Death Of A Hollow Man Read online

  “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, w
hich 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 dran
k 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.”