by Simon Brett
Not very funny. Minor accidents are funny, fatal accidents aren’t. Basic rule of comedy.
More pertinently, Rod Tisdale had already delivered the six scripts he was writing for the series, so his removal did not impede the progress of The Strutters in any way.
What was more, he was a person to whom Bernard Walton looked to provide him with a new star vehicle.
And, most galling of all to any theorist trying to see a pattern of murders committed by the star, Rod Tisdale had been killed at nine o’clock the previous evening. At which time the main suspect was sitting in the Greville Club, dining with Charles Paris.
The case was once again wide open.
CHAPTER EIGHT
West End Television Ltd,
W.E.T. House,
235-9 Lisson Avenue, London NW1 3PQ.
18th June, 1979.
Dear Charles,
I thought I’d just drop everyone a note after recent events to assure them that, in spite of problems you all know about, everything is okay on The Strutters front and all of us here are still confident we’ve got a very exciting property on our hands.
Until recently we weren’t certain whether Rod Tisdale was going to write the remaining scripts in the series or not. He was undecided about it. Obviously now the decision has been made for us, and I am delighted to be able to announce to you that the rest of the series will be written by none other than Willy and Samantha Tennison! I’m sure you’re familiar with their work from hosts of successful sit coms, but if your memory needs any nudging, let me just mention such series as Flat Spin, Daisy and Jonathan, Your Turn, Darling, Oh, What a Pair of Au Pairs! and that charming show set in a cookery college, Oh, Crumbs!
Willy and Sam are delightful people and great chums and I’m sure will be absolutely right for The Strutters. I’ve asked them to come along to our next read-through, so that we can all get a chance to meet up.
Thank you, incidentally, for your continuing hard work on the series. We really have got a smashing cast and I think that’s one of the most important ingredients in a really exciting show. Let’s put our troubles behind us and look forward to the success The Strutters is inevitably going to be!
With the warmest good wishes,
Yours sincerely,
Peter
Peter Lipscombe
Producer The Strutters
When Bob Tomlinson arrived at the Paddington Jewish Boys’ Club Hall for the next read-through the following Wednesday and found Willy and Sam Tennison holding court, he said he was going out for a sandwich and would come back in half an hour, by which time everyone had better be ready to start work.
The atmosphere of the second read-through had cleared, and everyone seemed a lot more cheerful. Rod Tisdale’s death, apart from shattering Charles Paris’s murder theories, had not had much effect. He had been such an unobtrusive person to have around that his absence was hardly remarked at all.
And any void he might have left was more than filled by Willy and Sam Tennison. They were a roly-poly little pair of writers, a married couple who that day affected patchwork shirts and matching yellow jeans. They were awfully affectionate and flirtatious with each other all the time, and talked in a manner very similar to the scripts of their sit coms. Since most of their success had been based on a series of interchangeable shows which dramatised the small happenings of their own lives, this was hardly surprising.
The viewing public knew everything about them. Their student lives in adjacent flats had hit the screen in the hilarious form of Flat Spin. The early days of their marriage had been chronicled in the series Daisy and Jonathan. The wacky tribulations of having children took comic form as Your Turn, Darling and the increasing affluence these scripts brought them provided the basis for Oh, What a Pair of Au Pairs! Their revolutionary attempt to do something different with Oh, Crumbs! had been weakened by the fact that the catering college where the series was set was run by a couple called Rob and Mona Partridge, who bore a remarkable similarity to all their other couples.
The Tennisons also had a disconcerting habit of always talking as if they were being interviewed and volunteering information that no one had ever asked for.
Peter Lipscombe thought they were wonderful. He laughed constantly at their shared monologue.
‘Well, I don’t know, darling,’ said Willy Tennison.
‘Don’t know what, darling?’ asked Sam Tennison.
‘How we’re going to get six scripts together in time, darling.’
‘Oh, we’ll manage somehow, darling. Lots of midnight oil.’
‘But is it going to be worth it with the price oil is these days?’
‘Oh, I’ve got a friend who’s a sheik.’
‘I thought your friend was the milkman.’
‘Well, this guy’s a kind of milk sheik.’
‘You know people always ask us how we manage to work together all the time, you know, as man and wife. Don’t they, darling?’
‘They do, darling.’
‘And I always say that there are four of us. There’s a husband and a wife and a writer and another writer.’
‘And never the twain and the twain shall meet.’
‘Yes. Or at least one twain never meets the other twain.’
‘Otherwise, darling, there’d be a twain crash.’
‘Oh, lovely, darling. I’ll write that one down.’
While her husband committed the gem to paper, Sam Tennison continued, ‘Willy always uses a blue notebook, while I like pink ones. We never go anywhere without our notebooks, do we, darling?’
‘Never, darling. Never know when the Muse will strike.’
‘As one pussy cat shop steward said to the other.’
‘Oh, darling, that’s another one for the book.’
Charles prayed for the return of Bob Tomlinson. He also mentally fabricated a new series which would chronicle the remainder of Willy and Sam Tennison’s lives if he had his way. There’d be Mum’s The Word! for when their tongues were cut out, There’s a Funny Thong! for when they were garrotted, and, to cover their funerals, We’re Only Here for the Bier!
Eventually, Bob Tomlinson and belligerent sanity returned.
‘Hello, Bob, I’m Sam. .’
‘And I’m Willy. .’
‘Shut up.’
‘We’re your new writers.’
‘Are you? Well, I don’t want you round my rehearsal rooms. Send your scripts in by post. You’ve already wasted enough time this morning. We’ve got a tight schedule. We’re losing two days’ rehearsal with the filming we’ve got to pick up. Incidentally, everyone, the overnight shoot for Ep. Six is fixed for Thursday fortnight. 5th July. Okay, read!’
‘But, Sam and I had hoped — ’
‘But, Willy and I had hoped — ’
‘Didn’t you hear me? Piss off.’
He was a good man, that Bob Tomlinson, thought Charle.
The overnight filming Bob had mentioned was for an insert into the last Strutters script Rod Tisdale wrote. In fact, it was the last full script of any sort that he wrote, but anyone who searched through its fabric for some final message from the writer to the world would have been disappointed. All he would have found was a predictable plot, dressed up with sixty-seven familiar jokes, fifty-two of which were destined to receive laughs from the studio audience and the remaining fifteen to have artificial ones imposed in the dubbing suite. Not a great memorial to a human being (which is what Rod Tisdale must have been, though he never gave any sign of it).
Charles had found out as much as he could about the writer’s death, but there was not a lot. His relaxed rehearsal schedule (given a pragmatist like Bob Tomlinson as director, fourteen lines and two moves didn’t take long to perfect) allowed him time to go to the inquest, but information seemed to be scarce.
Rod Tisdale had lived in a block of flats in a quiet road in Maida Vale. At nine o’clock on the previous Friday evening, 15th June, he had left the block and started out across the road, where he had be
en knocked over and killed by a vehicle travelling at considerable speed.
There had been no witnesses of the accident, though people in other flats had heard the impact. By the time they looked out of their windows, only parked cars were visible.
Rod Tisdale had lived alone, and had apparently spent the day in his flat working. Investigations so far suggested that he had not spoken to anyone on the telephone except for his agent, and had not then mentioned any plans to go out. There was nothing in his diary to indicate why he set out at nine o’clock. He might have been walking towards Maida Vale tube station. He might have been going to the local pub (though he was very rarely seen in there). He might just have been going out for a walk.
Police investigations would continue to try to track down the errant vehicle which had killed him, so an adjournment was requested. The coroner granted it in a voice that did not expect much more to be discovered and commented on the alarming increase in hit and run accidents.
There was no one Charles Paris recognised at the inquest, so he left little the wiser. The death could just have been an accident. On the other hand, if the potential murderer were someone Rod Tisdale knew, the murder would have been fairly easy to set up. He had only to ring the writer, fix a meeting-place which would involve his crossing the road, and sit and wait for him to come out.
So, just another death, and apparently an accidental one. Every attempt at a pattern Charles started was soon frustrated. He had been on very promising lines with Bernard Walton cast as villain, but that approach had been mined by the latest incident. Rod Tisdale’s death would do nothing to halt the progress of The Strutters, and was, on the contrary, a positive loss to Bernard, who had looked to the writer to come up with a new star vehicle for him.
So, even if Bernard Walton hadn’t got the one alibi Charles could never crack, his motivation was gone, and, with it, fantasies of the star bringing in hired killers to do his dirty deeds.
Charles tried to contact Bernard a few days later with a view to checking a few facts about Scott Newton’s death, but the housekeeper said Mr Walton had gone for a month’s holiday to his villa in Sardinia. Since this was supported the next day by a photograph of the star beaming farewells at Heathrow Airport, there was no reason to disbelieve it. (Charles’s first cynical reaction to the news had been that Bernard’s Publicity Manager had packed him off to Sardinia in the hope that a well timed kidnap might bring his client back to public attention.)
So, if any further accidents hit The Strutters team during the next month, it was pretty unlikely that Bernard Walton had anything to do with them.
But for the next couple of weeks there was no sign of any sort of accident. Charles began to think that the first three must after all be just unfortunate coincidences.
All that happened was that The Strutters continued to be made, and that was quite a tiring process for all concerned. The basic pattern for the first burst of the series had been for Tuesday evening recordings, with a read-through for the next episode the following morning. Six weeks of this was already a heavy schedule, but the need to fit in extra filming days to replace those lost after Scott’s death made it very heavy indeed. Saturday rehearsals crept in, then Sunday ones. Even Charles, on whom the demands of fourteen lines and two moves a week were not onerous, began to get tired. The strain on the principals must have been enormous.
George Birkitt reacted by occasional bouts of temperament. He was not used to learning so many lines every week and was often still to be seen with script in hand at the Dress Run on recording day. He got very cross when the poor little Assistant Stage Manager charged with the task prompted him, and kept complaining that he found the lines difficult to remember because they were so badly written.
Aurelia Howarth, on the other hand, always knew her lines after a couple of days and generally showed professionalism and stamina which would have been remarkable in an actress half her age. She still appeared very anxious, no doubt worried about Cocky’s health, but did not let this interfere with her work. She lived up to the theatrical standard of a ‘trouper’ and, by contrast, showed up George Birkitt’s relative immaturity.
In spite of her worn looks, she did not seem to have lost any of her enthusiasm for the business. Indeed, a couple of days after Rod Tisdale’s death, Charles was amused to hear her asking Peter Lipscombe whether he’d yet read the books she’d lent him. She was sure there was series potential there.
Peter apologised, promised they were next on his list, really. Charles had heard that from too many producers to take it too seriously. Though many television producers can read scripts, it’s a very rare one who can manage a whole book.
So there didn’t seem much prospect for Aurelia’s idea. But Charles was impressed that at her age and in the middle of such a tight schedule she was still on the look-out for a new project.
With all the pressures, a kind of peace and community spirit came over the production. They all spent so much time together that they had to choose between constant arguments or conviviality and fortunately most opted for the latter. Even Charles began to see the advantages of television. It was almost like having a regular job.
The audience reaction to the recordings didn’t change much, but everyone seemed quite happy about it, and Charles came to share the indifference to, or even contempt of audiences, which is common to most people who work in television. Bob Tomlinson was all set to come in with his electronic hilarity in the dubbing suite, so it hardly mattered what the people shovelled out of coaches into the studio seats thought of the show. The only function of their reaction was to tell the viewing audience at home where the jokes were intended to be.
Charles also got closer to Jay Lewis. The young PA seemed to have ended her relationship with Nick Coxhill and to be more or less available. She seemed to enjoy Charles’s company and, though he got a little sick of the received wisdom of Phil Middleton and Ernie Franklyn Junior, news of the progress of VTR editing and the doings of Jay’s flatmate who worked in Film Research, he enjoyed hers. She really was very pretty.
Sometimes Charles wondered if his continuing attraction to girls young enough to be his daughter arose from his incomplete relationship with his real daughter, Juliet. But, since it didn’t change facts or get him anywhere, he never indulged such speculation for long.
He didn’t make any move with Jay for the time being. They were working too closely together for him to risk a rebuff or any awkwardness. But he made his interest clear, and planned in a vague way for some sort of advance just before the break in recording sequence in mid-July.
Thoughts of crime receded. When he spoke to Gerald Venables after one of the recordings, he said he’d decided there was nothing to be investigated, except for a sequence of coincidences. The only thing that had ever made him think differently was the words of Sadie which he had overheard. And there was no chance of finding out any more about them.
After the recording before the overnight filming, the usual group of cast (including Toby Root, who’d played the part of Colonel Strutter’s friend) and camp followers (very camp, in some cases) gathered in the bar for a quick drink, because the week ahead was busy. Read-through the following morning and rehearsal all day. Then, because of Union regulations covering the Thursday night’s shoot, no rehearsal on the Thursday or Friday. Pick up again Saturday morning, rehearse Sunday, somehow be ready for the Crew Run Monday at noon, and into the studio on the Tuesday. It wasn’t long to get a half-hour of television together.
With this in mind, neither Dame Aurelia Howarth nor George Birkitt went up for a drink. Both no doubt (though the latter would never admit it) had gone back to do a bit of work on the week’s lines.
The absence of his idol left Aurelia’s Number One Fan at something of a loose end. Since his first contested appearance, Romney Kirkstall had come to every recording and hung around on the fringe of Aurelia’s circle in the bar afterwards. He never had a drink, neither buying for himself nor accepting anyone else’s offer.
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He looked so helpless that once he had got a large Bell’s (very skilfully bought by Peter Lipscombe), Charles went across to him.
‘Dob not coming up?’ asked Romney Kirkstall anxiously.
‘Don’t think so. Busy schedule this week. I expect she’s gone back to catch up on some sleep.’
‘Oh dear.’ The little man looked very upset. The focus of his whole week had been removed.
‘I’m sure she’ll come up for a drink next time,’ Charles comforted. ‘It’s just that we’ve got an overnight shoot on Thursday, so it’s a tight week.’
Romney Kirkstall still looked distraught. ‘I wanted to see her. I’ve got a book I wanted her to autograph.’
‘Oh. Well, next week.’
‘I suppose so,’ Romney Kirkstall conceded dismally. ‘I was so excited to find it, though. It’s a biography of Dab that I’ve been looking for for ages. Found it on a barrow outside a second-hand bookshop in Putney.’
‘Oh, really.’
‘It’s very rare, you know. Called I Dream of Dancing. You know, after the song.’
‘Oh yes. I’ve heard of it.’ It was difficult not to have done. The song had been a big hit in a revue in the early Thirties and had virtually become Aurelia Howarth’s signature tune.
‘Oh, I did want to get her signature today.’ Romney Kirkstall still sounded desolated.
‘You’ll get it in a week.’
‘Anything can happen in a week.’
Charles looked up sharply, his dormant detective instinct aroused. But no, there was no threat in Romney Kirkstall’s words. He was a little man with an obsession, but that obsession wasn’t murder.
Charles thought perhaps showing an interest would cheer him up, so asked Romney if he might look at the book.
It was the right question. There was a scurry into the duffle bag and the precious trophy was presented to him.
The book was a battered little blue volume. Presumably it had had a decorative dust jacket, but that was long gone. Charles turned instinctively to the date of publication — 1940. It was not surprising that Romney Kirkstall had had difficulty in finding it. Most books vanish pretty quickly, but show business biographies must be the most quickly dated and evanescent forms of literature.