Simon Brett - An Amateur Corpse

‘I think Charlotte had had a very sheltered upbringing. Northern Ireland. Straight-laced, inward-looking family so far as I can gather. Convent education.’

‘It seems odd Sally, considering that, that she was allowed to go to drama school. You’d think there would have been family opposition.’

‘Yes, it was strange. But she was strong-minded about certain things. And she knew she could act and that that was what she wanted to do. I don’t think anyone could cross her once she’d really made up her mind about something.’

‘Hmm. She was a good actress. I only saw her in one thing, tatty amateur production of The Seagull, but by God it was all there.’

‘Oh yes, she was good. That’s what made her marrying Hugo so sad. He didn’t want her to be a successful actress. He was miserly about her, wanted to keep her to himself.’

‘Do you think he even objected to her joining the amateur society?’

‘I don’t think he was keen. That was something she decided to do very much on her own. Anyway, he could hardly object — I gather he had been a member to take advantage of the bar for some time. But I doubt if they discussed it. By then they were hardly speaking.’

Charles nodded. It was satisfying to have his diagnosis of the marriage and Charlotte’s motivation confirmed. ‘So she joined as a deliberate attempt to assert her own individuality?’

‘Yes. I think she also saw it as a step of getting herself back on the road to the professional theatre. You know how it is in the business — if you don’t work for a bit, you lose confidence. I think she had to do something to prove to herself that she could still act.’

‘It’s surprising that she started at such a local level, that she didn’t just up and leave Hugo and go back to the real theatre world.’

‘I don’t think she really wanted to leave him. She had been very much in love when they married. It was only when he withdrew completely into himself that the marriage foundered. I think she still hoped that one day he would come out of his sulk and everything would be all right again. Deep down she had a great belief in the sanctity of marriage. The Catholic background again. She wouldn’t have left her husband lightly.’

‘Hmm. But she would have an affair with another man lightly?’

Sally Radford appraised him coolly. ‘You know about that then. In fact, I don’t think that was entered into lightly either. Charlotte was a very serious girl — as I said, an earnest child. No, I think the affair was because she just had to do something to get out of her spiral of loneliness. And also because she was very attracted to the man in question.’

‘You don’t, by any chance…?’ Charles hazarded hopefully.

Sally shook her head. “Fraid not. I have this sneaking feeling that she did once mention a man’s name to me, but I’m sorry, I can’t for the life of me remember what it was.’

‘But she did tell you she was having an affair?’

‘Not directly. But she came to me for practical advice, and I put two and two together.’

‘Practical advice?’

‘Yes. It’s back to the naivete we were talking about. Charlotte had always been a bit backward in sexual matters. I mean, at drama school, where all the rest of us were screwing away like rabbits, she kept herself to herself.’

‘You don’t mean she managed to come through drama school a virgin? I thought that was a technical impossibility.’

Sally smiled. ‘I don’t know if she was actually a virgin, but I do know that she was pretty inhibited about such things. Needless to say, all the men were panting round her like puppies, but I don’t know if any of them got anywhere.’

‘Not even Diccon Hudson?’

‘Ah, you know Mr. Golden Voice. Yes, he certainly tried as hard as any of them, but I just don’t know. He made a point of trying to have everything in sight, really put it about. What do they reckon that kind of manic screwing’s a sign of? Latent homosexuality? Not in his case, I think.’

‘But did he make it with Charlotte?’

‘I think probably not. And I’m sure if he didn’t it made him furious. Great blow to the great pride. No, for Charlotte, Hugo was the first big thing in her life. I think perhaps she found the slower approach of the older man less frightening than the ravenous groping of her contemporaries.’

‘Yes, of course, we old men do slow down quite a bit,’ Charles agreed with mock-seriousness.

Sally Radford realized what she had said and giggled. She looked at him and a new awareness came into their conversation. ‘Anyway, Charles, to come up to date… Some time in July, Charlotte rang and asked if we could meet for lunch. We did and, after some small talk and embarrassment on her part, she asked me how she should set about getting on the Pill. Since she had got that far into her married life without it and because she was so surreptitious about the inquiry, I reckon that that meant she had started sleeping with someone other than her husband.’

‘Yes, that would fit.’ Charles quickly summarized his discovery of the pills in their hiding place in Charlotte’s bathroom.

‘Anyway,’ Sally continued, ‘for some reason she didn’t want to go to her local G.P. So I recommended the Brook Clinic in Totty Court Road. I’d been there myself, they’re very helpful.’

‘So we can assume that they fitted her out and the affair continued.’

‘I imagine so. I found it a bit sad that she came to me actually. I mean, not that she was so ignorant, that was just part of her character, but the fact that I was the only person she could talk to. I didn’t know her that well, and yet she was in a strange way dependent on me.’

‘Hmm. When did you last see her or hear from her?’

‘We had lunch again quite soon after the time I mentioned. Since then, just the odd phone call.’

‘Did she talk again about the contraception business?’

‘Only once. Otherwise it was as if it had never happened.’

‘And the once?’

‘That was quite recently. I think the last time I heard from her. She must have read some scare article about the Pill in a magazine or something. She asked all kinds of things about the dangers of it. Not straight away, but she manoeuvred the conversation round to it.’

‘What sort of things did she ask?’

‘Practically everything — about the dangers of embolism, could the Pill cause obesity, was it liable to raise the blood pressure, could it harm the foetus if a pregnant woman took it, could it lead to sterility, did it upset the cycle irrevocably — just about every Pill scare that has ever been put out, and a few old wives’ tales thrown in for good measure.’

‘Did she sound worried?’

‘She didn’t actually sound worried, but she was a good actress and the fact that she raised the subject suggested to me that she must be.’

‘You didn’t get any impression which of the particular dangers she was worried about?’

‘’Fraid not. If there was one in particular she was asking about, she managed to put up an effective smoke-screen with all the others. I assumed that the Pill had just affected her cycle. It often does at first. If her periods had always been regular before, it would probably worry her if things suddenly got out of phase.’

Charles was silent, his passivity hiding the speed with which his mind was working. There were other things that could cause an upset in a woman’s cycle.

Sally Radford suddenly spoke again, with more emotion than hitherto. ‘God knows why she asked me. That’s what I meant by being sad, that there was no one else she could ask, no family, no friendly doctor. As if I were an international expert on contraception.’

The bitterness in the last sentence made Charles look up and he was surprised to see the glint of a tear in her eye.