‘… In fact, Mary, Queen of Sots derives directly from the presentation techniques I developed in a show based on the Boston Tea Party for my Master’s thesis at U.S. C…’
‘U.S.C.?’ Charles queried weakly.
‘University of Southern California. I did my Master’s there before coming to Derby. In Drama and Creative Writing. When I say my project was based on the Boston Tea Party, I mean of course loosely based. It concentrated on the ethnico-political problems of the American Indians. Viewed of course from a Socialist standpoint. The central allegorical symbol was the fact that the Boston Tea Party was perpetrated by white men disguised as Indians. White usurping the place of red. Like corpuscles. I used the analogy of leukaemia.’
Charles concentrated and tried to nudge the conversation in the direction he wanted. ‘But you come to this show in rather macabre circumstances.’
The nudge was insufficient; Sam needed actual derailment. ‘The macabre is very much an integral part of my writing. And the bizarre. Another image I developed in the U.S.C. show,’ he steamrollered on, ‘was the unusual ability of the Navajo Indians to walk along girders at great height as if they were on the ground. It’s a different spatial concept. I related that to the myopic nature of the social services…’
‘Oh.’ Charles found himself nodding like a toy dog in the back of a car. He made another supreme effort to manhandle Sam off his monologue. ‘What I meant was that Willy Mariello was killed with a knife and that’s why you’re here actually taking part in Mary, Queen of Sots.’
For a moment it seemed to have worked. Sam looked straight at him and was silent for a long time before his continuation showed that Charles had failed. ‘Well, of course, Mary is an entirely different proposition, in spite of certain similarities of technique. And in fact, from an allegorical point of view, it’s very apt that the show should be born in an atmosphere of violence.
‘You see, the basic allegory of Mary, Queen of Sots is the historical parallel. The original Mary’s life was stained with blood. In my version, Mary, Queen of Scots represents Scotland and the natural wealth of her oil resources.’
‘Oh yes,’ Charles mouthed, wilting.
‘Yes,’ said Sam, as if it were a surprising affirmation. ‘Now Mary’s two husbands, Lord Darnley and the Earl of Bothwell, I take to represent England and the good old U.S. of A., the two countries who want to control her wealth. Queen Elizabeth, who ordains her execution, is the Arab states, who hold the real power in oil politics. Neat, huh?’
Charles, suffering from mental indigestion at the thought of this laboured allegory being expounded in Creative Writing, nodded feebly. But he saw a slight chance. ‘Where does David Rizzio fit into this scenario?’
‘David Rizzio represents the ecological lobby who might argue against the exploitation of oil resources in favour of a more medieval economic structure. For that reason, he gets killed off pretty early.’ Sam chuckled at his own intellectual audacity.
It might be a tiny lever to shift the conversation and Charles seized it. ‘But not killed off as early as Willy Mariello was.’
‘No.’
Before Sam had time to relate the death to one of his allegories, Charles pressed on. ‘You must have been pretty cut up to hear about Willy.’
‘Shocked certainly. I mean one is always shocked to hear of a young person’s death; it’s a kind of suspension of continuity. And obviously there was a dramatic element in this particular event.’
‘But you must have felt this more. To lose a friend…’
‘I didn’t know Mariello that well.’
‘I thought it was through you that Willy came to be in this show in the first place.’
‘That’s true, but only indirectly. I suppose the suggestion that he should do the music came from me-I put it up to the D.U.D.S. committee-but that was on the recommendation of someone else.’
‘Who?’
‘A girl involved in the society suggested it. I thought it was a good idea, because, you know, he was a professional musician and into rock music and I, well, I’ve got a kind of basic musical knowledge, but really my talent lies with words. And certainly the settings Mariello did for my lyrics were infinitely superior to anything I could have done. He changed the odd word here and there and I had to pull him up on that, but basically it was great. Besides, I believe very strongly in people working together under a kind of creative umbrella unit.’
‘Why do you think the girl recommended Willy to you?’ Charles asked slowly.
‘Well, like I say, he was very good. And he’d been hanging round the Derby campus for a bit and apparently, after the group he was with split up, he wanted to try something different…’
‘And?’
‘Well, I kind of got the impression that there might be a kind of thing going on between him and this girl. They both played it pretty close to the chest, but I sort of got this feeling that they wouldn’t mind being involved in something together.’
‘Oh,’ said Charles, and then asked the question he had been putting off. ‘Who was this girl?’
‘A girl called Anna Duncan. She’s now playing Mary in my show. I don’t know if you know her.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Charles, ‘I know her.’
That evening he met James Milne back at Coates Gardens and found the Laird eager for another Dr Watson session. Charles had suddenly become unwilling to pursue the business of detection, but he could not avoid a cosy chat over malt whisky.
Sherlock Holmes was always way ahead of Dr Watson in his deductions, but he rarely actually withheld information from his sidekick. Charles Paris did. There were things he wanted to be sure of, half-formed ideas that could not be shared until they had hardened into facts.
They talked mostly about Martin Warburton. Charles told of his long tracking expeditions and the discovery of Martin’s second identity.
‘But surely that makes him our number one suspect?’
‘I suppose so.’ Charles hoped he sounded convinced.
‘It’s fairly bizarre behaviour.’
‘Yes, I agree. Certainly Martin is in a very strange mental state. He’s all mixed up and he has some violent fantasies. I think he’s probably suffering from overwork-you know, just taken finals-but that doesn’t make him a murderer. His disguise may be for criminal purposes, or it may just be that he needs to escape into another identity.’
‘Hmm. That sounds like psychological claptrap to me.’
‘You don’t subscribe to a psychological approach to crime?’
‘I dare say it’s very useful in certain cases, but I think it’s often used to fog perfectly straightforward issues. Every action has some sort of motive, and I’m sure that Martin Warburton has a real motive for dressing up as someone else.’
‘And you don’t regard an inadequacy in his personality as a real motive?’
‘I regard it as a formula of words. A motive is theft or blackmail, that sort of thing. Revenge even.’
‘But Martin might take on another identity because there’s something in his own that he can’t come to terms with.’
‘I don’t really know what you’re talking about.’
It was so easy for the Laird, insulated from life in his library, just as he had been insulated with his mother at Glenloan House and insulated in the staffroom at Kilbruce School. Because he had never encountered any unpleasant realities, he assumed they did not exist. Or if they did, they were simple things that could be cut up like sheets of paper, not made of material that frayed and tore and could never be properly divided.
‘But, James, come off it. When we last spoke you were talking of an obsessional killer, someone for whom the Mary, Queen of Scots story had a macabre significance.’