Original Sin Page 2

  They mounted the wide double staircase without speaking. Miss Etienne’s office was on the first floor. It had obviously once been a library but the end had been partitioned to provide a small office. A serious-faced young woman, so thin she looked anorexic, was typing on a word processor and gave Mandy only a brief glance. Miss Blackett opened the interconnecting door and announced: ‘It’s Mandy Price from the agency, Miss Claudia,’ then left.

  The room seemed to Mandy very large after the ill-proportioned outer office and she walked across an expanse of parquet flooring towards a desk set to the right of the far window. A tall dark woman got up to receive her, shook hands and motioned her to the opposite chair.

  She said: ‘You have your curriculum vitae?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Etienne.’

  Never before had she been asked for a CV, but Mrs Crealey had been right; obviously one was expected. Mandy reached down to her tasselled and garishly embroidered tote bag, a trophy from last summer’s holiday in Crete, and handed over three carefully typed pages. Miss Etienne studied them and Mandy studied Miss Etienne.

  She decided that she wasn’t young, certainly over thirty. Her face was sharp-boned with a pale delicate skin, the eyes shallowly set with dark, almost black, irises under heavy lids. Above them the brows had been plucked to a high arch. The short hair, brushed to a sheen, was parted on the left side, the falling strands tucked behind her right ear. The hands which rested on the CV were ringless, the fingers very long and slender, the nails unpainted.

  Without looking up, she asked: ‘Is your name Mandy or Amanda Price?’

  ‘Mandy, Miss Etienne.’ In other circumstances Mandy would have pointed out that if her name were Amanda the CV would have said so.

  ‘Have you had any previous experience of working in a publishing house?’

  ‘Only about three times during the last two years. I’ve listed the names of the firms I’ve worked for on page three of my CV.’

  Miss Etienne read on, then looked up, the bright luminous eyes under the curved brows studying Mandy with more interest than she had previously shown.

  She said: ‘You seem to have done very well at school, but you’ve had an extraordinary variety of jobs since. You haven’t stuck to any of them for more than a few weeks.’

  In three years of temping Mandy had learned to recognize and circumvent most of the machinations of the male sex, but was less assured when it came to dealing with her own. Her instinct, sharp as a ferret’s tooth, told her that Miss Etienne might need careful handling. She thought, that’s what being a temp is, you silly old cow. Here today and gone tomorrow. What she said was: ‘That’s why I like temporary work. I want to get as wide a variety of experience as possible before I settle down to a permanent job. Once I do, I’d like to stay on and try to make a success of it.’

  Mandy was being less than candid. She had no intention of taking a permanent job. Temporary work, with its freedom from contracts and conditions of service, its variety, the knowledge that she wasn’t tied down, that even the worst job experience could end by the following Friday, suited her perfectly; her plans, however, lay elsewhere. Mandy was saving for the day when, with her friend Naomi, she could afford a small lock-up shop in the Portobello Road. There Naomi would fashion her jewellery and Mandy would design and make her hats, both of them rising rapidly to fame and fortune.

  Miss Etienne looked again at the curriculum vitae. She said drily: ‘If your ambition is to find a permanent job then make a success of it, you are certainly unique in your generation.’

  She handed back the curriculum vitae with a quick impatient gesture, rose to her feet, and said: ‘All right, we’ll give you a typing test. Let’s see if you’re as good as you claim. There’s a second word processor in Miss Blackett’s office on the ground floor. That’s where you’ll be working so you may as well do the test there. Mr Dauntsey, our poetry editor, has a tape he wants transcribed. It’s in the little archives office.’ She got up and added, ‘We’ll fetch it together. You may as well get some idea of the layout of the house.’

  Mandy said: ‘Poetry?’ This could be tricky, typing from tape. From her experience it was difficult with modern verse to know where the lines began and ended.

  ‘Not poetry. Mr Dauntsey is examining and reporting on the archives, recommending which files should be retained, which destroyed. The Peverell Press has been publishing since 1792. There’s some interesting material in the old files and it ought to be properly catalogued.’

  Mandy followed Miss Etienne down the wide curved stairs, across the hall and into the reception room. Apparently they were to use the lift and it ran only from the ground floor. It was hardly, she thought, the best way to get an idea of the layout of the house, but the comment had been promising; it looked as if the job was hers if she wanted it. And from that first view of the Thames, Mandy knew that she did want it.

  The lift was small, little more than five feet square, and as they groaned upwards she was sharply aware of the tall silent figure whose arm almost brushed her own. She kept her eyes fixed on the grid of the lift but she could smell Miss Etienne’s scent, subtle and a little exotic but so faint that perhaps it wasn’t scent at all but only an expensive soap. Everything about Miss Etienne seemed to Mandy expensive, the dull sheen of the shirt which could only be silk, the double gold chain and gold stud earrings, the cardigan casually slung around her shoulders which had the fine softness of cashmere. But the physical closeness of her companion and her own heightened senses, stimulated by the novelty and excitement of Innocent House, told her something more; that Miss Etienne wasn’t at ease. It was she, Mandy, who should have been nervous. Instead she was aware that the air of the claustrophobic lift, jerking upwards with such maddening slowness, was quivering with tension.

  They shuddered to a stop and Miss Etienne hauled back the double-grille gates. Mandy found herself in a narrow hall with a facing door and one on the left. The door ahead was open and she saw a large cluttered room filled from floor to ceiling with metal shelves tightly packed with files and bundles of papers. The racks ran from the windows to the door with just enough room to walk between them. The air smelt of old paper, musty and stale. She followed Miss Etienne between the ends of the shelves and the wall and to another smaller door, this time closed.

  Pausing, Miss Etienne said: ‘Mr Dauntsey works on the files in here. We call it the little archives office. He said that he’d leave the tape on the table.’

  It seemed to Mandy that the explanation was unnecessary and rather odd, and that Miss Etienne hesitated for a second, hand on the knob, before turning it. Then with a sharp gesture, almost as if she expected some obstruction, she pushed the door wide open.

  The stink rolled out to meet them like an evil wraith, the familiar human smell of vomit, not strong but so unexpected that Mandy instinctively recoiled. Over Miss Etienne’s shoulder her eyes took in at once a small room with an uncarpeted wooden floor, a square table to the right of the door and a single high window. Under the window was a narrow divan bed and on the bed sprawled a woman.

  It had needed no smell to tell Mandy that she was looking at death. She didn’t scream; she had never screamed from fear or shock; but a giant fist mailed in ice clutched and squeezed her heart and stomach and she began shivering as violently as a child lifted from an icy sea. Neither of them spoke but, with Mandy close behind Miss Etienne, they moved with quiet almost imperceptible steps closer to the bed.

  She was lying on top of a tartan rug but had taken the single pillow from beneath it to rest her head as if needing this final comfort even in the last moments of consciousness. By the bed stood a chair holding an empty wine bottle, a stained tumbler and a large screw-top jar. Beneath it a pair of brown laced shoes had been neatly laid side by side. Perhaps, thought Mandy, she had taken them off because she hadn’t wanted to soil the rug. But the rug was soiled and so was the pillow. There was a slime of vomit like the track of a giant snail gummed to the left cheek and stiffening the pi
llow. The woman’s eyes were half open, the irises turned upward, her grey hair, worn in a fringe, was hardly disarranged. She was wearing a brown high-necked jumper and a tweed skirt from which two skinny legs, oddly twisted, stuck out like sticks. Her left arm was flung outwards, almost touching the chair, the right lay across her breast. The right hand had scrabbled at the thin wool of the jumper before death, drawing it up to reveal a few inches of white vest. Beside the empty pill bottle there was a square envelope addressed in strong black handwriting.

  Mandy whispered as reverently as if she were in church: ‘Who is she?’

  Miss Etienne’s voice was calm. ‘Sonia Clements. One of our senior editors.’

  ‘Was I going to work for her?’

  Mandy knew the question was irrelevant as soon as she asked it, but Miss Etienne replied: ‘For part of the time, yes, but not for long. She was leaving at the end of the month.’

  She picked up the envelope, seeming to weigh it in her hands. Mandy thought, she wants to open it but not in front of me. After a few seconds Miss Etienne said: ‘Addressed to the coroner. It’s obvious enough what’s happened here even without this. I’m sorry you’ve had this shock, Miss Price. It was inconsiderate of her. If people wish to kill themselves they should do so in their own homes.’

  Mandy thought of the small terrace in Stratford East, the shared kitchen and one bathroom, her own small back room in a house in which you’d be lucky to find enough privacy to swallow the pills, let alone die of them. She made herself gaze again at the woman’s face. She felt a sudden urge to close the eyes and shut the slightly gaping mouth. So this was death, or rather this was death before the undertakers got their hands on you. Mandy had seen only one other dead person, her gran; neatly shrouded with a frill at her neck, packaged into her coffin like a doll in a gift box, curiously diminished and looking more peaceful than Gran ever had in life, the bright restless eyes closed, the over-busy hands folded in quietude at last. Suddenly grief came upon her in a torrent of pity, perhaps released by delayed shock or the sudden acute memory of the gran whom she had loved. At the first hot prick of tears she wasn’t sure whether they were for Gran or for this stranger sprawled in such defenceless ungainliness. She seldom cried but when she did her tears were unstoppable. Terrified she would disgrace herself she fought for control and, gazing round, her eyes lit on something familiar, unfrightening, something she could cope with, an assurance that there was an ordinary world continuing outside this death-cell. On the table was a small tape recorder.

  Mandy went over to it and closed her hand round it as if it were an icon. She said, ‘Is this the tape? Is it a list? Do you want it tabulated?’

  Miss Etienne regarded her for a moment in silence, then she said, ‘Yes, tabulate it. And two copies. You can use the word processor in Miss Blackett’s office.’

  And in that moment Mandy knew that she had the job.

  2

  Fifteen minutes earlier Gerard Etienne, chairman and managing director of Peverell Press, was leaving the boardroom to return to his office on the ground floor. Suddenly he stopped, stepped back into the shadows, delicate-footed as a cat, and stood watching from behind the balustrade. Below him in the hall a girl was slowly pirouetting, her eyes upward to the ceiling. She was wearing thigh-length black boots flared at the top, a short tight fawn skirt and a velvet jacket in a dull red. One thin and delicate arm was raised to hold on her head a remarkable hat. It seemed to be made of red felt and was wide-brimmed, turned up at the front and decorated with an extraordinary array of objects: flowers, feathers, strips of satin and lace, even small fragments of glass. As she turned it flashed and gleamed and glittered. She should, he thought, have looked ridiculous, the peaked childish face half-hidden by untidy swathes of dark hair, topped by such a grotesque confection. Instead she looked enchanting. He found himself smiling, almost laughing, and was suddenly seized with a madness he hadn’t felt since he was twenty-one, the urge to rush down the wide staircase, sweep her into his arms and dance with her across the marble floor, out through the front door and to the rim of the glittering river. She had finished her slow turn and followed Miss Blackett across the hall. He stood for a moment savouring this upsurge of folly which, it seemed to him, had nothing to do with sex but the need to hold distilled a memory of youth, of early loves, of laughter, of freedom from responsibility, of sheer animal delight in the world of the senses. None of it had any part in his life now. He was still smiling as he waited until the hall was clear and then slowly descended to his office.

  Twenty minutes later the door opened and he recognized his sister’s footsteps. Without looking up he said: ‘Who is the child in the hat?’

  ‘The hat?’ For a moment she seemed not to understand, then she said: ‘Oh, the hat. Mandy Price from the secretarial agency.’

  There was an odd note in her voice and he turned, giving her his full attention. He said, ‘Claudia, what’s happened?’

  ‘Sonia Clements is dead. Suicide.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Here. In the little archives office. The girl and I found her. We were fetching one of Gabriel’s tapes.’

  ‘That girl found her?’ He paused and added, ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘I’ve told you, in the little archives office. We didn’t touch the body. Why should we?’

  ‘I mean where is the child?’

  ‘Next door with Blackie working on the tape. Don’t waste your pity. She wasn’t alone and there isn’t any blood. That generation is tough. She didn’t blink an eye. All she worried about was getting the job.’

  ‘You’re sure it was suicide?’

  ‘Of course. She left this note. It’s open but I haven’t read it.’

  She handed over the envelope then walked to the window and stood looking out. After a couple of seconds he slid out the flap and drew the paper carefully from the envelope, then read aloud. ‘“I am sorry to cause a nuisance but this seemed the best room to use. Gabriel will probably be the one to find me and he’s too familiar with death to be shocked. Now that I live alone I might not have been discovered at home until I began to stink and I find that one has the need to preserve some dignity, even in death. My affairs are in order, and I have written to my sister. I am under no obligation to give a reason for my act, but in case anyone is interested it is simply that I prefer annihilation to continued existence. It is a reasonable choice and one which we are all entitled to make.”’

  He said: ‘Well that’s clear enough, and in her own hand. How did she do it?’

  ‘With drugs and drink. There isn’t much mess, as I said.’

  ‘Have you phoned the police?’

  ‘The police? I haven’t had time yet. I came straight to you. And is it really necessary, Gerard? Suicide isn’t a crime. Can’t we just ring Dr Frobisher?’

  He said curtly, ‘I don’t know whether it’s necessary but it’s certainly expedient. We don’t want any doubts about this death.’

  ‘Doubts?’ she said. ‘Doubts? Why should there be doubts?’

  She had lowered her voice and now they were almost whispering. Almost imperceptibly they moved further from the partition towards the window.

  He said: ‘Gossip then, rumours, scandal. We can phone the police from here. There’s no point in going through the switchboard. If they bring her down in the lift we can probably get her out of the building before the staff know what’s happened. There’s George of course. I suppose that the police had better come in by that door. George will have to be told to keep his mouth shut. Where is the agency girl now?’

  ‘I’ve told you. Next door in Blackie’s room, doing her typing test.’

  ‘Or, more likely, describing to Blackie and anyone else who comes by how she was taken upstairs to get a tape and found a dead body.’

  ‘I’ve instructed them both to say nothing until we’ve told all the staff. Gerard, if you think you can keep this quiet even for a couple of hours, forget it. There’ll be an inquest, publicity. And they’ll have t
o bring her down by the stairs. You can’t possibly fit a body bag on a stretcher in the lift. My God, though, this is all we needed! Coming on top of the other business it’s going to be great for staff morale.’

  There was a moment’s silence in which neither moved towards the telephone. Then she looked at him and asked: ‘When you sacked her last Wednesday, how did she take it?’

  ‘She didn’t kill herself because I gave her the push. She was a rational woman, she knew she had to go. She must have known that from the day I took over here. I always made it clear that I thought we had one editor too many, that we could farm out the work to a freelance.’

  ‘But she’s fifty-three. It wouldn’t have been easy for her to get another job. And she’s been here for twenty-four years.’

  ‘Part-time.’

  ‘Part-time but working almost full-time. This place was her life.’

  ‘Claudia, that’s sentimental nonsense. She had an existence outside these walls. What the hell has that to do with it anyway? Either she was needed here or she wasn’t.’

  ‘And is that how you broke it to her? No longer needed.’

  ‘I wasn’t brutal, if that’s what you’re implying. I told her that I proposed to employ a freelance for some of the non-fiction editing and that her post was therefore superfluous. I said that although she didn’t legally qualify for maximum redundancy pay we would come to some financial arrangement.’

  ‘Arrangement? What did she say?’

  ‘She said that it wouldn’t be necessary. She would make her own arrangements.’

  ‘And she has. Apparently with distalgesic and a bottle of Bulgarian cabernet. Well at least she’s saved us money but, by God, I’d rather have paid out than be faced with this. I know I ought to feel pity for her. I suppose I shall when I’ve got over the shock. Just now it isn’t easy.’

  ‘Claudia, it’s pointless to reopen all those old arguments. It was necessary to sack her and I sacked her. That had nothing to do with her death. I did what had to be done in the interests of the firm and at the time you agreed. Neither you nor I can be blamed for her suicide and her death has nothing to do with the other mischief here either.’ He paused then said: ‘Unless of course she was the one responsible.’