Dead Giveaway

by Brett, Simon

  ‘I wanted the host job from the start. I never made much secret of the fact. I don’t believe in disguising ambition. I think if you say what you want, you stand a damned sight better chance of getting it.’ The forthright Joe Soap quality came back briefly into his voice. ‘So I suppose that could look like a motive . . .’

  ‘Not the only one,’ said Charles gently.

  A light that had not been switched off in an office above them filtered through the windscreen, illuminating one side of Bob Garston’s face. Charles saw bewilderment, then understanding, quickly followed by fury. ‘How the hell did you hear about that?’

  Charles protected his source. ‘Let’s just say I heard.’

  ‘Did my wife tell you?’

  ‘No. I’ve never met your wife.’

  ‘Look, if this gets out to the gossip columns I’ll bloody murder you.’ Realisation of what he had said came into Bob Garston’s face. It was followed by a twisted smile. ‘Unfortunate remark perhaps, in the circumstances. So . . . you think I killed Barrett. May I ask how I’m supposed to have done it?’

  ‘Anyone who was round the studio area between six-thirty and six-fifty could have done it. They only needed to take the cyanide from Studio B into Studio A and put it in the glass. Would have taken two minutes, maximum.’

  Bob Garston nodded grimly.

  ‘You were seen at about twenty-five to seven – coming out of Studio A.’

  ‘Yes.’ He lost his temper. ‘Dammit! Why the hell did I go in there?’

  ‘You tell me,’ said Charles.

  Bob Garston let out a long sigh. ‘I didn’t do it, you know. I didn’t kill Barrett.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No, I bloody didn’t!’

  ‘Then why are you getting so upset?’

  ‘Because, as I said, I’m the obvious suspect. The same day you tell the police Chippy didn’t do it, they’re going to be round knocking on my door, asking questions. It’ll be down the station, “helping with enquiries” . . . they might even bloody arrest me.’

  ‘But if you can prove you’re innocent –’

  ‘Doesn’t make a blind bit of difference. Look, my career’s at an important stage, could take off quite dramatically in the next couple of months. The last thing I need now is my name over the papers.’

  ‘But, as I said, if you can prove you’re innocent –’

  ‘Listen. If there’s one thing doing my sort of programme has taught me, it’s that mud sticks. I make some allegation on the show, however oblique it is, about some official, and that bloke never lives it down. He’s lost credibility . . . his colleagues don’t trust him any more. I know, I’ve got plenty of letters to prove it. I’ve even been sued a few times. Once the allegation’s been made, no amount of public denial can make it go away completely. Look at the newspapers – thousands read the scandalous headline – how many read the little printed apology for getting the facts wrong that comes out the next week?’

  Under other circumstances, Charles might have questioned the assurance with which Joe Soap admitted destroying the credibility of his victims, but it wasn’t the moment for moral debate. ‘Well, I’m glad you’re aware of the stakes,’ he said. ‘So now perhaps you realise that the only way for you to keep the police off your doorstep is to prove to our satisfaction that you are innocent.’

  ‘Oh, I am.’

  ‘Good. Tell us why, and then perhaps you can help us find out who did kill Barrett Doran.’

  ‘Right.’ Bob Garston was clearly ill at ease as the subject of interrogation, and made a bid to take over the interview himself. In his best hectoring manner, he demanded, ‘You want to know what I was doing between six-thirty and six-thirty-five that evening?’

  ‘Yes. We know you went into Studio A.’

  ‘All right, all right. I did. I’m not denying it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t rush me. I’m about to bloody tell you, aren’t I?’ He paused, as if composing his next sentence into the most palatable form. ‘The fact is, I wanted to get on to that set. I wanted to stand by Barrett’s lectern. I just wanted to get the feel of it . . . to know what it felt like to be in charge of that kind of show. You know, just like a little lad trying on his Dad’s overalls . . .’

  This winsome simile would have gone down well with the Joe Soap audience, but it failed to charm Charles. ‘That doesn’t sound very convincing to me. And I’m not sure that the police would be that convinced either.’

  ‘Well, it happens to be the bloody truth!’ Bob Garston snapped petulantly. ‘I can’t help it if the truth isn’t convincing, can I?’

  ‘I’m only thinking of you, Bob,’ said Charles with needling magnanimity. ‘You’re the one who wants to keep the police off your doorstep. Of course, they may be convinced by this story of whimsical role-playing, but I doubt –’

  ‘Look!’ Bob Garston pointed an angry finger in his antagonist’s face. ‘You just asked me why I went in. I told you. What happened when I got there is a different question. There was no way that I could have fiddled around with Barrett’s glass. I’d have been seen.’

  ‘There was someone else in there?’

  ‘Of course there bloody was!’

  ‘Who? The contestant, Tim Dyer? Hadn’t he left?’

  ‘No. Not him. It was the designer, wasn’t it? Him with the bloody stupid haircut. He was there, fiddling with his precious set.’

  ‘Sylvian,’ murmured Sydnee, breaking her long silence.

  ‘So what did you do?’ asked Charles.

  ‘Well, I wasn’t going to start prancing round, pretending to be the host, was I? Not with him there. I turned straight round and walked out again.’

  Charles’s mind was racing as he voiced a formal thanks.

  ‘Don’t think I told you because I wanted to. But just bloody see that when you do go to the police, you tell them I’m out of the bloody reckoning. I haven’t worked this hard on my career to have it shot to pieces by some half-baked rumour.’ Without waiting for any response, he turned round to Sydnee. ‘Right, with that out of the way, perhaps we’d better go and talk about this bloody game show.’ He leant across Charles and clicked open the passenger door. ‘You can get out and walk.’

  Charles got out. And, as he walked the three miles back to Hereford Road, he thought again and again of what Barrett Doran had said about Sylvian de Beaune’s first television set design.

  Chapter Eleven

  SYLVIAN DE BEAUNE’S flat was at the top of an old converted warehouse in what used to be London’s Dockland. It was up four flights of stairs and there was no Entryphone, so a long gap ensued between their ring on the bell and his appearance at the front door.

  He looked surprised to see them, recognizing Sydnee, but apparently never having seen Charles before in his life. He had put in further work on his appearance. The black Mohican strip on his head now had orange tufts at the front, and clusters of orange feathers depended from his ears. His face was covered with white make-up, relieved only by a dab of orange on lips and eyelids. He was out of the leather gear now, and dressed in a kind of pyjamas of off-white sackcloth, joined at the seams by beige leather thongs. The effect was, to Charles, reminiscent of a line-drawing of medieval underwear from a school textbook with a title like Social Life in the Middle Ages. He was coming to the conclusion that, amongst other things, Sylvian de Beaune designed his own clothes.

  It was clear, when they got upstairs, that he was his own interior designer as well. The flat was really one long room, whose exposed rafters under a pitched roof should have given it the appearance of a Saxon mead-hall. And would have given it the appearance of a Saxon mead-hall if every surface had not been painted silver. The floor had been painted the same colour, and what must have been lovely views over the Thames were excluded by silver paint over the panes of the high windows. The area was lit by theatrical spotlights, the harshness of whose glare was subdued by gels of red and blue. Their beams were trained on to matt-black rectangular boxes, which
, by a process of elimination, Charles deduced to be furniture (though which was a table and which a chair he would not like to have had to specify).

  Sydnee showed no surprise at the surroundings, which must mean either that she had been there before, or that all her colleagues lived in similar environments. (If the second were the case, it was not surprising that the three researchers had found the Hereford Road bedsitter a little unusual.)

  On one of the matt-black shapes a sheet of paper was pinned, and the selection of pens, templates and rulers nearby suggested that Sylvian had been working on his latest design when interrupted by the doorbell. Charles did not dare to contemplate what it might be.

  As they entered, music, which could either have been South American flutes or a team of asthmatics competitively blowing blockages out of hose-pipes, sounded loudly. Sylvian de Beaune went across to a matt-black box with an array of matt-black buttons on the front, and moderated the volume. He gestured to them to sit. Charles had almost fully descended when he heard the words, ‘No. That’s a table’, and moved accordingly to a smaller matt-black box.

  Sylvian remained standing. ‘What is it, Sydnee?’

  ‘If The Cap Fits.’

  ‘Don’t tell me – John Mantle wants more bloody changes?’

  ‘No. It’s harking back to the first pilot.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Barrett Doran’s death.’

  Had there been any natural colour in Sylvian de Beaune’s face, that would have bleached it out. He gaped, stupefied.

  ‘Chippy didn’t kill him,’ Sydnee continued. Because he still seemed incapable of speech, she persisted, ‘Charles here drank from Barrett’s glass at about six-thirty. At that point it definitely contained gin.’

  ‘Oh, my God.’ The words were hardly audible.

  Charles picked up the initiative. ‘So the cyanide was put in the glass after that time. You were seen m the studio just after six-thirty by Bob Garston.’

  The orange lips moved, but this time no sound came out.

  ‘It was your first major set, isn’t that right, Sylvian? You were very proud of it, very worried about it. We know what Barrett Doran said when he saw it for the first time. Not very appreciative of your efforts, was he?’

  Still no words came, but the designer shook his head, as if in disbelief. Slowly, he subsided on to one of the matt-black rectangular boxes. It was the one he had said was a table, but Charles didn’t think it was the moment to say anything. He and Sydnee maintained the silence.

  Finally, Sylvian de Beaune spoke. His voice was dull, as if he were repeating something learned by rote. ‘I hoped it hadn’t happened. I went into a terrible state of panic when he died and I heard it was cyanide. But then when Chippy was arrested, and I heard about how she had a motive to kill him and the opportunity to get the poison, I thought it was all right. I thought he’d got the right glass.’

  ‘The right glass? Did you put the cyanide in it?’

  The black and orange tufted head shook. ‘No. Why on earth should I do that? No, that’s not what I did.’

  ‘Then what did you do?’

  The voice retained its monotone as he told them. ‘As you say, it was my first major set. As you say, I was worried about it. I kept looking at it from different angles, kept trying to see things that didn’t work. That’s why I went back into the studio during the meal-break. I was worried that something had looked wrong, so I went in to check.’

  ‘What were you worried about – the wheel?’ asked Charles, remembering what Tim Dyer had done to that part of the set.

  ‘No. There was just something in the colours that had looked wrong. Something wrong with the balance between the lectern and the celebrities’ desk. I’d looked and looked at it, and eventually the only thing I could think of was the glasses – the four on the desk and the one on the lectern.’

  ‘But they were all the same – surely?’

  ‘They were all nearly the same, yes. But they had been specially made to match the set. Hand-painted. I thought maybe they were slightly different, maybe there was more red on one, more blue on another. It was only likely to be a tiny difference – something definitely looked wrong. I couldn’t think of anything else.’

  ‘So what did you do?’ asked Charles, with a sick feeling he knew the answer.

  His worst fears were confirmed. ‘I started changing them round.’

  ‘Oh, my God.’

  ‘Just to see if it made the colour balance better.’

  ‘So which one did you change with Barrett’s?’ asked Charles, resigned.

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Oh, come on. You must remember,’ Charles snapped. ‘You realise how important this is, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I do. Now. But, honestly, I can’t remember. I tried them every way. I moved first one and then the other. I really couldn’t say at the end which one was where. That’s why I felt so awful when I heard about the cyanide. Then, when Chippy was arrested, I thought, thank God, at least he got the right one back.’

  ‘Except that his right one contained gin at six-thirty.’

  ‘Yes.’ The tufted head drooped.

  ‘But surely,’ said Sydnee excitedly, ‘the police would have checked the glasses afterwards. If we go to them and say what happened, and find out who had the one containing gin –’

  Charles shook his head. ‘The desk got knocked over. The glasses were scattered all over the place.’

  Sylvian raised his head. ‘Yes, I don’t understand that. I designed it to be very stable. I mean, the centre of gravity was –’

  But Sydnee didn’t think it was the moment for a discussion of the intricacies of furniture design. ‘Surely, Charles, the celeb who had gin in his or her glass would have noticed?’

  ‘Must’ve done, yes. But nobody’s said anything, have they? Otherwise Chippy wouldn’t have been arrested. Which must mean the intended victim knew the poison was meant for him –’

  ‘Or for her.’

  ‘Yes . . . and is deliberately keeping quiet about it.’

  ‘And all the while letting Chippy suffer,’ said Sydnee, boiling with resentment.

  ‘You realise something else . . .’

  Sydnee looked at him curiously.

  ‘If the cyanide wasn’t put into Barrett’s glass but into someone else’s, it could have been done at any time during the meal-break.’

  ‘Oh no. And all our checking of people’s movements has been quite worthless.’

  Charles nodded, then let out a long sigh. ‘I think we’re going to have to get our little research team together again, Sydnee.’

  Chapter Twelve

  NO ONE EVEN suggested that the second meeting of Charles’s research team should take place in his bedsitter. They met instead at Harry Cockers, where Sydnee, Chita and Quentin obviously felt much more at ease.

  ‘Isn’t it a bit of a risk,’ Charles had said when the idea was mentioned, ‘talking about this sort of thing in such a public place?’

  ‘Good God, no,’ Sydnee had replied airily. ‘It’s ideal. Perfect security. Nobody at Harry Cockers goes to listen to anyone else. They just go to listen to themselves.’

  And, as he once again sat watching the screeching variegated flying-suits at the bar, Charles had to admit she was right.

  He had asked Sydnee to view the tape of the ill-fated pilot, concentrating on two specific moments, and the first business of their meeting was her report on this.

  ‘I’m afraid it didn’t help, Charles. The trouble is, television’s such a selective medium. You only see the shots that the director chooses and that the vision-mixer punches up. What you were hoping to see probably happened off-camera.’

  ‘There must have been shots of the celebrities drinking.’

  ‘Oh yes. There are. But in none of them are they showing any unusual reaction.’

  ‘But come on, if you pick up a glass you think contains water and take a swig from it and find it contains gin, you must react. There’s
no way you can help yourself.’

  ‘You’re probably right. And I expect someone did react like that, but the fact remains that the camera wasn’t on them while they did it.’

  ‘Damn.’ Another hope bubbled up in his mind. ‘Did any of them not drink at all? That might be as much of a pointer as a reaction to the first swig. Once they’d identified the gin –’

  The copper-beech hair swished as Sydnee shook her head apologetically. ‘No. All four of them take a drink from their glass at least once while they’re in shot.’

  ‘One of them must have been covering up,’ Quentin drawled.

  ‘Covering up what?’ asked Charles.

  ‘As soon as the person in question smelt the gin, he or she must have realised what had happened, realised that the cyanide glass had been switched and that someone else was going to cop it. So they’d want to hide the fact that they knew anything about it.’

  Charles grimaced. ‘Sorry, Quentin, that doesn’t work. The only person who knew there was a glass with cyanide in it was the person who put it there. Unless we’re talking about an elaborate suicide plot, the discovery by that person that he or she had gin would not automatically mean that the proposed murder victim’s glass had been switched. They’d just think, funny, why have I got gin in here?’

  ‘But why wouldn’t they have mentioned it when questioned by the police? Surely then the police would have realised there was something odd and –’

  ‘No. You see, by then the proposed murder victim would know what had happened. As soon as Barrett Doran reacted to the poison, they must have understood, and realised why they had gin in their glass. But, for some reason of their own, they didn’t want the police to know that someone was out to kill them. Which was why they upset the table – to send all the glasses over the floor and confuse the evidence.’

  He looked across at Sydnee, who shook her head lugubriously. ‘Camera wasn’t on it. There’s a shot of the celebs before Barrett takes his fatal swig, then the camera stays with him as he starts choking. Next time we see the celebs, they’re running forward and the desk’s already tipped over.’