‘You nodded.’
‘No, I didn’t!’
‘You can ask the others. They all saw you. I said what I said and I may not have meant it, but you nodded your head in total agreement.’
‘You think Anthony killed her?’ Hawthorne asked.
‘I’m not saying that. Not at all. I’m just pointing out that he had as much motive as any of us. She really hated his play!’
‘You know that she was killed with a dagger,’ Hawthorne said.
‘So the police informed me. I spoke to two of them yesterday in this very room. A lady by the name of Cara Grunshaw and her rather kickable sidekick. They were particularly interested in the murder weapon.’ He leaned forward and grabbed the dagger he had been given by Ahmet. He waved it in our direction. ‘As you can see, I still have it. Not the murder weapon! Mine is unsullied! It wasn’t the most generous first-night present in my opinion. Quite tacky and irrelevant to the play. But much as I like Ahmet – and in many ways he is a decent enough chap – he doesn’t have much sense of style.’
‘So why did you agree to appear?’ Hawthorne asked.
That surprised him. ‘For the same reason that I agree to do anything. The script, dear boy, the script. I thought Mindgame was a genuinely interesting piece of work. That’s why I was so angered by Harriet Throsby’s intervention. And a comedy thriller! Why not? I’ve always believed it’s the mission of the actor to spread one’s wings. Shakespeare, Molière in the original French, Mamet, O’Neill. I spent two years on Broadway … in Sweeney Todd, Sondheim’s masterpiece.’
‘Who did you play?’ I asked.
‘I was the lead.’
The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Another killer.
‘In fact, the first part I took when I came to this country was also in a musical. Cats. I took over as Mr Mistoffelees at the London theatre. It was a wonderful experience.’
‘So how did you become an actor?’ Hawthorne asked.
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I’m a big fan. I very much enjoyed your performance as Dr Farquhar. I remember seeing you as King Lear at the Hampstead Theatre. And I watched Dick Turpin with my son.’
It was remarkable how easily Hawthorne lied. Those were exactly the two productions I had mentioned to him. But it did the trick. There are very few actors who don’t warm to someone who admires their work. Jordan put down the weapon and reached for some blusher instead.
‘I have been very fortunate to find my inner spirit,’ he began. ‘You could say that I began my life with nothing. I had no family. I had no background. Everything I held dear was taken away from me.’
‘You were born in America?’
‘Yes. In South Dakota. I’m sure Anthony will have acquainted you with my Native American heritage, Mr Hawthorne. I never knew my parents, which is to say, I was taken from them when I was just three years old. They were members of the Sicangu Tribe, good people I believe, but victims of a cruel system about which the world knows very little and cares even less.’
There was a protracted silence while he carefully smoothed out the shadows beneath his cheekbones.
‘I would imagine you have never heard of the Indian boarding schools that were prevalent across the United States from the end of the nineteenth century,’ he went on. ‘The Carlisle Indian Industrial School will mean nothing to you, even though a hundred and eighty Native children are buried there. It was all in the name of assimilation. Do you know what the motto was at Carlisle? “Kill the Indian, save the man.” I never went to the school. It had closed down long before I was born, but even so, that, in a nutshell, was what happened to me. That was the beginning of my life experience.’
He turned round to face us.
‘Until I was three years old, I lived with my mother in Rosebud, one of the poorest reservations in America. I wish I could tell you something about that time, but I don’t have any memories at all. I’m not sure if we even had running water or electricity, but I believe, in my heart, that we were a happy family … or at least, I would like to think so. All I know for certain is that my older brother got into some sort of trouble. He stole a car. As a result of this, my parents were deemed “unsuitable guardians” and a week later, two social workers turned up, removed me and my three sisters and took us all to foster homes. Separate foster homes. We never saw each other again.
‘Don’t think for a minute that my experience was unique. The state was allowed to remove children who were considered to be in danger and the social services acted with complete immunity. There were even cases of children being taken from school, snatched on the way to class. You or I would call it kidnap, but they believed they were saving us. Oh, and since the state received a thousand dollars in federal funds for every child taken into custody, it was a nice little earner too.