An Alibi Too Soon

by Roger Ormerod

  I had been staring at her too long. She moistened her lips and glanced away.

  ‘This stuff on her ears smells awful.’

  ‘It seems to help.’

  ‘And who’, she asked, realising I wasn’t going to offer it, ‘failed to come out alive?’

  ‘A former friend of mine. A man called Llewellyn Hughes. Ex-Detective Chief Superintendent.’

  ‘Ah!’ she said, nodding. She used ten seconds to unclip the lead from Cindy’s collar, hand me the lead, and bend to put her down, then she had worked out the connection. ‘And you’re also police?’

  ‘Also Ex. I worked with him as a sergeant, years ago.’

  ‘You’re not the one…but of course not. He was so brisk and humourless.’

  ‘I’m not the one. Richard Patton, if we’re to get on to names.’

  ‘And I’m Rosemary Trew.’

  We formally shook hands. Her fingers were long and slim, the nails short and uncoloured. She turned away and began to stroll back towards the house, and I was forced to follow. She was leading me away from the garages. We circled the rhododendrons and headed up a gentle slope towards the terrace.

  ‘I remembered the name, you see,’ she explained. ‘Your friend was in charge when my Uncle Edwin died. Now the Chief Superintendent dies, and the following day you wish to look at the house. Would you mind explaining the connection?’

  Her attitude had changed completely. Her formality was cold, even biting.

  ‘I would, as a matter of fact. Mind, I mean.’

  She stopped dead, and turned to face me. The little bob of hair at the back swung out, then returned to disciplined position. Her lips were in a firm straight line.

  ‘Then I suggest that you return to your car and drive away again.’

  ‘Which I would have done, if you hadn’t started to walk me up to the house.’

  ‘I can easily walk you back.’

  ‘Thank you. That would be most pleasurable. I did hope you’d explain to me about the garage doors. But…’ I shrugged. ‘I can call again.’

  ‘You’re just as unfeeling as the other one was,’ she declared, sounding disappointed.

  ‘Who? Grayson?’

  ‘That was his name.’

  ‘Unfeeling, perhaps, but efficient. Grayson I mean, not me.’

  ‘Efficient my…What is it you want? Why have you come here?’

  ‘Perhaps a little water for Cindy. I think she’s dehydrated. The fire, you know.’ I was stalling, not wanting to discuss any aspect of Edwin Carter’s death with one of the people involved, before I’d read more carefully through Llew’s notes. But there was an air of brisk intelligence about this woman that convinced me that she would not leap clumsily to conclusions, and a naked honesty that I knew I had to test.

  ‘Llew Hughes was writing his memoirs,’ I told her.

  ‘And you’re intending to finish them for him?’ she asked, her right hand flicking past my face, dismissing both the memoirs and my ability. ‘If that’s the case, you’ll need to get your facts straight.’

  ‘What I had in mind.’ I meant the facts.

  ‘Then get one thing firmly in your head before you put pen to paper: dear Duncan did not kill my uncle.’

  ‘Did he not?’

  ‘Of course not.’ She was relaxed again, and was once more walking towards the house, her steps positive and her chin high. ‘If anyone did, it was me.’

  ‘I suspected you from the start.’

  ‘And if you can’t be serious…’ She glanced darkly at me. ‘You’re smiling,’ she told me severely.

  ‘One minute you’re sending me packing, the next you’re accusing yourself…what can I do but smile?’

  ‘You can take more notice of what people say than the other one did.’

  ‘Grayson?’

  ‘Once he’d got one idea in his head, nothing would budge him.’

  We had reached the terrace. The flags were uneven and covered with the green stain of algae. She was leading me towards the far window, which stood open as a door.

  ‘What idea was that?’

  ‘He said it was murder, when obviously poor Uncle Edwin committed suicide.’

  So she had nothing new to offer. A pity. But I couldn’t turn away now, particularly as she said, as a directive: ‘You’re staying to lunch, of course. I have some friends here…’

  And I had thought the house to be empty! There were seven people in that room. They sat to one side on folding chairs at card tables, lounged against the wall chatting, peered suspiciously at the buffet table against the far wall, four men, three women. This would have been the dining room mentioned by Grayson, the one used for party games after Edwin Carter had driven off into the night looking for fresh supplies of liquor. But at that time it would surely have looked different. There would have been pictures breaking up the naked expanses of oak panelling. The two chandeliers, now looking decidedly dusty and dejected, would have been lit and sparkling. Heavy Victorian furniture would have been thrust back against the walls, along with the dining table.

  Now the oak block floor was a large, cleared space, broken only by strips of wide, white tape, affixed in squares and oblongs and large enclosing blocks. The lighting—not switched on—was from standard lamps of the studio variety, very functional.

  I’d seen something like it before, when I’d visited a television studio to interview one of the executives, whom we later arrested. They were rehearsing a play.

  Rosemary cast her eyes around. Then she brought her hands together into the praying position in a small, undemonstrative slap.

  ‘Everybody. Please. This is a friend who’s come to meet us. You’ll be interested, Drew. He’s a policeman.’

  Nobody cheered. Nobody clapped their hands in delight and said, ‘Oooh!’ They looked at me with indifference, and returned to their Scrabble and their prawn cocktails.

  ‘And this is Cindy,’ said Rosemary, with a noticeable increase of enthusiasm, holding her up. ‘Wouldn’t she be ideal in act two, Mildred, you on the settee…’

  ‘No you don’t,’ I said, before I realised she was ribbing me.

  ‘She’s brown,’ said Mildred plaintively, ‘and you know I’ll be wearing blue.’

  ‘Of course you will, dear. Don’t worry about it.’ Rosemary turned to me. ‘Mildred thinks blue’s her lucky colour,’ she whispered. ‘But of course, quite out of the question.’

  I agreed. Mildred Niven. I knew her face from the television screen, knew her name from the list of guests on the night Edwin died. But Miss Niven—sorry, Dame Mildred—was in her eighties, surely, a tremendously overpowering lady when she got into her part, and not, I’d have thought, at seventy on that night, a potential murderess. Nor, come to think of it, a likely participant in party games.

  Rosemary took me round for formal introductions. Most of the people were of no interest to me, apart from the fact that I knew their names and faces. Yet they looked strangely different in their jeans and blousons, their caftans, their jumpsuits, and without television make-up. They nodded. They smiled. But I was just an outsider, not in the business.

  Only Drew Pierson showed any interest, as Rosemary seemed to expect. He was due to appear on the honours list any time, surely, one of those actors I’d watched grow old, first as the young hopeful in films of the forties, graduating by way of the Royal Shakespeare and the National Theatre to character parts in television, when his face had grown old enough to display character, to the supreme accolade of being permitted to advertise somebody’s butter in a commercial.

  Drew Pierson was playing the part of the police inspector. Any tips would be appreciated and ignored.

  ‘We’re doing a revival of Uncle Edwin’s Fair’s Fair, opening at Coventry in six weeks,’ Rosemary told me. ‘Drew’s the policeman. He’s very good at it, aren’t you, Drew?’

  Drew Pierson inclined his head, and produced his famous smile of bemused self-depreciation.

  ‘And you,’ I asked her, ‘what part a
re you playing?’

  ‘I’m directing,’ she told me, her expression indicating I was a bit slow, not realising. Then she touched my arm, forgiving me, and turned to Pierson again.

  ‘Drew. You were here, the night Uncle Edwin died. You tell him.’

  ‘Tell him what, darling?’

  ‘How he died. Why he died. Oh…you know.’

  I had recognised Drew Pierson’s name, too, from the guest list for that night. But Pierson didn’t know anything. He’d been acting for so long that he didn’t know anything that wasn’t down on paper as a speech. Or so I at first believed.

  Rosemary whipped up a script from the buffet table and walked away to have words with a young couple who’d been practising their kissing scene in the corner. Pierson suggested I should try the salad with a little of the pâté. I slipped some of the pâté to Cindy on a paper plate and dug into a prawn cocktail, while Pierson poured me a glass of white wine. My lunch, that was.

  He asked me: ‘What do I know about it? Tell me that.’

  That shock of white hair had been with him as long as I could remember. His face was severely lined, and his mouth was loose enough to retain crumbs in the corners. He was dressed in a formal three-piece suit with an open-necked shirt, revealing a chain disappearing into a hairy chest. He blinked at me mildly.

  ‘Go on, interrogate me,’ he invited. ‘Break down my resistance. I want to see how you do it.’

  ‘I don’t want to interrogate you. I’d need a closed room and a rubber hose. But you can tell me—why was Rosemary so certain he committed suicide?’

  ‘Who? Edwin? I suppose he did. Try the red, it goes better with prawns. Oh yes, it was on the cards. If he hadn’t, I think I’d have killed him myself. Dear Edwin. Give him a sheet of paper and he’d write the most divine dialogue. I was with him for years, you know. Six of his plays. Success after success. And none of your tantrums with him, you understand. Playwrights are so touchy. Every word a jewel, and nobody must change it. But not Edwin. Tell him it didn’t speak right, and he’d alter it. Divine.’

  ‘But not at the end?’ I asked, slipping Cindy a prawn.

  ‘They’d call for him at the final curtain, you know. Author, author. He loved it. But it wasn’t enough. Greenslade used to direct for him, before he went on to films. Clyde Greenslade.’ He raised his glass, peered through it, then downed it in one gulp. ‘A very unsympathetic director, Clyde. Mark my words. But Edwin…Author, author wasn’t enough for Edwin. It had to be producer, producer…Oh yes, he financed the last two himself, and directed them. Wanted the lot. Greedy Edwin. The little sausage rolls are rather nice.’

  ‘So…as a director he failed?’

  ‘A complete flop, dear boy. You’d have thought he didn’t really understand his own plays. Two in a row, complete flops. And I was the lead in both. Almost wrecked my career. I could cheerfully have killed him myself.’

  ‘But all the same, you came to his party.’

  ‘Of course. He was my friend. I think your dog’s going to be sick, you know.’

  I got her out on to the terrace in time. Clearly, I had a lot to learn about dogs, so I apologised to Cindy, and we went back inside.

  Rosemary had the two youngsters in the middle of the room, reading to them from the script, with wide sweeps of her expressive fingers. Drew Pierson was now sitting at a card table by the side wall, facing Mildred Niven, a glass of red wine close to his hand. I rescued half a dozen of the sausage rolls, and went to join them.

  Dame Mildred glanced at me, then down at her knitting again. The needles flashed, as did her eyes.

  ‘You didn’t tell me’, I reminded Pierson, ‘why you’re so certain Edwin committed suicide.’ I was not, at that stage, probing the physical problems involved, but the emotional ones. It was all very well dumping Edwin into a psychological bracket: manic-depressive. But it was not enough. And these people had known him, and worked with him.

  But had they? My impression was that the miserable author was expected to disappear into the background, once rehearsals began, so that he’d not protest at the mangling of his play.

  ‘The man was unstable,’ Pierson stated complacently.

  ‘Now Drew,’ said Mildred severely, ‘that will not do, and you know it.’ For one smallest part of a second the needles had paused whilst one of them pointed at him accusingly. Pierson grunted, and peered into his glass. ‘You must not give our friend the wrong impression.’

  She turned and smiled at me. That smile! In repose, her face assumed a somewhat grim expression, accentuated by a wide mouth that drooped at the corners and a square, firm chin. She rationed the smile, which illuminated her face. ‘Drew’, she explained, ‘has always been rather superficial, I’ve noticed. Edwin Carter was simply a dear man who tried to please, and tried too hard. He was a brilliant playwright, but didn’t realise it himself.’

  Pierson cleared his throat. He had the natural authority that converted it into a momentous event, and I automatically awaited a deep pronouncement.

  ‘Edwin’, he said, ‘was a fool to himself. He wrote wonderful dialogue. But he had no self-confidence. If I asked him to change my words, he would.’

  ‘And no doubt…’ Mildred nodded. ‘…for the worse, knowing you.’

  ‘I was going to ask about that,’ I said. ‘I thought authors were encouraged to keep out of the way.’

  Mildred chuckled. ‘Just try it with Edwin. He clucked around like an anxious hen.’

  ‘But not sufficiently anxious to refuse amendments?’

  ‘I never asked him,’ she said. ‘My lines were me, my dear. I spoke them, and they were true. And it was tight dialogue. Do you know what tight dialogue is, Mr…er?’

  ‘Patton,’ I said. ‘And I don’t.’

  ‘It’s dialogue that follows on itself, each speech naturally luring on the next, all linked together as far as three or four speeches further on, and all flowing smoothly. Edwin Carter was a wonderful playwright. It’s a pity he’d never accept it.’

  ‘Surely, the evidence of success…’

  ‘There are people who will never accept they are succeeding in what they can do well, serious authors who feel they must write comedy, and vice versa. Pianists who must be conductors. And footballers who must be cricketers. Oh, you could go on…’

  ‘I heard’, I observed, biting into another sausage roll, ‘somebody describe him as big-headed.’

  Drew Pierson laughed, that rumble of his that shakes the gods. ‘Edwin! It was painful to watch.’

  ‘He blushed,’ Mildred explained.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘When anybody praised him,’ Pierson explained.

  ‘And he was desperate,’ Mildred amplified. ‘You could see it in his eyes. Desperate for some sort of success he could recognise himself.’

  ‘You’re telling me why you believe he committed suicide.’

  Click, click went the needles. Something bulky and blue was growing as I watched.

  ‘We knew, you see,’ she said. ‘Edwin tried to be a director, and he slaughtered his own plays. Nobody could convince him that he was a success as a writer. And nobody needed to tell him that he’d failed as a director. We knew he was near breaking point. That night…his party. Just the sort of thing he’d arrange, of course, celebrating his failure. It was as good as saying out loud: I always told you I was no good, now I’ve proved it. We came, his friends, to hold his hands. It was all building up, his wild and enthusiastic mood, like a volcano waiting to blow its top. We knew that if we didn’t keep an eye on him, anything could happen.’

  ‘And yet you didn’t,’ I reminded her gently. ‘You all let him drive away into the night, with the obvious expectation that his mood would switch to black depression.’

  She flicked that smile at me again, but now it held a tang of contempt.

  ‘A critic once wrote about a play I was in: “I did not enjoy so-and-so’s play because I didn’t go to it. I couldn’t stand his previous one.” That’s you. You were not here
. You do not know these people.’ A movement of the needles encompassed the room. ‘The show must go on. You know. A good example was that evening. We went on. Party games. We wanted him to return to happiness. On the surface, we were happy. We are actors, young man. Actors.’

  ‘And you were here?’ I asked, not distracted by being called a young man. ‘In this room. Yourself. All the time.’

  ‘I was here, keeping a quiet eye on the proceedings.’

  ‘In case the jollity flagged?’

  ‘Naughty,’ she said. ‘But yes, I was here.’

  ‘And nobody left the room, for one moment…’

  ‘I would not be prepared to swear to that. But for moments only. Except for Duncan, of course.’

  ‘Not being an actor, he couldn’t pretend to be happy?’

  ‘He had said he wanted to see his uncle privately, and he was in here and out again, back again, like a restless waif.’

  ‘Waif?’

  ‘Waif was what he was. Lost. Unhappy.’

  ‘He was not’, put in Pierson, ‘in the business. Of course he was lost, amongst a crowd of extroverts.’

  Once again I was aware that Drew Pierson saw more and understood more than he pretended.

  ‘So Duncan was sort of elected to be there when his uncle returned?’ I persisted.

  ‘He elected himself,’ Mildred said. ‘The danger point—that was how I thought of it myself—would be when Edwin returned. Of course, it was realised that Edwin might not have gone all the way to the nearest pub across the border. He could quite easily have abandoned such a stupid idea…’

  ‘He was insistent,’ Drew reminded her.

  ‘…and returned early without the stuff he’d gone for. But Duncan, I’m sure, went down to the garages several times, just in case.’

  ‘Including the time when Edwin did return,’ I commented.