‘What’s she doing now?’ Ashley Wilkes hissed to Jane Blaisedell at the back of the auditorium.
‘Mr Wilkes!’ she hissed back. ‘If you persist in these interruptions, I shall have to ask you to leave.’
‘This is a theatre, policewoman, not an extension of your bloody Incident Room.’ Wilkes was a patient man. But his theatre had come into disrepute recently. He felt fingers pointed at him wherever he went over Gordon Goodacre and the whole place felt like an endless crime scene. It was like doing An Inspector Calls for ever.
Jane had no time to take the awkward bastard out. ‘Jane. Over here.’ Magda Lupescu stood stock still centre stage right, looking up, her elegant hands posed theatrically on her pointed chin. Jane scowled at Wilkes and pounded off down the gentle, carpeted slope of the central aisle. She found herself climbing the steps and standing downstage of the strange woman.
‘Something?’ she asked.
Magda’s eyes were closed, one foot pointing downward on tip-toe. ‘How old was Gordon Goodacre?’ she asked.
‘Fifty-seven,’ Jane told her. She’d gone over the man’s life often enough in the last couple of weeks.
‘He had a bad heart.’
‘Did he?’ Jane didn’t remember that from the details of Astley’s post-mortem and she didn’t have her notes with her. Magda gasped, spinning fast on the flat heel, frowning into the shadows of the wings. ‘He heard something. Over there.’ She was striding across the stage now, her heels clacking on the boards. She stopped abruptly, shuddering. ‘Here,’ she said loudly. She looked up suddenly and followed something with her eyes. Jane looked up too, but there was nothing there. Nothing but lanterns and the tangled cables that always festooned theatre ceilings. Then, quieter, Magda said, ‘He died here.’
Jane was nodding. ‘That’s right.’ She hadn’t seen the body in situ, but she’d studied the SOCO photographs and diagrams minutely.
Magda was looking backwards and forwards, then up into the tangle of cables and gantries and lights overhead again. ‘He was afraid,’ she said softly. ‘When he died, Gordon Goodacre was afraid.’
‘Of what?’ Jane asked, eyes wide.
Magda seemed to come to, as though out of a trance. She smiled darkly at the raven-haired girl. ‘Perhaps of that.’ She pointed to the largest incarnation of Audrey II lying in sections behind the tabs, its tendrils stretched across the apron, where a grateful, exhausted David Balham had left it. ‘After all, it eats people, doesn’t it?’
From his skylight world, Peter Maxwell could see the lights twinkling out on the Shingle, the dark spur of land that jutted out to sea like the black carcass of some huge, stranded whale. He’d lost track of time painting the tiny crimson vandyking around the sheepskin of Private Pennington’s horse. His mind wandered at times like these, when he could switch off from the cares of the world. And when he switched off, the Great Man’s thoughts turned, inevitably, to murder.
‘Well, frankly, Count,’ he muttered to the cat lolling on the upturned linen basket in the corner. ‘I’d expected rather more. What do you think of Scenario One – the Jacob’s Ladder theory?’
Metternich twitched his left ear and stared Maxwell down. He’d need more advance notice than this for God’s sake. He had a whole night’s hunting to plan. And then, there was the sortie into Mrs Troubridge’s rubbish… Did this man have no sense of priorities at all?
‘Gordon Goodacre is still a blank canvas.’ His master was putting it all together, slumping down in his modelling chair again and tilting the gold-laced pill box over his eyes. He locked his fingers behind his head and swivelled. ‘I don’t even know yet what the man did for a living, still less for a dying. I think it’s fair to say he didn’t exactly wear the pants in the Goodacre family, however. I get the distinct impression that Matilda, his good lady, has that privilege and, indeed, distinction. So what do we know?’
Clearly, the Count was from Barcelona. He knew nothing.
‘Gordon was apparently alone in the theatre on the night in question and fell foul of a ladder. Did it fall or was it pushed? Catch!’ He suddenly hurled a cushion at the cat, the one he used when his back had given up the ghost completely. Metternich dodged aside and pirouetted off to a perch high up, where Maxwell’s many battered suitcases lay in the semi-darkness of his attic.
‘Exactly.’ Maxwell loved it when a plan came together. ‘If you know something’s coming at you, you get out of the way, don’t you? Now, admittedly, at his advanced age, I think it’s probably true to say that Gordon Goodacre didn’t have your lightning reflexes – no, now don’t be modest, Count; you know it’s true. But that ladder is nearly twenty feet long – I know, I’ve seen it. Damn, I wish I’d listened in those Physics lessons all those years ago when I was doodling obscenities in my homework book. There must be a ratio for the length of time it takes a ladder to fall from the vertical to the horizontal, pinning an unsuspecting set painter beneath it. But,’ he picked up his glass of Southern Comfort and pointed a finger at Metternich, ‘there’s no ratio known to man that explains how such a ladder can slip its chains without human agency at the very time that said set painter is passing under it. Who stood to gain?’ He echoed the great Cicero again, in English this time for the benefit of the cat, who, let’s face it, had little Latin and no Greek. ‘Matilda Goodacre, if she cleans up financially. Or maybe she just hated the old man’s guts. Cherchez la femme, Count? Can it be that simple?’
Maxwell was warming to his theme now, or was it the Southern Comfort kicking in? ‘How long had they been married, I wonder? Twenty years? Thirty? More? Things irritate, don’t they? The way he sucked his dentures, picked his feet, farted in bed – all those little endearments which wear thin as time itself wears on. Did she finally snap, old Matilda? Oh, of course, she could have gone for him with the bread knife, the poker, the wasp killer in the shed, but all that would have tied her in, wouldn’t it? You know Henry Hall, Count – he’d have had her on Leighford’s Death Row before you could say “Where are my bollocks?” – No, don’t look for them now.’
But it was too late. The cat had jack-knifed, as felines do, and was munching the fur perilously close to where his testicles had once been housed.
‘So she had to kill him away from chez ons. Even so, the Arquebus seems a little near to home, too, to be honest. Anyhoo,’ he took a swig of the amber nectar before inspecting his paintwork’s drying time, ‘Scenario Two…’
‘Max!’ It was Jacquie calling from two floors below. ‘Max, can you come down?’
In the lounge on the first floor, Jane Blaisedell stood with her back to where a blazing log fire would have been if 38 Columbine hadn’t been built by a four-year-old chimpanzee with acne. She was clutching a large glass of Maxwell’s Southern Comfort. A very large glass.
‘I think you’d better hear this,’ Jacquie said, passing him another, unaware that he already had one simmering upstairs.
He took it, winking at Jane. ‘I’m not driving, Woman Policeman,’ he said. ‘To what do we owe the pleasure?’
The girl sat down on Maxwell’s settee, Jacquie next to her for moral support. Maxwell took the chair opposite. Jane had always been, if truth were told, just a little in awe of Peter Maxwell. People didn’t call him Mad Max for nothing. And Jane always felt a bit like a little girl in her Headteacher’s office when she saw him, for all the forthright spade-calling she tried to do.
‘Look,’ she said firmly, fortified by one giant slug for mankind. ‘I know I shouldn’t have come here, but I’ve seen things today… Jesus, Jacquie,’ and she swigged again, her face contorting as the liquor hit her tonsils. ‘The guv’nor’s called in a psychic.’
Jacquie and Maxwell looked at each other. ‘What?’ She popped the question first, laughing.
‘Her name is Magda Lupescu,’ Jane said. And she wasn’t laughing at all. ‘I’ve seen her in action.’
Jacquie was frowning now, putting her Pellegrino on the hearth. ‘I’ve known Henry Hall for the best part of ten years now,’ she said, ‘and never, in all that time…’
‘It’s not the DCI,’ Jane said, staring at the carpet. ‘It’s from the top floor – the Chief Constable.’
‘Waste of bloody space!’ Jacquie growled.
‘Tsk, tsk,’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘Such disloyalty.’ But then he didn’t know David Slater at all. ‘What have you seen, Jane?’
‘What?’ She blinked at him, her eyes flicking up to his face from the carpet.
‘You said you’d seen things today,’ Maxwell reminded her. ‘What things?’
She looked steadily at him for a moment, then looked away, lip trembling, fumbling for the right words. ‘We went to the theatre,’ she said, ‘to the Arquebus. She picked out the precise spot where Gordon Goodacre died – not just the stage, mind, but the exact place. As if it had been marked with a cross.’
‘She’d seen the crime scene photos.’ Jacquie, ever the realist, offered a sensible solution.
‘No.’ Jane was adamant. ‘No, she hadn’t. That’s just it. She refused to see them. Henry told me to give her every help, any paperwork she wanted. She took nothing. Didn’t even open the file. Christ, Jacquie. She knew. And about Uncle Tony…’
‘Who?’ Maxwell asked. This wasn’t a name he’d come across at the Arquebus. Uncle Vanya, yes; Uncle Tony, no.
‘Nobody,’ Jane said quickly. ‘It’s not important. Let’s just say this woman’s for real.’
‘Where’s she from?’ Jacquie asked.
‘London. Although she’s living in Brighton at the minute. She’s been involved with the Met before now. Half a dozen European forces. Apparently, they think highly of her at Quantico.’
‘So who did it?’ Maxwell asked. Quantico was just a place that was vaguely suspicious of the whackier exploits of Scully and Mulder; and where Clarice Starling ran through dark woods before chatting to Hannibal Lecter. None of it seemed very real, somehow.
‘Hmm?’ Jane was far away.
‘Who killed Gordon Goodacre? That’s the bottom line, isn’t it? How she gets there is irrelevant. Except of course that none of it is acceptable in a court of law.’
‘She…she became Gordon,’ Jane said, emptying her glass with a shudder.
‘How do you mean?’ Jacquie was lost.
Jane blurted it out as if she could only bear to say it once. ‘She stood on the spot where Goodacre died and she started talking in a man’s voice. “Who’s there?” she said. “What do you think you’re playing at?” And her face…oh, God,’ and the girl ran her hands down her pale, sweating cheeks.
‘What about it?’ Jacquie’s own voice was shaky now.
Jane half turned to her. ‘It…I don’t know. She…she actually looked like Gordon Goodacre.’
Instinctively, Jacquie’s hand snaked out, not to Jane, but to Maxwell. Fear was climbing her spine, spreading across her shoulders, tightening her jaw and making her skin crawl.
‘You knew Gordon?’ Maxwell asked Jane.
The policewoman shook her head. ‘I’ve only seen the photos from the morgue,’ she whispered. ‘But that’s how she looked. Shadows around her eyes, like…just like a corpse. Christ, I think I’m going to throw up.’
‘Jacquie,’ Maxwell said softly. ‘Some black coffee, darling, please. Jane, look at me.’ He leaned forward and took both her clammy hands in his. ‘Here. Up here.’ And she tried to focus on him. ‘Breathe in. That’s it. Gently, now. And out. That’s the way.’
Jacquie was in the kitchen, clattering the kettle, spooning the coffee. She’d seen shock before, they all had. And they all knew how to cope with it. But no one was better than Mad Max in mad moments like these.
‘All right?’ Maxwell slowly relaxed the pressure on the girl’s hands and held her face in both his. ‘Jane, are you all right?’
‘How did you know this psychic sounded like Goodacre?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘You said she spoke in a man’s voice. Was that Goodacre’s voice? You’d never heard his voice, surely?’
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘That’s right. But the theatre manager, Ashley Wilkes, he was standing next to me. And he said, “That’s him, Jesus, that’s him.” Jack, I can’t do this any more.’
Jacquie was back with the black coffee in record time and sat down next to her colleague, patting her arm and cradling her shoulder. ‘Talk to Henry,’ she advised. ‘This is putting you under a lot of strain. You don’t need this.’
‘I don’t understand it,’ Jane said, the tears near now. ‘That’s the problem. I can take the corpses, the mutilations, the heartbreak of the bereaved. All that goes with the job, doesn’t it? Like a bloody warrant card and a night stick and a cold cup of tea. But this…I…I just can’t work out how she does it. And it scares me, Jacquie. Max. It scares me.’
Saturday night. And Henry Hall had nobody. He sat alone at his desk, the lamp illuminating the scattered papers in front of him and the light bouncing back from his glasses, as always. He whipped them off suddenly and rubbed his tired eyes. Day Twelve of a double – or was it a triple? – murder inquiry. And he knew all too well what they said. If you hadn’t solved it by Day Four, perhaps you’d never solve it.
He looked up to see Tom O’Connell standing there. ‘Detective Sergeant,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d gone home.’
‘What, and miss out on all the overtime, guv?’ The sandy-haired sergeant crashed into a chair. He went far enough back with Henry Hall to risk a line like that.
‘Read the Lupescu report?’ Hall asked him.
O’Connell nodded.
‘And?’
‘Well…’ the Detective Sergeant was being just a little cagey.
‘Come on, Tom.’ Hall flicked his glasses back on. ‘I’ve known you now, man and boy, for the best part of three years. That’s for ever in our business. No bullshit. What do you think?’
‘I think it’s bollocks, guv.’
‘Well,’ Hall sighed. ‘Thank you for your candour, at least.’
‘I mean, what’s it all about? Some nutter with a ouija board goes down to the theatre and starts talking in tongues. Do you reckon Jane’s all right, guv?’
‘I’m sure it’s a perfectly accurate reflection of what happened,’ Hall said. ‘Why?’
‘Have you seen Jane? Since this morning, I mean?’
‘No.’ Hall frowned, sensing an undercurrent here. ‘No, she emailed this to me.’ He lifted a four-page dossier from his desk. ‘Is there something I should know?’
‘Well, I saw her at the station late this afternoon,’ O’Connell told him. ‘White as a bloody sheet. Looked to me like…’
‘What is it, Tom?’ Hall leaned back, giving the man time, giving him space.
‘Guv, I don’t want to land the kid in it.’
The DCI shrugged. ‘This is between you and me, Tom,’ he said, indicating the empty room. ‘Nobody else here.’
‘Well, I’d say she’d had a few. Her voice was shaky and just a tad slurred.’
‘What time did you say this was?’
‘Five-ish, half past, maybe.’
Hall checked the report again. ‘And she’d gone to the theatre with Magda Lupescu this morning. Did she say where she’d been in the meantime?’
‘Working on the report, I guess, guv. But she wasn’t working here or I’d have seen her. I’ve been on the Winchcombe woman’s last known movements for most of the day.’
Hall nodded. ‘Did she say where she was going?’ he asked. ‘Home, I hope.’
‘No, guv,’ O’Connell said seriously. ‘She said she was going to see Jacquie Carpenter.’
‘Did she now?’ Hall’s face hadn’t changed at all.
O’Connell nodded. ‘And doesn’t that mean Peter Maxwell?’
It was Hall’s turn to nod. It always meant Peter Maxwell. Every time he turned his back.
She wandered down a narrow corridor. It was dark and the only light came from its end. Everything seemed far away. As though, at one moment, she might reach out and hold the light in the palm of her hand. Then, it was gone again. Not one light, but many. Not many, but the same one. Repeated and repeated, again and again. And the noise. She hadn’t noticed the noise before. It was a gentle sound, caressing like the lapping of water. And the smell came again as it always did, a rising tide of nausea that filled her throat and coated her parched lips. And the solitude. That was the all-defining emotion at times like these. The feeling of being totally, unutterably alone.
‘Mr Maxwell?’ The woman was old enough to be Florence Nightingale. ‘Do you intend to be present at the birth?’
‘Yes, Middie Prentice, I do.’
The woman frowned. Her lips pursed like an old pea pod. ‘Why are you calling me that?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Maxwell shrugged. ‘It’s just that it says Prentice here on your desk. I naturally assumed…’
‘Not that,’ she interrupted him. ‘That…what is it, Middie thing?’
‘Oh, it’s Puritan-speak,’ Maxwell beamed. ‘In the seventeeth century, Mrs was Goodwife, or Goodey for short. You’re a midwife, so Middie for short. No offence, I hope. Just my idea of levity, to lighten the moment.’
‘You’ll have to forgive him, Mrs Prentice.’ Jacquie thought it was time to step in, for all their sakes. ‘He’s a historian.’
‘Is he?’ The Midwife looked the man up and down as if the term had more in keeping with paedophilia. ‘Well, I’m afraid we don’t do the hot water and towels thing any more. And positively no cigars in the theatre. You’ll have to gown up, of course.’
‘Of course,’ Maxwell nodded solemnly. ‘Will my old Jesus one do? I mean, I can get it dry cleaned, if you like.’
Jacquie flipped her handbag strap quickly so that it stung his hand under the midwife’s desk.
‘Have you had any home visits yet?’ the woman asked.
‘No,’ Jacquie said, smiling serenely in an effort to counter the idiocy of the father of her unborn child. ‘One was due in August, but there was a kerfuffle. You said you’d rearrange.’
‘Yes, of course we will.’ Mrs Prentice scanned her ledger. ‘It says here you are a teacher, Mr Maxwell?’
‘Does it?’ He craned round to read the line.
‘So, if somebody called, say on Wednesday, you’d be at school, would you?’
‘I think you can take that as a racing certainty,’ Maxwell said.
‘Good.’ The Midwife slammed the book shut. ‘Wednesday it is, then.’