Her visit to Norwich was not recorded until February 13.
LOTS has happened. I did go into Norwich. I waited and waited outside the theatre. Then he came out. But he wasnt alone. He was with one of the ladys in the play and another man. They were talking together like it was some sort of argument. I said his name. At first he didnt here me so I went up to him and touched him on the arm.They went all just sort of dead when I did that.Then he smiled and said, hello I didnt see you there. Have you been waiting long? Excuse me for a moment. And he and the lady and the other man went to a car. The lady and man got in and left but he came back to me. He was mad, I could tell. But I said why didnt you interduce me to them? And he said what are you doing here without letting me know your coming? And I said why should I are you embrassed of me? And he said dont be a little fool. Dont you know Im trying to get you into the company? But I cann’t make a move too soon before your ready. These are professonals and they wont accept anyone whos not a professonal as well so start acting like one. So I started to cry. And he said oh damn, Han, dont do that. Come on. So we went to his rooms. Lord I was there till 2 a.m. I went back the day before yesterday and he said he was working on an awdition for me but I would have to learn a very hard scene from a play. I was hoping it would be the dutchess play but it was the other one. He said to copy the part down and then to memerise it. It seemed awfully long and I asked why I had to write it why couldent he just give me a script. But he said there arent enough and it would be missed and then they would know and my awdition wouldent be a surprise. So I copied. But I didnt get it done and will have to go back tommorrow. We made love. He didnt seem to want to at first but he was happy enough after we did it!!
Lynley did not miss the perfunctory quality of the girl’s final statements, and he wondered that she did not notice it herself. But apparently she had been too intent upon joining the theatrical company and starting life with a new man to notice the moment that lovemaking became simply an expected routine.
Her next entry was on February 23.
Teddy was ill for 5 days. Bad. John went on and on about it till I thought I would scream. But I got away 2x to finish copying that old script. I dont know why I just cant have one but he says they would know. He says just to memerise my part and not to worry about how to act it. He says hell show me how to act it. Of course he should know!!! Thats what hes good at. Anyway its only 8 pages. So what Im going to do is suprise him. I’ll act it for him! Then he wont have any douts about me. Sometimes I think he dose have douts. Except when we go to bed. He knows how mad I am for him. I can harly be round him without wanting to take off his close. He likes that. He says oh God Hannah you know what I like dont you? You really know how, better than anyone. Your better than anything. Then he forgets what were talking about and we do it.
Hannah had devoted her next several entries to a detailed description of their lovemaking. These pages were heavily thumbed, no doubt the section that John Darrow turned to whenever he wanted to remember his wife in the worst possible light. For she was meticulous in description, omitting nothing, and at the last comparing her husband’s endowments and his performance with those of her lover. It was a brutal evaluation, nothing that a man would get over very quickly. It gave Lynley an idea of what her farewell note to John Darrow must have been like.
The penultimate entry was on March 23.
Ive been practicing all week when Johns down in the pub.Teddy watches me from his cot and laughs something wicked to see his mum prancing round like a russion lady. But Ive got it down. Was dead easy, that. And in 2 nights Im off to Norwich so we can decide what to do and when Im to have my awdition. I can harly wait. Im lonely for him right now. John was on me like a pig this morning. He said its been 2 months since the doctor said he couldent and he was threw with waiting for him to say he could. It almost made me sick when he put his tong in my mouth. He tasted like shit I swear it. He said thats better now isnt it Han and he did me so hard I tried not to cry.When I think that till 2 months ago I thought thats what it was sposed to be like and I was just sposed to put up with it. I have to laugh now. I know better. And Ive decided to tell John befor I leave. He deserves it after this morning. He thinks hes such a MAN. If he only knew what a real man and I do to each other in bed hed probaly faint. God, I dont know if I can wait 2 more days to see him again. I miss him so. I DO LOVE HIM.
Lynley snapped the journal closed as Hannah Darrow’s comments came together in his mind, like a puzzle finally completed. Prancing around like a Russian lady. A play about a man who gets married, whose sisters hate his wife. People talking endlessly about moving away or marrying. And the poster itself-as big as life-on Lord Stinhurst’s offi ce wall. The Three Sisters, Norwich. The life and death of Hannah Darrow.
He began searching through the rest of her belongings, digging past clothes and handbags and gloves and jewellery. But he did not fi nd what he was looking for until he turned to the second trunk. There at the bottom, past sweaters and shoes, beneath a girlhood scrapbook filled with clippings and mementoes, was the old theatre programme he had prayed to fi nd, Hannah’s wire-rimmed spectacles hooked onto its cover. Designed with a diagonal stripe across the front to serve as division between the two pieces that the company were doing in repertory, the programme was fashioned with stark letters, white upon black on the top half and the reverse on the bottom: The Duchess of Malfi and The Three Sisters.
Impatiently, Lynley skimmed through the pages, looking for the cast. But when he came to it, he stared incredulously, scarcely believing the obscene twist of mocking chance that had governed the casting of the performances. For with the exception of Irene Sinclair and the addition of actors and actresses in whom he had no interest, everyone else was absolutely the same. Joanna Ellacourt, Robert Gabriel, Rhys Davies-Jones, and, to complicate matters further, Jeremy Vinney in a minor role, no doubt the swan song of a brief career on the stage.
Lynley tossed the programme to one side. He got up from the chair and paced across the little room, rubbing his forehead. There had to be something that he had not noticed in the few entries Hannah had made about her lover. Something that revealed his identity in even an oblique fashion, something Lynley himself had already read without realising what it meant. He returned to his chair, picked up the journal, and began it all again.
It was not until the fourth time through that he found it: He says hell show me how to act it. Of course he should know!!! Thats what hes good at. The words implied only two possibilities: the director of the production or the actor who was in the scene from which Hannah’s “suicide note” had been drawn. The director would be skilled in showing an untutored girl the rudiments of a performance. An actor from the same scene would be able to show her how to play the role with ease, since he had been performing opposite an actress doing it for several weeks.
A quick survey of the programme told Lynley that Lord Stinhurst had been the director. He scored a point for Sergeant Havers’ intuition. Now all that was left was to fi nd out where in The Three Sisters the “suicide note” belonged and who played the roles in that scene. For he could visualise it now-Hannah going to the mill to meet her lover, in her pocket the eight pages of script that she had meticulously copied by hand for her audition. And the man who killed her, who took those eight pages, tore off the single part that would look like a suicide note, and took the rest with him, leaving her body hanging from the ceiling.