It took me a moment to remember that this was the book written by the waiter at the Ivy Club, the man who had dropped the plates when he saw Alan Conway. He claimed that Alan had stolen his ideas and used them for the fourth Atticus Pünd mystery, Night Comes Calling. I still didn’t like his title very much and the first sentence (‘There had been hundreds of murders in the Pavilion Theatre, Brighton but this was the first one that was real.’) didn’t quite work for me either. A nice idea, but too on-the-nose and expressed a little clumsily, I thought. But I had promised him I would read it and with Charles away and with Alan so much on my mind, I thought I’d get to it straight away. I had my tea. Why not?
I skim-read most of it. It’s something I’ve learned to do. I can usually tell if I’m going to like a book by the end of the second or third chapter but if I’m going to talk about it in conference, I’m obliged to hang in there to the last page. It took me three hours. Then I pulled out a copy of Night Comes Calling.
And then I compared the two.
Extract from Night Comes Calling by Alan Conway
CHAPTER 26: CURTAIN CALL
It ended where it had begun, in the theatre at Fawley Park. Looking around him, James Fraser had a sense of inevitability. He had abandoned his career as an actor to become the assistant of Atticus Pünd and this was where his first case had brought him. The building was even shabbier than when he had first seen it now that the stage had been stripped and most of the seats piled up against the walls. The red velvet curtains had been pulled aside. With nothing to conceal, no play about to begin, they looked tired and threadbare, hanging limply on their wires. The stage itself was a yawning mouth, an ironic reflection of the many young spectators who had been forced to sit through the headmaster’s productions of Agamemnon and Antigone. Well, Elliot Tweed would not be performing again. He had died in this very room, with a knife driven into the side of his throat. Fraser was not yet used to murder and there was one thought that chilled him in particular. What sort of person kills a man in a room filled with children? On the night of the school play, there had been three hundred people sitting together in the darkness: little boys and their parents. They would remember it for the rest of their lives.
The theatre suited Pünd. He had arranged the seats so that they were facing him in two rows. He stood in front of the stage, leaning on his rosewood cane, but he could just as easily have been on it. This was his performance, the climax of a drama that had begun three weeks earlier with a frightened man visiting Tanner Court. The spotlights might not be illuminated but still they bowed their heads towards him. The people he had asked to be here were suspects but they were also his audience. Detective Inspector Ridgeway might be standing next to him but it was clear that he had been given only a supporting role.
Fraser examined the staff members. Leonard Graveney had been the first to arrive, taking his place in the front row, his crutch resting awkwardly against the back of his chair. The stump of his leg jutted out in front of him as if purposefully blocking the way for everyone else. The history teacher, Dennis Cocker, had come and had sat next to him although Fraser noticed that neither of them had spoken. Both men had been involved in the last, fateful performance of Night Comes Calling when the murder had happened, Graveney as the author of the play, Cocker as its director. The lead part had been taken by Sebastian Fleet. Aged just twenty-one, he was the youngest teacher at Fawley Park and he had ambled in nonchalantly, winking at the matron who deliberately turned her head away, ignoring him. Lydia Gwendraeth was sitting in the row behind, ramrod straight, her hands folded on her lap, her white starched cap seemingly glued in place. Fraser was still convinced that she had been involved in Elliot Tweed’s murder. She certainly had a motive – he had behaved horribly towards her – and with her medical training she would have known exactly where to place the knife. Had she run through the audience that night, taking revenge for the humiliation she had suffered at his hands? As she sat, waiting for Pünd to begin, her eyes gave nothing away.
Three more members of the staff came in – Harold Trent, Elizabeth Colne and Douglas Wye. Finally, the groundsman, Garry, arrived, his hands deep in his pockets and a scowl on his face. It was clear he had no idea why he had been summoned.
‘The question we must ask ourselves is not why Elliot Tweed was killed. As the headmaster of Fawley Park, he was a man with more, you might say, than his fair share of enemies. The boys feared him. He beat them mercilessly and on the slightest pretext. He made no attempt to disguise the fact that he took pleasure in their pain. His wife wanted to divorce him. His staff, who disagreed on so many issues, were united only by their dislike of him. No …’ Pünd’s eyes swept over the assembly. ‘What we must ask is this. I have said it from the start. Why was he murdered in this way, so publicly? The killer appears as if from nowhere and runs the full length of the building, pausing only to strike out with a scalpel taken from the biology laboratory. It is true that it is dark and that the eyes of the audience are focused on the stage. It is the most dramatic moment of the play. There is a mist, a flickering light, and in the shadow appears the ghost of the wounded soldier as portrayed by Mr Graveney. And yet, it is a huge risk. Surely someone will have seen where he comes from or where he goes. A preparatory school such as Fawley Park provides many simpler opportunities for murder. There is a timetable. It is known, at all times, where everyone will be. How convenient for a killer who can plan his movements in the sure knowledge that his victim will be alone and that he will be unseen.
‘Indeed, the darkness, the speed with which the crime is committed, results in catastrophe! Inspector Ridgeway was of the belief that the assistant headmaster, Mr Moriston, who was sitting next to Mr Tweed that night, must have witnessed something and that he was subsequently killed in order to silence him. Perhaps blackmail had been involved. The discovery of a large amount of cash in his locker would certainly seem to suggest this. We now know, however, that the two men had swapped seats just before the performance began. Mr Tweed was several inches shorter than Mr Moriston and had been unable to see over the head of the woman who was sitting in front of him as she was wearing a hat. It was Mr Moriston who was the true target. The death of Mr Tweed was an accident.
‘And yet it is strange because Mr Moriston was a very popular man. He had often come to the defence of Miss Gwendraeth. It was he who chose to employ Mr Garry, in the full knowledge of his criminal record. He was also able to prevent the suicide of a child. It is hard to find anyone at the school who spoke anything but well of John Moriston – hard, but not impossible. There was, of course, one exception.’ Pünd turned to the maths teacher but he did not need to name him. Everyone in the room knew who he meant.
‘You’re not saying I killed him!’ Leonard Graveney barked out the words. He couldn’t stop himself smiling.
‘Of course it is impossible that you could have committed the murder, Mr Graveney. You lost a leg in the war—’
‘Fighting your lot!’
‘And you now have a prosthetic. You could not have run through the auditorium. That much is painfully clear. However, you will agree that there was a great deal of enmity between you.’