Dead Giveaway

by Brett, Simon

  ‘So we’ve no idea who pushed it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because that person, I’ll lay any money, was the intended victim.’ Charles looked at Chita and Quentin. ‘You two were on the set. You didn’t by any chance see . . .?’

  His words trickled to a stop as they shook their heads. ‘Sorry. There was so much confusion and chaos that we didn’t really see anything.’

  Sydnee spoke. ‘Joanie Bruton said it was Nick Jeffries who pushed the desk over.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Any reason to disbelieve her?’

  Charles shrugged. ‘Not really, but I’m now getting so paranoid about this case that I’m suspicious of everyone.’

  ‘On the new time-scale, of course,’ Quentin announced slowly, ‘Nick Jeffries would have had time to put the cyanide in a glass himself.’

  ‘Yes, but I think the person who pushed the desk over was the intended victim rather than the murderer.’

  Sydnee corrected him. ‘Not necessarily, Charles. As soon as Barrett Doran had started choking, the murderer would have realised that something had gone wrong and have exactly the same reason to confuse the evidence as the intended victim.’

  Charles was forced to admit the truth of this.

  ‘In fact, a much more straightforward reason than the intended victim.’

  He was forced to admit the truth of that too. He looked round at his researchers. ‘Right, so Nick Jeffries is now in the running. Who else? Back we go to the tedious business of retracing everyone’s footsteps.’

  ‘We’ve done it,’ said Chita, and handed him a blue folder.

  Charles looked at her in surprise.

  ‘Well, we knew you’d want to know, so we got together and went through everyone. We are professional researchers, you know.’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’ He opened the folder and looked at the list inside. It read as follows:

  SUSPECTS WITH OPPORTUNITY

  1. BOB GARSTON – Left Conference Room at 6.05. Not seen again until 6.20 when he was observed by Tim Dyer walking along the corridor with Roger Bruton.

  2. JOANIE BRUTON – Left Conference Room at 6.10 with Roger to go to Make-up, where he left her. According to Make-up, left them at 6.20. Roger Bruton claims she met him by the lifts a little before 6.30. By that time both of them were back up in the celebrity Conference Room.

  3. ROGER BRUTON – See above. On his own after depositing his wife in Make-up. Seen with Bob Garston by Tim Dyer at 6.20. Again presumably on his own until meeting his wife again just before 6.30.

  4. NICK JEFFRIES – Left celebrity Conference Room, following Fiona Wakeford, just after 6.15. Seen entering her dressing room at about 6.20, and seen leaving it again about a minute later. Not back in the Conference Room until just after 6.30.

  NOTE: These are the facts as accurately as they can be ascertained. They do not, however, take into account the possibility of any of the witnesses lying, nor of a conspiracy amongst any of the above to poison the water glass.

  ‘But just a minute,’ said Charles, as he finished reading the document. ‘Surely there are a couple more we should be considering. The two contestants, Tim Dyer and Trish Osborne. They both left their Conference Room at six-fifteen. She went to Barrett Doran’s dressing room, but was out of there by twenty-five past and . . .’

  Chita shook her head. ‘She’s in the clear. She went straight to the Ladies. One of the Assistant Stage Managers was in there and saw her, trying to repair her make-up. She’d been crying, apparently. She was there till after half-past.’

  Charles felt obscurely relieved that Trish had been telling the truth. ‘But what about Tim Dyer?’

  Quentin shook his head. ‘No. We’ve found another witness there too. One of the dressers saw him hanging around the corridor, looking suspicious. There’ve been quite a lot of costumes going missing recently, so the dresser watched what he was up to. Tim Dyer went into Studio A just before half-past, but he quite definitely did not go into Studio B.’

  ‘So he couldn’t have got the cyanide. Oh well, at least thank God that’s two of them eliminated.’ Charles looked down at their list. ‘Thanks for this. Good bit of work.’ He sighed ruefully. ‘I don’t know. Bloody marvellous, isn’t it? Four murder suspects and I don’t even know who they were trying to kill.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to Sydnee later that evening. ‘I’m not proving to be much use to you. I’m afraid my reputation as a detective has been a little over-inflated.’

  She did not deny this, but told him that at least she had been glad of someone to talk to about the case. They were sitting over coffee after dinner in a Covent Garden Italian restaurant. Charles felt very low. The first snagging self-doubts of depression threatened. When the depression came, it could be a long one.

  He sighed. ‘So I suppose now we do what we should have done in the first place – go to the police about it. I tell them that Barrett Doran’s glass contained gin at six-thirty. At least that’ll let Chippy off the hook.’

  ‘And then the police will get on to Sylvian,’ Sydnee said listlessly. ‘And he won’t be able to tell them which glass he changed for which, because he fiddled about with all of them . . .’

  ‘But at least sorting out all these bloody suspects then becomes the police’s problem. It is their job, after all. That’s what they’re trained for.’

  Sydnee nodded and was silent for a moment. ‘Of course, the police aren’t going to be terribly pleased with you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Withholding evidence. Why didn’t you go and tell them what you knew earlier?’

  Charles shrugged. ‘That’s a risk I’ll have to take.’ But he didn’t warm to the idea.

  ‘I just feel we’ve got so close to it,’ said Sydnee doggedly.

  ‘Oh yes. I thought we were getting close with Bob, but after finding out about the glasses being switched, I don’t know, the whole case is so wide open that everything we’ve done seems to have been wasted.’

  ‘Not everything.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We now know our suspects pretty well. We know what makes them tick, what their priorities are.’

  ‘Yes.’ In spite of himself, Charles felt a flicker of interest. ‘So where does that lead us?’

  ‘Well, it enables us to think of reasons why they might want to murder each other.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘All right, let’s start with Bob Garston. We worked out a lot of reasons why he might want to murder Barrett. In doing that, we should have found out enough about his character to see reasons why he might want to murder someone else.’

  ‘His character seems very simple to me. Totally selfish. He’s motivated solely by considerations of his career. Anyone who threatened that might be expendable. But Barrett was the only one on the show who represented any kind of threat.’

  ‘Maybe. Bob was also desperately worried about adverse publicity.’

  ‘That’s just another facet of the same thing. It threatened his career.’ Charles mused in silence for a moment. ‘The thing that really seemed to get him uptight was that we knew about Barrett and his wife . . .’

  ‘Yes, he didn’t want the gossip columns to get hold of that, did he?’

  ‘No.’ Charles found his mind wasn’t as exhausted as he’d thought. It was waking up again, starting to make connections. ‘And before the show, the only person he thought knew about the affair was Joanie Bruton . . .’

  ‘And Roger. Remember, Tim overheard Roger talking about it.’

  ‘Yes. My God, do you suppose that what Roger was actually saying was a blackmail demand? You do something for us or we’ll tell the press about Barrett and your wife.’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘Far-fetched, though. Why should someone as successful as Joanie Bruton want to resort to blackmail?’

  ‘People are greedy. Even the rich – particularly those who’ve just become rich – always want that little bit more. And Joanie�
��s success may not be that secure. Okay, she’s Flavour of the Month at the moment, but we both know how quickly television faces go out of fashion. Then she’d be just back to the journalism. It’s not as if she writes books or has got any other nice little earner going for her.’

  ‘No.’ Charles thought about it. ‘And Joanie is of course ideally placed as a blackmailer. As she said, she’s a repository for a great many secrets.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  There was a new excitement in Sydnee’s pale-blue eyes. Charles gave her a wry smile. ‘I can see what you’re doing. You’re just trying to get me interested in the case again, aren’t you?’

  ‘So what’s wrong with that?’

  ‘What’s wrong with that is that I have so far spent a fortnight getting precisely nowhere, while what I should have done was to go to the police straight away.’

  ‘Don’t you like a challenge, Charles?’

  ‘I have been challenged and I have shown myself unequal to the challenge.’

  ‘Doesn’t that frustrate you?’

  ‘Of course it bloody does!’ he snapped.

  ‘It certainly frustrates me.’ This was a new Sydnee, her surface poise giving way to a girlish stubbornness. ‘I’m a researcher, and the aim of research is to get to the bottom of things, to get to the truth. Nothing pisses me off more than failing in that quest. Go on, you must feel the same. If you don’t find out who the murderer is, you’re going to be really pissed off, aren’t you?’

  Charles couldn’t deny it.

  ‘Then let’s bloody find out who it is. Look, we’ve already got a motive for Bob to want to kill Joanie. Let’s see if we can get any motivations for the rest of them.’

  Charles was thoroughly hooked again by now.

  ‘Well, the new entrant into the suspect stakes is of course Nick Jeffries. He didn’t seem to have a particularly benevolent nature, but I’m not sure I see him as a murderer. Still, let’s try and think who he might want to murder.’

  ‘Fiona, for refusing his advances?’

  ‘Seems extreme.’

  ‘Very sensitive plant, the male ego.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me,’ said Charles ruefully. ‘On the other hand, I don’t really see poison as Nick Jeffries’ style. I can see him thumping someone, but . . . Still, I suppose it’s possible.’ He shook his head in frustration. ‘Oh, I’d just like to see them all together again. I’m sure I’d get some feeling of what they felt for each other if I did.’

  ‘You’ll have the chance tomorrow.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s the second pilot. You may see something.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I may. I must say I’d rather see the first one again. I don’t mean the tape. I mean the whole thing. I’m sure if I could see their reactions to the drink or who knocked the desk over, I’d be able to . . .’

  He stopped. Sydnee looked at him curiously. She was even more curious when she saw the beatific smile which had spread across his features.

  ‘What on earth is it?’

  ‘Sydnee,’ he said with a new, calm confidence, ‘I have had an idea.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE DAY OF preparation for the second pilot of If The Cap Fits closely followed the pattern of the first, though generally everything was more efficient. John Mantle had gathered an experienced game-show team around him and they had learned from the shortcomings of the previous pilot.

  As a result, three Conference Rooms had been booked, so that the ‘professions’ did not have to spend the afternoon pondering Sydnee’s ‘Ugly Wall’. (On this occasion the researchers had assembled a shepherd, a metallurgist, a coach-driver and a vicar, the last of whom thought, mistakenly, that his appearance on the programme would help to make the Church seem more accessible to ordinary people.) The hide-and-seek game of keeping the various participant groups apart was better orchestrated, so that there were fewer sudden rushes for cover.

  An acrimonious confrontation between John Mantle and the Head of Wardrobe had resulted in the hats being ready when required (though the sullen expressions on the faces of the staff who produced them suggested that they still did not think it was their job). However, arguments could not be avoided on the subject of what sort of hats metallurgists wore and whether a Church of England vicar could really be properly identified by a biretta.

  Sydnee had had a long session with Make-up and finally organised a schedule that would get everyone done without transgressing the sacred and expensive lines of the meal break.

  The new contestants spent the afternoon in the same state of nervous tension as their predecessors. The extrovert personalities for which they had been selected seemed to desert them once on the set, leading Aaron Greenberg and Dirk van Henke, who had just returned from a long lunch at Inigo Jones with John Mantle, to turn on him and object that this bunch had even less ‘pazazz’ than the last lot.

  They were also suspicious of Bob Garston’s ‘pazazz’-rating. His gritty Northern approach to the job of host contrasted unfavourably with the more flamboyant style of ‘Eddie back in the States’, and John Mantle had to endure a further barrage of talk about killing Golden Geese stone-dead and screwing up something which could mean ‘someone making a pot’. As ever, he trimmed and shifted, full of magnanimous concessions which gave away nothing. He could see the end in sight. The next day, come what might, the Americans would be on Concorde on their way back home. The massive accumulations of their bill at the Savoy and the charges on his Gold Card would be at an end, and John Mantle would at last have some time to himself.

  He felt confident that, by the time that magic moment arrived, he would also have the makings of a very successful game-show series which would run for years. As Sydnee had suggested, for him, having to do a second pilot had been like a gift from heaven. It had given him the opportunity to adjust the format, to regulate the pace of the show and give the whole package an additional gloss. Good housekeeper to the end, he was even confident that his budget would not suffer too much. Whereas there had been almost no possibility (even without Barrett Doran’s murder) of the first pilot being transmitted, there was a good chance that the second could be, probably not as the first of the series, but safely tucked away four or five into the run. All in all, John Mantle was very pleased with the way things had turned out. Barrett Doran’s death couldn’t have come at a better time for him.

  It was a subject that was not mentioned in the celebrity Conference Room. The foursome reverted to the required laid-back approach to the proceedings. The three who had played the game before had good reason to take it lightly; they now knew the format so well there was no need even to pretend to be doing any homework on it. Joanie and Roger Bruton muttered their way through a file of correspondence. Fiona Wakeford painted her fingernails with studious concentration. Nick Jeffries, whom this studious concentration was intended to exclude, sat around restlessly looking at a newspaper and resorting too often to the hip-flask in his pocket.

  The newcomer, brought in to fill the gap on the panel left by Bob Garston’s promotion, was George Birkitt. He was an actor with whom Charles Paris had worked on numerous occasions. Of moderate talent, he had been elevated by appearances in various television series to celebrity status. Since he was devoid of personality, he had no inner star quality, but was content to assume the mannerisms and behaviour of authentic stars he had met. The act was successful, in that the television audience seemed unable to distinguish him from the genuine article.

  George Birkitt joined in the occasional, insouciant banter of the Conference Room, saying things like, ‘Never sure about these damned game shows myself. Still, the agent says they’re good, keep the old face in front of the public, show there’s a man behind the actor. So I suppose I should take his advice. After all, that’s what I pay the old sod such a large chunk of my income for . . .’

  He did, however, refer to his copy of the show’s format rather more often than was strictly proper for someone of his celebrity
status.

  Between the Conference Rooms Jeremy Fowler flitted, a lost soul trying to shed his burden of wacky one-liners about shepherds, metallurgists, coach-drivers, vicars and hats. He found few takers, though George Birkitt, who recognised that he had the imaginative faculty of a bar of soap, did scribble down an old joke about a rock-star’s school cap being discovered when he had a haircut.

  And all the while Bob Garston dashed about the place, expending enormous energy and charm. He was determined to show not only that he could host the show a damned sight better than Barrett Doran, but also that he could be lovable with it. The effort he put into his affability was almost physically painful.

  In Studio A rehearsal wound on its dilatory way. Jim Trace-Smith exhorted the participants to bravura performances with all the damp aplomb of fruit juice soaking through a paper bag.

  And Sylvian de Beaune, dressed for the occasion in a leopard-skin T-shirt and gold lame trousers, fussed around his set and wondered why Sydnee had asked him to meet Charles Paris for a chat in the bar at half-past six.

  For Charles it was a day of nerves. Not terrified, panicky nerves, but nerves of anticipation, that jumpy surging twitchiness which precedes a first night, the feeling that a great many different strands are coming together and that if one can only keep going a little longer, everything will be all right.

  This state covered the whole spectrum of emotion and included moments of great confidence. In one of these, he rang Maurice Skellern, assertively demanding what there was coming up on the work front.

  The fact that his agent gave the predictable reply, ‘Nothing. Very quiet at the moment, Charles’, did not instantly deflate his mood, so he made another audacious phone-call. He rang the number of Frances’s school and asked to speak to the headmistress.

  ‘What on earth is it?’ Her voice was tight with anxiety. ‘Something to do with Juliet or the boys?’

  It was predictable that her first thought should be for their daughter and grandchildren, though why she should think he might know anything of Juliet’s troubles Charles could not imagine. If there were anything wrong, Juliet would have got straight on to Frances. Experience had not encouraged her to rely on her father.