Stage Fright (14 page)

Yes, Kevin
was
attractive: that easy charm, that energy. There would be no lack of opportunity. He seemed devoted to Melissa, but how well did I really know him?

Fisher picked up on my hesitation. ‘Well?'

‘Things seemed OK.'

Fisher nodded. He didn't speak. Neither did I. I recognized this technique. In fact, I used it myself in tutorials. If the silence stretched out for long enough, someone would usually feel impelled to break it. Now I knew what it felt like to be on the receiving end.

I sighed. ‘I don't know what I can tell you. Melissa didn't talk very much about her marriage. But then, women don't usually, I mean, in terms of complaining. Not much point in bad-mouthing a guy if you have to go on living with him. It's better to make the best of it.'

Fisher tapped his pen on his notebook. He said, ‘I got the impression that Mr Kingleigh could be a little, well, shall we say, demanding? Does he tend to make a fuss if things aren't exactly as he likes them?'

I saw again the expression on Kevin's face when he realized that Melissa hadn't done the washing-up.

‘He does like things to be just so,' I admitted.

Fisher went on. ‘What I'm getting at is this: if Miss Meadow was already under pressure, it could have added to the strain if a lot was also expected of her domestically.'

As he spoke, a memory came to me of an evening that Stephen and I had spent over at Journey's End. I saw Kevin and Melissa in the kitchen there. He was clowning about in an apron, tossing pancakes with one hand, his other arm round Melissa's waist.

‘I thought they were happy,' I said, with more conviction. ‘Kevin
is
a bit fussy, especially about what he eats, but then he has to be. He's got a serious food allergy, he can't eat nuts. He does most of the cooking, actually.'

‘OK.' He didn't sound altogether convinced. Nevertheless he leaned back in his chair and put his notebook away in his breast pocket.

‘What will you do next?' I asked.

‘Appeal through the press. There'll be a lot of coverage anyway. I'm afraid you're in for a pretty rough time. Everyone here at the theatre will be pestered, including you. In fact, especially you. You were the one who broke into the house to rescue the baby. That's the down side. The plus side is that when someone well known like Miss Meadow goes missing, they generally don't stay missing for long. Her photo will be everywhere and someone will remember seeing her.'

Her photo? Something snagged in my memory and that was it: I knew now what had been nagging at me since the beginning of the interview.

‘There's something missing,' I said. ‘Something that was here on Tuesday. Melissa's family photos. There was a collage of them – pictures of her family, Kevin, Agnes – in a big silver frame. Right there on the dressing-table. What's happened to it?'

*   *   *

‘I'm sorry, Cass,' Rose said. ‘Stan's just popped out to the chemist. She wanted to get some nappies for Agnes. She said to tell you she won't be long.'

I'd arrived out of breath in the costume department. I'd arranged to meet Stan there to take her over to the car-hire place. The interview with Fisher had taken longer than I'd expected. The department was housed on the third floor at the back of a small office block a couple of hundred yards from the theatre. During working hours, the quickest way in and out is via the fire escape. I had just run up them, only to find that Stan wasn't there.

I sank on to a stool. It was another hot day and sunshine was coming in through the metal-framed windows on to a big dressmaker's table which stretched almost the whole length of the room. Bolts of fabric were heaped up at the far end. At this end Rose was leaning down to jot something in a notebook lying open in front of her. She was an elegant young woman with long blonde hair so straight that it might have been ironed.

‘It's awful about Melissa,' she said without looking up. A wing of hair fell forward. She pushed it back behind her ears and added something to her list. ‘Do you think it's post-natal depression? My sister had that really badly. I bet that's what it is.'

‘Maybe,' I said non-committally.

‘Stan told me about Phyllida Haddon,' Rose went on. ‘We could do worse. I think she has very much the same sort of figure as Melissa. With any luck I'll be able to get away with a few nips and tucks. Otherwise I just don't know how we'll manage. I mean Lady Isabel wears a different dress virtually every time she comes on, and there's the Madame Vine outfit, too.' She bit her lip and looked sideways at me. ‘I expect you think I'm awful worrying about that at a time like this.'

‘No, I don't,' I said. ‘The dress rehearsal's only two days away: I'm not surprised you're worried.' I was more amused than anything by the way that everyone was seeing the situation from their own point of view: Stan was concerned with reliability and punctuality, Rose with whether the costumes would fit. And was I any better? I'd been wondering whether Phyllida would learn the lines in time. No point in feeling guilty about that. It was natural and it didn't stop me being worried sick about Melissa at the same time.

Rose sighed. ‘I'll be working round the clock, and that reminds me, I'd better grab a sandwich before Phyllida arrives and I know the worst. Do you mind if I just pop out? I won't bother to lock up if you're going to wait here for Stan.'

‘Off you go.'

‘Thanks. I won't be long.'

She grabbed her handbag and pushed open the opaque glass door on to the fire escape. The metal structure shuddered and clanged under her feet and then there was silence.

Normally the costume department is one of the busiest places in the theatre. If it isn't an actor having a fitting, it's one of the technicians dropping in to get a button sewn on. There were often more people in here than there were in the green room. There's somewhere like that in most organizations, a special corner where people tend to gather and gossip. Today there was no one, and I was glad of a few more minutes to myself.

I was rattled by those missing photos. I couldn't think of any reason for anyone except Melissa to take them. I was pretty sure no one else
could
have taken them, because the dressing-room was kept locked. Fred had a spare key and he had opened it for Fisher to use that morning. Melissa's key was presumably in her handbag, and that was, presumably, with her, wherever that was. I could think of only one reason why she would take the photos: she knew she was going to leave home and she wanted to take a memento with her. And if that was the case, then it wasn't a spur of the moment thing. And that in turn meant that when I had seen her that last evening, she must have known that she was going to leave. But surely I would have had some inkling that something was wrong. Or had I been so distracted by the prospect of meeting Joe that I just hadn't noticed? I didn't want to believe that of myself.

I got up and wandered around the room. The door to the costume store was ajar. I pushed it open and breathed in a smell that was compounded of dust, sweat and something a little acrid: dry-cleaning fluid, maybe. It was a large windowless room densely packed with racks of costumes suspended from the ceiling and winched up so that they hung a couple of feet from the floor. The place was like a child's dream come true, the biggest dressing-up box in the world.

I strolled down the aisles, pausing here and there to stroke the fake ermine on an Elizabethan costume or the satin of an Edwardian ball-gown. If I'd been in a carefree mood, I'd have been tempted to try out a new identity as a twenties flapper, or a nun, or the conductor of a brass band. There were big open boxes of shoes jumbled higgledy-piggledy together. I remembered Rose telling me actors were protected by Equity from having to wear other people's shoes. They're the only things that have to be new for every production. Ranged on the shelves all the way round and stacked up on the floor were dozens and dozens of brown cardboard storage boxes. I read the labels: boned bodices, bust supporters, bloomers. There was a kind of poetry about it. The lid was askew on ‘Ostrich – primary and secondary'. I put out a hand to press it back down and met resistance. Something made of heavy black material, like felt, had been stuffed in on top. I pulled it out, revealing flattened ostrich-feathers underneath. The garment fell into my arms in heavy folds. I held it at arm's length and shook it out.

I was looking at a long, black hooded cloak lined in a shiny black material like silk. Why hadn't it been hung up? I could think of only one reason.

The rows of hanging costumes muffled sound. That was why I didn't hear someone come into the outer room and why I nearly jumped out of my skin when the dark shape of a figure appeared at the door.

‘Cass?'

‘Stan!'

‘Christ! You nearly gave me heart failure. I didn't realize there was anyone in there. Where's Rose?'

‘Went out to get a sandwich. She'll be back any moment.'

Stan came into the room.

‘What have you got there?' she asked.

I held it up for her to see. ‘I found it stuffed into the top of a box of ostrich-feathers.'

She looked at me then back at the cloak.

‘Someone borrowed this, didn't they?' I said. ‘And when they brought it back they needed to conceal it in a hurry. It wouldn't be difficult to do that, would it? To take this away and bring it back without anyone knowing?'

Stan was gazing at the cloak through narrowed eyes,

‘No, it wouldn't. You know what it's like here. People in and out all the time. You'd have to choose your moment, of course. It's not very likely that anyone would notice it was missing…'

‘Because of course you wouldn't need it for very long.'

‘Oh no, not for very long. Just long enough to hide in the back row of the dress-circle and scare the shit out of an impressionable young woman.'

She took the cloak from me and examined it carefully as if it might yield up a clue to whoever had taken it.

‘It's awfully creased, but other than that…' She frowned.

‘What's the matter?' I asked.

‘Can you smell something?'

I sniffed. ‘Don't think so.'

She gathered the collar and hood close to her face and buried her nose in them. She gestured to me to come closer. I lowered my own face to the cloth. I caught the faintest possible whiff of something musky, something just on the very edge of being familiar.

‘I thought I smelt something, but it's gone,' I said.

We looked at each other and I knew we were thinking the same thing. Whoever had last worn this cloak had left something of themselves behind.

‘What was it?' I asked. ‘Not cigarette smoke?'

‘No,' Stan said. ‘But I think I've smelt it before.' She raised the cloak to her face again. She shook her head. ‘I can't even smell it now.'

‘Would you recognize it again?'

‘I think I might.'

Chapter Nine

I put my hands over my ears and closed my eyes. Grace stopped yelling. I kept my eyes shut and my ears covered. After a bit I opened my eyes. Grace was staring up at me from her cot. She was goggle-eyed, her face was scarlet, and a string of saliva was swinging from her jaw. Cautiously I lowered my hands from my ears. She glared at me and took a long deep breath, filling up her lungs. There was a pause that stretched out like the moment before a wave breaks. The noise began again.

I'd gone through her usual routine: a feed, a bath, and I'd put her down to sleep at 7.30. I looked at my watch. It was quarter past nine. She'd been crying off and on for over an hour and a half.

I'd arrived home to find ten separate messages from journalists on the answering machine. I had no idea how they'd got my number and I knew it was only a matter of time before they discovered where I lived. It was a miracle that I hadn't found them camped out round the front door. I thought of driving back to Cambridge and holing up in Stephen's flat, but I wanted to be close to Journey's End in case Melissa came back.

Probably Grace was picking up on my stress but knowing that didn't help. I put my hands under Grace's arms and lifted her up so that her face was level with mine. Her eyes were blurred with tears and she was pumping out scream after scream.

‘Are you doing this on purpose?' I said through gritted teeth. Didn't she know how tired I was – and how anxious I was about Melissa? I couldn't take this a moment longer. I wanted to shake her until she stopped. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. Then very carefully I put Grace back in her cot. I left the room and closed the door on her. I could hear her still shrieking as I walked out of the front door.

I went round the house into the garden and the noise grew fainter. The evening air was cool on my face. I sat on a wooden bench by the stream. The sky was a dark, rich blue shading to lilac in the west, and a full moon, so improbably huge and yellow that it didn't seem real, hung on the horizon. I breathed in the mingled scents of night-scented stock and tobacco plants that Stephen had planted nearby. Behind that I caught a whiff of something more acrid, redolent of water and decaying vegetation. There was a loud
miaow.
Bill Bailey came threading his way through the long grass, his white paws and face and chest luminous in the dusk. He leapt up lightly on to the bench beside me and pushed his head against me. I stroked him absently. I was shaken by the quickness and fierceness with which my anger had flared. I wondered whether Melissa could have felt like this. Agnes wasn't such a demanding baby as Grace, but could it be that Melissa had found it all too much? Where was Melissa now? Was she watching the same moon? Or was she sitting in some bleak hotel room looking at the photograph of Agnes that had gone from her dressing-room. But maybe the room wasn't bleak? Perhaps she was lying in a luxurious bath somewhere, sipping champagne.