Final Act

by J M Gregson

  Lambert looked hard at Hook as the faint smell of perfume lingered in the murder room. ‘That wasn’t very productive.’

  ‘No. But she’s new to the company. I wouldn’t expect her to have many ideas on who might have killed the boss.’

  ‘You may be right, although in my view that young lady is quite shrewd enough to have formed her own ideas. I should think she’s probably discussed them with other people by now, though I don’t know who those others might be. What I meant was that those few minutes weren’t very productive from our point of view in assessing the lady herself. I don’t feel I’m any closer to knowing whether or not she’s a candidate for our killer than I was when she stepped in here. Are you?’

  Bert resisted the thought that it was quite ridiculous that that ravishing, patently innocent and cooperative young woman could even be considered as a candidate for this crime. Lambert was a positive Gradgrind when it came to facts, and until you could offer him facts he wasn’t prepared to rule out anyone. Hook said, ‘She struck me as far too clever to involve herself in anything as desperate as murder.’

  Lambert smiled, recognising his bagman’s attempt to appear objective in the face of striking beauty. ‘She’s bright and she’s clever; the two aren’t quite the same. We shall have to bear that in mind.’

  ‘For what it’s worth, I didn’t think she held anything back from us, John.’

  The subject of these conjectures was already back in her caravan. It was only fifty yards from the murder room, but she was more grateful than ever before for the privacy it afforded her. She needed to think and she was thankful that Karen was on set and she had this haven to herself. But first, while she still had full privacy, she needed to put on her costume for the scene which was scheduled for shooting at the end of the morning. Be ready for professional action before you permit yourself the luxury of more private thoughts.

  She stripped quickly to bra and pants, then paused for a moment to look at herself in the full-length mirror which is the most essential item of equipment for actresses. The livid bruising on her upper arm and above her breast was more spectacular than ever this morning. Vivid blue and green now surrounded the black at the centre, where the blows had almost broken the flesh. The multi-coloured skin around the bruises was a necessary part of healing: she knew that. In a few days, or perhaps even a few hours, the angriness of the colours would begin to fade and the skin which had been so perfect would turn again towards its natural colour.

  In the meantime, no one must see this. She pulled the long-sleeved blouse she was to wear for the shoot over her head hastily, slipped into her skirt, and became again the Peg Reynolds who would turn heads in the street and on the screen. She felt a little pain as she twisted the upper part of her body, but nothing she couldn’t cope with. She was used to not wincing by now when the shafts of pain coursed through her. The important thing was that no one must know about what her blouse concealed, least of all those two experienced men whose business it was to discover secrets.

  There was a sharp knock at the murder room door. In answer to Lambert’s invitation to enter, Martin Buttivant stepped confidently into the room and contemplated the CID men. He wasn’t a man accustomed to making tentative entries.

  ‘Detective Inspector Rushton said that you wanted to see me at around this time. I’m free for the next forty minutes, so I thought I should seek you out.’

  Lambert nodded. ‘Thank you. You are obviously one of the people who can tell us most about the background to this crime.’

  ‘I am the principal character in a fictional drama. That doesn’t make me the person who knows most about a real crime.’

  He had the assurance which comes with television fame. Far more than a triumph on stage, television success brings money and power. Achievement on the great stages of the country is still deeply respected within the acting profession; it brings homage, perhaps even veneration. But success on television brings with it a much wider public acclaim and acknowledgement. You become that most glamorous of twenty-first-century phenomena, a ‘celebrity’. You are recognized wherever you go. You earn a mysterious access to seats on Wimbledon’s centre court, you are picked up by the cameras at Lords, Wembley or Ascot. People even seem delighted to see you there and to highlight your presence, as if it marked out that particular event as being of real importance.

  It is difficult not to be affected by celebrity, difficult to maintain the attitudes and standards you had as a struggling young actor. You are central now to a great and successful enterprise. Everyone else involved is conscious that they cannot afford to lose you, which means that they must not offend you in even the slightest of ways. People defer to you in all sorts of things every day. Quite unconsciously, Martin Buttivant had come to expect that people would be deferential.

  It wasn’t going to happen here. Lambert sat him down in the chair recently vacated by Peg Reynolds and said uncompromisingly, ‘You are fifty years old and have played Inspector Loxton for the last six years, during which the project has grown from a minor television series to an international success. You must have known your producer, Samuel Jackson, extremely well. We need all the information you can give us, not only on a murder victim but on those who were closest to him in the months before his death.’

  Buttivant stared at him steadily and said nothing for a moment. He was not by nature an extravagant man, but he carried with him by now the trappings of success. His hair was impeccably groomed and his grey suit had a Savile Row cut. He had crossed his feet at the ankles, which drew attention to the shining leather of his shoes, gleaming but obviously also very comfortable. He now folded his arms, allowed himself a small smile, and stared at them unwaveringly with keen blue eyes. His face carried fewer lines than were usual in a man of fifty. He wasn’t as tall in life as he looked on screen. Obviously he wanted to look younger than his years. That was not mere vanity: he wanted to play Inspector Loxton for as long as the series went on and for as long as he could look convincing in the role. Bert Hook wondered if men used Botox. Everything was possible in the exotic world of acting.

  Buttivant looked perfectly relaxed. Was that acting also, or did he really have nothing to fear from this investigation? Lambert said, ‘We’ve already heard from others that Jackson was a difficult man who didn’t trouble to avoid making enemies. Were you one of them?’

  The question was a more direct challenge than Martin had encountered in several years – except from Sam Jackson himself. But he didn’t propose to tell them about that. He wouldn’t show them that he was ruffled. He steepled his hands and put his fingertips together, raising them a little to emphasize that he was giving the matter due consideration. ‘Sam and I got on perfectly well. We maintained an effective but purely professional relationship. Detective Sergeant Hook glimpsed a little of that when we met in the studios of Central Television recently.’

  It was his first acknowledgement that he recognized Hook and remembered where he had seen him before. Celebrities learned to do that, if they were sensible and did not believe their own publicity. It won them easy esteem among the public: people were flattered when a celebrity remembered their humble presence on a previous occasion and recalled it to them.

  Bert Hook wasn’t flattered. He said, ‘I thought Samuel T. Jackson rather an odious man on that occasion. I had sympathy with you as a man who had to deal with him regularly.’

  ‘Sympathy is always much appreciated. But in this case it is misplaced. Sam Jackson didn’t give me much cause for concern. I was grateful that he wanted me six years ago. But by the time of this death, he was not in a position to jettison me. I am one of the few people on this site today who was pretty well Jackson-proof. I wouldn’t dream of saying that if Sam was still around, mind you! It was the sort of thing he’d have taken as a challenge.’

  ‘You didn’t like him, did you?’ Bert was persistent in the face of the man’s panache. He was a murder suspect until it proved otherwise.

  ‘Not much, I suppose.
But in the main our relationship was what I called it a moment ago, purely professional. You train yourself not to like or dislike people, when they have the money and the power to hire and fire. I work in an industry where employment is traditionally precarious.’

  ‘But you were fireproof. You’ve just told us so.’

  ‘Almost, but not entirely. I’ve also just told you that Sam would have regarded any such assertion as a challenge.’

  ‘So he was a dangerous man. To others, if not to you.’

  Martin took his time. It was one of the things he had learned to do since he had become a celebrity. People hung upon your every word; it only conferred an impression of greater gravitas if you delivered them slowly. He didn’t see how they could know about his own dispute with Jackson, didn’t see how anyone else was going to tell them. But it wouldn’t do any harm to give them a little information about others; that would divert their attention from him. ‘Sam offended most people. He enjoyed doing it. It had become almost a way of life for him. The difficulty for me is seeing how someone would translate resentment into hatred strong enough to make them kill him.’

  ‘But someone did. That’s why we’re all here. Tell us what you know. That’s your only obligation. It’s our job to find out who took it to those lengths.’

  ‘You speak as if I can give you the full catalogue of Sam’s offences. I’ve told you that it was his habit to offend people, but I really know only a fraction of his life. As far as possible, I confined our relationship to the professional.’

  Lambert had let Hook do the questioning for some time, preferring to observe the behaviour under pressure of a man he saw as a central figure in the case. He now said with a trace of impatience, ‘So begin the catalogue for us, Mr Buttivant. Name the people whom Jackson had recently offended?’

  Martin took his time again. The innocent and the confident wouldn’t be hurried, would they? ‘We couldn’t film on Monday because of the weather, but Sam Jackson turned up in the afternoon and sounded off at most people. Very publicly. I remember thinking that if I’d been his director, John Watts, I wouldn’t have taken kindly to being told I was neglecting my job in front of the entire cast like that – particularly as the allegation was totally unjustified. There was no way any of us could have been working in Monday’s conditions.’

  ‘You have some eminent names around you for this episode. I imagine they wouldn’t take kindly to Jackson’s approach. What about Sir Bradley Morton, for instance?’

  Buttivant smiled, the slightly twisted smile which half the nation had grown to love. ‘Bradley didn’t like Sam. But strictly between the two of us, he’s glad to have secured the part in this episode. It gives him exposure in a popular series, it’s a part tailor-made for him, and it will cement his standing as a national institution, not to mention a national treasure. So he took what Sam threw at him and tried hard to smile at it.’

  ‘Has he got previous history with Jackson?’

  Martin weighed the matter. He wanted to implicate the theatrical knight more deeply, but he didn’t have the material to do that. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if he did. The two go back a long way. Bradley Morton was a successful film and stage actor when Sam Jackson was still in his twenties, but Sam already had his first great success and the money that went with it. I didn’t know him then, but he was probably already aggressive with anyone who worked for him. If I know him, he’d have been at pains to put Brad in his place, as he saw it.’

  ‘David Deeney?’

  Martin nodded sagely. ‘Dave didn’t like Sam and he didn’t take as much trouble as some to disguise it. Sam was aggressively and by today’s standards objectionably heterosexual. He treated women badly at times, but he never troubled to disguise his lust for them. Another facet of that was his hostility to homosexuals. There are plenty of them in our profession and Sam couldn’t avoid employing them. But he took every opportunity to denigrate them and he expressed his contempt for them at almost every opportunity. David Deeney didn’t take kindly to that. I wouldn’t have expected him to. He has a long-term relationship with another man and he’s quite open about it. Sam said insufferable things. Women would certainly regard him as sexist and the gay community would very reasonably call him homophobic.’

  ‘Do you think Deeney snapped? This might not have been a premeditated crime.’

  An elaborate shrug of the shoulders. ‘Who knows? I wouldn’t have thought so, but someone around here has done something none of us would have expected.’

  Lambert frowned. ‘You said women were in danger from his sexist advances. We’ve already talked with Peg Reynolds. What about other women involved here?’

  Martin allowed himself again that half-pensive, half-humorous smile. ‘The only other actress seriously involved in the Herefordshire Horrors episode is Sandra Rokeby. And Sandra can look after herself. She’d resent any suggestion that she couldn’t, if she were here.’

  ‘I imagine that she too has history with Jackson.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right and I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it. I can’t give you chapter and verse myself.’

  He was terser, less relaxed than he had been previously, thought Lambert. It made him wonder what there might be between Buttivant and Sandra Rokeby. He looked forward to meeting the lady who had been a sex symbol when he was still a young man – well, youngish, anyway. ‘Who else was close to Jackson? Who else might have visited him in the hours before he died?’

  ‘You’ve already seen John Watts and Peg Reynolds. You already know more about their movements than I do.’

  So they’d been comparing notes and no doubt also discussing what questions people had been asked. That was inevitable, in a community thrown closely together on a site like this. But it didn’t make the police task any easier when people came in here prepared for what you might ask them. ‘Who else other than your fellow actors might have gone in there?’

  Buttivant gave the matter careful thought. He had scarcely bothered to think beyond the cast; like most of his profession, he found it difficult to regard anyone else as other than secondary to the main action. Eventually his face brightened and he said, ‘There’s Ernie Clark, of course. As assistant producer, he was close to Sam.’

  ‘Inevitably, I suppose. What was actually his position in the set-up?’

  ‘I don’t know what the financial arrangements were between him and Sam – how much he had invested, how much he took out. Sam always gave the impression he was a one-man band, with all the ideas, all the profits, all the cigars. But that was Sam’s way. He’d never admit anyone else made any decisions or offered useful ideas.’

  ‘So what exactly does Ernie Clark do?’

  ‘He works very hard, actually. As deputy producers normally do, particularly those attached to Sam Jackson. Ernie was the dogsbody who did the real work around sites like this, as well as in the studio. It was his job to make sure everything was present for shooting to go ahead – cast, make-up girls, cameramen, props, scenery, etc. Even the catering was his responsibility. He had to watch the daily budget. Filming for television is an expensive business, particularly when we’re on location. An inefficient producer wastes money and soon puts a project on the rocks. Ernie Clark is efficient. I’m sure Sam knew that, but I never heard him acknowledge it.’

  Hook looked up from his notes. ‘Did you visit Mr Jackson’s caravan yesterday morning?’

  This time Buttivant’s smile was almost patronising. ‘No, I didn’t. I knew Sam reasonably well: that was inevitable as we’d both been involved in the Inspector Loxton series for so long. But we didn’t socialise much. Unless I had a professional reason to seek him out, I didn’t do that. I had no such reason yesterday morning.’

  ‘After a sensational death like this one, there will be much discussion around the site and among your fellow actors. It is inevitable that you will hear facts and suggestions which don’t come to us. Please keep your eyes and ears open and report anything to us which seems even remotely rele
vant. It is your duty to do so.’

  ‘I shall do that. I wish you and your team every ounce of luck. To quote my entirely fictional character Ben Loxton, “Murder is an ugly business.”’

  It was a conventionally sombre thought. Yet he looked as he left them entirely satisfied with his efforts.

  SEVEN

  The scene was set beside the stream at the edge of the location. It was here that Sir Bradley Morton performed his ageing libertine act with verve and enthusiasm. It was what he had been hired for, after all. The producer, the director, and above all his indulgent public expected it from him.

  They got it in spades. Morton had given either this performance or a slight variation of it several times over the years. By now he was not quite sure how much of the ageing roué was an act and how much was himself. He was vaguely aware that he was in danger of going OTT. He threw in a ‘By Jove!’ which wasn’t in the script and caressed the upper arm of the lady he was beguiling a little more than the stage directions indicated, but she responded well, with the required indulgent smile and bodily actions which said that this was acceptable and humorous rather than offensive.

  Sir Bradley was at his core a highly competent actor. He’d never had the depth for the great Shakespearean heroes, but he’d been an excellent Toby Belch and even an effective Malvolio in the past. And his Falstaff had been well received, if not quite the complete critical triumph he now fondly recalled as the years moved on.

  He knew what he was doing here and he was familiar with the people acting with him and with his director. He knew his few lines well and he knew by now how to use rehearsals effectively. Today the real thing went off excellently, he thought. The actual performance always brought a little extra zest from people who’d trained for the stage, Sir Bradley maintained. That zest from him would lift those around him, some of whom had only known this strange world of television acting.

  There was a little spatter of applause for him at the end of the scene, a louder one when it was announced by John Watts that the shoot was a wrap and that no retake of this scene would be necessary. Sir Bradley was benign. He nodded affably at the other three actors who had been involved and said, ‘Good to know I’m not completely geriatric. They always used to call me “One-take Morton”, you know, when I was in films.’ They never had, but there was no one here old enough to dispute the claim, was there?