“You think she wasn’t genuinely distressed?”
“I just couldn’t decide. I’m damn glad you knew them all beforehand.”
“Just because someone displays an emotion in the most effective or even stylish manner of which they’re capable doesn’t mean it isn’t genuine. Remember that.”
“Right, chief.”
“And in any case, with the exception of Joyce and Nicholas, you should be able to see through them. They’re all dreadful actors.”
“Oh.” Troy kept his counsel. Actually he had thought the show was rather good. His disappointment had been in looking at the scenery close up. All old stuff cobbled together, painted over, and held up by what looked like old clothes props. Marvelous what a bit of illumination could do. Which reminded him. “I take it Doris and Daphne are definitely out, sir? Airy and fairy in the lighting box?”
‘‘I’m inclined to think so. Apart from the fact there’s no discernible motive, they were in the wings and dressing rooms so briefly—as these statements from the actors confirm”—he tapped the pile of forms with his hand— ‘‘and also so near to the first curtain that there would simply have been no time for tinkering. The same goes for Harold. I happened to arrive at the theater when he and his wife did. He hung up his coat and started swanning around in the foyer doing his Ziegfeld number. He was there when Cully and I went to wish the cast good luck—” “Beautiful girl that, chief. Fantastic.”
“—and came down himself a minute or two later. And we all left virtually at the same time to take our seats.”
“He didn’t slip into the bog?” Barnaby shook his head.
“What about the intermission?”
“Same problem with time, really. He was up in the clubroom for a bit, then went backstage to give them hell for lack of verismo, so my wife says. Then went back to his seat with the rest of the audience. And anyway, not only did Harold have no discernible motive for wanting Esslyn out of the way, he had very positive reasons for wanting him to stay alive. He was the only person in the group who could tackle leading roles in a moderately competent manner. He was doing Uncle Vanya next.”
“Who’s he, sir, when he’s buying a round?”
“It’s a Russian play.”
Troy’s nod was distant. It seemed to him that you could go on for a very long time indeed before you ran out of decent English plays without putting on foreign rubbish. And Communist rubbish, at that. He tuned back into the chief inspector’s gist.
“I think the next thing is to give Carmichael’s house the once-over. There might be something in his effects that will give us a lead. Organize some transport, will you? I’ll sort out a warrant.”
Rosa had a plan. She had not revealed it to Earnest despite the fact that if the plan came off, his life would never be the same again. Time enough to spring it on him if it proved to be workable. Really, it all hinged on whether Rosa had read Kitty’s character correctly. And Rosa was sure she had. Kitty had always struck her as a vapid, silly little thing, frankly on the make. A good-time girl. Now she was free, rich (unless Esslyn had been singularly spitefull in drawing up his will), and still only nineteen. What on earth, reasoned Rosa, would someone in that position want with a child?
Kitty had been in the company for two years. Never during this time had she been heard to express the slightest interest in children. Dressing-room conversation, when touching on family matters, produced only yawns. Various offspring of CADS members backstage from time to time hardly merited a glance, let alone a kindly word. So, given this lack of interest, Rosa, like the majority of people at the Latimer, assumed that Kitty had got herself deliberately pregnant only to ensnare Esslyn. Now that he was so conveniently dispatched, surely the means of ensnarement would be nothing but a hindrance? Of course, there were those with no concern for other people’s children who still, when their own arrived, found them a never-ending source of wonder and delight, but Rosa believed (or had persuaded herself to the belief) that Kitty was not of that number. And it was this persuasion that had instigated her grand design.
Since Esslyn’s death, Rosa had been whirling around in a veritable hodge-podge of emotions and troubled thoughts. Beneath her affected public manner she was increasingly aware of an aching pulse of sorrow. She recalled constantly the early days of her marriage, and mourned the passing of what she now believed to be a tender and passionate love. And as she dwelt on those happier days, it was as if her imagination, newly refurbished by the recent tragedy, wiped out in one blessed amnesiac stroke the years of disillusionment, leaving her with a wholesome if slightly inaccurate picture of Esslyn as sensitive, benevolent, and quite unspoiled.
It was this sentimental sleight of memory that had led her first to covet Kitty’s baby. A child, Esslyn’s child, alive and growing in his wife’s womb, would transform her (Rosa’s) barren life, making it fresh and green again. Over the past two days the idea of adoption had flickered through her mind, returned, settled, taken root, and flowered with such intensity that she had now reached the point where she was practically regarding it as a fait accompli.
Until she picked up the telephone. Then her previous sanguinity was swamped by a flood of doubts. Prominent among these was the idea that Kitty might decide to have an abortion. Having dialed the first three digits of the number at White Wings, Rosa replaced the receiver and pondered this alarming notion. Common sense forced her to admit that it must appear to Kitty the obvious solution. And she would have the money to go privately, so there would be no holdups. The whole thing would be simplicity itself. In and out: problem solved. The baby, vulnerable as an eggshell, all gone. She might even now be making the arrangements! Rosa snatched up the receiver again and redialed. When Kitty answered, Rosa asked if she might call in for a chat, and Kitty, as laconic as if such a request were an everyday occurrence, said, “Sure. Come when you like.”
Backing the Panda out of the garage and crashing the gears with nervousness, Rosa struggled to plan out the strategy that would shape the argument she would have to present to Kitty. If it was going to be successful, she must look at the whole situation from the younger girl’s point of view. Why, Kitty might well and understandably ask, should she lumber around for the next five months, getting heavier and heavier, less and less able to circulate and enjoy life, then go through the lengthy and perhaps extremely painful ordeal of giving birth, only to hand over the result of all this travail to another woman? What (Rosa could just see her sharp, calculating little eyes weighing the odds) was in it for her?
During the ten-minute drive over to White Wings, Rosa made herself answer that question to what she hoped would be Kitty’s satisfaction. First she would point out the psychological as well as the physical damage that might result from an abortion. Then she would ask Kitty if she had thought of the expense involved in rearing a child. A child cost thousands. They weren’t off your hands until they were eighteen, and even then, if Earnest’s sister’s complaints were anything to go by, you had to cough up for three more years while they went to university. “But you will have none of that financial burden,” Rosa heard herself saying, “I will take care of everything.”