by Simon Brett
‘Thank you very much.’ The words were loaded with irony. ‘If I make a come-back, it won’t just be because nostalgia’s very big, whatever that means. It’ll be because I’m a bloody good comic. I’m going to go on being a comic and if it turns out that I’m what the audience wants suddenly, then I’m sure I’ll be a rich and popular comic again. If that doesn’t happen, it won’t stop me working.’
‘But don’t you get depressed when it’s going badly?’ asked Charles, prepared to identify with the reply.
‘Of course you do, but it doesn’t stop you doing it. It’s my profession. Look, an estate agent doesn’t stop estate agenting when a house sale falls through and I don’t stop being a comic when I get the bird. I get depressed, sure, but it just makes me determined to do it better. I’m not like that poor boy who used to do I Do Like To Be Beside the Seaside, what was his name? Mark Sheridan, that’s right. He shot himself in Glasgow when the audience hadn’t liked his act. Well, that’s not my style. I just keep doing it.’
‘But surely you want to get back to the success you had in the forties and fifties?’
‘Oh sure I’d like to get back. I’m human. That was good, that was a peak. The money, for a start, being recognized in the street, flash restaurants, showbiz golf, Royal Variety Show, all the ballyhoo. But if it doesn’t happen, I’ll still be a comic, that’s all I’m saying.’
‘I think it could happen again,’ said Walter Proud wisely, as if he was withholding some information on the subject. Charles knew from his experience of Walter’s character that he wasn’t.
‘I don’t think about it no more.’ Barber took a swig from his whisky glass. ‘I’ve heard too many agents and producers saying this is going to be the big one, this time it’ll really take off. I tell you, I been discovered so often that I’m only glad all the discoverers didn’t plant flags on me. OK, a comic has peaks and troughs. I’ve had my peaks, I’m lucky – a lot of comics never even have that. My Dad never made it big. Always a great comic, but nobody remembers the name. And what’s more, it didn’t stop him working.’
The long exposition of his life seemed to have relaxed him. He joked over the choice of sweets before plumping for a Little Nell. ‘I shouldn’t really, but the old guts don’t seem to have taken the first course too badly.’
Charles thought it might be a good time to find out a little background to the death of Bill Peaky. ‘Interesting, the Hunstanton show,’ he began.
Lennie Barber quickly showed up the fatuity of that as an opening gambit. ‘Interesting? I would have thought it was anything but bloody interesting. Now if you’d said boring or dull or terrible, I’d be right with you. But interesting – no. Summer season’s always hell – even pantomime’s better – but Hunstanton was the bottom. Nothing happened there.’
‘Except the death of a comedian,’ Charles offered gently.
‘Like I said, comedians have died in every –’
‘I didn’t mean that. Bill Peaky.’
‘Oh, him.’ From his intonation, it sounded as if he had genuinely forgotten the incident. ‘Was he a comedian?’
Walter Proud couldn’t forget that he had actually been trying to set up a programme with the dead man. ‘Oh yes, I think he was enormously talented. Would have developed into something really big.’
‘Jesus, Walter, ever since I’ve known you, you’ve always wanted everything to be big. Back in Ally Pally days, when you were just a technical boffin with all the sound recording stuff, you were always talking about things being big. I don’t know whether Bill Peaky was going to be big or not. Personally I couldn’t see anything in his act. He had no technique, no experience. But I’m prepared to believe from the money they were paying him that somebody thought he had a future. But a short one, surely. The public will be fooled by novelty for a bit, but they soon get tired of it.’
‘They didn’t get much of a chance to get tired of Bill Peaky,’ observed Charles.
‘No. Mind you, the rest of the company did. A little of him went a very long way.’
‘Not popular, you mean?’ Charles overlaid his interest with casualness.
‘You could say that. About as popular as a mosquito in a sleeping bag. Always going on about how great he was, how much money he was making, what a big star he was going to be. Fair got up everyone’s hooter. No, he was riding for a fall. Just as well he snuffed it before someone helped him on the way.’
It shouldn’t have been, but it was a shock to Charles to realize that most people still thought of the death as an accident. The presumption of murder had become so much a part of his thinking. ‘Anyone in particular out to get him?’ he asked with the same casualness.
‘Like I say, no one liked him. Big-headed little runt. He was so rude to everyone. My God, the things he said to that poor little pianist, Norman del Rosa. But not just him. Everyone. We were all crap and he was God’s gift to the entertainment business.’
‘What about the girls? Did they like him?’
‘If you mean was he shafting any of them, the answer was yes. I think he was trying to work his way through all the dancers.’
‘These Foolish Things?’
‘Yes. Maybe he thought when he’d had all of them, he could send off for a free badge or something.’
‘How far had he got when he died?’
‘He’d made it with a couple of them, I know. But I think he may have come unstuck with one called Janine.’
‘What, she wasn’t having any?’
‘Oh no, not that. But she got a bit serious about him. He’d seen it as wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, but I think she had something more permanent in mind. They had a fairly major bust-up about it. Lots of shouting in the dressing rooms and slamming doors.’
That confirmed what Vita Maureen had hinted at so decorously.
And suddenly something else slotted into place. Charles thought back to the show in the Winter Gardens, Hunstanton. To the end of the first half. When These Foolish Things had mimed and danced to When You Need Me. When, contrary to all the teaching of Chuck Sheba the great choreographer, there had been four boys and only three girls. Charles reckoned he could put money on the name of the missing girl.
In fact, to find the murderer of Bill Peaky, the first essential was to trace a Foolish Thing called Janine.
CHAPTER FOUR
COMIC: An out-of-work actor came home one day and found his wife in a hysterical state, her clothes torn, her face and arms scratched to pieces.
‘My God,’ he cried. ‘What happened?’
‘It was terrible,’ his wife replied. ‘This man came round and raped me.’
‘Who was it?’ shouted the actor in fury. ‘Who was it?’
‘Your agent.’
‘My agent? Did he leave a message?’
There was only one member of the Sun ’n’ Funtime company over whom Charles had any hold. And fortunately Vita Maureen, anticipating a reciprocal genteel tea party, had given him their phone number in Dollis Hill.
Norman sounded guilty when he answered the phone, as if he had been caught in the lavatory with a dirty book. From what Charles knew of the pianist’s character, it was quite possible that he had been caught in the lavatory with a dirty book.
‘I’m sorry, Vita’s out.’ He didn’t entertain the possibility of anyone wanting to speak to him rather than to his lovely wife. ‘She’s doing an audition for a new rock musical about the Boston Strangler.’
While Charles’ mind stove to digest this incongruity, his voice said he didn’t want to speak to Vita anyway.
‘Oh.’ Norman sounded desperately unhappy.
‘It’s about the dancers in the Hunstanton show.’
Of course Norman took it wrong. ‘Look, you said you’d never mention that. Are you trying to blackmail me, because I daren’t let Vita find out about –’
‘No, no,’ Charles soothed. ‘I wouldn’t dream of breaking your confidence.’
‘Oh.’ Norman sounded appeased but still suspicious. ‘Then
what do you want?’
‘I’m trying to trace one of the dancers. Janine. She was the one who was having an affair with Peaky, wasn’t she?’
‘Everyone reckoned so. Mind you, I don’t think she was the first in the company.’ This was said with a kind of wistful relish. Maybe Norman del Rosa didn’t confine his voyeurism to peeking at girls changing.
‘And she had a row with Peaky on the day he died?’
‘Yes.’
‘When he broke off the affair.’
‘That’s what everyone reckoned.’ Norman del Rosa was unwilling to answer anything off his own bat; he needed the support of majority opinion.
‘And then she went off in the middle of the show?’
‘Yes, she wasn’t well. Gastric trouble.’
Fairly easy to fake. Lots of visits to the lavatory and nobody would question their authenticity. ‘So, what . . . she went home?’
‘Back to her digs, yes. Got a taxi. Actually . . .’ Norman dropped his voice for the great daring of an opinion, ‘I think it could have been caused by the emotional upset.’
Charles agreed, but didn’t say so. ‘Do you happen to remember when she got the taxi home? Straight after their opening number, or what?’
She may have ordered it then. I don’t think it arrived till the end of the interval.’
Giving her plenty of time to tamper with the amplifier extension. ‘Look, I want to get in touch with this Janine. Any idea where she lives?’
Anyone would have asked why Charles wanted to contact the girl, but Norman del Rosa wasn’t going to get involved. ‘I don’t know, Charles. I mean, I know where she was staying in Hunstanton, but she’ll have gone from there.’
‘Give me the address anyway. She must have told the landlady where she lived.’
Norman gave the information, again making no concession to curiosity. Maybe he regarded this as the price of Charles’ silence over his own sad little secret.
‘And if I don’t get any joy there, do you know who the group’s agent was?’
Again Norman obliged. Then, with ill-disguised relief, he put the phone down.
Janine’s Hunstanton landlady had stepped straight out of Your Favourite Seaside Landlady Jokes. As she fulminated down the phone, Charles visualized a McGill postcard figure, arms folded righteously beneath her enormous bosom, bottom thrust backwards with rectitude, body swathed in a print overall and curlered hair scooped up into a red print handkerchief.
Basically she was offended by his call. And she let him know it. ‘I keep a respectable private hotel and I don’t give the addresses of my clients to any Tom, Dick and Harry who phones up out of the blue. I’ll have you know, I only allow in a very respectable type of client. I don’t want you to think that I’m prepared to act as a mere convenience. I don’t set up assignations for girls who come and stay here. You ought to be ashamed at your age – chasing after young girls. She’s not been here for weeks, anyway. I know you dirty old men, pestering girls young enough to be your daughters. Well, I don’t keep a licensed brothel and –’
‘Look, all I’m trying to do is to contact the girl to –’
‘Don’t you come the heavy breather with me, my man. Oh, I know your sort. You think just because a girl’s a dancer, because she’s prepared, for her art, to show a little leg onstage that –’
The pips went. Charles decided it wasn’t worth putting in more money.
He stood irresolute by the pay phone on the landing of the Hereford Road house where he lived. One thing the affronted landlady had told him was that he needed a cover. Unless he found some story to explain why he wanted to find the girl, all his inquiries were going to be met with the same suspicion. Maybe he even needed another identity to help him out. With a little bubble of school-boy excitement, he went into his bedsitter to look at his range of clothes.
The man who walked into the office of Alltalent Artistes in Berwick Street was wearing a trilby hat and a long beige mackintosh. The trilby dated from the days when men actually wore trilbies and the raincoat Charles had bought at a jumble sale during one of his economy drives and never worn because it was too big. He thought the image was not inappropriate to an insurance salesman. The potential shabbiness of the garb was offset, he felt, by a rather distinguished pair of silver-rimmed half-glasses and a slim black briefcase.
The girl in the hardboarded-off cupboard which served as reception was not impressed. She peered over her typewriter and the detritus of coffee-cups, publicity photographs and handouts that littered her desk. ‘What do you want? If it’s Danielle, French Model, that’s up two more floors.’
‘No, I wanted to come here,’ said Charles in the precise tones of an insurance salesman, innocent of any activities of French Models other than modelling Parisian fashions. He had worked quite hard on the characterization. He was using the voice he had developed for The Fireraisers in Newcastle (‘Had I not known it to be a good play, this production would not have convinced me of its merit.’— Hexham Courant.) And if he ran out of motivation or vocabulary for his character, all he had to do was to focus his mind on his son-in-law, Miles Taylerson, who was a rising force in the insurance world and spent all of Charles’ rare visits to his home trying to get his signature onto a policy.
Charles produced his carefully prepared identification routine. ‘I’m from the Eagle Crown Insurance Company.’ He didn’t give a name; there was always the danger he might forget it. ‘I’m trying to contact Miss Janine Bentley, whom I believe is a client of Alltalent Artistes.’ Maybe the ‘whom’ was a bit much. Still, the girl was not a discriminating audience.
‘Well, she doesn’t live here. Why don’t you try her home?’
‘I have tried, but had no success at the address where we previously had dealings.’
‘Hmm.’ The girl still looked at him askance. ‘I’ll go and tell Mr. Green you’re here.’
She edged round her desk and through a door in the hardboard partition. Opposite Charles hung a publicity poster for These Foolish Things. As when he had seen them on-stage, he was struck that Janine Bentley was the prettiest one. She intrigued him. There was a quality of innocence in her face that seemed out of place in a murder investigation.
The thinness of the hardboard which separated off Mr. Green’s office meant that Charles could hear exactly how the agent’s secretary described him.
‘There’s a funny sort of bloke outside trying to contact Janine.’
‘Oh yeah. Who is he?’
‘Says he’s from some insurance company.’
‘Legit?’
‘Dunno. Looks a bit weird.’
Weird? It is the actor’s lot to have his performances dissected by ill-informed critics.
‘You better show him in.’
The secretary came back into view and scuttled behind her desk as if Charles had rabies. ‘Mr. Green will see you. If you’d like to go in.’
Mr. Green was a thick-set man, whose nose appeared to have been the victim of cosmetic surgery. The disparity between it and the rest of his heavy features made it almost impossible to conduct a conversation with him without staring transfixedly at the little button in the middle of his face.’
Out came the identification routine again. Green looked at him in silence for a moment, assessing. ‘I gather you’re trying to contact Janine Bentley.’
‘That is correct, yes.’
‘Why?’
Still on prepared ground. ‘A couple of years ago I sold Miss Bentley a life-insurance policy. Linked in fact to our property fund, which, I must say is doing very well at the moment with the current upturn in property values. Well, there has recently been a slight change in our company’s manner of dealing with our clients’ investments and I wanted to discuss the new options available with Miss Bentley.’ Pretty damned good, Charles thought to himself.
Green still looked at him. ‘Janine never struck me as the sort of girl to go in for life-insurance.’
‘Oh really? We’re talking about the
same Janine, aren’t we? The one who dances with These Foolish Things. She obviously behaves very differently with different people. I mean, she went into the whole business of insurance with me in great detail. Very mature, responsible young lady. You wouldn’t think it when you see her on-stage, all flashing thighs and carefree bounce. But I find a lot of my clients are like that. Whatever they’re like on the outside, sensible people do think about life-insurance . . . I don’t suppose you yourself might be interested in any of the schemes that our company offers . . .’ he added diffidently.
That was naughty. He shouldn’t have got carried away. But fortunately Green reacted just as Charles always did when Miles got on to his favourite subject.
‘I wouldn’t under normal circumstances give anyone the address of one of my clients. You know, there are a lot of strange people about.’ The agent paused and appraised Charles. ‘Middle-aged men, possibly not very happy in their private lives, who are often anxious to get in touch with my girls. They are, after all, attractive girls.’
‘Oh, very attractive.’
‘Yes. And I have to protect them. But in the case of Janine any moral decision I might have to make about putting her in touch with you is made for me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I can’t put you in touch with her. I don’t know where she is.’
‘But you must know where the group’s working.’
‘Janine is no longer a member of the group.’
‘When did she leave?’
‘Rang me about a week ago. Said she had to get out “for personal reasons”. Bloody inconvenient for the group. They’ve just got a big telly spectacular coming up and I’ve got plenty on my plate without having to rush around auditioning new girls. Apart from anything else, all the ones I’ve seen so far have been terrible.’
‘So Janine left just at the end of the Hunstanton booking?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Could you give me her home address so that I can contact her there?’
‘Wouldn’t do you a lot of good if I did. She’s moved out. Used to live in a flat with a boy-friend, but I gather they’ve split up. Anyway, he’s moved out too.’