When I protested at its height round my neck he said merely, ‘Do you want your throat cut? Wear a polo-necked sweater. I brought you this thin white one, in case you hadn’t got one.’ He handed it over as if it were nothing.
‘Thanks, Robbie,’ I said, and he could hear I meant it.
He nodded briefly. ‘I’d better get back to my mob of coughers, or they’ll lynch me.’ He packed things away. ‘Do you think your hanged lady was lynched?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Did you trawl any useful mud with Professor Derry?’
‘The knife that bust my rib is called an Armadillo. The one with the finger holes, from the Heath, is a replica from World War One. The police had already asked the professor about it.’
‘Wow.’
‘The professor’s about eighty-five. He told me not to say wow.’
‘He sounds a riot.’
‘We got on fine, but he doesn’t know who owns the Armadillo.’
‘Take care,’ he said, leaving. ‘I’m around if you need me.’
I ate what was left of my breakfast, dressed slowly, shaved and gradually got used to living like a turtle inside a carapace.
At about the time I was ready to leave again the people at the reception desk phoned up to tell me that a young woman was asking for me. She thought I was expecting her. A Miss Lucy Wells.
‘Oh, yes.’ I’d temporarily forgotten her. ‘Please send her up.’
Lucy had come in jeans, sweater, trainers and ponytail, chiefly with the cool eighteen-year-old young lady in charge but with occasional tongue-tied lapses. She looked blankly at the multitude of boxes and wanted to know where to begin.
I gave her a lap-top computer, a notebook, a biro and a big black marker pen.
‘Give each box a big number,’ I said, writing ‘I’ with the marker pen on a microwave oven carton. ‘Empty it out. Write a list of the contents on the pad, enter the list on the little computer and then put everything back, topping each box with the list of contents. On another page, write me a general list, saying, for example, “Box I, books, biographies of owners and trainers.” OK?’
‘Yes.’
‘Shake out each book in case it has loose papers inside its pages, and don’t throw anything away, not even pointless scraps.’
‘All right.’ She seemed puzzled, but I didn’t amplify.
‘Order lunch from room service,’ I said. ‘Don’t leave any papers or books lying around when the waiter comes. OK?’
‘Yes, but why?’
‘Just do the job, Lucy. Here’s the room key for here.’ I gave it to her. ‘If you leave this room, use the key to return. When I come back I’ll bring Nash Rourke in for a drink.’
Her blue eyes widened. She wasn’t a fool. She looked at the boxes and settled for the package I’d offered.
I went back to work, driver and bodyguard giving me a lot less confidence than Delta-cast. We spent all morning in the stable yard, with Nash patiently (both in and out of character) dealing with the actors playing at police.
The initial police doubts, called for in the script, took an age to get right. ‘I don’t want these policemen to appear thick,’ I pleaded, but it was the actors, I concluded, who were slow. I’d had no hand in casting minor characters; the trick was to make the dumbest poodle jump through the hoops.
Moncrieff swore non-stop. Nash could turn and get the light across his forehead right every time, but Nash, I reminded my fuming director of photography, wasn’t called a mega-star for nothing.
The level of muddle was not helped by the arrival of the real police asking why my fresh fingerprints were all over Dorothea’s house. We could have played it for laughs, but no one was funny. I proved to have an alibi for whenever it was that Paul had died (they wouldn’t or couldn’t say exactly when) but the stoppage ate up my lunch hour.
Back at work we progressed at length to the first arrival (by car) of Cibber, and to his planting of suspicions against Nash in the (fictional) police mind. Cibber was a good pro, but inclined still to tell inappropriate fruity jokes and waste time. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ he would breezily say, fluffing his words without remorse.
I hung on grimly to forbearance and walked twice out onto the Heath breathing deeply with sore rib twinges while Moncrieff’s men loaded the cameras for the eighth take of a fairly simple sequence. I phoned Wrigley’s garage and asked if Bill Robinson could have the afternoon off, and I spoke