Death Of A Hollow Man

Exit, Pursued by a Bear

The Barnabys were at breakfast. Cully was enjoying some fresh pineapple and Greek yogurt. Barnaby was squaring up to the wobbly challenge of a half-cooked egg, and Joyce was putting two sprigs of virbumum bodnantense in a glass vase on a tray.

She was feeling very tired, but much calmer than she had expected. She was still living with the moment when Esslyn turned and, with the thin red weeping line across his throat, had put his hands on her shoulders and stared disbelievingly into her eyes. But she had talked about it over and over again to Cully, which had helped, and then, when he had finally come home at two o’clock bringing Deidre, to Tom. But as for offering any constructive ideas as to the reason for that terrible death, or on how or when the tape could have been removed, Joyce was as uninformative as the rest of the company. She felt keenly frustrated that this should be so. This was the first time in their long and happy marriage that she had been directly involved in one of her husband’s cases and in a position where, it might be supposed, she could be of some help. But waiting in the scene dock, intensely aware of her companions, when she had brought each of their names individually to the forefront of her mind and tried to imagine that it belonged to a murderer, all she experienced were mounting feelings of incredulity. She could not believe that even the hateful oily Everards could have set in motion such a formidably final train of events.

Tom had been neither surprised nor disappointed at her response. He knew how much she had to do during the course of the play and how little time was spent standing around and had had no expectations in that direction. What he hoped for was that, in casting her mind back over the weeks of rehearsal and clubroom conversation as he suggested, Joyce might remember a remark, an expression, a reaction that, put into the later context of Esslyn’s demise, might prove to be significant. Now, tuning in once more to the early morning conversation (still about Amadeus), she heard Cully say that at least Harold couldn’t complain on his first night about lack of verismo. Unbowed under her father’s criticism that such a remark showed a certain lack of sensitivity, she then asked if he thought the culprit was the merry widow in cahoots.

“Possibly.”

“I bet it is. Like in all those films noirs. The Milkman Always Comes Twice. ”

“Don’t be rude, Cully.”

“Alternatively,” said Barnaby, shaking out a tablet, “it seems to be even-stevens on Diedre.”

“Poor Diedre,” Joyce said automatically. Then she tutted at her husband’s pill-taking, which she insisted on regarding as an amusing affectation.

“You ought to stop saying that. Everybody ought.”

“What do you mean, dear?” asked her mother.

“This persistent attitude toward her as an object of pathos.”

“It’s understandable,” argued Joyce. “She’s had a very sad life. You’ve had all the advantages. You should be kinder.”

“Since when does having all the advantages make you kind? You and Dad are sorry for her. That’s awful—so patronizing. Pitying people isn’t a kindness. It makes them supine. And those who seek it don’t deserve respect.” Barnaby looked at his bright, beautiful, clever daughter as she continued, “Last time I was home, Mum was going on about her losing some weight and getting contact lenses. I mean, it’s so sentimental. The Cinderella bit. Deidre’s quite interesting and intelligent enough as she is. I should think she could wipe the floor with the lot of them at the Latimer given half a chance. She’s got a grasp of stage management that would put Cardinal Wolsey to shame.” She added, as her mother took down a jar of instant coffee, “Don’t give her that, for godsake. It’s going to be hard enough waking up this morning as it is. Use one of my filters.”

Joyce took one of the Marks and Spencer individual coffee filters out of its box and set it on a cup. Cully always brought what she called protective rations home with her. One of the reasons her father looked forward to her visits so much. Now, she said, “Could I have the vegetable lasagne tonight? It’s in the freezer.”

“I’m doing a bouillabaisse. ”

“Oh, Ma—don’t be silly.”

“It’s all in here.” Joyce indicated a book lying open near the breadboard. “Very plainly explained. I’m sure I shall cope perfectly.”

Cully finished her pineapple, crossed to her mother, and picked up the book. “Floyd on Fish? It’s not like you to be seduced by the telly.”

“Oh, I didn’t buy it. Harold gave it to me.” “Harold?” said her husband. “Harold wouldn’t give you the fluff from his navel.”

“He didn’t buy it, either. It turned up at the theater anonymously. Toast…”

Cully snatched the bread from the jaws of the toaster in the nick of time, saying, “What a peculiar thing to give to a place that doesn’t sell food.”

“I don’t think it was for the theater. It was addressed to him personally.”

“When did it arrive?” asked Barnaby.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Joyce put some butter in a saucer. “A few days ago.” The coffee drip-dripped through the fine-meshed gauze, its fragrance mingling with the scent of the Viburnum.

“Let’s have a look.” Cully brought the book over, hissing “Burn it” in her father’s ear as she put it close to the egg, which had now congealed almost to the stage where he might just feel able to put a little in his mouth. He opened the book. There was no inscription.

“Did it come through the post?”

“No. Pushed through the letter box. So Diedre said.”

“Fancy.” Barnaby slipped the book in his pocket. “Tom! What about the bouillabaisse?”

“A delight I fear we shall all have to postpone, my love.” Barnaby got up. “I’m off.”

As he left, he heard his daughter say, “Have you got the phone number of that boy who played Mozart?” and Joyce reply, “Open the door, Cully.”

Joyce bore the tray upstairs, put it down outside the spare room, and knocked gently.

Deidre had slept and slept. Even now, hours after she had been helped to bed after drinking a hot rum and lemon toddy, she was barely conscious. Sometimes she heard a voice, but very distantly, and occasionally chinking and chiming sounds that seemed to be part of a dream. She resisted wakefulness, already faintly aware that it was pregnant with such dismay that reaching it would make her long for oblivion again.

Joyce opened the door and crept in. She had already looked in twice, and found the girl so deeply asleep she had not had the heart to disturb her.

When Tom had brought Deidre home, she had been in a terrible state. Soaking wet and covered in mud, her face scratched and tearstained. Joyce had taken her temperature, and between them they had decided that she was simply distressed and exhausted and that there was no need to call out a doctor. Tom, when paying off the taxi, had discovered the starting point of Deidre’s journey, and Joyce had already rung the hospital before breakfast, hoping to have some cheerful news with which to wake the girl. But they had been very cagey (always a bad sign) and, when she admitted she was not a close relative, simply said he was as well as could be expected.

Now, she crossed to the side of the bed and watched consciousness wipe the look of sleepy confusion from Deidre’s face. Once awake, Deidre sat up immediately and cried, “I must go to the hospital!”

‘‘I’ve rung them. And the gas office. I just said you were a bit off color and wouldn’t be coming in for a couple of days.”

“What did they say? The hospital?”

“He’s doing … reasonably well. You can ring as soon as you’ve had breakfast. It’s nothing too complicated.” Joyce laid the tray across Deidre’s knees. “Just a little bit of toast and some coffee. Oh—and you’re not to worry about your dog. He’s being looked after at the station.”

“Joyce … you’re so kind … you and Tom. I don’t know what I would have done last night … if … if—”

“There, there.” Joyce took Deidre’s hand, thought the hell with being patronizing, and gave her a hug. “We were very glad to have the chance to take care of you.”

“What lovely flowers … everything’s so nice.” Deidre lifted her cup. “And delicious coffee.”

“You’ve Cully to thank for that. She didn’t think the instant was good enough. The nightie, too.”

“Oh.” Deidre’s face darkened. She looked down at her voluminous scarlet flannelly arms. She had forgotten Cully was home. She had known the Barnabys’ daughter since the child was nine years old, and was well aware of Cully’s opinion of the CADS, having heard it thoroughly bruited during her early teens. Now she was acting at Cambridge, no doubt she would be even more scathing. “I don’t think I can manage any toast.”

“Don’t worry—you have only just woken up, after all. But I expect you would like a bath?” Joyce had done no more previously than sponge Deidre’s face and hands while the girl had stood in front of the basin swaying like a zombie.

“Please. … I feel disgusting.”

“I’ve put out some clothes for you. And some warm tights. I’m afraid my shoes’ll be too small. But you could probably squeeze into my wellies.” Joyce got up. “I’ll go and run your bath.”

“Thank you. Oh, Joyce—did they find out after I’d gone—the police, I mean—who had … ?” Joyce shook her head. “I still can’t believe it.” Deidre’s face quivered. “What a terrible night. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.”

“I don’t think any of us will,” replied Joyce. “You might like to ring the hospital while you’re waiting for your bath. I’ve left the number by the phone.”

After Joyce had gone, Deidre found her glasses, put them on, and sat on the edge of the bed staring into the dressing-table mirror. Cully’s gown billowed around her like a scarlet parachute. It was the red of wounds and freshly killed meat. Hearing the water start to gush reminded Deidre of the reservoir. She gripped the edge of the bed. In her mind the two images juxtaposed: Esslyn’s throat gaped anew. Blood came—a trickle, a stream, a torrent, pouring into the reservoir, turning the water crimson. Her father fell again from his boat, disappeared, and surfaced, his face shining, incarnadined. He did this over and over, like a mechanical doll. Oh, God, thought Deidre, I’m going to see those two things for the rest of my life. Every time I stop being busy. Every time I close my eyes. Every time I try to sleep. For the rest of my life. Futilely she covered her eyes with her hands.

“Hi.” Deidre jumped up. Cully stood in the doorway, pencil-slim, an eel in blue jeans. She also wore a T-shirt inscribed “Merde! J’ai oublie d’iteindre le gaz!” “You look much nicer than I ever did in that thing, Deidre. Do keep it.”

That’s a dig at my size if ever I heard one, Deidre observed to herself. She replied primly, “No, thank you. I have several pairs of pajamas at home. ” Then she thought, what if Cully was simply trying to be kind? How brusque and ungrateful I must sound.

“Okay.” Cully smiled, unoffended. She had perfect teeth, even and brilliantly white like a film star’s. Deidre had read once that very white teeth were chalky and crumbled easily. It seemed a small price to pay. “I just came to say that I got some super bath oil for my birthday from France. Celandine and Marshmallow—and it’s on the bathroom windowsill. Use lots—it really makes you feel nice.” Cully turned to go, turned back, and hesitated.

“Terrible business, last night. I’m so sorry. About your father, I mean.”

“He’ll be all right,” said Deidre quickly.

“I’m sure he will. I just wanted to say.”

“Thank you.”

“Not sorry about Esslyn, though. He was an outbreak of rabies and no mistake. If I were queen, I’d order dancing in the streets.”

When Cully had gone, Deidre rang the hospital and was told that her father was resting, that he was being seen that afternoon by a specialist and they would prefer her not to visit until the following day. On receiving the assurance that he would be told she had rung and given her love, Deidre made her way to the bathroom rather guiltily relieved that she had a whole day to rest and recover before the stress of a visit.

She measured out a careful thimbleful of Essence de Guimauve et Chelidoine, tipped it in, then stepped into the faintly scented water. Then, as she lay back letting go, floating away, sliding away, vanishing, her mind emptied itself of ghastly memories, and a new idea gradually, timidly drifted to the surface. It was an idea too appalling really to be given credence, yet Deidre, tensing a little with not unpleasurable alarm, braced herself to consider it.

Cully’s intemperate phrases when referring to the previous night’s disaster had shocked Deidre deeply. She had been brought up to believe that you never spoke ill of the dead. As a child, she had assumed that this was because, given half a chance, the dead would come back and savage you. Later she modified this apprehension to include the understanding that a) if you only said nice things about them, they might put in a good word for you when your turn came, and b) it just wasn’t honorable to attack people who couldn’t answer back.

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.”

“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.”

On the other hand, once the adoption was legally formalized, she would make it clear that Kitty could continue to see the child whenever she wished. Surely, Rosa thought as she drove, far too fast, down Carradine Street, the triple thrust of her argument (huge savings, no responsibility, ease of access) must win the day. She had already forgotten her previous assumption—that Kitty’s maternal instinct was minus nil—which made immediate nonsense of hook number three.

And as things turned out, none of the previous dialectic was of use anyway. Because at the moment of pressing the bell at the house and hearing it jangle in that so-familiar way in the sitting room, all Rosa’s careful reasoning evaporated and she was left, trembling with the urgency of her appeal, on the doorstep. And when Kitty opened the door and said “Hi” and clicked back to the kitchen in her feathered mules, Rosa, mouth desert dry, followed floundering with uncertainty.

The kitchen was just the same. This was both a surprise and a comfort. She had been sure that Esslyn must have changed things around. That Kitty must have wanted new furniture, wallpaper, tiles. Apparently not. Rosa looked at the eggy, fat-smeared plate and the frying pan on the burner and noted the lingering fragrance of the full English breakfast. All this grease couldn’t be doing the baby much good, she thought proprietorially. Which brought her back to her reasons for being there. As Kitty removed a butter dish, its contents liberally garnished with burned toast crumbs and smears of marmalade, Rosa reviewed the situation.

Momentarily she wondered if she should throw herself on Kitty’s mercy. Reveal how she’d always longed for a child and that this might be her last chance. Almost immediately this idea was rejected. Kitty would just give the thumbs down. She would enjoy that. Seeing Rosa on her bed of nails. The thing to do—why hadn’t she thought of it before?—was to offer money. Rosa had five thousand pounds in the bank and some jewelery she could sell. That was the way. Not to let Kitty see that she was desperate but to remain calm, even casual. Just to slip the subject almost lightheartedly into the conversation. Won’t be much fun coping with a child by yourself. Or, I expect you feel differently about having a baby now that Esslyn’s gone. Kitty removed more crumbs from the table by the simple expedient of sweeping them onto the floor with the sleeve of her negligee, and asked Rosa to take the weight off her feet.

As soon as she did so, Rosa felt the move was a mistake. She felt uneasy and at a disadvantage. Kitty put the frying pan on top of the dishes already in the sink and turned on the hot tap. The water hit the handle of the pan and sprayed upward and all over the tiles. Over her shoulder Kitty said, “And how’s dear old Earnest?”

She always referred to Earnest in this manner, as if he were a shambling family pet on the verge of extinction. An ancient sheepdog, perhaps. Or elderly spaniel with rapidly stiffening joints. The point of such remarks, Rosa knew, had always been to force a comparison between her husband and Kitty’s, the man Rosa had loved and lost. Normally it evoked a response of irritation shot through with bitterness. Now, noticing these dual emotions twitching into life, Rosa made a determined effort to repress them. Apart from not wishing to give Kitty the satisfaction of knowing she’d drawn blood, any feelings of antagonism would assuredly work against a successful outcome to the mission. And, Rosa comforted herself, whatever Earnest’s shortcomings in the youth and glamour stakes, he did have the undeniable advantage of still being alive. That should give him some sort of edge, if nothing else.

She settled back a little more easily in her chair. Outside the waxen dark green leaves and scarlet berries of a cotoneaster framed the kitchen window through which the winter sun streamed, further gilding Kitty’s already extremely honeyed curls. It was intensely hot. The central heating was on full blast, and Rosa sweltered in her heavy cape. Kitty was wearing a shortie cream satin nightie styled like a toga, slit almost to the waist on one side, and a spotted blue chiffon cover-up with little knots of silver ribbons. And not a knicker leg in sight, observed Rosa sourly. And her stomach still as flat as a pancake. She noticed with some satisfaction that, without her armory of blushers and shaders and pencils and lipsticks, Kitty’s face looked almost plain.

Kitty dried her hands on the dish towel and, leaning against a radiator for extra warmth, turned to face her visitor. She had no intention of offering coffee or tea. Nor any other form of sustenance. Kitty did not go in for female friendships at the best of times, and certainly not with women old enough to be her mother and with a hefty ax to grind. Now, watching Rosa’s greasy, large-pored nose, which seemed to Kitty to be positively quivering under the urge to poke itself into matters that were none of its business, she braced herself against what she was sure would be a great slobbery wash of false sympathy and sickly reminiscence.

Rosa took a deep breath and shuddered under her heather-mixture bivouac. She felt immobilized by the complexity of her thoughts. She saw now that she should have blurted out the reason for her visit, no matter in what garbled and emotional form, the minute she entered the house. The longer she sat in the untidy, homely kitchen (only a high chair needed to complete this picture), the more bizarre did her request appear. And Kitty was no help. She had made no welcoming gesture; not even the one regarded as virtually mandatory in any English home when a visitor calls. Realizing she had missed the boat on the instant-clarification front, Rosa had just decided to approach the subject snakily, starting with a formal expression of sympathy, when Kitty spoke.

“What’s on your mind, then?”

Rosa took a huge lungful of air and, not daring to look at Kitty, said, “I was thinking now that Esslyn’s dead, maybe you wouldn’t feel able to keep the baby, and was wondering if I could adopt it.”

Silence. Timidly Rosa looked up. As she did so, Kitty lowered her head and covered her face with her hands. She made a small sound, a little plaintive moan, and her shoulders trembled. At this Rosa, who was basically a kindhearted person, experienced a spontaneous welling up of sympathy. How callous, how imperceptive she had been to assume that, just because Kitty made no public display of sorrow she was unmoved by the shocking fact and manner of her husband’s death. Now, observing the thin shoulders shaking in despair, Rosa pushed her chair back and, awkwardly holding out her arms, made a tentative, somewhat clumsy move to comfort the sobbing figure. But Kitty shook off such consolation and crossed to the open door where, her back to Rosa, she started to make terrible jackdaw squawks and cries.

Rooted to the spot, impotent, distressed, and self-castigating, Rosa could only wait, her hands held beseechingly, palms upward, continuing to offer solace should it be eventually required. At last the dreadful noises stopped and Kitty turned, her face puffy and red traces of tears on her cheeks, her shoulders still feebly vibrating. And it was then Rosa realized, with a tremendous shock of outrage and indignation, that Kitty had been laughing.

Now, shaking her head apparently with disbelief at the pricelessness of the situation, Kitty pulled a crumpled tissue from the pocket of her negligee, mopped her streaming eyes, and dropped it on the floor. Her shoulders finally at rest and her breathing quieted, she stared across at Rosa, and Rosa, still mortified but starting to get healthily angry, stared back.

Everything became very still. And quiet. A faucet dripped, making a dull, soft-spreading sound. Already, only seconds into this embarrassing and faintly ridiculous confrontation, it was getting on Rosa’s nerves. She stood (she would have said stood her ground), and could think of nothing to say. In any case, she felt it was not up to her to speak. She had described why she was there, and invoked in Kitty an explosion of grotesque mirth. Now, it was up to Kitty to either explain her behavior or bring the interview to an end.

Rosa forced herself to meet that hard blue gaze. No merriment there. Indeed, now she came to think of it, there had not been much humor in those raucous hoots in the first place. They had been run through with an almost … almost crowing aggression. Yes, that was it! There had been triumph in those sounds. As if Kitty, with the battle lines hardly sketched out, was already victorious. But why was she crowing? Probably, thought Rosa, with a stab of humiliation, about the fact that she had Esslyn’s first wife in a begging position. What a tale that would make to pass around the dressing rooms. Rosa could just hear it. “You’ll never guess. Poor old Mrs. Earn came round the other day wanting to bring up the baby. Talk about an absolute scream. Left it too late to have any of her own. Silly old fool.”

Ah, well, observed Rosa, she’d brought it on herself. Imagining Kitty’s phantom gibes made her now wonder how she had ever entertained the ridiculous, misbegotten idea of adoption for a minute, never mind letting herself get to the stage where she’d actually visited the house and put the question. What in the world, queried Rosa, now devil’s advocate, did she want with a child at her time of life? And dear Earnest, who had brought up three and, while doting on his grandchildren, found a half-hour-a-week romp and dandle with each a contact of ample sufficiency. How would he have coped? But there was no point in railing, she thought doughtily. What was done was done. Now, the only course open was to withdraw with as much dignity as she could muster. And she was about to do just that when Kitty closed the door.

The click sounded very loud. And rather final. Having shut the door, Kitty didn’t move away but leaned back against it in what seemed to Rosa a rather threatening maimer. And then she smiled. It was a terrible smile. Her narrow top lip with its exaggerated lascivious arch did not spread sideways. It lifted in the manner of an unfriendly animal, revealing pointed, sharp incisors. The light glinted on them. They looked dangerously sharp and bright. Then she stopped smiling, and that was worse. Because Rosa, distracted briefly by the sight of those alarming pale fangs, made the mistake of looking into Kitty’s eyes. Brilliant azure ice. Inhuman. Suddenly the air in the room was thick and fearful. And Rosa knew. She knew that all the joshings and suppositions and half-serious theories bandied about in the clubroom were no more than simple facts. And that Kitty had truly got rid of her husband for his money and her freedom. And that she, Rosa, was now alone with a murderess.

Rosa realized she had been holding her breath, and let it out now with great care, as if the gentle purling might snatch Kitty’s attention and activate some quiescent impulse to destroy. Rosa tried to think, but all her cerebral processes seemed to have ground to a halt. She tried to move as well, and found to her horror that far from simply standing on the floor as she had supposed, she seemed to be rooted in it like a tree. Her heart thudded, and the drop of water splashed and spread. And it seemed to Rosa that the long long space between one splash of water and the next and one thud of her heart and the next was alive with the pulsating obscene hum of evil.

What could she do? First look away. Look away from those guileless, cruel eyes. Then have a go at tautening up her sagging mental faculties. If only she had told someone—anyone—that she was going to White Wings. But then, thought Rosa sluggishly, ticking over again at last, Kitty didn’t know that. Bluff! That was the thing. She would bluff her way out. She would say that she had told Earnest where she was going, and that he was driving over to pick her up any minute now. Quaveringly she got the information across.

“But Rosa—how can he be? The car’s out there in the drive.”

Oh, but she was cunning! All that was in her voice was simple puzzlement. Rosa joined Barnaby in wondering how the hell they had all come to believe that Kitty couldn’t act. Well, that was water down the drain. What next? Kitty moved away from the door, and Rosa’s brain, now miraculously freed from its former coagulate state, leaped into protective action, feeding dozens of combative images across the screen of her mind.

She floored Kitty with a kung-fu kick or a straight uppercut. She pressed her to the ground and held a knife to her throat. With one immaculate Frisbee spin of a plate, she stunned her into insensibility. As the last of these comforting pictures faded, she realized that Kitty was slowly walking toward her.

“Oh, God,” prayed Rosa. “Help me … please. ”

She felt huge and stifled, hippo-sluggish in the heat. Runnels of sweat ran over her scalp and down between her breasts, yet her upper lip and forehead prickled with chill, and her blood felt thick and unmoving. She stared at Kitty, young, Amazonian, slim as a whip with strong, sinewy arms and legs and thought again, What chance will I have?

Kitty was smiling as she came on. Not her genuine weasely smile, but a false one, painted on her lips. A simulacrum of concern. So might she have smiled at Esslyn, thought Rosa, as she wished him well on the first night, before unsheathing the means of his destruction. And then, recalling her first husband, she had a sudden, vivid impression of Earnest arriving home as he would be just now and wanting his lunch. At the thought of never seeing his dear face again, Rosa felt her blood stir and start to flow. Anger chased out fear. She went up on the balls of her feet (now miraculously unstuck) and felt her calf muscles tense. She would not go down without a fight.

Kitty was barely a foot away. It was now or never. Rosa hooded her eyes in what she hoped was a menacing fashion. And sprang.

Colin Smy sat alone in his workshop. He was cold but could not be bothered to light the heater. He held a smooth blond piece of maple in his hands, but the beauty and grain of the wood, once a certain stimulus to feelings of the deepest contentment and an amulet against despair, this morning had lost the power to move. Next to him was a cedarwood cradle. Only two days ago he had been delicately chiseling a border of leaves and flowers around the name Ben. He pushed the cradle with his finger, and it rocked on its bed of fragrant rust-colored shavings. He got up then and moved a little stiffly around the room, touching and stroking various artifacts, pressing the outlines hungrily and devouring the detail of line and marking as a man might who was on the point of going blind.

Colin picked up his chisel. The varnish on the handle had long since worn away, and it fitted the palm of his hand to such perfection that the word “familiar” was totally inadequate to describe the sensation. Colin always felt vaguely ill at ease away from his workshop and the beloved tools of his trade. Now, believing that it might be months or even years before he saw or touched any of them again, he felt a great gaping, prescient sense of loss.

He stilled the cradle and stood looking round for a moment more. Although his emotions were chaotic, his thoughts were crystal clear. Paramount was the vow he had made to Glenda when she lay dying. “Promise me,” she had cried, over and over again, “that you will look after David.” And he had reassured her, over and over again. Almost her last words (before “such a short while” and “good-bye, my darling”) were, “You won’t let any harm come to him?”

Colin had kept his promise. Since her death, David had been his world. He had given up everything and gladly for the boy. His welding job had been the first to go. So that he could take David to and from school and be available at the weekends and holidays, Colin had taken up freelance woodwork and carpentry, at first with scant success. In material terms they’d had very little, but they had each other, and Colin had been overwhelmed with pride when his son had shown a talent far surpassing his own for carving. Two of David’s sculptures stood now on his workbench. A grave old man, a sower of seed, a shallow basket in the crook of his arm and a kneeling heifer, a present for Ben, most tenderly carved, its head bowed, the horns tipped at such an eloquent angle.

After Glenda had left them, Colin put thoughts of remarriage aside. At first, grieving for his wife, this had not been difficult. Later, when occasionally meeting women he might normally have been tempted to pursue, the thought that they might not love David as he deserved or, worse, come to resent him had stopped the chase before it started. But now David was grown up and had even brought one or two girls of his own home, but the affairs had petered out, and Colin had been glad at the time. The girls had seemed a touch overconfident (one of them was almost domineering) for David. Now, of course, Colin wished to God his son had married one of them. But even then, he had to admit, if David had continued helping out at the Latimer, he would still have met Kitty.

Colin sat down again and held his aching head in his hands. When he had first heard the rumor about David and Esslyn’s wife, he had been unalarmed if a little disappointed in his son. But Kitty was an attractive young woman and, like everyone else in the company, Colin was not averse to the idea of Esslyn’s eye being put out. But to think it could lead to this… .

Last night, sick at heart, he had tried to talk to David, but when it came to the sticking point, he had lacked the courage to put his feelings of dread into plain words. Instead, he had mumbled, “Now she’s free … I suppose … well … you’ll be …”

“Yes, Dad.’’ David had spoken calmly. “She’s free. Although I wouldn’t have wanted it to happen like this, of course.”

Colin had listened, struggling with feelings of amazed disbelief. That David could speak in such a manner. In such a detached, heartless manner. David, who had never harmed a living thing. Who would carry spiders carefully out into the garden rather than kill them. Who, when he was ten and his hamster died, had wept for three days. When he added, “I shall have to go very carefully at first,” Colin, not trusting himself to reply, had left the house and spent the ensuing hours walking round and round Causton trying desperately to come to some decision. Knowing what the right thing to do was, realizing simultaneously that he could never do it, and struggling to alight on an alternative course of action.

Because he must do something. He had experienced great alarm during his interview with Tom at the station on Tuesday morning. More alarm than David apparently, who, when asked at one o’clock how it had all gone, had just said “fine” and continued with his dinner. Although Colin’s time at the station had been short, it had also been deeply disturbing. He had never thought of old Tom as being especially clever, but the sharp, piercing quality of the chief inspector’s gaze—quite absent from their cozy sessions in the scene dock—had caused him to think again. Now, having got a glimpse of the measure of the man, Colin realized that Barnaby was a hunter. He would pursue; questioning, checking, rechecking, perceiving, concluding, closing in. And how well would David be able to stand up to that sort of treatment?

Before going back to work, he had told his father that he had simply denied any knowledge of razor tampering and this had been accepted, but already Colin was seeing this supposed acceptance as a clever ploy. David was so guileless. He would not see that Barnaby was only pretending to believe him. That, even now, they were probably questioning Kitty. Making her admit complicity. And she would, too. She would tell them everything to get herself off the hook.

Colin snatched up his raincoat. One of the sleeves had got tangled, and he almost growled with impatience as he tried to force his arm in. What the hell was he doing sitting here brooding, going round and round the situation while perhaps any minute …

He ran out, not even stopping to lock his shed, skidding on the icy pavement. He cursed his previous indecision. He had known hours ago; had known when he was walking the streets at 3:00 a.m., that there was only one course of action that he could possibly take. Because of what he had sworn to Glenda all those years ago. (“You won’t let any harm come to him? Promise me?”) Oh, why had he waited? Now, Colin became convinced as he slid and skittered toward the police station, that he was already too late, that sometime during the afternoon the police had fetched David from his place of work and were even now working on him, trying to break him down.

At last he hauled himself up the station steps, searing his hands on the freezing metal rail, and asked at the desk to see Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby. A pretty darkhaired police-woman told him that the inspector was out and showed him to a small room, acrid with stale cigarette smoke, where he could wait. Noticing his white face and trembling hands, she asked if he would like to talk to anyone else. Then if he would like some tea. But Colin declined both these offers, and was then left in peace studying an antitheft poster and waiting to confess to the murder of Esslyn Carmichael.

“How the Other half lives, eh, chief?” muttered Troy snidely as he drove up the graceful curve of the drive leading to White Wings and swaggered into a semi-circular preparking spin, throwing up several pounds of gravel in the process. Troy drove fast, skillfully, and with care, but could not resist the flourish of a zigzag or curlicue when coming to a halt. Occasionally Barnaby felt it sensible to restrain this flamboyant behavior, and then Troy, with a piqued, almost disconsolate air, would park with such funereal exactitude that it was all his superior could do to keep a straight face. This usually lasted a few days, then exuberance gradually snuck back in. Troy regarded this pizazz as part of his style. He was very hot on style, and despised those dullards who didn’t know a Cordobian reversal from an uphill start. Right now, feeling a lecture coming on, he snapped his belt and started to climb out before the chief could really get into the swing of it.

As he did so, a piercing yell came from the house. Then a series of screams. Troy raced to the baronial front door, tried it, found it locked, and pounded on it with his fists, shouting, “Open up! This is the police!” Barnaby had just joined him when a key was turned and the door swung inward. Kitty stood in the opening in a pretty blue housecoat with the most extraordinary expression on her face. She looked in a state. A bit fearful, a bit angry, but shiftingly so, as if she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She stood in the center of the hall patting her curls and pulling a mock-horrified face.

“What’s wrong?” demanded Barnaby. “Who was that screaming?”

“Me, actually …”

“Why?” An icy wind was blowing into the house. Troy shut the front door, but the blast continued. Barnaby strode into the kitchen. The back door was wide open. “Who else is here?”

“No one.” She tiptoed across to the garden door and closed it. “Brrr.”

“Whose car is that outside?”

“I’m going to make some coffee to calm my nerves. D’you want some?”

“Kitty.” Barnaby stopped her. “What the devil’s going on?”

“Well … you won’t believe this, Tom, but I think I’ve found your murderer.”

“Perhaps I can make some coffee, Mrs. Carmichael?” said Troy, with his most winning smile. “You sound as if you could do with some.”

“Oh, how sweet.” Kitty’s unpainted lips returned the smile. Troy noticed with an uprush of excitement that beneath the lusciously lipsticked Cupid’s bow he had so admired the other evening was a real one. Just as luscious and twice as sexy. “But I’d better do it,” she continued. “It’s all Eyetalian, the equipment… it might blow up in inexperienced hands.” Although her voice barely changed, it managed to imply that she was sure Sergeant Troy’s hands were anything but inexperienced, and, given the opportunity, would be more than prepared to put her theory to the test. “Shan’t be a mo.”

“You can talk, I assume, Kitty, while you’re getting to grips with that contraption.”

“ ’Course I can,” replied Kitty, juggling water, coffee, twists of chrome and a couple of retorts. “To put it in a nutshell, Rosa just came round here and attacked me.”

“Just like that?” asked the chief inspector, shaking his head at Troy, who seemed quite prepared to hare off and make an instant arrest.

“Just like that.” She set the contraption on a low flame, clopped to the radiator, and nestled against it. “Warm me bottie. Otherwise I’ll get goosebumps.” She pulled the blue wrapper very tight, and at least two of the bumps leaped into prominence.

“Any idea why?”

“Jealousy. What else? She killed Esslyn because she couldn’t bear to see him happy. Then she came round after me.

“But they’d been divorced for over two years. Surely if she couldn’t bear to see him happy, she’d have done something about it before now.”

“Ahhh …” Kitty shook a cigarette out of a packet. Troy’s nostrils twitched in anticipation. “Before there wasn’t the baby.”

“Perhaps you’d better tell us from the beginning.”

“Okay.” Kitty, having lit her cigarette and dragged deep, coughed and said, “It’s hard to credit, I know, but she had the bloody cheek to come round here and ask me when the baby was born if I’d hand it over to her and ancient Ernie.”

“And what did you say?”

“I didn’t actually say anything. To tell you the truth, it was so funny I had to laugh. And then once I started, I couldn’t stop. You know how you get …” She winked at Troy, who, tormented enough already by the smoke from her Chesterfield, nearly collapsed under the extra strain. “And why was it so funny?”

“Because there wasn’t any baby.”

There was a pause while the apparatus gurgled and googled and backfired. Then Barnaby said, “Can I just get this clear, Kitty? Are you saying that you’ve had a miscarriage? Or that there was never a child in the first place?”

‘‘Never one in the first place.”

‘‘And I assume Esslyn was not aware of this?”

‘‘Are you dumb? D’you think he’d have married me if he had been?” The smile was almost voluptuously satisfied. It said, “Aren’t I clever? Don’t you wish you were as smart as I am?”

Tricky little tart, thought Troy. He looked at Kitty, torn between admiration and resentment. He understood her class and stamp (he often picked up her less fortunate sisters around the bus station trying to turn a trick) without recognizing how close it was to his own. So her nerve and determination earned his grudging respect. On the other hand, she had definitely made a monkey out of one of the superior sex, and he couldn’t go along with that. He couldn’t go along with that at all.

“And what did you plan to do,” asked Barnaby, “when your condition—or rather, lack of one—became obvious?”

“Oh—I thought a tiny tumble down the steps. Nothing too drastic. Poor little precious—” her sorrowful sigh went ill with her saucy grin—“wouldn’t have had a chance.”

“So your husband’s death could hardly be more opportune.”

“Right.” Kitty poured the coffee into three opalescent mugs. “Men on the job like lots of sugar, don’t they? For energy?”

“None for me, thank you.” Troy asked for two sugars and plenty of milk. Barnaby accepted his drink and took a sip. In spite of the baroque extravagance of the “Eye-talian” ganglia, the coffee was absolutely disgusting. Worse even than Joyce’s, and that was saying something. For some odd reason he found this rather a comfort. He was about to restart the conversation at the point where it had broken off, when Kitty did it for him.

“And when you discover who carried out the dirty deed, I shall go and thank him personally.”

As Kitty drank her coffee, she stared at Barnaby over the rim of her mug. The stare was so sassy he wondered if she was aware of just how precarious her situation actually was. He returned the stare in a manner that made the weather outside seem positively summery. “You’ve been seemingly very frank with us, Kitty. And your refusal to pretend to any grief you do not feel does you credit. But if your belief that the world was well rid of your husband has given you any ideas about protecting his killer, or hindering our investigation in any way, I advise you to think again. Because you’ll find yourself in very serious trouble.”

“I wouldn’t do that, Tom,” Kitty said soberly, stubbing out her cigarette. “Honestly.”

“As long as we’ve got that straight. Now to return to this business with Rosa. She’d asked for the baby, you’d had a fit of the giggles. Then what happened?”

“It was really weird. There was a terrible draft from that door”—she nodded toward the hall—“and me being only in my naughties and feeling the pinch, I went over and closed it. Then, when I turned round, she was staring at me—her eyes were positively bulging. Then she started shaking. She looked as if she was going to have a fit. So I thought I’d get her some water … I didn’t know what to do. I mean, it’s not the sort of thing that happens to you every day, is it? So I went to the sink, which meant I had to cross the room, and I was just in front of her when she jumped at me. I yelled and started to scream … and she ran away—”

“Just a minute. Was that when Sergeant Troy started banging on the door?”

“Is his name Troy? How romantic. No, that was the funny thing. She ran off the second I started shouting. Before we knew you were here at all.”

“It doesn’t sound much like a serious attempt to do you harm. ’ ’

“That’s a nice attitude for the police to take, I must say. I shall sue her for assault.”

“That’s up to you, of course.”

“Actually—why are you here? With all the excitement, I never asked.”

“We’re continuing our inquiries, Kitty.”

“Oh, Tom.” She smiled delightedly. “Do you really say that? I thought it was just in the movies.” She crossed to the littered pine table and pulled out two wheelback chairs. “Park yourselves, then, if you’re stopping.”

The two men sat at the table, and Kitty joined them. She sat quite close to Troy, and he was aware that she had not yet bathed. She gave off a warm, intimate, faintly gamey scent, redolent of nighttime retreats and assignations.

“I’d like first to ask you, Kitty,” continued the chief inspector, “if you noticed anything—anything at all—in the weeks leading up to your husband’s death that might assist us?”

“What sort of thing?”

“Did he talk of any plans? Any special difficulties? Problems with relationships?”

“Esslyn didn’t have relationships. There was nothing of him to relate to.”

“What about a break in his usual routine?”

“Well, he did pop into the office on Saturday morning. Said he had to call something in … and oh, yes—his costume. He brought his costume home. I’ve never known him to do that before.”

“Did he say why?”

“Didn’t want to risk leaving it in the dressing room. He really fancied himself in that coat. ’Course, in the play he starts off in a grotty old shawl and dressing gown, then flings them off and stands up looking like the Queen of Sheba, and we’re all supposed to go ‘ooh’ and ‘aaah.’ He tried the whole thing on on Saturday, prancing about looking in the glass. Practically hugging himself to death, he was. Then he said what a coo … coody … something.”

“Coup de theatre. ”

“Yeah. Whatever that is.”

“A staggering theatrical effect.”

“He made that all right,” giggled Kitty. Then, catching Barnaby’s eye, she had the grace to blush. “Sorry, Tom. Bad taste. Sorry.”

“Can I pin you down on this, Kitty? It may be important. Can you remember precisely what it was he said?”

“No more than I’ve just told you.”

“What a coup de theatre it’ll be.”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure by ‘it’ he meant this transformation in Act One?”

“Well … that’s what he was talking about just before.”

Barnaby, watching Kitty closely, then said, “Your husband did speak once before he died.” No flicker of fear there. No spark of alarm. Just straight-forward curiosity. Damn, thought the chief inspector. And my favorite suspect, too.

“What did he say?”

“My sergeant got the sound of the word ‘bungled.’ That mean anything to you?”

Kitty shook her head. “Except …” Under Barnaby’s look of encouragement she stumbled on. “Well … that something had gone wrong. That’s what bungled means, isn’t it? And it had. For Esslyn, anyway.”

“Perhaps his grand coup de theatre. ”

“No—that’s at the beginning of the play. He pulled that off all right. This was right at the end.” Sharp little cookie, thought Troy, wincing as she shook out another cigarette and lit up. Catching his greedy eye, she held out the pack.

“Not on duty, Mrs. Carmichael, thank you.”

“Gosh. I thought that was just hard liquor and … er … what was the other?”

“I have a warrant with me, Kitty.” Barnaby got up abruptly. “I’d like to look through Esslyn’s effects before I go. Especially any correspondence and personal papers.”

“Help yourself. I’d better slip into something decent.” They followed her into the hall, and she nodded toward a door on the left. “That’s his study. See you in two ticks.” Troy watched her long, tanned legs disappear up the thickly carpeted stairs. He thought she looked like a delectable slave girl in one of those TV comedies set in ancient Rome. Where all the birds pranced around in shortie nighties and the men had brushes growing out of their helmets. He wouldn’t mind chasing her round the Forum. Whu-hoo.

“Forget it, Troy.”

“I’m off duty at seven, chief. Might find out something.”

“The only thing you’ll find out is how to stunt your growth. Now come on—let’s get cracking.”

They entered a small room sparsely furnished with a knee-hole desk, bookshelves, and a couple of armchairs. Troy said, “What are we looking for?”

“Anything. Everything. Especially personal.”

No section of the desk was locked, but the contents proved to be meager and unexciting. Insurance. Documents for the Volvo. Mortgage and a few bills. Bank statements that showed regular standing orders and moderate monthly transfers from a deposit account. Barnaby put these aside. There were also a couple of holiday brochures. They checked the shelves of books (all on accountancy apart from a set of Dickens that looked as if it had never been opened, let alone read) and shook them open, but no sinister letter or revealing billet doux fell out.

Esslyn’s wardrobe and the rest of the house were equally unrevealing. By the time they were ready to leave, Kitty, in a black jumpsuit, was racing away on her exercise cycle. She came down to the hall to see them out. She had brushed her hair, and it lay like pale satin against her velvet shoulders.

“Beautiful house,” said Troy, putting a friendly smile in the bank for future use.

“Miles too big for little me,” replied Kitty, opening the front door. “I’m putting it on the market tomorrow.”

“I should make sure it belongs to you first,” said Barnaby.

“What do you mean? Everything comes to me as next of kin.”

“A commonly held misconception, Kitty.” Then, looking at her suddenly frozen features, Barnaby patted her arm sympathetically. “I’m sure Esslyn left things in order, but I’d pop into the solicitor if I were you. Just to make absolutely sure.”

He left then, and his sergeant was about to follow when Kitty laid her hand on his sleeve.

“Funny you being called Troy, isn’t it?”

“Why’s that, Mrs. Carmichael?” Even through the thickness of his overcoat he could feel the warmth of her fingers.

“Cause my middle name’s Helen,” she said with a wicked smile.

“Hold it … hold it.”

Barnaby stopped Colin on line one, asked for some tea, and talked vague generalities until it turned up. He waited while Colin had dissolved his three sugars with a lot of active stirring, then pulled a pad and pencil toward him.

“Tea okay?”

“Yes, thank you.” Colin had been in such a state waiting for the chief inspector that he hadn’t really got much past picturing his own declaration of guilt. If he had, he’d certainly have envisioned a slightly more excitable reception than he had received so far.

“What did you expect, Colin?” asked Barnaby. “That I’d clap you in irons?”

Colin flushed. And felt a deep stab of alarm that the other man could read his mind so easily. He struggled to compose his expression. To set it in a mask of unconcern. “ ’Course not.” He swallowed nervously. “I knew there’d be tea. Seen it all often enough on the box.”

“Ah, yes. They only got bread and water before Hill Street. ”

Colin felt he should laugh or at least crack a smile. There was a long pause. What were they waiting for? Colin scraped his throat nervously and drank some more tea. Perhaps this was the way it worked. How they broke people down. Ordeal by silence. But what was there to break down? He’d come in to make a confession, hadn’t he? Why the hell couldn’t he just get on with it? The continuing quiet stampeded him into speech.

“It’s been preying on my mind, Tom.”

“Messing with the razor?”

“Yes. I felt I couldn’t … um … live with myself so … I came to confess.”

“I see.” Barnaby nodded seriously, but without, Colin noticed, writing anything on his pad. “And why exactly did you do it?”

“Why?”

“Not an unreasonable question, surely?”

“No … of course not!” Why? Oh, God, Colin! You great fool. You haven’t thought any further than the end of your bloody nose. “Because … he was awful to David … sneering and laughing at him at rehearsals. Humiliating him. I … decided he should be taught a lesson.”

“Rather a savage lesson.”

“Yes …”

“Disproportionately harsh, one might say.” Barnaby picked up his pen.

“I didn’t expect—” Colin’s voice strengthened. “He was an absolute bastard to David.”

“He was an absolute bastard to everyone.” When Colin did not reply, Barnaby continued, “Well, what didn’t you expect?”

“That he’d … die.”

“Oh, come on, Colin. Why do you think there were two thicknesses of tape on the thing? What did you think would happen when they were removed and he dragged it across his throat? If you’ve got the guts to come and confess, at least have the guts to admit you knew what you were doing.” Although Barnaby had hardly raised his voice at all, it seemed to Colin to positively boom, bouncing off each wall in turn, belaboring his eardrums. “So when did you take the tape off?”

“After Deidre checked it.”

“Obviously. But when precisely?”

“Do you mean the time?”

“Of course I mean the time!”

“… um … after she’d called the half, I think … yes. That’s right. So between seven-thirty and seven-forty.”

“Bit dodgy, wasn’t it? Must’ve been quite a few people about.”

“No. Deidre had gone to collect her ASMs from upstairs. All the actors were still in their dressing rooms.”

“And where did you do it?”

“Pardon?”

“Where?”

“… well … the scene dock.”

“You’d have to be quick. What did you use?”

“A Stanley knife.”

“The same one that was in the wings?”

Colin hesitated. Fingerprints, he thought. His should be all over the one in the wings, but you never knew. “No. I used my own.”

“Got it with you?”

“It’s in my workshop.”

“And what did you do with the tape?”

“Just … scrumpled it up.”

“And left it there?”

“Yes.”

“So if we went over now, you could produce it?”

“No! Afterward … when I realized how terrible everything was … I threw it away. Down the bog.”

Barnaby said, “I see,” and nodded. Then he leaned back in his chair and gazed out of the window at the black and gray scudding clouds. Colin leaned back a little, too. His breathing returned to near normal; his heart stopped thundering. That hadn’t been too bad. All he had to do now was remember precisely what it was he’d said (for Barnaby’s pad now seemed to be quite covered with lines and squiggles) and stick to it. And that shouldn’t be too difficult.

Colin glanced at the clock. To his amazement, barely ten minutes had passed since he had entered the room. The delusion that he had been shut up here babbling away for hours must simply be put down to stretched nerves. Barnaby drained his tea. “Some more, Colin?” When the other man declined, Barnaby said, “I think I will,” and disappeared.

Left alone, Colin gathered his wits. He was bound to be asked all the foregoing questions again and probably many more (although he could not imagine what they might be), but now he had got the time, method, and motive firmly tethered, he felt a lot more confident. After all, those were the basics. The crucial underpinnings to the case, and no one could prove that he wasn’t telling the truth. He would stand up in court and swear. He would swear the rest of his life away, if need be.

Barnaby was a long time. Colin wondered why he hadn’t just pressed the buzzer as he had before if he wanted more tea. Colin inclined his ear toward the door, but he could hear nothing but the distant rattle of a typewriter. Perhaps Barnaby was finding someone to take down a proper statement. Colin listened again; then, hearing no approaching footsteps, leaned over the desk and turned the chief inspector’s pad around. It was covered with beautifully drawn flowers. Harebells and primroses. And ferns.

Alarmed, Colin slumped back in his seat. Tom had not written down a single thing! Following this realization came another, more terrible. The only reason for this must be that Tom had not believed a word that he, Colin, had said. He had been sitting there, nodding, scribbling, asking questions, and all the time he had just been playacting. Only pretending to take things seriously. Colin’s leg started to tremble and his foot to jounce on the linoleum floor. He pressed his leg hard against the chair to keep it still, then felt his mouth brim with bile. He was going to be sick. Or faint. Before he could do either, Barnaby returned, sat behind his desk, and gave Colin a concerned glance.

“You look a bit green. Are you sure you don’t want another drink?”

“Some water …”

“Can we have a glass of water?” said Barnaby into his buzzer. “And I’d like some more tea.”

The drinks arrived. Colin sipped his slowly. “Didn’t you go out for some more tea, Tom?”

“No. To arrange some transport.”

“Ah.” Colin put his glass on the desk. He desperately needed time to think. Struggling to apply his attention to the matter, Colin almost immediately saw where he had gone wrong. It was in the murder motive. No wonder Tom had been disbelieving. Colin, in the chief inspector’s shoes, would have felt the same. How ridiculous—to kill someone because they had been unkind to your son. And him a grown man. If only, Colin chided himself, he had prepared what he had come to say more carefully. But it was not too late. He saw now how he could put things right. And what he should have said in the first place.

“The truth is, Tom,” he blurted out clumsily, “David is in love with Kitty. You’ve seen … you were in the audience … how violent Esslyn was toward her. He found out, you see. And I was afraid. Afraid for her and for David. He was fiendish, Esslyn. I really thought he might harm them both.”

‘‘So you spiked his guns?”

‘‘Yes.”

“Well … that sounds a bit more likely.”

“Yes. I didn’t say that at first, because I thought if I could keep them out of it, I would.”

“Such delicacy does you credit.” Barnaby drank deep of his breakfast blend. “There’s only one little snag in that scenario. Esslyn believed his wife was having an affair with Nicholas.”

“Nicholas. ’’

“But of course you weren’t to know that.”

“Was it true?” Colin turned an eager look upon the chief inspector.

“No. The general consensus seems to be that David was indeed the man. By the way, where was he while you were carrying out all this jiggery-pokery?”

Colin’s breath stopped in his throat. He gazed at Barnaby; the mouse and the cat. He felt the skin on his face prickle and knew it must be stained crimson. He opened his mouth, but no sound came. He couldn’t think. His brains were stewed. Where was David while all this was going on? Where was David? Not in the wings or (obviously) the scene dock. Not upstairs. In the dressing room! Of course.

“In the dressing room. Anyone will vouch for him.”

“Why should anyone need to vouch for him?”

“Oh—no reason. Just … if you wanted to check.”

“I see.” Barnaby completed to perfection the tight, curled lip of the Asplenium trichomanes. “I feel I should tell you that we tried to flush the tape down every loo in the theater and were completely unsuccessful.”

“… oh … did you? Yes … sorry … my memory … I threw it out of the window.”

“Well, Colin”—Barnaby put down his pen and smiled rather severely at his companion—“I’ve sat at this desk and listened to some sorry liars in my time but if I gave a prize for the worst, I think you’d cop it.”

He watched Colin’s face, which had already shown every aspect of alarm and apprehension, further suffuse with emotion. It seemed to blow up like a balloon. The skin stretched tight across his cheekbones and jaw, and his eyes darted around like tiny, trapped wild creatures. He seemed to have no control over his mouth and his lips worked in little push-pull convulsions. He swayed in his chair as if giddy.

And giddy was what he felt. For Colin was reeling under the force of a double-edged blow. He now saw with icy clarity that coming to the station and making a false confession was the worst thing he could possibly have done. Not only had he failed to save his son, but the slightest pause for reflection must have shown him that David would never stand silently by while his father, innocent of any crime, was arrested, perhaps imprisoned. In trying to protect the boy, Colin now saw that he had stupidly thrust him into the very heart of the crime where all the danger lay. He covered his face with his hands and moaned.

Barnaby shifted from his chair, came round to the front of the desk, and perched on the edge. Then he touched Colin on the shoulder and said, “You could be wrong, you know.”

“No, Tom!” Colin turned a desolate seeking look upon the chief inspector. The look was wild with unfounded expectation. It begged Barnaby, even at this late stage, when a traitorous admission, though still unspoken, lay as solid as a rock between them, to perform a magical conjuring trick. To say it wasn’t so. When Barnaby remained silent, Colin gave one terrible dry sob, racked from his gut, and cried, “You see … I saw him do it. I actually saw him do it. ”

Ten minutes later, having accepted more tea and, to some degree, composed himself, Colin told Barnaby what he had observed in the wings at the first night of Amadeus. He spoke in an emotionless voice, hanging his head as if deeply ashamed to be speaking at all. Barnaby received the information impassively, and when Colin had finished, said, “Are you positive he was tinkering with the razor?”

“What else could he have been doing, Tom? Looking round so furtively to make sure that no one was watching. Bending over the props table. And he actually went into the toilet, came out, and went back again.”

“But you didn’t see him touch it?”

“No. I was over on the other side of the stage, behind the fireplace. And of course he’d got his back to me .. Colin looked up then and a tiny wisp of hope touched his voice. “Do you think … Oh, Tom … d’you think I’ve got it wrong?”

“I certainly think we’d better not leap to any more conclusions. One’s enough to be going on with. We’ll see what David has to say when he gets here.”

“David. .. here.. . Oh, God!” Horrified, Colin rose from his seat.

“Sit down,” said Barnaby, irritated. “You come in here and make a false confession. As you’re not a head case, it’s clear that you’re protecting someone. There’s only one person you’d go to those lengths for. Obviously we need to speak to that person. And here”—the buzzer sounded— “I should imagine, he is.”

As the door opened, Colin quickly bowed his shoulders and buried his face once more in his hands. He did not look up as David almost ran across the room and knelt beside him.

“Dad—what is it? What are you doing here?” Getting no response, he turned to Barnaby. “Tom, what the hell’s going on?”

“Your father has just confessed to the murder of Esslyn Carmichael.”

“He’s done what?” David Smy, absolutely dumbfounded, stared at Barnaby, then turned again to the figure crouched in the chair. He tried to move his father’s head so that his face was visible, but Colin gave a fierce animal cry and burrowed ever more firmly in the wedge of his arms.

David stood up and said, “I don’t believe it. I simply don’t believe it.”

“No,” replied Barnaby dryly. “I don’t believe it, either.”

“But then … why? What’s the point? Dad. ” He shook his father’s arm. “Look at me!”

“He’s shielding someone. Or thinks he is.”

“You stupid … What do you think you’re playing at?” Panic streamed through David’s voice. “But … if you know he’s lying, Tom … that’s all right, isn’t it? I mean … that’s all right?”

“Up to a point.”

“How ‘up to a point’?”

“Who do you think he would be prepared to go to prison for?”

David frowned, and Barnaby watched his homely face move through incomprehension, dawning apprehension, and incredulity. Incredulity lingered longest. “You mean … he thought it was me?”

“That’s right.”

“But why on earth would I want to kill Esslyn?”

Barnaby had heard that phrase (give or take a change in nomenclature) a good many times in his career. He had heard it ringing with guilty bluster and innocent inquiry; spoken in high and low dudgeon, afire with self-righteous indignation, and shot through with fear. But he had never before been faced with the quality of complete and utter stupefaction that was now stamped on David Smy’s bovine features.

“Well,” answered the chief inspector, “the general consensus seems to be because of your affair with Kitty.”

David’s expression of disbelief now deepened to the point where he looked positively poleaxed. He shook his head from side to side slowly, as if to clear it from the effects of a blow. Barnaby said, “I should sit down, if I were you.”

David collapsed into the second of the tweedy chairs and said, “I think there’s been some mistake.” Colin raised his head then, the disturbed agony of his gaze quieted, transmuted.

“You were seen acting suspiciously in the wings,” said Barnaby. “Around the quarter.”

David went very pale. “Who by?”

“We had an anonymous tip. These things have to be followed up.”

“Of course.” David sat silently for a moment, then said, “I was sure there was no one around.”

“You don’t have to say anything else!” cried Colin. “You have all sorts of rights. I’ll get you a solicitor—”

“I don’t need a solicitor, Dad. I haven’t done anything all that dreadful.”

“Do you think we could get down to exactly what you have done?” Barnaby said brusquely. “My patience is rapidly running out.”

David took a deep breath. “Esslyn told this unkind story about Deidre’s father. It was so cruel. Everyone laughed, and I knew she’d overheard. She was just on the stairs outside. Then I saw her afterward checking the sound deck, and she was crying. I got so angry. When she went upstairs to collect the ASMs, I got some scouring powder from the gents’ and I shook it all over those little cakes he eats in Act One. I know it was silly. And I know it was spiteful and childish, and I don’t care. I’d do it again.” Barnaby stared at David’s stubborn face, then shifted his glance to the boy’s father. Before his eyes Colin’s countenance was rinsed clean of misery and despair and brightly transformed as is a child’s face when a smile is “wiped” on by the back of its hand. Now, Colin was expressing a delight so intense it made him appear quite ridiculous.

“I didn’t know you fancied the girl!” he cried joyously.

“I don’t ‘fancy’ her, Dad. I care deeply for her and have for some time. I told you.”

“What?”

“We were talking about her last week. I told you that I cared for someone, but she wasn’t free. And we discussed it yesterday as well.”

“You meant Deidre?”

“Who else?” David looked from his father to Barnaby and back again. His expression was stern. He had the air of a man who was being trifled with and could do without the experience. “I don’t know who got this idea off the ground that I’d got something going with Kitty.” Barnaby shrugged and smiled, and David continued indignantly, “It’s no laughing matter, Tom. What if it got back to Deidre? I don’t want her thinking I’m some sort of Don Juan.” The thought of David with his shining countenance and straight blue eyes and simple heart in the role of Don Juan caused Barnaby’s lip to twitch once more, and he faked a cough to cover it. “As for you, Dad …” Colin, looking discomfited, shamefaced, and radiant with happiness, shuffled his feet. “How did you get to know about all this, anyway?”

“We called at the house,” cut in Barnaby before Colin could reply. Not that he looked capable. “I’m afraid your father drew his own conclusions from the form our questions took.”

“You silly sod,” David said affectionately. “I don’t know how you could have been so daft.”

“No,” said Colin. “I don’t either, now. Well …” He got up. “Could we … is it all right to go now?”

“Can’t wait to see the back of you.”

“Actually, Tom,” David said hesitantly, “there’s something I’d half meant to tell you. It seemed so vague, that’s why I didn’t mention it yesterday, but I’ve been thinking it over, and … as I’m here …”

“Fire away.”

“It’s very slight. So I hope you won’t be cross.”

“I shall be extremely cross any minute now if you don’t hurry up and get on with it.”

“Yes. Right. Well, you know I take the tray with all the shaving things on at the end of the play. There was something odd about it on the first night.”

“Yes?”

“That’s it, I’m afraid. I told you it was vague.”

“Very vague indeed.”

“I knew you’d be cross.”

“I am not cross,” said Barnaby with an ogrish grin. “All the usual things were there, I take it?”

“Yes. Soap in wooden dish. China bowl with hot water. Shaving brush. Closed razor. Towel.”

“Placed any differently?” David shook his head. “Different soap, perhaps?”

“No. It’s never used actually, so we’ve kept the same piece, Imperial Leather, all the way through rehearsals.” “In that case, David,” said Barnaby rather tersely, “I’m at a bit of a loss to see what was so odd about it.”

“I know. That’s why I hesitated to tell you. But when I picked the tray up from the props table, I definitely got that feeling.”

“Perhaps then it was something on the table?” asked Barnaby, his interest quickening. “In the wrong position. Or maybe something that shouldn’t have been there at all?” David shook his head. “No. It was to do with the tray.”

“Well”—Barnaby got to his feet dismissively—“keep mulling it over. It could be important. Ring me if anything clicks.”

Colin thrust out his hand, and the strength of his gratitude for Barnaby’s white lies could be felt in the firm grip. “I’m very, very sorry, Tom, to have been so much bother.”

They left then, and Barnaby stood at his office door and watched them, David striding forward looking straight ahead, Colin loping alongside in a cloud of relief so dense it was almost tangible. As they went through the exit, Colin, careful not to sound incredulous, said, “But why Deidre?”

And Barnaby heard David reply, “Because she needs me more than anyone else ever will. And because I love her.”

Deidre walked up the drive toward the Walker Memorial Hospital for Psychiatric Disorders, the dog trotting at her heels. On being informed by Barnaby that he was being kept in one of the police kennels until she claimed him, Deidre had called there on her way to the hospital to put the record straight. The nice blond policewoman was in reception and asked how Deidre was feeling. Deidre asked in her turn after the constable who rescued her father, then the policewoman lifted the counter flap, said, “Through here,” and disappeared. Deidre, murmuring “The trouble is, you see,” followed.

The kennels were really large cages and held three dogs. Two lay mopingly on the earthen floor, the third leaped to its paws and moved eagerly forward. Deidre, repeating “The trouble is, you see,” looked down at the questing black nose and soft muzzle pressed against the wire mesh. The tail was wagging so fast it was just a brown blur. Policewoman Brierley was unfastening the padlock. Now was the time to explain. Afterward, trying to understand why she hadn’t, Deidre decided it was all the dog’s fault.

If he had whined or complained or yapped or reacted in any other way but the way that he had, she was sure her heart could have been hardened. But what she couldn’t handle was his simple confidence. There was no doubt at all in his eyes. Here she was at last, and off they would be going. And didn’t she owe him something? reasoned Deidre, recalling the terrible night when he had been her father’s only companion.

“Got his lead?”

“Oh … no … I came straight from the Barnabys’. I haven’t been home yet.”

“Shouldn’t really take him without a lead.” She was replacing the lock. Deidre looked at the dog. His expression of dawning dismay was terrible to behold.

“It’ll be all right,” she said hurriedly. “He’s very well-trained. He’s a good dog.”

PW Brierley shrugged. “Okay. If you say so …” and opened the cage. The dog ran out, jumped up at Deidre, and started licking her hands. She signed a form for his release and they left the station together and entered the High Street. The cobbler’s had some brightly colored leads and collars, and Deidre chose one of scarlet leather with a little bell. As she bent down to put it on, the man behind the counter said, “D’you want a disc for him? In case he gets lost? Do one while you wait.”

“Oh, yes—please.” Already, barely minutes into dog ownership, Deidre could not bear the thought of him getting lost. She gave her address and telephone number.

“And his name?”

“His name?” She thought frantically as the man stood with the drill buzzing ready. All sorts of common or garden dog’s names came to mind, none of them suitable. He was certainly no Fido or Rover. Nor even a Gyp or Bob. Then she remembered the day center where she had first seen him and the name came. “Sunny,” she cried. “He’s called Sunny.” The man engraved “Sunny,” added the other details, and Deidre fixed the disc to the collar.

Now, arriving at the main hospital entrance, she wondered what to do with him. “You can’t go inside,” she said. “You’ll have to wait.” He listened closely. She tied his lead around an iron foot-scraper and said, “Sit.” To her surprise, he immediately lowered his ginger rump to the floor and sat. She patted him, said, “Good dog,” and went indoors.

She was immediately engulfed in a series of labyrinthine corridors and started walking with a heavy heart. When she had been told, on ringing the general hospital to inquire when she could visit, that her father had been transferred to “the Walker,” she had been horrified. The brooding soot-encrusted Victorian pile of bricks had always been known locally as the fruit-and-nut house, and, as a child, she had luridly imagined it inhabited by chained people in white robes, raving and shrieking, like poor Mrs. Rochester in Jane Eyre.

The reality was different. So quiet. As Deidre continued on past several pairs of swing doors looking for the Alice Kennedy-Baker ward you could have believed the place to be deserted. Thick, shiny linoleum the color of cooked veal muffled every footfall. The walls were dirty yellow, the paint cracked and peeling, and the radiators, though giving out powerful blasts of heat, were scabbed with rust.

But all these things, though depressing, were nothing compared to the deadening pall of despair that permeated the atmosphere. Deidre felt it choking her lungs like noisome fog. It smelled of stale old vegetables and stale old people. Of urine and fish and, most profusely, of the sickly synthetic lavender that had been aerosoled everywhere in a futile attempt at aping normal domesticity. A nurse, crackling by in white and sugar-bag blue, asked her if she was lost, then pointed her in the right direction.

The Kennedy-Baker ward appeared to be empty but for a West Indian nurse sitting at a small table in the center by a telephone. She got up as Deidre entered and said the patients were in the sun lounge. She explained why Deidre had not been consulted over the decision to transfer her father. Apparently there was no question of permission being sought. He was being admitted to the Walker for his own safety and that of others. If Deidre wished to speak to the doctor in charge of his case, an appointment could be made.

“Your father’s feeling very well, though, dear,” she added as she led Deidre to the sun lounge, a bulbous growth on the far end of the ward. “Quite tip-top.”

The lounge had a gray-stained haircord carpet, assorted shabby chairs, and an ill-conceived and poorly executed oil painting of its benefactress in true electric blue gazing munificently down at the assembled company. There were five people in the room; three elderly women, a young man, and Mr. Tibbs, who was sitting by the window wearing unfamiliar pajamas and a violently patterned dressing gown surely designed to stimulate rather than to soothe.

“Your daughter’s come to see you, Mr. Tibbs. Isn’t that nice?” said the nurse very firmly, as if expecting some denial.

Deidre pulled up a low chair with scratched wooden arms and sat down, saying, “Hullo, Daddy. How are you feeling?”

Mr. Tibbs continued to gaze out of the window. He didn’t look very “tip-top.” His jaw gaped in a sad, loose way and was covered in grayish-white stubble and snail trails of dried saliva. Deidre said, “I’ve brought you some things.”

She unpacked her bag and laid his toilet articles, some soap, and Arrowroot biscuits on his lap, keeping back his special treat, a box of Turkish delight, until the last moment, to ease the pain of parting. He looked at the little pile with fierce puzzlement, then picked the things up one at a time, handling them very carefully, as if they were made of glass. He obviously had no idea what they were, and tried to put the soap in his mouth. Deidre took them all away again, and put them on the floor.

“Well, Daddy,” she said brightly, struggling to keep her voice on an even keel, “how are you?” Oh, God, she thought, I’ve asked that already. What could she say next? And what an incredible question to be asking herself. She who had spent years quietly and contentedly talking and listening to the old man in the basket chair who bore such a strange resemblance to her father. She couldn’t even tell him about the dog, in case it brought back memories of that shocking night at the lake. So she just held his hand and looked around the room.

The young man in baggy flannel trousers was drumming on his knees with the tips of his fingers at tremendous speed. He sat next to an elderly woman with the hooded, gorged glance of a satisfied bird of prey. Then there was a dumpy, bald woman with warts like purple Rice Krispies who was stretching out her arms, palms inward, holding an invisible skein of wool. The third woman was just a bundle of clothing (checks and spots and stripes and patterned lisle stockings) with a tube disappearing up the skirt from which hung a plastic bag of yellow liquid. There they sat, each sealed in an impenetrable bubble of drugs and dreams. They could not even be said to be waiting, since the act of waiting acknowledged the possibility that life might be about to change. Deidre eased back her sleeve and looked at her watch. She had been in the sunshine lounge for three minutes and suddenly felt that she could stand no more. She fastened her coat and started to pull on her gloves. Her father gazed blindly out of the window. I can do nothing here, she thought. I am no help. No use. “I’ll come again soon, Daddy … On Sunday.”

She stumbled out into the ward proper. Before she had reached the swing doors, she heard her father’s voice raised in song to the tune of his favorite hymn, “The Old Rugged Cross.” But the words were strange and garbled, and some of them obscene.

Nicholas, invited to dinner, had arrived bursting with excitement, brandishing his letter of acceptance to Central and sporting a battered nose. He had been at the house half an hour and hadn’t stopped going on about the letter, although, as far as Avery was concerned, you could have covered the subject adequately in two minutes flat and still had time for a lengthy reading from the Upanishads.

“Isn’t it absolutely marvelous?” Nicholas was saying yet again.

“Enough to bring stars to your eyes.” Tim smiled. “Drink up.”

Avery, eggshell-brown tonsure gleaming under the spotlights, was slicing a tenderloin of pork into slices so thin they fell into soft rosy curls on the marble slab. Peanuts and chilies stood by. The fresh tomato soup was keeping warm in the double boiler. Basil, picked the previous summer and immediately frozen into an ice cube, thawed in a cup. Avery moved purposefully among his culinary arcana and drank a little Frog’s Leap Cabernet Sauvignon almost content. Almost, not quite. A cloud, no bigger than a man’s lie, would keep drifting across his horizon. And a tiny scene—hardly a scene even, a vignette, was stamped on his memory.

Tim and Esslyn, standing together in the clubroom, heads close, two tall, dark blades. Esslyn talking quietly. When Avery had entered, they moved apart, not guiltily (Tim never did anything guiltily), but quickly nonetheless. Avery had let several days drag by before he had casually asked what the fascinating conversation had been about. Tim had said he couldn’t recall the time in question. The lie oblique. Bad enough. Avery let the matter slide. What else could he do? But then, much worse, came the lie direct.

While they were all huddling frailly in the wings, as Esslyn’s life blood seeped into the boards and Harold stormed, Avery had whispered, “This will put the lighting out of his mind. P’raps we won’t have to leave after all.”

And Tim had said, “No. We’ll definitely have to go now.”

“What do you mean now?”

“What?”

“You said, ‘We’ll definitely have to go now. ’ ”

“No, I didn’t. You’re imagining things.”

“But I distinctly heard—”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake! Stop nitpicking.”

So, of course, Avery had stopped. Now, not quite content, he watched his love through the yellow-mottled screen of mother-in-law’s tongue relaxing, toasting Nicholas.

“I must say,” Avery called, making a special effort to put his fears aside, “I do miss not being able to bad-mouth Esslyn.”

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t,” replied Tim. “When he was alive, you never stopped.”

“Mmm …” Avery took down a heavy iron pan, poured in some sesame oil, and added a pinch of anise. “Half the pleasure then was the chance that it would somehow get back to him.”

“Tom said I ought to get a solicitor,” Nicholas said suddenly. “I’m sure he thinks it was me.”

“If he thought it was you, dear boy,” said Tim, “you wouldn’t be sitting there.”

Nicholas cheered up then, and asked for the third time if they thought he would have any problem getting a grant for drama school. Avery reached for his chilies and threw a couple in. He shook and rattled his pan a little more loudly than was strictly necessary. He often did this when visitors came. Childlike, he was afraid both that they might forget he was there behind the monstera and philodendron or, if they did remember, might not appreciate just how hard he was working on their behalf.

Nicholas leaned back on a raspberry satin sofa seamed and scalloped like a great shell and drank deeply of his aperitif. He loved Tim and Avery’s sitting room. It was an extraordinary mixture of downy delights such as the sofa and austere pieces of donnish severity like Tim’s Oscar Woollen armchair, two low black glass Italian tables, and a stunning heavy bronze helmet lying on its side near the bookshelves. He said, “What’s on the menu today, Avery?”

“Satay.”

“I thought that was a method of doing yourself in.” Nicholas slithered about on the shiny cushions. “Whoops! Can I have some more of this marvelous wine, Tim?”

“No. You’re already all over the place. And there’s some Tignanello with the meat.”

“Shame!” cried Nicholas. Then: “Did you see Joycey’s daughter on the first night? Wasn’t she the most breathtaking thing?”

“Very lovely,” said Tim.

“Those legs … and that long neck … and eyelashes … and those spectacular bones …”

“Well, you may not be the most sober person in the room, Nicholas,” said Avery. “But my God you know how to take an inventory.”

“Will you come and see me in my end-of-term shows?”

“How the boy leaps about.”

“If asked,” said Tim.

“Maybe in my last year I shall win the Gielgud medal?”

“Nicholas, you really must at least pretend to be a bit more modest, otherwise the rest of the students will positively loathe you.” Avery turned his attention back to his cooking. He frazzled the pork a little, sipped some more wine, checked the soup, and peeped at his little sugar baskets with iced cherries keeping cool in the larder. Then he took hot brown twists of bread from the oven, poured the soup into a warm tureen, and tuned once more into the conversation.

Nicholas was saying that he would come back and see them in the holidays. Personally Avery believed that once the lad hit the smoke, neither of them would see or hear from him again. He called, “From me to you,” and took in the tureen, the bread, and an earthenware bowl of Greek yogurt and sour cream. The talk was still of the theater.

“I don’t know whether to stay on for Vanya or shoot off now,” Nicholas was saying.

‘‘You won’t start at Central for months,” said Tim. ‘‘But I could get some sort of job and see all the plays and join a movement class or something.”

‘‘There are three marvelous parts in it,” continued Tim. ‘‘And now that Esslyn’s gone, you could take your pick.”

“Mmm.” Nicholas spooned in some more soup. “This isn’t very tomatoey, Avery.”

“Miss Ungrateful,” retorted his host. “Still, if your taste buds are punch-drunk on monosodium glutamate, what can one expect?”

“I don’t know the play,” said Nicholas. “What’s it like?”

“Twice as long as Little Eyolf but without the laughs,” said Avery. “And the tap routines.”

“It’s wonderful. A Russian classic.”

“I don’t think I fancy being directed by Harold in a Russian classic. He’ll have us all swinging from the samovars. I think I’ll go.”

“You may not be allowed to go,” said Tim, “while the investigation’s still going on.”

“Blimey.” Nicholas scraped his bowl clean and held it out for more. “I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose we’re all under suspicion. Present company excepted.”

“We’ve guessed and guessed at the possible culprit,” said Avery, wielding the ladle. “You don’t deserve this— but answer came there none.”

“The present odds-on favorite is the Everards.”

“Don’t talk to me about the Everards,” said Nicholas, tenderly touching his swollen nose.

“That was wicked of Tom to tell you,” said Tim. “I didn’t think the police did that sort of thing. I thought statements were in confidence.”

“What have they got?” asked Avery.

“A black eye each and one cut lip.”

“Don’t swagger, Nicholas.”

“He asked me! Anyway—why are they on top of the list? They were the court toadies.”

“Nasty position, court toady,” said Avery, passing the still-warm twists. “You must get to hate the person you’re sucking up to.”

“Not necessarily,” said Nicholas. “Weak people often respect those much stronger than themselves. They feel safe getting carried along on their coattails.”

“You surely don’t see the Everards as weak, Nico?” said Tim.

“Well … yes … don’t you?”

“Not at all.”

“I can see him wanting to get rid of them,” continued Nicholas, “nasty little parasites. But not vice versa. I still favor Kitty.”

“What about Harold?” suggested Avery.

“Of course, along with everybody else, I’d just love it to be Harold. In fact, apart from him having neither motive nor opportunity, I see Harold as the perfect candidate.” Nicholas slurped his last spoonful. “This soup really grows on you, Avery.”

“Well, you’re not having any more,” cried Avery, bearing away the empties, “or you’ll have no room for the nice bits.”

Avery scraped the sauce, smelling of butter and peanuts, into a boat, and took his shallow Chinese dishes from the oven. He loved using these. They had a shaggy bronze crysanthemum painted on the bottom and small blue-green Oriental figures touched with gold around the sides going about their business in a world of tiny trees and short, square white rivers, tightly corrugated, like milky squibs. Avery got such pleasure from causing all this exquisite artificiality to vanish then, as he supped, gradually exposing it again. They were the only things in the kitchen that never went into the dishwasher, and only Avery was allowed to clean them. They had been an anniversary present from Tim bought during a holiday at Redruth, and so doubly treasured. Now, he brought the bowls with their curls of crispy pork and scurried round the table, placing them before the others.

Tim said, “I do wish you wouldn’t romp,” and Nicholas sniffed and murmured, “Aahhh … gravy mix.” Avery bowed his head for a moment more in relief over a job well done than in thanks for benisons received, and they all dug in. Avery passed the sauce to Nicholas, lifting it high over the candle flames.

“There’s no need to elevate it,” said Tim. “It’s not the host.”

The Tignanello was opened and poured, and Tim lifted his glass. “To Nicholas. And Central.”

“Oh, yes …” Avery toasted Nicholas, who grinned a little awkwardly. “R. and F. before you’re twenty-five, or I shall want to know the reason why. And don’t forget— we believed in you first.”

“I won’t.” Nicholas gave a slightly drunken smile. “And I’m so grateful for everything. The room … your friendship … everything …”

“Don’t be grateful,” said Tim. “Just send seats in the front row of the dress circle for all your first nights.”

“Do you think then … the gods will reward me by answering my prayers?” The heavy attempt at sarcasm was only partially successful. Nicholas’s voice trembled.

“Nico—you’re so naive.” Tim smiled. “That’s the way the gods punish us—by answering our prayers.”

“Oh, my—it’s not going to be one of your world-weary evenings is it? I don’t think I could stand that.”

But Avery’s response was jocular, and he appeared the picture of contentment. He beamed, and his little blue eyes twinkled. He started to relax. He had been tiptoeing about very carefully all day, because his morning horoscope, though fairly positive on the whole, had ended, “There may be friction in the home, however.” But surely, reasoned Avery, by nine-thirty any respectable bird of ill omen must be safely tucked up in its nest, reading the runes for the following day.

“Is it all right?” he asked, mock-anxious.

“My love—it’s absolutely marvelous.” Tim reached out, and his slim El Greco fingers rested briefly, lightly on Avery’s arm. Avery’s face burned with the intensity of his pleasure, and his heart pounded. Tim never used an endearment or touched him when other people were present, and Avery had quickly learned that he must behave with the same propriety. Of course, it was only Nico but even so …

Avery breathed slowly and deeply, experiencing the spicy scents of the meat, the delicate fragrance of the jasmine in its hooped basket, the aroma of the wine, and the slightly acrid drip of the candles not just briefly in the membranes of his nose but pervasively, as if they had been injected into his bloodstream and were spreading languorously through his body. He broke a piece of bread and popped it into his mouth, and it was like the bread of angels.

The phone rang. Everyone groaned. Avery, who was nearest, pushed back his chair and, carrying his glass, went to answer it.

“Hullo? … Oh, hullo, darling.”

“Who is it?” Tim mouthed, silently.

Avery pressed the secrecy button. “The Wicked Witch of the West.”

“My condolences.”

“Tim sends his love, Rosa.”

“And mine.”

“And Nicholas. We’ve been having the most divine— Oh, all right. I’ll be quiet. There’s no need to be rude. One must go through these opening civilities, otherwise one might just as well take to the hills … Shut up yourself, if it comes to that.” He switched again. “Evil-tempered old crone.”

The two men at the table exchanged glances. Tim’s faintly humorous, rather resigned. Nicholas’s wry, even a touch patronizing. A look that would never have graced his features when their friendship had first begun. They turned their attention back to Avery, whose face was avidity personified. His soft lips, delicately tinted toffee brown from the satay, were pushed forward into a thrilled marshmallow O.

“My dear!” he cried. “But didn’t we always say? Well, I certainly always said … Are you sure? Well, that clinches it then … Of course I will … and you keep me posted.” He hung up, took a deep swallow of his wine, and hurried back to the table. Bursting with information, he looked from Tim to Nicholas and back again. “You’ll never guess.”

“If there are three more interesting words in the English language,” said Tim, “I’ve yet to hear them.”

“Oh, come on,” Nicholas said, rather slurrily, “what she say?”

“The police have arrested David Smy.”

Avery sat back more than satisfied with the effect of his pronouncement. Nicholas gaped foolishly in disbelief. Tim’s face, golden and ivory in the candle’s flame, became bleached; white and gray. “How does she know?”

“Saw him. She was going to the library when a police car drew up outside the station and two cops marched him inside.”

“Did he have a blanket over his head?”

“Don’t be so bloody silly, Nicholas. How on earth could she have known it was David if he’d had a blanket over his head?”

“Only they do,” persisted Nicholas with stolid determination. “If they’re guilty.”

“Well, really. Sometimes I think your thought processes should be in a medical mysteries museum.”

“Leave the boy alone.” Tim’s voice laid a great chill over the lately so festive company. “He’s had too much to drink.”

“Oh … yes … sorry.” Avery picked up his glass, then nervously put it down again. His exhilaration was draining away fast. Almost as he entertained this thought, the last couple of wisps evaporated. He looked across at Tim, who was not looking at him, Avery, but through him, as if he didn’t exist. Avery looked down at the glistening puddle of peanut sauce, picked up his spoon, which clattered against the gilded rim of the bowl, and tasted a little. It was nearly cold. “Shall I warm this up Tim … do you think? Or bring in the pudding?”

Tim did not reply. He had withdrawn into himself as he occasionally did in a way that Avery dreaded. He knew Tim didn’t mean this behavior as any sort of punishment. The action was so undeliberate as to appear almost involuntary, yet Avery inevitably felt responsible. He turned to their guest. “Are you ready for some pudding, Nico?”

Nicholas smiled briefly and shrugged. He looked a little sulky and deeply abashed, as if guilty of some social misdemeanor. Yet, Avery thought, it is I who have committed the solecism. How unpleasant now, how crass, his reception of Rosa’s news appeared. With what salacious relish had he rushed to the table to relay the information, as if it were some edible goody he couldn’t wait to share. If he had stopped to think, even for a moment, he must have behaved differently. After all, this was a friend they were talking about. They all liked David and his kind, unhurried ways. And now he might be going to prison. For years. No wonder Tim, extremely fastidious at the best of times, had removed his attention from such a lubricious, blubbering display.

“Well …” he said, forcing cheeriness into his voice, “it doesn’t do to get depressed. Okay, Rosa saw him going in … what does that mean? He might have just been asked to help clear up one or two points. Help them with their inquiries.” Avery wished he hadn’t said that. He was sure he’d read somewhere that was the official way of announcing that the police had got the guilty party but weren’t legally supposed to say so. “Just because he was the man in the lighting box doesn’t mean … well … what else have they got to go on, after all?” (Only that he had ample opportunity. Only that he was the man who took the razor on. Only that his mistress was now a rich widow.) Tim was getting up.

“What … what’s happening?” said Avery. “We haven’t finished.”

“I’ve finished.”

“Oh, but you must have some cherries, Tim! You know how you love them. I made them especially. In little sugar baskets.”

“Sorry.”

I could kill Rosa, thought Avery. Malicious, scandal-mongering, interfering old bitch! If it weren’t for her, this would never have happened. And we were having such a lovely time. Tears of disappointment and frustration sprang to his eyes. When they cleared, Tim, wearing his overcoat and Borsalino hat, was at the sitting room door. Avery leaped to his feet.

“Where are you going?”

“Just out.”

“But where, Tim?” Avery hurried across and hung on Tim’s arm. His voice trembled as he continued, “You must tell me!”

“I’ve got to go to the station.”

“… the … the police station?” When Tim nodded, Avery cried, “What on earth for?”

But even as he asked, Avery’s heart was squeezed with the terrible cold foreknowledge of what would be Tim’s reply.

“Because,” said Tim, gently removing Avery’s hand from his sleeve, “I was the man in the lighting box.”

Tim was sorry he had come. Barnaby had vouchsafed the information (it seemed to Tim with a certain amount of wry pleasure) that David Smy, far from being arrested, was as free as a bird and likely to remain so. Still, Tim’s confession had been made, and he could hardly take it back. He had assumed once this simple statement had been completed, he would be free to go, but Barnaby seemed keen to question him further. To add to the charm of these unwelcome proceedings, the poisonous youth with the carroty hair was also present at his scrivenings.

“Just background, you understand, Tim,” Barnaby was saying. “Tell me how you got on with Esslyn.”

“As well and as badly as anyone else. There was nothing to get on with, really. He was always posing. You never knew what he truly felt.”

“Even so, it’s unusual for someone to belong to a group for over fourteen years and not have a single relationship of any depth or complexity.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Lots of men don’t have close friendships. As long as Esslyn was much admired and had plenty of sex, he was content.” Tim smiled. “The advertiser’s dream made manifest.”

“No more than human.” Barnaby sounded indulgent. “Which of us can’t say the same?”

Bang on target, thought Troy. Don’t knock it till you’ve had enough. Like when you’re stepping into your coffin. Troy was feeling very put out. He just couldn’t cope with the revelation that the man he thought of (apparently only too appropriately) as the cocky bugger in the executive suit had had it off with Kitty. Paradoxically, his resentment against Tim was now doubled. And the way he sauntered about … Look at him now … completely at home, mildly interested, cool as a cucumber. The dregs of society, thought Troy, should know their place and not come floating to the surface mingling with the good honest brew. Serve Kitty right if she got AIDS.

“He was never short of female company, then?” Barnaby was asking.

“Oh, no. Nothing that lasted long, though. They soon drifted off.”

“You don’t know of anyone in the past that he had rejected? Who might be suffering from unrequited love?”

“Anyone involved with Esslyn, whether rejected or not, suffered from unrequited love. And no, I don’t.”

“You must realize, I’m sure, that Kitty is our number-one suspect. Did you assist her in doing away with her husband?”

“Certainly not. There would have been no reason for me to do so. Our affair was trivial. I was already tired of it.”

“Did she let anything slip while you were together that might give us some insight into this matter?”

“Not that I recall.”

“Or hint at any other man?”

“No.”

“To get on to Monday night—”

“I’ve really nothing to add there, Tom.”

“Well,” said Barnaby easily, “you never know. Try this. Why did the murder happen then? Why not, for instance, at one of the early rehearsals? Fewer people hanging around. No coppers present.”

“The wings are never dark at rehearsal. And there’s always someone there prompting. Or wanting to do a scene change.”

“They’re not dark at the run-through, surely. Or the dress rehearsal?” When Tim did not reply, Barnaby added, “By the way—did I congratulate you on your splendid lighting?”

“I really don’t remember.”

It was like touching a snail on the horns, thought Barnaby, sensing the quick (protective?) folding in of the other man’s attention.

“Harold seemed quite put out.”

“Did he?”

“I noticed him thumping away in the intermission on the door of your box.”

Tim shrugged. “He runs on a short fuse.”

“Might’ve been less alarming if you’d sprung these splendid illuminations before the first night.”

“If I’d done that, they’d never have reached the first night.”

“So Harold didn’t know?”

The snail disappeared completely. Although Tim’s expression remained laconic, even a tinge scornful, his eyes were disturbed and the skin seemed to tighten over his patrician nose. “That’s right.”

“So he got two shocks for the price of one?”

“As things turned out.”

“Quite a coincidence.”

“They happen all the time.”

Not this time, thought Barnaby. He did not know how he knew, but he knew. Somewhere way back in the murk of his mind, so faint as to be hardly apprehended, he heard a warning rattle. This man who could not possibly have murdered Esslyn Carmichael knew something. But he met Barnaby’s gaze frankly, almost dauntingly, nor did he look away.

“You’re probably not aware,” said Barnaby, “that Harold is claiming the new lighting plot as his own.”

“Hah!” Tim laughed harshly, strainedly. His face flushed. “So that—” his laughter croaked—“so that was all we had to do. Say ‘Yes, Harold’ to everything. And go our own way. Just like Esslyn.”

“So it seems.”

“All these years.” He was still laughing in a rasping, irascible way when the chief inspector let him go a few minutes later.

Barnaby had seen no point in keeping Tim there or in applying pressure at this stage. Tim was not the sort to wilt under generalized bullish cajoling. But Barnaby knew now where the pressure point was and could apply a little leverage if or when it became necessary. He turned to his sergeant.

“Well, Troy?”

“A worried man, sir,” Troy replied quickly. “All right till you touched on his lights, then shut up like balls in an ice bucket. He might have been hard put to it to have done the murder, but he knows something.”

“I believe you’re right.”

“How would it be if I had a word with his friend”— Troy arched his wrist limply—“Little Miss Roly Poly. On her own, like.” He winked. “She’d soon crumble.” He received in exchange for the wink a stare so icy that he all but crumbled himself.

“First thing tomorrow I want to visit Carmichael’s office. And his solicitor. Get on the phone and fix it.”

Nicholas had left fairly quickly after Tim, thanking Avery for the dinner, then saying on the doorstep with absolute clarity, “I’m not as think as you drunk I am.”

Now, Avery sat alone. He had finished the Tignanello, pouring and gulping, pouring and gulping, at first in shock, then, steadily, in bitter loneliness and despair. After emptying the bottle, he had, in a confused state of aggressive misery jumbled up with vague ideas of retaliation, opened some Clos St. Denis, grand cru, that he knew Tim was keeping for his birthday. He wrestled savagely with the cork, breaking off little pieces and sloshing the wine about.

The candles in their Mexican silver rose holders guttered, and Avery blew them out. But even in the dark the room was full of memories of Tim. Avery flinched at the word “memories,” and chided himself for being melodramatic. After all, Tim was coming back. But no sooner had this thought, which should have been a comfort, struck him than it was swamped by a hundred others, all permeated with the fervor of self-righteousness. Oh, yes, observed Avery to himself with a miserable snigger, no doubt he’ll be coming back. He won’t find anyone else like me in a hurry. Who else would cook and iron and clean and care for him with just the odd kind word for wages? And that tossed so casually into the conversation it might have been a bone to a mangy cur. Who but me would have bought a bookshop and given—yes given, fulminated Avery, half of it away? Whose money had furnished the house? And paid for the holidays? And he asked so little in return. Just to be allowed to love and look after Tim. And to be offered in exchange a modicum of affection. Immensely moved by this revelatory glimpse into the nobility of his soul, Avery shed a disconsolate tear.

But the tear had no sooner dried on his cushiony cheek than the cold finger of reason pointed out that, for a reasonable sum, people could be found to cook and iron and clean and that Tim had once earned an excellent living teaching Latin and French in a public school and no doubt could do so again. And that if Avery poured out all the tiger words that, at this moment, were prowling round his heart when Tim came back, he might put on his Crombie overcoat and Borsalino hat and leave again, this time forever. And in fact (Avery felt sick with apprehension), even if he made the most tremendous superhuman efforts at self-control and behaved with calmness and understanding when his lover returned, it was probably too late. Because Tim had already met somebody else.

Avery stood up suddenly and put the light on. He felt he must move. Walk about. He thought of going down to the station to meet Tim, to know the worst right away, and had seized his coat and opened the front door before he recognized what a foolish thing that would be to do. For Tim hated it when Avery “trailed around” after him. Also (Avery dropped his coat onto the raspberry bouffant sofa), his quick dash to the door had revealed him to be intensely, dizzily nauseous. He moved to the table and sat upright with difficulty, holding on to the edge. He felt as if he were trapped in a revolving door of the emotions. Having whipped rapidly and passionately through jealousy, rage, yearning fear, and concupiscence, he now seemed to be meeting them all on the way back.

Avery made a huge effort to fight free of this soggy swamp of wretchedness. He drank several large glasses of Perrier and sat quietly struggling to compose himself. He tried to think as Tim would think. After all, what was done could not be undone. Perhaps, Avery thought tremulously, I am blowing it up out of all proportion. Also, getting into this state is just what Tim would expect. Poor Tim. Sitting down there for hours at the police station and then coming home to face a raging screaming row. How remarkable, how truly amazing it would be if he were welcomed by a tranquil, smiling, naturally slightly distant but ultimately forgiving friend. Let him without sin, decided Avery, and all that jazz. What would be the point, after all, of railing at Tim because he was not doggedly faithful? It’s because he’s so completely unlike me, realized Avery, now quite mooney with sentiment, that I love him so. And how proud he will be when he sees just how well I can actually handle things. How mature and wise, how detached, he will find me in the face of this, our first real catastrophe. Avery’s chest had just swelled to a pouter-pigeon prominence when he heard a key in the door, and a moment later Tim was standing before him.

Avery yelled, “You faithless bastard!” and threw one of the Chinese bowls. Tim ducked, and the bowl hit the architrave and shattered into small pieces. When Tim bent to pick them up, Avery shouted, “Leave it! I don’t want it. I don’t want any of them. They’re all going in the trash bin.”

Ignoring him, Tim picked up the pieces and put them on the table. Then he got a clean glass from the kitchen and poured some of the Clos St. Denis. He sniffed at it and made an irritated sound, picking out a few cork crumbs.

“I was laying this down.”

“Seems to be your favorite occupation.”

“If you wanted to get tanked up, why on earth didn’t you use the Dao? There’s half a dozen bottles in the larder.”

“Oh, yes—the Dao! Any old rubbish will do for me, won’t it? I haven’t got your exquisite palate. Your celebrated je ne sais quoi.”

“Don’t be silly.” Tim took a thoughtful swallow. “Wonderful fruit. A lot of style. Not as big as I expected.”

“Well hoity lucking toity.”

“I’m tired.” Tim removed his muffler and coat. “I’m going to bed.”

“You most certainly are not going to bed. You are going to leave my house. And you are going to leave it now!”

“I’m not going anywhere at this hour of the night, Avery.” Tim hung up his coat. “We’ll talk in the morning, when you’ve sobered up.”

“We’ll talk now!” Avery leaped up from the table and stumbled over to the hall, where he stood at the bottom of the staircase barring the way. Tim turned then, made his way to the kitchen, and started filling up the coffee-maker. Avery followed, crying, “What do you think you’re doing?” And “Leave my things alone.”

“If I’m going to stay awake, I need some strong coffee. And so, by the looks of things, do you.”

“What did you expect? To come home and find me all sweet reason? Clearing up after the Last Supper? Counting out your thirty pieces of silver?”

“Why are you being so dramatic?” Tim spooned the Costa Rica out lavishly. “And come and sit down before you fall down.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’d love it if I fell and hit my head and died. Then you’d get the shop and the house, and you’d be able to move that bloody little tart in here. Well, you can think again, because first thing tomorrow I shall go to the solicitor’s and change my will.”

“You can do what you like tomorrow. For now, I should concentrate on parking your bum on something and getting this coffee down you.”

Avery, allowing a moment for a disdainful pause, thus making it clear that any move he might be inclined to make would be entirely of his own choosing, made his erratic way over the kitchen floor and contemplated the north face of the Bentwood stool. Somehow he managed to clamber up and hang on, swaying like an aerial mast in a high wind.

The rich, homely smell of coffee filled his nostrils cruelly, recalling a thousand shared starts to happy days and as many intimate and gossipy after-dinner exchanges. All gone now. All ruined. He and Tim would never be happy again. Avery’s eyes filled with sorrow as the utter terribleness of the situation struck him anew, and a thrill of pain stabbed clean through the deadening haze of alcohol. A needle to the heart.

As Tim passed the coffee, he folded Avery’s limp, unresisting fingers around the cup, and this gesture of concern was the last straw breaking the back of Avery’s anger and releasing a great gush of tears. And with the release of tears came an overwhelming need for contact and solace. He cried, “I trusted you …”

Tim sighed, put down his drink, pulled up a second stool, and sat next to Avery. “Listen, love,” he said, “if we are going to have a heart-to-heart at this ridiculous hour of the morning, let’s not start with a false premise. You have never trusted me. Ever since we started to live together, I’ve known that whenever we’re apart, you do nothing but worry and fret over whether I’m meeting someone else or that I might one day meet someone else. Or that I’ve already met someone else and I’m concealing it. That is not trust.”

“And you can see why now, can’t you? How right I was. You said you were going to the post office.”

“I went there first. Don’t worry. All the books went off.”

“I didn’t mean that,” screamed Avery. “You know I didn’t.”

“It was of no importance,” said Tim quietly. “Not compared to us.”

“Then why? Why risk you and me … all this… ?” Avery gestured at the cozy sitting room with such vigor that he slid off his perch.

“God—you’re pixilated,” said Tim, helping him back up.

“I am not pissilated,” wept Avery. “I mean … if it wasn’t David in the box, I thought it might be Nico … or Boris. I never in a million years thought it could be you.”

“I don’t see why not. You know my sexual history.”

“But I thought you’d turned your back on all that,” said Avery. Then: “Don’t laugh.”

“Sorry.”

“And why Kitty, of all people?”

Tim shrugged, remembering the combination of fragile bones and tough, sly cherubinical smile that had briefly excited him. “She was pretty, and lean … quite boyish, really …”

“She won’t be boyish for long,” cut in Avery. “Very unlean and unpretty she’ll be.”

“I wouldn’t have wanted her for long,” said Tim. And for a second he looked so desolate that Avery forgot who was the guilty party and almost made a move to comfort him as he would have done before the betrayal. “If it makes you feel any better,” continued Tim, “it was Kitty who started it all. I think she regarded me as some sort of challenge.”

“Some people don’t seem to know the difference between a challenge and a bloody pushover.” Avery braced himself. “How long … how many… ?”

“Half a dozen times. At the most.”

“Oh, God!” Avery gasped as if from a body blow and covered his face with his hands. “And was she … I mean … has there been. …”

“No. No one else.”

“What shall I do?” Avery rocked from side to side on his stool. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Why should you do anything? It seems to me more than enough’s been done already. And don’t blubber.”

“I’m not.” Avery took his little butterball fists, shiny with moisture, from his teary eyes. His pale yellow curls, limp with sorrow, looked like a ring of scrambled egg. He choked out the next words. “I don’t know how you can be so heartless.”

“I’m not heartless, but you know how I hate these honky tonk emotions.” Tim tore a piece off the paper-towel roll and mopped Avery’s face, which was crisscrossed with rivulets of tears and mucous and sweat. “And give me that cup before it’s all over the floor.”

“Everything’s soiled … and … spoiled. I just can’t bear it anymore …”

“I don’t see how you can possibly know that until you try.” This cold, sinewy reasoning brought Avery to a fresh pitch of misery. “I mean it, Tim,” he cried. “You must promise me faithfully that you’ll never ever ever again—”

“I can’t do that. And you wouldn’t believe me if I did. Oh, you might now, because you’re desperate, but tomorrow you’d start to wonder. Any by the day after that…”

“But you must promise. I can’t go on with all this insecurity.”

“Why not? Everybody else has to. Your trouble is you expect too much. Why can’t we just muddle along like Mr. and Mrs. Average? You know … doing our best… picking each other up if we fall … making allowances … Cloud nine’s for retarded adolescents.” Tim paused. “I never promised you a rose garden, as the saying goes.”

“Well,” said Avery, with a flash of the old asperity. “If I’m not going to have a rose garden, I shan’t want all this shit, shall I?” Then, when Tim smiled his shadowy, introspective smile, Avery suddenly cried, “It’d be all right if I didn’t love you so much!”

“But if you didn’t love me so much, what on earth reason would I have for staying?”

Avery pondered this. Was such a remark a consolation? It seemed to imply that what he had to offer (the shop, the house, the meticulous and affectionate concern with which he went about his daily tasks) was not, after all, the reason why Tim stayed. Yet what else, worried Avery, did he have to offer? He turned the thought over. It seemed to him that the question had a catch in it somewhere, and he said so.

“There’s always a catch.” Tim moved back to the sitting room and collected the pieces of the Chinese bowl. “I must get some stuff tomorrow and fix this.”

“That’s right. Put the boot in.” But Avery felt his woozy unhappiness touched by a flicker of warmth. Perhaps Tim would not be packing his bags after all. Perhaps in the morning they could open the shop and check the till and tidy the books and carefully, like the walking wounded that they were, reach out to each other for comfort. Tim came back and put the painted fragments on the kitchen table.

“I’m sorry about the dish.”

“No, no. It’s what I’ve always wanted,” Tim said kindly. “A glued-together home.”

“Do you remember Cornwall?”

“To my dying day. I thought I’d never get you away from that Redruth fisherman.”

“Oh.” Avery turned a guilty countenance toward his lover. “I’d forgotten all about that.”

“I hadn’t. But … as you see … I’m still here.”

“Yes. D’you think”—Avery held out his hand—“we’ll ever be really happy again?”

“Stop living in some mythical future. You can’t invent happiness. It’s just a by-product of day-to-day plodding along. If you’re lucky.”

“We have been lucky, haven’t we, Tim?”

“We are lucky, you old tosspot. Best not to talk anymore now. I’m wacked.”

Tim went upstairs then, leaving Avery to finish his coffee. He felt like a punching bag once the belaboring has ceased. Still vibrating with the memory and bruised. Then, because the first terror had passed and because Tim had come home and was going to stay, the concentration of despondency that had obscured Avery’s fear lifted, and the cloud no bigger than a man’s lie returned.

Tim’s remark that he had first denied making then shrugged aside appeared suddenly to have developed an ominous gloss. For it seemed to Avery that to say “We shall certainly have to leave now indicated some secret knowledge. Surely it implied that, if Esslyn had not been killed, Avery and Tim, in spite of the lighting conspiracy, would have been able to stay? Now, to add to Avery’s alarm, was the information that Tim had been Kitty’s lover. And it was Tim who had supplied the razor. Had he really just gone down to the john in the interval of the play? And why go downstairs at all when there were two restrooms in the clubroom?

Tim called, “What’s keeping you? Come on …”

But for the first time ever Avery, even while experiencing the usual sting in the flesh, did not get up and hurry toward the source of his delight. He sat on in his disordered kitchen, getting colder and colder. And feeling more and more afraid.

It was the following day, and Harold was making one of his rare appearances at the lunch table. Usually he dined out, and Mrs. Harold, who put up the sandwiches, was quite thrown by this sudden change of plan. Her household budget was tiny, and any incursion at one point meant immediate retrenchment at another. She had found a Fray Bentos canned individual steak and kidney pudding at the back of the cupboard and had rushed out and bought some carrots out of her flower-seed money. But Harold had eaten so abstractedly that she felt she could well have given him her own lunch (boiled potatoes and two slices of luncheon meat) without him being any the wiser. Now, as he scraped up the last smear of gravy, she said, “It’s not like you to come home midday, Harold.”

“I’m taking the afternoon off. It’s Nicholas’s half day and we have to have a serious talk about his future.”

“Does he know you’re coming?” Harold looked blank. “I mean … have you made some arrangement?”

“Don’t be silly, Doris. I don’t make arrangements with junior members of the company.”

“Then he might not be in.”

“I can’t imagine where else he would be on a dreadful day like this.”

Doris looked out at the black rods of rain hammering against the kitchen window. “There’s a piece of cake for sweet, Harold. If you’d like it.”

Harold did not reply. He stared at his wife but did not see her yellowish-gray hair and shabby skirt and cardigan. His mind was full of his future leading man. He saw Nicholas striding the stage as Vanya and perhaps later as Tartuffe and later still as Othello or even Lear. Why not? Under Harold’s expert guidance, the boy could develop into a fine actor. Every bit as good as Esslyn. Perhaps even better.

Harold had not come to this decision easily. He had toyed with Boris and even Clive Everard who gave, in his quirky posturing way, quite an interesting performance. But he was aware that the potential of both was still nowhere near that of Nicholas. The only reason Harold had considered, even briefly, an alternative was because of a certain willfulness, an antic disposition, that he had sensed strongly in the boy during rehearsals for Amadeus. Several times he had felt Nicholas getting away from him and glimpsed flashes of prowling energy that were disturbing, to say the least. And of course Nicholas was very saucy.

But Harold was confident that he could handle it. After all, he had always managed to handle Esslyn.

“What are you going to see him about?” asked Doris.

“I’d have thought that was obvious. I have to find a replacement for Esslyn.”

Mrs. Harold dutifully saw her husband off the premises and waved as he squeezed his paunch into position behind the wheel of the Morgan and backed out of the garage. A replacement for Esslyn indeed, she thought as she put the plates and cutlery in the sink. Anyone’d think he was a door handle. Or a broken teapot.

She had been deeply shocked by the reaction of Harold and the rest of the CADS to the death of their leading actor. She knew he wasn’t popular (she hadn’t liked him much herself), but some tears should be shed somewhere by someone. She decided to go to the funeral, and left the dishes to soak while she went upstairs to look for something dark and respectable.

Meanwhile Harold zipped up Causton High Street and parked outside the Blackbird. He planned to kill two birds and was pleased to see that Avery, who returned his greeting in a very subdued manner, and his partner were both in the shop. Harold beckoned Tim grandly to the cubbyhole and said, “I’m holding auditions for Vanya on Friday evening. Dashing around and notifying everyone. Is Nico in?”

“Yes but he’s-”

“Good. Now—I’d be very interested to see any ideas you might have on lighting the play.” Ignoring Tim’s surprised and ironical glance, he continued, “Technically you’re very capable, and I think it’s high time you were given a chance to branch out.”

“Thank you, Harold.”

“Nothing too fancy. It’s Russia, don’t forget.” On this enigmatic note, Harold whisked aside the chenille curtain and heaved himself up the wooden stairs.

Nicholas was sitting on the floor declaiming. The gas fire was on, and the room was warm and cozy. Cully Barnaby was curled up on the bed drinking coffee. Play scripts littered the floor, and Nicholas was reading from the Harrison translation of the Aeschylus: “Down, down, down he goes, and falling knows nothing, nothing. A smother of madness clouds round the victim. The groans of old—” As Harold appeared in the doorway, Nicholas broke off, and he and Cully looked at the intruder rather coolly.

“Ah,” said Harold, missing the coolness but spotting the appellation. “I’d have expected to see you reading Uncle Vanya.“p>

“Why, Harold?”

“The auditions are on Friday.” Harold would have preferred this conversation without Tom Barnaby’s daughter sitting in. She had been, in his opinion, although quite a good actress, a nasty, self-opinionated little girl, and she didn’t improve with age. Harold cleared his throat.

“I’m sure you will be very proud … very excited to hear that I have chosen you out of all the company to succeed Esslyn as my leading man.” Harold could see from the expression on Nicholas’s face that he should perhaps have led up to this revelation more subtly. The boy looked deeply alarmed. Reassuringly Harold added, “You’re too young for Vanya, of course, but if you work hard, with my help I know you’ll be a great success.”

“I see.”

So overwhelmed was Nicholas with emotion that he choked out the words. Then he added something else, but the girl chose that precise moment to indulge in a fit of coughing, and Harold had to ask Nicholas to repeat himself. When he did so Harold, openmouthed with dismay, tottered to the nearest chair and fell into it.

“Leaving?”

“I’m going to Central.”

“Central what?”

“Central School of Speech and Drama. I want to go into the theater.”

“But … you’re in the theater.”

“I mean the real theater.”

The force of Harold’s response lifted him clean from his seat. He gave a great cry in which rage and incredulity and horror were equally intermingled. Nicholas paled and climbed hurriedly to his feet. Cully stopped coughing.

“How dare you!” Harold walked across to Nicholas, who stood his ground but only just. “How dare you! My theater is as real … as true … as fine as any in the country. In the world. Do you have any idea who you’re talking to? What my background is? I have heard the sort of applause for my work in what you are pleased to call the real theater that actors would sell their souls to achieve. Stars have clamored to work for me. Yes—stars! If it weren’t for circumstances completely beyond my control, do you think I’d be working in this place? With people like you?”

The final sentence was a tormented shout, then Harold stood, panting. He appeared bewildered and ridiculous, yet there was about him the tatters of an almost heroic dignity. He looked like a great man grown overnight too old. Or a warrior on whose head children have placed a paper crown.

“I’m … I’m sorry …” Nicholas stumbled into speech. “If you like, I could stay for Vanya … I don’t have to go to London immediately.”

“No, Nicholas.” Harold stayed the boy’s words by a simple gesture. “I would not wish to work with anyone who did not appreciate and respect my directorial gifts.”

“Oh. Right. I might come along and audition anyway … if that’s okay?”

“Anyone,” replied Harold, magisterially breaking upstage right, “can audition.”

After he had left, the two young people smiled at each other, celebrating their meeting and mutual admiration.

“Will you go on Friday?” asked Cully.

“I think so. He might’ve calmed down by then.”

“Then I shall, too.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Why not? I’m not due back till the end of January. And I’d give anything to play Yelena. We can always work our own way.”

“Gosh—that’d be fantastic.”

Cully parted her lovely lips and smiled again. “Wouldn’t it though?” she said.

Barnaby and Troy were in the office of Hartshorn, Weatherwax, and Tetzloff. Their Mr. Ounce, who handled Esslyn Carmichael’s affairs, was being affable if slightly condescending. Entertaining the police, his manner implied, was not what he was used to, but he hoped if it was thrust upon him, he could behave as well as the next man.

But if Barnaby had hoped to discover some sinister undertow to the murdered man’s life in his solicitor’s office, he was unlucky. Mr. Ounce could reveal little more than the arid contents in the desk at White Wings. Barnaby had been unlucky at the bank as well. No suspiciously large sums of money ever leaked in or out of the Carmichael account, all was depressingly well ordered, the balances no more and no less than one would have expected. The only thing remaining was the will, which he was about to hear read. (He had offered to apply in the proper manner and go to a magistrate, but Mr. Ounce had graciously waived the necessity, saying he was sure time was of the essence.)

The document was brief and to the point. His widow would get the house and a comfortable allowance for herself and the child as long as she carried out her maternal duties in a proper manner. Carmichael Junior would get the full dibs on reaching twenty-one, and in the event of the child’s demise everything, including White Wings, went to the brother in Ottawa. Mr. Ounce replaced the stiff ivory parchment folds in a metal deeds box and snapped the lock.

“Neatly tied up,” said Barnaby.

“I must confess my own fine Italian hand was somewhat to the fore there, Chief Inspector.” He rose from his old leather swivel chair. “We can’t let the ladies have it all their own way, can we?”

“Blimey,” said Troy, when they were back in the station and warming themselves up with some strong coffee. “I wouldn’t mind being a fly on the wall when Kitty hears that.”

Barnaby did not respond. He sat behind his desk tapping his nails against each other. A habit to which he was prone when deep in thought. It drove Troy mad. He was just wondering if he could sneak out for a quick drag when his chief gave voice.

“What I can’t get, Sergeant, is the timing. …” Troy sat up. “There are dozens of ways to kill a man. Why set it up in front of a hundred witnesses … taking risks backstage … tinkering with a razor … when all you have to do is wait and catch him on some dark night?”

“I feel that’s rather a strike against Kitty, myself, chief. Trying it at home, she’d be the first person we’d suspect.”

“A good point.”

“And now we’ve flushed the lover out,” Troy bounded on, encouraged, “and discovered that he was the one who supplied the razor in the first place. I bet he even suggested the tape—”

“I think not. I’ve asked a lot of people about that. The general consensus seems to be that it was Deidre.”

“Anyway, there he is with the perfect alibi, leaving Kitty to carry the can. That sort always do.”

“I don’t know. It’s a bit obvious.”

“But … excuse me, sir … the times you’ve said the obvious is so often the truth.”

Barnaby nodded. The observation was a fair one. As was Troy’s implication that the familiar unheavenly twins lust and greed were once again probably the motivating power behind a sudden death. So why did Barnaby feel this case was different? He didn’t welcome this perception, which seemed to him at the moment to lead absolutely nowhere, but it would not be denied. He saw now, too, that his previous knowledge of the suspects, which he had regarded from the first as an advantage, could also work against him. It was proving well nigh impossible to make his mind the objective mirror it should be if he was to appreciate what was really going on. His understanding of Kitty’s character, his liking for Tim and the Smys, his sympathy for Deidre, all were gradually forcing him into a corner. At this rate, he observed sourly to himself, I’ll hardly have a suspect left.

And then there was Floyd on Fish. He picked it out of his tray and fanned the pages yet again. The thing had been through the works at the lab. It was no more and no less than what it purported to be, and smothered with dozens of assorted prints. Now, why the hell should someone send Harold, who had not the slightest interest in cooking, a recipe book? Why was it given anonymously? Troy, asked for his ideas, had been worse than useless. Just given one of his excruciating winks and said, “Very fishy, chief.” Joyce said Harold had seemed to be genuinely puzzled by its arrival, assumed it to be a gift from an unknown admirer, and promptly given it away. Barnaby couldn’t see a single way in which it might be connected with the case, but it was certainly odd. A loose end. And he didn’t care for loose ends, although, as the case looked at the moment like a bundle of cooked spaghetti, he supposed another one more or less didn’t much signify.

Troy was clearing his throat, and Barnaby retrieved his wandering thoughts and raised his eyebrows. “If we’re leaving sex and cash out, chief, I suppose the other big one would be that he’d got something on somebody and they wanted to keep him quiet.” Barnaby nodded. “I know we didn’t find any surprises in his account, but it could still have been blackmail. He could’ve been stashing it abroad.”

“Mmm … it’s an appealing idea. The trouble is, it doesn’t fit the nature of the beast.”

‘‘Sorry, sir … I’m not quite with you on that one.” Troy was frowning; a little anxious about being found wanting, but determined to have each step quite clear before proceeding to the next. He never pretended that he understood what Barnaby was getting at when he didn’t, and the chief inspector, knowing how his sergeant longed to give the impression of keeping up or even leaping ahead, respected this veracity.

“I just don’t think Carmichael was the type. It’s not that he was a nice man—far from it—but he was completely self-absorbed. He had no interest in other people’s affairs, or the sheer energetic nastiness a successful blackmailer needs.”

‘‘Jealousy then, chief? Him being the leading light and all that. Maybe somebody else wanted a go?” Even as he voiced this suggestion, Troy thought it was probably a nonstarter. Although he had quite enjoyed Amadeus, he thought the actors a load of pimpish show-offs. Personally he wouldn’t have thought any of them had the guts to skin a rabbit, never mind putting somebody in the way of cutting their own throat. Still, he had been wrong before (Troy saw his willingness to admit to possessing this almost universal human weakness as a sign of real maturity) and might well be so again. ‘‘Perhaps they were all in it together, sir? Like that film on a train … where everybody had a stab at the victim. A conspiracy.”

Barnaby raised his head at this and looked interested. Interested but glum. Troy remembered a phrase from the early morning news and essayed one of his witticisms.

“A putsch-up job, sir?”

‘‘What?”

‘‘Put up—it’s a joke, chief. A sort of play on words. Putsch up—put up …”

Barnaby was silent for a minute, then spoke slowly. “My God, Troy. You might just be right.”

Gratified, the sergeant continued, “It was in one of these banana republics—”

“It’s so near …”

“That’s what I said. Put and—”

“No, no. I’m not talking about that. Perhaps … let me think. …”

Barnaby sat very still. A nebulous possibility, no more than a glimmer, flickered into his mind. Flickered and was gone. Came back, solidified a bit, was gently tested.

“I wonder,” continued Barnaby, “perhaps Esslyn gave us the reason for the murder. At least”—he groped toward the next words slowly—“he gave it to Kitty. She didn’t have the wit to see the implication behind what he said, but I should have. There’s no excuse for me.”

Troy, appreciating that he also hadn’t had the wit and that there was no excuse for him, either, regarded his boots sulkily. Barnaby got up and started to pace around, then sent his sergeant for some more coffee. Troy disappeared into the outer office and helped himself from the Cona.

When he returned to the inner sanctum, the DCI was gazing out the window. Troy put the mugs on the desk and returned to his seat. When Barnaby turned, he was struck by the paleness of the chief inspector’s countenance. Pale but lively. No sooner had one expression, hopeful elation, registered than it was chased away by disbelief, which in turn gave way to a jauntiness that was almost debonair, dissolving into puzzlement.

“You’ve … got something then, sir?” asked Troy.

“I don’t know. It’s all out of whack … but it must be. I just can’t see how.”

Fat lot of good that is then, opined Troy silently. The old sod always did this when he believed a case was shifting toward a conclusion. He would say that all the information so far obtained was as available to Troy as it was to him and that the sergeant should be perfectly capable of coming to his own assessment. The fact that this remark was a perfectly valid one in no way lessened the sergeant’s chagrin every time he heard it. Now, he noticed Barnaby was looking at him rather oddly. Then, to his alarm, the chief walked around the desk, came up to Troy’s chair, bent down, and brought his lips close to the younger man’s ear. Bloody hell, thought Troy, preparing to leap for the door. Who’d have thought it? Barnaby moved his mouth, breathed faintly, and returned to his seat. Troy produced a handkerchief and mopped his face.

“Well, sergeant,” Barnaby said, in a blessedly masculine and unseductive manner. “What did I say?”

“Bungled, sir.”

“Aaahhh …” It was a long, slow hiss of satisfaction. “Nearly, Troy. A good guess. Nearly … but not quite.”

Bangles? thought the sergeant. Burgled? Boggled? Buggered? (Back to Doris and Daphne.) Or how about bonbons? Hey … how about bonbons? The bloke was eating sweets all through the play. Or there was borrowed. That fitted. The razor was borrowed. All the dead man’s clothes were hired. Wasn’t much like bungled, though. Fumbled. Something had been fumbled. That was more like it. Meant practically the same thing, after all. As no revelation appeared to be forthcoming from the horse’s mouth, Troy decided to settle for “fumbled.” He looked across at Barnaby, who seemed to have gone into a trance. He was staring over Troy’s left shoulder, the light of intelligence quite absent from his eyes.

But his mind was whirring. Like a chess player, he moved his figures around. On the black squares (the wings, the stage, the dressing rooms) and on the white (the lighting box, the clubroom, the auditorium). He forged likely and unlikely alliances and guessed at possible repercussions. He imagined mirrored reflections of his suspects, hoping that way to surprise a familiar face in secret revelatory relaxation. And gradually, by way of improbable juxtaposition, glancing insights, and hard-won recall of certain conversations, he arrived at an eminently workable hypothesis. It fitted very well. It made perfect sense and was psychologically sound. It explained (almost) everything. There was only one slight snag. The way things stood at the moment, what it hypothesized (who had murdered Esslyn Carmichael and why) could not possibly be anywhere near the truth. He muttered that fact aloud.

Near what truth? wondered Troy, still smarting over his inability to figure out Barnaby’s earlier insights. Now, the chief was rumbling again. Rumble, rumble. Mutter, mutter.

“There had to be an audience, Troy. We’ve been looking at things from quite the wrong angle. It wasn’t a hazard—it was an essential. So that everyone could see what he was doing.”

“What, Carmichael?”

“No, of course not. Use your nous.” Barnaby picked up a ball-point and started scribbling. “And don’t look so affronted,” he continued, not looking up. “Think, man!”

While Troy thought, Barnaby reflected minutely on the times and the names and positions he had jotted down. If everyone was where they said they were at the times they said they were, doing what they said they were doing, then he was up a creek. So someone was lying. Fair enough. You expected murderers to lie. But when you had a theater full of people prepared to stand by what was, after all, the evidence of their own eyes and back him up then you were in a real bind. Especially when two of the eyes were your own.

But he knew he was right. He knew in his blood and in his bones. Over the years he had come to this point in a case too many times to be mistaken. Details might be unclear, practicalities elusive, methodology right up the Swanee, but he knew. The backs of his hands prickled, his neck in the stuffy, overheated office crawled with cold. He knew and could do nothing.

“Oh, fuck it, Troy!” The sergeant jumped as Barnaby’s fist hit the desk. “I’m bloody hemmed in. Nobody can be in two places at once … can they?”

“No, sir,” replied Troy, feeling for once on pretty safe ground. He was not displeased to see Barnaby foxed. You could put up with just so much swaggering about. Now, there were two of them without a bloody clue. He watched his chief’s fierce frown and tightly clamped jaw. Any minute now, the little brown bottle would appear. And here it was. The chief inspector shook out two indigestion tablets and chased them down with cold coffee. Then he sat and stared at his piece of paper for so long that the neat black letters became meaningless.

“This is where,” he said to Troy, “if I were a religious man, I should start praying for a miracle.”

And—such is the wickedly unfair tilt of things in a world where a monk can spend his life on his knees and never get a nibble—for Tom Barnaby, sometimes profane, moderately decent, frequent faller by the wayside, the miracle occurred. Buzz, buzz. He picked up the phone. It was David Smy. Barnaby listened for a moment, responded “You’re quite sure?” and replaced the receiver.

“Troy,” he said, presenting an awesome countenance. “When all this is over, remind me to send a hefty check to a worthwhile cause.”

“Why’s that then, chief?”

“Strokes of luck like this must be paid for, sergeant. Otherwise whoever’s sending them gets annoyed.”

“So what did they say? Whoever it was.”

“If you remember,” said Barnaby with a smile so broad it seemed to touch his ears, “David thought there was something odd about the tray he took on.”

“But he described it all and there wasn’t.”

“Quite right. But you’ll recall from his statement that as it was a personal prop he gave the tray a quick look-see about the five. Now, the razor that Young supplied and that the murdered man used to cut his throat had a mother-of-pearl design of flowers and leaves on one side of the handle and a little line of silver rivets on the reverse. The reason David Smy thought there was something odd when he entered the wings with it lying sunny-side down on his tray was because he noticed the rivets.”

“So?”

‘‘When he gave the tray the once-over just before eight, the rivets were not there.”

“Then”—Troy picked up the inspector’s excitement— “there were two?”

“There were two.”

“So all our problems with the time … ?”

“Gone. The whole thing’s wide open. It could have been tinkered with any time between when Deidre checked it and ten o’clock, when David took it on.”

“So … whoever it was left the substitute, took the tape off, and slipped the original back in his or her own good time.”

“Precisely. I’d thought of that option, of course, but assumed no one would dare risk leaving the tray on the props table minus the razor for more than a few minutes, even with the wings dark. But, as we now see, they didn’t have to.”

“So you’re no longer boxed in, sir?” Troy struggled hard not to sound peevish. He didn’t wish to appear mean-spirited, but really, the way information fell into some people’s laps was beyond a joke. Then he recalled that some of the kudos at the end of a successful case always fell on the bag-carrier and cheered up. “So we’ve got a full house, then? Anybody could have done it?”

“I think we’ll have to except Avery Phillips. He didn’t come out of the box till after the murder. But apart from him, yes … anybody.” He got up, suddenly full of vim and vigor, and grabbed his coat. “I’m going to sort out a warrant. Get the car round.”

“We looking for the other razor, sir?”

“Yes. I expect whoever it is has had the sense to chuck it by now, but you never know. We might strike lucky.” By the time Barnaby returned from Superintendent Penrose’s office, Troy, sub-Burberry tightly belted, had brought the car around.

“Where to first, chief?”

“We’ll start at the top and work our way down.”

Deidre opened the front door of the house and stepped inside. It was eerily quiet. She had always thought of her father’s presence as a silent one; now, she realized it instigated many subtle sounds. The creak of his armchair, the soft rub of his clothes against the furniture, the snatched papery rustle of his breath. She took off her coat and Sunny’s leash and hung them in the dingy hall, then walked to the kitchen, where she stood uncertainly, looking at the dishes that had been sitting in the sink, gravied and custard-streaked, for the past four days. They looked as much a fixture as the spotted chrome taps and grubby roller towel. Best to keep busy, the medical social worker had said, and Deidre knew this was good advice. Even as she stood there, she saw herself sweeping and polishing and dusting. Hanging gay new curtains, placing a bright geranium on the windowsill. But vivid as these pictures were, they paled beside a concomitant weight of ennui so great that after a few more minutes attached to the hearth rug, she began to believe she would never move again.

Sunny, who had gone in for the most dashing leaps and runs when they were out, had already sensed the situation and now sat quietly at her feet. Deidre picked up her copy of Uncle Vanya, interleaved and crammed with production ideas and sketches for the set. One of the nicest things during her stay with the Barnabys had happened on Wednesday morning, when she had discussed the theater for hours with Cully, at first tentatively, then, as her companion responded with great interest, more and more enthusiastically. They had talked through lunch (extraordinarily inedible) and well into the afternoon, in fact right up to the time Deidre had had to leave for the hospital. She couldn’t understand now why she had ever thought Cully sneering and standoffish.

Sunny made a hopeful sound, stretching his lips in that strange manner that dogs have; half yawn, half grin. Deidre started guiltily. He had not eaten all day, and had made no complaint till now. There were three cans of meat and a large bag of Winalot in her bag, and she put some food on a plate, then filled his stone dish marked dog with clean water. She left the sound of steady lapping behind as she climbed the stairs.

In her father’s room she started automatically to make his bed, then stopped, sharply recalled to the complete pointlessness of her task. She looked around, a fall of green blanket in her arms, taking in the bottle of medicine and little bottles of pills on the bamboo table; the Bible open at the First Book of Kings showing an engraving of Elijah being delicately fed by ravens; two pieces of Turkish delight in a saucer.

Gradually, and with the deepest apprehension, she absorbed the full enormity of what had happened. Her father was not poorly or a little unstable or susceptible to queer turns. He had Alzheimer’s disease and was a danger to himself and others; the balance of his mind disturbed. Deidre had a sudden vision of some old-fashioned scales and an impersonal hand dishing out wholesome grains of sanity with a little brass scoop. They were white and clean like virgin sand. Into the other shallow metal saucer was poured a hot dark flux of irrationality until the saucer overflowed and the chaste pale granules were first swamped, then quite washed away, in the black froth of madness.

Deidre bowed her head. She swayed and momentarily fought for breath. But she did not sit down. And she did not cry. She stood for five full minutes in a tumult of misery and sorrow, then started to strip the bed and fold up the sheets and blankets. She opened the window and, as the cold air rushed in, realized for the first time how stuffy the room was. Fearful of her father’s health once October had arrived, she had kept the window tightly closed. “That’ll blow the cobwebs away,” he would say when she opened it again in May. Having put the bedding in a neat pile, Deidre picked up the wastebasket and swept all bottles into it together with his carafe and glass. The Bible she snapped shut and replaced on the bookshelf.

She worked mechanically, under no illusion that her activities could even begin to ease, let alone transform, her situation. But (the social worker had been right in this respect) as she continued to go briskly from one simple task to the next, generating her own momentum, she became aware that the procedure did offer some slight degree of comfort. And—even more important—was getting her though the period she had dreaded most, her first time alone in Mortimer Street.

She shook the two rugs in the backyard and noticed how threadbare the dark red-and-blue Turkish one was. She rolled it up and pushed it in the trash bin. Then she carried the bedding downstairs and put it by the front door. She would have the sheets washed, the blankets cleaned, and give the lot to the Salvation Army. She cleaned and polished for the next hour, until the room shone and smelled fragrantly of beeswax and Windowlene. She replaced the single mat and put Mr. Tibbs’s tortoiseshell hairbrush and comb and leather cuff-link box away in the chest of drawers. Then she leaned against the windowsill and sighed with something like satisfaction.

The room looked clean, neat, and would have appeared to a casual visitor quite impersonal. Deidre completed her task by dusting the pictures. Two Corot reproductions, a text (trust in the lord) garlanded with pansies and ears of wheat and framed in burnt pokerwood, and “The Light of the World.” Deidre flicked the dust from the first three while they were in situ, then took down the Holman Hunt and studied it pensively. The figure that had given comfort to her childish hurts and sorrows and had seemed to stand loving guard when she slept now appeared nothing more than a sentimental dreamer, a paper savior impotent and unreal, standing in his flood of insipid yellow light. She fought against the pity that always gripped her at the sight of the crown of thorns; she fought against insidious false comfort.

Running downstairs again, holding the picture away from her almost at arm’s length, Deidre hurried through the kitchen to the back garden and once more lifted the lid of the trash bin. She dropped “The Light of the World” inside and, replacing the cover, turned away immediately, as if that sad, calm, forgiving gaze might pierce the metal and catch her own. And she had no sooner gone back upstairs than the upbeat energy, the essential driving feeling that she was tackling a job well done, drained away. Now, looking at the poor denuded room with all traces of her father so firmly erased, Deidre was appalled. She was behaving as if he were dead. And as if his memory must always bring pain and never solace. She apologized aloud as if he could hear, and brought out his brush and comb and link box and replaced them on the bamboo table. Then she returned to the backyard and retrieved the painting.

She stood indecisive and shivering in the cold air, with “The Light of the World” in her hands. She did not want to take it back inside, but felt now that it was out of the question that it should be destroyed. In the end she put it in the shed, placing it carefully on an old enamel-topped table beside the earth-encrusted flowerpots, balls of green twine, and seed trays. She closed the door gently as she left, not wishing to advertise her presence and invoke Mrs. Higgins.

Deidre had only seen her neighbor once since Monday evening, when she had called in briefly to collect any mail. Mrs. Higgins had been all agog with many a “fancy” and “poor Mr. Tibbs—out of the blue like that.” Deidre had reacted tersely. “Out of the blue” had seemed to her an especially fatuous remark. Terrible things surely came out of the gray, or out of a deep, transforming black. At the realization that there would be no more little envelopes or lugubrious sighs and miserable forecasts when she arrived home from the Latimer, Deidre’s spirits lifted once more.

She returned to the kitchen, where Sunny, curled up in front of an empty grate, immediately got up and ran to meet her. She crouched down and buried her face in his sparkling cream and ginger ruff. Glancing at the mantelpiece, she realized there were three hours before she needed to leave for the Chekhov auditions. How slowly the clock seemed to be ticking. Of course, there was plenty to do. All those dishes, for a start. Perhaps Sunny might like another walk. And she still hadn’t unpacked her case. It occurred to Deidre suddenly how much time there seemed to be when you were unhappy. Perhaps this leaden comprehension that each minute must last for at least an hour was what people meant by loneliness. Time turning inward and then standing still. Well—she’d just have to get used to it and soldier on. She was turning on the hot-water faucet when the doorbell rang.

She decided not to go. It was probably one of her father’s so-called friends who had heard the news and, after cutting him dead for the past eighteen months, was now calling to see if there was anything he could do. Or Mrs. Higgins, dewlaps aquiver with curiosity. It wouldn’t be the Barnabys. Although warmly pressing her to stay, Joyce had left it that Deidre would get in touch if she wanted any further help. The bell rang again, and Sunny started to bark. Deidre dried her hands. Whoever it was, was not going away. She opened the front door. David Smy stood on the step clutching a bunch of flowers.

“Oh!” Deidre stepped back awkwardly. “David … What a … Come in … that is … come in. What a surprise. I mean, what a nice surprise …” She chattered nervously (no one from the company had ever visited her at home before) as she led him to the kitchen. On the threshold she remembered the state of the place, backed away, and opened the door of the sitting room.

“Please … sit down … how nice … how lovely to see you. Um … can I get you anything … some tea?”

“No thank you, Deidre. Not at the moment.”

David sat, as slowly and calmly as he did everything, on the Victorian button-backed nursing chair, and removed his corduroy cap. He had on a beautiful dark green soft tweed suit that Deidre had never seen before, and looked very smart. She wondered where on earth he was going. Then he stood up again, and Deidre fluttered to a halt somewhere between the piano and the walnut tallboy.

David’s flowers were long-stemmed apricot roses, the flowers shaped like immaculate candle flames. The florist had assured him that in spite of being scentless and unnaturally uniform, they were the finest in the shop and had been flown in from the Canaries only yesterday. David, starting as he meant to go on, had bought every bloom in the bucket (seventeen) at a cost of thirty-four pounds. Now, he held them out to Deidre, and she closed the gap between them, reaching out hesitantly.

“Thank you … that is kind. Actually, I’ve already been to the hospital, but I’ll be going again on Sunday. I’m sure my father will love them. I’ll just get a vase.”

“I don’t think you quite understand, Deidre.” David stopped her as she turned away. “The flowers are not for your father. They’re for you.”

“For … for me? But … I’m not ill…”

David smiled at this. He further narrowed the gap between them and bent upon her a look of such loving kindness that she all but burst into tears. Then he stretched out his green tweedy arm and drew her to him.

“Ohhh…” breathed Deidre, hope and disbelief shining equally in her eyes. “I didn’t… I didn’t know … I didn’t understand…”

She did weep then; little sobs of joy. Sunny, much concerned, started to whimper. “It’s all right.” She bent down and patted him. “Everything’s all right.”

“I didn’t know you had a dog.”

“It’s a long story. Shall I tell you? Perhaps while we have some tea—’’ She turned toward the door, but David drew her back.

“In a moment. I’ve been waiting a long time to do this. And we have the rest of our lives to have some tea.” And then he kissed her.

She nestled once more against his shoulder, and his arm tightened. It was not a white-feathered arm, and it was certainly not twelve feet tall, yet such was the feeling of exhilarating comfort, for a moment it seemed to Deidre that she might have been enclosed in a tightly furled wing.

Rosa sat in the middle of row D, feeling disappointed. She had been convinced there would be an “atmosphere” at the audition for Vanya. Surely the unseemly departure of the company’s previous leading man would mark the proceedings in some way? Slightly lowered tones perhaps; a nice hesitancy in putting oneself forward for the unexpectedly vacant title role. But no, everything was proceeding as usual. Actors striding on and off the stage, Harold pontificating, Deidre at her table. David Smy was in the back row next to his father with a piebald dog on his knee, and Kitty, who had had quite a bit of fun running away from Rosa with mock squeals of fright, was now leaning against the proscenium arch and sulking. She had come down not to read but to have a nice cozy chat with Nicholas, only to find him deep in conversation with Joycey’s showy daughter.

Joyce herself, hoping for the part of Marina, the elderly nurse, was waiting in the wings with Donald Everard. Clive, to everyone’s surprise, had cheekily taken to the stage to try for Telyegin. Boris, having just given Astrov’s “idle life” speech, was drinking Kanga’s piddle, and Riley rested on Avery’s bosom darting many a snappy glance over his shoulder at the dog in the back row, suspecting some planned territorial infringement.

When Clive had finished, Cully Barnaby stepped forward to read for Yelena, and Rosa sat up. No reason why the child shouldn’t make an attempt, of course. There was no denying that she was marginally nearer to the character’s age (twenty-six) than Rosa, or that, as a youngster, she’d had quite a little way with her onstage. Still … Rosa half settled back and waited, uneasy.

“You’re standing by the window,” called Harold. “You open it and talk, half looking out. From ‘my dear—don’t you understand’ … page two one five.”

Then Cully moved, not as Rosa had expected, toward the window at the back of the set, still in place from Amadeus, but right down to the footlights, where she pushed against an imaginary casement and leaned out, her lovely face stamped with irritated melancholy. She began to speak in a rich, sharp voice, vivid as an ache and not at all in the musical “Chekhovian” manner the CADS thought proper. Her anger flowed into the auditorium, powerful and bitter. Rosa, chilled to the marrow, felt her heart tumble out of its place and bounce against her ribs.

But Cully was hardly into the speech when two men appeared at the swing doors under the exit sign and walked, with measured tread, down the aisle. So unflurried and even was their stride (neither fast nor slow), so closely did the younger man emulate the bearing of his companion, that there was something almost comic in their sudden appearance. They might have been making an entrance in a musical comedy. Until you looked at the first one’s face.

Cully faltered, read one more line, stopped, and said, “Hello, Dad.”

“Well, really, Tom .. Harold got up. “Of all the times. We’re auditioning here. I hope this is important.”

“Extremely. Where are you going?” Tim had climbed out of his seat.

“To open some wine.”

“Sit down please. What I have to say won’t take long.” Tim sat down. “Perhaps everyone onstage and in the wings could come to the stalls. Save me screwing my neck around.”

Nicholas, Deidre, Joyce, and Cully clambered down from the stage. Donald Everard followed and slid into the seat next to his twin. The young detective in the raincoat sat on the steps leading from the stage, and Barnaby walked to the pass door at the end of row A, turned, and surveyed them all. Joyce, sitting next to her daughter, shivered as the cold, impersonal beam of her husband’s attention swept around the stalls. She felt suddenly alienated, and watched his profile tighten and become almost hawkish, with increasing feelings of distress. By the time he began to speak, she felt she was looking at a complete stranger. There was absolute quiet. Even Harold had fallen silent, though not for long, and Nicholas, innocent though he might be, thought, This is it, and experienced a thrill of alarm so strong it made him feel almost sick.

Barnaby began by saying, “I felt it only fair to keep you abreast with the current investigations pertaining to the Carmichael case.” What a tease, thought Boris. As if the police ever kept a suspect abreast of anything. Tom’s setting something up. ‘‘And I’d like to talk for a moment if I may about the character of the murdered man. It has always been my belief that an accurate assessment of the victim’s personality is the first step in an inquiry of this kind. Random killing apart, a man or woman is usually done away with because of what they think or believe or say or do. In other words, because of the sort of person they are.”

‘‘Well, I hope we’re not going to waste much time going over that,” interrupted Harold. “We all know what sort of person Esslyn was.”

“Do we? I know what the general opinion was. I went along with it myself—why not? Until now, I’d no reason to go into the matter in any detail. Oh, yes, we all knew what sort of person Esslyn was. Eminently fanciable, vain, strong-willed, solipsistic, a wow with the ladies. But when I tried to get to grips with this character, I found he simply wasn’t there. There were outward signs, of course. Certain narcissistic posturings and Casanovian pursuits, but beyond this … nothing. Now why should this be?”

“He was shallow,” said Avery. “Some people just are.”

“Perhaps. But there is always more to any one person than what they choose to reveal. So I asked questions and listened to the answers and examined my own perceptions a bit more closely, and gradually a very different picture began to emerge. First, perhaps, we can look into the question of women. There is no doubt that he was loved, and very truly loved, by one.” His glance fell on Rosa, and her mouth folded tightly into a controlled line. “She accepted him for what he was. Or what she thought he was.”

“There’s no thought about it!” cried Rosa, her voice raw. “I knew him.”

“But who else ever cared? When I tried to pin this down, I got varying replies. Esslyn himself naturally fostered the illusion that they all cared. That, like Don Juan, he had no sooner had his way with one blossom than he moved on to pluck the next, leaving a trail of broken hearts. But I could find no actual proof of this. It was all hearsay, very vague. I did, however, come across one or two interesting comments. ‘Nothing ever lasted very long for Esslyn,’ and ‘They used to get fed up and drift off.’ They, you’ll notice—not he. Certainly when he finally did break up his marriage for a pretty girl, she’d left him within the month. And his second wife had no love for him at all.”

Kitty’s eyes, already quite tarnished with crossness, glowered. Barnaby guessed at a recent visit to Mr. Ounce.

“And why was it such a piece of cake for her to lead this man, who supposedly had the pick of the bunch, to the altar by simply lying about a pregnancy?”

There was an audible intake of breath from several people at this revelation, and Rosa made a thick, choking sound. The Everards whickered like excited horses.

“To move on to his position as an actor. In this company, he was top dog. A big fish in a little pond—”

“I beg leave to take issue there, Tom. This theater is—”

“Please.” Harold subsided reluctantly. “A little pond. True, he had leading roles, but he did not have the talent, the perception, or the humility to make anything of them. Neither did he have the ambition to look for pastures new. There are bigger groups in Slough or Uxbridge where he might have stretched himself, but he never showed the slightest inclination to do so. Perhaps because he may not have found another director quite so amenable.”

“Amenable!” cried Harold. “Me?”

“There are many people I know who regarded his refusal to take direction as revealing supreme confidence. I disagree. It is putting yourself in a director’s hands, trying different ways of working, taking risks, that shows an actor’s confidence. And I gradually came to the conclusion that ambition and self-assurance were two things that Esslyn Carmichael had very little of.”

He got a lot of puzzled looks at that, but none of actual disbelief. More than one person seemed to find the idea feasible. Rosa, while looking a little mystified, also nodded.

“And yet …” Barnaby left his position at the pass door and walked slowly up the aisle. Every head followed. “There were certain signs that this aspect of his personality was undergoing some sort of change. The feeling I picked up during questioning was that over the last few months, he had become openly argumentative, querying or defying Harold and castigating the only other actor in the company who was any serious threat.” Nicholas looked rather pleased at that remark, and gave Cully a wide smile. “Now,” continued Barnaby, “why should that be?”

The company recognized the question as purely rhetorical. No one spoke. In fact, two people looked so deeply disturbed you could have been forgiven for thinking that they might never speak again. “I believe that once we know the answer to that, we shall know why he was murdered. And once we know why, we shall know who.” Troy found his mouth was dry. At first guarded and resentful of his chief’s deductive progress, he had sat outside the circle with a slightly defiant air, knowing his place, showing his detachment disdainfully. Now, in spite of himself totally gripped by the thrust of Barnaby’s narrative, he leaned forward, caught in the storyteller’s net.

“I’d like to jump to the first night of Amadeus, and the drama within the drama. I’m sure you all know by now that rumor and misinformation were running rife, and that Kitty and Nicholas were both attacked by Esslyn during the course of the evening.” At this indication that his previous declaration had been validated, Nicholas looked even more pleased. “This naturally put them high on the list of suspects. In any case, I’m afraid the widow of a murdered man is usually thrust into this unenviable position. Kitty had the motive—he’d discovered she was unfaithful, and once the baby had ‘disappeared’ would perhaps have turned her out. And she had the perfect opportunity—”

“I didn’t kill him!” shouted Kitty. “With all the witnesses I’d got to physical cruelty, I could’ve got a divorce. And maintenance.”

“That sort of procedure can take a long time, Kitty. And not always end to your advantage.”

“I never touched the bloody thing.”

“Certainly your prints were not on the razor, but then neither were anybody else’s until the dead man picked it up. But then, the most inept delinquent knows enough to wipe the handle of a murder weapon clean. Even so, all my instincts set themselves against this simple solution.” Kitty and Rosa engaged glances. Triumph and disappointment sizzled back and forth.

“I also decided that David, Colin, and Deidre were in the clear, and in each case for pretty much the same reasons. I’ve known them all a long time, and although I’d never be foolish enough to say that none of them are capable of murder, I very much doubt if they were capable of this particular murder. But of course they did have the opportunity. And this was my real stumbling block. Because, until earlier this evening, it seemed all the wrong people had the opportunity and all the right people had none.”

“What happened earlier this evening, then?” asked Harold, who had been quieter for longer than anyone present could ever remember.

“I discovered there were two razors.”

The remark fell into the silence like a stone. Ripples of emotion spread and spread. Some faces looked eager, some were flushed and serious, one turned ghastly pale. Avery, noticing, thought, Oh, God—he knows something. I was right. Then, not caring whether or not he was publicly rebuffed, he took his lover’s hand and squeezed it; once for comfort and twice for luck. Tim didn’t even notice.

“This, of course, opened up the whole thing. Almost anyone could have taken it, left the substitute, removed the tape when it was convenient, and then slipped the original back.”

“Who’s the ‘almost,’ Tom?” asked Nicholas.

“Avery. He didn’t return to the wings till the play was over. Now I knew how,” continued Barnaby, “I was left with the two whys. Why should anyone wish to murder Esslyn in the first place and, much more puzzling, why choose to do it in front of over a hundred people? Frankly, I still haven’t understood the second, but I have become quite sure about the first.”

Now, he retraced his steps and, once again, every head, as if yoked together on one invisible string, turned. He leaned back against the thrust of the stage, hands in pockets, and paused. The old ham, observed Cully admiringly. And I thought I got it all from me mum.

“Putting aside the motives we first thought of—namely, passion and money—we are left with a third, equally powerful and, I believe, the correct one. Esslyn Carmichael was killed because of something he knew. Now, our investigation has proved that, unless he’s been ordering his affairs with special cunning, there have been no large sums of money coming his way, and that seems to rule out using this knowledge for financial coercion. But a blackmailer’s demands can be other than monetary. He can put sexual pressure on people, or he can use his secret to obtain power. I thought the first, as he was so newly married and, according to his imperceptive lights, quite satisfied, was unlikely. Yet how much more unlikely, given my understanding of his character as lacking ambition and confidence, was the latter. And yet I became more and more certain that it was in this area of investigation that my solution lay.

“Like all of you, I’m sure I have thought of this murder as a theatrical one. Although on this dreadful evening reality crept upon the stage in certain unpleasant ways, we all knew, until the very last minute, that we were watching a play. Esslyn wore makeup and costume, he spoke lines, and executed moves that he had rehearsed. Whoever killed him was a member of the company. It seemed so plain that everything centered on the Latimer that I hardly took into account the rest of Esslyn’s life—the larger part of it, after all. It was Kitty who reminded me that from nine till five Monday to Friday Esslyn Carmichael was an accountant.”

At this point Tim covered his chalk-white countenance with his hands and lowered his head. Avery put an arm around his shoulders. As he did so, his mind became crowded with bathetic images. He saw himself visiting Tim in prison every week, even if that meant for years. He would bake a cake with a file inside. Or smuggle in a rope beneath his poncho. At the thought of prison food, Avery felt his tummy start to chum. How would Tim survive?

“If you remember, Kitty”—Avery forced his attention back to what Tom was saying—“I asked you if you had noticed any change recently in your husband’s routine, and you said he had gone to work the Saturday morning before he died. I don’t know, Rosa, if you recall … ?”

“Never.” The first Mrs. Carmichael shook her head. “He was quite firm on that. Said he had enough of facts and figures during the week.”

“He had gone to the office, Kitty told me, to ‘call something in.’ A strange phrase, surely. One you’d be more likely to hear from the lips of a gambler than an accountant. Or a debt collector. Because that’s what the phrase means. You ‘call in’ a debt. And I believe this is what Esslyn was about to do. What was owed and for how long we don’t know. But he had apparently decided that it had gone on long enough.”

“But, Tom,” interrupted Joyce, her voice harsh and nervous, “you said he was killed because he knew something.”

“And also”—Nicholas took advantage of the breach— “owing someone money isn’t much fun, but it’s not the end of the world. Certainly not worth killing for. I mean, the worst that can happen is you get taken to court.”

“Oh, there was much more than that at stake. To discover precisely what, we have to go back to the point I reached earlier and ask again what happened several months ago—six, to be exact—to give Esslyn the confidence to start throwing his weight about?”

Barnaby paused then, and the silence lay ripe with suspicion and stabbed by startled looks. At first dense, it slowly became more lightsome, gathering point and clarity. Barnaby was never sure who first fingered the Everards. Certainly it was not him. But, as if telepathically, first one head, then another, pointed in their direction. Nicholas spoke.

“He got himself a pair of toadies.”

“I see nothing wrong—” rushed in Clive Everard. “Neither do I,” said Donald.

“—in becoming friendly with—”

“—in devotedly admiring—”

“—even venerating—”

“—someone of Esslyn’s undoubted talents—”

“—and remarkable skills.”

“You bloody hypocrites.” Barnaby’s voice was so quiet that for a moment people glanced around, uncertain from where that damning indictment had arisen. Troy knew, and his adrenaline shot up. Barnaby walked to the edge of the row in which the brothers were sitting and said still softly, “You malicious, wicked, meddling, evil-minded bastards.”

Pasty-faced, their nostrils pinched in tight with alarm, the Everards shrank closer together. Kitty gazed at them with dawning horror, Cully, unaware that she was gripping Nicholas’s arm very tight, half rose from her seat. Avery’s expression of misery was suddenly touched with a glow of hope. Joyce felt she would choke on the suspense, and Harold was nodding. His head wagged back and forth as if it were loose on his shoulders, like the head on those gross Chinese Buddhas found sometimes in antique shops.

“You’ve no call to speak to us like that,” cried one of the Everards, recovering fast.

“Since when has it been against the law to admire an actor?”

>“Admire.” Barnaby almost spat out the word, and the volume of his voice increased tenfold. He pushed his angry face close to theirs. “You didn’t admire him. You led him around like a bear with a ring through its nose. And he, poor bugger, never having had a friend in his life, thought no doubt that this was what friendship was. Court toadies? Quite the reverse. Whatever that might be.”

“Eminences grises?” suggested Boris.

“And directly responsible for his death.’’

At this, Donald Everard flew out of his seat. “You heard that!” he screamed, flapping his arms at the rest of the gathering. “That’s slander!”

“We shall sue!” shrieked his brother. “You can’t go around saying we killed Esslyn and get away with it.”

“We’ve got witnesses!”

“All these people!”

“I didn’t say you had killed him,” said Barnaby, stepping back from these hysterics with an expression of deep distaste. “I said I believed you were responsible for his death.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“Not quite. As you’ll realize if you’ll stop flinging yourselves about and settle down to think about it.” When they had reluctantly, with many an injured cluck and toss of a gel-stiffened crest, reseated themselves, Barnaby carried on. “So we now have a puppet, a hollow man with someone pulling his strings. And what do they do, oh so subtly, so slyly, these puppeteers? At first they encourage intransigence. I can just hear it … ‘You’re not going to take that, are you? You’re the leading man … don’t you realize how powerful you are? They couldn’t do anything without you.’ But after a few weeks that rather modest mischief starts to pall. They’ve gone about as far as they can go with that one. So they look around for something more interesting, and I suspect it was about this time that Esslyn shared with them the information that was to instigate their grand design and lead directly to his death.

“In fact, it was something my sergeant said in the office today that pointed me in the right direction.” His sergeant, suddenly in the spotlight, attempted to look intelligent, modest, and invaluable. He also managed a surreptitious wink at Kitty, who promptly winked back. “He’s given to making feeble, atrociously unfunny jokes,” continued Barnaby (Troy immediately looked less intelligent), “the latest being a play on the word ‘putsch,’ but, as these things sometimes do, it reminded me of something very similar from a recent interview. I don’t know if you remember, Kitty… ?”

Suddenly addressed, Kitty, who was still ogling Troy, blushed and said, “Sorry?”

“You told me that Esslyn spoke to you of the dramatic effect he intended to make on the first night.”

“That’s right, he did.”

“And because he was admiring himself in his costume, you assumed that he referred to his own transformation.” “No—you said that, Tom. When you explained that funny French bit.” Barnaby almost repeated the phrase, making it a question, and Kitty said, “That’s right.”

“Are you sure?”

Kitty looked around. Something was amiss. People were staring at her. She suddenly felt cold. What had she done that they should stare so?

“Yes, Tom, quite sure. Why?”

“Because what I just said was not the same phrase.” So near though, and it had taken him two days to get it. “What I said—what Esslyn said—was ‘coup d’etat.’ A seizing of power.”

“Oh, God—” The fragment of sound from Deidre was almost inaudible, but David immediately handed the dog to his father and took her hand.

“Twice a phrase was misheard or misinterpreted. And in both instances the correct readings would have provided vital clues.”

“What was the other, Tom?” asked Boris, the only member of the group who seemed relaxed enough to speak.

“Esslyn tried to tell us with his dying breath of the plan that had undone him. Only one word, and that word was thought to be ‘bungled.’ But I performed a simple experiment earlier today, and I’m now quite sure the word in fact was ‘Uncle.’ And that if time had been granted him the next word would have been ‘Vanya.’ Isn’t that right, Harold?” Harold’s head continued to nod like a Chinese Buddha.

‘‘Did you not pick up the razor as you went through the wings, remove the tape in the interval, wipe the handle with your yellow silk handkerchief, and put it back on the tray? And while you had it in your pocket, did you not put this in its place?” He produced an old-fashioned razor from his pocket and held it aloft.

There was a terrible pause. Everyone looked at each other, shocked, excited, horrified by this revelation. Joyce covered her eyes with her hands and gave a muffled cry.

‘‘Yes, that’s right, Tom,” said Harold pleasantly.

‘‘And with an audience prepared to swear you never left your seat, you would be in the clear.”

‘‘Certainly that’s how I envisaged it. And it all seemed to work terribly well. I can’t imagine how you spotted the substitution.” Barnaby told him. “Imagine that,” continued Harold ruefully. “And I always thought David rather a slow-witted boy.”

David did not seem to take offense at this, but his father glared at the back of Harold’s head, and Deidre flushed angrily.

“I shall have to have a firm word with Doris about letting you root among my private possessions.”

“She had no choice in the matter. We served a warrant.”

“Hm. We’ll see about that. Well, Tom, I expect now you know how, you’d like to know why?” Barnaby indicated that he would indeed, and Harold rose from his seat and started pacing in his turn, thumbs hooked into his vest pocket, the DA making his closing speech.

“To elucidate this rather annoying matter, we have to go back some considerable time. In fact, fifteen years, to the building of the Latimer and the formation of my present company. Money was short. We had a grant from the council, but not nearly enough for something that was to become the jewel in Causton’s crown. And when that drunken old sot Latimer dropped dead, his successor was not nearly so sympathetic. I believe he had leftish tendencies—and cut our grant. No doubt he would have preferred to see a bingo hall. So almost from the beginning, we had cash-flow problems. And naturally one had to keep up a certain lifestyle. An impresario can’t go round in a Ford Escort dressed like a shop assistant.” Harold broke here, having reached the top of the stairs, wheeled dramatically, took a deep breath, and continued.

“I have an import-export business, as you may know, and flattered myself that the hours I worked yielded very satisfactory returns. I kept my domestic expenses to a minimum and put my profits where they showed—that is, about my person and into the Latimer productions. However, healthy as these profits usually were, a huge percentage of them went to the Customs and Excise sharks for the VAT on import duty, and another great slice to the Inland Revenue. Obviously I resented this, especially when the scrap I got back in the form of a grant was slashed. So I decided to even the situation out a little. Of course, I intended to pay some tax and a proportion of the VAT required—after all, I’m not a criminal—but a judicious rearrangement of the figures saved me, in that first year, several hundred pounds, most of which went into The Wizard of Oz, our opening production. I don’t know if you remember it, Tom?”

“A splendid show.”

“Of course, when Esslyn prepared my accounts, I expected him to recognize my sleight of hand, but I was sure, as the company’s star, he would appreciate the necessity for such a procedure. However, to my amazement, he said nothing. Just submitted them as usual. Naturally I had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, no one wants an accountant so incompetent he can’t spot a necessary juggle or two. On the other, it augured very well for the future. And so it proved. I kept back a little more every year—several thousand when I bought the Morgan— and every year no comment was made. But do you know what, Tom?”

Harold had come to rest near Barnaby. His head, which had been doing no more than gently bob in time to his movements, now began to jiggle and shake alarmingly. “He had known what I was doing all the time. He had known and said nothing. Can you imagine anything more deceitful?”

Barnaby, facing the murderer of Esslyn Carmichael, thought yes, he could imagine one or two things more deceitful, actually, but just said, “When did you discover this?”

“Last Saturday afternoon. I’d just got in from being interviewed at the theater. He rang and asked if he could come over. Doris was out shopping, so we had the place to ourselves. He didn’t beat about the bush. Just said he was taking over direction at the Latimer starting with Uncle Vanya, and making an announcement to that effect after the curtain call Monday night. I said it was out of the question, he produced all these figures and said I could either step down or go to prison. I immediately spotted a third alternative, which I lost no time in carrying out. I got the duplicate razor from a shop in Uxbridge on the Monday morning. I knew Deidre’s routine and that everything would have been checked long before the five. Esslyn never touched props, so I knew he wouldn’t be likely to spot the substitution. I simply picked up the original as I went through the wings and, in the interval, took off the tape—”

“Where was this?”

“Well, I popped into the actors’ loo, but Esslyn and his cronies were there. So I just stepped outside the stage door for a minute on my way to the dressing rooms to give them all a rollicking. Then, going back, I made the switch again. It only took a second. I used Doris’s flower knife, it’s very sharp. Simple.”

Harold gave everyone a delighted smile, squinting at each face in turn and gloating a little in his cleverness. His beard had lost its clean, sculptural outline, and now had a disordered, almost herbaceous air.

“I knew, of course, Esslyn hadn’t worked it out all by himself, especially when he owned up to sending that silly book. It was supposed to be a hint, he said. I was involved in ‘fishy’ business, you see. And a cookbook because I was ‘cooking the books.’ Well, really, he could never have thought of anything so subtle to save his life. I knew where that had come from, all right. And all the fifth-column work at rehearsals to make me seem incompetent, so the takeover would be more acceptable.”

The Everards, trying to register self-righteousness and lofty detachment, merely looked as if they wished they were a thousand miles away. The rest of the company expressed surprised disgust, excitement, amusement, and, in two cases (Deidre and Joyce) shades of pity. Troy got up from his position on the steps and crossed the stage. Harold started to speak again.

“You do understand, don’t you, that I had no choice? This”—he made a great open-armed gesture gathering in his actors, the theater, all of the past, and triumphs yet to come—“is my life.”

“Yes,” said Barnaby, “I do see that.”

“Well, I must congratulate you, Tom.” Harold held out his hand briskly. “And I can’t say I’m sorry that all this has been cleared up. No doubt it would have come out sooner or later, but it’s nice to start a new season with a clean slate. And I can assure you no hard feelings—at least on my part. And now, I’m afraid I must ask you to excuse me”—the hand returned, unshaken, to his side—“I must get on. We’ve an awful lot to get through tonight. Come along, Deidre. Chop-chop.”

No one moved. Tom Barnaby stood irresolute, opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. He had arrested many criminals in his time, quite a few of them for murder, but he had never been faced with one who had confessed, offered to shake hands, then turned to go about his business. Or one who was so obviously mad.

“Harold ..

Harold turned, frowning. “You can see I’m tied up here, Barnaby. I’ve been reasonable so far, I’m sure you’ll agree—”

“I want you to come with us.”

“What—now?”

“That’s right, Harold.”

“Out of the question, I’m afraid. I must get Vanya cast tonight.”

Barnaby felt Troy move, and put a restraining hand on the sergeant’s arm. Apart from Barnaby’s own sensibilities, which made dragging a demented, possibly screaming man out of a building and into a car a task he would hardly relish, there was the fact that his wife and daughter were present. Not to mention Deidre, who must have had more than enough of this sort of thing already. Harold was now standing waving his arms about urgently in the center of the stage. No one laughed. Barnaby prayed for inspiration, and caught Joyce’s eye. Her face looked withdrawn, almost alarmed. Barnaby had never seen his “closing in look,” and had no idea how fearsome it could be. He allowed his expression to soften and saw his wife respond, warmth come back into her cheeks. Then he noticed a newspaper lying on her lap, The Stage and Television Today, and silently sent his thanks.

“Harold,” he repeated, moving toward the director, then gently touching his arm. “The press are waiting.” “The press.” Harold repeated the honeyed words, then his brow darkened. “That potbellied idiot from the Echo…”

“No, no. The real press. The Times, The Independent, The Guardian. Michael Billington.”

“Michael Billington.” The blaze of hope in Harold’s eyes dazzled. “Oh, Tom.” Harold placed his hand on the chief inspector’s arm, and Barnaby felt the weight of his exultation. “Is it really true?”

“Yes,” said Barnaby, his voice rough.

“At last! I knew it would come. … I knew they’d remember me.” Harold gazed wildly around. His face was white with triumph, and saliva, like a bunch of tiny crystal grapes, hung on his lips. He allowed Barnaby to take his arm and guide him down the steps leading from the stage. Halfway up the aisle, he stopped. “Will there be pictures, Tom?”

“I … expect so.”

“Do I look all right?”

Barnaby looked away from the shining countenance disfigured by lunacy. “You look fine.”

“I should have my hat!”

Avery got up and collected Harold’s succubus and silently handed it to him. Harold put on the hat at a grotesque angle, the tail hanging over one ear; then, satisfied, continued his progress to the exit.

Troy, a few steps ahead, opened and hooked back one of the double doors and held aside the heavy crimson curtain. Harold paused on the threshold, then turned and stood for a moment to take a last look at his kingdom. He held his head a little to one side and appeared to be listening intently. On his face memory stirred, and an expression of the most intense longing appeared in his crazed eyes. He seemed to hear, from far away, a trumpet call. Then, still touched by the magic of death and dreams, he walked away. The heavy crimson curtain fell, and the rest was silence.