Murder in the Title

by Simon Brett

  ‘I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say how upset I am about Tony’s death. We all appreciated him as a director and friend, and I only wish that we had recognized the symptoms of the breakdown which was coming and which led him to . . . do what he did. But Tony was a reticent chap, didn’t talk a lot about his feelings.

  ‘But we can’t look to the past. The time will come for a memorial service for Tony, when we can all voice our appreciation of him, but at the moment our first priority is to get on with the work of the theatre.

  ‘You probably know by now – and I’m not pretending otherwise – that the Regent has been going through a fairly rough time recently, and this new disaster couldn’t have come at a worse moment. This town’s full of people who don’t give a damn about the Arts, and, if we have to close the theatre down, they’ll do their level best to see that it doesn’t reopen.

  ‘So we must keep going. Shove It will open, don’t worry. May take us a day or two to find a new director, but it will open – you take my word.

  ‘So I must ask you all to be patient and co-operative, and we’ll let you know as soon as there’s anything to let you know. Meanwhile, there’s a performance tonight and two more tomorrow of The Message Is Murder. And the best tribute you can all give to the memory of Tony Wensleigh is to make sure that all three performances of his last production are real little crackers!’

  The Councillor’s experience again told, and he secured his required round of applause.

  There was no question about the commitment of the General Manager and the Chairman of the Board. Charles wondered whether, after all, Tony’s death might not prove a blessing to the Regent Theatre. His financial irregularities would probably now never be investigated, and his departure had cleared the air. The new Artistic Director, when he was appointed, would start with a clean slate and, given the back-up of Donald’s efficiency and, presumably, better judgement than Tony had demonstrated, might well be able to lead the theatre into a new era of success.

  Assuming, of course, that the Regent could survive the hazardous period of interregnum.

  He had given his all (insofar as a dead body is capable of giving its all) in the Friday night performance and was unscrewing the sword from his chest, when there was a tap on the dressing room door and Nella entered.

  ‘Charles, there’s a lady at the Stage Door who would like to speak to you.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She looks upset. Could you come down?’

  ‘Do you know who it is?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but I think it’s Tony’s widow.’

  She did look upset, but seemed to be in control. She introduced herself as Martha Wensleigh, and agreed to his suggestion that they should go over to the pub and have a drink. Even on Friday night, he assured her, it would be pretty empty at this time.

  As they crossed the bar, the old lady with the Guinness, who seemed as much a fixture as the dart-board, claimed to recognize them both, but Charles ushered the new widow past to a sheltered corner. He had a large Bell’s and she agreed to his suggestion of a large brandy.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ he began conventionally.

  ‘Thank you. I haven’t really started to feel yet.’

  ‘No. It’ll take time. He was a fine man.’ The clichés jolted out uneasily. He wondered how much Martha knew of what had brought her husband to his death. It struck him that in the three weeks he had been in Rugland Spa, he had never heard Tony’s wife even mentioned. She hadn’t been at the first night party, and the fact that Nella had been uncertain in identifying her suggested that she was not often at the theatre. This was unusual; in most of the provincial theatres he had worked where the Artistic Director had a wife, Charles had been aware of her presence. (In one particular company he couldn’t avoid it, because she played all the female leads.) Maybe the Wensleighs’ marriage was breaking up.

  Martha scotched that idea straight away. ‘Tony and I were very close.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘He wasn’t very outgoing to people he didn’t know, but he talked to me. Whenever he got the time, he talked.’

  ‘Yes.’ The conversation wasn’t really flowing. ‘He can’t have had much time. The Regent was a very demanding job.’

  She nodded. ‘Sometimes it seemed he only came home to sleep. Sometimes not even that. All-night lighting, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Of course.’ Charles wondered if she had disliked the theatre, kept away from it deliberately as some mark of disapproval.

  Again she answered his unspoken question. ‘Tony liked to keep his work and his home life separate. He gave a lot of himself during the days; and then at home I like to think he could relax, recharge his batteries.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When we first started living together, I thought he wanted me as part of his work. I used to do Wardrobe. But then it was clear he valued me more as someone outside it all, someone who could be objective, who wasn’t involved in all the ups and downs of productions and politics.’

  Charles nodded. He knew a lot of people in the business who kept their marriages and sanity intact that way. Choose a partner outside the theatre and you’ve got someone with whom you can laugh about the obsessive dramas and crises of rehearsal and performance. If you ever see them . . . That had been the problem with Frances all those years before. He was never there, always off in the alien single beds of the nation’s Mimis. Acting and marriage had different imperatives, which were hard to reconcile.

  Martha Wensleigh broke into his maudlin reverie with an abrupt change of subject. ‘I thought of you because of something I heard from a man called Spike.’

  ‘Spike?’

  ‘His real name was Gareth Warden. He stage-managed at the Regent a few years back.’

  ‘Oh, I remember him.’ It came back. Spike had worked on the pre-London tour of the musical, Lumpkin!, a show whose progress had been bedevilled by a series of unexplained crimes.

  ‘Spike talked about you one night when he was a bit drunk. Said you were not above a bit of detective investigation.’

  ‘What a nice way of putting it.’

  ‘I want you to undertake an investigation for me.’

  ‘Into Tony’s death?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Charles looked at the widow with pity. ‘I think I’m unlikely to unearth a satisfying murderer. There seems to be little doubt that he did kill himself.’

  ‘I know that. I don’t want you to unearth a murderer. I just want to know what drove him to . . . do what he did.’

  Strange, that she should use exactly the same euphemism as Herbie Inchbald. Or perhaps not strange. Anything rather than define the unpalatable truth too closely.

  ‘Tony had been under a lot of pressure for a long time,’ said Charles gently. ‘I think he was very confused.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me that, Charles. I lived with him.’

  ‘Yes. Of course. What I’m saying is, I think that confusion impaired his judgement. He had done a series of strange things recently. I’m afraid taking his own life may have been the culmination of those. What’s the phrase – “while the balance of his mind was disturbed”?’

  ‘Yes, but what disturbed it?’

  Charles shrugged. ‘As I say, a series of things. The Regent’s been under threat for a long time, you know that – that was one continuing pressure. Then . . .’ Charles fought shy of mentioning the financial fiddles and the attempted murders. ‘There were other things,’ he ended lamely.

  ‘But he used to be able to cope with pressure.’

  ‘One day it just gets too much. He had been getting worse – forgetting he had done things, not doing things he thought he’d done.’

  ‘He talked about that. It worried him a lot. There were letters he swore he had written, and then it turned out he hadn’t . . . very strange . . .’

  ‘He was always at rehearsal,’ Charles explained soothingly. ‘Administration was never one of his strengths.’

  ‘I know tha
t. But what I do want to find out is what the final pressure was. What made him . . . do it?’

  ‘Didn’t he talk to you about it?’

  ‘Only in general terms. He said he didn’t want to go into details until he’d sorted everything out. And I thought he had. He rang me the evening he died.’

  ‘Did he?’ Charles was instantly alert. Have you told the police?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she replied wearily.

  ‘What time did he ring?’

  ‘About eight.’

  Before Charles had met him in the prop store. ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He said he’d finally sorted it out. He said it had all been very confusing, but he was getting there. Soon he’d have it all taped and the pressure would be off.’

  Charles grimaced ruefully. ‘That’s pretty much what he said to me later on. It’s ambiguous, to say the least.’

  ‘Yes. The police . . .’

  ‘I can imagine. Took it as further evidence that he intended to do away with himself.’

  ‘Yes.’ Martha Wensleigh looked discouraged and, for the first time, as if she was about to break down.

  ‘He didn’t say anything else, anything more specific?’

  ‘He said something rather strange. I can’t remember the exact words, but, more or less, he said, “At least I’m not paranoid. A paranoid thinks he’s being persecuted, but now I know I’ve been being persecuted”.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s exactly what a paranoid would say.’

  He hadn’t said it gently enough. Martha Wensleigh flared up. ‘Oh, for God’s sake! Can’t you say anything more helpful than that?

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  She looked at him. Her eyes had the same dark vulnerability as her husband’s. Grey-haired lady in her fifties, not particularly attractive. And now a widow. What did the rest of her life hold for her?

  She swallowed down a sob as she spoke carefully. ‘I’m sony too. It’s just that Tony was convinced someone was out to get him, that someone at the Regent was trying to ruin his career. He said it more than once. He didn’t say who, and he didn’t say how – just that someone was out to destroy him and the theatre.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have to say it, Martha, but that again sounds very like paranoia.’

  ‘Yes, I agree. It could. But I sort of got the impression that Tony was building up some sort of case against his . . . enemy. When he rang last night, I thought he meant his case was complete.’

  Charles looked sufficiently dubious for her to lose her temper again. ‘Oh, you’re just like everyone else! You don’t want to help and –’

  ‘I do. It’s just . . .’

  ‘Forgive me.’ Once again she made a supreme effort to control herself. ‘As I said, I’m not feeling properly yet. Not feeling the things I will feel. Soon I’m going to break down and weep for a year. But at the moment all that’s coming out is anger, anger and the need to do something. I can’t bring Tony back, but at least I can find out who persecuted him so much that he killed himself. Or if I can’t . . .’ She softened, and for the first time Charles was aware of her as a woman, as someone with a sexual identity, ‘perhaps you can.’

  The appeal was strong, and he would have liked to agree to what she asked. But he felt certain that she was going to be disappointed in her quest, and thought it better that that disappointment came sooner rather than later.

  ‘Martha, from what I can gather, Tony had been cracking up for some long time. His artistic judgement seemed to have gone.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know when the season’s programme is decided . . .’

  ‘Oh, about eight months back. Has to be finalized round June.’

  ‘Then I reckon he had started to crack back in June. Do you really think that choosing The Message Is Murder, followed by Shove It, is the action of someone whose artistic judgement is intact?’

  Martha Wensleigh stared at him, surprise so dominating her face that it drove out the pain and distress. ‘But he didn’t want to do those plays.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tony thought they were both awful. Directing them made him utterly miserable.’

  ‘Then why on earth did he choose them?’

  ‘He didn’t. That’s done by the Play Selection Committee.’

  ‘Isn’t he even on the committee?’

  ‘Oh yes, but he could be overruled by the others.’

  ‘Who are the others?’

  ‘The Chairman of the Theatre Board, the General Manager, and there’s always a Creative Consultant. This year it was Leslie Blatt.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  CHARLES HAD TO parry offers of tea, coffee, cocoa and rock cakes from Mimi before he could get to bed and look at the file that Martha Wensleigh had given him.

  It was her revelation about Tony’s dislike of the plays that had persuaded him to go further. So much of his thinking about the collapse of the Artistic Director’s judgement had been based on the two choices, that he now felt the whole case needed re-examination. Also, the knowledge that Wensleigh’s opinion of The Message Is Murder and Shove It coincided with his own made him feel closer to the dead man than he ever had during their acquaintance.

  So he had agreed that he would investigate, but with no very lively hope of success. It was the nakedness in Martha Wensleigh’s eyes that had swayed him, though deep down he suspected he would find out nothing that was not already obvious.

  The file she had brought with her was all that Tony had kept at home. Any hope that it would prove to be some kind of dossier, evidence in the ‘case’ his wife had suspected he was building up against his ‘enemy’, was soon dashed.

  The file was a further demonstration of Tony Wensleigh’s disorganized mind, of his lack of administrative ability. It was just bits and pieces, carbons of letters and photocopies of documents jumbled up with photos of actors, programme proofs, rehearsal notes scribbled in his cramped handwriting, props lists, snippings of Frank Walby reviews, Board Meeting agendas, designers’ sketches for sets, phone numbers on backs of envelopes, restaurant bills and other less decipherable scraps.

  There was no system in the collection; it was as if the Artistic Director had every now and then emptied out his jacket pockets and shoved whatever he found into the file.

  Just sorting through the mass of paper would be a long job. Charles was glad he had taken the precaution of buying a half-bottle of Bell’s from the pub. He took a long swig and, propping himself up on Mimi’s brushed nylon pillows, started to wade through.

  After about an hour, he had winnowed out four single sheets and one stapled bunch of papers which he thought might have some bearing on the case, or which, failing that, might at least provide some background to recent events at the Regent Theatre.

  The first confirmed what his widow had said about Tony Wensleigh’s view of the plays in the current season. It was a duplicated sheet, headed ‘Play Selection Committee – Proposals’, containing a list of play titles. Presumably, since there were only seventeen in all, these represented some sort of short list. Five shows in the season, no argument about the pantomime (which had been Puss In Boots that year) and, it seemed, one nomination from each committee member for each of the other four slots.

  It was clear, from his underlinings and comments, which had been the Artistic Director’s own suggestions. Much Ado About Nothing, Sleuth, Kiss Me Kate and Ayckbourn’s Ten Times Table. Not wildly original, perhaps, but a fairly well-balanced programme of Rugland Spa fodder.

  What was striking about the committee’s voting was that in every case the Artistic Director’s proposal had been voted out, and in each case replaced with something inferior. Even Much Ado . . . had given way to All’s Well That Ends Well, a much more difficult and less readily accessible play.

  Whether the committee’s voting reflected lack of artistic judgement or something more sinister it was hard to be certain. The first was quite possible, Charles reflected. He already had serious doubts
about Herbie Inchbald’s knowledge of the theatre; The Message Is Murder did not inspire much confidence in Leslie Blatt as an arbiter of taste; and, he suddenly realized, though he had heard Donald Mason talking about a lot of administrative matters, he had never heard an artistic judgement from the General Manager.

  On the other hand, the unanimity of voting against Tony Wensleigh suggested that his suspicion of organized opposition was not completely fanciful.

  The Artistic Director’s view of one of the plays ultimately selected was left in no doubt by a carbon of a letter dated a few days before the Play Selection Committee Meeting.

  Dear Leslie [it ran], thank you very much indeed for letting me see the script of The Message Is Murder, which I return herewith.

  I am afraid your submitting it puts me in a difficult position, because, having known you so long, I would like to be able to write back with enthusiasm, but I’m afraid I can’t. I am sure that, as you say, the play was well received when first produced in the fifties, though I feel the fact that its run ended on its pre-London tour may suggest that it lacked a certain West End gloss.

  Anyway, that need not matter. Frequently a revival can completely change a play’s fortunes. But I’m afraid I cannot see that happening in this case. To be brutally frank, the play has dated badly and now seems painfully contrived. The characters have no inner life or psychological continuity, and, speaking as a director, I can foresee massive problems in giving the play any credibility at all.

  I am sorry to have to write like this, but I feel that it is better to be frank at this point than by politeness to get caught in a project which should not have started.

  Please rest assured that I have often had occasion to respect your judgement in the past, and am sure that I will be grateful for your advice in the future. I am only sorry that I cannot agree with you about the suitability of The Message Is Murder for production at the Regent in the 1980s.

  Yours sincerely,

  Tony.

  The letter interested Charles a lot, not only because it confirmed Tony Wensleigh’s dislike of the play, but also because it revealed a core of good sense and professional skill which he had not seen during his brief acquaintance with the director. Tony Wensleigh might have cracked up in the intervening months, but he hadn’t cracked when he wrote that letter.