Death Of A Hollow Man Read online

  The dog, as if sensing that the situation was now completely out of his control had crouched quietly down and was looking back and forth from the couple on the edge to the couple in the water with increasing degrees of anxiety.

  PC Watson had been unable to seize Mr. Tibbs with his former neat precision and, having awkwardly grabbed at his shoulder, was now lugging rather than towing him. The policeman’s muscles ached almost beyond endurance with the double effort of trying to steer them both to the bank and keep Mr. Tibbs’s head above the water. Also, the old man’s benign attitude had become transformed, no doubt due to his being snatched from the jaws of death against his will, to one of extreme truculence. He flailed his arms and legs about, and gave little wheezy hoots of crossness. Kevin Lampeter, the ambulance driver, said afterward it was as if someone were trying to drown a set of bagpipes. He arrived just after the police reinforcements, who had brought a coil of rope and had drawn PC Watson and his burden to safety.

  Deidre immediately flung herself on her father, supporting him and calling his name over and over again. But he shrank away as if from an unkind stranger. The ambulance men persuaded him onto a stretcher, and the bedraggled group limped, staggered, or, in the case of the dog, trotted briskly toward the waiting vehicle. The wall was negotiated with far less ease than previously. PC Watson, a blanket around his shoulders, climbed heavily into the back of the ambulance, and Mr. Tibbs, all the light fled from his countenance, went next. The dog, attempting to follow, was sternly rebuffed.

  “You’ll have to take him up front.”

  “Oh, but he’s not—” said Deidre, bewildered. “I mean … I don’t know …”

  “If you could hurry it up, please, dear. The sooner we get the old man to a hospital, the better.”

  Deidre climbed into the cab, but the dog had got there first. When she sat down, he bounded onto her lap, unfurled his plume tail, wrapped it neatly around his hindquarters, and stared intently out of the window all the way to Slough.

  Kitty settled herself composedly. She inspected her pretty face, flirted her curls a bit, and accepted a cup of tea from Sergeant Troy with a look that was as good as a wink and then some. Barnaby assumed her sangfroid to be genuine. Given her present position as suspect number one, this argued either great cunning, absolute innocence, or absolute stupidity. Of the three, Barnaby was inclined to favor the latter. He started with formal condolences.

  “A terrible business this, Kitty. You must be dreadfully upset.”

  “Yeah. Terrible. I am.” Kitty’s azure glance slid sideways and fastened, sweet and predatory, on Troy’s carrot-colored crown. He looked up, met the glance, flushed, smirked, and looked down again.

  “Do you have any idea who might have wanted to harm your husband?”

  “Could’ve been any number of people. He was an absolute pig.”

  “I see.” He was obviously not going to have the same problem with the second Mrs. Carmichael that he had had with the first. “You would include yourself among that number?”

  “Definitely.”

  “But it wasn’t you who removed the tape?”

  “Only because I didn’t think of it first.” Bold madam, thought Troy. And get a load of those sweet little oranges.

  “Did you and Esslyn arrive together?”

  “Yes. I went straight to the dressing room. Got dressed and made up. All of a twitch and tremble I was. Ask Joycey.”

  “That was a savage bit of business in Act Two,” said Barnaby, circling closer.

  “Bastard. Nearly broke my back.”

  “I understand he’d just discovered you’d been having an affair.”

  “An affair.” Dismay, indignation, and comprehension jostled for position on Kitty’s foxy face. “So that was what set him off. How the hell did that get out?”

  “You were seen.”

  “Charming. Nosy buggers.” She scowled. “Where was I seen?”

  “In the lighting box.”

  “Oh, no.” Kitty laughed then. A blowsy, coarse chuckle. “Poor old Tim. He’ll be furious.”

  “Would you care to tell me who the man is?”

  “But—” She stopped. Her face, spontaneously surprised, became smooth and guarded. “Not really. You seem to be doing very well on your own. I’m sure by this time tomorrow you’ll know his name, what he has for breakfast, and the size of his socks. Not to mention the length of—”

  “Yes, all right, Kitty,” interrupted Barnaby, noticing his sergeant’s look of rollicking appreciation.

  “In any case, it wasn’t what you’d call an affair. Not a real steamer. More of a frolic … all very lighthearted, really.”

  “Did you expect your husband to see it like that?”

  “I didn’t expect my husband to find out, for godsake!”

  “Who do you suppose told him?”

  “His little muckrakers, I should think. They’re never happier than when they’re turning over a nice big stone and mixing up the ooze. He relied on them for all the juicy bits.”

  “I understand that after this violent scene onstage, you rested for a while in the wings—”

  “Hardly for a while.”

  “—next to the props table. In fact, almost on top of the tray with the bowl of soap and the razor.”

  “I was only there a second.”

  “A second is all you would need,” said Barnaby. “It’s obvious that whoever messed with the razor took it away to do so. And almost the only place where it could have been tampered with undisturbed was a locked lavatory cubicle.” His voice tightened. “I understand it was in the ladies’ where Deidre found you.”

  “ Where’d you expect her to find me? In the gents?”

  “And that you then said that if Esslyn touched you again, you would kill him.” Kitty stared, suddenly whey-faced with shock.

  “What a brilliant lot. Gossips. Spies. Peeping Toms. And now a bloody tipster. You wait till I see her. Little cow!”

  “You mustn’t blame Deidre,” said the chief inspector, feeling that the least he could do was save the wretched girl from a further stream of opprobrium. “You were overheard. In the wings.”

  “Well? So what?” Kitty was quickly regaining her balance. “You saw what happened onstage. What d’you think I’d say? We must do this more often? In a pig’s eye.”

  Her voice was steely and laced with bravado. Barnaby, remembering the coquettish, adoring glances directed at her husband and her other cute wriggling little ways, could only reflect wryly on the commonly held assumption that Kitty couldn’t act for beans.

  “Anyway,” she continued, her eyes bright and astute, “if I’d been in the loo taking the tape off, I’d hardly start shouting to the world that I was thinking of killing him.”

  “Stranger things have happened. You could have been perpetrating a double bluff. Assuming that we would think exactly that.”

  “Oh, come on, Tom. You know me. I’m not that clever.”

  They stared each other out. Kitty, her cornflower blue eyes dark with anger, was thinking she’d find out who had spotted her in the lighting box, and when she did, they’d wish they’d never been born.

  Barnaby was wondering if she had genuinely not known the reason for Esslyn’s sudden explosion of rage. Had she really been sitting in the scene dock for (he checked his watch) the best part of two hours with Nicholas, also the recipient of Esslyn’s violence, without coming to any conclusions? They must surely have discussed it. He supposed if the Everards had kept their mouths shut, this could be the case. Was Kitty a bored young wife playing around? he wondered. Or was she a calculating harpy who had snagged a financially secure older husband and then wished to be rid of him? Was the removal of the tape an impulsive act? Or planned for some time? If so, Barnaby asked himself (as he was to do over and over again in the coming days), why on earth should it be done on the first night? He became aware that Kitty was leaning forward in her seat.

  “You’re not sticking this on me, Tom,” she said firmly.r />
  “I have no intention of ‘sticking’ this on anyone, Kitty. But I intend to find out the truth. So be warned.”

  “I don’t know what you mean. I’ve nothing to hide.” But her cheeks colored suddenly, and she did not look at him.

  “Then you’ve nothing to fear.”

  After a longish pause during which Kitty recollected herself to the extent that she was able to send a second slumberous glance in Troy’s direction, she got to her feet and said, “If that’s all, a person in my condition should have been in her lonely bed hours ago.”

  “Quite a girl,” said Barnaby as the door closed behind her.

  “Anybody for a gin and tonic?” murmured the sergeant, hopefully memorizing the telephone number at the top of Kitty’s statement. Then he added, “Maybe they were in it together. Her and her bit of crackling.”

  “The thought had occurred to me. We’ll see how he checks out tomorrow.”

  Troy scanned his notes briefly, then said, “What now, sir?”

  Barnaby got up and collected his coat. “Let’s go and find the big white chief.”

  Barnaby had hardly set foot in the scene dock before Harold, incandescent with rage, sprang before them like a greyhound in the slips. “So there you are!” he cried, as if to a pair of recalcitrant children. “How dare you leave me while one and then the other of the company is interviewed? It’s not as if you aren’t aware of my position. How am I supposed to keep control when they see me constantly passed over like … like the boot boy!”

  “I’m sorry you’re upset, Harold,” said Barnaby soothingly. “Please … sit down.” He indicated a rustic arbor on which dusty blue paper roses were impaled. Reluctantly, simmeringly, Harold lowered himself.

  “You see,” continued the chief inspector, “everyone has had a story to tell. Sometimes these are mutually supportive, sometimes they contradict each other, but what I need at the end of the day is the viewpoint of someone who knows the group through and through. Someone perceptive, intelligent, and observant, who can help me to draw all the information together and perhaps see some underlying pattern in this dreadful affair. This is why I left you until the last.” He looked concernedly at Harold. “I thought you’d understand that.”

  “Of course, Tom. I sensed that something like that was behind it all. But I would have appreciated a discreet word. To have been kept informed.”

  Barnaby’s look of regret deepened. Troy, sitting just to the side of Harold in a deck chair (Relatively Speaking) watched with proprietorial pleasure. You could almost hear the steam hissing out of the old geezer (or geyser, revised the sergeant wittily), and see self-importance taking its place. Next would come complacency, the most fertile ground for the forcing of revelation. (Not fear or anger, as is commonly supposed.) Troy tried to catch his chief’s eye to indicate his appreciation of the maneuver, but without success. Barnaby’s concentration was total.

  Actors, thought the sergeant, wearing the shade of a contemptuous smile. You’d have to get up early to find one to match the D.C.I. He had as many expressions to his face and shades to his voice as a mangy dog had fleas. He could imitate the dove and the scorpion and even the donkey if he thought it would serve his ends. More than once Troy had seen him shaking his head in apparent dumb bewilderment while witnesses feeling secure in his incomprehension happily babbled on, quite missing the echo of the turnkey’s tread. And he had a special smile seen only at the moment of closing in. Troy practiced that smile sometimes at home in the bathroom mirror and frightened himself half to death. Now, Barnaby was congratulating Harold on the excellence of his production.

  “Thank you, Tom. Not an easy play, but I pride myself on a challenge, as you know. I wasn’t altogether delighted with Act One, but the second half was a great improvement. So intense. And then to end like that … ” He clicked his tongue. “And of course any sort of screw-up, people immediately blame the director.”

  “I’m afraid that’s the case,” agreed Barnaby, marveling at Harold’s grasp of the essentials. “You were hardly backstage at all, I believe?”

  “Not really. Went through on the five to wish them all bonne chance—well, you were directly behind me, I believe? Then again in the intermission to tell them to pull themselves together. ’

  “And you saw no one behaving suspiciously in the wings?”

  “Of course not. If I had, I would have stopped them. We had five more performances, after all. And Saturday’s sold out.”

  “Do you have any idea who might have tampered with the razor?”

  Harold shook his head. “I’ve thought and thought, Tom, as you can imagine. There might be someone in the company who’s got it in for me but…’’—he gave a perplexed sigh—“I can’t possibly think why.”

  “Or Esslyn.”

  “Pardon?”

  “It could be said that Esslyn had been sabotaged just as successfully as your production.”

  “Oh. Quite.” Harold pursed his lips judiciously, implying that although this was a completely new slant on the situation, it was not one he was prepared to reject out of hand. “You mean, Tom, it might have been something personal?”

  “Very personal, I’d say.” Troy, almost alight with enjoyment, leaned back too hard in his deck chair and broke the strut. By the time he had sorted himself out, Barnaby had reached the four-dollar question. “Did you have any reason for wishing Esslyn Carmichael harm?”

  “Me?” squeaked Harold. “He was my leading man. My star! Now, I shall have to start all over again, training Nicholas.”

  “What about his relationships with the rest of the company?”

  “Esslyn didn’t really have relationships. His position made that rather difficult. I have the same problem. To hold authority, one must keep aloof. He always had a woman in tow, of course.”

  “Not since his recent marriage, surely?”

  “Perhaps not. I’m sure we’d all know. I’ll say this in Esslyn’s favor—he never attempted to conceal his infidelities. Not even during his years with Rosa.”

  Quite right, thought Troy, flicking over his page. What’s the point of having it if you don’t flaunt it?

  “She seemed very distressed, I thought.”

  “Rosa could always weep to order.”

  “In fact,” insinuated the chief inspector, “far more so than the present incumbent.”

  “Ah.” In an ecstasy of enlightenment Harold slapped himself about the jowls like S. Z. (Cuddles) Sakall. “In other words, cherchez la femme. Could be, could be. He was the sort to make enemies, mind you. Selfish to the core.”

  Barnaby had always believed it was possible to judge the love and respect in which the newly deceased was held by the width of the gap between the immediate, almost inevitable reaction of shock and distress (even if only on the “every man’s death diminishes me” principle) and the point at which the dead party’s failings could be discussed with something approaching relish. In Esslyn Carmichael’s case, the gap was so narrow it would hardly have accommodated one of Riley’s whiskers.

  “But in spite of that, you got on with him?”

  “I get on with everyone, Tom.”

  “Personally and professionally?”

  “They’re intertwined. Esslyn didn’t always accept my suggestions easily, but there was never any question of compromise. There can only be one leader.”

  Harold’s disdain for accurate introspection and his air-brushed memory were certainly working overtime tonight, observed Barnaby. Or perhaps he genuinely believed that Esslyn had dutifully carried out the instruction of his imperator—which argued a hazy grip on reality, to say the least.

  “Returning to the question of motive, you have to remember,” continued Harold, borrowing the obituarist’s subtle shorthand when describing arrogant insensitives, “that he didn’t suffer fools gladly. But then”—a smug smile peeped through the silvery boscage—“neither do I.” When Harold had been dismissed and left, apparently without noticing that he had neither given an overv
iew nor pulled any threads together, Barnaby returned to the now scrupulously investigated and empty wings and took the reel of tape from a box on Deidre’s table. He wound it twice around the handle of her microphone, then removed it by slicing it through with a Stanley knife. He gave it to Troy. “Chuck that down the toilet.” Then he stood listening to the repeated flushings and gushings till his sergeant returned.

  “Can’t be done, chief.”

  “Tried the ladies’ as well?”

  “And upstairs. And the disabled.”

  “Well, the search proved none of them were concealing it. Scenes of crime didn’t turn it up. So …”

  “Out the window?”

  “Right. And with this wind and rain, it could be halfway to Uxbridge by now. Still, we might be lucky. It could’ve caught up somewhere. Have a look in the morning. I’ve had enough for one night.”

  As they made their way up through the deserted auditorium, Troy said, “Why did you leave him till last, sir? Old fat ’n’ hairy?”

  “I don’t like the way he speaks to people.” Then, when Troy still looked inquiring: “He thinks everyone’s there to do his bidding. Takes them for granted, gives them no thanks, and talks to them like dirt. I didn’t think it would do him any harm to be at the end of the queue for once. ” “Think it’ll do him any good?”

  “No. Too far gone.”

  “I think he’s round the twist.”

  “All theatricals are round the twist, Troy,” said Barnaby, tugging at the doors that led to the foyer. “If they weren’t, they’d get out of the business and into real estate.”

  It seemed to take forever for Mr. Tibbs to be seen by all the people who had to have a look at him. Deidre gave the few details that were to be entered on his admission card, and was then told to wait in reception. She had been there over an hour when a nurse came and said she could see her father for a sec just to say good night.

  Mr. Tibbs lay, neatly swaddled, in the iron rectangle of his hospital bed. He did not respond to her greeting, but stared straight ahead humming something atonal. His cheeks were flushed bright red.