Tickled to Death and Other Stories of Crime and Suspense

by Simon Brett

  Isabel typed up the invoice, hitting the keys with something approaching savagery.

  THE HAUNTED ACTRESS

  MARIANA LYTHGOE TOOK the centre of the stage as if by right. It was a matter of habit and instinct, helped by the natural deference of those around her. But the dominance of her presence was never resented; force of personality demanded a tribute that was willingly given. Nor was that force of personality noticeably diminished by the actress’s seventy years. Though the famous brown eyes were foxed with grey, they retained their magnetism.

  The stage whose centre she so naturally took was, on this occasion, a small one. It was a low wooden table, surrounded by a cluster of plastic-upholstered armchairs, in BBC Radio’s Ariel Bar.

  The audience was also small, but more theatrically discriminating than many she had faced in her long career on the stage. Every member was, to a greater or lesser extent, “in the business”. They had all just completed recording a radio play, for which the producer, Mark Lear, had lured Mariana Lythgoe from her much-publicized retirement.

  It was a tribute, Charles Paris thought wryly, to her enduring magnetism that Mark was now listening to her with such concentration. During the two days of the recording the producer had been patently earmarking a young, purple-haired actress for his attentions, and the fact that he was deferring the inevitable post-production chat-up for Mariana said a lot for the old lady’s power.

  “But, of course, no one remembers me now,” she was saying with self-depreciating charm.

  “Absolute balderdash,” Mark Lear protested. “The less work you do, the more you seem to be in the public eye.”

  She laughed in fond disagreement.

  “No, really, Mariana. You should have heard the reaction I got from people who heard you were going to do this play for me. And then there’s been all this recent publicity about your autobiography.”

  “A nine-days’ wonder,” she said dismissively. “Publishers spend their lives creating nine-day wonders. A month hence everyone will have forgotten about the book.”

  “Don’t you believe it,” Mark persisted. “Then there’s this new production of Roses In Winter at the Haymarket. There hasn’t been a single review of it which hasn’t mentioned you.”

  “Oh . . .” The vowel was long with denial, but still asked for more.

  “That’s the way to get reviews,” the producer continued, “—without even being in the show. Get all the critics saying, ‘It’s hard to forget Mariana Lythgoe’s creation of the part of Clara in Boy Trubshawe’s original production.’ You ever had any notices like that, Charles?”

  Charles Paris grimaced. “No. I’ve had one or two that wished I hadn’t been in shows I was in, but none that actually praised me in absentia.”

  Mark laughed. “Well, I’m afraid the poor kid who’s playing Clara in this production hasn’t got a chance. What’s her name?”

  “Sandy Drake,” Mariana supplied. “I haven’t seen it, but I gather she’s awfully good,” she added loyally.

  “The only good things I’ve read about her have been in comparisons with you,” said Mark. Charles couldn’t decide whether the producer was being more than usually sycophantic or whether this was just the effect Mariana Lythgoe had on people. From his own reactions to her, he inclined to the second opinion.

  “No, but really,” Mark continued, “she’s only getting your reflected glory. Same with that nephew of yours.”

  “Oh, now, darling, I won’t have you saying that. Dick’s sorting out a wonderful career for himself, without any help from me.”

  “Hmm. Well, I read an article on him in the Standard, and the whole piece seemed to be about you. You needed to be a trained detective to find the one reference to Dick.”

  “Ah.” Mariana let out a long sigh. “Wouldn’t it sometimes be nice to have a trained detective on hand.”

  Mark pointed to Charles. “Well, there’s the one you want, Mariana.”

  Charles Paris felt the faded brown eyes burning into him. “Are you a trained detective?”

  “Far from trained,” he hastened to assure her. “A dabbler. Strictly amateur. Weekends . . . oh, and of course during those brief, brief patches of ‘resting’.”

  This understatement of their endemic unemployment brought its predictable laughter from the other actors present, which Charles hoped was sufficient to shift the subject of conversation.

  “Right,” he said, standing up. “Who wants another drink?”

  But, as he took the orders, and as he made his way to the bar, he could still feel the old actress’s eyes on him.

  “And you really think someone’s out to get you?”

  “Yes,” Mariana Lythgoe replied firmly.

  Charles looked out of the tall windows over Regent’s Park. Her flat was on the top of one of the beautiful wedding-cake blocks north of the Marylebone Road. At one time its interior had been expensively decorated, but little had been spent on its upkeep since. The furnishings had a wistful air of dated elegance, like an old stage set that has done duty in a tour of many theatres.

  “And when you say ‘get you’, what do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure.” She sat regally in an upright armchair, a cut-glass goblet of gin and tonic in her freckled hand. From her bearing, she could have been on stage as Cleopatra. She spoke slowly as she defined her thoughts. “I think I mean ‘to frighten me’. I think someone is trying to harass me with a view to frightening me.”

  “I wouldn’t think you frighten easily.”

  She inclined her head at the compliment. “No, I don’t. As a rule. I am not frightened by anything rational, anything that I can make sense of. But anyone can be frightened by a sudden shock.”

  Charles nodded. “Why should anyone want to frighten you, though? What might there be in it for them?”

  “I don’t know. It’s because the whole thing’s irrational that it actually is frightening.”

  Charles was silent for a moment, thinking. Then he spoke. “But there must be a reason. Unless we’re dealing with someone who’s mentally unbalanced, the person who is persecuting you must be doing it for a reason. That reason might be to punish you for some imagined wrong. . . . Know anyone you’ve offended recently?”

  The splendid head was shaken slowly from side to side. “No. There’s no one I’ve offended wittingly.”

  “Or they could be trying to frighten you to stop you investigating something they want kept quiet. Anything you can think of that might . . .?”

  Again the head was shaken slowly but positively.

  “Or to back up a blackmail threat, to show that the people you’re dealing with mean business. But that, of course, presupposes that you have had a blackmail threat. . . .”

  She shook her head for the third time. “There has been no mention of blackmail. The letters contained nothing that could be construed in that way.”

  “What letters are these?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I haven’t shown them to you. It’s the letters that really got me worried. The phone-calls were ambiguous, but the letters . . .”

  As the old lady eased herself out of the armchair and moved across to a writing desk, Charles queried her mention of telephone calls.

  “Oh, nothing was said, Charles. Just the telephone ringing and no one at the other end when I answered it.”

  “Heavy breathing?”

  “Perhaps. I didn’t notice it. They could have been that sort of call, of course. I gather any lady listed in the telephone directory is likely to get a few of those.”

  “I’m surprised you’re in the directory.”

  Mariana smiled knowingly. “My dear, when I was famous, of course I kept my name out of the book. But now . . .” She shrugged. “Now my name doesn’t mean a thing, so the danger of nuisance from my admirers is considerably lessened.”

  She produced three letters, held together by a paper clip, from the writing desk, and handed them over to Charles.

  Their threats were not specific, b
ut disturbing. Unsettling for an old lady. “WE’RE OUT TO GET YOU, MARIANA” was the basic message. As she had said, there was nothing that could be interpreted as blackmail.

  “When did these come? Presumably not all together?”

  “No. Over the last three weeks. The first one was here when I got back.”

  “Got back?” Charles echoed.

  “Oh yes, darling. I was doing a little . . . now what did the sweet girl at the publishers call it? . . . promotional tour, that’s right. Being driven round the country and talking to all these very young people in radio stations. Very strange. Of course, one was used to press interviews about plays, but at least then you were going to the places to perform.”

  “A book is a kind of performance.”

  “Is it?” She looked at him with vague earnestness, not untinged with humour. “A very self-indulgent performance in the case of my book. Just an old lady maundering on about herself. I can’t imagine why anyone’s going to be interested in that.”

  Charles was now getting used to her method, and could recognize that this, though cast with the usual charm, was angling for contradiction and compliment. He withheld both, but Mariana did not appear discomfited. Instead, she looked at him with a new irony, possibly a new respect.

  “How did these letters arrive?” he asked.

  “Pushed through the letter-box.”

  “No stamps?”

  “No.”

  “So someone came through the main entrance of the block and up the stairs to deliver them.”

  “Yes. Lots of people come and go here. The security is very slack.”

  “No doorman?”

  “Not as such. The caretaker lives in the basement of the adjacent block, but he never seems to be there. Has another job, many of the residents believe. What do they call it . . . moonshining?”

  “Moonlighting.”

  She inclined her head wryly in acknowledgement of her error.

  “Why haven’t you been to the police about the letters?” asked Charles suddenly.

  “The police.” She articulated the word pensively, as if it were a new idea. “I’m sure the police have quite enough to think about without being worried by old ladies.”

  “I wouldn’t say—”

  “Besides . . .” Her timing of the word stopped him neatly.

  “Besides what, Mariana?”

  “Well . . . one wouldn’t want the police involved if it turned out that the person doing this was . . .” Her voice went suddenly quiet. “. . . someone one knew.”

  “Does that mean you do have an idea of who might be responsible?”

  “No. No. Of course not.”

  Charles let it go at that. For the time being. “You say the block’s not very secure. What about the flat itself?”

  “There are two locks on the front door. It would be hard for anyone to get past those.” After a pause, she added, “So long as I remember to lock them.”

  “And do you?”

  “Usually. But old ladies get absent-minded.”

  Charles smiled. There was a teasing quality, almost a flirtatiousness, about the way she kept harping on her age.

  “However,” Mariana continued, “the kitchen door is less secure.”

  “Kitchen door?”

  She led him across to the small room which had been planned and decorated in the days before the concept of kitchen units and toning work surfaces. A glass-topped door opened on to the top landing of a zigzag fire escape. It was secured by one fairly primitive lock.

  “Wouldn’t hurt to get another lock on this. A few bolts, too. The glass is a hazard.”

  “But it does make the kitchen light.”

  Charles nodded. “You could get it replaced with reinforced glass. At the moment it’s an invitation to anyone who wants to walk in.”

  “Yes.” For the first time in the evening, Mariana looked frail. “Yes, I suppose I had better get it done. Though it seems rather a lot of trouble to protect an old lady who’ll be dead soon in the natural course of events.”

  Charles put a hand on the angularity of her shoulder. “Don’t you believe it. You’ve got another twenty years in you.”

  “Oh, I hope not. Sometimes I think it’d be rather a relief if whoever-it-is came and got me quickly.”

  “‘Got you’—we’re back to that. Do you think they really mean violence against you? Do you think they’re really out to kill you?”

  Mariana Lythgoe gave a thin smile. “They wouldn’t need much violence.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have a serious heart condition. All it’s going to need to kill me is a sudden shock.”

  The pounding on the door first merged with, then detached itself from Charles’s dream. He fumbled for the light-switch, screwed up his eyes and looked at his watch. Quarter to three.

  He opened the door of his bedsitter and was confronted by an aggrieved Swedish girl in a brushed nylon nightdress. The rest of the rooms in the house were occupied by Swedish girls, all, like this one, built on the lines of night-club bouncers. In their dealings with Charles, they all always wore aggrieved expressions, though on this occasion the annoyance had some justification.

  “It is for you the telephone,” the girl snorted, and stumped upstairs, her footsteps heavy with offence.

  He took up the receiver that dangled from the landing payphone. “Yes?”

  “It’s Mariana.” The famous voice was breathless, almost gasping. “Something’s happened.”

  “I feel terrible,” she said, handing him a cup of coffee, “disturbing you in the middle of the night. I’m sorry, I over-reacted. It was just such a shock.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Charles felt better now. The taxi ride had shaken the sleep out of him. “Your reaction was quite reasonable. It must have been horrible for you.”

  “It was. But I feel better now. I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t think of ringing the police?”

  “Over something like this? They’d have thought I was mad.”

  “I don’t know. There’s the trespass element, anyway. Whoever planted that thing broke into your flat to do so. Any sign of forcible entry?”

  “No.” She looked sheepish. “Mind you . . .”

  “What?”

  “I was out most of today and I’m afraid when I came back . . . I found I’d left the kitchen door unlocked.”

  She looked pathetically at him, fearing his reprimand, so Charles just said, “Never mind. Let’s just have another look in the wardrobe.”

  Mariana stayed in the sitting-room as he went into the bedroom. He turned off the bedside light and moved towards the wardrobe, just as she must have done a few hours previously.

  She had woken, she said, at half-past two, woken with that raw knowledge that there was no chance of sleep for another couple of hours. She had read for a little, then decided to get up and make a cup of tea. It was early November, chilly when the block’s central heating was off, and she had gone to the wardrobe to fetch a cardigan. She had turned off the bedside light to save going back across the room, got up and walked across to the wardrobe. Then she had opened the door and seen it.

  It was a luminous skeleton, about two foot high, and it had been suspended from a hanger in front of the clothes. To eyes that expected it, the cardboard outline looked faintly ridiculous. To an old lady taken completely by surprise, it must have been horrifying.

  Charles detached the figure. Its limbs were joined with paper clips. It had been manufactured by Hallmark in the United States. It looked brand-new.

  There was something familiar about the ornament. Charles had seen things like it somewhere before.

  He concentrated and the memory came back to him. Yes, Hallowe’en. A couple of years previously he had gone to a Hallowe’en party given by some expatriate American friends, and they had garlanded their house with cut-outs of pumpkins, witches and skeletons.

  Maybe there was an American connection with Mariana Lythgoe’s persec
utor.

  Mariana was so ready to give him a copy of her autobiography that Charles felt remiss in not having asked for it earlier. She brushed aside his request for a loan, insisting that he should have a copy of his own and inscribing it to him with fulsome, but apparently genuine, affection.

  The next day, rising late after making up the night’s deficit of sleep, Charles started to read the book. It was a day for reading, cold, dull November, as usual no work to go to. He sat till the pubs opened at five-thirty, in his armchair, feeding coins into the meter for his gas-fire and reliving Mariana Lythgoe’s extraordinary life in the theatre.

  The story was extraordinary not for any particularly bizarre incidents, but for the sheer breadth of experience it demonstrated. She had known and worked with every major theatrical figure of the twentieth century. Charles knew she was famous, but the variety of justifications of her fame amazed him.

  But the book was not just a catalogue of dropped names. Her personality came across in every line; the story was written just as she spoke, and a reader who had never met, seen or even heard of Mariana Lythgoe could not have failed to be charmed by it.

  From the point of view of the current investigation, the book offered very little. Even allowing for the fact that the writer was giving her own version of events, Mariana did not seem to be the sort of person who made enemies. She had worked with some notorious ogres of the theatre, but seemed with all of them to have maintained extremely sunny relationships. Professional revenge was an unlikely motive for the persecution.

  The only name of which Charles made a mental note was Boy Trubshawe, the director of the original production of Roses In Winter. Mariana indulged in no criticism of his professional work, but did detail some of the practical jokes for which he was famous, and in her description of these (some of which sounded rather heartless), her writing almost took on a note of censure. That, coupled with the nature of the attack that had been made, raised in Charles the mildest of suspicions of Boy Trubshawe.

  But there was nothing which impugned the director’s professional reputation. Of Roses In Winter, Mariana wrote, “Given such a wonderful script and such a wonderful cast, there was no doubt that Boy Trubshawe was about to have his first major success. Which he duly did.”