The Fethering Mysteries 08; Death under the Dryer

“Yes, I do. And quite a strong suspect too.”

“I see. And would you be generous enough to tell me why?”

“Very well. First, you work at Connie’s Clip Joint, which was the scene of the crime…”

He slapped the back of his hand on his forehead in a ‘Foiled again!’ gesture. “How on earth did you work that out?”

Carole wasn’t to be deterred. “What’s more you presumably have keys to the place, so you could get in and out at any time of the day and night…”

“That too I can’t deny. God, where did you learn to be so devilishly clever?”

“What is more,” Carole pressed on, “you had a very strong feeling of dislike for Kyra Bartos.”

“Did I? And where did that come from?”

“It arose, because she was the one who had got Nathan Locke to fall in love with her, and you loved him.”

Her previous statements had tickled his sense of humour, but this one reduced him to uncontrollable hysterics. Carole sat rigidly still and deeply embarrassed until the paroxysms died down.

“Oh, that is wonderful!” said Theo, wiping the tears from his eyes. “That is so brilliant! Thank you, Carole. We all need a good laugh, and that is the funniest thing anyone has said to me for years and years. “I killed Kyra because she had stolen the affections of the man I love…” Too wonderful.” Relishing the idea brought on another spasm of laughter.

When the last ripples had died down, Carole said, “I don’t know that it’s such a ridiculous idea. I’ve seen photographs of Nathan – he’s a very attractive young man. Just the sort who would appeal to a…” she couldn’t bring herself to say ‘gay man’ “…to a homosexual.”

“A homosexual like me, you mean? How many gays – how many homosexuals do you actually know, Carole?”

“Erm…” Her knowledge wasn’t that extensive. There were one or two men in Fethering who everyone said were, but she didn’t actually know any of them to speak to. “There were quite a few in the Home Office,” she concluded lamely.

“I’m sure there were. And were they homosexuals just like me?”

“Well…”

Her answer was interrupted by the sound of a key in the front door. As soon as it opened, a tornado of two small children and a large Old English Sheepdog thundered into the sitting room and wrapped itself around Theo. Behind them, closing the door, stood a tall slender woman with long black hair. She moved forward and, picking her way between children and dog, planted a large kiss on Theo’s lips.

“You haven’t lost your sense of timing, Zara.” He grinned across at his guest. “Carole – my wife Zara. Our children Joey and Mabel. And our dog, Boofle.”

“Ah.”

“I’m actually tied up for a little while, love.”

“Don’t worry,” said Zara. “The horde needs feeding. Come on, kids. Come on, Boofle. Teatime.” And she led them out into the hall, discreetly closing the door behind her.

Carole was lost for words. All she could come up with was, “That’s an Old English Sheepdog. You said you had a little Westie called Priscilla.”

“Ah – discovered! Mea culpa! Yes, I knew I could not keep my guilty secret from you forever. I do not have a little Westie called Priscilla.”

“Look, what is all this, Theo? Am I to gather that you’re not…homosexual?”

“Once again nothing escapes the eagle eye of Miss Marple. It’s uncanny. How does she do it?”

“But you…I mean, the way you behave at Connie’s Clip Joint…Even when I was there, when you were talking to Sheena, you said things that definitely implied you were…homosexual.”

“I did. I admit it. So far as Connie’s Clip Joint is concerned, I’m as gay as a pair of Elton John’s glasses.”

“But I don’t understand.”

He dropped into his arch hairdresser’s drawl. “Give the customers what they want, darling. Someone like Sheena positively loves having her hair cut by a gay man. She’d be disappointed if she didn’t have a gay man doing it. So, if that’s what she wants…” He gave a helpless, camp shrug.

“There must be more to it than that.”

“Ooh, there is, yes. It’s also self-protection. Let’s take Sheena as an example yet again. Imagine what’d happen with someone like her if she thought I was available. She’d be flirting, she’d be all over me. I tell you, behaving the way I do saves me a lot of aggravation. I’m much safer appealing to the fag hag in a harpie like Sheena than I would be if she thought I was hetero.”

Having met the woman in question, and having heard Jude’s account of a lunch with her, Carole could see Theo’s point.

“So did you invent the business for her about fancying Nathan and being jealous of Kyra?”

“I remember hinting at it to Sheena, just as a joke.

“But maybe it got embroidered in her rather over-active imagination.”

“All right, that’s possible. But it still doesn’t explain everything. The changing clothes, the changing cars.”

“In Fethering everyone thinks I’m gay. In Brighton everyone thinks I’m heterosexual. Yeomansdyke is where I change identities, that’s all.”

“That’s not enough. There’s more to it.”

“Oh? Tell me what there is more to it, Miss Marple.”

“Well, it’s an incomplete disguise, for a start. Fethering and Brighton aren’t that far apart. Maybe you don’t see many of your Brighton friends in Fethering, but it must sometimes happen that you meet one of your clients here.”

“Less often than you’d think. And on the few occasions when it does, they see me out of context, with Zara, with the children and they do a sort of take. I can see their minds working. And usually I can see them concluding: I’ve just seen someone who looks extraordinarily like my hairdresser. I promise you, it’s never been a problem.”

“Is that all the explanation I’m getting?”

Still with a glint of mischief in the dark brown eyes, he spread his hands generously wide. “Why? Isn’t that enough?”

“No, Theo. It isn’t.”

“Ah, I see.” He gestured round the lovely sitting room. “You’re telling me that all this is a bluff. A cleverly constructed front. The Theo of Connie’s Clip Joint is the real me. I am a closet gay, who fancied Nathan Locke so much that I killed his girlfriend in a fit of jealous homosexual pique.”

Again Carole felt herself blushing under his sardonic gaze.

Theo chuckled. “I’ll tell you the truth, if you like.”

“Would you?” she asked pathetically. “I mean, for a start, is Theo your real name?”

“Theo is my real name. I started off as an actor. And at one point I got involved in a production with one of those self-obsessed, power-crazed directors who builds up a show from months of improvisation.”

“Oh?” Carole didn’t know a lot about the theatre. She hadn’t heard of such a technique.

“Well, I was supposed to be playing a hairdresser in this show and so the director, true to his principles, sent me off to research my part by working in a real hairdresser’s. I did three months. It could have been worse. I was lucky – one of the other actors had been cast as a cess-pool emptier’s mate. Anyway, the usual thing – three months in the salon, three months of self-indulgent improvisation in the rehearsal room, and you end up with a show that would have been a lot better if the director had got a writer in in the first place.

“But after the run finished – and maybe because of what the show had been like – I go through a very bad patch work-wise. You couldn’t give me away with soap. And after a long time sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring, I think: well, I’m going to have to get an income from somewhere…and I quite enjoyed that three months I spent in the hairdressing salon…so…”

“You became a hairdresser?”

“Exactly. I joined another salon, trained properly, and suddenly I was a stylist. Money’s not great, but compared to being an out-of-work actor, anything’s better.”