hoped it hadn’t happened. I went into a terrible state of panic when he died and I heard it was cyanide. But then when Chippy was arrested, and I heard about how she had a motive to kill him and the opportunity to get the poison, I thought it was all right. I thought he’d got the right glass.’
‘The right glass? Did you put the cyanide in it?’
The black and orange tufted head shook. ‘No. Why on earth should I do that? No, that’s not what I did.’
‘Then what did you do?’
The voice retained its monotone as he told them. ‘As you say, it was my first major set. As you say, I was worried about it. I kept looking at it from different angles, kept trying to see things that didn’t work. That’s why I went back into the studio during the meal-break. I was worried that something had looked wrong, so I went in to check.’
‘What were you worried about — the wheel?’ asked Charles, remembering what Tim Dyer had done to that part of the set.
‘No. There was just something in the colours that had looked wrong. Something wrong with the balance between the lectern and the celebrities’ desk. I’d looked and looked at it, and eventually the only thing I could think of was the glasses — the four on the desk and the one on the lectern.’
‘But they were all the same — surely?’
‘They were all nearly the same, yes. But they had been specially made to match the set. Hand-painted. I thought maybe they were slightly different, maybe there was more red on one, more blue on another. It was only likely to be a tiny difference — something definitely looked wrong. I couldn’t think of anything else.’
‘So what did you do?’ asked Charles, with a sick feeling he knew the answer.
His worst fears were confirmed. ‘I started changing them round.’
‘Oh, my God.’
‘Just to see if it made the colour balance better.’
‘So which one did you change with Barrett’s?’ asked Charles, resigned.
‘I can’t remember.’
‘Oh, come on. You must remember,’ Charles snapped. ‘You realise how important this is, don’t you?’
‘Yes. I do. Now. But, honestly, I can’t remember. I tried them every way. I moved first one and then the other. I really couldn’t say at the end which one was where. That’s why I felt so awful when I heard about the cyanide. Then, when Chippy was arrested, I thought, thank God, at least he got the right one back.’
‘Except that his right one contained gin at six-thirty.’
‘Yes.’ The tufted head drooped.
‘But surely,’ said Sydnee excitedly, ‘the police would have checked the glasses afterwards. If we go to them and say what happened, and find out who had the one containing gin — ’
Charles shook his head. ‘The desk got knocked over. The glasses were scattered all over the place.’
Sylvian raised his head. ‘Yes, I don’t understand that. I designed it to be very stable. I mean, the centre of gravity was — ’
But Sydnee didn’t think it was the moment for a discussion of the intricacies of furniture design. ‘Surely, Charles, the celeb who had gin in his or her glass would have noticed?’
‘Must’ve done, yes. But nobody’s said anything, have they? Otherwise Chippy wouldn’t have been arrested. Which must mean the intended victim knew the poison was meant for him — ’
‘Or for her.’
‘Yes. . and is deliberately keeping quiet about it.’
‘And all the while letting Chippy suffer,’ said Sydnee, boiling with resentment.
‘You realise something else. .’
Sydnee looked at him curiously.
‘If the cyanide wasn’t put into Barrett’s glass but into someone else’s, it could have been done at any time during the meal-break.’
‘Oh no. And all our checking of people’s movements has been quite worthless.’
Charles nodded, then let out a long sigh. ‘I think we’re going to have to get our little research team together again, Sydnee.’
Chapter Twelve
No one even suggested that the second meeting of Charles’s research team should take place in his bedsitter. They met instead at Harry Cockers, where Sydnee, Chita and Quentin obviously felt much more at ease.
‘Isn’t it a bit of a risk,’ Charles had said when the idea was mentioned, ‘talking about this sort of thing in such a public place?’
‘Good God, no,’ Sydnee had replied airily. ‘It’s ideal. Perfect security. Nobody at Harry Cockers goes to listen to anyone else. They just go to listen to themselves.’
And, as he once again sat watching the screeching variegated flying-suits at the bar, Charles had to admit she was right.
He had asked Sydnee to view the tape of the ill-fated pilot, concentrating on two specific moments, and the first business of their meeting was her report on this.
‘I’m afraid it didn’t help, Charles. The trouble is, television’s such a selective medium. You only see the shots that the director chooses and that the vision-mixer punches up. What you were hoping to see probably happened off-camera.’
‘There must have been shots of the celebrities drinking.’
‘Oh yes. There are. But in none of them are they showing any unusual reaction.’
‘But come on, if you pick up a glass you think contains water and take a swig from it and find it contains gin, you
‘You’re probably right. And I expect someone did react like that, but the fact remains that the camera wasn’t on them while they did it.’
‘Damn.’ Another hope bubbled up in his mind. ‘Did any of them not drink at all? That might be as much of a pointer as a reaction to the first swig. Once they’d identified the gin — ’
The copper-beech hair swished as Sydnee shook her head apologetically. ‘No. All four of them take a drink from their glass at least once while they’re in shot.’
‘One of them must have been covering up,’ Quentin drawled.
‘Covering up what?’ asked Charles.
‘As soon as the person in question smelt the gin, he or she must have realised what had happened, realised that the cyanide glass had been switched and that someone else was going to cop it. So they’d want to hide the fact that they knew anything about it.’
Charles grimaced. ‘Sorry, Quentin, that doesn’t work. The only person who knew there was a glass with cyanide in it was the person who put it there. Unless we’re talking about an elaborate suicide plot, the discovery by that person that he or she had gin would not automatically mean that the proposed murder victim’s glass had been switched. They’d just think, funny, why have I got gin in here?’
‘But why wouldn’t they have mentioned it when questioned by the police? Surely then the police would have realised there was something odd and — ’
‘No. You see, by then the proposed murder victim would know what had happened. As soon as Barrett Doran reacted to the poison, they must have understood, and realised why they had gin in their glass. But, for some reason of their own, they didn’t want the police to know that someone was out to kill them. Which was why they upset the table — to send all the glasses over the floor and confuse the evidence.’
He looked across at Sydnee, who shook her head lugubriously. ‘Camera wasn’t on it. There’s a shot of the celebs before Barrett takes his fatal swig, then the camera stays with him as he starts choking. Next time we see the celebs, they’re running forward and the desk’s already tipped over.’
‘So we’ve no idea who pushed it?’
‘No.’
