A Series of Murders

by Simon Brett

  ‘Of course I will. Easy-peasy.’

  ‘We’ll see. Is it tomorrow you’re off to Dorset?’

  ‘Late afternoon, yes.’

  ‘And is your murder suspect going with you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, don’t do anything stupid.’

  ‘You see, you do care.’

  ‘Don’t push your luck, Charles Paris,’ Frances growled.

  Why was it, he reflected, that coach journeys took adults straight back to infantile behavior? As soon as the Stanislas Braid team entered the coaches chartered by W.E.T. to take them to Swanage, the silliness began, and it continued all the way to Dorset. Songs, party games, impressions of members of the production team, paper darts, all helped along by the bottle of wine someone had thoughtfully provided. They were weak with laughter by the time they arrived.

  He certainly had no chance to talk to Tony Rees. Just as he had had no chance to talk to Tony Rees for the last week. The A.S.M. avoided him deliberately. For the journey to Dorset, he waited to see which coach Charles got into and deliberately got into the other.

  Still . . . ‘The Italian Stiletto Murder’ had been safely recorded, and no real-life murder had marred the proceedings. Charles was beginning to doubt the strength of the chain of logic that had seemed so strong when he had found the hidden weapon. At times he even questioned his conviction that Sippy Stokes had been murdered. Time blurred things. The more days went by and the less new evidence came to light, the lazier his interest grew.

  And even if she had been murdered, did it actually matter that much? Everyone was happier for her death. Even Rick Landor, back in charge as Director of this episode, seemed restored to his normal good humor.

  Charles did not believe in absolutes of right and wrong, the necessity that for every crime there must be a matching retribution. As he travelled down in the coach to Swanage, diverted by the silliness around him, and particularly by the chatter of Joanne Rhymer, he could entertain the possibility of Sippy Stokes’s death slipping quietly out of his mind. Never to return.

  The W.E.T. contingent arrived in Swanage about five and checked into their various accommodations. Charles was delighted to find that his new-found status as a regular character in a television series entitled him to a room in an AA three-star hotel, along with Russell Bentley, Jimmy Sheet, Will Parton, Joanne Rhymer, and Rick Landor. Other members of the cast were scattered in various two-star hotels. The W.E.T. staff members, following many years’ experience in the management of expenses, had mostly opted for hotels cheap enough to ensure that they made a profit on their overnight allowances.

  Charles checked into his room, which commanded what would presumably be a good view of Swanage Bay when the weather wasn’t so dull. The sky had gotten darker and damper the farther west the coach went, and by the time they arrived in Swanage, everything was shrouded in a thick sea mist. The limited visibility did not augur well for the next two days’ filming.

  Still, that was Rick Landor and Ben Docherty’s problem, not his. At times, the passivity of being an actor almost drove Charles Paris to distraction, but there were also times, like this one, of gleeful irresponsibility in his chosen profession. And, as ever, being in a strange hotel room gave him a lift. It seemed to recharge his identity, give him a feeling of starting afresh, the sensation that nobody had any expectations of him and he could behave in any way he chose.

  The way he chose initially was not very different from the way he might have chosen at any other point in his life. He decided to take advantage of his ‘resident’ status and go down to the hotel bar for an out-of-hours drink.

  On the way he met Will Parton, in a towelling dressing gown. The writer was going down to the hotel swimming pool. So were most of the others, except for Jimmy Sheet, who was going to work out in the hotel gym. Did Charles fancy joining them?

  Well, no, actually. He had swum in his time and quite enjoyed it, but the effort of all that changing and getting wet and getting dry and changing back again always seemed to Charles disproportionate to the amount of pleasure involved. And when the charms of diving into a swimming pool were set against those of diving into a large Bell’s . . . well, there was no contest.

  He had a couple of large Bell’s and, having agreed with the barman in about half a dozen different formulae of words that it was very foggy, decided, since none of the rest of the Stanislas Braid team had reappeared, that he would go out for a walk before dinner.

  He hadn’t bothered to go up to his room for his coat and was surprised at how wet the mist was when he got outside. In fact, rain was driving with some persistence through the murk. By the time Charles had gone a couple of hundred yards down toward the front, he had decided that he must either curtail his walk or risk the final disintegration of his sodden sports jacket, so the sight of a pub was a welcome one. A quick drink, he reckoned, and the rain might have eased off a bit before he went back up the hill to the hotel for dinner.

  Inside the pub, the light seemed as murky and steamy as it did outside. A few people stood around in raincoats and anoraks. It was only just after seven, so the pub was not yet very full.

  But sitting facing him in an alcove at the far end of the room, Charles saw a figure he recognised: Tony Rees.

  On the evidence of the last week, Charles fully expected the A.S.M. to walk straight out of the pub and was amazed to see Tony rising with a half of lager in his hand and coming to intercept him with an expression on his face that could almost be described as genial.

  ‘Charles, good evening. Can I get you a drink?’

  ‘Well, why don’t I get you one, Tony?’

  Charles made for the bar but was diverted by the A.S.M., who took him firmly by the arm and led him to a seat in the alcove adjacent to the one from which Tony had just risen. ‘Now, what’s it to be?’

  ‘Large Bell’s’d be good.’

  ‘Fine. Large Bell’s it shall be, Charles Paris,’ said the A.S.M. loudly and bonhomously.

  While Tony was at the bar, Charles puzzled over what could have brought on this sudden affability but had reached no conclusions by the time his drink arrived.

  Tony Rees sat down opposite him, still with the same half of lager. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘You said you wanted to talk to me, Charles.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I did.’ He was again taken aback by the ease with which he was being offered the interview, which had been evaded all week.

  ‘Well, what was it about?’

  ‘Candlesticks . . . for a start.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Tony Rees, and his face fell. ‘How much do you know?’

  ‘I know that a candlestick was moved off the set of Stanislas Braid’s study on the Wednesday of the first episode, just before Sippy Stokes died.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And I know what happened to it subsequently.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes. You also know what happened to it subsequently, don’t you?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Yes, you do, Tony. You know exactly what happened.’ The A.S.M. looked horror-struck. He reached forward for his drink, but his hand was shaking too much to hold it. The half-pint leaped from his hand onto the table, cannoning its contents out into Charles’s lap.

  ‘I’m so terribly sorry.’ Tony Rees was instantly at his side with a handkerchief, making ineffectual efforts to mop up the mess.

  ‘Don’t worry, Tony. Hasn’t made me much wetter than I was already.’ Charles indicated two heavily anoraked figures who were just leaving the pub. ‘Don’t envy anyone who’s going back out there at the moment. Come on, let me get you another drink.’

  It was a pleasure to stand up. The lager-drenched trousers didn’t cling to his legs quite so clammily in a vertical position. He bought another half and, since his own drink seemed mysteriously to have emptied itself, another large Bell’s.

  When he sat down again, he continued in a businesslike fashion. ‘I haven’t forgotten
what we were talking about.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Candlesticks . . . and stilettos.’

  ‘Yes. You saw me going to get the stiletto that lunch break when I didn’t realise there was anyone in the studio.’

  Charles nodded.

  ‘Well, what are you proposing to do about it, then?’

  ‘I don’t know, Tony. It depends really on how much you are prepared to tell me. Then maybe I suppose we go to the police.’

  ‘The police! Over something like that? But everyone does it.’

  If Tony Rees’s speech had sounded flabbergasted, then Charles’s reaction to it sounded even more so. ‘Everyone does it!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What are we talking about, Tony?’

  ‘Nicking stuff from the studio.’

  ‘Oh, are we?’

  ‘It’s like a perk of the job, Charles. And it’s not as if W.E.T. can’t afford it,’ said Tony Rees, echoing Mort Verdon’s words.

  ‘So you nick stuff on a regular basis?’

  ‘If you put it like that, yes. Not big stuff. And stuff I know I can get rid of without too much bother.’

  ‘Stuff like candlesticks and stilettos?’

  ‘Yes. Got a dealer down Church Street Market I know’ll give a good price and not ask too many questions.’

  ‘So you just pick things up off the set?’

  ‘Well, carefully, like. I mean, if you do it too obviously, people’re going to notice, aren’t they? I tend to do it sort of gradual.’ As he knew more confidential, the thickness of Tony Rees’s Welsh accent increased.

  ‘So you take something and hide it round the back of the set?’

  ‘That’s it. Then wait till it’s quiet.’

  ‘Lunch break or some time like that?’

  ‘Uh-huh. And slip it out at my leisure.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Oh, now come on,’ Tony Rees pleaded. ‘We needn’t be talking about going to the police over something like that. I mean, that stiletto – I only got twenty quid for it. Hardly talking about the crown jewels, are we?’

  ‘And the candlesticks?’

  ‘Got a bit more for them, certainly. But, you know, I reckon the company owes me a favour or two. I mean, all this rationalisation and what-have-you they’re doing . . . cutting down the overtime and the amount of jobs there are.’

  ‘So you reckon you’ve got to make it up somehow?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it, yes. Pick up what you can where you can.’

  ‘Do anything for money, you mean?’

  ‘Why not? Don’t look so bloody pious, Charles. Listen, commercial television’s taking the public for a bit of a ride. I don’t reckon it does any harm for them to be taken for a bit of a ride themselves. In a small way.’

  ‘You don’t feel any guilt about stealing from them?’

  ‘Course not. They don’t notice it one way or the other.’

  It all sounded very plausible. Charles thought he probably had found the full extent of Tony Rees’s criminal activity. But there were still details he wanted to check. ‘The candlesticks, Tony . . .’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘When did you take them?’

  ‘End of the last studio day that week. You know, the Thursday, because the Friday was cancelled, wasn’t it? There was such chaos in the studio at the end of that day, nobody knowing whether the set was going to stay up or be taken down, you could have walked away with anything.’

  ‘But that wasn’t the first time you’d taken the candlesticks – or at least one of them – was it?’

  The A.S.M. blushed.

  ‘You took one on the Wednesday, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but I put it back.’

  ‘Why? What actually happened?’

  ‘Well, tell you what . . . Just after we broke for coffee, we’d done a scene of Stanislas Braid in his study. You know, sitting there and thinking, like –’

  ‘I remember.’ It was the scene that had been frozen on the monitor when Charles had visited Rick Landor in the editing suite.

  ‘Now, at the end of that scene, I was just clearing the set, and I noticed there’s only one candlestick there.’

  Just as Charles had noticed on the monitor.

  ‘So I thought, what the hell, some other bugger’s nicked one. They’ll have to get another pair, anyway. I may as well have that one.’

  ‘So you took it and hid it in your usual hiding place behind the set?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Then why did you put it back?’

  ‘Well, bugger me if ten minutes later I don’t go back on to that study set and suddenly notice that the missing one’s been returned. I reckon they’re more likely to look for one than two, so I pop mine back. Felt bloody relieved I did, too, actually, since the whole studio was swarming with police half an hour later.’

  ‘Yes.’ Charles nodded slowly. ‘And it was because you’d moved the candlesticks that you lied to the police about when you’d gone back into the studio . . . You know, later, when they questioned us at the rehearsal room?’

  ‘Yes, well, don’t want to draw attention to yourself, do you?’

  ‘No.’ Charles was silent. Then he asked, ‘Tony, you didn’t see anyone either taking the first candlestick or putting it back, did you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t see anyone.’

  Someone had done it, though. Charles now had proof that someone other than Tony Rees had taken a candlestick during the break and replaced it shortly afterward.

  He also felt fairly sure that while it was in his or her possession, someone had used the candlestick to kill Sippy Stokes.

  Back at the hotel he was going to change his lager-stained trousers, but he met Will Parton and the others in the bar and, after a couple more large Bell’s, went through with them to the restaurant. They were a large party and commandeered two tables, which they insisted the hotel staff put together. While they didn’t actually behave badly, no one in the restaurant was left with any doubt that these were media people, who saw it as part of their mission to liven up Sunday night in Swanage – not, in the estimation of Will Parton, the most difficult thing in the world to do. ‘I’ve seen more get-up-and-go in a mortuary,’ he murmured at one point in the evening.

  The group around the tables included Charles, Will, Rick Landor, Russell Bentley, Jimmy Sheet, Joanne Rhymer, and surprisingly, Ben Docherty. The Producer had said at the end of the previous week that he intended to stay in London, but either the need to see how his budget was being spent or the realisation that he was missing a lot of W.E.T.-subsidised drinking made him change his mind, and he had driven down to Swanage on his own.

  If it was the drinking that had drawn him, he was not destined to be disappointed. The ‘school treat’ atmosphere of the jaunt encouraged them all to order a great deal of wine, and as they relaxed, their conversation became increasingly indiscreet.

  ‘Here’s to Stanislas Braid,’ said Will Parton, raising his glass, ‘the show that stands a chance now it’s got rid of most of the dead wood!’

  ‘What dead wood do you mean?’ asked Charles.

  ‘Oh, take your pick. W. T. Wintergreen? The bizarre Louisa? Sippy Stokes? Mind you’ – Will leaned close to him for a moment and whispered – ‘there are a few other bits of pruning that wouldn’t hurt.’

  ‘Like who, for instance?’

  The writer looked across at the show’s star. ‘Wouldn’t do any harm to have Stanislas Braid played as Stanislas Braid rather than as Russell Bentley, would it?’

  Charles grinned.

  ‘How’re the rest of the scripts going, Will?’ asked Joanne Rhymer, who was sitting next to Charles (a state of affairs of which, incidentally, he heartily approved).

  ‘All written months ago. But all no doubt to be rewritten right up to the moment of transmission.’ He smiled sweetly at his Producer. ‘Isn’t that right, Ben?’

  Ben Docherty beamed benignly. He was at the stage of his alcoholic cycl
e when the drink mellowed him. ‘No, not a lot more. Nearly all done. Just those few tinkerings with the last episode.’

  ‘It shall be done, Mein Führer!’ Will Parton barked with a cod Nazi salute. ‘I haff brought here ze book off ze famous Double-Vee Tee Vintergreen to achieve ze tinkerings zat vill be ze Final Solution of ze script.’

  Ben Docherty smiled paternally at his writer’s excesses.

  ‘Which book is the last one based on?’ asked Charles.

  ‘The Transvestite Hermaphrodite Murder,’ Will Parton replied, ‘in which Stanislas Braid is dragged kicking and screaming into the twentieth century.’

  ‘Ha. Ha. No, what is it really?’

  ‘The Medieval Crossbow Murder.’

  ‘Oh, well, I wonder which one of us will be killed by a crossbow bolt from the blue?’ Charles mused aloud.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ asked Jimmy Sheet, suddenly alert.

  Charles didn’t actually know why he was embarking on this particular tack, but having started, he saw no reason not to continue.

  ‘Well, think about it . . . We try to record The Brass Candlestick Murder, and we get stopped by an actual death.’

  ‘Not by a murder,’ said Jimmy Sheet firmly.

  ‘We don’t know that,’ said Charles, cavalier in his lack of caution.

  ‘And certainly not a murder committed with a brass candlestick.’ Ben Docherty had now joined in the conversation.

  ‘We don’t know that either,’ Charles asserted. He was vaguely aware that he was being reckless, but his inhibitions were down, and he thought he might achieve some useful results by making his suspicions public. ‘I mean, suppose someone had decided they wanted to kill Sippy Stokes.’

  ‘I don’t think this is in the best of taste,’ Rick Landor objected quietly.

  No, it wasn’t. Charles knew it wasn’t. He was fully prepared to stop there, but Jimmy Sheet insisted, ‘Go on, Charles. This is interesting.’

  ‘Well, suppose someone decided to do away with the poor kid, took a brass candlestick off the set during the coffee break, lured her into the props room, hit her over the head with it, and then pushed the shelves of props on top of her.’

  After their recent rowdiness, the tables had gone very quiet. Charles knew he was a bit drunk and being rather stupid, but he had got to a point where he couldn’t go back. His investigation into Sippy Stokes’s death wasn’t progressing. It needed a kick to get it moving again, and maybe what he was doing was providing that kick.