Twelve Red Herrings (34 page)

“You still
haven’t explained why you needed such a large amount of strychnine,” he said,
remaining behind his client.

“We had been
losing a lot of chickens,” Mrs. Banks replied, still not moving her head. “My
husband thought it was rats, so he told me to get a large quantity of
strychnine to finish them off.

“Once and for
all” were his exact words.”

“But as it
turned out, it was he who was finished off, once and for all – and undoubtedly
with the same poison,” said Sir Matthew quietly.

“I also feared
for Rupert’s safety,” said Mrs. Banks, ignoring her counsel’s sarcasm.

“But your son
was away at school at the time,
am !
not
correct?’

“Yes, you are,
Sir Matthew, but he was due back for half term that weekend.”

“Have you ever
used that supplier before?”

“Regularly,”
said Mrs. Banks, as Sir Matthew completed his circle and returned to face her
once again. “I go there at least once a month, as I’m sure the manager will
confirm.” She turned her head and faced a foot or so to his right.

Sir Matthew
remained silent, resisting the temptation to look at his watch. He knew it
could only be a matter of seconds. A few moments later the door on the far side
of the interview room swung open and a boy of about nine years of age entered.
The three of them watched their client closely as the child walked silently
towards her.

Rupert Banks
came to a halt in front of his mother and smiled, but received no response. He
waited for a further ten seconds, then turned and walked back out, exactly as
he had been instructed to do. Mrs. Banks’s eyes remained fixed somewhere
between Sir Matthew and Mr. Casson.

The smile on
Casson’s face was now almost one of triumph.

“Is there
someone else in the room?” asked Mrs. Banks. “I thought I heard the door open.”

“No,” said Sir
Matthew. “Only Mr. Casson and I are in the room.” Witherington still hadn’t
moved a muscle.

Sir Matthew
began to circle Mrs. Banks for what he knew had to be the last time. He had
almost come to believe that he might have misjudged her. When he was directly
behind her once again, he nodded to his junior, who remained seated in front of
her.

Witherington
removed the silk handkerchief from his breast pocket, slowly unfolded it, and
laid it out flat on the table in front of him.

Mrs. Banks
showed no reaction. Witherington stretched out the fingers of his right hand,
bowed his head slightly, and paused before placing his right hand over his left
eye. Without warning he plucked the eye out of its socket and placed it in the
middle of the silk handkerchief.

He left it on
the table for a full thirty seconds,
then
began to
polish it. Sir Matthew completed his circle, and observed beads of perspiration
appearing on Mrs. Banks’s forehead as he sat down. When Witherington had
finished cleaning the almond-shaped glass object, he slowly raised his head
until he was staring directly at her,
then
eased the
eye back into its socket. Mrs. Banks momentarily turned away. She quickly tried
to compose herself, but it was too late.

Sir Matthew rose
from his chair and smiled at his client. She returned the smile.

“I must confess,
Mrs. Banks,” he said, “I would feel much more confident about a plea of guilty
to manslaughter.’

COULD ANYONE BE THAT BEAUTIFUL?

I was driving round the Aldwych on my
way to work when I first saw her. She was walking up the steps of the Aldwych
Theatre. If I’d stared a moment longer I would have driven into the back of the
car in front of me, but before I could confirm my fleeting impression she had
disappeared into the throng of theatregoers.

I spotted a
parking space on my left-hand side and swung into it at the last possible
moment, without indicating, causing the vehicle behind me to let out several
appreciative blasts. I leapt out of my car and ran back towards the theatre,
realising how unlikely it was that I’d be able to find her in such a mle, and
that even if I did, she was probably meeting a boyfriend or husband who would
turn out to be about six feet tall and closely to resemble Harrison Ford.

Once I reached
the foyer I scanned the chattering crowd. I slowly turned 360 degrees, but
could see no sign of her. Should I try to buy a ticket? I wondered. But she
could be seated anywhere – the stalls, the dress circle, even the upper circle.
Perhaps I should walk up and down the aisles until I spotted her. But I
realised I wouldn’t be allowed into any part of the theatre unless I could
produce a ticket.

And then I saw
her. She was standing in a queue in front of the window marked “Tonight’s
Performance’, and was just one away from being attended to. There were two
other customers, a young woman and a middle-aged man, waiting in line behind
her. I quickly joined the queue, by which time she had reached the front. I leant
forward and tried to overhear what she was saying, but I could only catch the
box office manager’s reply: “Not much chance with the curtain going up in a few
minutes’ time, madam,” he was saying. “But if you leave it with me, I’ll see
what I can do.” She thanked him and walked off in the direction of the stalls.

My first
impression was confirmed. It didn’t matter if you looked from the ankles up or
from the head down – she was perfection.

I couldn’t take
my eyes off her, and I noticed that she was having exactly the same effect on
several other men in the foyer. I wanted to tell them all not to bother. Didn’t
they realise she was with me? Or rather, that she would be by the end of the
evening.

After she had
disappeared from view, I craned my neck to look into the booth. Her ticket had
been placed to one side. I sighed with relief as the young woman two places
ahead of me presented her credit card and picked up four tickets for the dress
circle.

I began to pray
that the man in front of me wasn’t looking for a single.

“Do you have one
ticket for tonight’s performance?” he asked hopefully, as the three-minute bell
sounded. The man in the booth smiled.

I scowled.
Should I knife him in the back, kick him in the groin, or simply scream abuse
at him?

“Where would you
prefer to sit, sir?
The dress circle or the stalls?”

“Don’t say stalls,”
I willed. “Say Circle... Circle... Circle...”

“Stalls,” he
said.

“I have one on
the aisle in row H,” said the man in the box, checking the computer screen in
front of him. I uttered a silent cheer as I realised that the theatre would be
trying to sell off its remaining tickets before it bothered with returns handed
in by members of the public. But then, I thought, how would I get around that
problem?

By the time the
man in front of me had bought the ticket on the end of row H, I had my lines
well-rehearsed, and just hoped I wouldn’t need a prompt.

“Thank goodness.
I thought I wasn’t going to make it,” I began, trying to sound out of breath.
The man in the ticket booth looked up at me, but didn’t seem all that impressed
by my opening line.

“It was the
traffic. And then I couldn’t find a parking space.

My girlfriend
may have given up on me. Did she by any chance hand in my ticket for resale?”
He looked unconvinced. My dialogue obviously wasn’t gripping him. “Can you
describe her?” he asked suspiciously.

“Short-cropped
dark
hair, hazel eyes, wearing a red silk dress
that...”

“Ah, yes. I
remember her,” he said, almost sighing. He picked up the ticket by his side and
handed it to me.

“Thank you,” I
said, trying not to show my relief that he had come in so neatly on cue with
the closing line from my first scene. As I hurried off in the direction of the
stalls, I grabbed an envelope from a pile on the ledge beside the booth.

I checked the
price of the ticket: twenty pounds. I extracted two ten-pound notes from my
wallet, put them in the envelope, licked the flap and stuck it down.

The girl at the
entrance to the stalls checked my ticket.
“F-s.

Six rows from
the front, on the right-hand side.” I walked slowly down the aisle until I
spotted her. She was sitting next to an empty place in the middle of the row.
As I made my way over the feet of those who were already seated, she turned and
smiled, obviously pleased to see that someone had purchased her spare ticket.

I returned the
smile, handed over the envelope containing my twenty pounds, and sat down
beside her. “The man in the box office asked me to give you this.”

“Thank you.” She
slipped the envelope into her evening bag. I was about to try the first line of
my second scene on her, when the house lights faded and the curtain rose for
Act One of the real performance. I suddenly realised that I had no idea what
play I was about to see. I glanced across at the programme on her lap and read
the words “An Inspector Calls, by J.B. Priestley’.

I remembered
that the critics had been full of praise for the production when it had
originally opened at the National Theatre, and had particularly singled out the
performance of Kenneth Cranham. I tried to concentrate on what was taking place
on stage.

The eponymous
inspector was staring into a house in which
an Edwardian
family were
preparing for a dinner to celebrate their daughter’s
engagement. “I was thinking of getting a new car,” the father was saying to his
prospective son-in-law as he puffed away on his cigar.

At the mention
of the word ‘car’, I suddenly remembered that I had abandoned mine outside the
theatre. Was it on a double yellow line?

Or
worse?
To hell with it.
They could have it in part-exchange
for the model sitting next to me. The audience laughed, so I joined in, if only
to give the impression that I was following the plot. But what about my
original plans for the evening? By now everyone would be wondering why I hadn’t
turned up. I realised that I wouldn’t be able to leave the theatre during the
interval, either to check on my car or to make a phone call to explain my
absence, as that would be my one chance of developing my own plot.

The play had the
rest of the audience enthralled, but I had already begun rehearsing the lines
from my own script, which would have to be performed during the interval
between Acts One and Two. I was painfully aware that I would be restricted to
fifteen minutes, and that there would be no second night.

By the time the
curtain came down at the end of the first act, I was confident of my draft
text. I waited for the applause to die down before I turned towards her.

“What an
original production,” I began.
“Quite modernistic.”
I vaguely
remembered that one of the critics had followed that line. “I was lucky to get
a seat at the last moment.”

“I was just as
lucky,” she replied. I felt encouraged. “I mean
,
to
find someone who was looking for a single ticket at such short notice.” I
nodded. “My name’s Michael Whitaker.”

“Anna Townsend,”
she said, giving me a warm smile.

“Would you like a
drink?” I asked.

“Thank you,” she
replied, ‘that would be nice.” I stood up and led her through the packed scrum
that was heading towards the stalls
bar,
occasionally
glancing back to make sure she was still following me. I was somehow expecting
her no longer to be there, but each time I turned to look she greeted me with
the same radiant smile.

“What would you
like?” I asked, once I could make out the bar through the crowd.

“A
dry martini, please.”

“Stay
here,
and I’ll be back in a moment,” I promised, wondering
just how many precious minutes would be wasted while I had to wait at the bar.
I took out a five-pound note and held it up conspicuously, in the hope that the
prospect of a large tip might influence the harman’s sense of direction. He
spotted the money, but I still had to wait for another four customers to be
served before I managed to secure the dry martini and a Scotch on the rocks for
myself. The harman didn’t deserve the tip I left him, but I hadn’t any more
time to waste waiting for the change.

I carried the
drinks back to the far corner of the foyer, where Anna stood studying her
programme. She was silhouetted against a window, and in that stylish red silk
dress, the light emphasised her slim, elegant figure.

I handed her the
dry martini, aware that my limited time had almost run out.

“Thank you,” she
said, giving me another disarming smile.

“How did you
come to have a spare ticket?” I asked as she took a sip from her drink.

“My partner was
held up on an emergency case at the last minute,’ she explained. “
Just one of the problems of being a doctor.”
“
Pity.