“Ah,” said Harold, missing the coolness but spotting the appellation. “I’d have expected to see you reading Uncle Vanya.“p>
“Why, Harold?”
“The auditions are on Friday.” Harold would have preferred this conversation without Tom Barnaby’s daughter sitting in. She had been, in his opinion, although quite a good actress, a nasty, self-opinionated little girl, and she didn’t improve with age. Harold cleared his throat.
“I’m sure you will be very proud … very excited to hear that I have chosen you out of all the company to succeed Esslyn as my leading man.” Harold could see from the expression on Nicholas’s face that he should perhaps have led up to this revelation more subtly. The boy looked deeply alarmed. Reassuringly Harold added, “You’re too young for Vanya, of course, but if you work hard, with my help I know you’ll be a great success.”
“I see.”
So overwhelmed was Nicholas with emotion that he choked out the words. Then he added something else, but the girl chose that precise moment to indulge in a fit of coughing, and Harold had to ask Nicholas to repeat himself. When he did so Harold, openmouthed with dismay, tottered to the nearest chair and fell into it.
“Leaving?”
“I’m going to Central.”
“Central what?”
“Central School of Speech and Drama. I want to go into the theater.”
“But … you’re in the theater.”
“I mean the real theater.”
The force of Harold’s response lifted him clean from his seat. He gave a great cry in which rage and incredulity and horror were equally intermingled. Nicholas paled and climbed hurriedly to his feet. Cully stopped coughing.
“How dare you!” Harold walked across to Nicholas, who stood his ground but only just. “How dare you! My theater is as real … as true … as fine as any in the country. In the world. Do you have any idea who you’re talking to? What my background is? I have heard the sort of applause for my work in what you are pleased to call the real theater that actors would sell their souls to achieve. Stars have clamored to work for me. Yes—stars! If it weren’t for circumstances completely beyond my control, do you think I’d be working in this place? With people like you?”
The final sentence was a tormented shout, then Harold stood, panting. He appeared bewildered and ridiculous, yet there was about him the tatters of an almost heroic dignity. He looked like a great man grown overnight too old. Or a warrior on whose head children have placed a paper crown.
“I’m … I’m sorry …” Nicholas stumbled into speech. “If you like, I could stay for Vanya … I don’t have to go to London immediately.”
“No, Nicholas.” Harold stayed the boy’s words by a simple gesture. “I would not wish to work with anyone who did not appreciate and respect my directorial gifts.”
“Oh. Right. I might come along and audition anyway … if that’s okay?”
“Anyone,” replied Harold, magisterially breaking upstage right, “can audition.”
After he had left, the two young people smiled at each other, celebrating their meeting and mutual admiration.
“Will you go on Friday?” asked Cully.
“I think so. He might’ve calmed down by then.”
“Then I shall, too.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Why not? I’m not due back till the end of January. And I’d give anything to play Yelena. We can always work our own way.”
“Gosh—that’d be fantastic.”
Cully parted her lovely lips and smiled again. “Wouldn’t it though?” she said.
Barnaby and Troy were in the office of Hartshorn, Weatherwax, and Tetzloff. Their Mr. Ounce, who handled Esslyn Carmichael’s affairs, was being affable if slightly condescending. Entertaining the police, his manner implied, was not what he was used to, but he hoped if it was thrust upon him, he could behave as well as the next man.
But if Barnaby had hoped to discover some sinister undertow to the murdered man’s life in his solicitor’s office, he was unlucky. Mr. Ounce could reveal little more than the arid contents in the desk at White Wings. Barnaby had been unlucky at the bank as well. No suspiciously large sums of money ever leaked in or out of the Carmichael account, all was depressingly well ordered, the balances no more and no less than one would have expected. The only thing remaining was the will, which he was about to hear read. (He had offered to apply in the proper manner and go to a magistrate, but Mr. Ounce had graciously waived the necessity, saying he was sure time was of the essence.)
The document was brief and to the point. His widow would get the house and a comfortable allowance for herself and the child as long as she carried out her maternal duties in a proper manner. Carmichael Junior would get the full dibs on reaching twenty-one, and in the event of the child’s demise everything, including White Wings, went to the brother in Ottawa. Mr. Ounce replaced the stiff ivory parchment folds in a metal deeds box and snapped the lock.
“Neatly tied up,” said Barnaby.
“I must confess my own fine Italian hand was somewhat to the fore there, Chief Inspector.” He rose from his old leather swivel chair. “We can’t let the ladies have it all their own way, can we?”
“Blimey,” said Troy, when they were back in the station and warming themselves up with some strong coffee. “I wouldn’t mind being a fly on the wall when Kitty hears that.”
Barnaby did not respond. He sat behind his desk tapping his nails against each other. A habit to which he was prone when deep in thought. It drove Troy mad. He was just wondering if he could sneak out for a quick drag when his chief gave voice.
“What I can’t get, Sergeant, is the timing. …” Troy sat up. “There are dozens of ways to kill a man. Why set it up in front of a hundred witnesses … taking risks backstage … tinkering with a razor … when all you have to do is wait and catch him on some dark night?”
“I feel that’s rather a strike against Kitty, myself, chief. Trying it at home, she’d be the first person we’d suspect.”
“A good point.”
“And now we’ve flushed the lover out,” Troy bounded on, encouraged, “and discovered that he was the one who supplied the razor in the first place. I bet he even suggested the tape—”
“I think not. I’ve asked a lot of people about that. The general consensus seems to be that it was Deidre.”
“Anyway, there he is with the perfect alibi, leaving Kitty to carry the can. That sort always do.”
“I don’t know. It’s a bit obvious.”
“But … excuse me, sir … the times you’ve said the obvious is so often the truth.”
Barnaby nodded. The observation was a fair one. As was Troy’s implication that the familiar unheavenly twins lust and greed were once again probably the motivating power behind a sudden death. So why did Barnaby feel this case was different? He didn’t welcome this perception, which seemed to him at the moment to lead absolutely nowhere, but it would not be denied. He saw now, too, that his previous knowledge of the suspects, which he had regarded from the first as an advantage, could also work against him. It was proving well nigh impossible to make his mind the objective mirror it should be if he was to appreciate what was really going on. His understanding of Kitty’s character, his liking for Tim and the Smys, his sympathy for Deidre, all were gradually forcing him into a corner. At this rate, he observed sourly to himself, I’ll hardly have a suspect left.