All the Colors of Darkness

“Years ago. At school. Why?”

“Seen the play, the movie?”

“I saw the Laurence Olivier version once, yes. Again, it was years ago. What are you—”

Banks held his hand up. “Bear with me, Annie. Please.”

“All right. Go on.”

Banks sipped some beer. “What do you remember most about the play?”

“Not much, really. Is this an exam or something?”

“No. Try.”

“Well, there was this . . . this Moor called Othello, and he was married to a woman called Desdemona, but he got jealous and killed her, strangled her, then he killed himself.”

“What made him jealous?”

“Someone told him she was playing away. Iago told him. That’s the one.”

“Right,” said Banks. “Sophia and I went to see it at the Eastvale Theatre on Saturday night. The one Derek Wyman directed and Mark Hardcastle did the German Expressionist sets for.”

“How was it?”

“The sets were crap, a real distraction. It looked like it was taking place in an airplane hangar or somewhere. Anyway, the acting was pretty decent, and Derek Wyman has a fair grasp of things thespian, anorak or not. But that’s not the point. The thing is, Sophia and I were talking later—”

“As you do,” said Annie.

Banks glanced at her. “As you do. Anyway,” he went on, “she pointed out that the play was more about the power of words and images than it was about jealousy and ambition, and I think she’s right.”

“That’s what an English lit degree will do for you. I can’t say we ever got much further than ambition and jealousy at my school. Oh, and the animal imagery. I’m sure there was animal imagery.”

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“There’s always animal imagery,” Banks agreed. “But if you think about it . . . well, it really makes sense.”

“How? What?”

“Let me just get another drink first. Remember, I’m on holiday.

You?”

“I’m fine with this.” Annie tapped her Britvic Orange.

Banks went out to the bar and Annie thought about what he was saying, still not sure where he was going with it. She remembered bits of the Olivier movie, how strange he appeared in blackface, a big fuss about a handkerchief, a young Maggie Smith as Desdemona singing a sad song about a willow tree before Othello strangled her. Frank Fin-lay’s persuasive Iago. Just fragments. Banks came back with another pint and set it next to his paper. Brief ly, he tried to explain what Sophia had said about the use of language to create unbearable images in the mind.

“Okay,” Annie said, “so Sophia says that Othello’s about the power of language. She may be right. And being such a manly man, he decides on the f limsiest of evidence that the only sensible thing to do is to strangle his wife?”

“Now’s not the moment for feminist criticism of Shakespeare.”

“I’m not criticizing. I’m only saying. Besides, I hardly think it’s especially feminist to point out that strangling your wife isn’t a good thing to do, whether she’s had an affair or not.”

“Well, Desdemona hadn’t. That’s the point.”

“Alan, this is all very stimulating and all, and I do love a literary discussion late on a Monday afternoon, but I’ve got ironing to do at home, and I still don’t see what this has to do with us.”

“It got me to thinking about the case,” Banks went on. “About Hardcastle and Silbert. Everyone’s pretty much decided how it happened, that no one else came in and bumped off Silbert while Hardcastle went out for a while, right?”

“That’s the general thinking.”

“Even though you pointed out that the absence of anyone else’s blood other than Silbert’s didn’t really prove anything.”

“Right,” Annie agreed.

Banks leaned back against the wainscoting, pint in his hand. “I 1 4 6

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think you’re right,” he said. “I don’t think Hardcastle did go out, and I don’t think anyone else did break in. I think it happened exactly as Superintendent Gervaise and Stefan say it did. Mark Hardcastle beat Silbert to death with a cricket bat, then went out and hanged himself out of grief.”

“So you agree with the official version?”

“Yes. But I also don’t think that’s the point.”

“What is, then?”