Now, hesitant and half-fearful, she prepared to examine—even acknowledge—an emotion she had always prayed would be forever absent from her heart. She recalled Esslyn’s behavior to his fellow actors. His condescension and spite, his indifference to their feelings, his impregnable self-esteem and swaggering coxcombry. His laughter and sneers about her father. Holding her breath, lying rigidly, fists clenched in the perfumed bath, Deidre faced, more or less boldly, a terrible new perception about herself. She had hated Esslyn. Yes. Hated him. And, even worse, she was glad that he was dead.
White-faced, she opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. Waiting for a sign of God’s displeasure. For the thunderbolt. When told as a child that every time she told a lie He got one out and it was only His all-forgiving love that stopped Him firing it off with all deliberate speed, she had tried to picture this celestial weapon of retribution, but all her young mind could come up with was the bolt on the kitchen door magnified a thousand times and painted shining bronze. Nothing even remotely similar crashed punitively through the Barnabys’ bathroom ceiling.
At the recognition that it never would and that she could be glad that Esslyn was no longer in a position to cause anyone pain or distress without fear of divine retribution, a tremendous wave of something far too powerful to be called relief broke over Deidre. She lay dazed, still faintly incredulous at this new truth. She felt as if someone had removed a great yoke from her shoulders or heavy chains from her legs and feet. Any minute now, she might drift up to the unriven ceiling. She felt weak but far from helpless. She felt weak in the way the strong must sometimes do. Not endemically, but accepting the need of occasional rest and refreshment. She wished now she had eaten her toast.
After a few somnolent minutes more, she turned on the hot tap and reached for the Celandine and Marshmallow elixir. If a thimbleful had this effect, reasoned Deidre, what could half a cupful do?
Barnaby, having perused his scenes-of-crime reports and witnesses’ statements, sat gazing at his office wall, lips pursed, gaze, vacant, to a casual observer miles away. Troy, having seen all this before, was not deceived. The sergeant sat on one of the visitor’s chairs (chrome tubes and tweed cushions) and stared out of the window at the dark rain bouncing off the panes.
He was dying for a cigarette but did not need the restraint of the no-smoking sign on the back of the door to stop him lighting up. He was used to being closeted all day with a clean-air freak. What really bugged him was that the chief had been a fifty-a-day high-tar merchant in his time. Reformed smokers (like reformed sinners) were the worst. Not content, thought Troy, with the shining perfection of their own lives, they were determined to sort out the unregenerate. And with no thought at all as to the possible side effects of their actions. When Troy thought of all that fresh cold air rushing into poor little lungs denied their protective coating of nicotine, he positively trembled. Pneumonia at the very least must be waiting around the corner. He insured himself against this eventuality by lighting up in the outer office, in the toilet, and anywhere at all the second Barnaby was off the premises. As a sop to all the haranguing, he had changed from unfiltered to filtered, flirting with Gitanes Caporal along the way. He admired the idea of a French cigarette more than the things themselves, and when Maureen had told him they stank like a polecat on the razzle he had not been sorry to give them up.
Troy had read through the statements but not the scenes-of-crimes reports. He had also been present an hour ago when the Smys were interviewed. David had arrived first and stated, in an even and unflurried manner, that he had not removed the tape from the razor or seen anyone else do so. His father had said the same, but much less calmly. He had blushed and blustered and stared all over the place. This did not mean that he was culpable. Troy was aware that many innocent people, finding themselves being formally questioned in a police station, become overwhelmed by feelings of quite unfounded guilt. Still, Smy senior had been in a state. Troy became aware that Barnaby was making a vague rumbling sound. He gathered his wits about him.
“That last word, Sergeant.”
“Sir.”
‘Bungled’… . Odd, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes. I’ve been thinking about that.” Troy waited politely for a nod of encouragement, then continued, “Was someone supposed to do something, and they bungled? And was the throat-cutting the result? Or was it Carmichael who bungled? I mean, I assume he was doing what he should have been doing? What he did when they all … practiced?”
“Rehearsed. Yes. Everyone seems to agree the last scene ran as usual.”
“So what could the bungle have been? I did wonder actually if he took the tape off himself.”
“No. He was the last person to commit suicide.”
“What I meant is, if he took it off for some cock-eyed reason of his own. Maybe to get someone into trouble. Then, in the heat of the moment—acting away with all that music and everything—just forgot. Maybe he was trying to say, ‘I’ve bungled.’ ”
“A bit unlikely.” Troy looked so crestfallen that Barnaby added, “I haven’t come up with anything, either. But he struggled to tell us something with his dying breath. It must have a point. And a very important one, I’d say. We’ll just have to poke away at it. This”—he slapped his scenes-of-crimes report sheets, ‘‘has one or two surprises. For a start, the razor, supposedly checked by Deidre and further handled by Sweeney-whoever-it-was, only has one set of prints. We’ll check it out, of course, but they must be those of the murdered man. We all saw him pick it up and use it. Now as Deidre would have no reason for wiping her own off— ”
“Unless, sir, she could see we’d think that. And wiped them for that reason?”
“I doubt it.” Barnaby shook his head. “That argues a degree of cunning that I just don’t think Deidre has. And I’ve known her for ten years. Apart from anything else, she has very strict ideas of right and wrong. Quite old-fashioned for someone her age.”
“Well—that still leaves us plenty to play with.”
Barnaby was not so sure. In spite of the large amount of people milling around both on and off the set, he believed the razor renovator would be found within the handful of people intimately known to the dead man. He thought it highly unlikely, for instance, that an evil prankster would be discovered among the youthful ASMs, although he had their statements on file should he wish to follow up the idea. Nor did he feel he was in with much of a chance with the small-part actors, three of whom had no previous knowledge of the dead man, having only joined the company for Amadeus. Although keeping an open mind on both these available options, Barnaby actually chose to cleave tightly to his core of hard-line suspects. Chief of whom, he surmised aloud, must be the widow.
“An armful of spontaneous combustion there, sir.”
“So they say.”
“And I wouldn’t be surprised if the current bun might not be the husband’s. Women are a faithless lot.” Troy spoke with some bitterness. He had been laying none too subtle siege to Policewoman Brierley for about two years, only to see her fall the previous week to a new recruit, hardly out of his rompers before he was into hers. “And as for these actors—well … you just don’t know where you stand.”
“Can you expand that a bit?”
“The thing is,” Troy continued, “when you usually talk to suspects, they either tell you the truth or, if they’ve got something to hide, they tell you lies. And on the whole you know what you’re dealing with. But this lot… they’re all exaggerating and swanking and displaying themselves. I mean, look at that woman he used to be married to. Getting her to answer questions was like watching Joan of Arc going to the stake. Almost impossible to know what she really felt.”