“And where did you do it?”
“Pardon?”
“Where?”
“… well … the scene dock.”
“You’d have to be quick. What did you use?”
“A Stanley knife.”
“The same one that was in the wings?”
Colin hesitated. Fingerprints, he thought. His should be all over the one in the wings, but you never knew. “No. I used my own.”
“Got it with you?”
“It’s in my workshop.”
“And what did you do with the tape?”
“Just … scrumpled it up.”
“And left it there?”
“Yes.”
“So if we went over now, you could produce it?”
“No! Afterward … when I realized how terrible everything was … I threw it away. Down the bog.”
Barnaby said, “I see,” and nodded. Then he leaned back in his chair and gazed out of the window at the black and gray scudding clouds. Colin leaned back a little, too. His breathing returned to near normal; his heart stopped thundering. That hadn’t been too bad. All he had to do now was remember precisely what it was he’d said (for Barnaby’s pad now seemed to be quite covered with lines and squiggles) and stick to it. And that shouldn’t be too difficult.
Colin glanced at the clock. To his amazement, barely ten minutes had passed since he had entered the room. The delusion that he had been shut up here babbling away for hours must simply be put down to stretched nerves. Barnaby drained his tea. “Some more, Colin?” When the other man declined, Barnaby said, “I think I will,” and disappeared.
Left alone, Colin gathered his wits. He was bound to be asked all the foregoing questions again and probably many more (although he could not imagine what they might be), but now he had got the time, method, and motive firmly tethered, he felt a lot more confident. After all, those were the basics. The crucial underpinnings to the case, and no one could prove that he wasn’t telling the truth. He would stand up in court and swear. He would swear the rest of his life away, if need be.
Barnaby was a long time. Colin wondered why he hadn’t just pressed the buzzer as he had before if he wanted more tea. Colin inclined his ear toward the door, but he could hear nothing but the distant rattle of a typewriter. Perhaps Barnaby was finding someone to take down a proper statement. Colin listened again; then, hearing no approaching footsteps, leaned over the desk and turned the chief inspector’s pad around. It was covered with beautifully drawn flowers. Harebells and primroses. And ferns.
Alarmed, Colin slumped back in his seat. Tom had not written down a single thing! Following this realization came another, more terrible. The only reason for this must be that Tom had not believed a word that he, Colin, had said. He had been sitting there, nodding, scribbling, asking questions, and all the time he had just been playacting. Only pretending to take things seriously. Colin’s leg started to tremble and his foot to jounce on the linoleum floor. He pressed his leg hard against the chair to keep it still, then felt his mouth brim with bile. He was going to be sick. Or faint. Before he could do either, Barnaby returned, sat behind his desk, and gave Colin a concerned glance.
“You look a bit green. Are you sure you don’t want another drink?”
“Some water …”
“Can we have a glass of water?” said Barnaby into his buzzer. “And I’d like some more tea.”
The drinks arrived. Colin sipped his slowly. “Didn’t you go out for some more tea, Tom?”
“No. To arrange some transport.”
“Ah.” Colin put his glass on the desk. He desperately needed time to think. Struggling to apply his attention to the matter, Colin almost immediately saw where he had gone wrong. It was in the murder motive. No wonder Tom had been disbelieving. Colin, in the chief inspector’s shoes, would have felt the same. How ridiculous—to kill someone because they had been unkind to your son. And him a grown man. If only, Colin chided himself, he had prepared what he had come to say more carefully. But it was not too late. He saw now how he could put things right. And what he should have said in the first place.
“The truth is, Tom,” he blurted out clumsily, “David is in love with Kitty. You’ve seen … you were in the audience … how violent Esslyn was toward her. He found out, you see. And I was afraid. Afraid for her and for David. He was fiendish, Esslyn. I really thought he might harm them both.”
‘‘So you spiked his guns?”
‘‘Yes.”
“Well … that sounds a bit more likely.”
“Yes. I didn’t say that at first, because I thought if I could keep them out of it, I would.”
“Such delicacy does you credit.” Barnaby drank deep of his breakfast blend. “There’s only one little snag in that scenario. Esslyn believed his wife was having an affair with Nicholas.”
“Nicholas. ’’
“But of course you weren’t to know that.”
“Was it true?” Colin turned an eager look upon the chief inspector.
“No. The general consensus seems to be that David was indeed the man. By the way, where was he while you were carrying out all this jiggery-pokery?”
Colin’s breath stopped in his throat. He gazed at Barnaby; the mouse and the cat. He felt the skin on his face prickle and knew it must be stained crimson. He opened his mouth, but no sound came. He couldn’t think. His brains were stewed. Where was David while all this was going on? Where was David? Not in the wings or (obviously) the scene dock. Not upstairs. In the dressing room! Of course.
“In the dressing room. Anyone will vouch for him.”
“Why should anyone need to vouch for him?”
“Oh—no reason. Just … if you wanted to check.”
“I see.” Barnaby completed to perfection the tight, curled lip of the Asplenium trichomanes. “I feel I should tell you that we tried to flush the tape down every loo in the theater and were completely unsuccessful.”
“… oh … did you? Yes … sorry … my memory … I threw it out of the window.”
“Well, Colin”—Barnaby put down his pen and smiled rather severely at his companion—“I’ve sat at this desk and listened to some sorry liars in my time but if I gave a prize for the worst, I think you’d cop it.”
He watched Colin’s face, which had already shown every aspect of alarm and apprehension, further suffuse with emotion. It seemed to blow up like a balloon. The skin stretched tight across his cheekbones and jaw, and his eyes darted around like tiny, trapped wild creatures. He seemed to have no control over his mouth and his lips worked in little push-pull convulsions. He swayed in his chair as if giddy.
And giddy was what he felt. For Colin was reeling under the force of a double-edged blow. He now saw with icy clarity that coming to the station and making a false confession was the worst thing he could possibly have done. Not only had he failed to save his son, but the slightest pause for reflection must have shown him that David would never stand silently by while his father, innocent of any crime, was arrested, perhaps imprisoned. In trying to protect the boy, Colin now saw that he had stupidly thrust him into the very heart of the crime where all the danger lay. He covered his face with his hands and moaned.
Barnaby shifted from his chair, came round to the front of the desk, and perched on the edge. Then he touched Colin on the shoulder and said, “You could be wrong, you know.”
“No, Tom!” Colin turned a desolate seeking look upon the chief inspector. The look was wild with unfounded expectation. It begged Barnaby, even at this late stage, when a traitorous admission, though still unspoken, lay as solid as a rock between them, to perform a magical conjuring trick. To say it wasn’t so. When Barnaby remained silent, Colin gave one terrible dry sob, racked from his gut, and cried, “You see … I saw him do it. I actually saw him do it. ”