'm sure you'd be able to put us right!” Since the problem they were discussing had arisen once at the Playhouse, I was able to reply lucidly and even to suggest an improvement on the method they had chosen. Stephen was obviously taken aback at my unexpected competence. “Of course,” he went on quickly, after Laurence Grey had thanked me warmly for the suggestion, “if you're not careful you can get bogged down with too many contrived effects, which eventually detracts from the drama rather than otherwise.”

I smiled. “You mean ‘Art for art's sake,' or
l'art pour I'art,
as Madame Lefevre always says.”

My laughing words dropped into an icy pool of sudden silence. For at least ten seconds – and it seemed three times as long – no one even moved. Then Laurence Grey said a little breathlessly, “
Who
did you say?”

I swallowed nervously, aware of the gimlet concentration of every pair of eyes in the room but completely at a loss to understand why I had merited it. “Madame Lefevre. She's a wealthy French widow I know in London who takes a great interest in the theatre.”

Laurence said smoothly, “I knew a Juliette Lefevre in Paris some years ago. I wonder if that could be any relation?” He was in control again now.

“I don't think so, no. She only had one son and he was killed in a road accident a few months ago.”

“I see.” Laurence's eyes were on me, considering, almost calculating. After a moment a perfunctory smile touched his mouth briefly and he looked away. I found that my neck was stiff, as though I had subconsciously held it in an immobility matching that of my companions. Carefully, with unsteady hands, I put my plate down on the floor and at the movement eyes dropped away from me and I was no longer under such intense scrutiny. I drew a quivering breath of relief.

Later, as Kitty and I washed the dishes side by side, I said with an attempt at casualness, “That was an odd reaction, about Madame Lefevre. Do you know what it was all about?”

“Search me. Perhaps Laurence had an affair with La Belle Juliette and was afraid of Papa with a shotgun in pursuit!”

“But it wasn't only Laurence that reacted.”

“Sorry, Ginnie, it was lost on me.” There was obviously no help forthcoming from Kitty. After we'd cleared away, we crept through to the auditorium and settled down in the back row to watch the progress of the rehearsal. On Carl's behalf I was particularly interested in Robert Harling's portrayal of Antonio and felt it came over very well. A girl I hadn't seen before, Joanna Lacy, made a very appealing Viola while Marion Dobie, whom I'd last seen as the mother in the Priestley play, was a rather elderly Olivia.

After a while Kitty glanced at her watch. “I'll have to go,” she said regretfully. “It's Mum's birthday and I promised I'd be there for tea. Are you sure it won't be a nuisance having to collect the coffee tomorrow? One of the cast could always slip out.”

“No, not at all. I'll drop it off on my way home.”

“Right, thanks. Keep the receipt for reimbursement. Are you going to stay a bit longer?”

“I'll wait till the end of this scene, anyway.”

She slipped away and I settled back as I'd done countless times in the past to watch movement and speech begin to coagulate, this time under the direction of Laurence Grey, slouched in the second row. “Can we have Malvolio on again please; this letter scene isn't gelling yet. Give Malvolio his cue, Liz: ‘Here comes the trout that must be caught with tickling.' Okay, let's go.”

I watched them go through it three or four times before he allowed them to pass on to the next scene, and by that time I was tired of sitting still. I left my seat quietly and pushed my way through the swing doors into the foyer. It was deserted – a coat slung over the bar, a cup and saucer pushed under one chair. I picked up the latter, carried them through to the kitchenette and retrieved my jacket and the empty shopping bag. No one was about, everyone being grouped on or around the stage engrossed in the rehearsal. I turned towards the stairs and then on an impulse, passed them and moved instead to the bend in the passage beyond. It was a fascinating old building, this, with countless hidden nooks and crannies and now seemed as good a time as any to explore it. A long corridor, dim and unlit, stretched away ahead of me to another bend where it turned once more to the right, presumably in the direction of the stage. The left-hand wall was bare along its entire length but there were two or three doors on the right. I started silently along the passage, wondering rather nervously if I was trespassing. I turned the knob of the first door but it would not yield. The next one was more forthcoming and opened onto a dusty storeroom, full of stacked chairs and trestle tables. The third room was empty except for an old washbasin leaning drunkenly on the floor. By this time I had come to the bend. The corridor continued beyond it but a few yards further on a short flight of steps led upwards, presumably to the wings, but a door at the top blocked off what lay behind. The passage itself continued beyond the stairs and after a moment's hesitation, so did I. Somewhere in the distance now I could see light and the faint noise of voices from the stage reached me.

Suddenly I stiffened. No, the voices weren't coming from the stage; they were nearer at hand. Someone was coming. Instinct told me I should not be discovered here and I glanced quickly over my shoulder. There was not time to reach the bend in the passage; the voices were growing louder. I turned and fled silently back to the stairs, swung myself round the post and up the steps two at a time. The door at the top resisted my frantic fingers. It was securely locked. I was trapped. Crouching down, I pressed myself into the bannister as closely as I could, hoping desperately that whoever was coming would not glance back as they passed the stairs. My heart seemed literally to be in my mouth, great muffled beats which were painful to swallow past. Footsteps came nearer and I heard Stephen's voice quite clearly. “Suppose he goes on refusing to eat?”

“God knows. You tell me.” It was a girl's voice, offhand and sullen. And then they were there, scarcely six feet below me. I tucked my head down behind the cumbersome bag I was still carrying and pressed still further back in my corner, not daring to look down in case the force of my gaze should communicate itself to them. And a moment later, blessedly, they turned the corner of the passage and their footsteps faded away. Time passed and at last, stiff and cold from my cramped position, I pulled myself to my feet and, as though suddenly released from paralysis, fled down the passages and the steep stairs and out into the mews. Minutes later, my heart still beating a tattoo high in my chest, I was in the car and driving like a maniac for home. Only then, in the safety of familiar surroundings, did I stop to wonder why I had panicked so. Technically I might have been trespassing, but I had never heard that the passage beyond the staircase was private property. I could have stood my ground and explained to whoever was coming that I had been exploring and hoped it was all right. But the fact that it had been Stephen who came only reinforced my thankfulness that I had not been seen, for if after all there was some undercurrent at the theatre, Stephen Darby was undoubtedly behind it.