Death Of A Hollow Man (37 page)

At this point Tim covered his chalk-white countenance with his hands and lowered his head. Avery put an arm around his shoulders. As he did so, his mind became crowded with bathetic images. He saw himself visiting Tim in prison every week, even if that meant for years. He would bake a cake with a file inside. Or smuggle in a rope beneath his poncho. At the thought of prison food, Avery felt his tummy start to chum. How would Tim survive?

“If you remember, Kitty”—Avery forced his attention back to what Tom was saying—“I asked you if you had noticed any change recently in your husband’s routine, and you said he had gone to work the Saturday morning before he died. I don’t know, Rosa, if you recall … ?”

“Never.” The first Mrs. Carmichael shook her head. “He was quite firm on that. Said he had enough of facts and figures during the week.”

“He had gone to the office, Kitty told me, to ‘call something in.’ A strange phrase, surely. One you’d be more likely to hear from the lips of a gambler than an accountant. Or a debt collector. Because that’s what the phrase means. You ‘call in’ a debt. And I believe this is what Esslyn was about to do. What was owed and for how long we don’t know. But he had apparently decided that it had gone on long enough.”

“But, Tom,” interrupted Joyce, her voice harsh and nervous, “you said he was killed because he knew something.”

“And also”—Nicholas took advantage of the breach— “owing someone money isn’t much fun, but it’s not the end of the world. Certainly not worth killing for. I mean, the worst that can happen is you get taken to court.”

“Oh, there was much more than that at stake. To discover precisely what, we have to go back to the point I reached earlier and ask again what happened several months ago—six, to be exact—to give Esslyn the confidence to start throwing his weight about?”

Barnaby paused then, and the silence lay ripe with suspicion and stabbed by startled looks. At first dense, it slowly became more lightsome, gathering point and clarity. Barnaby was never sure who first fingered the Everards. Certainly it was not him. But, as if telepathically, first one head, then another, pointed in their direction. Nicholas spoke.

“He got himself a pair of toadies.”

“I see nothing wrong—” rushed in Clive Everard. “Neither do I,” said Donald.

“—in becoming friendly with—”

“—in
devotedly
admiring—”

“—even venerating—”

“—someone of Esslyn’s undoubted talents—”

“—and remarkable skills.”

“You bloody hypocrites.” Barnaby’s voice was so quiet that for a moment people glanced around, uncertain from where that damning indictment had arisen. Troy knew, and his adrenaline shot up. Barnaby walked to the edge of the row in which the brothers were sitting and said still softly, “You malicious, wicked, meddling, evil-minded bastards.”

Pasty-faced, their nostrils pinched in tight with alarm, the Everards shrank closer together. Kitty gazed at them with dawning horror, Cully, unaware that she was gripping Nicholas’s arm very tight, half rose from her seat. Avery’s expression of misery was suddenly touched with a glow of hope. Joyce felt she would choke on the suspense, and Harold was nodding. His head wagged back and forth as if it were loose on his shoulders, like the head on those gross Chinese Buddhas found sometimes in antique shops.

“You’ve no call to speak to us like that,” cried one of the Everards, recovering fast.

“Since when has it been against the law to admire an actor?”

>“
Admire
.” Barnaby almost spat out the word, and the volume of his voice increased tenfold. He pushed his angry face close to theirs. “You didn’t admire him. You led him around like a bear with a ring through its nose. And he, poor bugger, never having had a friend in his life, thought no doubt that this was what friendship was. Court toadies? Quite the reverse. Whatever that might be.”

“
Eminences grises?
” suggested Boris.

“And directly responsible for his death.’’

At this, Donald Everard flew out of his seat. “You heard that!” he screamed, flapping his arms at the rest of the gathering. “That’s slander!”

“We shall sue!” shrieked his brother. “You can’t go around saying we killed Esslyn and get away with it.”

“We’ve got witnesses!”

“All these people!”

“I didn’t say you had killed him,” said Barnaby, stepping back from these hysterics with an expression of deep distaste. “I said I believed you were responsible for his death.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“Not quite. As you’ll realize if you’ll stop flinging yourselves about and settle down to think about it.” When they had reluctantly, with many an injured cluck and toss of a gel-stiffened crest, reseated themselves, Barnaby carried on. “So we now have a puppet, a hollow man with someone pulling his strings. And what do they do, oh so subtly, so slyly, these puppeteers? At first they encourage intransigence. I can just hear it … ‘You’re not going to take that, are you? You’re the leading man … don’t you realize how powerful you are? They couldn’t do anything without you.’ But after a few weeks that rather modest mischief starts to pall. They’ve gone about as far as they can go with that one. So they look around for something more interesting, and I suspect it was about this time that Esslyn shared with them the information that was to instigate their grand design and lead directly to his death.

“In fact, it was something my sergeant said in the office today that pointed me in the right direction.” His sergeant, suddenly in the spotlight, attempted to look intelligent, modest, and invaluable. He also managed a surreptitious wink at Kitty, who promptly winked back. “He’s given to making feeble, atrociously unfunny jokes,” continued Barnaby (Troy immediately looked less intelligent), “the latest being a play on the word ‘putsch,’ but, as these things sometimes do, it reminded me of something very similar from a recent interview. I don’t know if you remember, Kitty… ?”

Suddenly addressed, Kitty, who was still ogling Troy, blushed and said, “Sorry?”

“You told me that Esslyn spoke to you of the dramatic effect he intended to make on the first night.”

“That’s right, he did.”

“And because he was admiring himself in his costume, you assumed that he referred to his own transformation.” “No—you said that, Tom. When you explained that funny French bit.” Barnaby almost repeated the phrase, making it a question, and Kitty said, “That’s right.”

“Are you sure?”

Kitty looked around. Something was amiss. People were staring at her. She suddenly felt cold. What had she done that they should stare so?

“Yes, Tom, quite sure. Why?”

“Because what I just said was not the same phrase.” So near though, and it had taken him two days to get it. “What I said—what
Esslyn
said—was ‘
coup d’etat
.’ A seizing of power.”

“Oh, God—” The fragment of sound from Deidre was almost inaudible, but David immediately handed the dog to his father and took her hand.

“Twice a phrase was misheard or misinterpreted. And in both instances the correct readings would have provided vital clues.”

“What was the other, Tom?” asked Boris, the only member of the group who seemed relaxed enough to speak.

“Esslyn tried to tell us with his dying breath of the plan that had undone him. Only one word, and that word was thought to be ‘bungled.’ But I performed a simple experiment earlier today, and I’m now quite sure the word in fact was ‘
Uncle
.’ And that if time had been granted him the next word would have been
‘Vanya
.’ Isn’t that right, Harold?” Harold’s head continued to nod like a Chinese Buddha.

‘‘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.”