A Series of Murders

by Simon Brett

  Her voice was guarded when she answered the phone; even more guarded when she heard who was speaking.

  ‘Charles, how are you?’

  ‘Oh, well, you know, Frances, not so bad.’

  ‘Meaning quite bad, from your tone of voice.’

  ‘Well . . . perhaps a bit shaken.’

  ‘And perhaps a bit drunk?’

  ‘Perhaps a bit.’

  ‘So what’s shaken you? Has something devastatingly unlikely happened . . . like your getting a job, for example?’

  ‘I have got a job, actually. Surely I told you?’

  ‘Charles, it’s over three months since you last rang me. On that occasion, too, you chose to make your call just before midnight . . . presumably on your arrival back at Hereford Road from some bar that closed at eleven.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Frances. I didn’t realise it was that late.’

  ‘Well, it is. And the last words you said to me at the end of our previous conversation three months ago were “I’ll call you before the weekend”.’

  ‘Oh, were they?’

  But Frances couldn’t stay peevish for long; it wasn’t in her nature. ‘What is it that’s shaken you?’ she asked in a gentler tone.

  ‘Oh, it’s – I don’t know. Somebody died.’

  ‘Somebody you were close to?’

  Was he being hypersensitive to hear a hint of jealousy in her voice? Though they hadn’t lived together regularly for many years, Charles liked to feel that his wife still cared for him.

  ‘No, not anyone I was close to,’ he replied.

  ‘This isn’t another of your murder investigations, is it, Charles?’

  ‘No, no. At least I’m fairly sure it isn’t.’

  ‘Oh, so you rang up just before midnight to tell me that someone you weren’t particularly close to has died?’

  ‘Well, yes, but . . . I wanted to hear your voice.’

  ‘This is my voice. This is what it sounds like. I think you’ll find it hasn’t changed a great deal in three months.’

  ‘And I want to see you.’ Suddenly he did, desperately. ‘I really want to see you, Frances.’

  ‘Ah, do you?’

  ‘You want to see me, don’t you?’

  The pause that greeted this question was longer than he would have wished.

  ‘You know, Charles,’ said Frances finally, ‘in many ways my life is much more restful when I don’t see you.’

  ‘Yes, but then who wants their life to be restful?’ he joked.

  ‘At midnight, Charles, let me tell you, restfulness is pretty high on my list of priorities.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. It’s unforgivably late. But look, let’s make a plan to meet.’

  ‘I don’t feel up to making plans now, thank you, Charles.’

  ‘But when might you feel up to making plans?’

  ‘When you’re sober,’ said Frances, and put the phone down.

  Chapter Five

  CHARLES HAD drunk more heavily than someone in work should have done. The trouble was that throughout his theatrical career work had been such an intermittent visitor and stayed for such short times that his regular habits were those of someone out of work rather than those of an employed person. And his usual method of dealing with a skinful the night before – a gradual rising punctuated by black coffee, aspirins, and retreats back to bed until the blessed relief of a pint around eleven-thirty – was unsuitable for someone who had a nine o’clock makeup call at W.E.T. House.

  He did make it, but his head pounded, his skin felt very tight, as though he had had face-lifts all over his body, and the makeup girl’s job was made more difficult by the fact that he had the shakes. He quipped that she might do better not to try rubbing the makeup into his face but simply to hold the sponge out and let him tremble against it. She didn’t appear to be amused by the idea.

  No one seemed to know what the day’s studio schedule would be. Normally reliable sources of all information, like Mort Verdon and the Floor Manager, could offer no help. Everything was disorganised. The sudden departure of Sippy Stokes had made a bigger hole in the production than anyone had realised the previous day.

  Eventually some sort of running order was concocted. Basically they were going to pick up any scenes they could that didn’t involve Christina Braid. Will Parton – also somewhat the worse for wear – was on hand for necessary script carpentry, sawing the beginnings and ends off scenes and making the stumps look as tidy as possible.

  But there was a kind of lethargy about everything. Russell Bentley walked through his scenes in a muted way, already determined that the whole episode should be remade from the start. And the absence of W. T. Wintergreen and her sister added to the sense that the proceedings weren’t really important.

  The Producer and Director did their best. Ben Docherty, full of the positive aggression that characterised all of his actions before lunch-time, urged the cast on to greater efforts. And Rick Landor, still looking ghastly, did all the right things with a kind of nerveless deliberation. Deep down, though, both of them seemed to have lost the will to continue.

  Charles was only involved in a couple of scenes on the set of Stanislas Braid’s study. Both followed the usual pattern of their encounters, in which the gifted amateur ran circles around the ponderous professional. The second scene seemed only to have been inserted in the script to plant the pair of candlesticks on Stanislas Braid’s mantelpiece, the candlesticks that he was to use so brilliantly to re-enact the murderer’s crime at the episode’s denouement. The denouement itself they could not record. The character of Christina was so integral to that scene that it would require from Will not a quick bit of carpentry but a major act of cabinet-making.

  Charles went listlessly through the motions, vowing throughout the morning that he would never touch another drop of alcohol and, after a couple of drinks at lunch-time, thinking throughout the afternoon that his morning’s vows had been perhaps a little rash. He dutifully did all that he was instructed to do, lifting and putting down the candlesticks endlessly while Rick Landor tried to frame his shots against the bored barracking of Russell Bentley.

  By five o’clock they had run out of scenes that they could even pretend were worth doing, and Will made it clear in no uncertain terms that there was no chance of his having done the monumental rewriting required by the following morning. So Ben Docherty, whose customary early-afternoon belligerence had by now given way to a sleepy acquiescence, was forced to recognise the inevitable. The following day’s studio would have to be scrapped. Reluctantly, knowing the effect it would have on his budget, he told the assembled company that they would not be called for Friday and instructed Mort Verdon to ring round the remainder of the cast and give them the news.

  Charles Paris changed more slowly this time. He was not after a Personal Best now, merely trying to eke out the time until the bar opened at half past five. His morning headache had returned; he was determined not to drink as much that evening. But then Charles Paris’s life was a long catalogue of such determinations.

  Changing out of costume and punctiliously scouring the last speck of makeup off his face only lasted him till twenty past five, so he took an atypically long route to the bar. He went through the Studio A control gallery, vaguely looking for Rick Landor, but the only person he found there was Mort Verdon, pressing down the buttons of the telephone after another of his calls to the cast.

  ‘Rick around, Mort?’

  ‘No, boofle. Editing. Suite three. He was booked from six, but he managed to move it since we broke early.’

  ‘Hmm. He seemed quite cut up about Sippy dying,’ Charles hazarded.

  ‘Yes, well, he would be. I think he and Miss Wooden might have been rather close.’

  ‘How close?’

  ‘Close enough to get splinters,’ said Mort Verdon archly. ‘And close enough for Rick to get the teeniest bit tetchy when Jimmy Sheet started switching on the charm.’

  ‘When did that happen? I didn’t notice an
ything.’

  ‘No, takes a trained eye.’

  ‘What happened? What did your trained eye see?’

  ‘Well, didn’t really see anything while we were in rehearsal or filming. But I happened to see them together in Stringfellow’s on Tuesday night.’

  ‘Stringfellow’s? I didn’t know that was your scene, Mort.’

  ‘Lot of things you don’t know about me, Charles Paris.’ The stage manager winked at him slyly. ‘Mind you, anytime you want to find out more . . . you have only to ask.’

  Charles had one large Bell’s in the bar before setting off to find Rick. As he approached the editing suites, he was once again struck by the unequal distribution of work load in television. Every production was surrounded by an enormous team of people, but the only ones who really had to work hard were the designer, the director, and the director’s production assistant. And of those the director had to work hardest. It was typical that after a long day in the studio Rick Landor would be faced by an evening’s videotape editing. Or an evening’s film editing. Or an evening preparing a camera script. It was a stressful job.

  And a job that could be made even more stressful if one had a girlfriend who had died.

  Through the glass panel of the door of suite 3, Charles could see Rick lounging back in a chair. The Director appeared to be on his own, and with no audience to hold himself together for, he had allowed his face to show the strains of the last few days. He looked up at the discreet tap on the door and composed his expression into something more purposeful and energetic.

  He gestured Charles to enter. ‘What can I do for you?’ he asked.

  Charles hadn’t really planned what the excuse for his visit would be but homed in on something safe. ‘Just wondered if you might be down for a drink in the bar later?’

  It wasn’t that strange a suggestion. The Director and actor had met for the occasional quick drink over the last week. And though Charles’s coming all the way to the editing suite to make his invitation might have seemed unusual, Rick did not appear to notice any incongruity.

  ‘I doubt it, actually, Charles. I’m pretty bushed. And I’m booked in here till nine – well, half past eight, cause we started early – but I think after that I’ll head straight back home. Thanks for the idea, though.’

  ‘Oh, well, plenty of other opportunities.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Charles looked around the suite. Videotape is not edited like film. The tape is not actually cut; different takes are joined together by a process of dubbing from one machine to another. Digital displays show the position of the various tapes. At that moment, the large machines, with their giant spools, stood idle. On the monitor in front of Rick, Stanislas Braid was frozen in his study, caught in mid-gesture.

  Answering Charles’s unspoken question, the Director said, ‘P.A.’s getting coffee, and the editor’s gone to get another tape. Library didn’t send up all we needed. Another cock-up.’

  Charles nodded. ‘Bit of a chapter of cock-ups the last few days have been,’ he said, trying to open out the conversation.

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘I didn’t know Sippy very well.’

  ‘No. I did.’

  There was no ambiguity in Rick’s tone. He made no attempt to hide the relationship. In fact, he seemed more than ready to expand on it. ‘My marriage broke up three years ago.’

  Of course, Charles remembered, a broken marriage was virtually an essential qualification for a young director in television. Mind you, he reminded himself with a little shiver at the recollection of Frances’s coldness on the telephone, I’m a fine one to criticise.

  ‘Sippy was the first girl I’d got even vaguely involved with since. Not that it was that serious, but . . .’

  ‘I’m sorry. It must have been hell for you the last couple of days.’

  ‘Not great, but . . . the show must go on,’ said Rick grimly. ‘Can’t think about that sort of thing too much when you’re working. And I seem to be working every hour God sends at the moment.’

  ‘Yes, I was just thinking that as I came along here.’

  ‘Still, can’t complain. At least the work’s there,’ said the Director brusquely. ‘And I do love television.’

  ‘Really?’ said Charles, for whom the only really attractive thing about television was the money.

  ‘Yes, I love it. Even though it broke up my marriage – Well, I suppose it wasn’t all television’s fault. The fact that my wife was a promiscuous little bitch might have had something to do with it, too . . . And now television has broken up another relationship for me.’

  ‘You blame television for Sippy’s death?’ asked Charles, eager to pounce on any stray clue that might be about.

  ‘No, not really. I just mean that she died in a television studio, that’s all.’

  There seemed something evasive about the way Rick spoke, as if he had started to say something else and then decided to backtrack.

  ‘You heard that I actually found her body, did you?’

  ‘Yes. Must’ve been nasty.’

  ‘Was.’ There was a silence. ‘I had to talk to the police.’

  ‘Me, too.’

  ‘Didn’t elicit much from them about what they thought had happened.’

  ‘Nor did I,’ said Rick unhelpfully.

  Charles looked at the picture on the monitor screen. Something in it caught his attention. Masking his excitement in casualness, he asked, ‘When did you record that scene?’

  ‘That? Oh, immediately after the break yesterday morning. It’s hardly a scene, really. It’s just one of those moments of Russell sitting in his study with a cigar and looking thoughtful.’

  ‘The Great Mind at work. Stanislas Braid’s Mighty Intellect solves another case.’

  ‘That’s it. There’ll be a good few of those shots through the series.’

  ‘Hard to tell how it’s going at this stage,’ Charles prompted diffidently.

  Rick Landor looked up at him with a cynical smile. ‘Well, I don’t think it’s going to be Miss Marple.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That’s W.E.T.’s idea. Look at the sales round the world of the BBC’s Miss Marple series – that’s the bandwagon they’re trying to hitch on to. They think, Let’s get something of the same kind . . . detective stories . . . lots of period detail . . . We’ll clean up. Hmm, well, I think they may have miscalculated.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For a start, W. T. Wintergreen is no Agatha Christie.’

  ‘And Russell Bentley is no Joan Hickson.’

  ‘No. And then again, the way they’re making it is all wrong. W.E.T.’s trying to do it on the cheap, as usual. I mean, that half-on-film and half-in-studio stuff just looks so old-fashioned nowadays. The international market wants series that’re all on film.’

  ‘And you’d much rather be directing something that’s all on film?’

  ‘Need you ask?’

  No, Charles needn’t have, really. All television directors think they’re film directors manqué. And most of them nurse secret fantasies of one day single-handedly reviving the British feature-film industry.

  ‘About Sippy . . .’ Charles began again.

  ‘Hmm?’ Rick responded wearily.

  ‘Your relationship was still happening . . . you know, when she died?’

  The director’s eyes narrowed. For the first time he showed signs of resenting Charles’s probing. ‘What makes you ask that?’

  ‘I don’t know. You just didn’t seem to take much notice of each other round the studio.’

  ‘There is such a thing as professionalism, Charles.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. I know.’ There is also such a thing, he reflected, as not wishing to draw attention to the operations of the casting couch. Particularly if the person cast did not show such exceptional abilities on a television set as she presumably did on the couch.

  ‘No,’ he went on, taking a calculated risk. ‘I mean, if I’d been asked to sa
y who – if anyone – in the company Sippy was tied up with, I’d probably have plumped for Jimmy Sheet.’

  That one hit home. Rick Landor’s eyes blazed. ‘Well, you would have been wrong, then, wouldn’t you, Charles?’

  But the vehemence of the denial meant that the matter was at least worthy of further investigation.

  Not at that moment, though. The editor had just returned with the right tape, and at the same time Rick’s P.A. appeared with a tray of coffee and packets of biscuits. Charles made his good-byes.

  He may not have got much information out of Rick Landor, but the visit to the editing suite had filled him with a bubble of excitement. Something he had seen there had brought bursting to the surface an idea that he had vigorously suppressed since his discovery of Sippy’s body.

  The frozen picture of Stanislas Braid’s study on the editing monitor had differed in one particular from the set on which Charles had worked that afternoon. Differed indeed from the set that he had seen when he returned from his coffee break the previous morning.

  On the later occasions there had been two candlesticks on Stanislas Braid’s mantelpiece. In the scene that had been recorded about the time of Sippy Stokes’s death, only one candlestick was in evidence.

  Where was the other one?

  Was it fanciful to imagine that the base of a candlestick might fit the dent in the young actress’s head?

  Or fanciful to imagine that Sippy Stokes had been murdered?

  Chapter Six

  IT WAS A NOVEL experience for Charles to ring his agent when he was working. Usually, such calls were made during those long sags in his career when it looked as if nobody would ever employ Charles Paris again in the history of the universe. At such times, though ringing his agent didn’t actually help – Maurice Skellern was so incompetent that he never knew of any jobs coming up – it did at least spread the misery.

  But for that Friday morning’s call the circumstances were totally different. Charles was at the beginning of a three-month contract for W.E.T. For once in his life he had a guaranteed income; he could see some way ahead financially – not very far ahead, it was true, but three months further ahead than he usually could. So it was almost with an air of condescension that he dialled his agent’s number.