The Strangling on the Stage

FIVE

‘I still think we should call the police,’ muttered Carole. ‘Or at least send for an ambulance.’

‘Hester specifically asked me not to,’ Jude whispered back. They were in the sitting room of Woodside Cottage and the subject of their conversation had just gone upstairs to the loo.

‘Yes, but she’s not rational. People who try to kill themselves are by definition not rational.’

‘It wasn’t a very serious attempt to kill herself. Those nail scissors couldn’t have done much damage. The cuts are only surface scratches.’

‘Maybe they are this time, but people who do that kind of thing are very likely to try again. Someone in authority should be informed.’

‘Carole, I’d rather just talk to Hester for a while, find out what her state of mind really is.’

‘Not great, if she’s trying to top herself,’ said Carole shortly.

‘Please. I’d just like to talk to her.’

Jude’s words only added to Carole’s sense of pique. ‘I’d just like to talk to her.’ Nothing on the lines of ‘We should talk to her.’ Not for the first time that evening, Carole felt excluded. She’d been stuck at the Cricketers with the world’s most boring man, Gordon Blaine, while Jude went off with a bunch of people who had, by definition, to be more interesting. Then in the car park her neighbour had overruled her about getting someone from SADOS to look after Hester Winstone. It had also been against Carole’s advice that Jude had driven Hester back to Woodside Cottage in the BMW.

To compound these multiple affronts, the business of doing a temporary bandaging job on the would-be suicide in the car park meant that Carole had missed at least half of her chronicle of wimples and waters breaking.

‘Very well,’ she said huffily to Jude. ‘Well, I must go. I’ve got things to do.’

‘The children are off at boarding school,’ said Hester Winstone, ‘and my husband’s away at the moment.’

‘Where?’ asked Jude.

‘He’s on a cricket tour in New Zealand.’ Jude didn’t take much of an interest in the game, but she knew that there seemed to be Test Matches happening somewhere every day right around the world.

‘What, watching cricket?’

‘No, playing.’

‘Really?’ That was a surprise. Assuming that Hester Winstone was in her late forties, then her husband might be expected to be the same age or a little older. And though Jude knew that some men continued to play cricket into their fifties and sixties, she didn’t expect many to be involved in international tours.

Hester seemed to sense her need for explanation. ‘It’s a group of them, a kind of ad hoc team called the Subversives. One of the blokes works in the travel industry and he sets up the tours. They’ve been doing it for years. Some of the players are pushing seventy.’

‘How long do the tours last?’

‘Oh, never more than a month. Mike will be back next Friday.’

Hester Winstone seemed remarkably together and businesslike for a woman who had within the last two hours slit her wrists. Jude recognized that she was embarrassed and trying to talk about anything except the reason why she had ended up in Woodside Cottage.

‘And have you been involved with SADOS for long?’

‘Oh no. Disciple is the first show I’ve done with them. No, I just thought, now I’ve got more time on my hands …’

‘Have you done amateur dramatics before?’

‘Not really. Well, a certain amount at school, and I started to do a bit at college, but since then … life’s rather taken over … you know, marriage, children …’

‘How many children do you have?’

‘Two. Boys, both boarding at Charterhouse. Younger one started in September. Mike was there, so there was never any thought of sending them anywhere else. It’s a very good school for sport.’

‘Are your boys keen on cricket too?’

‘Oh yes,’ Hester replied, a note of weariness in her voice. ‘And football and tennis and squash.’

‘What about you? You do a lot of sport?’

A wrinkling of the lips suggested the answer was no. ‘I play a bit of genteel tennis with some friends, that’s about the limit of my involvement. Unless, of course, you count the hours I have put in making cricket teas, ferrying Mike and the boys to various matches and tournaments, helping to score in pavilions, shrieking encouragement on chilly touchlines.’

‘Sounds like you’ve served your time.’

‘Hm. Maybe.’

Jude was again struck by the incongruity of this normal – even banal – conversation going on with a woman whose right wrist was dressed with a bandage covering the cuts she had inflicted on herself. They weren’t very deep, but even so they must reflect some profound malaise within Hester Winstone. But maybe she just came from that class of women who’d been trained from birth to avoid talking about life’s unpleasantnesses.

‘From what you say,’ Jude began cautiously, ‘you could be suffering from Empty Nest Syndrome.’

‘Oh, I don’t believe in Syndromes,’ said Hester Winstone dismissively. ‘All psychobabble, so far as I’m concerned.’

‘Hm,’ said Jude gently, ‘but, whether it’s a Syndrome or not, things aren’t right with you, are they?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Look, you cut your wrist in the car, didn’t you?’

‘Oh yes, I just got over-emotional.’ She dismissed the incident as if it were some minor social lapse, like sneezing before she’d got her handkerchief to her nose.

‘But why did you get over-emotional?’

For a moment Hester Winstone was about to answer, but then she reached for her handbag, saying, ‘I must be getting home. Really appreciate your helping me out.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Jude firmly, ‘but I really don’t want you to go home straight away.’

‘What do you mean?’ She sounded affronted now. ‘What business is it of yours?’

‘It’s my business,’ came the calm reply, ‘because I found you in your car, having just cut your wrists. And I don’t really want you to be on your own until I’m sure you’re not about to finish what you started.’

‘And what makes you think I’d do that?’

‘Because you’ve done it once.’

‘Oh, that was an aberration. As I said, I just got over-emotional.’

‘Listen, Hester, I don’t have any medical qualifications, but I work as a healer so I do come across a lot of people who’ve got troubles in their lives. And I’d be failing in my duty to my profession – not to mention in my duty as a human being – if I were just to let you go straight home.’

‘But I’m fine.’

‘Look, just think how I’d feel if I heard on the local news tomorrow that you’d committed suicide.’

‘But I’m not about to commit suicide.’

‘That’s exactly what someone planning suicide would say.’

Hester Winstone was suddenly on the verge of tears as she said, ‘Can’t you just leave me alone!’

‘No, I really don’t think I can.’ There was a silence, broken only by Hester’s suppressed sobs. ‘Look, if you won’t agree to talk to me, I’ll have no alternative but to call an ambulance.’

‘But I don’t need an ambulance. You’ve seen my wrist – it’s only a scratch.’

‘The fact remains that it’s a scratch which you inflicted on yourself. If you were to go home, you’d be on your own, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Hester admitted grudgingly.

‘Well, is there someone who could come and be with you? A family member? A neighbour?’

‘No, there’s no one. Anyway, I don’t want people knowing about what’s happened. If Mike ever got wind it, it would be an absolute disaster.’

‘Don’t you think you should tell your husband?’

‘No, he wouldn’t understand.’

‘But surely, if you’re unhappy enough to slit your wrists – even if you didn’t do it very efficiently – then your husband ought to know.’

‘No, he mustn’t.’

‘So when he comes back next Friday, how are you going to explain the big scar on your wrist?’

‘Oh, I’ve worked that out. I’ll say I cut it when I was opening a tin of dog food.’

‘And will he believe you?’

‘It would never occur to Mike not to believe me.’

‘I still think you should tell him what happened.’

‘No, Mike’s no good with that sort of stuff. It’d confuse him – and upset him.’

‘If he’s the cause of your unhappiness, then perhaps he needs to be upset.’

‘I didn’t say he was the cause of it.’

‘No. But you haven’t said what else is the cause, so I’m just having to make conjectures based on the very small amount of information you have given me.’

‘You have no right to make conjectures about my life. I’m going to go.’

‘Hester, I’ll tell you why I have a right to make conjectures about your life. Because I found you in your car having just cut your wrist. That means, whether you like it or not, I have that information. What I do with that information is up to me. A lot of people would have just rung for an ambulance – or even the police – straight away, regardless of whether you wanted them to or not. Carole and I didn’t do that. We brought you back here and tidied you up. And I’m quite happy for no one else to know what happened … so long as you persuade me that you’re not about to do the same thing again.’

‘What – you’re blackmailing me into talking to you?’

‘I don’t like your choice of word, but if that’s what you want to call it, fine. I just want to feel reassured about your mental state.’ Hester Winstone was silent. ‘Anyway, suppose Carole and I hadn’t come into the car park just then …? Would you have cut your wrists some more? Did you want to be discovered there by someone in SADOS?’

The slightest of reactions from the woman suggested Jude might have touched a nerve there. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t very in control,’ Hester mumbled, acknowledging for the first time since Carole had left the two women together that there was something wrong.

‘Look, I don’t know you,’ said Jude. ‘I know nothing about your life apart from what you’ve told me in the last few minutes, but for someone to cut their wrist – however ineffectively – suggests a very deep unhappiness.’

‘Maybe,’ Hester Winstone conceded.

‘Whether that’s caused by the state of your marriage, or your boys being away at boarding school or some recent bereavement or a long-term depressive condition or the menopause, I don’t know. But if you do want to confide in someone, I have the advantages of not knowing your social circle, so nothing you say will go further than these four walls. I also promise not to be judgemental. And enough people have said it to me that I think I can confidently state I’m a good listener. Not to mention an experienced healer. So if you do want to tell me anything … well, the ball’s in your court.’

Hester twisted her hands together in confusion. ‘It’s tempting.’

‘Then why not give into temptation?’

After a moment the reply came. ‘No, I can’t. Sorry.’

‘Well,’ said Jude, ‘shall I tell you what I, as an impartial observer of what I saw happen in the Cricketers, think may have caused the sudden deterioration of your mood?’

‘You can try. But we were only in the same group of people for a couple of minutes, so you can’t have seen much.’

‘I had been aware of you in the bar before we were actually introduced. I noticed your body language.’

‘God, I didn’t know I had any body language.’

‘Oh, you did. Hard thing to avoid, body language.’

‘And what was mine saying?’

‘It was saying you were feeling neglected …’

‘Oh?’

‘Or possibly rejected.’

‘Really? By whom?’

‘Neville Prideaux.’

‘Oh God.’ Hester Winstone’s hand shot up to her mouth. ‘Was it that obvious? Does that mean everyone in SADOS knows?’

‘I wouldn’t worry too much about that. From the impression I got of those I met this evening, they’re all too preoccupied with themselves to notice what’s going on with other people. It was easier for me to observe things as an outsider.’

‘So what exactly did you observe? From my body language?’

‘You seemed to be trying to engage Neville’s attention. He seemed to be very deliberately avoiding eye contact with you, and constantly moving to other groups in the pub, so that you wouldn’t get a moment alone with him.’

Hester Winstone was silent. Tears were beginning to well up in her hazel eyes.

‘But, as I say, I’m sure nobody else noticed,’ Jude reassured her. ‘It’s just, being introduced to a group of people for the first time, you see things in a detached way … you know, before you get to know any of them.’

Hester nodded, hoping, but not convinced, that what Jude had said was true.

‘So you’ve got a bit of a history with Neville Prideaux, have you?’

‘A very brief history. I hadn’t met him a month ago.’

‘But you did meet him during the time that your husband’s been in New Zealand?’

‘Yes,’ the woman said wretchedly.

‘And he came on to you?’

‘It wasn’t as obvious as that. Not like Ritchie. He … Neville … he kind of took me seriously. At least appeared to take me seriously.’

‘You mentioned Ritchie. So he came on to you, did he?’

‘Well …’

‘He came on to me the minute I was introduced to him,’ said Jude.

‘Yes, he does that to everyone.’ Hester Winstone coloured. ‘He’s a very attractive man.’

‘He certainly thinks he is.’

‘But he really is,’ Hester insisted, and Jude was forced to admit it was true. Though Ritchie Good’s chat-up line had been crass beyond words, Jude had still felt a tug of attraction towards him.

She banished such thoughts from her mind and said, ‘One thing I don’t quite get is that today was the first rehearsal for The Devil’s Disciple …?’

‘Yes.’

‘… and it’s only in the last few weeks that both Ritchie and Neville have come on to you …?’

‘Well, as I say, with Neville it wasn’t so much “coming on”.’

‘All right. But how did you come to be involved in SADOS before this production started rehearsing?’

‘Ah well, it was the end of the panto …’

‘Oh?’

‘SADOS always do their pantomime at the end of January. And it was round then that Mike went off to New Zealand … and I was kind of at a loose end, so I got in touch with SADOS to see if there was anything I could do to help out, and they needed some people for front of house during the panto, so that’s how I became involved.’

‘And were Ritchie and Neville both in the show?’

‘Not acting, no. Ritchie just came to see one performance and then he kind of chatted me up in the Cricketers afterwards.’

‘And did you mind him chatting you up?’

‘No, I was flattered … just having someone taking some notice of me.’

Jude recognized this as another comment on the state of Hester’s marriage, but didn’t pursue it. Instead she asked, ‘And what about Neville?’

‘He wasn’t acting in the panto, but he’d written the lyrics for the songs, so he was around quite a lot during the run.’

‘And you kind of “got together”?’

Hester Winstone blushed furiously. ‘One evening after the show we’d had a few in the Cricketers, and my car was being serviced, so Neville offered to give me a lift home, and I invited him in for a drink and … I don’t think anything would have happened if we hadn’t been drinking.’

‘And did it happen again?’

‘No, just the once. And then suddenly Neville seemed to lose interest. Didn’t reply to my texts or calls.’

‘And you were hurt because you loved him?’

‘I don’t know about love. Maybe I convinced myself at the time that was the reason. I don’t know. I just felt dreadful. I can’t think why I let it happen.’

‘You were lonely.’

‘Yes, maybe, but that’s no excuse, is it? And in my head I’ve gone through so many scenarios about how I would tell Mike, but that was assuming that Neville still wanted me and … I don’t know. I’m just so confused.’

‘From what you say, it sounds as if you’ve never been unfaithful before.’

‘Good Lord, no.’ Hester sounded appalled by the very idea. ‘And I wouldn’t have done, I mean, not unless I thought I actually was, at least at that moment, in love with Neville. And now I feel just so confused. And Mike’s back next week, and I’ll have to tell him.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, I can’t not, can I?’

‘Of course you can,’ Jude asserted. ‘In my view far too many people rush to tell their partners about their infidelity. In very few cases does it do any good, and in many it destroys a perfectly salvageable relationship.’

‘Do you really believe that?’ And there was a spark of hope in Hester Winstone’s hazel eyes.

‘I most certainly do.’

‘But when I see Mike, I’m sure I’ll just blurt it out.’

‘Well, curb the instinct. Don’t give him more ammunition with which to criticize you.’

‘But I haven’t said he does criticize me.’

‘I extrapolated that, Hester.’

‘Oh, did you?’ She sounded a little crushed. And guilty. But also reassured. Jude’s recommendation that she shouldn’t tell her husband about her lapse had clearly brought her comfort.

‘Oh dear, I don’t know what to do.’ But now Hester sounded weary rather than desperate.

‘Well, I’ll tell you exactly what you’re going to do. You are going to sit here while I open a bottle of wine and pour you a drink. Then I’ll cook us some supper. Then I think you should probably stay here the night.’

Hester grimaced. ‘Love to, but I’ve got to get back for the dogs. If they aren’t let out … well, you can imagine what will happen …’

‘I think I can. What about the drink and the supper?’

The woman grinned as she replied, ‘That’d be wonderful.’

‘And when you go back home, you’ll be all right, will you?’

‘Yes, I’ll be fine,’ said Hester Winstone.

And Jude believed her.