Death Of A Hollow Man

by Caroline Graham

  “Yes … of course. I’m sorry, Tom. It was just nerves. Panic, I suppose.”

  “What have you got to be panicky about?”

  “Nothing!”

  Barnaby paused for a moment, letting his impassive gaze rest on Nicholas. Then he exchanged a look with Sergeant Troy. Anything could have been read into that look. Nicholas, already a bundle of quivering apprehension, felt his spine turn to jelly.

  Barnaby could not have seen (no one could have seen what had happened to him onstage under the table. But if he had, he would never believe the attack to be entirely unmotivated. Who would? And if Esslyn appeared to have a reason for attacking Nicholas, might Nicholas not be supposed to have a reason for killing Esslyn? How airy-fairy now, thought Nicholas, did his reasoning seem that the other man was temporarily mad. Nicholas could see himself drawn into a whole area of emotional muddle and mess with questions and counterquestions all under that basilisk eye. (Could this be old Tom?) Thank God no one else had seen the confrontation. All he had to do was not get rattled and he’d be fine.

  “What have you done to your hand?”

  “What hand?”

  “Let’s have a look.” An irritated grunt. “The other one, Nicholas.”

  Nicholas held out his hand. Barnaby regarded it silently. Troy allowed himself a low whistle.

  “Nasty,” said the chief inspector. “How did you manage that?”

  “Stung.”

  “What by?”

  “A wasp.”

  “A wasp’s nest in the wings? There’s novelty.”

  “I did it yesterday.”

  “Ah.” Barnaby smiled and nodded, as if he found this suspiciously unsound explanation quite satisfactory, then said, “I understand it was you who started the rumor of Kitty’s infidelity.”

  “It wasn’t a rumor,” retorted Nicholas hotly. “I know I was wrong to tell Avery, and I’m very sorry, but it wasn’t a rumor. I actually saw her in the lighting box with David Smy.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. They were the only two people in the building.”

  “Apart from yourself.”

  “Well … of course.”

  “So we only have your word for it that anyone was with Kitty.”

  “She’d hardly have been reeling and writhing about up there on her own.”

  “But she might have been there with you.”

  ‘‘Me!”

  “Why not? I’d have thought you were a much more likely contender than David.” Nicholas looked more trapped than flattered.

  “Why on earth would I want to tell tales about myself? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “You might have wanted things out in the open.”

  “That’s nonsense.”

  “What happened to your hand, Nicholas?”

  “I told you.”

  “Forget the wasps. It’s November, not mid-July. What happened to your hand?”

  “I don’t remember… .”

  “All right. What happened to your thumb?”

  “A splinter.” Nicholas seized gladly at this opportunity to give a brief and truthful reply.

  “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  “How?” Barnaby’s look became more concentrated, and Nicholas closed his eyes against the glare.

  “I’ve forgotten …”

  “Nicholas.” Nicholas opened his eyes. The glare was muted now. Tom looked slightly more like his old self. Nicholas, who hadn’t realized he was holding his breath, let it out gratefully; his backbone unjelled a little; his shoulders relaxed.

  “Yes, Tom?”

  “Why did you believe that Esslyn was trying to kill you?”

  Nicholas gasped as if a pail of cold water had been thrown in his face. He struggled to regain his equilibrium and formulate a sensible reply. At the moment his brain seemed unraveled, nothing but kaleidoscopic fragments. All he could do was stall.

  “What?” He tried a light laugh. It came out a strangled croak. “Where on earth did you get that idea?” Rosa. Of course. He had forgotten Rosa. Tom had stopped looking like his old self. He spoke.

  “I’ve been sitting in this chair for a very long time, Nicholas. And I’m getting very tired. You start messing me about, and you’ll find yourself in the slammer. Got that?”

  Nicholas swallowed. “Yes.”

  “Right. The truth, then.”

  “Well … my hand … he did that with his rings. Turned them all feeling inward and squeezed tight. Then, near the end of the play when I crawl under the table, he came after me. His cape cut all the light off. I was trapped. Then he tried to strangle me. …” Nicholas trailed lamely off. Barnaby leaned forward and studied his lily-white throat. “Oh—he didn’t actually touch me.”

  “I see,” said the chief inspector. “He tried to strangle you. But he didn’t actually touch you.”

  Nicholas fell silent. How could he convey the feelings he had experienced during those dreadful minutes when, half-paralyzed with fear, he had shrunk away from Esslyn’s jackal breath and groping, bony fingers. He stumbled into speech, explaining about cutting a page and a half and bringing Kitty on.

  “And you really believe that it was only her entrance that stopped him attacking you?”

  “I did then … yes.”

  “But temporarily?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Obviously anyone really determined balked at one attempt will look for an opportunity to make a second.”

  “That didn’t occur to me. I just felt that if only I could get offstage, I’d be safe.”

  “You really expect me to believe that?”

  “I know it sounds unlikely, Tom.”

  “It sounds bloody ridiculous! How much more likely that you come off frightened and angry. Take the razor, nip off to the loo, remove the tape, and bingo! You get him before he gets you. Problem solved.”

  “That’s not true. ”

  “Cop a plea of self-defense,” said Barnaby cheerfully, “get off with three years.”

  “No!”

  “Why go straight to the props table?”

  “I just sat down for a second. I felt shaken. I’d got this splinter. It hurt like hell. I went down to the men’s dressing room.” Nicholas could hear the sentences clattering out through chattering teeth. Each one less convincing than the one before.

  “Anyone see you?”

  “… I don’t know … yes … Rosa …”

  “What on earth was Rosa doing in the men’s dressing room?”

  “She wasn’t. I couldn’t find any tweezers, so I went next door.”

  “Who was in the men’s, then?”

  “No one.” Barnaby tutted. “But … if I’d been messing with the razor, I’d have taken the tape off, then gone straight back, surely? To put it back before it was missed.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. If I’d been messing with the razor, I’d have made sure I had a good excuse to be downstairs and someone saw me going about my lawful business.”

  “You don’t think I rammed that splinter down my thumb on purpose? It was bloody agonizing.” Nicholas plucked at the square of grubby Band-Aid. “Do you want to have a look?”

  Barnaby shook his head, then slowly got to his feet. “See if you can rustle up some tea, Sergeant. I’m parched.”

  Nicholas waited for a moment and, when Barnaby made no attempt to continue the conversation, also got shakily to his feet … “Is that all, then, Tom?”

  “For now.”

  “D’you think”—Nicholas appeared almost to gag on the words—“I ought to find a solicitor?”

  “Everyone should have a solicitor, Nicholas,” said Barnaby, with gently smiling jaws. “You never know when they’re going to come in handy.”

  It was about ten minutes later, when Nicholas was putting on his coat, that the odd thing struck him. Barnaby had not asked the first question that even the most inexpert of investigators must surely have put. And the chief inspector, as Nicholas’s still twitching nerve ends
could testify, was far from inexpert. He had not asked Nicholas why Esslyn would wish to kill him. There must be a reason for this very basic omission. Nicholas did not believe for a moment it was either lack of care or forgetfulness. Perhaps Barnaby thought he already knew. In which case he knows a damn sight more than I do, thought Nicholas. He decided to look into this further, and retraced his steps to the ladies’ dressing room.

  Long afterward, when she was able to look back with some degree of equanimity on the first night of Amadeus and its shocking aftermath, Deidre marveled at the length of time it had taken her to realize that there was only one place where her father felt safe and cared for when she was absent. Only one place where he could possibly be.

  The day center, Laurel Lodge, was nearly a mile from the middle of town. Two custard-yellow minibuses, Phoenix One and Phoenix Two, collected the elderly and infirm at their homes and ferried them to and from the center each weekday. So Mr. Tibbs knew the way. In fact, it was not complicated. You just took the B416 as if you were going to Slough, then tapered off on a side road toward Woodbum Common. The distance could be covered in about an hour. Or less, if you were running your heart out and pacing yourself against dark, unreasoned fears.

  Deidre remembered the center when she had been hunched over the electric fire in the kitchen being urged by the policewoman to swallow some hot, sweet tea and try not to worry. Now, she sat once more in the back of the Escort warmed by the drink and above all by the knowledge that the hopeless, misdirected floundering was over and that they were definitely on their way to where her father would be waiting. She struggled to keep calm, knowing that her attitude was bound to affect the situation when they met.

  She couldn’t help worrying, of course. For instance, the place was locked up and there was no caretaker on the premises, so Mr. Tibbs would not have been able to get in. This observation, when first made, had considerably threatened Deidre’s equilibrium. For the building, thoughtfully, even lovingly designed so that its inhabitants would get the benefit of all the light and sunshine available, was made almost entirely of glass. And what if her father, frenziedly searching for Mrs. Coolidge (or Nancy Banks, who made such a fuss over him) harmed himself by hammering on those heavy slabs or, worse, seized a stone from the garden and tried to smash the doors? Suppose he then tried to squeeze through gripping the jagged raw edges … ?

  At this point Deidre would wrench her mind from such dreadful fancies and once more wrestle her way toward comparative tranquility. But the idea would not easily be vanquished, and when the car drew up outside Laurel Lodge, and the dark glass structure loomed apparently undisturbed, she felt a great rush of relief.

  The iron gates were locked, a token restraint merely, as the grounds were surrounded by a brick wall barely a yard high. The rain had stopped, but there was still a high howling wind. As Deidre staggered across the gravel, her coat streamed out behind her and her cries of “Daddy, where are you? It’s Deidre” were blown back into her mouth as soon as uttered. Constable Watson had a flashlight in his hand, and was testing all the doors and windows and bellowing “Mr. Tibbs?” in what seemed to Deidre a very authoritative, even threatening manner. He disappeared around the side of the building shining his light into each of the five transparent boxes; the workroom and kitchen, the rest room and office, the canteen. Then he came back shouting “He’s not here,” and Deidre, uncomprehending, yelled back, “Yes, yes … somewhere.”

  She waved at the surrounding garden, and the man followed the movement with his flashlight. The beam swept an arc of brilliant light over the surrounding lawns and shrubbery. A band of green-gold conifers, waving and soughing like the sea, leaped into sight, then vanished as the flashlight moved on. The flower beds were empty brown sockets, and the shrubs that gave the place its name creaked in the bitter whirling wind. (Deidre had always hated the laurels. They were so coarse and melancholic, and their leathery spotted leaves made her think of the plague.)

  She seized PC Watson’s arm, gasped, “We must search,” and started pulling him toward the nearest dark mass of shrubbery. He resisted, and Deidre, turning back, was just about to redouble her efforts when the blistering roar of the wind ceased. The strife-tom trees rustled and groaned for a few moments more, then settled into silence.

  Surprisingly—for they were half a mile from the nearest habitation—a dog barked. This was followed by another sound, which, although muffled by the hedge of Leylandii conifers, was unmistakably a human voice. It was calling out, not in any panic-stricken way but with a sonorous, tolling necessity, like a town crier. Deidre moaned, “The lake!,” and flew in the general direction from which the recitations had come. Her companion followed, trying to light her with his flashlight, but she was running so fast and zigzagging so wildly back and forth that he kept losing her. Once she tripped, fell into a flower bed, and scrambled up, her hands and clothes plastered with mud.

  In fact, the lake was not a lake at all but a reservoir. A vast natural hollow that had been extended and shaped into a rectangle, then edged with masonry and planted all about with reeds and other vegetation. People were allowed to sail on it in the summer, and it was home to a large variety of birds and small mammals. Nearby was a concrete building surrounded by a high wire fence with a sign attached. It showed a yellow triangle with a jagged arrow and a man lying down and read danger of death, keep out. Just as Deidre arrived, the moon, so white it appeared almost blue in the icy air, sailed serenely out from behind a bank of dark cloud. It illuminated an astonishing sight.

  Mr. Tibbs was standing rigidly upright in an oarless rowing boat in the very center of the reservoir. His arms were flung wide and, as his fingers were almost precisely aligned with the perfect circle of the reflected moon, he seemed to be holding a new, mysterious world in the palm of his hand. His trousers and shirt were torn, his hair stuck out wildly in all directions, and his forearms and chest were scratched and bleeding. But his face as he stared upward was stamped with such ecstatic bliss that it was as if he saw streams of celestial light pouring from the very gates of paradise.

  Mr. Tibbs had an audience of one. A rough-haired, rather shabby brown-and-white mongrel with a plumed tail. He sat bolt upright, his head cocked to one side in an attitude of strained attention, his ears pricked. He paid no attention when the others crashed into view, but kept his eyes (brown and shiny as beechnuts) firmly fixed on the figure in the boat.

  “I saw a mighty angel come down from heaven!” cried Mr. Tibbs. “Clothed with a cloud. And a rainbow was upon his head! And his face was as it were the sun. And his feet as pillars of fire!”

  While the constable used his radio to organize assistance, Audrey Brierley was hanging on to a struggling Deidre. “We’re getting reinforcements, love,” she said urgently. “And an ambulance. They’ll be here in no time. Please calm down. There’s nothing you can do. If you get in there, that’ll be two people we’ll have to pull out. Twice the trouble, twice the risk. Now you don’t want that, do you?” Deidre stood still then. “Good girl. Try not to worry. He’ll be cold and wet, but he’s in no real danger.”

  “If any man have an ear, let him hear,” clarioned Mr. Tibbs. Then he flung out his arm in a wide sweep encompassing his human audience of three, the concrete hut, and the scrupulously attentive canine, and fell into the water.

  Deidre screamed, Policewoman Brierley hung on anew, and Constable Watson peeled off his heavy tunic, got rid of his boots, and dived in. He kicked out with great difficulty (his trousers were immediately saturated), cursing the fate that had put him on late turn. He attempted a strong crawl toward the dark outline of the boat, and each time he turned his head, a little of the water, freezing cold and tasting richly of mud and iron, slopped into his mouth. He grabbed what he thought was his quarry, only to find himself clutching a huge skein of slimy weed. He swam further in. On his limited horizon the water lapped and bobbed against the sky. Mr. Tibbs’s descent had fractured the immaculate circle of the moon, and it now lay in broken bars o
f silver around the policeman’s head. He could hear wails from Deidre interspersed with barks from the dog, which, now that the declamation had ceased and the action had started, was running excitedly round in circles.

  The policeman reached Mr. Tibbs, hooked an arm around the old man’s neck, and turned him around. To the anguished Deidre, wringing her hands on the bank, her father seemed to spin with graceful ease, but to Jim Watson it was like hauling a hundred-pound sack of potatoes. Thank God, he thought, feeling his arms wrenching in their sockets, the old man wasn’t thrashing about. Indeed, Mr. Tibbs seemed quite unaware that there was any danger in his position at all. He drifted beatifically, cruciformly, on his back. With his rigid, unnatural smile and spreading white hair, he looked like the corpse of a holy man floating in the Ganges. PC Watson plodded on. His arm was almost beating the water in his efforts to keep them both afloat.

  Then Mr. Tibbs decided he had had enough and announced his approach to the next world. “We are coming, Lord,” he cried, and made the sign of the cross, poking PC Watson savagely in the eye.

  “Christ!” exclaimed the unfortunate constable as an agonizing pain exploded behind his forehead. Mr. Tibbs, no doubt encouraged by this sign of solidarity, twisted himself out of the policeman’s grasp, placed his hands on his rescuer’s shoulders, and sank them both. Jim Watson held his breath, kicked his way violently to the surface, took a fresh lungful of air, and dived again, bringing up Mr. Tibbs.

  “Ohhh …” wailed Deidre. “We must do something.”

  “He’ll be all right.” PW Brierley sounded more confident than she felt. The two pale faces were still a long way from the edge.

  “Can’t you go in and help?”

  “Then there’d be two of us round his neck.”

  “I thought everyone in the police had to be able to swim.”

  “Well they don’t,” snapped Audrey Brierley, unpleasantly aware that her uniform was wet and filthy, her hat lost somewhere in the bushes, her tights in shreds, and that she was screamingly, ragingly, desperately dying for a pee. She moved slightly forward, extending her fingertips another inch. The inch that might make all the difference. She said, “Hang onto my legs.”