Leila Waters looked across her desk at Patrick. A faint smell of hot cheese from the pizzeria below wafted into the office through the fractionally opened window.
‘Yes. I identified Sam,’ she said.
‘But why you? Wasn’t there a relative?’
‘We knew of no one. It was either me or someone from the company. I probably knew him as well as anyone.’
‘Yet you didn’t know much about his private life.’
‘No one did,’ said Leila. ‘The police were quite satisfied for me to do it – I’d known him for years.’
‘Wasn’t it rather a distressing experience?’
‘What do you think? Do you know what the water does to people?’
Patrick knew a lot about drowned bodies. Sam’s was not the only one he had seen.
‘He’d dyed his hair for Macduff?’
‘Yes – he preferred it to wearing a wig.’
‘But he didn’t grow a beard?’
‘No – he’d have had to dye that too, wouldn’t he? And that wouldn’t have been so easy,’ said Leila.
‘But he did wear a beard for Macduff?’
‘Yes.’
‘He was good at make-up, wasn’t he? He’s unrecognisable in some of his old photographs.’ Patrick leaned across the desk and handed her one of the theatre programmes appropriated from Tessa. It showed a fat, elderly man: Sam, padded in face and body, playing Falstaff.
‘True enough. Make-up does wonders. But that was gross miscasting,’ Leila said. ‘Sam wasn’t a good Falstaff.’
‘Why? Too much unlike his own personality?’
‘Yes.’
‘Surely that’s the test of an actor – to go against type?’
‘Up to a point.’
‘It’s easier to act a role like your own nature?’
‘Not necessarily. Sometimes it can be a release to play another sort of person.’ She tapped the programme. ‘It was a long time ago – before he lost his nerve.’
‘You had no doubts about his identity when you saw the body?’
‘No. Nor did the woman who recognised him when he was dragged out of the river. She knew him at once.’
‘Who was she?’ asked Patrick.
‘I don’t know her name. Some passer-by.’
‘Was she at the inquest?’
‘No. It wasn’t necessary – it was just a preliminary enquiry so that the funeral could take place. Perhaps she’ll be at the resumed inquest,’ said Leila. ‘Now, I really am very busy.’
Patrick departed; he was the object of interested scrutiny from the patient clients lined up in the outer office, and this time the receptionist even gave him a smile.