“And you seriously wanted me to go out with you before admitting that, did you?” asked Meera.
The squabbling continued late into the rainy night.
∨ The Memory of Blood ∧
14
Relationships
On Wednesday morning the June weather grew worse, and the pleasant, airy start to the week faded to a memory. Charcoal clouds punched down over King’s Cross and drizzle drew a shroud across the streets, staining brickwork and shining roads. The working population dragged itself to offices in the knowledge that the London summer had once again failed to materialize and would probably truncate itself to a halfhearted four-week period starting in late July.
John May arrived early at the warehouse on Caledonian Road to face a mountain of old-fashioned glue-staples-and-scissors paperwork. In his spare evenings and weekends away from the PCU, he had been building an experimental programme based on witness responses that would work as a supplement to Banbury’s. Now, looking at the forest of forms before him, he was starting to wish he hadn’t.
Traditional witness statements often failed to garner as much information as they could. On one side of the usual chequered MG 11 form there was a consent request about the provision of medical records, a disclosure for the purposes of civil proceedings and an agreement to allow details to be passed to the Witness Support Service. The other side simply left room for a statement made in the knowledge that falsehoods would be liable to prosecution.
May’s new supplementary questionnaires were informal and oblique, dwelling largely on moods and feelings, but he thought they could prove useful in understanding the mind-sets of those who had been suddenly exposed to criminal activity.
Although the new forms could not be officially recognized in a court of law, he was planning to try them out with the guests who had attended the party at 376 Northumberland Avenue. Accordingly, he arranged for everyone to visit him in the informal atmosphere of the PCU staff common room, and sorted the appointments into three main groups.
At nine a.m. he saw the party’s waiting staff and the downstairs doorman. Immediately it was clear that the questionnaire could provoke surprising responses. One waitress, a ghostly, slender Estonian girl, remembered overhearing an urgent whispered argument in the kitchen between Mrs Kramer and the handsome young actor Marcus Sigler, but her English was not fast enough to follow the conversation. A Polish waiter recalled which of the guests were smokers and which were not. He also knew which ones were heavy drinkers, who had appeared agitated and who had left the room to use the bathroom.
“They don’t see us,” he explained. “We’re invisible when we move among them, so we see everything.”
The doorman remembered who treated him with politeness and who regarded him disdainfully. In May’s experience, staff usually made good witnesses because they were focused, silent and watchful.
At ten a.m. May met with Robert Kramer and his financiers and went through the same exercise. Now, though, the recollections were about business conversations, not body language and shielded slights.
Kramer was frank about his reasons for throwing the party. His producer had asked him to raise further finance and find new backers for the show. The company needed to be seen as a new force in the world of commercial theatre. He had discussed mergers and acquisitions, copyright and licensing issues. But there were others in attendance who spent the evening vying for his attention.
For Kramer, hosting the party had been an important display of power, and he was convinced that someone in the room hated him enough to harm his only child. He freely admitted that he was disliked, but was reticent when it came to providing a reason. His employees were even less forthcoming. May learned the least from this group.
Finally, at eleven-thirty, May saw the actors and production crew. At first they politely refused to discuss the other guests, but it didn’t take long for most of them to crack and start enthusiastically chipping in with scurrilous information. This group proved to be the most interesting, but a new problem emerged: May could not tell who was telling the truth and who was exaggerating for effect. The responses on the questionnaires were colourful but largely constructed from surmise and gossip.
“Judith Kramer doesn’t love her husband,” confided Mona Williams, the older lady who was playing the handsome actor’s grandmother in The Two Murderers. She had insisted on being interviewed with Neil Crofting, her onstage partner.
“They’ve only been married a short while,” said May. “What happened?”
“She told me that Robert had deceived her.”
“How?”
“She was seeing someone else when they met, but Robert was extremely persistent in his attentions. He bombarded her with gifts, turned on the charm, flew her to India to propose. He pushed her to marry him. She says he wanted a hostess, not a partner. Look at her, she’s a classic trophy wife! After they were married he completely changed. Treated her like a servant.”
“How do you know this?”
“Judith and I have had quite a few heart-to-hearts.”
“Why did she go through with the marriage?”
“She told me her parents divorced when she was seven and her mother was left penniless, and I think she was frightened that the same thing might happen to her. She did what a lot of insecure women do. She married for security and saw someone else for love.”
“Do you know who this ‘someone else’ was?”
Mona shot a meaningful glance at her old friend Neil Crofting.
“You might as well tell him, seeing as you’ve gone this far,” said Neil, with a sigh.
“So long as it goes no further,” said Mona. “It’s Marcus Sigler, our leading man.”
“When did she stop seeing him?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t think she has. I don’t know for sure because she won’t tell me, but apparently the last ASM walked in on them in his dressing room, which we think is why she left the company. She knew too much, couldn’t face seeing them after that.”
“And Robert Kramer really has no idea?”
“God no, he’d never have hired Marcus for the play if he had! If he ever found out, I don’t know what he’d do. He has a terrible temper. He was married before but his first wife couldn’t take any more of his behaviour and it all ended badly. He never talks about her.”
What would it take, May wondered, for a man to kill his own child? Could Robert have murdered Noah to spite his wife for her infidelity? And if so, how did he do it in his own flat, surrounded by his friends?
“There’s something else,” said Mona, always happy to be a harbinger of ill will. “Gail Strong, our so-called ASM, was giving our leading man the come-on from the moment she set eyes on him at the party. I’m RADA-trained, you know. I miss nothing.” May made another note.
The corpulent Alex Lansdale had been a restaurant critic, a film critic, an art critic and now a theatre critic. He explained that he had been born to criticize others for a living, and made more money than any of those he lambasted. His ultimate ambition was to become a TV talent show judge. Lansdale sat back in the sofa, his tiny grey eyes lost in a basin of unhealthy flesh, and held forth to his audience.
“You must understand, Mr May, that Robert Kramer is a terribly clever man when it comes to money, and an imbecile when it comes to art. He knows what the public wants, but he couldn’t tell Nijinsky from Stravinsky. Basically, he’s a property developer with no taste. Have you seen The Two Murderers? Oh, it’s smartly written, I suppose, but pure sensation, gore and sex for the masses. It’ll make a fortune, but in my opinion it’s meretricious trash.”