“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.”