Murder Unprompted

by Simon Brett

  ‘Oh, Frances.’

  ‘Charles.’

  They swayed together. Very together.

  ‘You really did it. I knew you could. I’ve always known you could be much better than the sort of parts you usually play. And tonight you proved it.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Frances.’ He meant it. She was a shrewd lady and not over-generous with praise, so, when it came, he appreciated it the more.

  ‘I was really proud of you tonight, Charles.’

  He felt embarrassed. ‘Would you like a drink or . . .?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘We’re all going out for a meal. Now I come to think of it, I haven’t eaten anything all day. Nothing’s passed my lips since that cup of tea this morning.’

  ‘What about your old friend?’ Frances pointed to the bottle of Bell’s.

  ‘I’ve only just had one slug of that. Five minutes ago.’ Again his mind was clouded by the heresy that had struck him after the first night in Taunton. ‘Do you realise, Frances . . .’ he said slowly, ‘I did that performance tonight without having had a single drink all day . . .? And it was all right, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was wonderful.’

  ‘Good Lord.’ He had to sit down because of the shock.

  ‘Perhaps.’ But the shock stayed with him. He had to have a long swig of Bell’s to shift it. ‘Well, what about coming out for a meal with all of us?’

  ‘No. Thank you, Charles. I have eaten and I’ve got to get back. Anyway, this’ll really be a cast thing. I’ll just be out of place.’

  He didn’t attempt to deny it. Frances had been married to an actor long enough to know what she was talking about.

  ‘Well, look, we must meet soon.’

  ‘I’d like that. Incidentally, I rang Juliet today.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘To tell her what you were doing. You know, taking on this part. She was very proud.’

  ‘Oh.’ It had never occurred to him that his daughter might be proud of him.

  ‘She and Miles’d love to see you.’

  ‘Oh, I’d love to see them.’

  ‘I’m going down Sunday week. It’s my half-term. I don’t know if you’d like to . . .’

  ‘Oh. Oh well, yes, I might. I’ll give you a buzz.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Frances without excessive confidence. Charles’s buzzes were not notorious for their reliability. ‘And, incidentally, what I suspected is true.’

  ‘Ah,’ Charles observed knowingly. But there was no point in pretending with Frances. ‘Er, what did you suspect?’

  ‘Juliet’s pregnant again.’

  ‘Oh, is she?’

  The theory that Charles Paris might be a better actor without alcohol was not put to the test any further that night. Like all good scientists, he knew that one should not rush experiments, so a great deal of Italian red wine and a good few Sambucas were consumed before he finally tottered into a taxi and gave the driver (with some difficulty) his address.

  The meal had been fun. He had needed to wind down after the spiralling tensions of the day, and once again he felt the company warmth and support that had sustained him through the day. Meals after shows, with a company who all got on, Charles found, were the moments he most enjoyed of being an actor. They did not happen that often – at least the meals happened, but not often with such unanimity of good humour. But when they did they were wonderful, and some of Charles’s happiest memories were of Italian or Chinese or Indian restaurants after hours in quiet provincial towns.

  In spite of the alcohol and the fatigues of the day, he did not feel sleepy when he got back to his bed-sitter. His mind was too full. Every time he lay down, some new thought or memory would excite him, and he would start walking round the room.

  He knew he should sleep. The next day was Saturday, which meant two performances, and he was already nearly on his knees from exhaustion. But sleep didn’t come and round about half past three he realised it wasn’t going to come.

  So he made a cup of coffee (realising, sensibly for once, that he’d had enough alcohol) and sat down in the low upholstered chair with wooden arms that was one of the room’s few comforts.

  It didn’t take long before he was thinking of Michael Banks’s death. Something about it disturbed him – not the obvious facts of its shock and tragedy – but some discordant element, something that didn’t ring true. His dormant detective instinct was stirring.

  For the moment he set aside the obvious solution. Say Alex Household hadn’t murdered the star, then who else might have had motive and opportunity to do it?

  Michael Banks had been a man who inspired love, but even so Charles could produce quite a list of people who might have had a grudge against him. Whether any of the grudges was strong enough to justify murder was another consideration he put on one side for the time being.

  Paul Lexington resented the money he was having to pay to Michael Banks since Bobby Anscombe had backed out of the production. His sums worked better with the star out of the way

  Malcolm Harris had been furious with Michael Banks for, as he mistakenly thought, making arbitrary cuts in the author’s precious speeches.

  George Birkitt resented Michael Banks’s precedence over himself. Dottie Banks might have resented her husband’s apparent liaison with Lesley-Jane Decker and killed him out of jealousy.

  Lesley-Jane Decker, if she was having an affair with Michael Banks, might have turned against him because he tried to break it off or committed one of the million other offences which men can commit against women with whom they are having affairs.

  Valerie Cass might have resented Michael Banks’s affair with her precious daughter, either because of his age or because she was just jealous.

  That seemed to be it, as far as motives were concerned, and, even to produce that list, he’d had to scrape the barrel a bit.

  And some of the people who had motives were excluded from suspicion by lack of opportunity. Lesley-Jane Decker had been on stage at the time of the shooting, so, unless she had brought in a hired killer, seemed to be in the clear.

  Dottie Banks had been sitting in the auditorium, so she was exonerated, with the same proviso.

  The remaining four had all been backstage at the relevant time, or could have been, but the motives Charles had managed to dredge up for them didn’t survive close scrutiny.

  Paul Lexington had too much at stake in the production to take the risk of being discovered as a murderer. And, although he had benefited from the publicity surrounding the death and from the cheapness of the star’s replacement, he would also have benefited from Michael Banks’s drawing power, had he survived. No, too fanciful to consider him in the role of murderer. He might well be guilty of swindling people, but not of shooting them.

  Valerie Cass’s motive seemed pretty feeble, too. She might well be capable of attacking someone who threatened Lesley-Jane or the girl’s career, which she lived with such fierce vicariousness, but there was no sign that Michael Banks did represent such threat. On the contrary she seemed rather to welcome Lesley-Jane’s attachment. She liked the reflected glory of her daughter’s being with such a famous star, and thought it could do nothing but good for the girl’s future in the theatre. Had it been Alex Household who had been shot, the situation would have been different, because she so patently disapproved of him but with Michael Banks as victim, it was difficult to cast her in the role of murderer.

  And to think of George Birkitt in that light was just ridiculous. He resented Michael Banks, but no more than he resented anyone else more famous than he was. He was far too lazy (and not bright enough) to plan a murder.

  Malcolm Harris was a slightly different proposition. He was clearly not a very stable person. He was absolutely obsessed by his play, and might regard what he saw as wanton tampering with it as a threat to his whole personality. But he was also a great admirer of Michael Banks, who was his dream casting for the role, and, unless one introduced very tortuous psychopathology, for him to
murder the star was utterly unlikely.

  And for any of these suspects to have done it, one had to posit a very unlikely set of circumstances. They would have had to know where Alex’s gun was in the Green Room, they would have had to run the risk of being observed on the O.P. side of the stage when they committed the murder . . . This last was not such a great risk, because most of the stage staff were needed on the Prompt Side at that point in the play for a forthcoming scene change.

  But there was one witness the potential murderer could not avoid, and that was the main suspect. No one could have gone into the O.P. wings and shot Michael Banks without being seen by Alex Household.

  At that point all theories of alternative murderers fell apart.

  Alex Household had a history of mental instability and paranoia. He had recently had a starring part and a new girl-friend, both of which he saw as part of a new start in his life, taken away by Michael Banks.

  He had voiced threats against the star, and that very evening showed signs of starting another breakdown.

  He had been sitting all evening in exactly the spot from which the gun had been fired. He was still there right up until the moment of the shooting, because Michael Banks, who didn’t know his lines, was still delivering them correctly and therefore still having them fed to him.

  The gun that had shot the star was Alex Household’s gun, on which, Charles had discovered at dinner that evening, the police had found no fingerprints but those of the owner.

  And, if anyone needed further proof of guilt after that, Alex Household had run away from the scene of the crime. And, in spite of police demands that he give himself up and intensive searches, he was still at large.

  Anyone who tried to prove Alex Household didn’t do it, when faced with all that evidence, needed his head examined.

  Oh, sod it. It was five o’clock. Charles went back on his resolution and poured himself a large Bell’s. Maybe lull himself into a little sleep. All this thought of death was unsettling him.

  He remembered the words of Tate Wilkinson, the eighteenth-century actor-manager. ‘No actor can speak of death without a bottle in his hand.’

  Charles Paris knew what he meant.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE SATURDAY’S performances of The Hooded Owl were not very good. In the euphoria of getting through the first night, Charles had forgotten how much concentration that effort had taken, and found it difficult to get back the rhythm of his lines with the A.S.M.. The sleepless night and the excesses which it had incorporated did not help, either.

  And the rest of the cast were less altruistically supportive. They too were suffering from exhaustion after recent events, and had less energy to carry Charles; their main concern was just to keep themselves going. They had all reached that stage following a crisis, which can often be more difficult than the crisis itself, when it is no longer a matter of one superhuman push, but husbanding resources for an indeterminately prolonged period of stress. There was huge relief when the curtain fell on the Saturday night performance. No talk of going out for meals then, the cast rushed off to their respective homes, grateful for the knowledge that they would not have to be back in the Variety Theatre until the ‘half’ on the Monday evening.

  There was still no news of Alex Household, though police investigations were being vigorously pursued. Either he had gone to ground very effectively and was in hiding, or – and this was a rumour that spread increasingly amongst the cast – he had killed himself. The more days went by, the more likely it became that the end of the police search would be the discovery of a corpse. It was a thought that depressed Charles considerably.

  He slept a lot of the Sunday and Monday and, when awake, just mooched about his bed-sitter in the gloom that inevitably followed moments of high excitement.

  He thought of ringing Frances, but something deterred him. She had spoken of meeting the following weekend and going down to Juliet’s. That possibly meant that she had something else on this weekend. Or would be busy sorting things out at school with the run-up to half-term. He didn’t feel up to the mildest of rebuffs from her; he seemed to have got back to a relationship like an adolescent infatuation, reading rejection in the most innocent of her actions.

  His mood also deterred him from ringing Dottie Banks. It was something he still intended to do, but he felt he should be at a peak of confidence to arrange such an encounter.

  Still, the rest did him good, and the performance on the Monday evening was better. It was well received by a fairly small house. About a third full. The publicity of Michael Banks’s death had now been replaced in the public’s mind with news of fresh disasters, and the show was running on its own impetus. The Variety Theatre’s position off the main West End beat, the obscurity of the play, and the (pace George Birkitt) lack of star names – all the elements which pessimists had predicted would work against the show – were now beginning to take their toll.

  Paul Lexington seemed, as ever, undaunted by the small audience. It was Monday night, he said, and that was always bad. The following for this kind of play would build up by word-of-mouth, he insisted. The coach-parties hadn’t started to come in yet. And he was going to give a rocket to Show-Off, whose performance on the publicity front had been absolutely dismal. Get another burst of publicity in the second week, and the show would be fine. Every production went through troughs.

  As ever, he sounded terribly plausible, and Charles was as willing as all the rest of the cast to believe what he said. How true it all was, Charles didn’t wish to investigate. And how the show was now funded, how tightly Paul Lexington was running his budget, what his break-even percentage of audience was, indeed how much of the audience was made up of paying theatre-goers and how much of free seats; all these were questions to which he knew he was unlikely to get answers.

  All they could do was work from day to day, from performance to performance, and through the second week, Charles started to feel his confidence in the part building up again. The play settled down with its new cast. The size of the audience didn’t increase noticeably, but the faithful few who did turn up seemed appreciative.

  He even got another nice review. Obviously there had been no notices after the first night, and few of the critics of the major papers would have had time, let alone interest, to give the play a second viewing; but a North London local paper with a weekly deadline had sent along its critic on the Monday of the second week, and their review appeared on the Thursday.

  The significant sentence read as follows: ‘The part of the father, played by an actor unfamiliar to me, Charles Paris, grows in stature through the evening until the powerfully climactic scene of confrontation with his daughter.’

  It was not, of course, unambiguous praise. Indeed, it could have been read merely as appreciation of Malcolm Harris’s writing; it was the part, after all, not the acting, which was said to grow in stature. And, to the cynically analytical mind which Charles usually applied to praise, the review could be read to mean that the part grew in stature until the powerfully climactic scene of confrontation with his daughter, at which point, in the hands of this actor, it diminished considerably.

  But, on the whole, he thought it was good. Like all actors with reviews, he checked through it for quotability, and decided that, with only slight injustice to the meaning, and the excision of a comma, he could come up with the very serviceable sentence, ‘Charles Paris grows in stature through the evening’.

  He even wondered if he ought to suggest to Paul Lexington that that sentence was put on a hoarding outside the theatre, but didn’t quite have the nerve. The Producer had been satisfied with snipping out from the same review the words, ‘a thoroughly solid evening’s entertainment’, to join the other encomiums that guarded the Variety’s portals.

  (These others, incidentally, demonstrated once again Paul Lexington’s very personal definition of truth and his skill in the use of small print. Since he hadn’t got any London press reviews, he had used the Taunton ones, and a
rtfully disguised their provenance. Thus the passerby would observe in large letters the exhortation, ‘I urge everyone to go and see The Hooded Owl now! – Times’. He would have to go very close indeed to the hoarding to read the word ‘Taunton’ between ‘now!’ and ‘Times’.

  In the same way, the Observer, which acclaimed ‘an evening of theatrical magic’, was the Quantock Observer; and the Mail, who had ‘rarely been so entertained’, was the Western Mail.

  The cheekiest of the lot was actually from a London newspaper. ‘One of the greatest dramas in the history of the British Theatre’ was, as its by-line claimed, from The Daily Telegraph; it had come, however, not from the Arts page, but from the front-page description of Michael Banks’s murder.

  There were no flies on Paul Lexington.)

  Charles cut out and kept his probably-nice review. He never kept bad ones. That was not just vanity. He always found that, while he could never exactly fix the wording of the good ones, the bad remained indelibly printed on his brain, accurate to the last comma.

  Though over thirty years had passed, he could still remember how his first major role for the Oxford University Dramatic Society had been greeted by an undergraduate critic (who, incidentally, later became a particularly malevolent Minister of Health and Social Security):

  ‘Charles Paris had a brave stab at the part, but unfortunately it did not survive his attack’.

  On the Wednesday matinée, when the house was minimal and so was the cast’s concentration, Charles came rather unstuck with his deaf-aid.

  To be honest, it wasn’t his fault. Or it wasn’t completely his fault. He got fed the wrong line.

  Inevitably, it was in the Hooded Owl speech, the play’s focus for either triumph or disaster. Charles had just turned to face the glass case, having made the analogy of the Hooded Owl and God. The line he should have received next was, ‘Why not? This stuffed bird has always been in the room.’ But, unfortunately, what the A.S.M. read to him was, ‘Why not? This bird has always been stuffed in this room.’