emotion that was more powerful than his control. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just so typical of her, to think that that kind of subterfuge would fool anyone. Going to Victoria instead… I mean, to go out of her way like that to be inconspicuous and then write all the details down in a diary. I think a lot of the affair was just a game for her, like a schoolgirl having a midnight feast.’
‘But it was serious on your side?’
Geoffrey looked pained. ‘Serious on both sides — in our different ways. It was very good.’
‘And it was still going well when she died? I mean, you hadn’t had a row or…?’
Geoffrey looked at Charles with some distaste, pitying his lack of subtlety. ‘I know what you mean. No, we hadn’t had a lover’s tiff which would inspire me with hatred to go and kill her. It was all going very well.’ He was becoming wistful again.
‘And was it going to change?’
‘Change?’
‘I mean, were you likely to get divorced and marry?’
Geoffrey shook his head and slowly. ‘No, it was an affair. I wanted to go on as long as possible, but I suppose some time it would have ended. I’ve had other affairs. They all end sooner or later. I wouldn’t have left Vee. People can never understand how close Vee and I are. I’m just one of those men who’s capable of loving more than one woman at a time. Do you understand?’
‘I think I do. Did Vee know about Charlotte?’
‘I assume so. I never told her, but she’s not stupid.’
‘Didn’t she get jealous?’
‘Vee would only get jealous if she thought someone was likely to take me away from her. She knew that no one would. According to my own rules of morality, I’m very loyal.’
Charles nodded. Geoffrey had a male chauvinist vanity which was quite strong enough to blind him to his wife’s real feelings. No woman, however liberated, actually welcomes the knowledge that her husband is sleeping around. And Charles knew from the way that Vee had watched her husband at the cast party, she had a strong possessive instinct.
There wasn’t a lot more Charles could find out. ‘I must go. I mustn’t keep you from your work any longer.’
Geoffrey laughed cynically and flapped his copy of The Winter’s Tale. ‘Ah, my work. Geoffrey Winter Associates haven’t had a decent size job now for four months.’
‘Where are the Associates?’
‘Disassociated — or should it be dissociated? I never know. All gone their separate ways, anyway. Even the secretary’s gone.’
‘So you just come up here and do nothing all day?’
‘Sometimes things come up. Odd little jobs, through friends in various government departments. That’s the answer these days — work in the public sector. No room for men on their own. I keep applying for jobs in local government and things, but as yet no luck. So I stay on here and wait. May as well, until the lease is up.’
‘When’s that?’
‘A couple of months.’
‘And then what?’
Geoffrey Winter’s shrug started expansive as if it encompassed every possibility in the known world, but shrank down to nothing.
‘So what do you live on?’
‘Credit.’ He laughed unconcernedly. ‘And the confidence that something will turn up.’
Charles went back to Hereford Road feeling excited. He had been glad to hear Geoffrey’s watertight alibi because that removed him from the running. And enabled Charles to follow the suspicions which were hardening in his mind. It wasn’t Geoffrey he suspected; it was his wife. He could not forget the tensed-up energy he had felt in Vee’s body as they had danced together. She was a woman capable of anything.
The chain of motivation was simple. Vee’s jealously of Charlotte had started when she was beaten for the role of Nina which she had regarded as hers by right. It had been compounded by the discovery of her husband’s affair with the upstart. That, however, she could have borne; what drove her to murder was the discovery that Charlotte was giving Geoffrey the one thing that their marriage could not — a child.
The opportunity for committing the crime was equally easily explained. Geoffrey had been at such pains to establish his own alibi that he hadn’t thought about his wife’s. While he was upstairs ranting through Leontes, she was assumed to be downstairs watching I. Claudius. So far as Geoffrey was concerned, that was what she was doing. He could presumably hear the television from upstairs.
But a television set conducts a one-way conversation, regardless of whether or not there is anyone watching. Vee, knowing that Geoffrey would get carried away by his performance, had every opportunity to leave the house after the show had started. There was plenty of time for her to have gone up to the Meckens’. Charlotte would have recognised her and let her in. A brief exchange, then Vee had taken Charlotte by surprise and strangled her. Put the body in the coal shed to delay its discovery and a brisk walk home to be back in time for the end of I, Claudius.
It was all conjecture, but it fitted. And, what was more, Charles thought he could prove it.
The proof lay on the table of his bedsitter. For reasons mainly of masochism (to see how much work other actors were getting), Charles always had the Radio Times delivered. Since he had no television and rarely listened to the radio, it was frequently thrown away unread. But on this occasion he felt sure it was going to be useful.
It was the Wednesday that interested him. He thought back to the Wednesday night when he had rung the Winters to get Robert Chubb’s number. He remembered the time. Twenty-five to eleven, because he had looked at his watch after speaking to Kate Venables. And when he had spoken to Geoffrey Winter, there had been a break in their conversation while Vee was given advice on how to adjust the television for a good picture on BBC2.
Charles almost shouted out loud when the Radio Times confirmed his suspicions. At ten o’clock until ten-fifty on BBC2 on Wednesday night there had been a repeat of the Monday’s episode of I, Claudius. Geoffrey Winter would not have been watching it, because he had missed so many of the earlier episodes.
So why should his wife watch the same program for a second time in three days? Unless of course she hadn’t been there to see it the first time.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Charles had cause to be grateful to sour Reggie for forcing him into joining the Breckton Backstagers. As a Social Member, it was quite legitimate for him to be propping up the Back Room bar at a quarter past seven that evening.
There were not many faces he recognized. Robert Chubb gave him the sort of glance most people reserve for windows and a few others offered insincere half-smiles. The only person who greeted him with anything like conviviality was Denis Hobbs, who bought him a large Bell’s. ‘You going to do some show or something down here then, Charles?’
Denis without Mary Hobbs was a refreshing change. He remained hearty, but didn’t seem to have the same obligation to be raucously jovial which he had demonstrated on their previous meeting.
Charles denied that he was likely to break into amateur dramatics. ‘Just a handy bar,’ he explained, hoping that Denis wouldn’t ask why it was handy for someone who lived fifteen miles away.
But Denis was a man without suspicion. He leaned forward to Charles and confided, ‘Exactly the reason I joined. I mean, you can’t turn up the chance of a bar on your doorstep, can you?’
‘So you don’t act?’
Denis erupted with laughter. ‘Me? Bloody hell, I could no sooner act than have a baby. Blimey, me an actor — no, I’m a builder, that’s what I am. Although Mary keeps trying to get me to say I work in the construction industry.’
The mimicry which he put into the last two words suggested that he was not as devoid of acting talent as he had implied. ‘No, the acting bit’s all Mary’s. Very keen she is on all this arty-farty stuff. I tell you,’ he confided like a schoolboy with a dirty story. ‘I’ve been more bored in that theatre next door than a poof in a brothel. Still, Mary
