‘Never mind.’ She ushered him into her living-room. The carpet had a yellow and green zigzag design, whose colours were picked up on the open curtains. White patterned net against the double glazing shut out the darkening world. The mahogany veneer surface of the dining table gleamed, as did the yellow-upholstered chairs marshalled around it. Light refracted through the spotless glass ornaments above the matt silver music centre on the room divider. On the walls, in yellow velvet tasselled frames, were photographs of three children at different ages. In pride of place, on the mantelpiece over the ‘log-effect’ gas fire, lay her red, blue and silver If The Cap Fits cap.
She gestured to a lime-green three-piece suite with dark wood arm-rests and rigidly plumped yellow cushions. ‘Do sit down. What can I get you? Tea? Coffee? Something stronger?’
This last was offered with a kind of insouciant daring, Trish demonstrating her freedom from the conventional restraints which might have inhibited someone not accustomed to media circles.
Charles resisted the temptation. ‘Tea’d be lovely.’
She must have had the kettle boiling when he arrived, because she appeared in only a couple of minutes with a loaded tray. Charles still hadn’t worked out his line of approach, so, while she poured, he played for time by indicating the photographs. ‘Nice-looking kids.’
‘Yes. Taken some time ago. They’re all grown-up now.’
‘Really?’
‘Youngest’s twenty.’
He looked at her. He knew it was going to be a corny line, but it was still true. ‘You don’t look old enough to have children of that age.’
She coloured very slightly in acknowledgement of the compliment. Her dark hair was even shorter, must have been cut since the recording. It came down to little peaks in front of her small ears. ‘If you start breeding at seventeen, it’s quite possible to have them all off your hands by the time you’re forty.’ She hesitated. ‘And then look around to see if there’s anything left of your life.’
‘Lots, I’m sure.’ Charles smiled in meaningless reassurance. ‘Even at my age, one still hopes there are more good bits to come.’
She didn’t look convinced. Nor did she look at ease, perched on the edge of her lime-green armchair. Charles took a long swallow of tea. He still hadn’t decided how to explain his presence. True, she hadn’t questioned it yet, but the moment must come.
He made a kind of start. ‘Terrible business at the recording, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes. The poor girl. I mean, I know men can be bastards, but to be driven to that. . to kill someone. .’
‘Yes. Poor Chippy.’
‘I thought the name was Caroline something.’
‘Chippy was her nickname, the name she used at work.’
‘I wonder what she’ll get. Surely not life for something like that. .? I mean it was a crime of passion, wasn’t it?’
‘I suppose so. Though that’s not always a category the British Law recognises. She could still get a hefty sentence.’
‘But I’d have thought when something’s spur-of-the-moment like that. .’
‘Not completely spur-of-the-moment. Taking the cyanide from one studio to the other must have involved a degree of premeditation.’
‘As I said, poor girl. .’
Charles decided to take a risk. ‘There has been talk around W.E.T. that maybe she wasn’t the one who did it. .’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There have been suggestions that someone else killed Barrett Doran.’
‘What!’ She turned her wide brown eyes on him in amazement. Either the idea was a total shock to her, or she was putting up a very skilful front. Charles, who knew a bit about the subject, didn’t think she was a good enough actress to be shamming. He decided it was worth taking another risk. The truth, he had often found, could be a useful surprise tactic.
‘In fact, that’s why I’m here. As I say, various people at W.E.T. have had doubts about Chippy’s guilt and I’m just sort of investigating, on their behalf, to see if there’s any other possible explanation for what happened.’
‘I see.’ The eyes went down quickly, but not quickly enough to hide their disappointment. ‘And, if Sydnee had been able to come today, is that what she would have been coming about?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah.’ The hurt was still there.
‘Why, what did you imagine she might — ?’
‘Nothing, nothing.’
Charles looked at the bowed dark head in its neat suburban living-room, and suddenly he saw everything. It was just another manifestation of the power of television. Trish Osborne thought she had done well on If The Cap Fits. And indeed she had. She had been a good lively contestant (in spite of what Aaron Greenberg and Dirk van Henke felt). But that was all she had been. She, with that ignorance of scale that always afflicts amateurs, had not recognised the limits of her performance. She had seen it as the start of something. With time on her hands at home for ideas to grow like ginger-beer plants, she had fantasised of directors hailing her as a ‘natural’ for television, of offers of work, of a new impetus to dig her out of her domestic rut, of a career to fill the void left by her departed children. She had thought that Sydnee’s wish to see her would be about the next step on that ladder. It was all very commonplace, very predictable and very sad.
He knew he was right, but he passed no comment on his findings. ‘So I’m here, really, to ask you to think back over that studio day, think if there was anything suspicious, anything you noticed that seemed out of the ordinary.’
She laughed, jogging herself out of self-pity. ‘The whole day seemed pretty out of the ordinary to me. I’d never been in a television studio before. It may seem pretty ordinary to you, but let me tell you, being on television is the answer to many a Billericay housewife’s dreams.’ Her face clouded. ‘I suppose, after what happened, I’m not even going to be on television. I mean, there’s no way they can put out that recording, is there?’
‘No.’
She clutched at a straw. ‘They couldn’t sort of edit on another ending. .?’
Charles shook his head. ‘Sorry, love.’ (For a moment he wondered, ‘Do I normally say ‘love’ as much as this, or have I picked it up from the infinitely understanding Joanie Bruton?’) ‘Think about it — with a show of that sort, you can’t suddenly change hosts in the middle. You couldn’t even if there had been no publicity about Barrett’s death. As it is. .’
‘Yes, I’m sorry. I was just being silly. Not thinking. Of course they couldn’t use it.’
Moved again by the disappointment in her eyes, Charles searched for another reassurance. ‘It probably hasn’t made that much difference, actually, love.’ (Doing it again.) ‘With a show like this, they’d be very unlikely to put out the pilot. They’d be almost bound to want to make some changes in the casting or the format before they got into a series.’
This was not at all the right thing to say. The brown eyes blazed. ‘What, you mean we went through all that for nothing? We were just being used as guinea pigs with no chance of the show actually being on the television? The producer swore it would go out unless there was something terribly wrong.’
‘Well,’ said Charles, redirecting the conversation off this sticky patch, ‘there was something terribly wrong, wasn’t there?’
This brought her up short. ‘Yes,’ she replied softly.
‘Barrett Doran’s death. Can we talk about that?’
‘If you like.’ She remained subdued, still inwardly boiling at the perfidy of a television company that could put her under such strain on what she regarded as false pretences.
‘Starting from the idea that Chippy didn’t kill her former lover. .’
‘Was he? I didn’t know that.’
‘Yes. That was presumed to be her motive. ‘Hell hath no fury. .’
‘Sorry?’
‘. . like a woman scorned.’
She gave a small shake of her head. The quotation didn’t mean anything to her.