“What did he tell you about it? And no, this isn’t for publication.”
“Then why are you here?” She kept her brisk pace towards the auditorium with Vinney dogging her stubbornly. He caught her arm and stopped her just short of the heavy, oak doors.
“Because your sister was my friend. Because I can’t get a single word from anyone at the Met in spite of their long afternoon with our melancholy Lord Stinhurst. Because I couldn’t get Stinhurst on the phone last night and I’ve an editor who says I can’t write a syllable about any of this until we’ve some sort of miraculous clearance from above to do so. Everything about the mess stinks to heaven. Or doesn’t that concern you, Irene?” His fi ngers dug into her arm.
“What a filthy thing to say.”
“I come by it naturally. I get particularly filthy when people I care for are murdered and life just cranks on with merely a nod of acknowledgement to mark it.”
Sudden anger choked her. “And you think I don’t care about what happened to my sister?”
“I think you’re delighted as hell,” he replied. “The crowning glory would have been to be the one to plunge the knife yourself.”
Irene felt the cruel shock of his words, felt the colour drain from her face. “My God, that’s not true and you know it,” she said, hearing how close her voice was to breaking. She jerked away from him and dashed into the auditorium, only imperfectly aware of the fact that he followed her, that he took a seat in the darkness of the last row, like a lurking Nemesis, champion of the dead.
The confrontation with Vinney was exactly what she had not needed prior to meeting with the cast members again. She had hoped to use all of her lunch hour to reflect upon how she would perform the role that Sergeant Havers had schooled her for last night. Now, however, she felt her heart pounding, her palms sweating, and her mind taken up with a violent denial of Vinney’s fi nal accusation. It was not true. She swore that to herself again and again as she approached the empty stage. Yet the turmoil she felt would not be stilled by such a simple expedient as denial, and knowing how much rested on her ability to perform today, she fell back upon an old technique from drama school. She took her place at the single table in the centre of the stage, brought her folded hands to her forehead, and closed her eyes. Thus, it proved nothing at all for her to move into character a few moments later when she heard approaching footsteps and her cousin’s voice.
“Are you all right, Irene?” Rhys Davies-Jones asked.
She looked up, managing a weary smile. “Yes. Fine. A bit tired, I’m afraid.” That would be enough for now.
Others began to arrive. Irene heard rather than saw them, mentally ticking off each person’s entrance as she listened for signs of strain in their voices, signs of guilt, signs of increased anxiety. Robert Gabriel gingerly took his place next to her. He fingered his swollen face with a rueful smile.
“I’ve not had a chance to say thank you for last night,” he said in a tender voice. “I’m… well, I’m sorry about it, Renie. I’m most wretchedly sorry about everything, in fact. I would have said something when the doctors had finished with me, but you’d already gone. I rang you up, but James said you were at Joy’s in Hampstead.” He paused for a reflective moment. “Renie. I thought…I did hope we might-”
She cut him off. “No. There was a great deal of time for me to think last night, Robert. And I did that. Clearly. At last.”
Gabriel took in her tone and turned his head away. “I can guess what kind of thinking you accomplished at your sister’s,” he said with aggrieved fi nality.
The arrival of Joanna Ellacourt allowed Irene to avoid an answer. She swept up the aisle between her husband and Lord Stinhurst as David Sydeham was saying, “We want fi nal approval of all the costumes, Stuart. It’s not part of the original contract, I know. But considering everything that’s already happened, I think we’re within our rights to negotiate a new clause. Joanna feels-”
Joanna did not wait for her husband to argue the merits of their case. “I’d like the costumes to reflect who the starring role belongs to,” she said pointedly, with a cool glance at Irene.
Stinhurst did not reply to either of them. He looked and moved like a man ageing rapidly. Managing the stairs seemed to drain him of energy. He appeared to be wearing the very same suit, shirt, and tie that he’d had on yesterday, the charcoal jacket rumpled, its sleeves badly creased. As if he’d given up interest in his appearance entirely. Watching him, Irene wondered, with a chill, if he would even live to see this production open. When he took his chair, with a nod of acknowledgement towards Rhys Davies-Jones, the new reading began.
They were midway through the play when Irene allowed herself to drop off to sleep. The theatre was so warm, the atmosphere on the stage was so close, their voices rose and fell with such hypnotic rhythm that she found it easier than she had supposed it would be to let herself go. She stopped worrying about their willingness to believe in the role she was playing and became the actress she had been years ago, before Robert Gabriel had entered her life and undermined her confi dence with year after year of public and private humiliation.
She even felt herself beginning to dream when Joanna Ellacourt’s voice snapped angrily, “For God’s sake, would someone wake her up? I’ve no intention of trying to work my way through this with her sitting there like a drooling grandmother snoring at a kitchen fi re.”
“Renie?”
“Irene!”
She opened her eyes with a start, pleased to feel the rush of embarrassment sweep over her. “Did I drop off? I’m terribly sorry.”
“Late night, sweetie?” Joanna asked tartly.
“Yes, I’m afraid…I…” Irene swallowed, smiled flickeringly to mask pain, and said, “I spent most of the night going through Joy’s things in Hampstead.”
Stunned astonishment met this announcement. Irene felt pleased to see the effect her words had upon them, and for a moment she understood Jeremy Vinney’s anger. How easily indeed they had forgotten her sister, how conveniently their lives had moved on. But not without a stumbling block for someone, she thought, and began to construct it with every power available to her. She brought tears into her eyes.
“There were diaries, you see,” she said hollowly.
As if instinct alone told her that she was in the presence of a performance capable of upstaging her own, Joanna Ellacourt sought their attention again. “No doubt an account of Joy’s life makes absolutely fascinating reading,” she said. “But if you’re awake now, perhaps this play will be fascinating as well.”
Irene shook her head. She allowed her voice to raise a degree. “No, no, that isn’t it. You see, they weren’t hers. They had come by express yesterday, and when I opened them and found the note from the husband of that wretched woman who had written them-”
“For God’s sake, is this really necessary?” Joanna’s face was white with anger.
“-I started to read. I didn’t get very far, but I saw that they were what Joy had been waiting for to do her next book. The one she talked about just the other night in Scotland. And suddenly…I seemed to realise that she was really dead, that she wouldn’t ever be back.” Irene’s tears began to fall, becoming suddenly copious as she felt the fi rst swelling of genuine grief. Her next words only marginally touched upon the script that she and Sergeant Havers had so painstakingly prepared. She was rambling, she knew it, but the words had to be said. And nothing else mattered but saying them. “So she’ll never write it now. And I felt as if…with Hannah Darrow’s diaries sitting there in her house…I ought to write the book for her if only I could. As a means of saying that…in the end, I understood how it happened between them. I did understand. Oh, it hurt. God, it was agony all the same. But I understood. And I don’t think…She was always my sister. I never told her that. Oh God, I can’t go back there now that she’s dead!”