The Twist of a Knife

‘Then I’m sorry I mentioned it. I just want you to understand that he would never hurt anyone.’ He looked at me across the top of his wine glass. ‘If you’re going to start throwing accusations around, you might as well know that Jordan wasn’t the only one. Anthony, for one, agreed with him.’

‘I didn’t!’

‘I saw you nod your head.’

‘Ewan – that’s not fair. I thought what he said was awful!’

‘I’m sure that’s true. I’m just pointing out that we’d all been drinking, it was late, the end of an intense evening, and emotions were running high. I wish Sky had never told us she had the review. I don’t know what she was thinking, anyway. She could have at least read it first.’

‘How did it make you feel?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘The review? It made me angry … bloody angry.’ So far Ewan had barely stammered, but he had to fight to get out the ‘b’ of bloody. He noticed the empty glass in his hand and went over to a trolley with its selection of bottles. ‘Are you sure you won’t have something?’ he asked.

‘We’re fine, thank you,’ Hawthorne said.

Ewan refilled his glass and came back to his chair.

‘First of all, it was unfair. Lots of people enjoyed it when we performed it outside London and I think it was sharper and stronger when we came in. But even if there were some failings – in the script, in my direction, whatever – she had no reason to be so filthy.’ He took another swig. ‘Harriet Throsby chose her words carefully,’ he continued. ‘That was what was so appalling about her. It’s one thing to criticise a play, but she did it in a very deliberate way, to cause the greatest upset. She was even at it at the party! I mean, you have to ask yourself, why would she even come to a first-night party? No critic does that. But she couldn’t resist the opportunity because she enjoyed hurting people – she relished it. You heard what she said to me.’

‘She hardly spoke to you,’ I said.

‘She said enough.’ He put the glass down heavily, slopping red wine over his fingers. ‘Perhaps you don’t remember what she said about the Savoy Hotel. “Those big hotels don’t exactly light my fire.” Those were her exact words.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You wouldn’t.’ I had never seen Ewan like this. He might have been unable to find a well of anger in Jordan Williams, but his own was spilling over, perhaps helped by all the wine he had consumed. ‘My life was ruined by a fire.’

‘Your production of Saint Joan!’ Suddenly I remembered.

‘Exactly. And you might as well know, she did the same thing in the review she wrote after the accident. There were plenty of newspaper stories, but none of the other critics actually sat down and reviewed the play. Why would they? It had already closed down. No audience was ever going to see it after the disaster on the opening night. But she couldn’t resist it, gloating about what had happened. Not, of course, that she made it obvious. It was just one little line buried in the rest of it. “Under Ewan Lloyd’s over-fussy direction, the play never caught fire.” You see? The same word!’

‘Do you have a copy of the review?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘No. I wouldn’t have that garbage in my house. You can find it online. Most of it was very sympathetic – or pretending to be. At the time nobody knew how badly Sonja Childs had been injured, so maybe that was why Harriet got away with it. In fact, she praised Sonja. “I’m sure everyone in the audience will be wishing her the speediest recovery and we can’t wait to see this talented actress back on the stage … ” But with every word she wrote, she blamed me. My ambition. My arrogance. My stupidity.

‘I thought about suing her. The theatre fully supported me. But at the time, I was torn to pieces. I had a young, beautiful actress in intensive care with third-degree burns. I’d destroyed her career. How could I have any right to worry about my reputation when I knew that, at the end of the day, it had happened because of me? To this day I don’t know what went wrong. Something short-circuited? A transformer overheated? Somehow a fake fire became a real fire and it was horrible, the worst day of my life – and Harriet Throsby made it worse still. I’ll never forgive her for that.

‘But I didn’t kill her.’ He had seen Hawthorne examining him and returned the stare. ‘I was in this house all morning. I took phone calls. I can give you the names of people who spoke to me.’

‘Did anyone see you?’

‘No. My wife was at the surgery. She’s a sports therapist. There was just me.’

‘So if it wasn’t you, who was it?’

‘I’ve told you. I don’t think it was anyone who was in the green room that night. Not Jordan. Not Sky or Tirian – they had no reason to kill her. She hadn’t said anything bad about either of them.’

‘You haven’t talked very much about Tirian. What do you make of him?’