‘‘Did you not pick up the razor as you went through the wings, remove the tape in the interval, wipe the handle with your yellow silk handkerchief, and put it back on the tray? And while you had it in your pocket, did you not put this in its place?” He produced an old-fashioned razor from his pocket and held it aloft.
There was a terrible pause. Everyone looked at each other, shocked, excited, horrified by this revelation. Joyce covered her eyes with her hands and gave a muffled cry.
‘‘Yes, that’s right, Tom,” said Harold pleasantly.
‘‘And with an audience prepared to swear you never left your seat, you would be in the clear.”
‘‘Certainly that’s how I envisaged it. And it all seemed to work terribly well. I can’t imagine how you spotted the substitution.” Barnaby told him. “Imagine that,” continued Harold ruefully. “And I always thought David rather a slow-witted boy.”
David did not seem to take offense at this, but his father glared at the back of Harold’s head, and Deidre flushed angrily.
“I shall have to have a firm word with Doris about letting you root among my private possessions.”
“She had no choice in the matter. We served a warrant.”
“Hm. We’ll see about that. Well, Tom, I expect now you know how, you’d like to know why?” Barnaby indicated that he would indeed, and Harold rose from his seat and started pacing in his turn, thumbs hooked into his vest pocket, the DA making his closing speech.
“To elucidate this rather annoying matter, we have to go back some considerable time. In fact, fifteen years, to the building of the Latimer and the formation of my present company. Money was short. We had a grant from the council, but not nearly enough for something that was to become the jewel in Causton’s crown. And when that drunken old sot Latimer dropped dead, his successor was not nearly so sympathetic. I believe he had leftish tendencies—and cut our grant. No doubt he would have preferred to see a bingo hall. So almost from the beginning, we had cash-flow problems. And naturally one had to keep up a certain lifestyle. An impresario can’t go round in a Ford Escort dressed like a shop assistant.” Harold broke here, having reached the top of the stairs, wheeled dramatically, took a deep breath, and continued.
“I have an import-export business, as you may know, and flattered myself that the hours I worked yielded very satisfactory returns. I kept my domestic expenses to a minimum and put my profits where they showed—that is, about my person and into the Latimer productions. However, healthy as these profits usually were, a huge percentage of them went to the Customs and Excise sharks for the VAT on import duty, and another great slice to the Inland Revenue. Obviously I resented this, especially when the scrap I got back in the form of a grant was slashed. So I decided to even the situation out a little. Of course, I intended to pay some tax and a proportion of the VAT required—after all, I’m not a criminal—but a judicious rearrangement of the figures saved me, in that first year, several hundred pounds, most of which went into The Wizard of Oz, our opening production. I don’t know if you remember it, Tom?”
“A splendid show.”
“Of course, when Esslyn prepared my accounts, I expected him to recognize my sleight of hand, but I was sure, as the company’s star, he would appreciate the necessity for such a procedure. However, to my amazement, he said nothing. Just submitted them as usual. Naturally I had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, no one wants an accountant so incompetent he can’t spot a necessary juggle or two. On the other, it augured very well for the future. And so it proved. I kept back a little more every year—several thousand when I bought the Morgan— and every year no comment was made. But do you know what, Tom?”
Harold had come to rest near Barnaby. His head, which had been doing no more than gently bob in time to his movements, now began to jiggle and shake alarmingly. “He had known what I was doing all the time. He had known and said nothing. Can you imagine anything more deceitful?”
Barnaby, facing the murderer of Esslyn Carmichael, thought yes, he could imagine one or two things more deceitful, actually, but just said, “When did you discover this?”
“Last Saturday afternoon. I’d just got in from being interviewed at the theater. He rang and asked if he could come over. Doris was out shopping, so we had the place to ourselves. He didn’t beat about the bush. Just said he was taking over direction at the Latimer starting with Uncle Vanya, and making an announcement to that effect after the curtain call Monday night. I said it was out of the question, he produced all these figures and said I could either step down or go to prison. I immediately spotted a third alternative, which I lost no time in carrying out. I got the duplicate razor from a shop in Uxbridge on the Monday morning. I knew Deidre’s routine and that everything would have been checked long before the five. Esslyn never touched props, so I knew he wouldn’t be likely to spot the substitution. I simply picked up the original as I went through the wings and, in the interval, took off the tape—”
“Where was this?”
“Well, I popped into the actors’ loo, but Esslyn and his cronies were there. So I just stepped outside the stage door for a minute on my way to the dressing rooms to give them all a rollicking. Then, going back, I made the switch again. It only took a second. I used Doris’s flower knife, it’s very sharp. Simple.”
Harold gave everyone a delighted smile, squinting at each face in turn and gloating a little in his cleverness. His beard had lost its clean, sculptural outline, and now had a disordered, almost herbaceous air.
“I knew, of course, Esslyn hadn’t worked it out all by himself, especially when he owned up to sending that silly book. It was supposed to be a hint, he said. I was involved in ‘fishy’ business, you see. And a cookbook because I was ‘cooking the books.’ Well, really, he could never have thought of anything so subtle to save his life. I knew where that had come from, all right. And all the fifth-column work at rehearsals to make me seem incompetent, so the takeover would be more acceptable.”
The Everards, trying to register self-righteousness and lofty detachment, merely looked as if they wished they were a thousand miles away. The rest of the company expressed surprised disgust, excitement, amusement, and, in two cases (Deidre and Joyce) shades of pity. Troy got up from his position on the steps and crossed the stage. Harold started to speak again.
“You do understand, don’t you, that I had no choice? This”—he made a great open-armed gesture gathering in his actors, the theater, all of the past, and triumphs yet to come—“is my life.”
“Yes,” said Barnaby, “I do see that.”
“Well, I must congratulate you, Tom.” Harold held out his hand briskly. “And I can’t say I’m sorry that all this has been cleared up. No doubt it would have come out sooner or later, but it’s nice to start a new season with a clean slate. And I can assure you no hard feelings—at least on my part. And now, I’m afraid I must ask you to excuse me”—the hand returned, unshaken, to his side—“I must get on. We’ve an awful lot to get through tonight. Come along, Deidre. Chop-chop.”
No one moved. Tom Barnaby stood irresolute, opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. He had arrested many criminals in his time, quite a few of them for murder, but he had never been faced with one who had confessed, offered to shake hands, then turned to go about his business. Or one who was so obviously mad.