‘Mr A. Constant’ fitted into a plastic slot. She tapped on the door and Esther Constant’s voice said, “Come in.”
The scene that greeted Jude was one of longstanding connubial bliss. Andy was propped up on a lot of pillows, with an edge of bandages visible at the neck of his pyjamas. Esther, a pretty woman with short dark hair, was seated at his bedside, holding his hand. She rose and said, “You must be Jude.”
“Yes.”
“I’m so grateful to you for coming. Andy really wanted to see you.”
The patient smiled weakly and gave a feeble wave. Jude felt the knee-jerk suspicion that she had in all dealings with Andy Constant. He wasn’t as badly hurt as he was pretending. Once again he was milking a situation for all it was worth.
“As I said on the phone,” Esther Constant went on, “he really thinks you may have saved his life. His attacker would have gone on stabbing him if you hadn’t arrived. Andy reckons the attacker must have heard you coming in through the main door of the Drama block, and that’s what made him do a runner.”
“Maybe. I didn’t see anything, but I think I must have passed him – or her – in the lobby.”
“Anyway, Andy says thank God you arrived.”
Jude’s conjecture that the whole conversation might be conducted with Esther verbalizing her husband’s thoughts ended, as Andy himself said, “Yes, I can’t thank you enough.”
Jude shrugged. “I’m glad if that is what happened, but it was pure luck. A serendipitous accident of timing.” But in spite of his injured state, she couldn’t help moving instantly into investigative mode. “Did you see who it was who attacked you?”
“No. He – or she – was waiting for me in the lighting box. Must have known I switch on the studio lights from there. Leapt on me as soon as I got through the door.” His voice sounded pretty robust, considering he had just emerged from intensive care.
“Have you been questioned by the police yet?”
“Just basic stuff.”
“They’re coming again tomorrow morning,” Esther Constant interposed. “Assuming he’s stronger by then.”
Andy Constant showed a brave smile. “Which I’ll hope to be.” Then he reached out and took his wife’s hand. “Esther love…I just want to ask Jude a few details about what she saw…and I don’t want to make you go through the whole thing again. Maybe you’d like to ask the nurse to get you a cup of coffee?”
His wife, obedient to his every whim, took the hint and made for the door. “I’ll give you five minutes.” Then, explaining to Jude, she said, “Important that he doesn’t get too tired. He’s very weak.”
Weak he may have been, but the minute Esther was out of the door, he sat up in bed and said urgently, “Have the police talked to you yet, Jude?”
“Yes. At some length.”
“And did you tell them anything?”
“About what?”
“About you and me.”
“There isn’t much to say about you and me, is there?”
“Come on. We’ve met a few times. But for…external events, we’d be lovers by now.”
Jude wondered how accurate that was. Any attraction she might have felt for Andy Constant had melted away in the last couple of days. But, looking back and being honest with herself, she had a nasty feeling his words might be true.
“Well, I certainly didn’t tell the police that.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Just that we’d met for drinks a couple of times, that you’d asked me to go and see
“And what about last night?”
“I said that you’d asked me to join you for a drink in the Drama Studio.”
“Just that?”
“Pretty much, yes.”
“Hm.” He looked troubled. “The thing is, it’s very important that Esther doesn’t find out anything about us.”
Jude saw him then for what he was. Just another cheap philandering husband. All his talk of the moribund nature of his marriage was so much guff. At home he was the dutiful husband, but he used those elastic moments between work and home to conduct his affairs. His favourite time for an assignation was not a dinner, not a whole evening. No, six o’clock in his own convenient little knocking-shop, the Drama Studio. Time for a furtive glass of Scotch and a quick sexual encounter. Then, no doubt, back home to Esther with an airy, “Oh, met up with some people for a drink after work.”
Jude shuddered inwardly to think how nearly she had become involved with a man like that.
“Andy, I’ve said what I told the police. What they make of the information, how much further they want to go with it, that’s not up to me.”
“I just don’t want Esther to get hurt. She’s quite fragile emotionally. I don’t want her getting hold of the wrong end of the stick.”
Getting hold of the right end of the stick, thought Jude. Being made to realize what a bastard her husband really was. Yes, it was quite possible that Esther was completely unaware of Andy’s finely practised seduction technique. As the saying went, the wife was always the last to know.
“I won’t do anything to make the situation worse,” said Jude. Then, suddenly she asked, “And what about you and Sophia?”
She wouldn’t have thought it possible for his face to have gone paler, but it did. “Me and Sophia? The police didn’t ask about that, did they?”
It was the nearest she was likely to get to an admission that he had been having an affair with the girl, so Jude pressed home her advantage. “No, they haven’t asked me about that, but what do you want me to say if they do?”
“Do you think that’s likely?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know which way the police investigation is going, do I?”
“Oh, God.” He looked really bad.
“So you’re not denying that you were having an affair with her?”
“Look, these things happen.” He was trying to sound disingenuous, but it wasn’t cutting any ice with Jude. “Two attractive people who’re attracted to each other, sometimes the emotion can just get too strong to cope with. Even with the difference in ages. I think in fact the difference in ages made it even more powerful. We could learn so much from each other. Come on, haven’t you ever been in a situation like that, Jude?”
She had, but she wasn’t about to tell him so. “How long had it been going on?”
“I suppose the attraction was there since the beginning of the academic year, when we first met…”
That made sense. Sophia had met Tadek in Leipzig in the summer, he had followed her to England in late September. Maybe they had begun or continued an affair. But round the same time Sophia had started her university career, and found the archetypal lecherous lecturer coming on to her. As Jude had deduced before, it was a classic love triangle.
“And when did you become lovers?” she asked implacably.
“I suppose it must have been in the run-up to Christmas. You know, there were lots of parties and things on the campus. And I was working closely with Sophia on some one-to-one role-playing exercises.” Yes, I bet you were, thought Jude. He shrugged helplessly, as he went on, “And, you know, one thing led to another. We both admitted how much we fancied each other and…”
Jude suppressed her fury. Andy Constant had shamelessly abused his position of responsibility and was now trying to get sympathy for himself as a plaything of the gods, a man incapable of resisting the surging power of a
“Joan? How do you know about – ?”
“I know it was Sophia’s nickname. One given to her by her other boyfriend.”
“Other boyfriend?”
