conversation. He hoped she wouldn’t notice. ‘That’s strange. I rang Geoffrey on Wednesday and I could have sworn he said you were watching it then.’
He played it very light, but still threw her. She looked at him, flustered and bewildered. ‘Oh… oh yes, I did watch it on Wednesday this week.’
He didn’t volunteer any comment. Just left her to explain.
She did a goad performance as someone sorting through her memory. ‘Oh, of course. My mother rang on Monday just after it had started. She always natters on so, the show was practically over by the time I got off the phone.’
Charles joked, as if the information meant nothing to him, ‘I think everyone’s mother’s like that.’ But he felt sure she was lying.
‘Yes, mine always rings at inconvenient times. Still, I suppose 1 shouldn’t grumble, if the odd phone call keeps her happy. Better than continually traipsing up to Lytham St. Anne’s to see her.’
That was very helpful. He knew Vee’s maiden name was le Carpentier. There shouldn’t be too many old ladies of that name in Lytham St. Anne’s with whom to check her alibi.
Eventually (and it seemed to take for ever) they came to the end of the photographs. ‘Fascinating,’ Charles lied.
Vee looked disappointed, as if she had expected more. What did she want him to do, for God’s sake, say that she was the greatest actress to tread the boards on the evidence of a load of amateur snapshots?
But it seemed there was more evidence about to be offered. Vee was now turning her attention to the cassette player and the black plastic-covered box of cassettes. ‘Actually,’ she said with elaborate casualness, ‘I’ve got recordings here for some of the stuff I’ve done.’
‘Oh, really?’ Charles gave the last dreg of his supply of simulated interest. ‘What, recorded off stage?’
‘Some of them. Some I’ve just done at home — really just for my own benefit, so that I can get a kind of objective view of what I’m doing.’
‘I see.’
‘I thought you might like to hear one or two little bits. It’d give you some idea of how I do act.’
Charles quarried a smile from his petrifying features. ‘Great.’ She fiddled with the machine. ‘Geoffrey lets you borrow his recorder then?’
‘It’s not his, it’s mine. He occasionally borrows it when he’s learning lines.’
‘And to dub off his music.’
‘What? Good God, no. He’s far too much of a purist for that. Only happy when music is being perfectly reproduced on all that hi-fi stuff he’s got upstairs. He always says I’m a bit of a Philistine about it. I mean, I’ve got some music cassettes — popular stuff — which I play round the house, but he gets very sniffy about them. This recorder’s only mono for a start and he says you’re missing ninety per cent of the enjoyment if you don’t hear music in stereo.’
‘So he would never use it for music?’
‘Not a chance. Look, there’s a bit here that’s an extract from a production of The Country Wife that we did. I played Mrs Pinchwife. Got very good press. I think this speech is quite amusing. Would you like to hear it?’
The affirmative smile was another triumph of engineering. Just before she switched it on, they both heard a strange wail from outside. A sound like a child in pain. Vee rose and Charles looked at her with some alarm.
‘I must go to the kitchen to let him in,’ said Vee.
‘Who is he?’
‘Vanya.’
‘Vanya?’
‘The cat.’
As soon as she was out of the door, he leapt to the cassette box. Her recorded voice wound on, but he didn’t listen. His mind was too full.
When he had first gone up to the study, Geoffrey Winter had been copying Wagner’s Liebestod from his expensive stereo on to this cheap mono cassette machine. Geoffrey had given some specious line about it being handier, which had seemed reasonable at the time, but which now seemed extremely suspicious.
If you don’t want a cassette copy of a piece of music, then why copy it? Only one answer sprang to mind — in order to cover something already on the cassette.
He felt a prickle of excitement. Now at last he was on to something. Geoffrey’s recording of the Wagner had taken place on the Tuesday, the day after Charlotte’s murder. The architect must somehow have found out about his wife’s crime and known that there was incriminating evidence on a cassette, which had to be removed. But Charles was due for supper just after he made the discovery, so he had to destroy the evidence while their guest was there without raising his suspicions. What was easier than to record over it?
Charles found the distinctive yellow and green container which held the cassette Geoffrey had used. There was a chance, a very long chance, that some part of its previous recording remained unerased. He slipped the thin rectangle into his pocket.
Meanwhile Vee Winter’s interpretation of Wycherley ground on.
Suddenly the door opened and Geoffrey walked in. ‘Hello, Vee, I — ’
The surprise was so great that even his well-controlled emotions were caught off their guard. In the flash of time before he recovered himself, Geoffrey’s face bared his thoughts. He found another man alone in his house with his wife. And he was extremely suspicious.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Gerald Venables was much more friendly when Charles rang him the next morning. Maybe he was less tired and the arrival of the weekend had cheered him. Or maybe the fact that it was the weekend meant he could relax his professional guard. Outside the office he could see Hugo’s predicament as a case to be investigated rather than as an inconvenient and time-consuming legal challenge.
Whatever the cause, he agreed that they should meet and invited Charles down to Dulwich for lunch. As he signed off on the phone, he said. ‘So long, buster. See you at my joint round twelve. Okay, coochie-coo?’ An encouraging sign.
As Charles walked from West Dulwich Station, he found that he was casting a Breckton eye over everything he saw, assessing the suburb from a suburban point of view. He hadn’t quite got to the stage of pricing the houses he passed, but he could feel it wasn’t far off.
Dulwich had the same air as Breckton of quiet desperation. Paranoid car-cleaning, wives pulled in every direction by children, buggies and shopping, determinedly jovial husbands taking the kids for a walk, track-suited executives sweating off some of the week’s lunches in unconvinced jogging, others bearing their loads of wood and ceiling tiles from the brochured neatness of the Do-It-Yourself shop to the bad-tempered messes of a constructive weekend.
Gerald’s house was predictably well-appointed. Part of a newish development, with that fraction more room between it and the next house which is the mark of success in the suburbs. The front door had a brass lion knocker and was white, with small square Georgian panels. The up-and-over garage door was panelled in the same way. In fact the whole scheme of the house was Georgian, with thin-framed white windows set in neat red brick. It was exactly the sort of house that anyone in Georgian England who happened to own two cars, a central heating oil tank, a television and a burglar alarm would have had.
Gerald was manifesting the schizophrenia of a Monday to Friday worker. He was dressed in a pale blue towelling shirt and evenly faded jeans (the summery image made possible by the blast of central heating which greeted Charles as he entered). His feet were encased in navy blue sailing shoes and a Snoopy medallion hung around his neck. This last was worn a bit self-consciously. Perhaps it was a fixture, always round the solicitorial neck beneath the beautifully-laundered cotton shirts and silk ties, but somehow Charles doubted it.
The shock of Gerald without a suit made him realize that it must have been nearly twenty years since he had seen his friend in informal gear. For a moment he wondered if he had come to the right house.
‘Kate’s taken the kids to some exhibition in Town, so we’ve got the place to ourselves. She sent love and so
