Death Of A Hollow Man

by Caroline Graham

  “Bit dodgy, wasn’t it? Must’ve been quite a few people about.”

  “No. Deidre had gone to collect her ASMs from upstairs. All the actors were still in their dressing rooms.”

  “And where did you do it?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Where?”

  “… well … the scene dock.”

  “You’d have to be quick. What did you use?”

  “A Stanley knife.”

  “The same one that was in the wings?”

  Colin hesitated. Fingerprints, he thought. His should be all over the one in the wings, but you never knew. “No. I used my own.”

  “Got it with you?”

  “It’s in my workshop.”

  “And what did you do with the tape?”

  “Just … scrumpled it up.”

  “And left it there?”

  “Yes.”

  “So if we went over now, you could produce it?”

  “No! Afterward … when I realized how terrible everything was … I threw it away. Down the bog.”

  Barnaby said, “I see,” and nodded. Then he leaned back in his chair and gazed out of the window at the black and gray scudding clouds. Colin leaned back a little, too. His breathing returned to near normal; his heart stopped thundering. That hadn’t been too bad. All he had to do now was remember precisely what it was he’d said (for Barnaby’s pad now seemed to be quite covered with lines and squiggles) and stick to it. And that shouldn’t be too difficult.

  Colin glanced at the clock. To his amazement, barely ten minutes had passed since he had entered the room. The delusion that he had been shut up here babbling away for hours must simply be put down to stretched nerves. Barnaby drained his tea. “Some more, Colin?” When the other man declined, Barnaby said, “I think I will,” and disappeared.

  Left alone, Colin gathered his wits. He was bound to be asked all the foregoing questions again and probably many more (although he could not imagine what they might be), but now he had got the time, method, and motive firmly tethered, he felt a lot more confident. After all, those were the basics. The crucial underpinnings to the case, and no one could prove that he wasn’t telling the truth. He would stand up in court and swear. He would swear the rest of his life away, if need be.

  Barnaby was a long time. Colin wondered why he hadn’t just pressed the buzzer as he had before if he wanted more tea. Colin inclined his ear toward the door, but he could hear nothing but the distant rattle of a typewriter. Perhaps Barnaby was finding someone to take down a proper statement. Colin listened again; then, hearing no approaching footsteps, leaned over the desk and turned the chief inspector’s pad around. It was covered with beautifully drawn flowers. Harebells and primroses. And ferns.

  Alarmed, Colin slumped back in his seat. Tom had not written down a single thing! Following this realization came another, more terrible. The only reason for this must be that Tom had not believed a word that he, Colin, had said. He had been sitting there, nodding, scribbling, asking questions, and all the time he had just been playacting. Only pretending to take things seriously. Colin’s leg started to tremble and his foot to jounce on the linoleum floor. He pressed his leg hard against the chair to keep it still, then felt his mouth brim with bile. He was going to be sick. Or faint. Before he could do either, Barnaby returned, sat behind his desk, and gave Colin a concerned glance.

  “You look a bit green. Are you sure you don’t want another drink?”

  “Some water …”

  “Can we have a glass of water?” said Barnaby into his buzzer. “And I’d like some more tea.”

  The drinks arrived. Colin sipped his slowly. “Didn’t you go out for some more tea, Tom?”

  “No. To arrange some transport.”

  “Ah.” Colin put his glass on the desk. He desperately needed time to think. Struggling to apply his attention to the matter, Colin almost immediately saw where he had gone wrong. It was in the murder motive. No wonder Tom had been disbelieving. Colin, in the chief inspector’s shoes, would have felt the same. How ridiculous—to kill someone because they had been unkind to your son. And him a grown man. If only, Colin chided himself, he had prepared what he had come to say more carefully. But it was not too late. He saw now how he could put things right. And what he should have said in the first place.

  “The truth is, Tom,” he blurted out clumsily, “David is in love with Kitty. You’ve seen … you were in the audience … how violent Esslyn was toward her. He found out, you see. And I was afraid. Afraid for her and for David. He was fiendish, Esslyn. I really thought he might harm them both.”

  ‘‘So you spiked his guns?”

  ‘‘Yes.”

  “Well … that sounds a bit more likely.”

  “Yes. I didn’t say that at first, because I thought if I could keep them out of it, I would.”

  “Such delicacy does you credit.” Barnaby drank deep of his breakfast blend. “There’s only one little snag in that scenario. Esslyn believed his wife was having an affair with Nicholas.”

  “Nicholas. ’’

  “But of course you weren’t to know that.”

  “Was it true?” Colin turned an eager look upon the chief inspector.

  “No. The general consensus seems to be that David was indeed the man. By the way, where was he while you were carrying out all this jiggery-pokery?”

  Colin’s breath stopped in his throat. He gazed at Barnaby; the mouse and the cat. He felt the skin on his face prickle and knew it must be stained crimson. He opened his mouth, but no sound came. He couldn’t think. His brains were stewed. Where was David while all this was going on? Where was David? Not in the wings or (obviously) the scene dock. Not upstairs. In the dressing room! Of course.

  “In the dressing room. Anyone will vouch for him.”

  “Why should anyone need to vouch for him?”

  “Oh—no reason. Just … if you wanted to check.”

  “I see.” Barnaby completed to perfection the tight, curled lip of the Asplenium trichomanes. “I feel I should tell you that we tried to flush the tape down every loo in the theater and were completely unsuccessful.”

  “… oh … did you? Yes … sorry … my memory … I threw it out of the window.”

  “Well, Colin”—Barnaby put down his pen and smiled rather severely at his companion—“I’ve sat at this desk and listened to some sorry liars in my time but if I gave a prize for the worst, I think you’d cop it.”

  He watched Colin’s face, which had already shown every aspect of alarm and apprehension, further suffuse with emotion. It seemed to blow up like a balloon. The skin stretched tight across his cheekbones and jaw, and his eyes darted around like tiny, trapped wild creatures. He seemed to have no control over his mouth and his lips worked in little push-pull convulsions. He swayed in his chair as if giddy.

  And giddy was what he felt. For Colin was reeling under the force of a double-edged blow. He now saw with icy clarity that coming to the station and making a false confession was the worst thing he could possibly have done. Not only had he failed to save his son, but the slightest pause for reflection must have shown him that David would never stand silently by while his father, innocent of any crime, was arrested, perhaps imprisoned. In trying to protect the boy, Colin now saw that he had stupidly thrust him into the very heart of the crime where all the danger lay. He covered his face with his hands and moaned.

  Barnaby shifted from his chair, came round to the front of the desk, and perched on the edge. Then he touched Colin on the shoulder and said, “You could be wrong, you know.”

  “No, Tom!” Colin turned a desolate seeking look upon the chief inspector. The look was wild with unfounded expectation. It begged Barnaby, even at this late stage, when a traitorous admission, though still unspoken, lay as solid as a rock between them, to perform a magical conjuring trick. To say it wasn’t so. When Barnaby remained silent, Colin gave one terrible dry sob, racked from his gut, and cried, “You see … I saw him do it. I actually saw hi
m do it. ”

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, having accepted more tea and, to some degree, composed himself, Colin told Barnaby what he had observed in the wings at the first night of Amadeus. He spoke in an emotionless voice, hanging his head as if deeply ashamed to be speaking at all. Barnaby received the information impassively, and when Colin had finished, said, “Are you positive he was tinkering with the razor?”

  “What else could he have been doing, Tom? Looking round so furtively to make sure that no one was watching. Bending over the props table. And he actually went into the toilet, came out, and went back again.”

  “But you didn’t see him touch it?”

  “No. I was over on the other side of the stage, behind the fireplace. And of course he’d got his back to me . . Colin looked up then and a tiny wisp of hope touched his voice. “Do you think … Oh, Tom … d’you think I’ve got it wrong?”

  “I certainly think we’d better not leap to any more conclusions. One’s enough to be going on with. We’ll see what David has to say when he gets here.”

  “David. . . here. . . Oh, God!” Horrified, Colin rose from his seat.

  “Sit down,” said Barnaby, irritated. “You come in here and make a false confession. As you’re not a head case, it’s clear that you’re protecting someone. There’s only one person you’d go to those lengths for. Obviously we need to speak to that person. And here”—the buzzer sounded— “I should imagine, he is.”

  As the door opened, Colin quickly bowed his shoulders and buried his face once more in his hands. He did not look up as David almost ran across the room and knelt beside him.

  “Dad—what is it? What are you doing here?” Getting no response, he turned to Barnaby. “Tom, what the hell’s going on?”

  “Your father has just confessed to the murder of Esslyn Carmichael.”

  “He’s done what?” David Smy, absolutely dumbfounded, stared at Barnaby, then turned again to the figure crouched in the chair. He tried to move his father’s head so that his face was visible, but Colin gave a fierce animal cry and burrowed ever more firmly in the wedge of his arms.

  David stood up and said, “I don’t believe it. I simply don’t believe it.”

  “No,” replied Barnaby dryly. “I don’t believe it, either.”

  “But then … why? What’s the point? Dad. ” He shook his father’s arm. “Look at me!”

  “He’s shielding someone. Or thinks he is.”

  “You stupid … What do you think you’re playing at?” Panic streamed through David’s voice. “But … if you know he’s lying, Tom … that’s all right, isn’t it? I mean … that’s all right?”

  “Up to a point.”

  “How ‘up to a point’?”

  “Who do you think he would be prepared to go to prison for?”

  David frowned, and Barnaby watched his homely face move through incomprehension, dawning apprehension, and incredulity. Incredulity lingered longest. “You mean … he thought it was me?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But why on earth would I want to kill Esslyn?”

  Barnaby had heard that phrase (give or take a change in nomenclature) a good many times in his career. He had heard it ringing with guilty bluster and innocent inquiry; spoken in high and low dudgeon, afire with self-righteous indignation, and shot through with fear. But he had never before been faced with the quality of complete and utter stupefaction that was now stamped on David Smy’s bovine features.

  “Well,” answered the chief inspector, “the general consensus seems to be because of your affair with Kitty.”

  David’s expression of disbelief now deepened to the point where he looked positively poleaxed. He shook his head from side to side slowly, as if to clear it from the effects of a blow. Barnaby said, “I should sit down, if I were you.”

  David collapsed into the second of the tweedy chairs and said, “I think there’s been some mistake.” Colin raised his head then, the disturbed agony of his gaze quieted, transmuted.

  “You were seen acting suspiciously in the wings,” said Barnaby. “Around the quarter.”

  David went very pale. “Who by?”

  “We had an anonymous tip. These things have to be followed up.”

  “Of course.” David sat silently for a moment, then said, “I was sure there was no one around.”

  “You don’t have to say anything else!” cried Colin. “You have all sorts of rights. I’ll get you a solicitor—”

  “I don’t need a solicitor, Dad. I haven’t done anything all that dreadful.”

  “Do you think we could get down to exactly what you have done?” Barnaby said brusquely. “My patience is rapidly running out.”

  David took a deep breath. “Esslyn told this unkind story about Deidre’s father. It was so cruel. Everyone laughed, and I knew she’d overheard. She was just on the stairs outside. Then I saw her afterward checking the sound deck, and she was crying. I got so angry. When she went upstairs to collect the ASMs, I got some scouring powder from the gents’ and I shook it all over those little cakes he eats in Act One. I know it was silly. And I know it was spiteful and childish, and I don’t care. I’d do it again.” Barnaby stared at David’s stubborn face, then shifted his glance to the boy’s father. Before his eyes Colin’s countenance was rinsed clean of misery and despair and brightly transformed as is a child’s face when a smile is “wiped” on by the back of its hand. Now, Colin was expressing a delight so intense it made him appear quite ridiculous.

  “I didn’t know you fancied the girl!” he cried joyously.

  “I don’t ‘fancy’ her, Dad. I care deeply for her and have for some time. I told you.”

  “What?”

  “We were talking about her last week. I told you that I cared for someone, but she wasn’t free. And we discussed it yesterday as well.”

  “You meant Deidre?”

  “Who else?” David looked from his father to Barnaby and back again. His expression was stern. He had the air of a man who was being trifled with and could do without the experience. “I don’t know who got this idea off the ground that I’d got something going with Kitty.” Barnaby shrugged and smiled, and David continued indignantly, “It’s no laughing matter, Tom. What if it got back to Deidre? I don’t want her thinking I’m some sort of Don Juan.” The thought of David with his shining countenance and straight blue eyes and simple heart in the role of Don Juan caused Barnaby’s lip to twitch once more, and he faked a cough to cover it. “As for you, Dad …” Colin, looking discomfited, shamefaced, and radiant with happiness, shuffled his feet. “How did you get to know about all this, anyway?”

  “We called at the house,” cut in Barnaby before Colin could reply. Not that he looked capable. “I’m afraid your father drew his own conclusions from the form our questions took.”

  “You silly sod,” David said affectionately. “I don’t know how you could have been so daft.”

  “No,” said Colin. “I don’t either, now. Well …” He got up. “Could we … is it all right to go now?”

  “Can’t wait to see the back of you.”

  “Actually, Tom,” David said hesitantly, “there’s something I’d half meant to tell you. It seemed so vague, that’s why I didn’t mention it yesterday, but I’ve been thinking it over, and … as I’m here …”

  “Fire away.”

  “It’s very slight. So I hope you won’t be cross.”

  “I shall be extremely cross any minute now if you don’t hurry up and get on with it.”

  “Yes. Right. Well, you know I take the tray with all the shaving things on at the end of the play. There was something odd about it on the first night.”

  “Yes?”

  “That’s it, I’m afraid. I told you it was vague.”

  “Very vague indeed.”

  “I knew you’d be cross.”

  “I am not cross,” said Barnaby with an ogrish grin. “All the usual things were there, I take it?”

  “Yes.
Soap in wooden dish. China bowl with hot water. Shaving brush. Closed razor. Towel.”

  “Placed any differently?” David shook his head. “Different soap, perhaps?”

  “No. It’s never used actually, so we’ve kept the same piece, Imperial Leather, all the way through rehearsals.” “In that case, David,” said Barnaby rather tersely, “I’m at a bit of a loss to see what was so odd about it.”

  “I know. That’s why I hesitated to tell you. But when I picked the tray up from the props table, I definitely got that feeling.”

  “Perhaps then it was something on the table?” asked Barnaby, his interest quickening. “In the wrong position. Or maybe something that shouldn’t have been there at all?” David shook his head. “No. It was to do with the tray.”

  “Well”—Barnaby got to his feet dismissively—“keep mulling it over. It could be important. Ring me if anything clicks.”

  Colin thrust out his hand, and the strength of his gratitude for Barnaby’s white lies could be felt in the firm grip. “I’m very, very sorry, Tom, to have been so much bother.”

  They left then, and Barnaby stood at his office door and watched them, David striding forward looking straight ahead, Colin loping alongside in a cloud of relief so dense it was almost tangible. As they went through the exit, Colin, careful not to sound incredulous, said, “But why Deidre?”

  And Barnaby heard David reply, “Because she needs me more than anyone else ever will. And because I love her.”

  Deidre walked up the drive toward the Walker Memorial Hospital for Psychiatric Disorders, the dog trotting at her heels. On being informed by Barnaby that he was being kept in one of the police kennels until she claimed him, Deidre had called there on her way to the hospital to put the record straight. The nice blond policewoman was in reception and asked how Deidre was feeling. Deidre asked in her turn after the constable who rescued her father, then the policewoman lifted the counter flap, said, “Through here,” and disappeared. Deidre, murmuring “The trouble is, you see,” followed.

  The kennels were really large cages and held three dogs. Two lay mopingly on the earthen floor, the third leaped to its paws and moved eagerly forward. Deidre, repeating “The trouble is, you see,” looked down at the questing black nose and soft muzzle pressed against the wire mesh. The tail was wagging so fast it was just a brown blur. Policewoman Brierley was unfastening the padlock. Now was the time to explain. Afterward, trying to understand why she hadn’t, Deidre decided it was all the dog’s fault.