“Anyway,” she continued, her eyes bright and astute, “if I’d been in the loo taking the tape off, I’d hardly start shouting to the world that I was thinking of killing him.”
“Stranger things have happened. You could have been perpetrating a double bluff. Assuming that we would think exactly that.”
“Oh, come on, Tom. You know me. I’m not that clever.”
They stared each other out. Kitty, her cornflower blue eyes dark with anger, was thinking she’d find out who had spotted her in the lighting box, and when she did, they’d wish they’d never been born.
Barnaby was wondering if she had genuinely not known the reason for Esslyn’s sudden explosion of rage. Had she really been sitting in the scene dock for (he checked his watch) the best part of two hours with Nicholas, also the recipient of Esslyn’s violence, without coming to any conclusions? They must surely have discussed it. He supposed if the Everards had kept their mouths shut, this could be the case. Was Kitty a bored young wife playing around? he wondered. Or was she a calculating harpy who had snagged a financially secure older husband and then wished to be rid of him? Was the removal of the tape an impulsive act? Or planned for some time? If so, Barnaby asked himself (as he was to do over and over again in the coming days), why on earth should it be done on the first night? He became aware that Kitty was leaning forward in her seat.
“You’re not sticking this on me, Tom,” she said firmly.
“I have no intention of ‘sticking’ this on anyone, Kitty. But I intend to find out the truth. So be warned.”
“I don’t know what you mean. I’ve nothing to hide.” But her cheeks colored suddenly, and she did not look at him.
“Then you’ve nothing to fear.”
After a longish pause during which Kitty recollected herself to the extent that she was able to send a second slumberous glance in Troy’s direction, she got to her feet and said, “If that’s all, a person in my condition should have been in her lonely bed hours ago.”
“Quite a girl,” said Barnaby as the door closed behind her.
“Anybody for a gin and tonic?” murmured the sergeant, hopefully memorizing the telephone number at the top of Kitty’s statement. Then he added, “Maybe they were in it together. Her and her bit of crackling.”
“The thought had occurred to me. We’ll see how he checks out tomorrow.”
Troy scanned his notes briefly, then said, “What now, sir?”
Barnaby got up and collected his coat. “Let’s go and find the big white chief.”
Barnaby had hardly set foot in the scene dock before Harold, incandescent with rage, sprang before them like a greyhound in the slips. “So there you are!” he cried, as if to a pair of recalcitrant children. “How dare you leave me while one and then the other of the company is interviewed? It’s not as if you aren’t aware of my position. How am I supposed to keep control when they see me constantly passed over like … like the boot boy!”
“I’m sorry you’re upset, Harold,” said Barnaby soothingly. “Please … sit down.” He indicated a rustic arbor on which dusty blue paper roses were impaled. Reluctantly, simmeringly, Harold lowered himself.
“You see,” continued the chief inspector, “everyone has had a story to tell. Sometimes these are mutually supportive, sometimes they contradict each other, but what I need at the end of the day is the viewpoint of someone who knows the group through and through. Someone perceptive, intelligent, and observant, who can help me to draw all the information together and perhaps see some underlying pattern in this dreadful affair. This is why I left you until the last.” He looked concernedly at Harold. “I thought you’d understand that.”
“Of course, Tom. I sensed that something like that was behind it all. But I would have appreciated a discreet word. To have been kept informed.”
Barnaby’s look of regret deepened. Troy, sitting just to the side of Harold in a deck chair (Relatively Speaking) watched with proprietorial pleasure. You could almost hear the steam hissing out of the old geezer (or geyser, revised the sergeant wittily), and see self-importance taking its place. Next would come complacency, the most fertile ground for the forcing of revelation. (Not fear or anger, as is commonly supposed.) Troy tried to catch his chief’s eye to indicate his appreciation of the maneuver, but without success. Barnaby’s concentration was total.
Actors, thought the sergeant, wearing the shade of a contemptuous smile. You’d have to get up early to find one to match the D.C.I. He had as many expressions to his face and shades to his voice as a mangy dog had fleas. He could imitate the dove and the scorpion and even the donkey if he thought it would serve his ends. More than once Troy had seen him shaking his head in apparent dumb bewilderment while witnesses feeling secure in his incomprehension happily babbled on, quite missing the echo of the turnkey’s tread. And he had a special smile seen only at the moment of closing in. Troy practiced that smile sometimes at home in the bathroom mirror and frightened himself half to death. Now, Barnaby was congratulating Harold on the excellence of his production.
“Thank you, Tom. Not an easy play, but I pride myself on a challenge, as you know. I wasn’t altogether delighted with Act One, but the second half was a great improvement. So intense. And then to end like that … ” He clicked his tongue. “And of course any sort of screw-up, people immediately blame the director.”
“I’m afraid that’s the case,” agreed Barnaby, marveling at Harold’s grasp of the essentials. “You were hardly backstage at all, I believe?”
“Not really. Went through on the five to wish them all bonne chance—well, you were directly behind me, I believe? Then again in the intermission to tell them to pull themselves together. ’
“And you saw no one behaving suspiciously in the wings?”
“Of course not. If I had, I would have stopped them. We had five more performances, after all. And Saturday’s sold out.”
“Do you have any idea who might have tampered with the razor?”
Harold shook his head. “I’ve thought and thought, Tom, as you can imagine. There might be someone in the company who’s got it in for me but…’’—he gave a perplexed sigh—“I can’t possibly think why.”
“Or Esslyn.”
“Pardon?”
“It could be said that Esslyn had been sabotaged just as successfully as your production.”
“Oh. Quite.” Harold pursed his lips judiciously, implying that although this was a completely new slant on the situation, it was not one he was prepared to reject out of hand. “You mean, Tom, it might have been something personal?”
“Very personal, I’d say.” Troy, almost alight with enjoyment, leaned back too hard in his deck chair and broke the strut. By the time he had sorted himself out, Barnaby had reached the four-dollar question. “Did you have any reason for wishing Esslyn Carmichael harm?”
“Me?” squeaked Harold. “He was my leading man. My star! Now, I shall have to start all over again, training Nicholas.”
“What about his relationships with the rest of the company?”
“Esslyn didn’t really have relationships. His position made that rather difficult. I have the same problem. To hold authority, one must keep aloof. He always had a woman in tow, of course.”
“Not since his recent marriage, surely?”
“Perhaps not. I’m sure we’d all know. I’ll say this in Esslyn’s favor—he never attempted to conceal his infidelities. Not even during his years with Rosa.”
Quite right, thought Troy, flicking over his page. What’s the point of having it if you don’t flaunt it?