Chapter 32

A member of the audience used a hand-held device to make recordings of ‘A Werewolf in Woolley Wood’ and posted vignettes online. Much of the dialogue is hard to hear but scrolling through to the final scene, I find the voices are raised.

Amidst scenery draped in white to look like snow-covered ground, Electra appears as White Fell. She’s draped in a white fur cloak, her long blonde hair streaming out from under a white fur hat and her lips a slash of bright red. A man dressed in steampunk style races onto the stage.

‘You pursue me through the snow to Woolley Wood,’ White Fell cries. ‘No man can resist my kiss!’

‘A kiss to save my twin!’

She laughs. ‘Too late! He is already in my snare!’

As Twin One rushes forward to embrace White Fell, he is grabbed from behind by another man in identical clothes, arriving breathless from the chase.

‘I am in time!’ Twin Two shouts. ‘You know I love her! But you are mad with jealousy and not the brother I once held in high esteem. You fill me with murderous rage. I am here to save White Fell from your clutches. If you touch a hair on her head I will kill you for your villainy.’

‘A kiss to save you, my brother!’ Twin One cries.

He plants a kiss on White Fell’s lips, then falls down as if in death.

White Fell grabs her throat. ‘Why am I dying?’ She pulls a red scarf like a slash of blood down the open front of her fur coat.

‘What have you done?’ shouts Twin Two.

‘I die that you can live,’ cries Twin One with his last breath.

He falls on his face, revealing a flash of red cloth around his neck.

‘A sacrifice of love,’ screams White Fell. ‘I cannot survive it.’

As she collapses backwards, she pulls off her gloves to expose clawed hands that reach up to the rolled edge of her fur hat and pull down the gaping mask of a wolf.

Twin Two recoils in shock as the truth hits him. ‘I cannot look at this … thing that was once White Fell.’

He turns to the audience and drops to his knees, delivering a heartbreaking soliloquy for his dead brother.

‘I know my brother dead as I did not know him in life. Now I see the full horror he faced for my sake. I will bury him here in Woolley Wood in honour of his sacrifice and be forever in his debt.’

As the recording ends, I’m struck by the emotional power behind the siblings’ melodramatic words.

Anita’s email arrives with the link to the interview. As I click on it, her warning rings in my ears. But leads like this have their own momentum.

‘Electra Loxton, creator of ‘A Werewolf in Woolley Wood’, welcome to Carte Blanche Conversations.’

‘I’m pleased to be here. Thank you for the opportunity to chat about my play.’

The sound quality is superior to the play extract and the first thing that strikes me is Electra’s voice. The voice of my doppelganger. Well-spoken and strong, with a melody to her intonation that shows her training as an actor. She could have added audiobook narrator to her many skills. The male interviewer’s voice has an arrogant edge.

‘I’m interested in your inspiration for it,’ he says. ‘The 1896 story by Clemence Housman, of course. But what else?’

‘Nothing else,’ Electra says. ‘As soon as I read her story, I could visualise it on the stage. And on the screen if a film producer agrees with me. I’ve always been interested in folklore and how timeless the motifs are.’

‘But what attracted you to read the Housman story in the first place? I believe you have a werewolf story in your own family.’

There’s a pause before she answers. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Your brother Alex. Some of our listeners might be too young to remember him. He was only three years old when he was kidnapped and murdered on Halloween. He was wearing a werewolf suit, wasn’t he? And his remains were found in a shallow grave in Woolley Wood after it was disturbed by a fox, a predator in the same family as the wolf.’

This guy had done his homework. I brace myself for what’s coming.

‘Your play is about murder by a werewolf,” he continues, “and the power of sibling love. You were only eleven when Alex was taken, old enough for it to impact you greatly and cause ongoing psychological consequences.’

Now he waits for her to reply.

‘I have very confused memories of what happened to my … to Alex,’ she says, a slight waver in her voice. ‘And my play is based on a fictional story from the Victorian era. I’m here today to talk about that.’

The interviewer should have stopped this line of questioning right there. He didn’t.

‘Carte Blanche Conversations are not publicity spots,’ he says. ‘The questions I ask delve into the motivations behind my guests’ creative works. My listeners expect me to dig deep and discover secrets not known until now. Studies show that artists can transform childhood trauma into intense creativity. From my research, it’s clear that Alex’s death is very much behind the themes in your play.’

‘Not at all.’

Her tormentor ignores her.

‘Let’s go through them, shall we? Alex was kidnapped because you, as a girl on the cusp of puberty, weren’t happy with your witch costume for Halloween. You threw a tantrum about it, distracting your aunt who was minding both of you and allowing the paedophile to pounce on your brother. I’m interested in exploring how your unacknowledged guilt about being responsible for Alex’s death influenced you to write a play about a werewolf where one sibling sacrifices himself to save his brother’s life.’

How did she get trapped in a recording studio with this monster? He hasn’t finished by a long way.

‘Freud said people who don’t remember past traumas are obliged to repeat them as contemporary experiences. The play is a re-enactment of Alex’s murder but with a different ending, isn’t it? An ending that seeks to assuage your guilt. If you’d been kidnapped and murdered in his place, like the sibling in the play, Alex would still be alive. And by putting yourself in the role of the werewolf on stage, you are killed. Every night.’

This tirade of psychobabble is devastating. During the long pause that follows, I squirm for Electra. She was only twenty-five and new to being in the public eye and the cut-throat world of selling ‘content’. I can imagine the click-bait headlines that would have gone with this interview if Electra hadn’t died.

When she speaks again, her voice has changed. Softer but the steel behind her words is unmistakeable.

‘Your research into this tragedy is based on newspaper reports and the bare facts about what happened to Alex twenty years ago. But my family’s suffering was private … and extreme. We don’t talk about it and I won’t be bullied into discussing it in public.’

‘You agreed to this interview. You can’t refuse to answer relevant questions.’

What? Yes, she can.

‘I can and I am. If your listeners would like to experience the outcome of my influences in the theatre, tickets for ‘A Werewolf in Woolley Wood’ are available for purchase. When they see me on stage, they’ll be free to make their own judgements.’

End of interview.

She sounds so strong and I blink back tears for her tragic death only a week later. Such a loss. Did his analysis stir up long forgotten memories and feelings of guilt, traumatising and overwhelming her? I hope he’s given up journalism.

Anita was right to warn me. Because I also feel ashamed. By listening to it, I’ve humiliated Electra all over again.

Using the emotions from the whole Perry Windermere debacle and Electra’s interview, I strengthen Piper Halliday’s reactions to events in Death by Deception before crashing early.

As I drift off, my thoughts return to Electra. Did she get any kind of support after that savage interview? If her ‘family’ never talked about Alex’s murder, she was referring to Ambrose and Helena. I wonder if she was alone with her demons and went to Woolley Wood in an attempt to expunge them. Did she jump or fall? Drowning by hypothermia can be an accident. If she slipped and fell into the lake, the cold shock ‘gasp reflex’ could have filled her lungs with water.

And what about the man she was about to get engaged to? Anita didn’t say who he was. As a member of a family intent on privacy, did Electra feel able to confide in him? And how has he coped with her loss?

Then in the early hours, a word dances into my consciousness. I sit straight up in bed, waking Raider.

I’m sure I saw the word and sailed right past it. But I skimmed so many news reports yesterday, where was it? Before or after I met with Perry?

Still in my PJs and fuelled by coffee, I respond to Perry’s words in the opposite way to what he intended: ‘If you’re any kind of author …’ Not to feel put down by them, but to spur me on to find what I missed.

After an hour I’m reading it.

Three-year-old in Werewolf Suit Missing from Exeter Front Garden

Alex Loxton (3) has disappeared from the front garden of his house in Exeter where he was dressed as a werewolf ahead of Halloween celebrations. Alex was wearing a grey-and-black fur body-suit with hood. The werewolf mask was found on the paving where she had been playing. Alex is 86 centimetres tall with fair hair.

I stare at it for several minutes as the implications surge around my synapses: The werewolf mask was found on the paving where she was playing.