“Well, we heard from Rosa who got it from Boris who got it from Avery who got it from Nicholas that it was David Smy.”
“And where did Nicholas get it from?”
“My dear, apparently he actually saw them,” cried Donald. “Going at it like the clappers in Tim’s lighting box.”
Barnaby supposed stranger things had happened. Himself, he would not have thought that Kitty, whose winsome appearance masked, he felt sure, a self-serving duplicitous little nature, would have fancied the rather stolid David. Mind you, if she was looking for a change, no one could have been a greater contrast to Esslyn.
“And as he was our friend,” said Donald with an unctuous wriggle, “we felt he ought to know.”
“So we told him.”
“In the middle of a performance?”
“Well, you know what an old pro he is … was. Nothing fazed him.” No need to ask how Barnaby knew precisely when. Act II spoke for itself. “Or so we thought.” “But my God—the effect!”
“We didn’t take his ego into account, you see. He’s like Harold. Sees himself as a prince … or a king. And Kitty belonged to him. No one else was allowed to touch.” “Lese-majeste. ”
“He went white, didn’t he, Clive?”
“Quite white.”
“And his eyes blazed. It was really frightening. Like being a messenger in one of those Greek plays.”
“Where you hand over the bad news, then they take you outside and rearrange your innards with a toasting fork.”
“He got hold of my arm. I’ve still got the marks, look.” Donald rolled back his sleeve. “And he said who?”
“Just the one word, ‘who?’ ”
“And I looked at his face and I looked at my arm and I thought, Well I’m not going to be the one to tell him who.”
“Friendship can be taken just so far.”
“Absolutely,” said Barnaby, ignoring his nausea and giving an encouraging smile. “So … ?”
“So I said,” continued Donald, “better ask Nicholas. And before I could say another word—”
“Before either of us could say another word—”
“He’d stormed off. And I never had a chance to add, “ ‘He’s the one who knows.’ ”
“And we realized once we’d got down to the dressing rooms that Esslyn’d got hold of the wrong end of the stick and thought that Nico was actually the man!”
“And you didn’t feel like disabusing him?”
“The place was packed, Tom.” Clive sounded reproving, if not scandalized. “You don’t want everyone knowing your business.”
Even Troy, so impassive in his role of bag-carrier that suspects occasionally thought he had entered a period of hibernation, choked back an astonished laugh at this astounding example of doublethink. The Everards turned and studied him carefully. Clive spoke.
“He’s not writing all this down, is he?”
Deidre ran on. And on. She seemed to have been running for hours. Her legs and feet ached, and a savage wind repeatedly plastered strips of soaking-wet hair over her eyes and mouth. She felt, from the soreness of her throat and totally clogged mucous membranes, that she must be crying, but so much water was pouring down her cheeks that it was impossible to be sure. Her father’s now-sodden coat, still clutched to her bosom, felt as heavy as lead. She peeled her hair away from her face for the hundredth time and staggered into the doorway of Me Andrew’s Pharmacy. Her heart leaped in her breast, and she tried to take long, deep breaths to calm it down. She averaged about one in three, the rest being broken by deep, shuddering sobs.
She rested between the two main windows. On her left stacks of disposable diapers and Tommy Tippee teething rings all supported by surging polystyrene worms. On her right a display of carboys, cans of grape concentrate, and coils of lemon plastic tubing like the intestines of a robot. (Be Your Own Fine Wine Merchant.)
Deidre moved to the edge of the step and stared up at the arch of the black thundering sky, a soft anemone violet when she had first left home. The stars in their courses, never all that concerned with the welfare of the human race, tonight looked especially indifferent. Through the rivulets making their way down Deidre’s glasses, individual stars became blurred, then elongated into hard, shining lances.
She had been running in circles. Starting in the High Street, then working outward in concentric rings. She had looked in all the shop entrances and checked Adelaide’s and the Jolly Cavalier, although a public house was the last place she would normally expect to find her father. In both places bursts of laughter had followed her wild appearance and speedy withdrawal. She scurried round and round, obsessed by the idea that she was just missing him. She saw him, old and cold and drenched to the skin, just one street ahead or a hundred yards behind or even in a directly parallel path concealed only by a house or dark gathering of trees.
Twice she had called in at home, checking every room and even the garden shed. The second time she had been terribly tempted by the still faintly glowing embers in the kitchen grate to take off her wet clothes and make some tea and just sit by the fire for a while. But minutes later, she was driven out to the streets again, afraid she would never find him yet compelled by love and desperation to keep on trying.
So now she stood, her hand pressed against her pounding heart, her skin stinging under the arrowheads of rain, unable to take another step. Not knowing which way to turn. She tormented herself with pictures of her father lying in a gutter somewhere. Or huddled against a wall. No matter that, having covered every gutter and every wall, if he had been, she would have long since discovered him. The ability to think rationally vanished the moment she had stepped into the clubroom and seen the empty chair, and blind panic took its place. She pressed her face against the cold glass and stared into the window.
Once more she turned her face toward the savage constellation of stars. God was up there, thought Deidre. God with His all-seeing eye. He would know where her father was. He could direct her if He chose. She locked her fingers together and prayed, choking on half-remembered fragments of childhood incantations: “Gentle Jesus … now I lay me down to sleep … in Thee have I trusted … neither run into any kind of danger …” Numb with cold, her hands pressed against each other in an urgency of supplication as she stared beseechingly upward.
But nothing changed. If anything, the great wash of iridescent stars looked even more distant, and the milky radiance of the moon more inhumanly bright. On one of Deidre’s lenses a rivulet spread sideways; the lance became a stretched grin.
She recalled her father’s years of piety. His simple confidence that he was loved by his Lord. Overlooked always by that luminous spirit and safe from all harm. Slowly anger began to course through her veins, unfreezing her blood, thawing out her frozen fingers. Was this to be his reward for years of devotion? To be allowed to slide into madness, then abandoned and left to caper about in the howling wind and rain like some poor homeless elemental? A wave of anguish swept over her. Followed by feelings of fury directed at a God she was no longer sure even existed. She stepped out of her shelter into the torrential rain and shook her fist at the heavens.
“You!” she screamed. “You were supposed to be looking after him!”
The police escort, alerted by the constable outside the Latimer, had just missed Deidre several times. Now, Policewoman Audrey Brieriey gave her companion a nudge and said, “Over there.”
Deidre had stopped yelling by the time they got out, and just stood with sad resignation awaiting their approach. Very gently they persuaded her into the car and took her home.
After showing in Tim and Avery, Troy pointedly moved his chair several feet away. Then he sat, legs protectively crossed, giving off waves of masochistic fervor, his breathing ostentatiously shallow. One might have thought the air to be thick with potentially effeminate spores, a careless gulp of which might transform him from a sand-kicker supreme to a giggling, girlish wreck.