When Ralph informed him about his find, Kane went straight along to the police morgue, hoping against hope it wasn’t Cat. The identification didn’t take long. It was early evening when he entered the building, and when he left he welcomed the bite of the cold March air on his face. He’d heard it said that death smoothed out the evidence of pain and suffering. It hadn’t with Lily, neither had it with Cat.
Ralph had accompanied him to the morgue and to the public house where Kane had two stiff whiskies. Then Kane sent Ralph home. He had to see Sophy alone, and now the identification had been made he didn’t want her hearing about Cat from the police. He knew she would be at the theatre preparing for the evening performance but it couldn’t be helped. Her understudy would have to take over.
When he reached the theatre he found the manager and explained he was the bearer of bad news and that Sophy would be unable to go on stage that night. Then he found her dressing room and paused outside. How was he going to tell her? He raked his hand through his hair. How the hell was he going to say it?
In the event, he didn’t have to. Sophy was sitting at her dressing-table putting the finishing touches to her stage make-up when he entered the room, and as she looked at him in the mirror she froze.
‘Sophy—’
‘No.’ Childishly, she put her hands over her ears as she shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Sophy, I’m sorry.’
She swung to face him then, her eyes filled with tears. She still shook her head as she whispered, ‘Are you sure?’
He nodded. ‘There – there’s no doubt.’
‘Oh, Cat, Cat.’
It was a moan and nothing could have prevented him from crossing the space between them and taking her into his arms. She fell against him, her head bowed and resting on his chest and it was all he could do not to crush her to him. He could never have imagined or wished for these circumstances, but, terrible as they were, they were the means by which he was holding his beloved in his arms for the one and only time.
The funeral was well attended. Sophy held the reception at her home, and on top of the tensions of the day and the harrowing facts she had learned about the manner of Cat’s last hours, which were at the forefront of her mind day and night, she was on tenterhooks lest Toby would do or say something to smear Cat’s name and dishonour her friend. By the time friends and acquaintances had left she felt like a limp rag, but although Toby had been surly, he’d behaved himself.
Arranging Cat’s funeral and dealing with the hundred and one matters appertaining to her friend’s death, along with her performances at the theatre, had meant that Sophy was flying from pillar to post every day, but even so she hadn’t been able to sleep much at night. She didn’t think she would until the person who had done those wicked things to Cat was caught and brought to justice. Kane had been so against her seeing Cat before the funeral that she hadn’t persisted in her wish to visit the undertakers once the police had released Cat’s body, but now, with the funeral over, she regretted this. She didn’t feel as though she had said goodbye. She felt she’d let Cat down.
Cat’s family had had no such qualms about not paying their respects, however. Sophy’s soft full mouth pulled tight. She had written to the Ardington-Tatlers after the family had made it clear to the police that they did not wish Cat’s body to be returned home and did not intend to give her a decent burial. A short terse letter from Cat’s father had arrived by return, stating that as far as the family was concerned, Christabel had been dead to them from the minute she had left to take up a degrading life on the stage, and they would thank Mrs Shawe not to communicate with them again in any form.
She glanced at Toby who was sitting in a chair by the fire, a glass of brandy at his side. He had been drinking steadily all day, and as soon as the last mourner had gone, had collapsed in the chair and promptly fallen asleep. Not for the first time she reflected how the life he had led for the last decade had changed the handsome man she’d married. His face was puffy, his skin blotched and the once athletic body unnaturally thin, but then he rarely ate properly. The opium he craved deadened his appetite and if, like today, he was forced to go without it for a time he drank excessively instead.