‘I’m not excusing what’s happened,’ said Rupert, ‘but I was very raw when Helen left me. Beattie lived with me for two years. Naturally I confided in her about my marriage, it never entered my head she’d shop me. None of the stuff that’s been printed was intended for the memoirs. Will you tell Helen how desperately sorry I am? I did tell Beattie hundreds of good things about her, which she conveniently forgot to put in.’
‘I’m sure that’ll be a great comfort to Helen,’ said Malise acidly.
‘Look, I’m going abroad immediately after the IBA meeting tomorrow,’ said Rupert. ‘I won’t be back for Christmas. I must see the children before I go.’
‘I don’t think that’s at all a good idea,’ said Malise crushingly, ‘and I know Helen won’t either. Tab’s far too young to understand, and I doubt if Marcus will ever speak to you again after the things you said about his mother. The press are howling round the place; your presence would only exacerbate things. Just bugger off and leave us all alone.’
‘I must explain —’ just for a second Rupert’s voice faltered — ‘that whatever’s happened, I still love them. For Christ’s sake, Malise.’
‘You can always write,’ said Malise, and hung up.
Rupert sat slumped for a long time. Then he borrowed two hundred pounds in cash from Basil’s till, a piece of writing paper and an envelope.
‘Darling Taggie,’ he wrote, ‘I’m sorry I was bloody the last two times we met. Of course we’re still friends. One day you’ll find some nice boy who’s worthy of you, and he’ll be the luckiest sod in the world. In the meantime could you spend the enclosed on Christmas presents for Marcus and Tab. You’ll know instinctively what they’d like. Thank you for everything. God bless you. . Rupert.’
Shoving the cash and the letter in an envelope, he gave it to Bas to deliver to The Priory.
Towards nightfall, over at Green Lawns, Freddie and Declan were just trying to prevent another backer pulling out when the private detective rang on another line. He had something too important to tell them over the telephone. He’d be straight round. He turned out, to Declan’s surprise, not to be some seedy unfrocked cop in a dirty mac, but a delightfully understated, mouse-haired young Wykehamist with an innocent pink and white face. Nor did he beat about anyone’s bush.
‘Tony Baddingham spent yesterday afternoon in a Stow-in-the-Wold motel with a woman. I’ve got pictures of them arriving separately and then leaving together, and exchanging kisses in the car park.’
He threw the pictures down on the table. Fascinated, Freddie and Declan got up to have a look. In the first photograph the woman had her black coat collar turned up and was wearing a black beret, dark glasses and her hair tied back. In the second, coming out of the motel, her coat was unbuttoned, she was laughing, holding the dark glasses and the beret in one hand, with her glorious red hair trailing down her back. In the third, she was kissing Tony in front of Taggie’s car.
‘Is this some kind of a joke?’ hissed Declan.
‘I’m afraid not,’ said the private detective. ‘I’m awfully sorry, Mr O’Hara. After they’d gone I talked to the receptionist. After I’d bunged her, she admitted they’d been there several times before. She showed me the register — they’d signed in as Mr and Mrs Jones. The girl remembered Mrs O’Hara because she was so beautiful.’
Declan started to shake. It was like seeing the first stroke of the woodcutter’s axe going into a great oak tree, thought Freddie.
‘But it was Bas, not Tony,’ muttered Declan.
‘Bas must have been a front,’ said Freddie.
‘Look how upset she was the other night when Taggie turned up with Bas,’ said Declan, frantically trying to convince himself.
‘That’s because she’s jealous of Taggie,’ said Freddie wisely. ‘It was only later she got really upset, which was when you told us you’d just seen Cameron with Tony — and she did know all about Dermot MacBride and the Shakespeare plays. ‘
‘I don’t believe it,’ muttered Declan. ‘She wouldn’t. I must find her.’ He stumbled towards the door.
‘For Christ’s sake, drive slowly,’ warned Freddie.
As Declan walked into The Priory Maud came out of the drawing-room with a glass of champagne in her hand. She was wearing a black polo-neck jersey, a black coat, black stockings, black flat shoes and a black beret on the back of her head. She was very pale, she wore no lipstick, but her skin had a glowing luminosity and her eyes were huge and dreamy. Declan thought she had never looked more beautiful, and suddenly knew she was as guilty as hell.
‘Darling — I got it!’ she said ecstatically.
‘What?’
‘The part — Nora — in A Doll’s House. We start rehearsing immediately after Christmas and they’re paying me four hundred a week, so our money worries are all over.’
How little she knows about anything, thought Declan — how can a child have done such terrible things?
‘Where’s Taggie?’ he asked.
‘Cooking supper, I think. You don’t seem very pleased for me, darling.’
As if in a dream he led her into the drawing-room, shutting the door and then opening it again to let in Claudius and Gertrude. Gertrude had a Bonio sticking out of the side of her mouth like a pipe. She could sit there for hours, saliva hanging in festoons. Declan leant against the door for support, watching Maud put a log on the fire. Despite all Maud’s grandiose plans for The Priory, there were still no curtains at the windows which were as black as her clothes.
‘How long have you been having an affair with Tony?’ he asked almost conversationally.
Maud’s face went as blank as a digital clock in a power cut.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Don’t prevaricate. I’ve got evidence.’ Declan threw the photographs down on the sofa. Slowly Maud examined them.
‘Rather good, that one.’ She took a leisurely sip of her champagne. ‘I might use it as a publicity photograph.’
‘How long’s it been going on?’
‘Since September.’
‘So you told him everything?’
Maud shrugged: ‘I really don’t remember. We found so much to talk about.’
This can’t be happening to me, thought Declan. I don’t feel anything. It’s as though we’re discussing two characters in a play.
‘But why Tony? Bas I can understand, but not —’ for the first time he betrayed any emotion — ‘not that filthy venomous toad.’
Maud looked at him for a moment, her hand gently stroking Claudius’s ears.
‘Because he was kind, because he listened to me, because he was interested in me as a person — not just as a hole between two legs.’
Her sudden uncharacteristic coarseness shocked Declan almost more than her betrayal.
‘Tony!’ he said in amazement, ‘kind?’
Suddenly Maud flipped. ‘You’re so obsessed with your fucking franchise,’ she yelled, ‘you don’t know anyone else exists, except when you want to fuck them. You couldn’t even forget it for one moment to get back for my first night, when I really needed you. Christ — I needed you! And then swanning in and ordering me away from my own first-night party.
‘I was only fooling around with Tony until then. It was only after that that it got serious. He arranged for me to meet Pascoe Rawlings. He saw that a car delivered me to Pascoe’s office last week and brought me back. He fixed for me to be driven to the audition today, and even though he’d got his IBA meeting this afternoon, he still rang me this evening to see how I’d got on. You’d even forgotten I was going.’ She laughed; it was a horrible sound without any merriment. ‘The great interviewer, so praised for his judgement of character and his consideration to the staff, who doesn’t know a thing about his own wife.’