Best Served Cold

by Sally Spencer

  Jerry Talbot was whistling loudly when he breezed into the boarding house lounge and plopped down in one of the easy chairs.

  ‘Now there’s a change,’ said Bradley Quirk, who was the only other resident of the lounge at that moment. ‘What’s put you in such a good mood? Has somebody else who you don’t like been murdered? Or have you finally found someone who is stupid enough to give you an alibi?’

  ‘I don’t need an alibi,’ Talbot said. ‘I’ve been thinking things through, and I’ve realized that – of the entire company – I’m the only one who can prove he didn’t kill Mark Cotton.’

  ‘You’re not just whistling – and slightly out of tune, if I may say so – you’re whistling in the dark.’

  ‘Am I?’ Talbot asked complacently.

  ‘Of course you are.’

  ‘Well, if the great Bradley Quirk has made a pronouncement, I suppose there is nothing I can do but to bow to his judgement,’ Talbot said.

  And then he picked up an old copy of The Stage and began flicking idly through it.

  Quirk held out for a full five minutes before he finally said, ‘All right, how can you prove you didn’t kill Mark Cotton?’

  ‘You should be able to work that out for yourself.’

  ‘I’m in no mood to play one of your childish games.’

  ‘Then I guess you’ll never know.’

  Quirk sighed. ‘All right, give me a clue.’

  ‘Think back to last night,’ Talbot said. ‘You and I were sitting side-by-side in the dressing room and—’

  ‘Ah, now I see,’ Quirk said.

  ‘And I’m right, aren’t I?’

  ‘So it would seem,’ Quirk conceded. Then a new thought came into his head, and he smiled. ‘But if you are right, dear boy, doesn’t that mean that your life is in danger?’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Talbot gasped, ‘I hadn’t thought of that!’

  ‘I’ve called a press conference for you, Monika,’ the chief constable said.

  ‘Have you, sir?’ Paniatowski replied. ‘And why would you have done something like that?’

  ‘So that you can announce at it that you’ve arrested someone in connection with what the smart-arse broadsheet newspapers are already calling the Revenge Hangman Murder.’

  ‘But I haven’t arrested Maggie Maitland, sir. I don’t have any evidence to connect her with the murder.’

  ‘Really?’ Pickering frowned. ‘I’ve worked with a lot of chief inspectors in my time, and I think that most – if not all – of them would have considered they had ample grounds for charging her.’

  Paniatowski said nothing.

  ‘Oh well, if you won’t charge her then we’ll just have to settle for second best. You can tell the journalists that you’re questioning a woman of … of whatever age this Maitland woman is.’

  ‘I can’t do that, either, because it wouldn’t be true. The woman’s in a traumatic state. Firing questions at her would be a waste of time. Besides, I don’t think she did it.’

  ‘You don’t think she did it!’

  ‘That’s right, sir.’

  ‘You have a woman who is clearly mentally unstable, who was obsessed with Mark Cotton and who had been hiding in the theatre for over a week, and you don’t think she did it?’ Pickering asked incredulously. ‘So would you like to tell me, Detective Chief Inspector, just how you reached that improbable conclusion?’

  Paniatowski outlined the discussion she’d had with her team in the Drum and Monkey, and – for good measure – threw in what the psychiatrist had told her.

  ‘I’m not entirely convinced about any of this,’ Pickering said, ‘and I find DC Crane’s airy-fairy theory particularly difficult to take on board.’

  ‘You’ll have to trust me on this one, sir,’ Paniatowski said firmly.

  ‘All right I’ll trust you for the moment – but you’d better not be wrong,’ Pickering said. ‘And since I am being so accommodating, I’d like you to do me one small favour in return.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Half the town council are on the verge of hysterics because we haven’t made an arrest yet, and the press are demanding pretty much the same thing, so given that, we’re going to have to throw them a bone.’

  ‘What kind of bone?’

  ‘I’d like you to stretch the truth a little, and tell the press conference that we’re questioning Maggie Maitland.’

  ‘I can’t do that, either, sir.’

  ‘Why the devil not?’

  ‘Because even as we speak, DI Beresford is doing his very best to persuade several police forces spread around the country to cooperate with us on this investigation.’

  ‘And are you saying that if we announce we’re already questioning someone, they’ll refuse to help?’

  ‘No sir, they’ll still help, but they’ll assume we’ve already caught our killer, and they won’t exactly bust their guts to get us what we want.’

  For a while, Pickering was silent. And then he said, ‘I do hope that you and I are going to get along, Detective Chief Inspector Paniatowski.’

  ‘I’m sure we will, sir,’ Paniatowski answered. ‘How can we fail to, when we’ve both dedicated our lives to the pursuit of truth and justice?’

  ‘Are you trying to be funny, Chief Inspector?’ Pickering demanded.

  ‘No sir.’

  Pickering studied her for a second, then nodded his head.

  ‘No, you’re not, are you,’ he said, in a slightly surprised voice.

  TWELVE

  The two civilian scene-of-crime officers were known universally as Bill and Eddie. The wages clerk at headquarters probably knew their surnames, too, but no one else in the Mid Lancs police force did.

  Bill was tall and thin, and Eddie was small and round. They looked like a sort of Laurel and Hardy in reverse, and while they did clown around, they were quite brilliant at what they did, and, over the years, Paniatowski had grown rather fond of them.

  It was Eddie who walked over to greet Paniatowski when she entered the theatre.

  ‘Well, just look at you, Chief Inspector!’ he said. ‘You’re the size of a small family caravan.’

  ‘Thank you, Eddie,’ Paniatowski replied. ‘I feel much better after your caring comment.’

  ‘I hope you’re making sure you go to the doctor regularly,’ Eddie said, more seriously. ‘When my missus had a bun in the oven—’

  ‘I never knew that you were married,’ Paniatowski interrupted.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Eddie said. ‘I’ve had five of the happiest years of my life with my wife – which would be great, if we hadn’t been married for fourteen.’

  ‘And what about Bill? Is he also a married man?’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to go into details, but let’s just say that he’s known his share of suffering, too.’

  Paniatowski grinned. ‘Are you done here?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Eddie said. ‘You and your team can start rampaging about like a herd of mad rhinos as soon as the mood takes you.’

  ‘Have you found anything I can use?’

  ‘We’ve found enough fingerprints for you to open a fingerprint emporium, if you were so inclined – and by sometime tomorrow, we should be able to tell you who most of them belong to.’

  Which would be of limited value, Paniatowski thought, since the killer – whoever he was – had probably had a perfect right to be wherever the fingerprint was lifted from.

  ‘Anything else?’ she asked hopefully.

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact, there is one thing,’ Eddie said. ‘Follow me, Your Ladyship.’

  He led her through the auditorium, on to the stage, and from there into the right wing.

  ‘See those?’ he asked, indicating a set of metal steps running – at a sharp angle – from the backstage floor to the top of some scaffolding.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘At the top of the steps is the platform which your feller took the big drop from.’ Eddie took a powerful torch from his pocket, and shone it on the e
ighth step. ‘What do you see?’ he asked.

  Paniatowski examined the thick brown substance which looked as if it had been smeared on the step.

  ‘It’s some kind of grease,’ she said.

  ‘It is. And though we won’t know for sure until it’s been analysed, I’d put my money on it being actors’ make-up.’

  ‘Of which there is a more than plentiful supply in this building,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘The place is swimming in it,’ Eddie agreed. ‘Now, look at the way that it’s spread. It’s thinner at the sides than it is in the middle, but in the very middle there’s a roughly triangular section where there’s hardly any grease at all.’

  ‘It’s where someone trod.’

  ‘That’s what I think. He’s coming up the steps in a hurry …’

  ‘He has to, because it’s only a few seconds before he has to make his appearance on the platform.’

  ‘… so he’s not putting the whole of his foot on the step, just the toes and the ball of his foot. Then he hits the patch of grease. It’s been fairly concentrated up until that point, but now the pressure from his foot makes it squelch to the left and the right. And as for him … he loses his footing completely and goes bouncing down four or five steps.’

  ‘How can you be sure of that?’

  ‘We found traces of the grease on the fourth step. Presumably, they came from his shoe. So unless I’m very wrong indeed, you’ll find several bruises on the dead man’s shins.’ Eddie paused. ‘He picks himself up and starts climbing the stairs again, and this time – either by luck or because he knows it’s there – he avoids the grease and reaches the platform.’

  It would have been by luck, Paniatowski thought, because if he’d known it was grease which had made him lose his footing, he would have realized something was seriously wrong – and then he might have thought twice about pulling the stunt with the noose.

  ‘He was probably taking two steps at once, to make up for the time he’d lost, so, on his second attempt, he didn’t make any contact with the greased step at all,’ she said.

  ‘That’s more than likely,’ Eddie agreed.

  ‘There’s no chance the grease got there accidentally, is there?’ Paniatowski asked.

  Eddie shrugged. ‘Anything’s possible in this world, but from the state it’s in now, I’d say it had been laid down very precisely.’

  Charlie Woodend had always established his centre of operations near to wherever the crime he was currently investigating had been committed – which usually meant the nearest pub.

  ‘You need to be close to the crime scene, Monika,’ he’d told Paniatowski at the very start of their partnership. ‘You need to able to walk around it – to feel the heart of it beating beneath the soles of your feet.’

  By the time they had wrapped up their second investigation together, Paniatowski had been convinced that Woodend was right, which was why, once Eddie had given her the all-clear, she had rung through to police headquarters and set in motion a process that would convert the bar in the Whitebridge Theatre into a place where she could work.

  In less than an hour, the transformation had been completed. The mock-Edwardian chairs and low tables had been stacked neatly in the corner, and been replaced by three businesslike desks. Heavy framed portraits of David Garrick, Henry Irving and Ellen Terry had been taken down, and blackboards had been hung in their stead. Police technicians had installed extra phone lines, and grey metal cabinets now stood where only recently there had been a one-armed bandit.

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ said Meadows, once they had the bar to themselves, ‘is why the killer bothered with the grease at all.’

  ‘Go on,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘I can’t see why he would do something so petty – something that would only give Cotton a few bruises – when he’d planned it so that the man would hang himself. In fact, by greasing the step, wasn’t the killer running the risk that he wouldn’t get what he really wanted at all?’

  ‘You mean that Cotton could have hurt himself so badly that he’d never even have reached the platform?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘The picture I’ve been building up of Mark Cotton is that of a man who was both very fit and very ambitious. Nothing short of a broken leg would have prevented him from picking himself up and making his entrance.’

  ‘It was still a risk.’

  ‘I think the killer may have decided it was a risk worth taking. By slowing him down – by robbing him of vital seconds – he was ensuring that Cotton didn’t have time to give the harness even a cursory inspection.’

  ‘But would he have inspected it anyway?’ Meadows wondered. ‘Time was tight even without the fall, and until the spotlight hit the platform, it was very dark up there.’

  There was a knock on the door, and one of the uniformed constables posted at the front entrance came in.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, ma’am, but there’s a man outside who wants to see you urgently. He claims he’s one of the actors.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Jerry Talbot. He says he was the victim’s – what’s the word? – he was the victim’s understudy.’

  ‘And so he was,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Show him in.’

  Jerry Talbot looked bloody awful. His eyes were wild and darting, and when he sat down and put his hands on the desk, it was obvious that he was unable to control his trembling.

  ‘We’re not actually ready to begin our round of witness interviews, Mr Talbot,’ Paniatowski said, ‘but since you seemed to think it was important that you should see me right away—’

  ‘You have to give me police protection,’ Talbot interrupted, in what was little more than a croak.

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘From the killer, of course.’

  ‘And why should he be interested in you?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I’m sure he is. I’ve always been the one who he was interested in.’

  ‘What leads you to that conclusion?’ Meadows asked.

  ‘Look, I was due to play Hieronimo last night. The whole cast knew that. And then, less than an hour before I was due to go on stage, that bastard Mark Cotton marches into the dressing room and says he’s going to play the lead instead. Do you see what I’m getting at?’

  ‘You’re saying that the faulty harness was intended for you, and not for Mark Cotton,’ Meadows said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is there any chance that the killer could have meddled with the harness and the rope after he’d learned that it would be Cotton playing Hieronimo?’ Paniatowski wondered.

  ‘No. I mean … I don’t think so. No, I’m sure there isn’t. I went on to the stage immediately after the swine had told me he was replacing me. I stood by those stairs which lead up to the platform. If anybody had been messing with the harness, I would have seen him.’

  ‘What were you doing standing next to the stairs, Mr Talbot?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You weren’t going to play Hieronimo that night, so you had no real reason to be there, did you?’

  ‘I … I …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I suppose I just wasn’t thinking. All right? I was angry and I simply went where my legs took me. Perhaps there was even some part of me that wanted to revel in my own misery. But that’s not the point.’

  ‘Then what is the point?’

  ‘I wasn’t the only one around – not by a long chalk. To exchange one rope for another, I would have had to go up to the fly loft, and it would have taken me at least five minutes. Someone would have been bound to notice me, just as they’d have noticed anybody else. So it must all have been set up beforehand – when everybody thought I was playing Hieronimo.’

  ‘Can you think of anyone in the company who might have wanted to harm you?’

  ‘I couldn’t stand that bastard Mark Cotton, and he couldn’t stand me,’ Talbot said. ‘I nearly didn’t come here at all because of him, but the
n I let Phil McCann talk me into it. He said Cotton would have changed – but he couldn’t have been more wrong about that. He was worse than ever – cocky, bullying, vindictive – and I hated him even more than I did in the old days.’

  ‘When did you have this conversation with Phil McCann?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘Why does that matter, when my life’s in danger?’

  ‘Because you want us to catch the killer, and that’s what we want, too. And the way we’ll catch him is by collecting as much information as we can, even information that probably seems irrelevant to you – and may turn out to be just that. So I’ll ask you again, Mr Talbot – when did you have this conversation with Mr McCann?’

  ‘It was the week before last. We met in a pub in London.’

  ‘So if you’d suspected anybody of wanting to hurt you, it would have been Mark Cotton,’ Meadows said. ‘The only problem is that if it had been Cotton who set up that death trap for you, he was hardly likely to walk into it himself.’ She paused. ‘You do realize you’ve just established that you had reasons for wanting him dead, don’t you?’

  Talbot groaned. ‘I just don’t believe this,’ he said. ‘I was supposed to be playing Hieronimo. Can’t you get that into your thick head? I was supposed to be playing him.’

  ‘Maybe, after setting up the death trap, you suggested to him that he might want to play the role on Monday night,’ Meadows said.

  ‘I desperately wanted to play it. I thought I was playing it. It came as a big shock when Mark Cotton told me I wasn’t – and if you don’t believe me, ask Bradley Quirk.’

  Bradley Quirk was a good-looking man – possibly better looking than Mark Cotton had been – yet Paniatowski could not picture him in her bed, nor could Meadows imagine tying him up.

  He walked into the room with breezy confidence, and sat down opposite the two officers without waiting for an invitation.

  ‘You summoned me, and like the good and faithful knight that I am, I have been fleet of foot in answering that summons,’ he said.

  ‘He means he got here about as quickly as a middle-aged man like him could have got here,’ Meadows translated.

  ‘Cruel – but fair,’ Quirk agreed, taking the remark in his stride.