‘Not at all, not at all. I – I’m entirely at your disposal.’
‘Good. Now then, I really don’t have to ask who you are and all that. Somebody as well-known as you needs, as they say, no introduction. So we’ll proceed directly to –’
He didn’t complete the sentence.
‘I say, sir, haven’t we met, you and I? I know I ought to remember, but …’
Knight bit into his lower lip, but so furtively that the gesture was noticed, again, only by Trubshawe, whom years of experience had taught to be eternally on the watch for all such, to others, imperceptible symptoms of disquiet.
The actor decided at once, however, that it would be both pointless and counterproductive to conceal the truth, and replied in a clipped tone:
‘Yes, Inspector, you’re quite right. We have met before.’
‘It was when I was on duty, was it not?’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘It’s coming back to me now. The reason I didn’t at first remember where and when we met is that, at the time, you weren’t using the same name. Am I right?’
‘You are.’
‘Would you mind telling me what name you were arrested under?’
As Hanway had before him, Knight edgily glanced back at the novelist and the Chief-Inspector.
‘No need for alarm, sir,’ said Calvert. ‘Everything we hear will remain between these four walls. Mum’s the word – unless, of course, it should turn out to have a bearing on the case we’re investigating.’
‘Very well,’ said Knight, struggling to control his nerves. ‘It happened about eighteen months ago. On V.E. Day. Or V.D. Day, as I believe some wag jocularly called it. I was arrested by two constables in Leicester Square for …’ – he hesitated again – ‘for soliciting in a Public Convenience. The – the young gentleman with whom I imagined I was having a pleasant and, uh, promising conversation turned out to be – as you know, Inspector – a plain-clothes policeman. I must say that did seem to me to take policing a little bit too far, especially on such a joyous and festive occasion.’
‘Well, of course, I’m sorry you feel that way, sir, but for me it was an assignment like any other. Our job, after all, is to protect the public from the likes of –’ said Calvert. ‘Anyway, do go on.’
‘As I say, I was arrested in Leicester Square and taken to Bow Street Police Station. Fortunately the sergeant there failed to recognise me and I was able to give another name –’
Calvert interrupted him.
‘I’m amazed to hear you brazenly admit that, Mr Knight. That was a most serious offence you committed.’
‘You don’t understand, Inspector. Gareth Knight is my professional name. For an obvious reason – which is to say, my career would have been killed stone dead if the press had got wind of the arrest – I gave my real one.’
‘Which is?’
His cheeks tensing, Knight seemed even more reluctant to confess to his real name than to the offence he had committed.
‘Colleano. Luigi Colleano.’
‘I see,’ said Calvert. ‘Luigi Colleano? Doesn’t quite have the same ring as Gareth Knight, does it? So you’re Italian?’
‘As a matter of fact, I was born in Bournemouth. My father, who emigrated just before the First War, earned his living by selling ice-cream cones and wafers on the pier.’
‘Uh huh. All very respectable, I dare say. But, well, didn’t you also look different?’
‘I had shaved off my moustache for the occasion. And wore spectacles.’
Observing Calvert’s expression of mild reproof, he added:
‘No crime in that, I believe?’
‘Never said there was, sir, never said there was. If I’m not mistaken, you were sent to Wormwood Scrubs, right?’
‘Three months penal servitude. My war record was taken into account. I’d been an R.A.F. pilot in the Battle of Britain. Shot down four Messerschmitts and one Dornier. Awarded the D.S.O.’
‘Only three months, eh?’ said Calvert. ‘Well, Mr Knight, I really don’t think you have too much to complain of. Could have been two years, you know.’
‘There is that, I suppose,’ agreed Knight drily. ‘The essential is that there was no write-up in the papers and my reputation was saved.’
‘You yourself might want to put it that way. For us in the police, of course, the essential is that you were made to pay your debt to society. And, since you did, we’ll say no more about it.
‘Now to the matter at hand. As I understand, you were actually performing alongside Cora Rutherford just before she died?’
‘That’s right. We were playing our one big scene together.’
‘What was your reaction, your initial reaction, when she collapsed in front of you?’
‘My initial reaction? To be absolutely honest with you – it’s awful to have to say such a thing – but my initial reaction was that she was grandstanding.’
‘Grandstanding?’ said a puzzled Calvert. ‘I don’t think I know that word.’
‘It’s what the French call “pulling the covers over to your own side of the bed”,’ explained Evadne. ‘Isn’t that so, Mr Knight?’
Knight turned to face her.
‘Yes it is, Mrs …?’
‘Miss. Miss Evadne Mount.’
‘Miss Mount. Yes, I’d say that was rather a neat definition.’
Then, to Calvert again:
‘It means trying to upstage your co-performers. And, well, I blush to think of it now but, before I realised that something deadly serious had happened, that’s exactly what I thought Cora was up to.’
‘So you disliked her, did you?’ the novelist put to him.
‘Cora? Why, not at all,’ he replied, expressing surprise. ‘Oh, I won’t pretend she didn’t sometimes set my teeth on edge with all her tantrums and taradiddle, and especially her chronic lateness – I cannot abide unpunctuality – but, no, deep down I was really rather fond of Cora.’
This revelation arrested Evadne’s head.
‘Were you?’ she said, even more surprised by Knight’s answer than he had been by her question.
‘Yes, I was. I can’t say I knew her all that well, but over the years, you know, we’d run into one another at the Ivy and the Caprice.’
‘You had no previous professional connection with her, I assume,’ Calvert asked.
‘Yes, I did. Just the once. It must have been in 1930. Possibly ’31. She and I were in a stage production together.’
‘Really?’ remarked Evadne. ‘Cora never mentioned it to me.’
‘I can’t say I blame her. It wasn’t something either of us felt like boasting about. A play by Eugene O’Neill, but decidedly one of his feebler efforts. Orpheus Schmorpheus. Adapted from the French – Jean Cocteau, you know. It closed after five performances. Precisely five too many, in my opinion. O’Neill never had the light touch.’
‘But as to Cora,’ the novelist persisted, ‘you say you really liked her?’
‘Well, yes, I rather did. Certainly, when I first met her, about fifteen years ago, she was very special. Unforgettably gorgeous and possessed of an extraordinary presence. Not just on stage but in life. She was one of those actresses who didn’t need spot-lights or arc-lights. She didn’t absorb light, she herself seemed to emit it.’
‘Nicely put, young man.’
‘Well, thank you, Miss Mount. And, incidentally, thank you, too, for the “young man”. We were two of a kind, Cora and I. She was somewhat older than I, of course, but we both had what she’d have called a “past”. We both launched our careers in the theatre before eventually gravitating to the films. And we both knew we were getting on when we stopped lying about what we were going to do and started lying about what we’d already done.