by Simon Brett
‘No idea.’ Pete Masters shrugged. ‘Unless we cut the meaningless little bit of schmaltz altogether.’ His tone was calculated to provoke, but produced no reaction. Emboldened, he pressed on:
‘Or go back to the original arrangements, which were quite as good and a darned sight less fussy.’
‘What, your arrangements?’ Christopher Milton asked slowly.
‘Yes.’
‘Your sodding arrangements.’ The build to anger was slow, but now it had started it built to a frightening intensity. ‘Your little tuppenny-ha’penny amateur tea-shop quartet arrangements. This is the bloody professional theatre, sonny, not some half-baked student revue. Your arrangements! This isn’t Penge Amateur Operatic Society, you know.’
Pete Masters’ face had gone very red, but he fought to keep his voice calm and give a dignified reply. ‘There’s no need for you to speak to me like that. You may prefer the new arrangements to mine, but there’s no need to be offensive about it.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, was I being offensive?’ The last word was pronounced with savage mimicry that exactly echoed Pete’s public school tone. ‘How foolish of me. I had forgotten that I was speaking to someone who has a degree in music and therefore knows everything about the subject. What a silly-billy I am.’
The impersonation was funny and, though Charles cringed in the wings and the musicians continued to stare impassively, it did produce an unidentified laugh from somewhere up in the flies where the stage crew were invisibly watching the proceedings. It gave Christopher Milton a stimulus and he continued to vent his lacerating irony on Pete.
Eventually the M.D. struck back. Still he tried to sound in control, but his wavering voice let him down. ‘Listen, if you’re going to speak to me like that, I’m going.’
‘Go. See if anyone cares. Just don’t think you can treat me like that. You’ve got to get it straight, boy, what matters in this show. You don’t. You go, there are a hundred second-rate musicians can take over tomorrow. I go, there just isn’t a show. Get your priorities right, boy.’
Pete Masters mouthed, but couldn’t produce any words. He did the only possible thing in the circumstances and walked off stage. The musicians looked at their watches with satisfaction. A row like this made it almost certain that they’d go into another session. The atmosphere in the theatre was heavy with embarrassment.
It blew over. Of course it blew over. That sort of row can’t go on for long. The pressures of keeping the show going don’t allow it. Pete and Christopher Milton were working together again within a quarter of an hour, with neither apologising or commenting on the scene. All the same, Charles Paris was relieved that Dickie Peck had not been present to witness the latest challenge to his protege.
It wasn’t just the clash at rehearsals that morning, but something changed the company mood on the Wednesday afternoon. Perhaps it was a small and silent house at the matinee. Perhaps it was Desmond Porton’s impending visit and the fear of having the show assessed. Or perhaps it was The Cold.
Actors, whose working tools are their voices, are naturally terrified of colds, sore throats, ’flus and other infections which threaten their precious vocal cords. They all have their own favourite remedies and preventative methods when germs are in the air, or, in some cases, even when they aren’t. Large doses of Vitamin C are swallowed, dissolved or crunched. (So are most other vitamins of the alphabet, with a kind of pagan awe.) Strange elixirs of lemon and honey (with bizarre variations involving onions) are poured down tender throats. Aspirin, codeine, paracetamol, Anadin, Veganin and others are swilled down, discussed and compared as connoisseurs speak of malt whiskies. Names of doctors who can ‘do wonders for throats’ (as well as others who deal with backs and nervous twinges) are exchanged like rare stamps. It is all taken very seriously.
When a show involves singing, the panic and precautions are doubled. Vocal sprays are brought into play. Little tins and envelopes of pills are ostentatiously produced and their various merits extolled. Some favour Nigroids, small pills which ‘blow your head off, dear, but really do wonders for my cords’; others will not stir without ‘The Fisherman’s Friend’ — ‘quite strong, darling, but they really relax the throat’; there are Friar’s Balsam, Vocalzones, Sanderson’s Throat Specific and a whole gallery of other patent medicines available, all of which have their staunch adherents.
The Cold started with one of the dancers, who had difficulty in preventing his sneeze during the matinee. Then Mark Spelthorne, quick to seize any opportunity for self-dramatisation, thought he might have one of his throats coming on. During the evening performance many of the cast were walking round backstage massaging their throats, talking in whispers (‘conserving the voice, dear — may have a touch of ’flu coming on’) and generally putting on expressions of private suffering which they had learnt when rehearsing Chekhov. It helped to make the atmosphere around Lumpkin! suddenly spiky.
Charles just made it to the pub as time was being called after a sedate Bristol house had given its qualified support to the evening performance. He was the only one of the company who went. Most went straight home to nurse themselves in anticipation of The Cold.
He managed to get in an order for a pint of bitter (performing always made him thirsty) and was letting the first mouthful wash down when the girl came up to him. The American voice twanged. ‘Did you ask him?’
‘Who? What?’ He pretended innocence, but knew full well what she meant.
‘Christopher Milton. You were going to ask him about the interview.’
‘Oh yes, of course. I hadn’t forgotten. Trouble is, today was very busy, what with the two shows. And we were rehearsing some new arrangements this morning.’ It sounded pretty feeble.
But she didn’t seem to notice. ‘Never mind. You’ll do it sometime.’ Surprisingly benign. He’d expected her to tear him apart for his omission. ‘Some time,’ she repeated and he realised that she was drunk.
‘Can I get you a drink?’
‘Haven’t they closed?’
‘Nooo. Never. Barman. What is it, Suzanne?’
‘Vodka tonic.’
‘One of those, please.’
She took the drink and gulped it down like water. She stood close to him and swayed so that they almost touched. ‘How’d the show go?’
‘Not world-shattering.’
‘’Smy birthday today.’
‘Ah.’
‘Had a few drinks to celebrate. Alone in a foreign country.’
‘Ah.’
She leant against him. ‘Give me a birthday kiss. Back in the States I never go without a birthday kiss.’
He kissed her dryly on the lips as if she were a child, but he felt uncomfortably aware of how unchildlike she was. Her breasts exercised a magnetic attraction as she swayed towards him. He drained his beer. ‘Well, better be off. They’ll be turfing us out shortly.’
‘You going to see me home?’ she asked kookily. Miss Suzanne Horst with a few drinks inside her was a very different proposition from the hyper-efficient lady who was about to set British journalism afire.
‘Is it far?’
‘Not far. Staying at a hotel.’
‘Ah.’ Charles found he said a lot of ‘Ahs’ in conversation with Suzanne. Because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
They hadn’t got far from the pub when she stopped and rolled round into his arms. ‘Kiss me properly,’ she mumbled. Light filtered across the road from the lamp over the stage door.
He held her warm and cosy in his arms. He didn’t kiss her. Thoughts moved slowly, but with great clarity through his mind. The girl was drunk. He was nearly fifty. He should keep away from women; it always hurt one way or the other. The silent resentment of Ruth was too recent a memory. And before that there had been Anna in Edinburgh. And others. A wave of tiredness swept over him at the eternal predictability of lust.
He felt a shock of depression, as if the pavement in front of him had suddenly fallen away. What was the point of anyth
ing? Women could alleviate the awareness of the approach of death, but they could not delay it. He was cold, cold as though someone was walking over his grave. The intensity and speed of the emotion frightened him. Age, it must be age, time trickling away. He thought of Frances and wanted her comforting touch.
The girl in his arms was still, half dozing. He took her elbow and detached her from him. ‘Come on. I’ll get you back to your hotel.’ Gently.
At that moment he heard the clunk of the stage door closing and looked across to see Pete Masters emerge with a brief-case under his arm. The M.D. didn’t see him, but started to cross the road, going away from him.
The Mini must have been parked near by, but Charles wasn’t aware of it until it flashed past. He turned sharply, seemed dumb for a moment, then found his voice, too late, to shout, ‘Look out!’
Pete Masters half-turned as the wing of the Mini caught him. He was spun round on his feet and flung sprawling against a parked car. From there he slid down to lie still in the road. The Mini turned right at the end of the street and disappeared.
CHAPTER TEN
And Dickie Peck had not been in Bristol at the time of the accident. Charles tried to reason round it, but the fact was incontrovertible. According to Christopher Milton, the agent was not expected to come and see Lumpkin! again until Brighton. In case that information wasn’t reliable, Charles went to the extreme of phoning Creative Artists to check it. He used a disguised voice and pretended to be a policeman investigating the accident to Pete Masters. It was a risky expedient, one that had turned sour on him before, but he couldn’t think of another. As soon as he put the phone down, he realised that if Dickie Peck had anything to hide, he was now going to be a hundred times more careful. And he could well have been lying about his movements anyway.
All the same, Charles had already started to remove the agent from the front rank of his suspicions. Though he might be involved, might be directing operations, Dickie Peck wasn’t the one to do the heavy stuff. The more Charles thought about it, the more incongruous it became — a successful agent, with a lot of artists on his books, going round running people over and slipping them liquid paraffin? No. What was needed was a logical reappraisal of the situation.
He sat in Julian Paddon’s sitting-room on a bright autumn day and once again wrote down James Mime’s headings, ‘Incident’, ‘Suspect’ and ‘Motive’. He only filled in the middle column. Three names — Dickie Peck, Christopher Milton and Christopher Milton’s driver.
Then, as if imposing logic by committing conjecture to paper, he wrote another heading, ‘Reasons for Innocence’. Against Dickie Peck’s name he filled in, ‘Not on scene of last incident (i.e. in London) — position to keep up — discovery would ruin career’. Against Christopher Milton — ‘Last point above to nth degree — v. concerned with public image — could not afford the risk of personal action’. Against the driver he put a neat dash, then changed his mind and wrote, ‘The only question is who he’s taking orders from — D.P. or C.M. — or is he acting off his own bat?’
Written down it looked convincing. Charles felt a satisfaction akin to completing The Times crossword. He couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t thought of the driver before. Very distinctly he remembered the first time he had seen the man, advancing threateningly towards the crowd of boys who mobbed Christopher Milton outside the Welsh Dragon Club. He remembered how the driver had been halted by a gesture and how he had hovered protectively until the star wanted to leave. Like a bodyguard. It was quite logical that Christopher Milton should have a bodyguard. People in the public eye are instant targets for freaks and lunatics. And in a way everything untoward that had happened on the show could be put down to an exaggerated interpretation of a bodyguard’s role. Whether the man interpreted it that way for himself or at someone else’s suggestion was a detail which could wait until there was some actual evidence of guilt.
In Charles’ new mood of logical confidence he felt sure that proof would not be difficult to find now that he had a definite quarry. He took his sheet of paper with the winning formula on it and burnt it carefully in the grate of the fireplace, pulverising the black ash until it could yield nothing to forensic science. Even as he did so, a sneaking suspicion that he concentrated too much on the irrelevancies of detection started to bore a tiny hole in his shell of confidence.
‘Charles, what the hell’s going on?’
‘What do you mean, Gerald?’
‘Well, there’s a little piece in the Evening Standard about this M.D. being run over.’
‘Ah.’
‘It also mentions Kevin being mugged in Leeds. No comment, just a juxtaposition of the two facts. It’s worse than if they actually said it’s a bad luck show.’
‘Oh, come on. If someone’s run over, it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s anything odd. Accidents do happen.’
‘But don’t you think this is another in the series?’
‘As a matter of fact I do, but nobody else does. There’s no talk about it in the company, beyond the sort of relish actors always have for dramatic situations.’
‘Have the Press made much of it down there?’
‘Not a lot. Small report, just the facts. M.D. of Lumpkin! — hit and run driver in stolen car — details of injuries, that’s all.’
‘What were his injuries?’
‘Mainly bruising. I think he may also have broken his patella.’
‘His what?’
‘Kneecap to you.’
‘And he’s out of the show?’
‘Certainly for a bit. Leon Schultz has taken over as M.D..’
‘Has he?’ Gerald sounded gratified. ‘Ah, well, it’s an ill wind. Good. I always said they should have got a big name from the start rather than that boy. It’ll bump the budget up a bit.’
The welfare of the show seemed to be Gerald’s only concern. So long as his investment was protected, nothing else mattered. Charles felt bitter, particularly as his friend continued, ‘But look, do keep a watchful eye on Christopher Milton. If he gets clobbered, the show really is a non-starter.’
‘And if anyone else gets clobbered, it doesn’t matter?’
‘Well, yes, it does, of course, because it’s very bad publicity for the show, but it’s Christopher Milton who’s the important one. And they must be aiming for him eventually, otherwise there’s no point in all this, is there?’
‘That’s not the way I see it. I don’t think I should worry about Christopher Milton; I should be protecting everyone else in the show.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing. I can’t explain it now. Suffice to say that my view of the case has changed since we last spoke.’
‘Oh. But do you know who’s doing it all?’
‘Yes. I think I do.’
‘Well, get him arrested and stop him.’
‘I haven’t got any evidence yet.’
‘Then get some.’
‘I will.’
Charles felt furiously angry when he put the phone down. The whole thing was getting out of proportion. The protection of Christopher Milton must continue, whoever got hurt on the way. It was hearing such blinkered lack of consideration from Gerald that made him so cross. The world, even his friends, would forgive anything done in the name of Christopher Milton. Gerald had asked for evidence and an arrest and he’d get them, though they might not be what he expected. Charles felt a wave of anger against the whole star set-up, the charming public persona that needed the support of thuggery to survive. Whether or not Christopher Milton was directly involved in the crimes, the rottenness and meanness of what had been going on should be exposed to the public. From now on Charles wasn’t working for Gerald Venables representing Arthur Balcombe. He was working for himself.
After the Thursday show, he dressed carefully for his midnight jaunt. As an actor, he knew how much the right costume could help in a difficult role, and the role in which he had cast himself was a very difficult one.
He wore a pair of h
is own black trousers and a black sweater borrowed from Julian (in what he hoped was a casual manner). He had bought a pair of plimsolls in Woolworth’s and, since Woolworth’s don’t sell ready-dirtied plimsolls for house-breakers, he had shabbied them up with earth from Julian’s garden. Other investments were a balaclava helmet and a pencil torch. He knew the preparations were over-elaborate, but they took his mind off what he had to do.
With the balaclava on, he looked like a very young photograph of himself as Second Sentry in Coriolanus (‘Leaden production’ — Richmond and Twickenham Times). Without it, he looked a cross between himself as Lightborn in a modern dress Edward II (‘Flamboyantly sinister’ — Birmingham Evening Mail) and as Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger (‘Ill-considered’ — Luton Evening Post). He crept down the stairs to the front door and realised he was using the walk he’d perfected for Rookery Nook (‘Uneven’ — Jewish Telegraph).
Unfortunately he met Julian coming in. ‘Where are you going dressed like that, Charles? You look as if you’re about to commit a burglary.’
That didn’t help.
Residents of the Holiday Inn in Bristol park their cars in the adjacent multi-storey car park. It was a simple matter to walk in. He found Christopher Milton’s distinctive Rolls on the first level without any problem.
And his luck held. The Corniche was unlocked. He slipped in by the passenger door and closed it quickly to douse the interior light. He reached to get the torch out of his pocket, but his hand was shaking too much. He closed his eyes and practised rib-reserve breathing, trying to keep the thought of what he was doing at bay. But a schoolboy fear of being found out remained. He wished he could remember some of the relaxation exercises various experimental directors had tried to put him through. None came.
Still, the deep breathing helped. He opened his eyes and, very slowly, like a man under water, he got out the torch and switched it on.