Derek Litwood was as smartly and conventionally dressed as he had been when Charles saw him out of the coffee shop window the Monday before. He established very quickly that he was a solicitor by profession, and that he had been given compassionate leave from work since his wife’s death.
‘Though, in fact,’ he said, ‘I’m not so much grieving as furiously angry. I want to know the truth about how Liddy died, and all I encounter is obstruction.’
‘Obstruction from the police?’ asked Charles.
‘Obstruction from everyone, but yes, mostly from the police. They’re obviously deep into their own investigations, but they won’t give me any information. I’ve still no idea whether they reckon her death was an accident, or something more sinister. So, as I said in my note, I’m desperate to talk to anyone who can shed any light on what really happened.’
Charles knew he had to be cautious. Unless Derek Litwood had actually witnessed his presence at the Duke of Kent’s that night, he would stick to the story he had told the police. That he hadn’t been there. That he hadn’t seen Liddy’s broken body at the foot of the stairs.
‘I’m very happy to tell you anything I know,’ he said carefully, ‘but I’m afraid that doesn’t amount to very much.’
‘Well, the first thing I should make clear,’ said Derek, ‘is that my marriage to Liddy was going through a rough patch.’
Charles had got that impression from the scene he’d witnessed outside the coffee shop, but he made no comment.
‘The fact is, her getting a part in a West End show made me think it was really over.’
‘Why?’
‘Because that was like a statement of the direction in which her life was going, the direction in which she wanted it to go.’
‘Sorry, you’ll have to explain that to me.’
‘Liddy and I met when we were at school. Then I did a Law degree, she did English, both at Nottingham Uni. We’d been together so long, it seemed logical to get married soon after we graduated.
‘Liddy had always been keen on theatre, played lead roles in school productions, did lots of stuff at Nottingham. That didn’t worry me. Law students had lots more lectures than people doing English, a much heavier workload, so it suited me fine that Liddy had an interest to keep her occupied when I was studying. Same thing when I was doing my Graduate Diploma and Legal Practice Course, right up until I was fully qualified.
‘By then, Liddy was getting more involved in professional theatre – well, semi-professional, fringe stuff. And I was loyal. Theatre had never really been my thing, but I’ve lost count of the number of smelly upstairs rooms in pubs where I’ve been to watch Liddy in “experimental” – and, it has to be said, usually pretty dreadful – plays. She still had a day job round that time, teaching in a primary school, but she gradually cut down the hours she was putting in there to do more theatre. Still fine by me, because we’d always had this understanding that when I qualified, we’d start a family.
‘So, when I did qualify, I assumed it would all be straightforward. We were late twenties, a lot of our contemporaries from school and uni were starting to have babies. It seemed logical that we should do the same.
‘It was only when I raised the subject with Liddy that I realized how far our ambitions had drawn apart. She said her acting career was beginning to take off, and the last thing she wanted to do was to interrupt that progress by having a baby.
‘I’d also told her that I was getting to the stage of my career when I was getting invitations to formal dinners and stuff, the kind of occasions which one should attend with one’s wife. Liddy said she’d rather stick needles in her eyes than go to some “stuffed-shirt solicitors’ event”. I’ve done my best to keep the marriage going, but …’
Derek Litwood’s narrative eventually trailed away to silence. Charles had only himself to blame. He was the one who’d asked for an explanation.
‘So, when … I mean up until …’ He tried to avoid mentioning the death, but couldn’t. ‘Up until Liddy died, what was the state of the marriage? Were you living together?’
‘No. Nearly a year ago, we’d bought this lovely house in Muswell Hill, perfect for a family, and Liddy hardly stepped inside it.’
‘Where was she living then?’
‘With friends.’ Derek shrugged. ‘That’s all she’d ever say. “With friends.” I never knew where she was.’
‘Didn’t you know her friends? Couldn’t you contact them?’
‘I knew our mutual friends, obviously. You know, people in Muswell Hill. But her actor friends … Of course, I met some of them at First Nights and things, but I didn’t know them. I didn’t have any means of contacting them. So far as I was concerned, they were all interchangeable poseurs.’
Derek was unaware of the potential insult to the person he was sitting with. Charles was beginning to understand why Derek and Liddy’s relationship had foundered. It was a syndrome he’d encountered many times before, where one member of a couple was ‘in the business’ and the other wasn’t. One would arrive home, exhausted by a day’s work, to find the other full of energy as they were about to go and give of themselves on stage. Then there were the different problems caused by touring and location filming. Charles didn’t have to look a lot further than his own marriage. But he kept these thoughts to himself, just saying, ‘Surely these days you can contact people through social media and stuff?’
‘Yes, but at first, after Liddy walked out, I didn’t want to contact her. Let her stew in her own juice for a while, I thought, and then she’ll come back with her tail between her legs.’ Derek was clearly unaware of mixed metaphors too. ‘Then I did need to contact her. There were invitations addressed to both of us, local things and professional stuff, too. People at the office were starting to ask questions. When I did want to contact Liddy, she wouldn’t answer the phone to me, though she did reply to texts about practical things. But I never knew where she was texting from. What she never seemed to realize,’ he said bitterly, ‘was how much a broken marriage could harm my career.’
A rather old-fashioned attitude, thought Charles. And then he realized that that was what defined Derek Litwood. He was deeply old-fashioned. All he wanted was a nice suburban house in Muswell Hill, with a wife who produced neat little children and scrubbed up well for solicitorial dinners. If that was a future Liddy Max had ever relished, working in the theatre had killed her appetite for it.
‘So, had you talked about divorce?’
‘No. She didn’t think it was important, whether we actually ended the marriage officially or not. She said there was no point in getting divorced until one of us wanted to marry anyone else. I was quite pleased about that, because I genuinely thought that at some stage we would get back together.’
‘Well, Liddy still wore a wedding ring, all the time we were rehearsing,’ said Charles, hoping his words brought encouragement.
‘Did she? Well, that doesn’t mean anything with Liddy. Last time I saw her, she said she’d wear the ring in situations where there was a danger of some old lech coming on to her.’
‘Oh,’ said Charles, awkwardly remembering the thoughts that had gone through his head at The Habit of Faith read-through. He moved the conversation along. ‘How long had you and Liddy been living apart?’
‘Nearly a year now.’ The abandoned husband looked gloomily into the residual foam of his cappuccino.
Charles made a connection. ‘And am I right – the reason you came to the Duke of Kent’s, you know, the afternoon of that Monday, was that you knew your wife would be there?’
Derek nodded. ‘I’d seen publicity for the show in the paper, yes, and saw that Liddy was in it. I wanted to talk to her face to face, and finally I knew where I could find her.’
‘So, had you been hanging round the theatre all that morning?’
‘No, I’d only just arrived from the office. I asked the guy at the stage door if Liddy was in, and he said she’d just left for the coffee shop over the road.’
‘I was in the coffee shop at the same time.’
‘I know you were. I recognized you.’
‘Oh?’ Charles couldn’t suppress the actor’s kneejerk warm reaction to those words. He only just prevented himself from asking, ‘What had you seen me in?’
Which was just as well, because Derek Litwood went on, ‘I’d got the full cast list from the production company’s website. Then I googled all the actors, and I saw a photo of you.’
Not quite as good as having been seen in a performance, but still quite cheering, just the fact that an image of Charles Paris was available online. He decided he must google himself as soon as he got back to his laptop. (Charles’s mobile wasn’t smart enough to access the internet – or, perhaps to put it more accurately, Charles wasn’t smart enough to access the internet from his mobile.)
‘Derek, can I ask about what was actually said between you, you know, that afternoon outside the coffee shop?’
‘Oh, we went over a lot of old ground. I was hoping that she might have changed her mind a bit, but no. She was more determined than ever that her career was the only thing that mattered. She said she was just on the verge of a lot of exciting things happening in her life. She’d got a new agent, who wanted her to focus on work in the States. And she seemed to think that working with Justin Grover might help her to get a part in Vandals and Visigoths.’
‘Was she specific about that? I mean, did she actually say she’d been offered a part?’
‘No, she just thought working with him might lead to something. I should have realized when I first met her just how ambitious Liddy was. Success in acting was the only thing she cared about. Relationships, family, other people: none of them even registered with her.’
Charles made no comment. He’d met plenty of people in the theatre whom that description would fit, but he wouldn’t have counted Liddy Max in their number. She had been devoted to her work, yes, but he had interpreted that as a desire to improve her skills, rather than to gain fame and money. Mind you, he hadn’t really known her that well. Certainly not as well as her husband had. And Charles knew how distorted the views of partners in a failing marriage could be. He didn’t really want to go there, because he felt sure Derek Litwood had an extensive further supply of recrimination to draw on.
So, rather tentatively, all he asked was: ‘After you’d talked to Liddy, what did you do for the rest of the day?’ If Derek had continued his surveillance of the stage door, there was no way he could have missed seeing Charles’s arrival after the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
To his relief, the answer was that he had just gone back to work. And not returned to the Duke of Kent’s that day.
‘So, anyway, what was it you really wanted to ask me about, Derek?’
‘Well, it’s just … you were working with Liddy for the last few weeks. You probably know more about what she was up to than I do.’
‘I wasn’t working that closely with her. We didn’t have many scenes together. And I didn’t see her at all outside of work.’
‘You were with her in the coffee shop.’ It sounded like an accusation.
‘That was the first time I’d ever gone out to eat with her.’
‘Right.’ The word was spoken grudgingly, as though Derek didn’t really believe him. ‘Listen, I said that for most of the last year Liddy was “with friends”. Have you any idea who those “friends” were?’
With complete honesty, Charles said he hadn’t.
‘I suppose what I really want to know is whether it was “friends” or a “friend”.’
‘You mean – had she shacked up with another man?’
‘That’s exactly what I mean. I’ve been in touch with lots of our mutual friends, and none of them had any idea where she was living. She seemed to have gone to ground. I thought you might have – I don’t know – seen her with some man at the theatre …?’ There was a glint of growing paranoia in Derek Litwood’s eyes.
‘No,’ said Charles. ‘I didn’t see her with anyone.’
‘Did she talk about anyone?’
He decided not to reveal what Liddy had said about having a ‘hot date’. He would keep that to himself for the time being. When he knew who the ‘hot date’ was, then he might share the information with Derek.
Maybe, his mind went on, encouraged by the memory leak he’d had in Liddy’s dressing room, he might in time remember more of what he’d seen in the Duke of Kent’s on the evening of her death.
Charles shrugged apologetically. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not being much help.’
‘No,’ Derek agreed. Then, realizing that might sound rather rude, he went on, ‘I’m just trying to get my head around what’s happened.’
‘I’m sorry. You must be in a very bad state.’
‘More confused than anything, I think. I mean, if Liddy and I had still been together when she died, it’d be totally different. But in the last year, I’ve kind of recognized that the marriage is over … so, in a way, her death lets me off the hook.’
‘How do you mean?’ asked Charles, not sure he could believe what he was hearing.
‘Well, I was in a marriage that wasn’t working. My wife has died in tragic circumstances. That means I don’t have to go through the ghastly process of a divorce. My path ahead is still a lot clearer than it was.’
‘You mean, to meet someone, else? To remarry?’
‘Yes,’ Derek replied calmly. ‘Someone who’ll be content with her role as a wife and mother.’
‘You’ll be lucky to find one of those around these days,’ was Charles’s thought. But he didn’t say it. He was still astonished by the calm, calculating way in which Derek Litwood spoke. He seemed to be suffering no pangs of bereavement. The loss of his wife had in fact proved very convenient for him. Charles wasn’t surprised that Liddy had wanted out of marriage to such a cold-blooded creature.
Inevitably, with the thought of how convenient the death had been for her husband, came the suspicion that Derek might have engineered that death. But it seemed unlikely.
‘What I did want to ask you, Charles,’ the ungrieving widower went on, ‘was whether you saw anything that evening – you know, the night she died.’
‘I wasn’t in the theatre, so I couldn’t have seen anything.’ There was no way he could go back on his lie now.
‘No. As I said, the police won’t tell me anything. Did any of the other members of the company see anything of what happened?’
‘Why don’t you ask them? Or have you already?’
‘I haven’t spoken to anyone else about Liddy. I will, obviously, if any of them have told you that they saw something strange.’
‘Nobody has told me anything like that. I honestly don’t think any other members of the company were in the theatre. We’d all suddenly got the bonus of a free evening, last one we were going to get – except Sundays – for three months. We’d be seeing quite enough of the Duke of Kent’s over that period. Most of the cast wanted to enjoy their last night of freedom.’
‘Except for Liddy.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve no idea why she might have stayed in the theatre?’
Charles felt even less inclined to mention the ‘hot date’. ‘No idea at all,’ he said. ‘I think we’ll have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that this is one of those mysteries that can never be solved.’
But that didn’t mean that Charles Paris wasn’t determined to solve it.
It was as he walked up the stairs to his dressing room that Charles thought about the incongruity of the conversation he had just shared. Derek Litwood had singled him out from the rest of the company as a potential source of information. Why? Charles hadn’t been particularly close to Liddy. When she socialized after rehearsal, it tended to be with Justin Grover and Grant Yeoell. Yet, from what Derek had said, he hadn’t questioned either of them. Just Charles Paris.
It came to him suddenly. Not necessarily the truth, but a possible scenario. Derek Litwood had lied about not going back to the Duke of Kent’s on the night his wife died. He had been keeping the place under surveillance, and seen Charles enter with his bottle of whisky soon after seven.
And the reason he’d wanted to question Charles was to find out whether Charles had witnessed what he, Derek, had done in the theatre that evening.