A Comedian Dies

by Simon Brett

  Charles stood alone and drank. His mind kept coming back to Janine Bentley. Pretty girl. Long golden hair. Not an intelligent face, but a sweet one. Appealing, childish really. Where was she?

  ‘Look, I do want to talk about the series potential in this thing, Charles old man.’ It was Walter back again. Nigel Frisch and Alexander Harvey had only required him as a waiter for their drinks and had not volunteered to include him in their conversation. Charles’ mind was not on series potential. ‘Walter, you know that show at Hunstanton . . .?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You saw it a few times, I gather?’

  ‘Yes.’ Walter looked at him blankly.

  ‘Did you meet one of the dancers called Janine?’

  The producer’s look changed from blankness to slight suspicion. ‘Yes, I met her.’

  ‘Apparently she was having an affair with Bill Peaky.’

  ‘Yes, or he was with her, whichever way you like to put it. So what? Do you disapprove?’

  ‘No, no. It’s just . . . I don’t know, they’re supposed to have had a quarrel on the afternoon he died.’

  ‘Yes, somebody mentioned that. She was serious about him; he wasn’t about her. Apparently Janine had been in touch with Peaky’s wife and told her what was going on, imagining, I think, that the wife would give up her claims and allow the course of true love to run smooth.’

  ‘Really. And that’s what annoyed Peaky?’

  ‘I gather so. It’d annoy most men. I’d have been pretty damned annoyed if any of my little bits on the side had told Angela.’ Somehow the sexual bravado in his tone didn’t carry conviction.

  ‘Hmm. Do you know what Peaky’s relationship with his wife was?’

  ‘Well, they were married. Sorry, being facetious. I don’t know. I think OK, but Bill used to put it about a bit.’

  ‘So I heard. Incidentally, Walter, do you know Peaky’s wife – widow, I should say?’

  ‘I’ve met her. Carla. Pretty girl. Lives out towards Epping Forest somewhere. Wouldn’t say I know her really.’ Walter Proud drained his gin reflectively. ‘Pity about Bill Peaky. Really talented boy. I thought I’d get some kind of show going there. Still, it’s an ill wind. If I hadn’t gone to Hunstanton to see him, I wouldn’t have made contact with old Lennie Barber again and tonight wouldn’t have happened.’

  Gerald Venables, who had been ensconced in a corner of the bar with the head of the television company’s contract department, offered to drive Charles home. ‘So where do you go now, big boy?’ he asked as the Mercedes purred along.

  ‘I reckon finding Janine is still the first priority.’

  ‘Cherchez la femme.’

  ‘But since the trail seems to have gone cold there at the moment, I think I might cherchez the family instead for a bit.’

  ‘Whose family?’

  ‘Peaky’s family. I think I’ll get in touch with his widow.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  COMIC: Do you know, I’m going to marry a widow?

  FEED: Are you? Ooh, I wouldn’t fancy being the second husband of a widow.

  COMIC: I’d sooner be the second than the first.

  Charles rang the phone number Walter Proud had given him the next morning. He asked to speak to Mrs. Peaky and was told he was speaking to Mrs. Pratt, who was Bill Peaky’s widow. He should have realized that Peaky was too good a name for a comedian to be genuine.

  He had decided that when he spoke to her, he would not attempt any subterfuge. Since she had not been in Hunstanton at the time, she could not possibly have been implicated in her husband’s death and she was likely to be interested to hear of any suspicious circumstances.

  She spoke slowly, treading her accent with caution like a tight-rope walker, all right at her own pace, but at speed in danger of falling into the Cockney below. ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘You don’t know me, Mrs. Pratt, and I hope you don’t mind my calling you. My name’s Charles Paris. I was present in Hunstanton when your husband died.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to upset you, but I’ve since heard things that make me wonder whether his death was in fact an accident.’

  ‘Whether it was . . . What, you mean that someone might have . . . that he might have been murdered?’

  ‘I believe it’s possible.’

  There was a long pause from the other end of the phone. When it came back, her voice was strained, less at pains to hide its origins. ‘Do you have any suspicions as to who might have murdered him?’

  ‘Suspicions, vague thoughts, nothing concrete. I wanted to talk to you about it.’

  ‘Me? But I –’

  ‘I’m sorry. Please don’t misunderstand me. Of course I’m not wishing to imply any suspicion of you. I just wanted to talk to you about your husband, ask if you know of anyone with a sufficiently strong grudge against him to . . . I’m sorry, I thought you would be interested.’

  ‘Yes, of course I am. It’s just a bit of a shock. I mean, it never occurred to me that . . . You’re convinced that it was murder?’

  ‘Fairly convinced, yes.’

  ‘As I say, it’s a shock.’

  ‘Of course. Can we meet?’

  ‘I think we should.’

  ‘Just say where and when.’

  ‘Do you mind coming out here? I’m sorry, it’s difficult to park the children at short notice. Can you come today?’

  Charles’ professional calendar was as empty as usual. ‘Certainly. Tell me how to get to you.’

  There was no evidence of the children when he arrived at the house. Presumably Carla Pratt had managed to park them at short notice after all.

  The house was in Chigwell, a nice area for an East End boy like Bill Peaky to aspire to when he started to make a bit of money. No doubt all the neighbours were company directors, professional footballers and minor racketeers. The building was a bungalow that seemed to have sprawled out of control, with a double garage and hacienda-style arch-ways that had been added to take the curse off its thirties redbrick lines. The frontage was all wrought iron, black wrought iron gates relieving black wrought iron railings.

  This motif was continued inside the sitting room where black wrought iron supported glass shelves, plant pots, light fittings, marble-topped tables and a series of photographs of Bill Peaky’s triumphs. The curled black metal gave the room a coldness, a newness, as if the decor were for show, not for living in.

  Carla Pratt was also dressed in black, but she had a higher cuddlability rating than the wrought iron. Her curves were less machined and warmer. Charles had seen her distantly at the inquest, but never without a coat and so had not appreciated her splendid contours. He recalled Walter Proud saying she had been a dancer and child-bearing had not slackened the athleticism of her figure. Nor did the black glazed cotton dress, worn presumably as a token of mourning, do anything to disguise her shape. Indeed, it offered fascinating grounds for conjecture as to whether she was wearing one of those negligible bras made of flimsy stuff like they wrap supermarket chickens in, or none at all.

  Her blonde hair had been recently (and expensively) cut and she looked fit and lively. If she was suffering from the pains of widowhood, she disguised it well.

  Having sat Charles down and provided him with a cup of coffee (instant, but one of the more expensive blends), she asked him to give his grounds for suspicion and he ran through the business of Norman del Rosa’s revelation again.

  ‘That doesn’t prove murder,’ she said with what sounded like relief. Presumably someone who has just reconciled herself to her husband’s death is not anxious to have to change her whole pattern of thinking on the subject.

  ‘Doesn’t prove it, but it does make the death seem rather odd. The particular electrical set-up which caused it would have been bound to show up on the ringmain tester.’

  ‘So you think someone fiddled with the wires after Bill tested it?’

  ‘That would seem a logical conclusion.’

  ‘Hmm.
’ She seemed to be waiting for him in some way, waiting for him to come to the point. Maybe she still feared that he was building up to an accusation. ‘But why? Why should anyone do that?’

  ‘One of my reasons for wanting to see you was the hope that you might be able to answer that question. The old “Did your husband have any enemies?” routine.’

  ‘I see. Let me think.’ It didn’t take her long. ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘You mean everyone liked him?’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked at Charles, as if daring him to challenge her assertion.

  He had no intention of challenging it, but it seemed odd. This certainly did not tally with what everyone else had said about Peaky. Still, Carla was his widow. Maybe in her eyes he could do no wrong. And, of course, she had not been in the company with him to hear his slights against fellow-performers.

  ‘But, Mrs. Pratt, someone who has as much success as your husband, and so quickly, is likely to cause jealousy among other people in the business. Didn’t you ever hear of that sort of thing?’

  ‘Not in Bill’s case, no.’ She said it with great determination. Difficult to tell whether or not she was protesting too much. Feeling that maybe she had not made her point, she added, ‘He was a wonderful man’.

  Charles lowered his eyes and regretted that he had never had the pleasure of meeting the young comedian. ‘So you can’t imagine anyone wanting to get him out of the way?’

  ‘No. No one except a maniac or someone like that. Why should anyone in their right mind want to destroy our lives, leave the two boys without their Dad, leave me a widow? It’s madness.’ She didn’t look particularly ruffled as she delivered this speech, but it could have come from genuine feeling. Emotion is revealed in many ways. Charles felt an indefinable suspicion as to her sincerity but decided that he was being hypersensitive.

  ‘I agree, it is madness, Mrs. Pratt, but if it were murder, would you mind my investigating it?’

  ‘How’d you mean?’

  ‘I mean, do you want me to find out all I can about the circumstances or would you rather I forgot all about it?’

  ‘No. If there is some possibility that he was murdered, I’d have to know. I mean, if I said forget it, it’d sound like I didn’t care.’

  ‘Only to me. No one else would know.’

  ‘That’s true.’ She vacillated. ‘But no, we’ve got to find out. I loved him. I’ve got to know.’

  Her final avowal again sounded pedestrian, but maybe that was as emotional as she ever got.

  Still, she had given Charles a cue and he was obliged to pick it up. ‘You say you loved him. You mean it was a happy marriage?’

  ‘Of course,’ she snapped.

  ‘I’m sorry to ask you this, but I’ve talked to other members of the Hunstanton company and they have suggested that perhaps your husband was not always . . . completely faithful?’

  He was fully prepared to get his face slapped for that, but her reply was surprisingly mild. ‘He was away a lot. I suppose in the nature of things he must have met other girls, had the occasional fling. I never asked. At least he had the decency to keep that sort of thing away from his own doorstep.’

  ‘He never talked about any girl-friends?’

  ‘No. We had a good marriage.’ Her persistence on this point was again unsettling. If the marriage was that good, if she had been so desolated by her husband’s death, how could she be so cool and collected and even sexy (yes, definitely sexy) so soon afterwards?

  ‘And you never met any of his girl-friends?’

  ‘Never. He wouldn’t humiliate me. It was a good marriage,’ she insisted.

  ‘Yes. Of course. So the name Janine Bentley doesn’t mean anything to you?’

  She shook her head. Charles elaborated. ‘Janine Bentley is a dancer. She was in the Hunstanton company. Backstage gossip said she was having an affair with your husband just before he died. Backstage gossip also said they had a serious row on the afternoon of his death.’

  ‘What? And you think she might have murdered him out of spite?’ Carla asked with wonderment.

  Charles shrugged. ‘It’s a theory. I’d certainly like to talk to her. Unfortunately she’s disappeared.’

  ‘But she’s your main suspect?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that, but she seems to have had more motive than anyone else. Also opportunity. If I found out something more which pointed to her guilt, I’d be prepared to be very suspicious.’

  ‘I see.’ Carla Pratt seemed to be thinking something out. When she spoke again, it was with much greater fluency. Maybe now for the first time she felt that she was not under suspicion and could speak freely. ‘I think I have heard of her.’

  ‘From Bill?’

  ‘In a way.’

  ‘I heard a rumour that she was very serious about him. Talking about marriage, expecting him to divorce you, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Bill would never have divorced me.’

  ‘You sound almost as if you wish he had.’

  The wistfulness of its tone had given her remark that flavour, but she bridled strongly at the suggestion. ‘Certainly not. You got me all wrong if you think that. All I ever wanted was to go on being with Bill. It was a very good marriage.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry. I was being facetious. Going back to Janine. The rumours I heard suggested that the row she had with your husband on the afternoon of his death was caused by her threat to tell you about their relationship.’

  Carla Pratt was silent for a long time after this. When she did speak, for the first time in their conversation her voice was a little unsteady with emotion. ‘You seem to know so much, I might as well tell you.’

  Charles made a sympathetic grunt, unwilling to break her new confidential mood with words.

  ‘She did tell me. She rang up here. About a week before Bill died. She said they were having this affair and they wanted to get married and I ought to know.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I didn’t believe her. I mean, I believed Bill was having a bit of fun with her – he liked girls – but nothing serious, no. So after she’d spoken, I rang him and asked. He admitted the affair, but he said she had got it all out of proportion. Apparently she was very mixed-up. Strange kid, a bit unbalanced, so Bill said. Certainly she sounded it when she talked to me.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She talked about men. Other men she had known. How they’d all been bastards until she met Bill. Apparently she’d had some long affair with a guy in a rock group, trailing round the country, following his tours. That had turned sour. She sounded sort of manic, if that’s the word.’ As Carla Pratt talked, her posh accent was eroded and the Cockney showed through.

  ‘Did she make any threats against Bill – or indeed against you?’

  ‘No. If she had, I daresay I’d have thought about it when he died and put two and two together.’ The last word came out as ‘togevver.’

  ‘You didn’t have any further contact with her?’

  ‘None at all. She was really weird on the phone, sort of spooky, like people in those exorcism films.’

  ‘And you’ve no idea where she is now? As I say, she’s disappeared.’

  ‘Haven’t a clue. Never even met her. Only spoke to her the once. And you know, now I come to think of it, after I come off the phone from talking to her, I felt really frightened.’

  As the Underground slowly took him back into central London, Charles went through the interview in his mind. It was full of strange inconsistencies. Carla’s image of her husband seemed so at variance with everyone else’s. Still, marriage must involve a degree of blindness to the partner’s faults. Perhaps it was natural enough. So, come to think of it, was her initial fear that Charles was suspicious of her as her husband’s killer. However illogical, everyone’s first instinct is to feel guilty. And no doubt her poised sexy exterior was just a carefully built up bastion against uncontrollable emotion.

  More important than the contradiction in Carla
Pratt’s character was the illumination she had given into the character of Janine Bentley. He had had difficulty visualizing the girl as a calculating killer. Other descriptions had suggested a rather anonymous, quiet little thing.

  But a girl who sounded unbalanced, indeed a girl who would make the kind of phone-call described, was a much more disturbing proposition. And there was another important detail – a girl who had spent a lot of time trailing round after a rock group would pick up some sort of knowledge of how their equipment worked and might well know how to stage a fatal ‘accident’.

  It was even more imperative that he should find Janine Bentley.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  COMIC: Did you hear about the Irish tap dancer?

  FEED: No.

  COMIC: He fell in the sink.

  Charles thought it would be tempting providence to approach Mr. Mike Green (he who conducted business under an assumed nose) in another disguise. The ‘raincoat débâcle’ had dealt a blow to his faith in his protean abilities.

  Vocally, though, he retained his confidence and it was the perky voice he had used in Fings Ain’t What They Used To Be (‘The boldness of choosing this piece was not justified by the company’s abilities’ — Leamington Spa Courier) that was transferred through by the suspicious secretary to Mr. Green.

  ‘Hello. You say you are from The Sun?’

  ‘That’s right. Bob Cherry of Photographic Features department.’ Oops. Silly choice of name.

  But fortunately Mr. Green did not seem to be a reader of the Billy Bunter stories. ‘I see. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Idea came up at an editorial meeting for doing a series of features on dance groups – gather you represent These Foolish Things – wonder if I could contact the group, have a bit of a chat, background stuff, then if the idea seems to be working send along a photographer, take a few pics. Any objections in principle?’

  ‘No, not in principle, no. When would you want to do this?’

  ‘’Fraid it’s a bit of a rush job – want to get something rough mapped out today, so that the editor can run his peepers over it, give us the go-ahead on the series.’