What Bloody Man Is That

by Simon Brett

  As Felicia had said it would, the cooking seemed to relax her, and when she came in holding the two loaded plates and balancing a wooden salad bowl between them, she looked more human and accessible than Charles had ever seen her.

  And astonishingly pretty. There must have been a bathroom off the kitchen, because she had clearly titivated herself a bit. For the first time in their acquaintance, she had released her blond hair from its severe knot and it swung, silky and just-brushed, a couple of inches above her shoulders. She had also touched up her lips with the palest of lipsticks, and a breath of expensively-fresh perfume preceded her.

  Charles wondered whether she made these changes every evening when she returned from rehearsal, or if they were for his benefit.

  She gestured to him to rescue the salad bowl, which he placed on the floor. She put the plates beside it and reached for the wine bottle. ‘Sure you won’t, Charles . . .?’

  Ooh, it hurt. But he managed to refuse. Gosh, wouldn’t Frances be proud of him. He must ring and tell her of this new miracle. When? Maybe when he’d done it for a week . . . Yes, a week had a good, solid feel to it.

  The thought of Frances made him think of sex. Funny, he hardly had thought about it at all in the last week. The shock of Warnock’s death, and the hard work of rehearsal seemed to have driven it, atypically, from his mind. At least, he hoped that was the reason. It could, of course, just be that he was getting old. Like many men before him, he suffered a momentary panic at the idea that something he’d so frequently cursed as a troublesome distraction might be about to cease troubling him.

  Or maybe it was because he was off the booze . . . Now that really was a terrifying thought. He tried to recall whether previous bouts of abstinence had had this bromide effect on his libido. Trouble was, he couldn’t recall any previous bouts of abstinence.

  Felicia sat beside him on the sofa. She didn’t suggest moving her Macbeth library from the low table and they ate off their knees.

  The lasagne was good, creamy and spicy. They were both hungry after the day’s hard work and ate in silence. Charles chased the last strip of lettuce round his plate and leaned back in satisfaction.

  ‘That was really good. Thanks.’

  ‘Would you like some fruit? I’ve got apples and kiwi-fruit. Or there’s yoghourt . . .?’

  ‘No, thanks. That was fine. Just right.’

  ‘Coffee? You do drink coffee, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. In a minute, if you’re having some. But there’s no hurry.’

  She finished her last mouthful and put the plate down on the floor. She too leant back, grimacing as she stretched against the sofa.

  ‘Back bad?’

  She nodded. ‘Hmm. I know it’s just tension. Always happens through rehearsals. Every vertebra seems to lock into the next one. I do exercises, but it still seizes up.’

  ‘Has it ever stopped you going on?’

  She looked at him in amazement. ‘Good heavens, no. As soon as I get on stage I don’t feel a thing. I can do really elaborate movement stuff without a twinge.’

  ‘Doctor Theatre strikes again.’

  ‘That’s right. Oh, I know it’s psychosomatic, really. Doesn’t make it any the less painful.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What kind of symptoms do you get?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Anxiety symptoms. You know, running up to a first night.’

  ‘Oh.’ Charles would have liked to say he got none. His pose of world-weary cynicism should put him above such self-indulgent frailties. But he knew that it didn’t. ‘Tends to go to my stomach. Always think I’m about to throw up just before a first night.’

  ‘Do you ever?’

  ‘Have done. Not for a while.’

  ‘Do you know any actors who don’t get nervous?’

  Charles shook his head. ‘Nope. I always feel with the ones who keep insisting that they don’t, it’s just their own way of expressing the nervousness. They go on about it so much.’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a companionable lull in the conversation. Their mutual confession of nerves seemed to have made a bridge between them. Charles wondered how he was going to steer the conversation round to Russ Lavery and Warnock Belvedere’s death. But he didn’t wonder with any great urgency.

  He glanced across at Felicia’s head, near his on the sofa. Her eyes were closed as she relaxed and the little furrows, which during rehearsal became a fixture on her brow, had been smoothed away. She looked very young. Such soft, smooth skin.

  He realised, with ironical relief, that the anxiety he had had before the meal was groundless. He was quite capable of thinking about sex without alcoholic prompting.

  In fact, he was thinking about it quite a lot.

  To divert his thoughts from that particular track, he deliberately moved the conversation back to his murder investigation. He must behave himself. Perhaps his new image of abstinence should carry over into his sex-life, too. Mr. Clean. No vices. Proper little Sir Galahad, he thought. ‘My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.’ Hmm. It had some appeal. Not much, though. Sir Galahad’s life may have been jolly pure, but it never sounded as if it had been much fun. All very well, in principle, devoting all your time to one long-term Grail; Charles preferred the idea of picking up a few nice little lesser Grails on the way.

  As if it couldn’t have mattered less, he floated a new topic of conversation. ‘Felicia, about Wamock Belvedere’s death . . .’

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE CHANGE OF subject did not seem to upset her. She still lay back on the sofa with her eyes closed, and said nothing.

  ‘I think very few people were sorry to hear about it,’ Charles continued.

  ‘I certainly wasn’t,’ Felicia agreed sleepily. ‘He was making my life impossible.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Not just the rudeness. I could ignore that. But his constant interruptions made concentration so difficult. And I am trying to get inside Lady Macbeth,’ she said, confirming what Charles had thought earlier. ‘In fact, it was just as well that he did die when he did.’

  Charles rationed himself to just another ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, I’d given Gavin an ultimatum. I said either Warnock would have to go or I would.’

  ‘Yes, I heard you say that to him after last Saturday’s run. I didn’t know you’d meant it literally.’

  ‘Oh, I meant it. I said it again on the Monday. Saw Gavin on his own and told him that if Warnock was at rehearsal the next morning, I was going to have to leave the company.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I know that sounds unprofessional, threatening to break a contract, but you can only be professional if other people around you are being professional. Warnock Belvedere was sabotaging any chance I had of building a performance.’

  ‘Yes.’ Charles allowed a cosy pause to develop before he continued diffidently. ‘So Warnock’s death was quite timely for you.’

  ‘Couldn’t have been more timely. I really meant what I said. If he had still been there on the Tuesday, I would have walked out. He was an obstructive, offensive old man, and death was the best thing that could have happened to him.’

  This was spoken so openly that it seemed to Charles to absolve Felicia from suspicion of direct involvement in the murder. But the possibility still remained that she had, either knowingly or unknowingly, inspired someone else to commit the crime.

  ‘Did anyone else know how strongly you felt about Warnock?’

  ‘I didn’t make a secret of it. Anyone could have worked it out for themselves.’

  ‘Hmm. What about Russ?’

  The mention of this name broke her serenity. The eyelids snapped open to reveal, unnervingly close to Charles, the concentrated blue of her eyes. The little furrows were once again etched between her eyebrows. ‘What do you mean?’

  Charles shrugged. ‘I just meant, did Russ know how much you wanted Warnock out of the way?’

  ‘Yes. Of cou
rse he did. We . . . we talked a lot about the production. I told Russ that I couldn’t go on unless somehow Warnock was got out of the way.’

  ‘You said that? You used those exact words?’

  ‘Something like that, certainly.’

  Again the ingenuousness of her reply seemed to rule her out as a suspect, and even as a deliberate prompter to murder. She had told Russ in all innocence that she wanted her tormentor ‘got out of the way’. But how the blindly besotted youth might have interpreted her remark was another matter.

  She arched her body and brought back her elbows behind her to alleviate the pain in her spine. ‘Ooh, gosh, it’s tense,’ she said, as she did so.

  ‘Bad luck,’ Charles commiserated, trying to think of something other than the splendid way in which that posture accentuated her breasts.

  Once again, he moved his thoughts away from sex by pressing on with the investigation. ‘Russ is rather keen on you, isn’t he?’

  She diminished the idea with a gesture. ‘Oh. Maybe a bit. I don’t know. We certainly got on well, talking, you know. He’s a very intelligent boy. He sees Lady Macbeth in very much the same way as I do.’

  ‘Ah. You don’t think it’s possible, do you, Felicia, that he –?’

  Abruptly she stood up. ‘Ooh, Charles, sorry. This back’s just so tight. And my shoulders. I say, would you mind just massaging it a bit?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t mind,’ he replied, very honestly.

  ‘Thanks.’

  She moved the table of Macbeth books and lay flat on the carpet in front of the sofa. ‘If you don’t mind just kneeling or . . .’

  ‘No problem. Where, right down the spine itself? Like that?’

  ‘Yes, and sort of easing off to either side. Yes, you can really press down on it. It needs a lot of pressure. Ooh, that’s nice.’

  Charles thought it was rather nice, too. Her spine was quite prominent through the soft cotton of her track suit, but there was no transverse ridge of a brassiere. And the flesh was comfortingly soft.

  He permanently revised his opinion about his interest in sex being dependent on the intake of alcohol.

  But he wondered why she was behaving like this. It could be completely innocent, just the behaviour of someone with a bad back, or it could be one of the most blatant come-ons he had ever encountered. He was not yet quite sure which.

  Of course, it had had the effect of breaking off the conversation about Russ, and Charles began to wonder whether maybe that had been its primary intention.

  But he was determined not to be side-tracked. ‘Felicia, about you and Russ . . .’

  ‘I really don’t want to talk about it.’ Her voice was muffled by her arms on which she was lying, but he could feel its resonance with his kneading fingertips.

  ‘I do want to talk about it.’

  ‘Why?’

  He decided there was no point in going the pretty way. ‘Because I think it might have something to do with Warnock’s death.’

  She raised her head and squinted round at him. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘Felicia, most of last week you and Russ were as thick as thieves . . .’

  ‘So . . .?’

  ‘But nobody in the company could fail to notice that on Tuesday morning you didn’t want to have anything to do with him.’

  She coloured and turned her head back towards the floor. ‘Surely that’s my business.’

  ‘Well, yes, it’s your business, so long as it doesn’t start involving other people.’

  ‘It doesn’t involve other people. Just Russ and me.’

  ‘Listen. I’ve been asking myself – what happened between closing time in the bar on Monday and the start of rehearsals on Tuesday . . .’

  ‘It’s none of your business what –’

  ‘. . . and the only thing that I know happened between those times,’ Charles went on inexorably, ‘was that Warnock Belvedere died.’

  ‘But that’s nothing to do with Russ and me.’

  ‘By your own admission, you wanted Warnock out of the way . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And wasn’t the timing of his “getting out of the way” rather convenient?’

  ‘Yes, it was, but . . .’ She rolled over and sat up, facing him. The eyes were disconcertingly beautiful. ‘What are you on about, Charles?’

  He had to play this carefully. He wanted to find out certain facts, but he didn’t want Felicia to be frightened off by the direction of his questions. He opted for a straightforward lie. ‘Listen, I was the one who found Warnock’s body . . .’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘. . . and, because I was presumably in the theatre when he died, the police have been asking me various questions.’ All true so far. Time for the lie. ‘In particular, they’ve asked me if I saw anyone else round the theatre at the relevant time.’ He hoped she didn’t remember that he had been out cold at the time he was supposed to be observing.

  She appeared not to. ‘I don’t see how I can help you.’

  ‘You can help me by telling me what you did after the bar closed that evening.’

  ‘I came straight back here.’

  ‘Yes, I thought you probably did. What is more pertinent, really, is: Do you know what Russ did?’

  She hesitated. ‘Why don’t you ask him?’

  ‘I have done.’

  ‘Well, then you know the answer.’ She had a moment of doubt. ‘What did he tell you he did?’

  ‘He said he stayed around the theatre for a while.’

  The answer seemed somehow to please her. ‘Then you know what he did, don’t you?’ She shuffled round so that she was sitting with her back to him.

  ‘Charles, would you mind just doing a bit on the shoulders? The spine feels much better, but the shoulders are still really knotted.’

  ‘Sure.’ His fingers started to slide back and forth across the material of her track suit. As the sweeps grew broader, the fingers touched the soft perfumed flesh of her neck with each stroke. The sweeps grew broader still.

  ‘Ooh, that’s lovely,’ she purred. She eased her neck luxuriantly round, and a few wisps of hair tickled across his chin.

  ‘Thing is, though,’ Charles continued gently, ‘the police are going to question me closely about who I saw. Russ apparently was there, but I didn’t see him.’

  ‘Probably in his dressing room,’ Felicia mumbled.

  ‘The other thing is . . . if the police did know Russ was around the theatre, they might want to question him.’

  ‘Why?’

  No way round it. He’d have to be more direct. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that Warnock’s death might not have been an accident?’

  ‘What – you mean that he might have been murdered?’ The tone of incredulity sounded genuine. Either the idea never had occurred to her, or she was a very good actress. But then, of course, Charles reflected, she was a very good actress.

  ‘It’s a possibility that I’m sure the police must have considered.’

  She turned her head round to look at him. ‘And you mean, if they knew that Russ had been in the theatre at the time, they might suspect him of the murder?’

  ‘Possible. Isn’t it?’

  The look of shock on her face seemed genuine, too. Maybe Russ had told her he had killed Wamock and she hadn’t believed it, thought the boy was showing off, fantasising. But now she was having his story confirmed from another source, and that was frightening her.

  There was a long silence. Then, in the deep voice which had so captivated Stratford theatregoers, she announced, ‘Russ didn’t stay around the theatre.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She knew she had to tell him more. ‘He came back here, with me.’

  ‘Straight after closing time?’

  ‘Yes, I drove him here.’

  ‘Oh well, that’s fine. Lets him off the hook then, doesn’t it?’ Charles was surprised at the depth of his relief. He hadn’t enjoyed casting Russ Lavery in the role of murderer. The boy was t
oo young, too appealing, had too much ahead of him to do such a thing. Besides, Charles liked him, and he didn’t enjoy unmasking murderers he liked.

  So it had just been a secret lovers’ assignation. Russ’s devotion had paid off. He had achieved the prize which John B. Murgatroyd had jokingly set his sights on.

  But, as well as relief, Charles couldn’t help feeling a twinge of jealousy. Felicia was very lovely.

  She turned her back towards him again. ‘Do you mind going on? It really is working.’

  ‘Knitting up the ravell’d sleave of care, am I?’ he asked with a grin, as he fingered the sleeve of her tracksuit.

  ‘That’s it.’ She let out a little contented sigh. She was comfortable with Shakespearean quotations. And they weren’t in a theatre, so Macbeth could be quoted with impunity.

  Charles’s fingers worked round the neck and shoulders, sweeping in ever wider and wider arcs. She nuzzled back against him, though whether this was merely to make herself comfortable or with a view to making him comfortable too, he could still not decide.

  ‘One thing’s odd . . .’ he murmured.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Why didn’t Russ tell me he came back here with you?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know . . .’

  Obviously she did know, but it didn’t seem too important to Charles, as the curves described by his fingertips moved lower and lower. Ho, ho, ho, John B. Murgatroyd, I may have something to tell you tomorrow that’ll make you green with envy.

  ‘Actually,’ Felicia announced in a voice that was informative rather than admonitory, ‘it’s just the neck and shoulders that are tense. My breasts are fine.’

  ‘You took the words right out of my mouth,’ mumbled Charles as he moved his face forward to nestle in her soft hair.

  She gently disengaged herself, and looked at him.

  ‘Shall I tell you why Russ lied about what happened?’

  ‘Sure. I’d be interested.’

  ‘We were talking about Macbeth in the bar and I was telling him about one of the essays in this book.’ She indicated A New Companion to Shakespeare Studies. ‘He sounded interested, so I invited him to come back for a coffee and have a look at it.’