by Simon Brett
Christopher Milton flashed her a frank, confiding smile. ‘I agree, Mrs Crichton-Smith, but Goldsmith was writing for his time. This is 1975, we can’t just do a production as if nothing has changed since the play was written. And, anyway, this is not She Stoops to Conquer, this is a new musical. What we’re trying to do, and I think our writer, Kevin McMahon, would agree with me here,’ he added, as if to impress the image of a big-happy-family, all-working-towards-the-same-end company, ‘is to create an original show. I mean, entertainment is variety. Your husband wouldn’t think much of you if you produced the same meal for him every night — however good it was.’
His middle-class half-joke produced the right middle-class half-laugh and Charles was once again impressed with Christopher Milton’s ability to adapt to any audience and say the right things. It was not an intellectual gift; he probably did not have the intelligence or knowledge to argue the merits of the piece on a literary level; it was just an instinct that never failed.
Miss Thompson, the secretary, next introduced a question from: ‘Mr Henry Oxenford, one of our keenest members, who’s interested in all things theatrical.’ Mr Oxenford, one of the bow-tied types who hang about amateur dramatic societies, content to be precious rather than queer, stood up and put his well-rehearsed enquiry, ‘I would like to know whether you, as a performer, be it as Tony Lumpkin or Lionel Wilkins, find the danger that a part tends to take over your private life and you become like that person?’
Christopher Milton laughed boyishly. ‘You mean when I’m working on the television series, do I go around trying to con money off everyone I meet?’
‘Well, not exactly.’
‘Oh, I beg yours.’ The Lionel Wilkins line was, as ever, perfectly delivered and got its laugh. Charles watched Christopher Milton’s eyes and saw him decide to continue in the Wilkins voice and prolong the misunderstanding. ‘Oh, I see what you mean — do I go up to people in the street and say, Look ’ere, I’ve got this great project. Wouldn’t you like to buy shares in the first motel on the moon? Not only do you get the normal dividends, but you also get a free weekend every year once the motel is completed. Now the shares aren’t yet officially on the market, but I can let you have some at a price which…’ And he was away, re-creating the plot of a recent episode of Straight Up, Guv. The Friends of the Palace Theatre loved it.
As he drew to the end of his routine, before Miss Thompson could introduce Mrs Horton who had been waving her arm like a schoolgirl know-all between each question, he glanced at his watch. ‘Oh, look at the time. I’m afraid we’ve gone on much longer than we intended. We’ve still got a lot of work to do on this show — oh, you may have liked it, but there are a good few things to he altered yet — so we must draw it to a close there.’
The Friends of the Palace Theatre started to leave through the stalls. An autograph cluster gathered round the star. The other members of the cast, who hadn’t got much of a look-in on the discussion, trickled back through the curtains. Mark Spelthorne dawdled, seeing if there were any fans of The Fighter Pilots on the autograph trail. When it became apparent there weren’t, he vanished smartly.
Christopher Milton finished the signings and waved cheerily from the stage until the last Friend had gone out of the doors at the back of the stalls. When he turned his face was instantly twisted with rage. ‘Cows! Stupid, bloody cows!’ He pushed through the curtains, shouting imperiously, ‘Wally! Dickie! Come on, we’ve got to get this script altered, even if we have to work all bloody night.’
As Charles waited to hear the inevitable news that there would be a rehearsal call at ten the following morning, he began to understand the personality-splitting pressure of a public image.
Gerald Venables was sitting waiting in his car, a Mercedes 280 SL, with the lights doused, by the stage door. He had the collar of his raincoat turned up and was slumped against the window in an attitude cribbed from some B-movie. He was trying so hard to be inconspicuous that Charles saw him instantly. ‘Hello.’
‘Ssh. Get in.’ The passenger door was slipped open. Charles climbed in clumsily. ‘So, what gives?’ Gerald hissed, his eyes scanning the empty road ahead.
‘Just been a bit of a dust-up, boss,’ Charles hissed back.
Gerald didn’t realise he was being sent up, but ran out of slang. ‘What? You mean a fight?’
‘Too right, boss.’
‘Irons?’
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘Irons — you know, guns. God, don’t you watch any television?’
‘Not much.’
‘Well, give us the dirt. Who swung a bunch of fives at whom?’ The grammatical resolution of the question rather weakened its underworld flavour.
Charles gave a quick account of the scene in the green room and the solicitor nodded knowingly. ‘So you reckon this McMahon could be our cookie?’
‘Our saboteur, the man devoted to the destruction of the show..?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know. Certainly he hates Christopher Milton. If anything were to happen to the star tonight, I would have no doubt about who to look for. But I don’t think Kevin can have been responsible for the other accidents, not the first two, anyway.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because why should he? When the pianist was shot at, Kevin didn’t know what was going to happen to his script, rehearsals had hardly started. I reckon at that stage he must have been full of excitement, you know, his first West End show and all that.’
‘But it can’t have taken long for him to realise the way things were going.’
‘Yes, I suppose he could have built up a sufficient head of resentment by the time Everard Austick met with his accident.’
‘Yes, surely, and — ’
‘There’s another snag, Gerald. Kevin’s resentment is completely against Christopher Milton. Sniping at these minor figures may be bad for the show, but it doesn’t hurt the star much. Christopher Milton doesn’t care who his supporting cast are, so long as they don’t argue with him or do anything better than he does. If Kevin McMahon did want to get at anyone he’d go straight for the one who was bugging him — and, with the star out of the way, there might be a chance that his musical could survive in another production.’
‘Yes. So we’ve got to look for someone else as the mastermind behind the whole sequence of crimes.’
‘If there is a sequence, Gerald, if there are any crimes. So far the only evidence I have of misdoing is what happened at the King’s Theatre. I know someone tampered with the rope holding those flats up. All the others could be genuine accidents. In fact, the thing at the King’s may have a perfectly legitimate explanation.’
‘I don’t know, Charles. I still have the feeling that they’re all linked and that something funny’s going on.’
There was a silence. ‘Hmm. Yes, I can feel a sort of foreboding too, but I don’t know why.’
As he spoke, light spilled across the road from the stage door. Christopher Milton, Dickie Peck, Wally Wilson and the show’s musical director, Pete Masters, came out, escorted by Milton’s driver, who smartly moved forward to the parked Corniche and opened the doors. They all got in. ‘Let’s follow them,’ whispered Charles, more to satisfy Gerald’s love of the dramatic than anything else.
They let the Rolls disappear at the junction on to the main road, confident that Leeds’ central one-way system would make it difficult to lose their quarry, and started up in pursuit.
Gerald’s ‘Follow that car’ routine was as exaggerated as his ‘I am waiting unobtrusively’ one, involving many sudden swivels of the head and bursts of squealing acceleration alternating with dawdling so slowly that it drew, hoots of annoyance from other road-users. But the inhabitants of the Rolls did not appear to notice them. There were none of the sudden right-angled swerves up side-roads beloved of gangsters in movies. They drove sedately round the one-way system and into Neville Street, where they swung off the main road and came to rest at the entrance of the Dragonara Hotel
. Gerald, who hadn’t been expecting the stop, overshot, screeched to a halt and reversed to a spying position, flashed at by the righteous headlights of other drivers in the one-way street.
The party disembarking from the Corniche still did not take any notice of their pursuers. The four of them walked straight into the foyer and the driver slid the car away to the hotel car park.
‘Well…’ said Gerald.
‘Well, I guess we’ve found out where he’s staying.’
‘Yes. Yes, we have.’
‘I could have asked him and saved us the trouble.’
‘Yes, but at least this way we can tell if he’s lying.’
‘What on earth do you mean? Why should he lie about staying in the newest, poshest hotel in Leeds?’
‘I don’t know.’ They both felt very foolish.
‘By the way, Gerald, why aren’t you staying at the Dragonara? I thought that was your usual style.’
‘I didn’t know it existed. Polly, my secretary, booked me into the Queen’s. More traditional, I think… I’m only here for the one night. I suppose I could try and get transferred, see if there’s a room here.’
‘What good would that do?’
‘Well, then I’d be in the hotel, I could spy, I…’
‘What are we spying on? What do we want to find out?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘All we want to do is see that Kevin McMahon doesn’t get a chance to have a go at Christopher Milton.’
‘Yes.’
‘And since he’s got Dickie Peck and his driver in the hotel there with him, I think we’re superfluous.’
‘So what should we do?’
‘Go to our several beds,’ said Charles, with mingled desire and depression at the thought of his.
‘All right. I suppose we’d better. Mind you, we’re going to feel pretty silly in the morning if we hear that Christopher Milton’s been murdered.’
They needn’t have worried. Christopher Milton survived the night unharmed. But Kevin McMahon was found beaten up in the car park by the bus station.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Charles didn’t hear about the new accident until he reached the theatre for rehearsal. A silent breakfast with Ruth had been followed by a silent lift in her Renault 5L to the city centre. She started work at nine, so he had time to kill. They parted in silence and he wandered off in the direction of the Dragonara for no apparent reason.
To occupy his mind with trivialities, he pretended he was trailing the man in front of him. The head he followed was completely bald with enormous ears like the handles of a loving cup. Charles varied his pace, playing a game with himself, committing details to memory, checking the time. At five to nine the man went in the front entrance of the Dragonara and the game was over.
Charles looked round for someone else to use as a dummy and then felt a wave of hopelessness. What was the point of playing at detectives when his performance was so abysmal on occasions that required real detective abilities?
The ‘what was the point?’ gloom deepened to embrace his emotional life too. Another night of angry sex with Ruth had depressed him. What was the point of it? He had left Frances to get away from the ties and twists of a ‘relationship’, hoping to find some kind of freedom. And he had accepted the limitations which the emotional free-lance shares with all other free-lances — delays between engagements and sudden terminations of contracts. But it wasn’t just that. Casual sex didn’t give him enough and anything deeper soon got claustrophobic. If he was going to go through all the hard work of making something work, he might just as well try again with Frances. At least he had got a start there.
But Frances had got a boy friend. So the rumour went, and he had no cause to disbelieve it. And that seemed to change it all. It twisted his emotional outlook. He would not admit to himself that he was prey to so simple an emotion as jealousy, but the fact that Frances was not floating unattached in the background made any other relationship more threatening, as if now he was really looking for something lasting. Which he wasn’t… Oh, hell, why couldn’t he just think of Ruth as a nice time in Leeds, all to be over and forgotten in a week? But guilt crept in, and though he was conscious of his depression over-dramatising everything, he was unable to get out of the pointless spiral of his thoughts.
He quickly got news of Kevin’s accident when he arrived at the theatre. The police were there. They had taken over one of the dressing-rooms, where they were questioning members of the cast. There were constant assurances that no one in the company was suspected, but certain facts had to be established — who Kevin was, where he was staying and so on.
The details of the beating spread quickly. Kevin was in the Infirmary though he was not seriously hurt. Apparently he had spent the evening drinking, moving on to a small club when the pubs closed. He had been kicked out of there at about two, and wandered round for some time — he couldn’t remember how long — and then been jumped by someone who punched him in the face, kicked him about the rest of his body, left him unconscious and stole his wallet. The police regarded it as a simple mugging and were looking for someone local.
They did hear about the altercation between Kevin and Dickie Peck and when the agent arrived with his protege at ten-thirty, he was questioned. But it transpired that the two of them, along with Wally Wilson and Pete Masters, the young musical director, had been up most of the night working on a new number to replace Liberty Hall. They had mutually dependent alibis.
That was a blow to Charles’ simple reading of the situation. He had leapt to the conclusion that Dickie Peck must have got at Kevin, continuing the scene that had started in the green room. And if there had only been Christopher Milton and Wally Wilson to corroborate Dickie’s alibi, he would still have believed it. But if Pete, the M.D., also vouched for him, that changed things. He was not one of the star’s immediate entourage and the most unlikely person to submit to intimidation. So maybe it was just an attack by a mugger unknown. But it did seem too much of a coincidence.
And if it was a coincidence, it was a very happy one for Christopher Milton. There was no dissenting voice when he announced that Liberty Hall was to be dropped and that the whole day until the evening performance would be spent rehearsing the new number which had been written overnight.
He was very ebullient and cheerful. He made no pretence now that David Meldrum was directing the show and leapt around the stage telling everyone what to do and demonstrating. He showed no fatigue after the long night and was supremely creative. His enthusiasm for the new song was infectious and they all worked hard to give it life.
Pete Masters, the M.D., had written a simple but catchy tune and was very pleased with himself. Wally Wilson had written the lyric and when Christopher Milton first sang it through with the piano, Charles could feel the gyrations of Oliver Goldsmith in his grave accelerate yet again.
When you’re out on the fiddle
And you’re trying to pull a con
And the cops come in the middle
Of the trick you’re trying on,
Then all you’ve gotta do
Is just give a little pause,
Give a little smile
And come back with ‘I Beg Yours?’
Not ‘I beg to differ’ or ‘I beg to remain…’
Not ‘I beg your pardon’, but an easier refrain,
Not ‘I’ve lost my bottle’ and not ‘I’ve lost my drawers -
The answer’s very simple -
All you say is ‘I Beg Yours?’
When you’re selling some jew’l’ry
And the jew’l’ry don’t exist
And the victim of your fool’ry,
(Who you thought was very… drunk)
Turns out to be a cop
And says he’ll bring down the laws,
Don’t lose your cool,
But come back with ‘I Beg Yours?’
Not ‘I beg to differ’ or… and so on through four more verses of variable scansion and anachron
ism. Christopher Milton ended the song with a flourish and Charles couldn’t help joining in the applause that followed it. He was once again struck by how good Christopher Milton was. The applause was not sycophancy; it was the genuine praise of professionals.
But in spite of the performance, the song was hopelessly wrong for the show. Charles knew it and felt he had to say something. He was just assembling a tactful objection when Mark Spelthorne came in with his own drawling complaint. Typically, it was completely selfish. ‘But we can’t really have that number there, Christopher. I mean, that would make it three solos for you in a row. Surely, it would be better for the balance of the show if we had an ensemble number at this point.’ (What he really meant was, ‘I had a lot to do in Liberty Hall. Now I’ve lost a number.’)
Christopher Milton did not snap back at Mark. He didn’t bother when Dickie Peck was present to do it for him. ‘That’s nonsense,’ barked the agent. ‘The audience will have come here to see Christopher Milton and the more of him they see, the happier they’ll be.’
‘There is such a thing as over-exposure,’ Mark Spelthorne observed in a voice that wouldn’t remain as cool as he wanted it.
‘Something you’re never going to have to worry about, sonny,’ Dickie flashed back. ‘No, it’s a great number. Really good. Just done overnight, you know — ’ (appealing for admiration from the company. Charles’ admiration conformed with Dr Johnson’s comment about a dog walking on its hinder legs — ‘It is not well done, but you are surprised to find it done at all.’) ‘- No, I think this is going to be the number of the show. Make a great single too. I don’t see actually why it shouldn’t be the title of the show. I Beg Yours? I mean it’s catchy and it’s — ’
‘All the publicity’s already gone out,’ David Meldrum interposed, thus at least killing that ridiculous idea. But Charles still thought someone ought to question the suitability of the number for a show which, in spite of major surgery and transplants, was still set in the eighteenth century and was about Tony Lumpkin rather than Lionel Wilkins. It would stick out like go-go dancers in the middle of the Ring Cycle.