by Simon Brett
The author of Mary, Queen of Sots was a young American with fine blond hair, a woffly ginger moustache and black-rimmed round glasses. He wore a thick check lumberjack shirt, the inevitable blue jeans and yellow-laced brown boots. He had arrived in Edinburgh that day, just in time to hear the boom of the one o’clock gun fired from the Castle and become immediately embroiled in one of Michael Vanderzee’s workshops.
‘That was after two solid days’ travelling. I got Mike’s telegram from the Poste Restante in Brindisi, and I just dropped everything and came. I mean, my God. I really care about this show . . .’
As soon as Sam started speaking, Charles realised why the tête-a-tête had been so easily arranged. Sam Wasserman was a bore, one of those instantly identifiable bores who has the ability to make the most interesting anecdote tedious, who can destroy by endless detail. But as well as qualifying as one of this international type, Sam also demonstrated that refinement of the quality which is peculiar to earnest young American academics. A glaze crept over Charles’ eyes as the monologue continued.
‘. . . In fact, Mary, Queen of Sots derives directly from the presentation techniques I developed in a show based on the Boston Tea Party for my Master’s thesis at U.S.C . . . .’
‘U.S.C.?’ Charles queried weakly.
‘University of Southern California. I did my Master’s there before coming to Derby. In Drama and Creative Writing. When I say my project was based on the Boston Tea Party, I mean of course loosely based. It concentrated on the ethnico-political problems of the American Indians. Viewed of course from a Socialist standpoint. The central allegorical symbol was the fact that the Boston Tea Party was perpetrated by white men disguised as Indians. White usurping the place of red. Like corpuscles. I used the analogy of leukaemia.’
Charles concentrated and tried to nudge the conversation in the direction he wanted. ‘But you come to this show in rather macabre circumstances.’
The nudge was insufficient; Sam needed actual derailment. ‘The macabre is very much an integral part of my writing. And the bizarre. Another image I developed in the U.S.C. show,’ he steamrollered on, ‘was the unusual ability of the Navajo Indians to walk along girders at great height as if they were on the ground. It’s a different spatial concept. I related that to the myopic nature of the social services . . .’
‘Oh.’ Charles found himself nodding like a toy dog in the back of a car. He made another supreme effort to manhandle Sam off his monologue. ‘What I meant was that Willy Mariello was killed with a knife and that’s why you’re here actually taking part in Mary, Queen of Sots.’
For a moment it seemed to have worked. Sam looked straight at him and was silent for a long time before his continuation showed that Charles had failed. ‘Well, of course, Mary is an entirely different proposition, in spite of certain similarities of technique. And in fact, from an allegorical point of view, it’s very apt that the show should be born in an atmosphere of violence.
‘You see, the basic allegory of Mary, Queen of Sots is the historical parallel. The original Mary’s life was stained with blood. In my version, Mary, Queen of Scots represents Scotland and the natural wealth of her oil resources.’
‘Oh yes,’ Charles mouthed, wilting.
‘Yes,’ said Sam, as if it were a surprising affirmation. ‘Now Mary’s two husbands, Lord Darnley and the Earl of Bothwell, I take to represent England and the good old U.S. of A., the two countries who want to control her wealth. Queen Elizabeth, who ordains her execution, is the Arab states, who hold the real power in oil politics. Neat, huh?’
Charles, suffering from mental indigestion at the thought of this laboured allegory being expounded in Creative Writing, nodded feebly. But he saw a slight chance. ‘Where does David Rizzio fit into this scenario?’
‘David Rizzio represents the ecological lobby who might argue against the exploitation of oil resources in favour of a more medieval economic structure. For that reason, he gets killed off pretty early.’ Sam chuckled at his own intellectual audacity.
It might be a tiny lever to shift the conversation and Charles seized it. ‘But not killed off as early as Willy Mariello was.’
‘No.’
Before Sam had time to relate the death to one of his allegories, Charles pressed on. ‘You must have been pretty cut up to hear about Willy.’
‘Shocked certainly. I mean one is always shocked to hear of a young person’s death; it’s a kind of suspension of continuity. And obviously there was a dramatic element in this particular event.’
‘But you must have felt this more. To lose a friend . . .’
‘I didn’t know Mariello that well.’
‘I thought it was through you that Willy came to be in this show in the first place.’
‘That’s true, but only indirectly. I suppose the suggestion that he should do the music came from me—I put it up to the D.U.D.S. committee—but that was on the recommendation of someone else.’
‘Who?’
‘A girl involved in the society suggested it. I thought it was a good idea, because, you know, he was a professional musician and into rock music and I, well, I’ve got a kind of basic musical knowledge, but really my talent lies with words. And certainly the settings Mariello did for my lyrics were infinitely superior to anything I could have done. He changed the odd word here and there and I had to pull him up on that, but basically it was great. Besides, I believe very strongly in people working together under a kind of creative umbrella unit.’
‘Why do you think the girl recommended Willy to you?’ Charles asked slowly.
‘Well, like I say, he was very good. And he’d been hanging round the Derby campus for a bit and apparently, after the group he was with split up, he wanted to try something different . . .’
‘And?’
‘Well, I kind of got the impression that there might be a kind of thing going on between him and this girl. They both played it pretty close to the chest, but I sort of got this feeling that they wouldn’t mind being involved in something together.’
‘Oh,’ said Charles, and then asked the question he had been putting off. ‘Who was this girl?’
‘A girl called Anna Duncan. She’s now playing Mary in my show. I don’t know if you know her.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Charles, ‘I know her.’
That evening he met James Milne back at Coates Gardens and found the Laird eager for another Dr Watson session. Charles had suddenly become unwilling to pursue the business of detection, but he could not avoid a cosy chat over malt whisky.
Sherlock Holmes was always way ahead of Dr Watson in his deductions, but he rarely actually withheld information from his sidekick. Charles Paris did. There were things he wanted to be sure of, half-formed ideas that could not be shared until they had hardened into facts.
They talked mostly about Martin Warburton. Charles told of his long tracking expeditions and the discovery of Martin’s second identity.
‘But surely that makes him our number one suspect?’
‘I suppose so.’ Charles hoped he sounded convinced.
‘It’s fairly bizarre behaviour.’
‘Yes, I agree. Certainly Martin is in a very strange mental state. He’s all mixed up and he has some violent fantasies. I think he’s probably suffering from overwork—you know, just taken finals—but that doesn’t make him a murderer. His disguise may be for criminal purposes, or it may just be that he needs to escape into another identity.’
‘Hmm. That sounds like psychological claptrap to me.’
‘You don’t subscribe to a psychological approach to crime?’
‘I dare say it’s very useful in certain cases, but I think it’s often used to fog perfectly straightforward issues. Every action has some sort of motive, and I’m sure that Martin Warburton has a real motive for dressing up as someone else.’
‘And you don’t regard an inadequacy in his personality as a real motive?’
‘I regard it as a formula of words. A motive is theft or
blackmail, that sort of thing. Revenge even.’
‘But Martin might take on another identity because there’s something in his own that he can’t come to terms with.’
‘I don’t really know what you’re talking about.’
It was so easy for the Laird, insulated from life in his library, just as he had been insulated with his mother at Glenloan House and insulated in the staffroom at Kilbruce School. Because he had never encountered any unpleasant realities, he assumed they did not exist. Or if they did, they were simple things that could be cut up like sheets of paper, not made of material that frayed and tore and could never be properly divided.
‘But, James, come off it. When we last spoke you were talking of an obsessional killer, someone for whom the Mary, Queen of Scots story had a macabre significance.’
‘I didn’t quite say that.’
‘You were moving in that direction. And an obsessional killer hasn’t got one of your nice neatly defined motives like theft or blackmail or revenge.
‘Yes, he has. The very obsession is the motive. It’s not a sane motive, but it’s real to the murderer.’
‘Therefore you’ve got to understand the psychology of the murderer.’ Charles felt that it was a mild triumph.
‘Yes, but the process is simple. Assume an inverted logic, and the motivation makes sense. You don’t have to delve into inadequacies of personality and compensation and all that humbug.’
‘I don’t think we’re going to agree on this point.’ Charles was beginning to lose the little interest he had in their discussion. His mind was elsewhere, and not enjoying the trip. But he felt he should simulate some concern. ‘So if Martin, say, is an obsessional killer, what do you reckon is the motive for his walking round the city of Edinburgh in disguise?’
‘It must be something to do with the planning of his next crime.’
‘I see.’ Charles tried not to sound contemptuous. ‘So what do you think we should do about it?’
‘I think we should keep a close eye on him.’
‘Yes, fine. I must go.’ He rose with almost rude abruptness. ‘I’ve got to . . . um . . . go.’ He could not think of a polite excuse. He could not think of anything except the ordeal ahead of him. The ordeal of seeing Anna.
When it came, it was not really an ordeal. She arrived, flushed and excited after the revue. There had been a B.B.C. producer in the audience who (according to Brian Cassells, who had buttonholed the poor man departing and forced an opinion out of him) had liked Anna’s performance. She was very giggly and charming as she described Brian’s earnest relaying of the news and imagined his clumsy handling of the encounter. Charles warmed to her in spite of himself.
But he felt detached because of the tiny infection of suspicion inside him. He kept wanting to ask her about Willy, to know if they had had an affair and, by doing so, cauterise the wound before it spread to dangerous proportions. But he could not do it. Not when she was so lovely. It would spoil everything.
They drank some port that Anna had bought and giggled into bed. And they made love. As good as ever, tender, synchronised, good. Except that Charles felt he was watching the two of them like a picture on the wall. Immediately after, they switched off the light and Anna, who was exhausted by Mary rehearsals and the revue, slipped easily into sleep.
Charles did not. He felt better for having seen her; his imagination could not run riot while she was actually there. But the doubt remained. He wanted to excise it, cut it out of his mind. The only way to do that was to ask her point-blank. But he knew he couldn’t. Not to her face. He contemplated ringing her up, even ringing her up in a different identity, pretending to be a policeman or . . . No, that was stupid.
He reasoned with himself. All right, so say she had been having an affair with Willy Mariello. So what? Charles had no particular claim on her and, anyway, he never worried about a woman’s previous lovers; they didn’t concern him. Jealousy over something that was over was pointless. And a lover couldn’t be more over than Willy.
That was the worrying bit. Not that Anna had slept with the Scottish lout, but that he had been murdered. Again Charles reasoned with himself and calmed himself with thoughts that there might be no connection between the two facts. Indeed, they weren’t both definitive facts yet. And they could be investigated.
Yes, a bit of investigation would put his mind at rest. He plumped up his pillow and turned over. Anna’s breathing had a soporific rhythm. But he did not sleep.
CHAPTER NINE
There’s some have specs to help their sight
Of objects dim and small
But Tim had specks within his eyes,
And could not see at all.
TIM TURPIN
THE FIRST PART of the investigation to set his mind at rest was another call on Jean Mariello.
She opened the door and leaned against it uninvitingly. ‘What do you want? There’s nothing more I can tell you.’
‘Please, just a couple of questions. I think I’m on to something.’
‘Big deal. Listen, Mr Paris. I’m very busy packing. The only thing that interests me about Willy is how soon I can forget he ever existed. And I don’t want to play cops and robbers.’
‘Please give me five minutes.’
‘Oh . . .’ She hovered between shutting him out and letting him in. Then she drew back. ‘Five minutes.’ She looked at her watch.
Charles entered the hall and moved into the front room. Jean Mariello gained some of the satisfaction she would have got from slamming the door in his face by slamming it behind him. ‘Right. Ask.’
Charles looked round. There were suitcases and cardboard boxes brimful of belongings. In the corner household rubbish and decorating rubble was swept into a neat pile. ‘You’re going?’
‘Yes, the house is on the market. I’ll never come back here.’
‘You’re leaving Edinburgh?’
‘Yes. I’m moving in with a man in the folk group. In Newcastle.’
‘Won’t you miss it?’
‘Edinburgh, yes. This house I hope I never see again.’
‘It’s a nice enough house.’
‘Look, I never lived here. Willy only bought the place a few months ago. I’ve been on tour. The only times I ever saw it, it was covered with paint brushes or plaster dust or other evidence of Willy’s latest ideas of home decor. He had the knack of converting every place we lived in into a pigsty. He’d suddenly get sick of his surroundings and want to change it all—smother everything with paint, take down a door . . . and never finish the job. We got turned out of one flat after he decided to take down the partition between the bedroom and sitting-room. Living with Willy was not an experience that gave one a feeling of home. I feel nothing for this place.’
‘Oh well, it’s in reasonable condition. You should get a good price for it.’
She snorted contemptuously. ‘The building society should get a good price for it.’
‘Ah. Still, Willy . . .’
She shook her head. ‘Willy had no money. He spent everything he made with Puce, not that there was much left after all the agents and managers had taken their bites. There may be a few royalties to come, but they’ll go on the bank loan he got for the deposit on this place and the arrears on the mortgage.’
‘Arrears?’
‘Yes. Willy got the mortgage on the basis of his earnings last year and the assumption that that level of income would continue. Then the band split up and he had virtually nothing. I don’t think one single repayment has been made to the building society. Mind you,’ she added bitterly, ‘I only discover this when he’s dead and I have to go through his mail.’
‘So you’re not exactly a rich widow?’
He got a scornful ‘Huh’ for that. ‘Mr Paris, I can’t believe that you came here to talk homes and gardens and mortgages. And if you didn’t, your five minutes and my patience are running low.’
‘I’m sorry. But just before I ask what I really came for, tell me why Willy boug
ht this house.’
‘It fitted the image of what he wanted to be. Saw himself as the great landowner, in his ancestral home in front of his blazing fire. The man of property, Willy, like all social upstarts, couldn’t wait to be rich enough to be Conservative. The Socialist pose, the sub-hippy world of rock music—that meant nothing to him really. It was only a stage he had to go through. He wanted to be stinking rich with servants to do everything for him. Trouble was, he was a bloody awful business man and couldn’t keep any money for more than five minutes.’
There was a pause. Jean Mariello looked at her watch and Charles realised he could not beat about the bush any longer. ‘I really wanted to ask you about Willy’s sex life.’
‘Oh. Well, of recent years I’m not really an expert on that.’
‘No.1 wanted to know about another woman.’
‘I didn’t take a great deal of interest in his other women either.’
Charles ignored the rebuffs and ploughed on. ‘When he was in Derby—you know, he stayed after the band had played there—do you know if he had a girl then?’
‘I assume so. I can’t think he stayed for the scenery.’
‘He never mentioned a girl?’
‘No. We didn’t discuss our private lives.’ She glanced at her watch.
‘Do you know if he had a girl around recently? You know, in the week before he died?’
She laughed incredulously. ‘I wasn’t here much of the time. You know that. What do you want me to do—say if I found stains on the sheets or hairs on the pillow?’
‘Yes, if necessary.
That took her aback. She paused and then said in a softer voice. ‘All right then, I would say, from the evidence of dirty laundry, that Willy did commit yet another desecration of our marriage bed between the Friday when I left and the Tuesday when he was killed.’
‘Yes?’
She spoke slowly, as if unwillingly dredging her memory. ‘Oh yes, he’d had someone. Hairs on the pillow, all the old familiar signs.’