Death Of A Hollow Man Page 16

  One scene-of-crime man arrived closely followed by Bill Davidson, untimely wrenched from his Masonic revels. After a briefing, they went about their business, working through the men’s dressing room first and releasing it for occupation. Cully took her mother home, Esslyn left for the county morgue, and Barnaby called for the Everards.

  Clive and Donald came prancing in, their eyes aglow with anticipation, trailing clouds of schadenfreude. They were still made up, and their pointilliste complexions were the peculiar tea-rose pink of old-fashioned corsets. Barnaby chose to see them together, knowing their habit of egging each other on to ever more indiscreet and racy revelations. Now, preening and clucking like a couple of cassowaries, they circled the two chairs cautiously a couple of times before perching. They stared beady-eyed at Sergeant Troy and his notebook, and he stared boldly but uneasily back.

  The sergeant liked men to be men and women to be glad of it. Here was a pair he couldn’t place at all. He always boasted he could tell a faggot a mile off, but he wasn’t at all sure about this particular combo. He decided they had probably been neutered at an early age and, having pinned them down to his satisfaction, heard Barnaby ask if they could think of anyone who would wish to harm the dead man and flipped over to a new page.

  “Quite honestly,” said Clive Everard, taking a keen, deep breath, “it’d take less time to tell you who wouldn’t wish to harm him. I shouldn’t think there’s anyone in the company hasn’t come up against Esslyn at some time and been the worse for it.”

  “If you could be a little more specific.”

  “If it’s specific you want—” They exchanged glances glittering with spite. “Why not start with Deidre. He was telling this wonderful story in the dressing room—”

  “—positively hilarious—”

  “About her father—”

  “Laughter and applause—”

  “And suddenly there she was in the doorway. She must have overheard Esslyn call the old man senile—”

  “Which of course he is.”

  “But d’you think she’ll admit it? Absentminded … disoriented … poorly …”

  “Poorly,” cackled Donald. “So what more natural than that she had a stab at getting her own back. Oops … Freudian slip there. Sorry.” He didn’t look sorry. His smile was as bright as a new penny as he added, “And of course who would have a better opportunity?”

  “This happened when she called the quarter?” asked Barnaby, recalling Deidre’s distressed appearance as he had passed through the wings.

  “That’s right. Would you care to hear the story?” Clive added politely.

  “No,” said Barnaby. “Anyone else?” Then, when they appeared to be savoring a multitude of possibilities: “What about Nicholas?”

  “Ahhh, you’ve snuffed out that little contretemps. Esslyn’d just discovered that his little kitten was having an affair.’’

  “And I’m afraid,” murmured Donald, looking with shy regret at Sergeant Troy, “that it was rather our fault.”

  “Not that we thought he’d react anything like he did.”

  “Heaven forbid.”

  “I mean, his complacency is legendary.” “Undentable.”

  “So who,” asked Barnaby, “was she supposed to be having an affair with?”

  “Well, we heard from Rosa who got it from Boris who got it from Avery who got it from Nicholas that it was David Smy.”

  “And where did Nicholas get it from?”

  “My dear, apparently he actually saw them,” cried Donald. “Going at it like the clappers in Tim’s lighting box.”

  Barnaby supposed stranger things had happened. Himself, he would not have thought that Kitty, whose winsome appearance masked, he felt sure, a self-serving duplicitous little nature, would have fancied the rather stolid David. Mind you, if she was looking for a change, no one could have been a greater contrast to Esslyn.

  “And as he was our friend,” said Donald with an unctuous wriggle, “we felt he ought to know.”

  “So we told him.”

  “In the middle of a performance?”

  “Well, you know what an old pro he is … was. Nothing fazed him.” No need to ask how Barnaby knew precisely when. Act II spoke for itself. “Or so we thought.” “But my God—the effect!”

  “We didn’t take his ego into account, you see. He’s like Harold. Sees himself as a prince … or a king. And Kitty belonged to him. No one else was allowed to touch.” “Lese-majeste. ”

  “He went white, didn’t he, Clive?”

  “Quite white.”

  “And his eyes blazed. It was really frightening. Like being a messenger in one of those Greek plays.”

  “Where you hand over the bad news, then they take you outside and rearrange your innards with a toasting fork.”

  “He got hold of my arm. I’ve still got the marks, look.” Donald rolled back his sleeve. “And he said who?”

  “Just the one word, ‘who?’ ”

  “And I looked at his face and I looked at my arm and I thought, Well I’m not going to be the one to tell him who.”

  “Friendship can be taken just so far.”

  “Absolutely,” said Barnaby, ignoring his nausea and giving an encouraging smile. “So … ?”

  “So I said,” continued Donald, “better ask Nicholas. And before I could say another word—”

  “Before either of us could say another word—”

  “He’d stormed off. And I never had a chance to add, “ ‘He’s the one who knows.’ ”

  “And we realized once we’d got down to the dressing rooms that Esslyn’d got hold of the wrong end of the stick and thought that Nico was actually the man!”

  “And you didn’t feel like disabusing him?”

  “The place was packed, Tom.” Clive sounded reproving, if not scandalized. “You don’t want everyone knowing your business.”

  Even Troy, so impassive in his role of bag-carrier that suspects occasionally thought he had entered a period of hibernation, choked back an astonished laugh at this astounding example of doublethink. The Everards turned and studied him carefully. Clive spoke.

  “He’s not writing all this down, is he?”

  Deidre ran on. And on. She seemed to have been running for hours. Her legs and feet ached, and a savage wind repeatedly plastered strips of soaking-wet hair over her eyes and mouth. She felt, from the soreness of her throat and totally clogged mucous membranes, that she must be crying, but so much water was pouring down her cheeks that it was impossible to be sure. Her father’s now-sodden coat, still clutched to her bosom, felt as heavy as lead. She peeled her hair away from her face for the hundredth time and staggered into the doorway of Me Andrew’s Pharmacy. Her heart leaped in her breast, and she tried to take long, deep breaths to calm it down. She averaged about one in three, the rest being broken by deep, shuddering sobs.

  She rested between the two main windows. On her left stacks of disposable diapers and Tommy Tippee teething rings all supported by surging polystyrene worms. On her right a display of carboys, cans of grape concentrate, and coils of lemon plastic tubing like the intestines of a robot. (Be Your Own Fine Wine Merchant.)

  Deidre moved to the edge of the step and stared up at the arch of the black thundering sky, a soft anemone violet when she had first left home. The stars in their courses, never all that concerned with the welfare of the human race, tonight looked especially indifferent. Through the rivulets making their way down Deidre’s glasses, individual stars became blurred, then elongated into hard, shining lances.

  She had been running in circles. Starting in the High Street, then working outward in concentric rings. She had looked in all the shop entrances and checked Adelaide’s and the Jolly Cavalier, although a public house was the last place she would normally expect to find her father. In both places bursts of laughter had followed her wild appearance and speedy withdrawal. She scurried round and round, obsessed by the idea that she was just missing him. She saw him, old and cold and drenche
d to the skin, just one street ahead or a hundred yards behind or even in a directly parallel path concealed only by a house or dark gathering of trees.

  Twice she had called in at home, checking every room and even the garden shed. The second time she had been terribly tempted by the still faintly glowing embers in the kitchen grate to take off her wet clothes and make some tea and just sit by the fire for a while. But minutes later, she was driven out to the streets again, afraid she would never find him yet compelled by love and desperation to keep on trying.

  So now she stood, her hand pressed against her pounding heart, her skin stinging under the arrowheads of rain, unable to take another step. Not knowing which way to turn. She tormented herself with pictures of her father lying in a gutter somewhere. Or huddled against a wall. No matter that, having covered every gutter and every wall, if he had been, she would have long since discovered him. The ability to think rationally vanished the moment she had stepped into the clubroom and seen the empty chair, and blind panic took its place. She pressed her face against the cold glass and stared into the window.

  Once more she turned her face toward the savage constellation of stars. God was up there, thought Deidre. God with His all-seeing eye. He would know where her father was. He could direct her if He chose. She locked her fingers together and prayed, choking on half-remembered fragments of childhood incantations: “Gentle Jesus … now I lay me down to sleep … in Thee have I trusted … neither run into any kind of danger …” Numb with cold, her hands pressed against each other in an urgency of supplication as she stared beseechingly upward.

  But nothing changed. If anything, the great wash of iridescent stars looked even more distant, and the milky radiance of the moon more inhumanly bright. On one of Deidre’s lenses a rivulet spread sideways; the lance became a stretched grin.

  She recalled her father’s years of piety. His simple confidence that he was loved by his Lord. Overlooked always by that luminous spirit and safe from all harm. Slowly anger began to course through her veins, unfreezing her blood, thawing out her frozen fingers. Was this to be his reward for years of devotion? To be allowed to slide into madness, then abandoned and left to caper about in the howling wind and rain like some poor homeless elemental? A wave of anguish swept over her. Followed by feelings of fury directed at a God she was no longer sure even existed. She stepped out of her shelter into the torrential rain and shook her fist at the heavens.

  “You!” she screamed. “You were supposed to be looking after him!”

  The police escort, alerted by the constable outside the Latimer, had just missed Deidre several times. Now, Policewoman Audrey Brieriey gave her companion a nudge and said, “Over there.”

  Deidre had stopped yelling by the time they got out, and just stood with sad resignation awaiting their approach. Very gently they persuaded her into the car and took her home.

  After showing in Tim and Avery, Troy pointedly moved his chair several feet away. Then he sat, legs protectively crossed, giving off waves of masochistic fervor, his breathing ostentatiously shallow. One might have thought the air to be thick with potentially effeminate spores, a careless gulp of which might transform him from a sand-kicker supreme to a giggling, girlish wreck.

  Avery, aware of the antagonism, typically became over-helpful, even ingratiating. Tim calmly shifted his chair so that his back was toward the sergeant and ignored him throughout the interview. In reply to Barnaby’s opening question, they agreed they had arrived on the half, gone up to the clubroom, and had a glass of Condrieu accompanied by Nicholas, who’d had a bitter lemon. Then they’d drifted around to the dressing rooms in what Tim called, “a whirl of insincere effusion and fake goodwill.” They did not touch the razor or notice anyone else doing so. They entered the box at ten to eight and stayed there.

  “You came out at the intermission, surely?”

  “Well, no,” said Avery.

  “Not even for a drink?”

  “We have our own wine. Tim won’t drink Roo’s Revenge.”

  “I was perhaps mistaken then … ?” Barnaby’s voice trailed off mildly.

  “Oh! I did dash to the loo,” said Tim. “Once the coast was clear.”

  “Yes. Splendid lighting.”

  “Our swan song.”

  “Was that the actors’ loo off the wings or the public?” asked Barnaby.

  “The actors’. There was a queue in the clubroom.”

  “Can you think of any reason,” continued Barnaby, “why anyone would wish to harm Esslyn?”

  Avery started to flutter, like a young bird trying to get off the ground. Fatally he glanced at Troy, receiving in return a look of such poisonous dislike that it took him a full five minutes to recover. Nervously he rushed into speech. “He wasn’t an easy person. Expected everyone to defer all the time, and most of us did. Except for Harold, of course. I quite liked him myself—”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Avery!” interrupted Tim. “We’re both in the clear. We were in the box. There’s no need to be such a bloody toady.”

  Avery looked disconcerted, then relieved. “I hadn’t thought of that. ‘Phew,’ as they say.” He mopped his forehead with an emerald-green Paisley hankie. “Well, if that’s the way of it, I don’t mind admitting that I thought Esslyn was an absolute shit. And so did everyone else.”

  Tim laughed and felt the blade of Troy’s attention in the small of his back. Barnaby said, “Some more than others, perhaps?”

  “People often weren’t bold enough to show it.”

  “Or careless enough.”

  “Pardon?” Avery looked puzzled but willing, like a puppy who hasn’t quite got the point of a trick but is prepared to give it a try.

  “He means,” said Tim dryly, “that this was probably some time in the planning.”

  Troy resented the speed of this connection. His own thought processes, though he liked to think he got there in the end, were less wing-footed. Queers were bad enough, he thought, stabbing at the page with his ballpoint, but clever queers …

  “You wouldn’t like to make a guess who is responsible?”

  “Certainly not,” said Tim.

  “Avery?”

  “Oh …” As if called upon unexpectedly to make a speech, Avery half rose in his seat, then sank back again. “I’d have thought Kitty. I mean, she can’t have enjoyed being married to Esslyn. He was over twice her age and about as much fun as a night out with the tontons macoutes. And of course they were heading for trouble as soon as the baby came.”

  “Oh? Why was that?”

  “Esslyn would have been so jealous. He couldn’t bear not to be the center of attention, and babies need an awful lot of looking after. At least,” he added, it seemed to Barnaby a trifle wistfully, “so I understand.”

  “You knew she was having an affair?”

  “So Nicholas told us.” Avery blushed and looked rather defiantly across at his partner. “And I, for one, don’t blame her.”

  Neither of them could think of anything else at the moment that might be of help, so Barnaby let them go, turning to his sergeant as the door closed and saying, “Well, Troy. What do you think?”

  Troy knew that it was not his opinion of homosexuals that was being solicited. There had been a particularly repulsive example of the species in a case the previous year at Badger’s Drift, and Troy’s suggestions as to how the man’s activities might be curtailed had been very frostily received. His chief was funny like that. Hard as iron in many ways. Harder than the iron men who thought they could never be broken and were now serving their time. Yet he had these peculiar soft spots. Wouldn’t come out and condemn things that everyone knew to be rotten. Probably his age, thought Troy. You had to make allowances.

  “Well, sir—I can’t think of any reason why either of them should have been involved. Unless the dead man was queer, and that’s why his missus screwed around. But from what I’ve heard, he seemed to have had a steady stream of tarts on the go.”

  Barnaby nodded. “Yes.
I don’t think his heterosexuality is in question.”

  “And those Everards, just slimy little time-servers.”

  “That seems to be the general opinion. Right—let’s have Nicholas.”

  The sergeant paused on his way out. “What shall I tell that little fat geezer? Every time I go in and it’s not for him, he nearly wets himself.”

  “Tell him”—Barnaby grinned—“tell him the dame always comes down last.”

  Scenes of crime had worked their way through the wings and were now tackling the stage. To save time, Colin and David Smy had been released and told to present themselves at the station the next morning. Barnaby was interviewing Nicholas.

  He had always liked the boy, and quickly became aware that Nicholas was enjoying the drama of the situation while feeling rather ashamed of himself for doing so. Which, thought Barnaby, was one up on certain other members of the company, who had taken in the enjoyment while stopping well short of the shame. Having ascertained that Nicholas knew and saw nothing in relation to the tampering with the razor, Barnaby asked if he could think of any reason why anyone would wish to harm Esslyn.

  “You’ve never acted with him, have you?” said Nicholas, with a strained laugh. He was blushing with nerves and anxiety.

  “I advise you to keep facetious remarks like that to yourself,” said Barnaby. “A man has died here tonight.”