“So it’s safe to say you don’t like Robert Kramer,” May pushed.
“I’m not paid to have an opinion about him one way or the other,” Lansdale replied. “I’m paid to cover the show.”
“You broke ranks to stab the play in the back. Yet you still showed up to the party. Why was that?”
“I’m as entitled as anyone. My readers expect me to be rude, and I try not to disappoint them. Besides, I had a – ” He stopped himself.
“You had a what?”
“Nothing. Please go on.”
May switched tactics. “Who do you think killed his son?”
Lansdale puckered his dimples, thinking. “It’s usually the mother, isn’t it? Postnatal depression. I think the wife’s positively unhinged. You hear all kinds of rumours about her, how she married him because she’d heard how much money he’d made and found herself stuck in a hellish relationship. Maybe she was pushed to the end of her tether. She’s out of her depth, pretty as porcelain and a lot more fragile.”
“Judith Kramer is a saint,” said Gregory Baine a few minutes later. “You have no idea what she’s had to put up with.” The producer helped himself to fresh strong coffee, which was probably a bad idea. His fingers fluttered restlessly in his lap and brushed at his shirt. He kept pawing at the iPhone on the next sofa seat, as if expecting momentously bad news to arrive at any second.
“How’s the general atmosphere between you all?” May asked. “Amicable? Fractious?”
“I’m sure you’d like to hear that we’re all at each other’s throats, but we’re not,” Baine replied. “It’s one of the most ego-free productions I’ve ever worked on. We all have our designated roles and we stick to them. Outsiders always assume we’re either friends or rivals, but that’s not true these days. Modern theatre is a business like any other. You draw up contracts and budgets, take meetings, put in your hours and go home at night. But money’s a problem. Cash flow is a nightmare, and I’m the one who takes the blame if anything goes wrong.”
“Do you think what happened to Noah Kramer is a personal affair? Nothing to do with anyone else at the party?”
“This is a private matter between Robert and Judith. The rest of the company is hardly known to them. They’re just employees.”
“You don’t count yourself in that group?”
“No. I’ve known Robert for years.”
“I understand Mr Kramer was primarily a property developer. What made him get into the theatrical business?”
“He fell in love with the building, and when the property report came in he found out that it still had a theatre licence, simple as that. He saw a way to make easy money on a relatively small investment. But he wouldn’t have been able to do it without Ray Pryce.”
May checked his notes. “The playwright.”
“Ray went to Robert with the play already written. Robert’s an astute businessman but he hasn’t got a creative bone in his body. Luckily, Robert listened to his advisors and Ray chose to stick with him.”
The director, Russell Haddon, agreed. He had nothing but compliments for his team and the company. But May noticed they were all being careful when it came to discussing Robert Kramer’s relationship with his wife. The detectives were being politely but firmly treated as outsiders. The theatre company had closed ranks against them.
Flicking back through the pages on his desk, May became aware that the case was starting to point in a single direction. To all appearances it seemed that Robert Kramer had found out about his wife’s affair and had killed their child in a fit of uncontrollable anger.
Marcus Sigler looked uncomfortable from the moment he sat down. He glanced around and dropped his voice, as if expecting to be spied on. “Am I being singled out?” he wanted to know.
“No, we’re talking to everyone.” May held him with a level gaze. “The main reason bad things happen to loved ones is that someone close to them gets angry, and I wondered how angry you are right now.”
“I don’t think I know what you mean.”
“Let’s start with your relationship to Judith Kramer. I understand you met her before she got married, and began an affair with her that’s still continuing – ”
“Oh, Jesus – ”
“Who initiated it?”
“It was a mutual thing.”
“Did you ask her to leave her husband?”
“Oh, Christ.” Marcus pushed back in his seat and covered his face with his hands. “No, you don’t understand. I care for her but I’m glad she married Robert. She is too.”
“Why?”
“Because she got what she always wanted. The best of both worlds.”
“A successful husband and an attractive lover.”
“She also became a mother, something else she’d always wanted.”
“Don’t you think it was a dangerous idea to continue seeing her?”
Sigler stared silently down at his perfectly manicured nails.
“How does it work, in the practical sense? You wait for Mr Kramer to go to the theatre, then say you’re heading off somewhere on business? You send Mrs Kramer a coded telephone message? What?”
“Look, it just happens. We find ways. Theatre people work unusual hours. It has to be like this.”
“No, it doesn’t. You could have stopped seeing her.”
“You have no right to judge me.”
“I’d agree with you if I were a regular police officer, but I’m not. I’m paid to hold opinions. You could be the cause of what’s happened, have you thought about that? Robert Kramer might have done this to get back at his unfaithful wife. And he might want to hurt you too.”
“No. Until Monday at least, I thought he couldn’t know about us.”
“How can you be sure?”
“He’s not the kind of man who can bottle up his emotions. You should hear him in the theatre sometimes. When he gets angry everyone knows about it.”
“OK, let me run another situation past you. You killed Noah Kramer to hurt the man who has been mistreating his wife – your lover.”
“No!”
“Why not?”
Another silence extended into discomfort. “I could never harm a child. Any child.”
“Give me a reason, Mr Sigler. Eliminate yourself from the inquiry, or we’ll be seeing quite a bit more of each other.”
“You mean I’ll remain under suspicion if I don’t tell you?”
“It’s looking that way.”
Sigler glanced around, then leaned closer. “How can I be sure that what I say in this room remains in the strictest confidence?”
“You can’t. It will stay within the confines of the investigation, but I’m not a priest.”
Sigler took a deep breath. “The boy was mine.”
“Noah Kramer was your son?”
“Yes. Judith told me that she and Robert had had trouble conceiving. They went to get advice, and Robert found out he has an abnormally low sperm count. He thinks he got lucky with Noah, but the hospital told Judith it was unlikely he would ever be able to give her a child. So I did. OK, it was an accident, but that’s what happened.”
“How did Judith feel when she discovered she was pregnant?”
“She was happy about it. She wanted to keep the baby – for Robert’s sake.”
“And Mr Kramer has no inkling about this either?”
“No, of course not. And now Noah’s dead, so you need to look for someone who wants to hurt me, not him. You wouldn’t have to look very far.”
“What do you mean?”
“I would have thought it was obvious. Something happened at the party. Somebody must have told Robert about us, and he put two and two together. He took his revenge by killing our child. I don’t know how he covered his tracks, but I’m sure it was him.”
This idea crystallized an uncomfortable sensation that May had felt since the start of the investigation; everything turned on the conversation at the party. It made the investigation trickier, because Bryant was chronically unable to empathize with the victims and witnesses of crime. This was a problem only May would be able to solve.