she would interpret them differently: the danger which he was trying to warn her against was all but lost in her sorrow for Elspeth. ‘So, one way or another, she died because of me,’ she said.
It was not a question but Archie protested nonetheless. ‘That’s not what I meant. I’m saying that because a girl has been killed, you are bound to suffer – it’s not the same thing. At best, you’ll have your name dragged through the papers again because the association is certain to get out; at worst – and I need you to take this seriously – your life could be in danger. There was nothing spontaneous about Elspeth’s murder and if it turns out that the killer got the wrong person, you can put money on the fact that he or she will try again. Don’t waste your time on feeling guilty about something that’s not your fault. If you must worry, then worry about yourself.’
‘Oh Archie, don’t be so bloody naive. How can I not blame myself when the very last time that you and I stood together in this room was after an inquest into another death that would never have happened had it not been for that wretched play?’
45
‘We’ve been over this a thousand times. Elliott Vintner killed himself because he was a ruined man. He got lucky with one novel and spent the next ten years trying to do it again. When he found he simply didn’t have the talent, he tried to take advantage of yours. Nobody in their right mind would accuse someone of plagiarism over a piece of history – let’s face it, if that were a viable legal argument, Shakespeare would have spent his whole life in the dock. Vintner gambled by taking you to court, and he lost – end of story. If his life was so miserable that he had nothing else worth living for, that can hardly be laid at your door. By all means mourn for a girl you liked who died too young, but don’t waste a minute on that bastard’s memory.’
‘I know you’re right, but it doesn’t alter the fact that this afternoon I’m supposed to be signing a contract to license a tour of
‘Do whatever you need to about the play – that doesn’t matter.
It’s you I care about.’
‘I know, and I’m grateful – even if it doesn’t always sound like it. But you surely can’t believe – if everything was as carefully planned as you say it was – that the murderer would have overlooked the small matter of getting the right victim?’ Archie said nothing, acknowledging the logic of Josephine’s reasoning but unable to let it overcome his instincts as she continued, more gently this time. ‘You don’t need to waste time worrying about me but I will be careful, I promise. And there is something else you can do to make me feel better.’
‘And that is?’
46
‘I’d like to see Elspeth’s family. Can I come with you this afternoon?’
‘What about your meeting with the boys?’
‘Like I said, there are more important things and I need to decide once and for all what I’m going to do before I see them. I’m sure Ronnie and Lettice would go for me if I asked them to, so at least I’ll know what happens. Look, I know it’s not normal procedure and I don’t want to be in the way, but I’d like to talk about Elspeth to someone who knew her, and it might help her family, too.’
Archie stood up, ready to leave. ‘I’ll pick you up at two.’ He kissed her briefly at the door. ‘It’s nice to see you,’ he said, smiling for the first time that morning.
47
Four
It was turning into the sort of day that made even the most faithful of Londoners question their devotion to the city. An unyielding stretch of cloud settled heavily over the rooftops, draining the colour from everything it touched before dissolving, at street level, into a half-hearted, depressing mist. Even so, as he left the house in Queen Anne’s Gate, Bernard Aubrey savoured the rush of freedom that accompanied any departure from the four walls which were, but rarely felt like, home. This picturesque relic of Georgian London, built in the eighteenth century by the founder of the Bank of England, was an appropriate reflection of the aesthetic taste and sound financial judgement which had made Aubrey one of the West End’s most prosperous and influential theatrical managers.
Like its neighbours, from which it differed only in the pattern of a curtain or the choice of flowers in a vase, the house breathed success. It was a smugness which he shook off like an unwanted chaperone every time he shut the door.
With an amiable nod to the statue that gave the square its name, Aubrey turned his back on her mannered serenity and headed for the more worldly stimulus of St Martin’s Lane. He loved his work and was diligent in its undertaking, spending most of his waking hours in the two theatres which his parents had built and entrusted to him, theatres which he had developed beyond even their wildest hopes through an addiction to the challenge of balancing art with money. It was a business founded on risk and he was not infallible, but his errors of judgement were few and far between, and he had been blessed with a talent for anticipating what the public would look for next, as well as with the financial means to provide it. The 49
considerable fortune which he had amassed along the way had been wisely reinvested and his instincts were underpinned by a tireless energy: he spent as many nights in the theatre as any actor and, on Sundays, when the stage was empty in deference to the pulpit and the family table, he was invariably to be found at his desk, taking advantage of the lull in one achievement to plan for the next. To actors and playwrights unused to such commitment, he was a self-effacing benefactor; privately, he knew that his ability to make or break a career overnight was little more than a by-product in a quest to prove something to himself, a quest which was nothing short of an obsession. It had been that way for as long as he could remember. Looking back, he could not honestly say if his bond with his wife and child had been sacrificed because of it or whether, in sensing that the emotional commitment required for family life was not his to give, he had instinctively thrown his energies into something he was more certain to be good at.
Driven by pride rather than by ambition or greed, Aubrey was not the sort of man who contemplated failure easily, or who liked to be anything other than a few steps ahead.
Today, as usual, he rejected the convenient option of a ten-minute journey to work courtesy of the city’s underground railway and set off on foot. The peculiar atmosphere evoked by London’s tunnels was not for him, and he never failed to wonder at the willingness with which people now accepted darkness and confinement as a natural part of their day-to-day existence. For Aubrey, the lingering, acrid smell of those subterranean passageways brought back ghosts from a past he tried in vain to forget.
Too old at forty-five to take part in the trench war but with a distinguished military record behind him, he had spent those terrible years as a tunneller in the guts of the French earth and had no wish to return to its horrors in his waking hours as well as in his nightmares. A tunneller’s war required a different sort of heroism to the fighting above ground, and if the strength and bravery involved had been psychological rather than physical, the sacrifice
