‘According to this, he was with his assistant, Maureen Bates,’ Hawthorne said.
‘Yes. She was with him. She was holding on to his arm. He didn’t look well.’
After one bad review? Wasn’t that a bit of an overreaction?
‘Can we get into the green room?’ Hawthorne asked.
Keith thought for a moment. ‘You can do what you like,’ he said. ‘It’s no skin off my nose. The police haven’t said anything more to me and we can’t keep it locked up for ever. It’s not as if anything happened there – and anyway, I cleared up after everyone left, so if there were any clues or whatever it is you’re looking for, I’d have got rid of them, I’m afraid.’
‘When you say you cleared up, what do you mean?’
‘Well, they’d had a cake. I put what was left of it in the fridge. I suppose it’s still there. I did the washing-up, which didn’t take a minute. Like I said, I cleared away the bottles. There was some sparkling wine, which I put on the side, and I threw away a couple of empties … whisky and vodka, I think. That was it.’
‘Did you find an ornamental knife? A dagger?’
‘You mean from the producer? They all got one … I know because when they were delivered, I had to take them in. There were five of them, stacked up in the office … first-night presents. And the answer to your question is yes. One of them was left behind in the green room. Someone had stuck it in the cake.’
That was Jordan Williams’s knife. I remembered him stabbing the cake after Sky had read the review. It was something I would never forget.
‘What did you do with it?’ Hawthorne asked.
‘I washed it and left it in the sink.’
‘Were there any other daggers in the room?’
‘There may have been. I didn’t really look.’ Keith frowned. He had suddenly remembered something. ‘And there was the broken glass!’ he exclaimed. ‘I cleaned that up too.’
‘What broken glass?’
‘I should have mentioned it to you earlier. You asked me if I’d seen anything unusual. But I didn’t see it exactly. I heard it.’ He paused. ‘It was twenty past twelve and I was just thinking of going downstairs to tell everyone it was time to get moving. They weren’t meant to be there after midnight. That was what we’d agreed and it wasn’t as if I was being paid extra to stay here. Anyway, that’s when I heard the sound of breaking glass – on the other side of those doors.’
He pointed at the double swing doors that led into the backstage corridor.
‘Did you find out what it was?’ Hawthorne asked.
‘Yeah. It was really strange. It turned out that one of the light bulbs had exploded. I can’t imagine how that happened because there was nobody around. I had to get a dustpan and brush and look here … !’ He held out his hand, showing us a cut on his finger. ‘I did that picking up the pieces. I was looking for a plaster when Tirian came up and told me about the review and the party finishing. Maybe the light bulb was a bad omen!’
‘Does that happen often? Electrical appliances blowing up?’
‘Well, I haven’t been here very long so I can’t say. But a lot of the fittings in this theatre are very old. Maybe it’s haunted? I don’t know.’
Keith handed over the key to the green room – an old, prison-style key on a wooden block – and we passed through the swing doors. It seemed strange to me that he’d recognised Harriet Throsby. He’d seen a photograph of her in another theatre – and one that had been defaced. It surely wouldn’t have been easy to pick her out in a crowd, the image projected onto a blurry black-and-white TV.
I said as much to Hawthorne.
‘She had quite distinctive looks,’ he said. ‘You recognised her too.’
‘I’d seen her at the Old Vic,’ I countered, back on the defensive.
We reached the staircase. Looking around me, I noticed that both upstairs and downstairs, the backstage area was brightly lit. ‘Do you think someone broke the bulb deliberately?’ I asked.
‘It’s possible.’
‘Maybe they were trying to hide something,’ I suggested. ‘There was something they didn’t want Keith to see too clearly.’
‘That’s possible too.’
Hawthorne had nothing more to add. We continued downstairs, past the dressing rooms and back underneath the stage-door manager’s office. The green room was in front of us. Hawthorne unlocked the door and we went in.