HE CAUGHT THE strong whiff of Indian food before he heard the voices. Damn, he should have considered the possibility of their having a takeaway. Still, presumably they’d eat in the dining room or kitchen. That should give him a chance to make a run for it out of the front door.
‘Shall we eat this upstairs?’ said a voice, dashing his hopes. It was Tottie Roundwood who had spoken, but a new Tottie Roundwood. The voice was sultry, even sexy.
‘Have we got a corkscrew?’ asked a male voice Charles also instantly recognised.
‘No need,’ she replied. ‘This Italian plonk has a screw-top.’
‘Good. Upstairs we go then.’
The landing light was switched on, sending a blade of brightness across the room in which Charles was cowering. The smell of the takeaway came ahead of the footsteps mounting the stairs. He looked desperately round. There was a window, but he didn’t fancy launching himself into the dark from the first floor.
Hide under the bed, that was the only answer. Just as he’d done in that terrible adaptation of a French farce, Follow Me, Fifi! (‘About as funny as an attack of shingles’ – Western Evening Press).
Charles was under the bed with a faceful of dust before he remembered what had happened next in Follow Me, Fifi! A couple had come in, lain down on the bed and started making love.
The footsteps paused on the landing. There was the sound of a long, succulent kiss.
‘Your place or mine?’ Tottie Roundwood’s voice asked throatily.
Oh God, thought Charles, please. This isn’t a French farce I’m involved in; it’s a case of murder.
After a pause which seemed endless, the man replied, ‘Mine. We can enjoy my music, yes?’
‘Yes.’ Tottie chuckled. ‘Amongst other things.’
The footsteps moved across the landing, away from Charles. A door opened and closed.
He gave it five minutes, then eased himself out from under the bed. There was dust all over him, he knew, but that was the least of his worries. He ran his torch beam once again over the books about fungi and the set of small jars. Making a quick decision, he pocketed the one labelled Aconite. Then he edged his way towards the door.
It creaked at the first gentle pull, and Charles froze. But there was no reaction from across the landing. He drew the door to him and stood exposed by the light.
He took a step towards the stairs. Still nothing. From the closed door opposite came the sound of Gregorian chant.
That was not the only sound, though. In profane counterpoint to the music, Charles could hear the mutual gasps of a couple making love.
He paused for a moment close to the door. A moan from Tottie changed into a little shriek. ‘Oh, you are a wonderful lover,’ she murmured. ‘These last six months have been the best time of my life, Alex.’
With great care, Charles moved down the stairs and across the hall. He turned the latch on the front door and closed it gingerly behind him, then padded softly off down the garden path.
His caution was probably unnecessary. Tottie Roundwood and Alexandru Radulescu sounded far too involved in each other to be aware of anyone else.
At the end of the street, Charles Paris slipped the half-bottle out of his pocket and rewarded himself with a substantial swig of Bell’s.
He deserved it. Now at last he had some solid proof of wrongdoing. He didn’t know much about the subject, but felt pretty sure that aconite derived from some form of poisonous fungus.
He also had a new suspect. If Tottie Roundwood had been having an affair with Alexandru Radulescu for the past six months, a great many previously inconsistent details fell into place. There is little a besotted woman nearing her fifties won’t do to keep the affections of a younger lover.
Charles wondered how much Alexandru had been involved in the planning. Or had it been a Thomas a Becket scenario? Did Alexandru just intimate the outcome he desired, and leave Tottie to make it happen?
The director must have been in contact with Asphodel, so that he knew they wanted to work with him. Then he just tipped the wink to Tottie, and she got Gavin Scholes out of the way. Vividly the picture came back to Charles of the dining hall at Chailey Ferrars, and the actress forcing a mushroom tartlet into Gavin’s mouth.
Then perhaps Alexandru had intimated that he was getting tired of Charles Paris’s intransigence about how Sir Toby Belch should be played . . .? Which had led to the poisoning in the Indian restaurant . . .
Unless . . . A new thought came to Charles. The scene at the restaurant was suddenly very clear to him. When John B. Murgatroyd had received his wrong order, he had called out down the table, ‘Anybody fancy swapping a Chicken Dupiaza for something stronger?’
And amongst the raucous responses, someone had shouted back, ‘I’ve already got one.’ Now, suddenly, Charles knew that that voice had been Sally Luther’s.
In other words, the poisoning of John B. Murgatroyd had not been aimed at Charles Paris. It had been the first attempt on the life of Sally Luther.
It had failed; but the second, the injection of poison at Chailey Ferrars, had succeeded. Probably all Alexandru had said was, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if I could actually have Russ Lavery playing both parts?’ And Tottie Roundwood, unhinged by her infatuation, had taken the hint.
Another detail fell into place. Amidst all the upheaval that followed Sally Luther’s death, Charles had forgotten the woman he had seen hurrying through the rain when he was on his way from Moira Handley’s Portakabin to the stage. But now that image too was crystal clear to him.
It must have been the murderer he had seen. Vasile Bogdan immediately left the reckoning. Even if he had been disguised in women’s clothes, he was far too tall.
But the height and the gender were absolutely right for Tottie. True, Charles’d caught a glimpse of blond hair spilling from the anorak hood, but what actress doesn’t have access to a range of wigs? She must have committed the crime only moments before, stabbed Sally through the hessian, and be running away from the scene.
And if that was the case, then – But his thought processes were suddenly halted. With no warning at all, he was seized by violent nausea.
And as the entire contents of his stomach – and what felt like most of the stomach itself as well – spurted out of his mouth on to the pavement, one of Olivia’s lines from Twelfth Night resonated in his head.
‘How now!
Even so quickly may one catch the plague?’
But quotation immediately gave place to one appalling, heretical thought in Charles Paris’s mind.
Somebody’s poisoned my Bell’s!