Then Mr. Tibbs decided he had had enough and announced his approach to the next world. “We are coming, Lord,” he cried, and made the sign of the cross, poking PC Watson savagely in the eye.
“Christ!” exclaimed the unfortunate constable as an agonizing pain exploded behind his forehead. Mr. Tibbs, no doubt encouraged by this sign of solidarity, twisted himself out of the policeman’s grasp, placed his hands on his rescuer’s shoulders, and sank them both. Jim Watson held his breath, kicked his way violently to the surface, took a fresh lungful of air, and dived again, bringing up Mr. Tibbs.
“Ohhh …” wailed Deidre. “We must do something.”
“He’ll be all right.” PW Brierley sounded more confident than she felt. The two pale faces were still a long way from the edge.
“Can’t you go in and help?”
“Then there’d be two of us round his neck.”
“I thought everyone in the police had to be able to swim.”
“Well they don’t,” snapped Audrey Brierley, unpleasantly aware that her uniform was wet and filthy, her hat lost somewhere in the bushes, her tights in shreds, and that she was screamingly, ragingly, desperately dying for a pee. She moved slightly forward, extending her fingertips another inch. The inch that might make all the difference. She said, “Hang onto my legs.”
The dog, as if sensing that the situation was now completely out of his control had crouched quietly down and was looking back and forth from the couple on the edge to the couple in the water with increasing degrees of anxiety.
PC Watson had been unable to seize Mr. Tibbs with his former neat precision and, having awkwardly grabbed at his shoulder, was now lugging rather than towing him. The policeman’s muscles ached almost beyond endurance with the double effort of trying to steer them both to the bank and keep Mr. Tibbs’s head above the water. Also, the old man’s benign attitude had become transformed, no doubt due to his being snatched from the jaws of death against his will, to one of extreme truculence. He flailed his arms and legs about, and gave little wheezy hoots of crossness. Kevin Lampeter, the ambulance driver, said afterward it was as if someone were trying to drown a set of bagpipes. He arrived just after the police reinforcements, who had brought a coil of rope and had drawn PC Watson and his burden to safety.
Deidre immediately flung herself on her father, supporting him and calling his name over and over again. But he shrank away as if from an unkind stranger. The ambulance men persuaded him onto a stretcher, and the bedraggled group limped, staggered, or, in the case of the dog, trotted briskly toward the waiting vehicle. The wall was negotiated with far less ease than previously. PC Watson, a blanket around his shoulders, climbed heavily into the back of the ambulance, and Mr. Tibbs, all the light fled from his countenance, went next. The dog, attempting to follow, was sternly rebuffed.
“You’ll have to take him up front.”
“Oh, but he’s not—” said Deidre, bewildered. “I mean … I don’t know …”
“If you could hurry it up, please, dear. The sooner we get the old man to a hospital, the better.”
Deidre climbed into the cab, but the dog had got there first. When she sat down, he bounded onto her lap, unfurled his plume tail, wrapped it neatly around his hindquarters, and stared intently out of the window all the way to Slough.
Kitty settled herself composedly. She inspected her pretty face, flirted her curls a bit, and accepted a cup of tea from Sergeant Troy with a look that was as good as a wink and then some. Barnaby assumed her sangfroid to be genuine. Given her present position as suspect number one, this argued either great cunning, absolute innocence, or absolute stupidity. Of the three, Barnaby was inclined to favor the latter. He started with formal condolences.
“A terrible business this, Kitty. You must be dreadfully upset.”
“Yeah. Terrible. I am.” Kitty’s azure glance slid sideways and fastened, sweet and predatory, on Troy’s carrot-colored crown. He looked up, met the glance, flushed, smirked, and looked down again.
“Do you have any idea who might have wanted to harm your husband?”
“Could’ve been any number of people. He was an absolute pig.”
“I see.” He was obviously not going to have the same problem with the second Mrs. Carmichael that he had had with the first. “You would include yourself among that number?”
“Definitely.”
“But it wasn’t you who removed the tape?”
“Only because I didn’t think of it first.” Bold madam, thought Troy. And get a load of those sweet little oranges.
“Did you and Esslyn arrive together?”
“Yes. I went straight to the dressing room. Got dressed and made up. All of a twitch and tremble I was. Ask Joycey.”
“That was a savage bit of business in Act Two,” said Barnaby, circling closer.
“Bastard. Nearly broke my back.”
“I understand he’d just discovered you’d been having an affair.”
“An affair.” Dismay, indignation, and comprehension jostled for position on Kitty’s foxy face. “So that was what set him off. How the hell did that get out?”
“You were seen.”
“Charming. Nosy buggers.” She scowled. “Where was I seen?”
“In the lighting box.”
“Oh, no.” Kitty laughed then. A blowsy, coarse chuckle. “Poor old Tim. He’ll be furious.”
“Would you care to tell me who the man is?”
“But—” She stopped. Her face, spontaneously surprised, became smooth and guarded. “Not really. You seem to be doing very well on your own. I’m sure by this time tomorrow you’ll know his name, what he has for breakfast, and the size of his socks. Not to mention the length of—”
“Yes, all right, Kitty,” interrupted Barnaby, noticing his sergeant’s look of rollicking appreciation.
“In any case, it wasn’t what you’d call an affair. Not a real steamer. More of a frolic … all very lighthearted, really.”
“Did you expect your husband to see it like that?”
“I didn’t expect my husband to find out, for godsake!”
“Who do you suppose told him?”
“His little muckrakers, I should think. They’re never happier than when they’re turning over a nice big stone and mixing up the ooze. He relied on them for all the juicy bits.”
“I understand that after this violent scene onstage, you rested for a while in the wings—”
“Hardly for a while.”
“—next to the props table. In fact, almost on top of the tray with the bowl of soap and the razor.”
“I was only there a second.”
“A second is all you would need,” said Barnaby. “It’s obvious that whoever messed with the razor took it away to do so. And almost the only place where it could have been tampered with undisturbed was a locked lavatory cubicle.” His voice tightened. “I understand it was in the ladies’ where Deidre found you.”
“ Where’d you expect her to find me? In the gents?”
“And that you then said that if Esslyn touched you again, you would kill him.” Kitty stared, suddenly whey-faced with shock.
“What a brilliant lot. Gossips. Spies. Peeping Toms. And now a bloody tipster. You wait till I see her. Little cow!”
“You mustn’t blame Deidre,” said the chief inspector, feeling that the least he could do was save the wretched girl from a further stream of opprobrium. “You were overheard. In the wings.”
“Well? So what?” Kitty was quickly regaining her balance. “You saw what happened onstage. What d’you think I’d say? We must do this more often? In a pig’s eye.”
Her voice was steely and laced with bravado. Barnaby, remembering the coquettish, adoring glances directed at her husband and her other cute wriggling little ways, could only reflect wryly on the commonly held assumption that Kitty couldn’t act for beans.