A Series of Murders

by Simon Brett

  Jimmy Sheet’s club was on a small street not far from Grosvenor Square. Once again he pulled the Mercedes to a halt on double yellow lines directly outside the entrance and, pausing only to don dark glasses, got out, clearly intending to leave it there.

  ‘Aren’t you worried about getting clamped?’ asked Charles tentatively.

  ‘Nah. There’s this service that sorts it out for you. And I’ve got an account with this limo company what’ll send one round pronto to take me home.’

  Money, it seemed, was not a problem for Mr. Sheet.

  His club looked expensive, too. But whereas Charles had been expecting something rather glitzy and American, a place full of girls with variegated hair where no drink was served without a cluster of umbrellas in it, the reception into which Jimmy Sheet ushered him was very restrained and patrician. Panelled walls and marble pillars, much nearer the Athenaeum than the Groucho.

  The porter, who would have been well cast as a minor retainer in an episode of Stanislas Braid, goodafternoon-Mr.-Sheeted him, and Jimmy magnanimously asked after the porter’s family while signing Charles in. It was interesting to see how quickly new money absorbed the habits of old money.

  In the dark wood-and-leather peace of the bar, Jimmy Sheet greeted a few pinstriped gentlemen who showed no resentment of his open-necked shirt and oyster-grey leather jacket. They were too much gentlemen even to show resentment of Charles’s neolithic sports jacket.

  A waiter, so discreet as to be almost invisible, took their orders for a large Bell’s and a spritzer. Jimmy Sheet popped a stuffed olive in his mouth, chewed it, and asked, ‘How’d you think it’s going, then?’

  ‘Not too bad,’ said Charles cautiously. ‘Rather better as of this morning than it was last week.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Jimmy Sheet nodded reflectively but did not pick up the cue to talk about Sippy Stokes. ‘Hope it’ll be all right. The agent said it’d be a good series for me to do. Don’t want to end up in a bummer.’

  Charles tried to imagine what it must be like to move in a world where your agent recommends shows that would be ‘good for you to do’ rather than one where you grabbed anything that was offered.

  ‘I’m sure it’ll be all right,’ he said automatically. ‘Because actually this is your first big acting break, isn’t it?’

  ‘Could say that,’ Jimmy Sheet agreed. ‘Mind you, “break” makes it sound like it was accidental. I mean, this was a calculated career move.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Well, I mean, I could’ve kept on with the singing, but, you know, last couple of singles didn’t get as high up the charts as the ones before, and I always reckoned to get out of that while I was still on top. It’s all only means to an end, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it?’ asked Charles.

  ‘Oh, sure. I done the singing because, you know, gives you a good international profile, but I never was going to stay with it. I mean, the money’s there if you want to. Go into cabaret, you know, keep recycling the old hits – you can do that till the cows come home. But that was never how I wanted my career to pan out.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Nah. Anyway, all that travelling. You know, I reckon I done my bit on the touring front. Need something that doesn’t take me away from home so much. Like to spend more time with Sharon and the kids.’

  ‘Actors do a lot of touring and location stuff.’

  ‘Oh, sure. But in the music business, you got to do it to keep up your profile. In acting, you know, you can choose your work.’

  Can you? thought Charles. First I’ve heard of it.

  ‘And the acting, you know, you can keep it going, fit it round other things, business commitments and that.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. I mean, again television’s only another kind of staging post.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘I’m just doing this series to, you know, like remind the public I’m not just a singer, I’m a good actor, and all. Kind of re-establish me in the public’s mind in a different role.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Not going to stay with the television.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, it’s not sort of international.’

  ‘I thought it could be. I thought it was becoming increasingly international.’

  ‘Yeah, but not at the same level as the music business or feature films.’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Apart from anything else, the money’s peanuts, isn’t it?’

  Since the three months of the Stanislas Braid contract would be the best-paid three months of his life, Charles didn’t feel qualified to reply to this.

  ‘No, as I say,’ Jimmy Sheet went on, ‘it’s feature films I’m going into in the long term.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘Might do some theatre as well . . . You know, if the right part comes up on Broadway, that kind of number.’

  Charles kept wondering why all this didn’t sound unconvincing. He had heard similar dreams expressed by any number of actors, and his normal reaction was, all sounds great; you just wait till you get out into the real world, sonny. But Jimmy Sheet spoke with such assurance that he made his plans sound more like business decisions than pipe dreams. He seemed to be in no doubt that he would be able to follow his proposed career path, and Charles found himself equally convinced.

  ‘What do you put your money in?’ Jimmy Sheet asked suddenly.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Charles.

  ‘Your money – what’s it in?’

  ‘Erm . . .’ Difficult question to answer, really. The truth – I haven’t got any – sounded just too pathetic and self-pitying. ‘Oh, this and that.’

  ‘Mm. Spread the investment – something to be said for that, certainly. I got most of my dosh in property.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Yeah. Don’t think you can ultimately lose with property.’

  ‘No. No, I suppose not. As Mark Twain said, “Buy land, my son, they are not making any more”.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mark Twain.’

  ‘Don’t know him.’ Jimmy Sheet restlessly picked up another olive and flicked it into his mouth. ‘Got some property in the States, bit in Australia, quite a lot here in England.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Well, you got to do something with it, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  Jimmy Sheet winked at the waiter, who ghosted up with more drinks. Charles decided it might be timely to move the conversation away from money, about which he’d never had the opportunity to know anything, to what he was really interested in.

  ‘Terrible business last week, wasn’t it?’

  ‘What’s that, then?’ asked Jimmy.

  ‘Sippy Stokes.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, yeah.’

  ‘Dreadful when something like that happens. You know, you feel you should have done more.’

  ‘Done more like what?’

  ‘Got to know her better, perhaps.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, when someone dies –’

  ‘People die all the time.’

  ‘Yes, but when it’s someone you know –’

  ‘You just said you didn’t know her.’

  Jimmy Sheet certainly wasn’t making the conversation easy. ‘No, I mean . . .’ Charles floundered on. ‘What I mean is, you just feel it’s kind of a waste.’

  ‘Not a waste of an actress, certainly.’

  ‘Perhaps not. But a waste of a person.’

  ‘Maybe to the people who were close to her.’

  ‘Do you know who was close to her?’

  Jimmy Sheet’s eyes narrowed. ‘Well, I gather Rick Landor wasn’t averse to giving her one every now and then.’

  ‘I suppose that’s how she got the part.’

  ‘Can’t think of any other reason. No, old Ben nearly bust a gut when he heard about it. They’d done most of the major casting, and he was still dithering about who was going to play Christina – mind you, I
think he’d got that Joanne bird in mind from the start. Then suddenly he hears Rick’s pulled a fast one and put through the booking for his little bit on the side.’

  ‘Couldn’t Ben have put a stop to it?’

  ‘Contract had gone out. He’d have had to pay her off for the series. And we saw this morning just how keen he is on writing things off.’

  ‘Yes. Mind you, he had decided to pay her off after the first episode, anyway.’

  ‘Had he?’

  Quickly, Charles filled Jimmy in on what Will had told him in the bar after Sippy’s death.

  ‘Shit,’ said the singer at the end of the account. ‘That Ben Docherty can be a really nasty operator.’

  ‘Yes. It’s amazing that Sippy didn’t hear from someone what he was planning.’

  ‘Well, she didn’t. She didn’t have a clue on the Tuesday night, anyway.’

  Jimmy Sheet had given something away there, and Charles pounced on it. ‘Oh, really? Did you see her on the Tuesday night?’

  ‘What? No. No. Just at the end of the filming, you know, just had a chat.’

  Charles would have recognised that the man was lying even if he hadn’t known of his visit with the ‘mystery brunette’ to Stringfellow’s.

  ‘So you weren’t one of the people who was close to her?’

  ‘No. No, course I wasn’t.’ Jimmy Sheet was becoming heated. ‘Shit, just because you’ve worked in the pop business, everybody thinks you’re bloody bonking everything in sight. Look, all right, in what I do, things I’ve done, there’s always been girls around. But I’m a happily married man. I got Sharon and the kids. Okay, in the past there may have been the odd flutter, but that’s all finished – got it?’

  It didn’t take a very advanced student of psychology to recognise that the vehemence of this defence was totally disproportionate to the hint of an accusation that Charles had made. Nor to identify it as the operation of a guilty conscience.

  As if to reinforce that impression – which hardly needed reinforcing – the ectoplasmic waiter suddenly materialised at Jimmy’s side and murmured discreetly that Mr. Sheet’s wife was on the telephone.

  Checking up on him, Charles thought as the harassed husband went off to take the call. There was something amiss with Jimmy Sheet’s marriage. His wife was a neurotically jealous woman, and she didn’t trust him. As the newspaper gossip column had hinted, she could well be the sort to divorce him and take away his beloved children if she caught a whiff of any other extramarital excursions.

  Taking Sippy Stokes out to Stringfellow’s on the night before her death might well qualify under that heading.

  Fine, so long as it remained secret. But it was a risky thing to do. Mort Verdon had seen them there. Any number of other people might have seen them there. It was only luck that the newspaper columnist hadn’t been able to identify the ‘mystery brunette’.

  Anyway, suppose Sippy Stokes didn’t want it to remain secret? Suppose she had threatened to tell the lovely Sharon what had happened?

  Then Jimmy Sheet might well feel that Sippy Stokes needed to be silenced.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘OH, HELLO, Charles. It’s Maurice.’

  ‘You ringing me? Good heavens, what’s happened?’

  ‘Availability check.’

  ‘Good God, there’s no stopping them at the moment. Is it the National Theatre again? I don’t know, that lot just won’t take no for an answer. Oh, well, I suppose if they insist on my giving my Lear, I can’t really say no, can I?’

  ‘Ha. Ha. You’re in a very chirpy mood this bright Tuesday morning, aren’t you? What’s got into you?’

  ‘I think it must be employment. I had forgotten how it felt to have things to do in the gaps between sleeping. And now my agent being flooded with availability checks . . .’

  ‘One’s hardly a flood, Charles.’

  ‘What about the two you had last Thursday?’

  ‘What? Oh, yes. Yes, of course, I’d forgotten those.’

  But the pause between the ‘What?’ and the ‘Oh, yes’ had been too long. Maurice had given himself away. As Charles had suspected, the availability checks of the previous week had been pure fabrication.

  ‘Anyway, who wants to know my availability?’

  ‘W.E.T.’

  ‘Hey, how about that? Success breeds success. What is it? Supporting artiste given his own series? New spin-off called Sergeant Clump Investigates? Or are they asking me to appear as a well-loved W.E.T. personality on some wacky, tacky game show?’

  He offered these suggestions as jokes, but only partly as jokes. No actor can suppress that secret hope that one day, it really is all going to happen for him.

  ‘It’s none of that, Charles. It’s still Stanislas Braid.’

  ‘Are they committing themselves to the second series already?’

  ‘No, they’re adding some extra dates to this series to pick up the episode they lost last week.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Yes, of course.’ So Ben Docherty had finally given in to the pressures around him. Sippy Stokes was to be erased completely from the series of Stanislas Braid. Russell Bentley had had his own way yet again.

  ‘That’s good news, Maurice. When is it? How’re they doing it?’

  ‘Just tacking a fortnight on to the end of this series. I mean, that’s assuming everyone can make the dates. As I say, it’s only an availability check at the moment. Presumably, if any regulars are committed elsewhere, they’ll have to rethink. I mean, Russell Bentley’s never out of work, so he might be a problem.’

  ‘He said he’d definitely make himself available for this. It came up at the read-through yesterday.’

  ‘Oh, well, it should be all right, then. He’s the one who’s likely to be difficult. I can’t think anyone else is going to have much coming up.’

  Charles cleared his throat. Then he cleared his throat again.

  ‘What’s up, Charles? Touch of the old laryngitis?’

  ‘No, Maurice’ came the dignified reply. ‘But isn’t there something you’ve forgotten?’

  ‘What’s that? Not your birthday, is it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Wedding anniversary? But I thought since you and Frances weren’t living together anymore, you didn’t –’

  ‘No, Maurice. Just think. W.E.T. rang you to check my availability?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, isn’t there something you haven’t done?’

  The agent was still at a loss. ‘What’s that, then?’

  ‘Come on, Maurice. You haven’t checked my bloody availability, have you!’

  ‘What – you mean, I haven’t asked whether you’ll be free for a fortnight at the end of this contract?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  There was a silence from the other end of the phone. Then it was interrupted by a sound that could have been an asthmatic having an orgasm. Charles recognised that Maurice was laughing.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said the agent when he was sufficiently recovered to speak. ‘I am so sorry, Charles. Aren’t we being grand?’ This idea sent him off into another burst of hysterical gasping. ‘Oh, dear. Oh, dear. All right, Charles. Here we go. Ready?’

  ‘Yes,’ Charles replied primly.

  ‘Right. Charles Paris, is it possible that you might be available to record an extra episode of the Stanislas Braid series for West End TV in the two weeks immediately following the cessation of your current contract with the company?’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ said Charles. ‘I’ll check.’ Then, after a pause during which someone who possessed an engagements diary would have had time to consult it, he returned to the phone. ‘I think it might be possible. There are one or two things in the air but nothing firmed up yet.’

  ‘I see,’ said Maurice soberly, playing out the game to its conclusion.

  ‘Yes, I think so long as W.E.T. issues their contract pretty sharpish, we should be all right.’

  ‘Oh, good, Charles. That is a weight off my mind.’

&nb
sp; ‘Mine, too, Maurice,’ said Charles, and then spoiled the whole effect by giggling. ‘Good news, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘Excellent. How’d the Rhymer girl shape up at the read-through?’

  ‘Great. She’s really good. No, I’m afraid the whole show will be immeasurably better without the services of Sippy Stokes.’

  ‘Ah, well . . . Incidentally, did you hear about the inquest?’

  ‘What?’ Once again Charles was taken aback by the efficiency of his agent’s information service.

  ‘Inquest on Sippy Stokes. Yesterday morning.’

  ‘No, I haven’t heard anything. What happened?’

  ‘Not a lot. Police asked for an adjournment while they made further investigations.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Well, you know what that usually means, don’t you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Means the police think the death’s suspicious, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Charles. ‘Does it?’

  He thought he might need a few drinks at lunch-time to get him through his encounter with the Railton sisters, but he drank whisky rather than beer. There was a danger that two or three pints diluted with tea would keep him running back and forth to the lavatory all afternoon.

  As it did for most people living in central London, the thought of a journey all the way out to Ham Common took on the dimensions of a search for the source of the Nile. That people commuted daily from that kind of distance (it took about half an hour by car) was a constant source of amazement to him.

  He caught the tube to Waterloo and a train to Richmond. From there he took a cab to the address W. T. Wintergreen had given him at the read-through. (What is all this with cabs, Charles Paris? he found himself wondering. Honestly, one three-month contract with W.E.T. and you start behaving like a bloody plutocrat.)

  Because of the Nilotic proportions of his imagined expedition, he had left far too much time for the journey, and it was only a quarter to three when he approached his destination. Hastily, so that his early arrival would not be an embarrassment, he managed to stop the cab just before it turned off to Ham Common and spent three-quarters of an hour walking away from the Railtons’ cottage toward Ham Gate of Richmond Park.

  It was a pleasant April afternoon, and Charles Paris felt as if he were in the depths of the country. Amazing to think all this lay such a comparatively short distance from central London. He really ought to get out more. There were any number of lovely places he could get to without great effort. And being out in the open air must be better than just mooching around his bed-sitter or spending too long in the pub.