Murder in the Title

by Simon Brett

  ‘Yes. Thank you very much.’

  ‘And if Tony –’

  Donald Mason was interrupted by a knock on the door. ‘That’ll be Mrs Feller. This is obviously the early stage of her campaign – she still bothers to knock. It’ll get worse.’

  He extended his hand to the actor. ‘Thanks for coming in, Charles. I’m relying on you, so keep it up.’

  Considering the circumstances, Charles reflected, the General Manager’s final cliché was singularly inapposite.

  Well-being flooded through Charles. Partly it was the first symptom of recovery from his hangover, that breakthrough moment when continuing existence first seems a possibility. When he had woken, three hours previously, the movement from horizontal to vertical had seemed insuperable, and yet here he was, on two feet, moving around, suffering from nothing worse than a light headache playing around his temples. He was even feeling hunger, a sensation which he thought had abandoned his body for ever.

  He went into a little café near the theatre and tucked into an espresso coffee and two jam doughnuts.

  Of course the euphoria wasn’t just physical. The interview with Donald Mason had contributed enormously. Though he’d thought he’d wanted the catharsis of dismissal, he was deeply relieved to have been spared it. Basically he had a respect for his profession and was disgusted by his unprofessional behaviour.

  And the surprise of how he had misjudged the General Manager’s character added an extra glow.

  All he had to do was to behave impeccably for the remainder of the run of The Message Is Murder.

  And sort out where he stood with Frances.

  There was a payphone in the café. But there was still no reply from his wife’s number at her new flat in Highgate.

  Still, she was unlikely to be there at twelve o’clock in the morning. If it was term-time, she’d be hard at work at the school where she was headmistress. And if it was half-term or holiday . . . oh God, he could never remember when they came. Frances’ life was always sliced up into neat segments by these academic dividers, while his own remained a shifting morass without any demarcation.

  He contemplated trying the school, but rejected the idea. Even if she was there, she was bound to be busy, and the circumstances wouldn’t be ideal for the sort of conversation they needed to have. Instead he rang the Pangbourne number of his daughter, Juliet. She answered.

  ‘It’s me . . . Charles.’ She never called him by his Christian name, but he couldn’t bring himself to say ‘Daddy’.

  ‘Oh, hello. How are you?’

  ‘Fine.’ The conventional lie. ‘And you?’

  ‘Yes, fine. Busy, but fine.’

  ‘Kids?’

  ‘Twins are at school, thank God, but Sebastian’s being a bit of a pain. He’s teething.’

  Charles had forgotten about his third grandson. Sebastian, born some eight months previously, ‘a brother for Damian and Julian’. God, why did they choose those names? Probably because Juliet’s husband, rising star of the insurance world, had discovered there were special reduced premiums for people whose names ended in I-A-N.

  ‘How is Miles?’

  ‘Oh, fine. He’s just been promoted. He’s now an Assistant Branch Manager.’

  ‘Oh.’ Then, because comment seemed appropriate, ‘Good for him.’

  ‘Yes, it is. It means we’ve been able to get a new dishwasher.’

  ‘Oh, good.’

  ‘Makes a big difference.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Miles has just bought me a food-processor, which is going to be a great help mashing up Sebastian’s stuff.’

  ‘I’m sure it is.’ He had to change the subject before he was treated to a complete inventory of the Taylersons’ kitchen. ‘I’ve been trying to contact your mother.’

  ‘Ah.’ He was sure Juliet’s tone changed with this syllable. It became more guarded. What was she hiding? Had she been given specific instructions from Frances as to how to deal with enquiries? Had Frances moved into some love-nest with her schools inspector and was Juliet the guardian of their secret address?

  ‘Can’t get any reply from her flat.’

  ‘No. Well, it’s half-term. She’s away.’

  ‘I thought you said your boys’re at school,’ said Charles with involuntary suspicion.

  ‘Yes, but they have different half-terms from the State schools.’

  My, oh my, Miles was doing well. Private education. No doubt paid for by a carefully selected insurance policy.

  ‘Of course. When’s Frances back?’

  ‘Sunday afternoon, I think.’ The ‘I think’ was mere dressing: Juliet obviously knew the exact hour of her mother’s return.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Paris.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Silence hung between them, the old silence of poor communication and ungainly love, but now shadowed by another awkwardness.

  Charles couldn’t just let the conversation drift to more kitchenalia and then goodbyes. He had to ask the questions hovering between them.

  ‘Is she there on her own?’

  ‘No.’

  He must mention the name as if it were familiar, as if he were a man of the world accepting the fait accompli. ‘Is she there with David?’ he asked, begging for a negative reply.

  ‘Yes,’ said Juliet.

  In some ways it made things better. At least it introduced an element of definition. Like a condemned man who has heard his sentence, Charles could begin to plan, devise ways of coping with his situation. He ordered another cup of coffee.

  It had been inevitable and he had no right to complain. He had left Frances twenty years before, and had been lucky to retain her as an emotional long-stop for so long. There had been rapprochements and reconciliations, but none had lasted. His character and his life were not compatible with the regularities of marriage. The only surprise was that she, still an attractive woman in her early fifties, had not met anyone else sooner.

  So he reasoned it out.

  But it still hurt.

  It was by forcing his mind off the subject of Frances that he began to think about the events of the previous night. His worries about her, the haze and pains of alcohol, the threat of dismissal, had prevented him from concentrating on the rather significant fact that someone had tried to kill him.

  Some of his recollections of the night were blurred, but the sight of the sword-blade stabbing through the flat above him was cinematically clear.

  It had happened. There was no doubt about it. When he inspected the flat under the working lights of the stage, Charles could see the new gash in the canvas. He stood in his normal dead body position and confirmed that gash corresponded with the middle of his back. He shivered.

  He went round the back of the flat and found that the tear had been repaired. A rectangular strip of canvas had been glued on to prevent the split from spreading. Someone had made that repair, but had it been just an act of routine maintenance or the cover-up of a failed crime?

  The theatre appeared to be empty. It was lunchtime on the Friday of the first week of the run. The Shove It cast would be at their outside rehearsal room (the Drill Hall which, he had learned that morning, they were about to lose). Any stage staff who might be in the theatre were likely to be up in the bar. But Charles did a little backstage tour to see if he could find the mysterious flat-repairer.

  He heard a voice as he approached the Green Room. It was Rick Harmer’s. Charles stopped out of sight of the phone and listened.

  ‘Yes, I know that’s the situation at the moment, but don’t worry, I’m going to be up for that recording. And the whole day’s rehearsal. I’m going to see that cast says my lines right. Look, I know that, and I’m not going to risk losing the job here, but somehow I’m going to make the bastard change his mind and agree to release me. I don’t know how, I’ll think of something. He is not going to stand in my way. No, okay, leave it with me. Yes. Anything else come up? Any enquiries? Availability checks?’

&n
bsp; These last questions identified Rick’s interlocutor as his agent. And Charles gained unworthy pleasure from the fact that Rick obviously got the same answers as he did when making the same enquiries of Maurice Skellern.

  He waited till the phone was down before proceeding casually round the corner.

  ‘Oh, Rick. Hello.’

  ‘Hi. Feeling better this morning?’ the A.S.M. asked with a hint of malice.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘Seen Donald?’

  No secrets in a provincial theatre company.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I have.’ Charles deliberately delayed gratifying Rick’s patent curiosity, before saying, ‘I’m staying on.’

  ‘Oh.’ The A.S.M. was so surprised it was a moment before he managed to say, ‘Good.’

  ‘Yes. Oh, incidentally, Rick, I was just looking onstage . . . at the scene of my disgrace . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And I noticed there was a tear in the flat at the back of my cupboard.’

  ‘Oh yes, I noticed that. I just repaired it, so that it doesn’t spread.’

  The answer came quickly enough, and apparently without guile.

  ‘Any idea how it happened?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The tear. What I mean is – did I do it while I was thrashing around last night?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so. No, I imagine something fell against it or someone caught a prop on it in the dark.’

  Which sounded reasonable enough – to anyone who hadn’t seen the real cause.

  Charles justified having a pint at lunchtime on medical grounds. It wasn’t going to be the start of another heavy day; it was just a necessary compensation for the dehydration caused by his hangover.

  And it did taste good.

  As he sat over it, he concentrated his mind on the stabbing.

  Two things seemed clear. First, that it had been a deliberate act. And, second, that he had not been the intended victim.

  The second conclusion came from lack of motivation. He had hardly been in the company long enough for anyone to build up murderous resentment against him, and the one person who might harbour such thoughts, Kathy Kitson, had been onstage at the moment of the attack.

  Leslie Blatt had been pretty furious with him the previous evening for ‘making nonsense of my play’ (no very difficult task, in Charles’ view). But the unwitting sabotage of the plot of The Message Is Murder had come after the stabbing, so could not be claimed as motivation.

  Nor were there any young ladies in the company who might (as in many other companies in which he had worked) have been offended by amorous advances from Charles Paris. His state of confusion over Frances had prevented him from even being aware of other women.

  No, whoever had wielded the duelling sword was under the impression that someone else was playing the late Sir Reginald De Meaux. And there was no shortage of candidates for the corpse’s job. Practically every male in the company who wasn’t actually onstage at the end of Act One seemed to have been considered to take over Charles’ role.

  He thought them through in the order that he had met them the previous evening.

  Lesley Blatt was the first. The repellent old playwright had offered himself for the job and reckoned he was going to do it, until told otherwise by Rick Harmer.

  Rick had officiously taken over, even getting dressed and made up for the part, before giving way to Charles himself.

  And then Tony Wensleigh had forbidden Charles to go on and said that he would go into the cupboard.

  Leslie, Rick and Tony – each one of these at one time thought – and no doubt told others – that he was going on for Charles Paris. The pivotal issue then became: who had each of them told? Or, who did the potential murderer think he, or she, was stabbing?

  Again Charles thought back. When he had met Nella Lewis on the stairs, she had been coming down from the floor where both Leslie Blatt and Rick Harmer were. And she had told Charles that his part was going to be taken by ‘that bastard’. Since the two young A.S.M.s appeared to have a harmonious relationship, it was reasonable to assume that she referred to the old playwright. And since she was then occupied for the rest of the Act ‘on the book’, she could well have continued to think that Leslie Blatt was the occupant of the cupboard. And it might not be out of character for her to respond violently to some septuagenarian assault on her virtue (an action that would certainly be in character for the playwright).

  What was more, Nella had actually been carrying the duelling sword when Charles met her.

  But no jumping to conclusions. On to the next potential victim.

  Rick Harmer had put a lot of backs up in the company by his cockiness and success, but the only person he had roused to real anger was Leslie Blatt. The younger man’s taunts obviously got through to the raw nerves of the older. Leslie Blatt had certainly been under the impression that Charles’ part was to be taken by ‘young Mr Smartypants’. On top of that, he had intended to spend the Act backstage, which would have given him ample opportunity to choose his moment for a murderous stab through the canvas.

  Then on to Antony Wensleigh. Who had arrived late on the scene, heard about Charles’ condition from Rick Harmer, and announced the apparently firm decision that he was going to take over as Sir Reginald De Meaux (deceased).

  Well, as Charles had just had confirmed by the telephone conversation, there was one person with a very substantial grudge against the Artistic Director. Rick Harmer was a very ambitious young man and Tony Wensleigh stood in the way of one of his ambitions.

  It was like a game. Three sets of potential murderers and potential victims. And, in spite of all those permutations, the person who nearly got spitted was Charles Paris.

  If he’d been standing up in his normal position when the lunge was made . . . The thought still gave him a nasty little frisson.

  Drunkenness, he thought as he rose to buy himself another pint, does have its advantages.

  Chapter Five

  THE MESSAGE IS MURDER moved into the second week of its run at the Regent Theatre, Rugland Spa, without further mishap. It was playing to over fifty per cent capacity, which was deemed to be very good business. Herbie Inchbald’s words about anything ‘with “murder” in the title’ seemed to be being proved true. And the play was greeted with a few oohs and aahs and the modest applause which, regulars assured Charles, was the nearest the Rugland Spa audience got to enthusiasm.

  Company life continued with its customary uneasy bickering. Kathy Kitson threw a tantrum one evening because the cold tap in her dressing room was dripping. Laurie Tichbourne caught a slight cold, which he treated as if it were an outbreak of cholera, and Nella Lewis ministered to him with hot lemon drinks and clean handkerchiefs. Rick Harmer hinted that his agent (that was his acting agent, of course, not his literary one) was having extremely interested enquiries about him for a major role in a major television series. Gay Milner insisted on lending everyone books about International Socialism, and Cherry Robson shrewdly started sleeping with a very rich local factory-owner. At meals after the show in The Happy Friend Chinese Restaurant and Takeaway, the Variety of Mr Pang’s Ice Creams remained fixed at Vanilla.

  Life, in other words, was normal.

  And Charles Paris had nothing to do.

  The ways that actors spend their time when they’re working in the provinces are various. Some spend it acting. Particularly in repertory companies, many of the cast of the evening’s show will pass much of their day rehearsing the next production. Though tighter Equity regulations have prevented the hours of work that used to be expected, this can still agreeably occupy most of the day.

  But Charles Paris wasn’t in the next production, the much-debated Shove It, and was so deprived not only of occupation but also the social life of rehearsal.

  Some actors, though not actually rehearsing, can still spend the entire day preparing for their evening’s performance. The deeply serious tune themselves like precision instruments, working through rela
xation exercises, preparatory walks and concentration games. The deeply lazy, like Laurie Tichbourne, can quite easily pass a day doing absolutely nothing. He would rise around eleven to a large breakfast, cooked by a loving landlady (he, needless to say, always ended up with a ‘treasure’), take a leisurely bath until lunch, eaten either at his digs or somewhere within strolling distance in the town, while away the afternoon perhaps with another sleep, then arrive at the theatre at seven o’clock complaining how tired he felt.

  Charles Paris couldn’t follow either of these courses. Even an actor marinated for a lifetime in Stanislavskian lore (which he certainly was not) would have had difficulty in ‘thinking himself into’ the role of the defunct Sir Reginald De Meaux. And the Laurie Tichbourne method didn’t work either. Charles was one of those people for whom stasis meant depression; to sit around all day was simply to offer an open invitation to all his worst thoughts. And since what he could only regard as the ‘loss’ of Frances, those thoughts were even less welcome than usual.

  Some actors marooned in the provinces are organized about their careers. They write lots of letters, to other theatres, managements, television producers, casting directors, anyone who might lead to another job. They ring their agents and other contacts, finding out what new shows are coming up. They work hard, and are occasionally rewarded.

  Charles Paris had long since ceased to believe that his career would be affected by anything but the randomness of fate.

  Some actors, who have the ability, use the time to write, trying out ideas, getting new shows together, trying to interest managements in their wares.

  Charles Paris, who had the ability, seemed to have lost the desire to write.

  Some actors take advantage of their environment. They join the National Trust, they spend their days visiting stately homes and other places of local interest.

  Charles Paris never got round to doing that sort of thing. Some actors pursue their sideline. It’s amazing how many extra talents actors have. Some are solicitors and do a little gentle conveyancing for their colleagues. Some are doctors and fit in the odd locum clinic. Some are collectors and use their time with profit scouring the antique shops or bookshops of the area.