Death in Disguise (47 page)

It was nearly seven. Barnaby sat, head in hands, brain stuffed to bursting with a kaleidoscope of detail, his thoughts overheated and stale. A labyrinth of faces, voices, diagrams, pictures. But which thread would lead him to the clear light of day? Perhaps that thread had not yet been discovered. If it was, he wondered how the hell he would find room for it.

That there was plenty of material that could be jettisoned he had no doubt, but at the moment he dared throw nothing away. His shoulders were stiff and he hunched them up and down then pressed them back to loosen up a bit. Troy was looking at his watch.

‘I expect they're doing evening-chanting up at the Windhorse,' he said. ‘Dancing round. Or whatever daft rubbish it is they do.'

‘Don't be like that, Troy. You might get born again yourself one day.'

‘Strikes me most of the people who are born again should never have been born in the first place.'

Barnaby laughed and Troy looked disconcerted. The chief would do that sometimes. Sit straight-faced through any amount of little witticisms then fall about when you were being serious. ‘It's getting on, sir.'

‘Something might still come in.'

‘Thought you said it was Cully's birthday.' Barnaby disliked the naked lechery in his sergeant's voice whenever Cully's name came up. ‘Isn't there going to be a party?'

‘A small one. She got engaged as well.'

‘Oh yeh? What's he do?'

‘An actor.'

‘He'll be on telly, then,' said Troy with simple confidence.

Barnaby did not reply. He was staring down at the pile of statements. Gamelin's was on top. Was there, buried in that printed page or on any of the others, a line of speech that could be reinterpreted? A fact looked at in a different light.

Troy observed his chief sympathetically. ‘My money's on that Master Rakowkzy. Anybody gives free legal advice must be up to no good. Most solicitors charge fifty quid just to fart in your pocket.' He chortled. ‘And talking of solicitors—you thought any more about Gibbs and May Cuttle? I mean—we've got a real motive there. Elizabethan manor house, acres of ground, not to mention that goat. I know they come over as innocent idealists—'

‘Idealists are never innocent.' Barnaby did not look up. ‘They cause half the trouble that's going. Check this.' Troy took Guy Gamelin's statement, read it through and looked blank. ‘It tells us something about the murder scene that none of the others do.'

Troy frowned. ‘No it doesn't.'

‘Yes it does. Read it again.'

Troy read it again and then once more. ‘Ohhh…' He shrugged. ‘What difference does that make?'

‘Perhaps,' Barnaby took the statement back, ‘it indicates another way of looking at things. Never a bad idea, especially if you're stuck.'

‘Right.' Troy moved fast to nip any lecture on the open mind in the bud. ‘Don't you want to get off now?'

‘Hmn.' Barnaby half rose, still looking at the bit of paper. ‘I think we'll have another talk with that mad boy tomorrow. Try and find out why he's so convinced Craigie's death was an accident. And why he's so frightened. Gibbs was definitely trying to put us off seeing him. We'll get someone else to sit in next time. Might have a bit more luck.'

‘What time's it starting—the sworry?'

‘Half seven.'

‘Just do it nice then.'

Barnaby said ‘Hmn' again, drummed his fingers on the desk, switched on his monitor. Troy couldn't understand it. Catch him hanging round the office on his daughter's twenty-first!

‘I'll stay.' A quick look of surprise. ‘I've missed the baby's bath and bedtime so there's no rush.'

‘That's good of you, Gavin,' said Barnaby, thinking poor old Maureen. ‘We've probably got all we're getting for tonight. And, of course, they can always reach me at home. Still—I appreciate it.'

‘Till about nine say?'

‘Fine. I can probably be back by then.'

‘Course you can, Chief,' said Troy, thinking poor old Cully.

When Barnaby had gone, he hung around obediently for half an hour, drifting in and out of the main office, talking to the duty staff, taking a few calls of no special interest. Then, bored, decided to get a bite of supper in the canteen. Leaving instructions that if his wife rang, he was out and if anything at all relating to the Windhorse case came in, it was to be put straight on his desk, he went off.

It wasn't just that he was hungry. There was a new assistant on late shift. Nicely married and, by all the locker-room accounts, not entirely averse to putting it about a bit. Loading his tray with spaghetti and chips, and a mug of bright rust-coloured tea, Troy arrived at the till. He noted with pleasure the long false eyelashes, straining overall and hot pink lips. They were shiny, too, as if she licked them a lot. Perhaps in anticipation? His change came to fifty pence. Holding the coin out, the lashes did a bit of cheek-sweeping. She said, ‘You ought to give that to the blind dogs.'

‘Blind dogs?' Troy saw the tin and dropped the coin in, regarding it as an investment. ‘Poor devils. It's not as if you can explain it to them, is it?' She looked blank. Ah well. He wasn't after her sense of humour.

Later she came round to clear. Troy patted the space next to him and when she sat down, said he wouldn't half like to be the leather on that chair. There was a fair bit more of this and a lot of sexy giggling. It was all very pleasant not to say promising, and Troy was quite sorry when a shout from the kitchen moved her on. He ordered a double mince-slice and custard and, when he'd finished that, another cup of tea—dallying both times at the till. Then he had a ciggie, spinning it out, watching the smoke curl away. All a bit time-consuming and of course he was very sorry afterwards. But how was he to know that it would cost a human life?

Barnaby arrived home on the stroke of half seven to find the double celebration had now become a triple—for Nicholas, in his final year at the Central School of Speech and Drama, had won the coveted Gielgud medal.

He had played Oedipus, stalking the stage righteous and white-clad hunting out diseased corruption and then, marled in red, finding it within himself. It had been a performance of outstanding showiness. So stylised and flamboyant in its agony as to dangerously approach parody but it had remained truthful at the heart and he had (just) pulled it off. Now, wondrously delighted by his acquisition of an agent and the certainty of the essential, life-preserving Equity Card, plus an entrancing fiancée, Nicholas was understandably on top of the world.

He and Cully were capping each other's remarks, laughing at everything and nothing. Every now and then, Cully would throw back her cloud of dark hair which was strewn with flowers. She was wearing a long scarlet cotton skirt banded with multicoloured ribbon and a white frilled Mexican blouse with sleeves so wide that several other blouses could have sprung fully formed from each one.

‘I can't tell you,' Nicholas was telling everyone, as the eggs tarragon were being relished, ‘how utterly appalling it was working with Phoebe Catchpole.'

‘She wasn't too bad,' said Cully graciously.

‘Actually,' said Joyce, ‘I thought she was quite good.'

‘But the size of her, darling,' continued Nicholas. ‘It was like squaring up to a rhino. On “Oh—lost and damned”—you know, her final exit—she leaned on me. I thought I was going straight through the boards. The only mature student in my year and they give her Jocasta. She was old enough to be my mother.'

Everyone cracked up and this time Nicholas tossed back his hair, which was long and chestnut gold. They fizzed and bloomed and radiated at each other across the table. All youth, beauty and mettlesome talent. No doubt seeing themselves, Joyce reflected tartly, as the Viv and Larry
de nos jours
. Ah well—life would soon knock the edges off. Life, the theatre, other people. Joyce felt sad, irritated and envious all at the same time. She started to collect the plates, saying, ‘I can never understand why psychiatrists call lusting after your mother an Oedipus complex. Surely the whole point of the play is that he didn't know she was his mother.'

‘Didn't you think Tiresias was moving?' Cully scraped up a last morsel of jelly. ‘Specially in that last speech.'

‘Oh come
on
,' returned Nicholas quickly. ‘He's got a voice like a corncrake.'

But the greatest of these is charity
. Joyce bore the dishes away thinking Nicholas was going to have to guard his tongue if he wanted to get on. She could still hear them in the kitchen, projecting like mad.

‘It's great there was a female messenger,' Cully was saying. ‘They're always terrific parts what with all the gory stuff happening off stage.'

‘If they brought bad news,' called out Joyce, ‘they were taken out and executed.'

‘Blimey,' said Nicholas. ‘How d'you get stuck with a job like that?'

‘The usual way,' said Cully. ‘Hanging round Groucho's.'

More laughter: Cully's artfully shaped, pure and poised perfectly in the throat. A chime of silver bells. Nicholas', warm, brown, shaving ad, masculine.

Joyce dished up Sainsbury's enchiladas and Basmati rice and tossed a large salad of escarole. There were two bottles already opened of some chewy Portuguese red. And Chocolate Butter Pecan ice cream to follow. She shouted, ‘I could do with a hand.'

‘I'm still not sure what option to take up,' said Nicholas, harking back to his future. He had been offered play as cast at Stratford or parts at the Octogon. ‘I suppose parts is the best bet.'

‘Of course it is.' Cully was incredulous. ‘What do you want to be? An actor—or some buskined groupie goggling at Ian McKellan's tights.'

‘I thought he was at the National?'

‘And you might be in a production that doesn't transfer.'

Nicholas was horrified. ‘Don't they all transfer?'

Putting plates of steaming food on a tray, Joyce found Tom at her side and handed it over. ‘Do try and contribute, darling.'

‘What?'

‘Say something.'

‘I'm listening.'

‘No you're not.'

‘They wouldn't notice if we stayed in here and ate.'

‘Don't tempt me,' said Joyce, knowing he was mistaken. Actors always notice when an audience disappears. She took in the wine and Cully poured it out, telling Nicholas the while how lucky Bolton was to have him. Nicholas said, ‘Please, no idolatry.'

‘Right, you two.' Barnaby's voice was loud and firm. The rebuke went unnoticed by Nicholas. Cully pulled a penitent face and smiled. Glasses were raised. ‘To your future success. On and off the boards. Be happy, darling.'

They all drank. Then Cully came around the table, kissed the top of her mother's head, her father's cheek. Briefly the curtain of fragrant hair blotted out his view and he felt the loss of her, to which he had been long resigned, brutally raw and sweet.

‘Thanks, Dad. Ma.' She was already back in her place.

Nicholas took her hand, curling the slender fingers within his own, raising it to his lips and saying, ‘I don't want to be out of London too long.'

‘For heaven's sake, Nicholas,' Joyce sounded really irritated. ‘You've only left drama school five minutes. You need some experience.'

‘What I'd really like,' said Nicholas, ‘what would really stretch me I think is to get right away from verbal theatre altogether for a bit. Get some experience in mime. Maybe in a circus. That'd be fantastic.'

‘You need to go to Spain for mime,' said Cully. ‘Or France.'

‘One of my current suspects worked in a Spanish circus,' said Barnaby. ‘As a lion tamer.'

‘Was he a roaring success?' asked Nicholas.

‘We went to see a mime the night we got engaged.' said Joyce. ‘Do you remember, Tom? At the Saville?'

‘Course I do.' He welcomed the vivid recollection which banished all thought of work, if only for a moment. ‘Had dinner first at Mon Plaisir.'

‘Were they any good?' asked Nicholas. ‘The company.'

‘It was just one man. Marcel Marceau.'

‘He's supposed to be brilliant,' said Cully.

‘He was,' said Barnaby. ‘Filled the stage with people. Talking to them, dancing with them. You'd swear they were actually present. There was one bit when he walked against the wind and you could see it practically knocking him over.'

‘Coo,' said Cully. She and Nicholas had stopped eating.

‘The best of all I thought,' said Joyce, ‘was the one he finished with. The mask-maker. He had this pile of masks—imaginary of course—and he tried them on one at a time. His own face is very handsome and amazingly flexible, like rubber. All the masks were different. He held them up quickly and each time his expression was totally transformed. The last had a terrible tragic expression. And he couldn't get it off. He tugged and pulled and finally tore at the edges, getting more and more frantic. It simply wouldn't budge. But—and this is what was so incredible—although the mask didn't move you could still see what lay behind it. See his terror when he realised he was going to look like that for the rest of his life.'