The Twist of a Knife

Six of them had been in the green room with me that night: Ewan, Tirian, Jordan, Sky, Ahmet and Maureen. The seventh was Keith, and although I couldn’t think of an earthly reason why the deputy stage-door manager would want to do Harriet Throsby harm, he had been the last person to enter the green room and he could easily have picked up the dagger belonging to me, so it seemed only reasonable to add him to the list. It was an unpleasant thought that one of them had been lying from the start, smiling at me and jollying me along while, all the time, they were planning to send me to jail. But the cloud had one silver lining. Seven suspects! That made it easy. Hawthorne would have solved the whole thing before breakfast.

I watched him as he went over to the dustbin and pulled out two empty bottles: Sky’s vodka and the whisky that Tirian had brought. He glanced at it and was about to put it back in again when he noticed something else. He leaned down and took out a crumpled packet of cigarettes. I saw the branding – L&M – the white letters printed sideways on a bright red background. I recognised them immediately. ‘Those are Ahmet’s,’ I said.

Hawthorne opened the packet. ‘He left three inside.’

I looked more closely. It was true. There were three cigarettes inside the package. They had been broken up when the carton was crumpled. ‘Why would he do that?’

‘What makes you think it was him?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘That’s definitely his brand. And he was smoking them after the party.’ I tried to come up with an answer. ‘Maybe he decided to give up.’

‘A bit of a strange time to make a decision like that, mate.’ He slipped the pack and the broken cigarettes into his pocket.

‘Listen, Hawthorne …’ I was excited to share what I had just worked out. ‘My knife was taken from this room. I’m sure of it. It only had my fingerprints on it. That means someone deliberately set out to frame me!’

‘You think so?’ He sounded surprised.

‘How else could one of my hairs have ended up on Harriet’s body? The killer must have done that too.’

‘Can you remember anyone pulling a hair out of the back of your neck?’

‘No!’ Was he being deliberately facetious? ‘But I told you. I never went near her. So it follows that someone must have put it there.’

Hawthorne considered what I’d just said. ‘Then the question is, who hated you enough to want to do that?’

‘I don’t know …’

‘They were all probably a bit pissed off with you. After all, you’d written the play.’

‘They all liked the play,’ I said. ‘That’s why they agreed to do it. Nobody could blame me for the bad reviews.’

‘Harriet Throsby did: “ … his talents fall lamentably short of what is required for an entertaining evening in the more adult arena of the West End and he must take much of the blame for what ensues.” That’s what she wrote. Maybe there was someone else in the cast who agreed.’

Had Hawthorne really learned the whole bloody review, word for word?

‘I don’t know what the reason was for killing her,’ I said. ‘But it’s crystal clear. Whoever did it wanted to make sure I got the blame.’

‘It’s definitely a possibility.’

And yet the way he said it made it sound unlikely.

I heard the bang of a door somewhere above and a deep voice making inarticulate sounds. It was Jordan Williams. He had signed in at the stage door and was making his way to his dressing room, doing some sort of voice exercise.

Hawthorne looked up. ‘Seven suspects,’ he said. ‘And it looks as if the first is right next door.’

10 Dressing Room 5

All the dressing rooms at the Vaudeville Theatre were more or less identical, dominated by a make-up table and recessed mirror with a wardrobe, a sofa, a fridge and a desk. But they were important to the actors in different ways. This was where they relaxed, prepared themselves for the performances, greeted friends. Hid.

Jordan Williams had the only one situated on the upper floor, closest to the light and (since all the windows in the building seemed to be nailed shut) to fresh air. It was just past the stage-door manager’s office, on the other side of the swing doors that you passed through when you came in from the street. I had met Jordan here on the opening night, but I had never been inside and crossing the threshold now, I almost felt as if I was trespassing.