‘But why wouldn’t they have mentioned it when questioned by the police? Surely then the police would have realised there was something odd and — ’
‘No. You see, by then the proposed murder victim would know what had happened. As soon as Barrett Doran reacted to the poison, they must have understood, and realised why they had gin in their glass. But, for some reason of their own, they didn’t want the police to know that someone was out to kill them. Which was why they upset the table — to send all the glasses over the floor and confuse the evidence.’
He looked across at Sydnee, who shook her head lugubriously. ‘Camera wasn’t on it. There’s a shot of the celebs before Barrett takes his fatal swig, then the camera stays with him as he starts choking. Next time we see the celebs, they’re running forward and the desk’s already tipped over.’
‘So we’ve no idea who pushed it?’
‘No.’
‘Because that person, I’ll lay any money, was the intended victim.’ Charles looked at Chita and Quentin. ‘You two were on the set. You didn’t by any chance see. .?’
His words trickled to a stop as they shook their heads. ‘Sorry. There was so much confusion and chaos that we didn’t really see anything.’
Sydnee spoke. ‘Joanie Bruton said it was Nick Jeffries who pushed the desk over.’
‘Yes.’
‘Any reason to disbelieve her?’
Charles shrugged. ‘Not really, but I’m now getting so paranoid about this case that I’m suspicious of everyone.’
‘On the new time-scale, of course,’ Quentin announced slowly, ‘Nick Jeffries would have had time to put the cyanide in a glass himself.’
‘Yes, but I think the person who pushed the desk over was the intended victim rather than the murderer.’
Sydnee corrected him. ‘Not necessarily, Charles. As soon as Barrett Doran had started choking, the murderer would have realised that something had gone wrong and have exactly the same reason to confuse the evidence as the intended victim.’
Charles was forced to admit the truth of this.
‘In fact, a much more straightforward reason than the intended victim.’
He was forced to admit the truth of that too. He looked round at his researchers. ‘Right, so Nick Jeffries is now in the running. Who else? Back we go to the tedious business of retracing everyone’s footsteps.’
‘We’ve done it,’ said Chita, and handed him a blue folder.
Charles looked at her in surprise.
‘Well, we knew you’d want to know, so we got together and went through everyone. We are professional researchers, you know.’
‘Yes. Of course.’ He opened the folder and looked at the list inside. It read as follows:
SUSPECTS WITH OPPORTUNITY
1. BOB GARSTON — Left Conference Room at 6.05. Not seen again until 6.20 when he was observed by Tim Dyer walking along the corridor with Roger Bruton.
2. JOANIE BRUTON — Left Conference Room at 6.10 with Roger to go to Make-up, where he left her. According to Make-up, left them at 6.20. Roger Bruton claims she met him by the lifts a little before 6.30. By that time both of them were back up in the celebrity Conference Room.
3. ROGER BRUTON — See above. On his own after depositing his wife in Make-up. Seen with Bob Garston by Tim Dyer at 6.20. Again presumably on his own until meeting his wife again just before 6.30.
4. NICK JEFFRIES — Left celebrity Conference Room, following Fiona Wakeford, just after 6.15. Seen entering her dressing room at about 6.20, and seen leaving it again about a minute later. Not back in the Conference Room until just after 6.30.
NOTE: These are the facts as accurately as they can be ascertained. They do not, however, take into account the possibility of any of the witnesses lying, nor of a conspiracy amongst any of the above to poison the water glass.
‘But just a minute,’ said Charles, as he finished reading the document. ‘Surely there are a couple more we should be considering. The two contestants, Tim Dyer and Trish Osborne. They both left their Conference Room at six-fifteen. She went to Barrett Doran’s dressing room, but was out of there by twenty-five past and. .’
Chita shook her head. ‘She’s in the clear. She went straight to the Ladies. One of the Assistant Stage Managers was in there and saw her, trying to repair her make-up. She’d been crying, apparently. She was there till after half-past.’
Charles felt obscurely relieved that Trish had been telling the truth. ‘But what about Tim Dyer?’
Quentin shook his head. ‘No. We’ve found another witness there too. One of the dressers saw him hanging around the corridor, looking suspicious. There’ve been quite a lot of costumes going missing recently, so the dresser watched what he was up to. Tim Dyer went into Studio A just before half-past, but he quite definitely did not go into Studio B.’
‘So he couldn’t have got the cyanide. Oh well, at least thank God that’s two of them eliminated.’ Charles looked down at their list. ‘Thanks for this. Good bit of work.’ He sighed ruefully. ‘I don’t know. Bloody marvellous, isn’t it? Four murder suspects and I don’t even know who they were trying to kill.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said to Sydnee later that evening. ‘I’m not proving to be much use to you. I’m afraid my reputation as a detective has been a little over-inflated.’
She did not deny this, but told him that at least she had been glad of someone to talk to about the case. They were sitting over coffee after dinner in a Covent Garden Italian restaurant. Charles felt very low. The first snagging self-doubts of depression threatened. When the depression came, it could be a long one.
He sighed. ‘So I suppose now we do what we should have done in the first place — go to the police about it. I tell them that Barrett Doran’s glass contained gin at six-thirty. At least that’ll let Chippy off the hook.’
‘And then the police will get on to Sylvian,’ Sydnee said listlessly. ‘And he won’t be able to tell them which glass he changed for which, because he fiddled about with all of them. .’
‘But at least sorting out all these bloody suspects then becomes the police’s problem. It is their job, after all. That’s what they’re trained for.’
Sydnee nodded and was silent for a moment. ‘Of course, the police aren’t going to be terribly pleased with you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Withholding evidence. Why didn’t you go and tell them what you knew earlier?’
Charles shrugged. ‘That’s a risk I’ll have to take.’ But he didn’t warm to the idea.
‘I just feel we’ve got so close to it,’ said Sydnee doggedly.
‘Oh yes. I thought we were getting close with Bob, but after finding out about the glasses being switched, I don’t know, the whole case is so wide open that everything we’ve done seems to have been wasted.’
‘Not everything.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We now know our suspects pretty well. We know what makes them tick, what their priorities are.’
‘Yes.’ In spite of himself, Charles felt a flicker of interest. ‘So where does that lead us?’
‘Well, it enables us to think of reasons why they might want to murder each other.’
‘Go on.’
‘All right, let’s start with Bob Garston. We worked out a lot of reasons why he might want to murder Barrett. In doing that, we should have found out enough about his character to see reasons why he might want to murder someone else.’
‘His character seems very simple to me. Totally selfish. He’s motivated solely by considerations of his career. Anyone who threatened that might be expendable. But Barrett was the only one on the show who represented any kind of threat.’
‘Maybe. Bob was also desperately worried about adverse publicity.’
‘That’s just another facet of the same thing. It threatened his career.’ Charles mused in silence for a moment. ‘The thing that really seemed to get him uptight was that we knew about Barrett and his wife. .’