A Series of Murders

by Simon Brett

  ‘But I –’

  ‘The reason you’re going to the police is because the police have been in touch with you, isn’t it?’

  She nodded. ‘The police in Dorset talked to us yesterday after Tony Rees’s death. Then, in the evening, we had a call from Scotland Yard, the people who have been investigating the actress’s death. They said they wanted to talk to us. Either we could fix a time, or if we hadn’t made contact within twenty-four hours, they would come and find us.’

  Charles looked at his watch. ‘And your twenty-four hours is nearly up.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which is why you killed Louisa.’

  ‘As I said, she couldn’t cope with my being away.’ W. T. Wintergreen frowned, as if in pain. ‘I don’t like you talking about my killing her. She didn’t feel a thing. I often put her to bed with her sleeping draft, but this time I just gave her a larger dose. She’s all right now. She won’t have to know about any of this, any of the unpleasantness.’

  ‘You’ve always protected her from unpleasantness, haven’t you?’

  ‘She was never very strong. She found life . . . difficult.’

  ‘So do most of us. But very few are lucky enough to have someone like you to keep the world at bay.’

  He moved across to Louisa Railton’s girlish dressing table and picked up a silver-framed photograph. The picture showed a beautiful girl in her early teens. But for the anachronism of the haircut and the collar of the dress that showed at her neck, it could have been Joanne Rhymer. ‘I can see why you were so pleased when the part was recast.’ He turned to face W. T. Wintergreen. ‘Louisa was Christina, wasn’t she?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Oh, I think you do. I think you wrote the books partly for her.’

  ‘Well, perhaps partly. We were very close.’ The old bespectacled eyes strayed across to the bed, as if hoping that its occupant would suddenly come back to life.

  ‘As you said, the books were “cozy”. They dressed up unpalatable things in a palatable form. Murder, the ultimate crime, is dressed up as an intellectual game. Other crimes – equally offensive crimes – were also dressed up and sanitised.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about, Mr. Paris.’

  ‘Yes, you do. Stanislas Braid was your father, Miss Railton.’

  ‘No, he wasn’t. As I said, our father was a very difficult man, and Stanislas is –’

  ‘I mean that Stanislas Braid was how you dressed up your father. Just as you dressed up your sister as Christina. And the idealised relationship between the two of them was how you dressed up the rather less attractive reality of the relationship between your father and your sister.’

  She let out a little gasp, staggered slightly, found her way to a bedside chair.

  ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ murmured Charles.

  Very slowly, the old head nodded. ‘In those days such things weren’t talked about. You didn’t have them blazoned across every newspaper and television programme. But yes, after our mother died, our father did’ – she swallowed – ‘start to touch Louisa.’

  ‘And she never really recovered from the trauma?’

  ‘No, I suppose not. I don’t fully understand these things, but certainly . . . in some ways my sister never grew up. She couldn’t cope with life.’

  ‘So it went on for some years?’

  ‘For some years, yes. In a way, I don’t think Louisa realised there was anything wrong. She loved him, you see, and she thought love made everything all right. So long as he was alive, she was strange, maybe immature, not fully grown-up, but it was after he died that she really broke down.’

  ‘And from then on you had a full-time job looking after her. Which is why you never had time to start writing again.’ W. T. Wintergreen acknowledged the truth of this with an almost imperceptible nod. ‘And was it after your father’s death that Louisa started to become obsessed by the Stanislas Braid books?’

  ‘Yes. She’d always liked them, been amused by them, but after our father died . . . yes, she became obsessed by them.’

  ‘So she was the one whose whole identity was threatened by the changes that W.E.T. was making to the books, particularly changes to the character of Christina or Christina’s relationship with her father.’

  W. T. Wintergreen made only a token gesture of dissent at this.

  ‘I think, Miss Railton, that almost everything you told me downstairs about how the murders were committed was true, so long as you cast Louisa in the role for which you cast yourself. She was the one who saw Sippy Stokes in the studio and was seized by the impulse to pick up that candlestick.’

  ‘She – my sister was not well. She had times when she was not herself.’

  ‘Yes, and you nursed her through all of them. But she had never committed murder before, had she?’

  W. T. Wintergreen shook her head.

  ‘And then she told you what she’d done. Told you, I would imagine, with pride. And that news put you in such an emotional state that you weren’t up to going into the studio the following day.

  ‘But you managed to put it from your mind. The death seemed to be accepted as an accident, the new Christina was wonderful, the chances for success of the series seemed greatly improved. As you said, you could almost believe that the crime hadn’t happened.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Until the murder of Tony Rees. With that one I don’t think what you said downstairs was quite accurate. When you claimed that you had killed him, you said it was an accident. But Louisa murdered him quite deliberately, didn’t she?’

  There was no response.

  ‘And when I saw you on Durlston Head this morning, the reason you looked so bewildered was not because you had just shot at Russell Bentley but because you had just snatched the gun from Louisa after she had shot at him.’

  The old lady was silent. She no longer made any attempt to deny the truth of what he said.

  The silence in the childlike bedroom extended for a long minute. Then, with an effort, W. T. Wintergreen clamped her hands on to the arms of the chair and heaved herself wearily upright. ‘Well, I think I’d better get to see the police now. Don’t want to put them to the trouble of coming out to fetch me.’

  ‘When you do see them,’ Charles Paris asked, ‘will you tell them the truth? Or will you continue to do what you’ve spent all your life doing: protect your sister?’

  ‘That,’ W. T. Wintergreen replied with dignity, ‘is my decision.’ And with something that was almost a grin, she continued: ‘The one inalienable right of crime writers in their own stories is to choose whodunit.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  OUTSIDE FOR THE first time that year, June had decided to blaze, but no dribble of sunlight percolated through the grimy windows of the St. John Chrysostom Mission for Vagrants Lesser Hall. The only effect of the change in the weather had been to reheat the trapped, moted air inside to a new staleness.

  It was the first day of rehearsal for the last episode of Stanislas Braid, ‘The Mashie Niblick Murder.’ There had been much discussion about this title. Though that was what the original W. T. Wintergreen book had been called, Ben Docherty had been of the opinion – with some justification – that the average member of the I.T.V. audience hadn’t a clue what a mashie niblick was. Will Parton, taking a perverse liking to the title, had argued that golf was a very popular television sport. The producer had countered that though golf was indeed popular, clubs were now referred to by numbers and not by exotic names.

  ‘We must definitely change the title,’ he had said firmly.

  ‘No, we mustn’t,’ Will Parton had said equally firmly. ‘The original book was called The Mashie Niblick Murder.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Ben Docherty had objected. ‘You’ve changed everything else. Why this sudden conscience about the title?’

  The argument had gone back and forth for some time, until the Producer pulled rank and said he was in charge of the series, he would make
that kind of decision. And his irrevocable decision was that the title should be changed.

  This conversation, however, had taken place in the morning. Later in the day, when Ben Docherty, the alcohol dying in him, was at the nadir of his mid-afternoon listlessness, Will Parton had simply handed his typescript over to the P.A. with instructions for her to type it up as it was, title and all. By the time the producer noticed what had happened, ‘The Mashie Niblick Murder’ had appeared on too many forms and schedules for it to be worth the effort of alteration.

  With the progress of the series, listlessness had become Ben Docherty’s dominant mood, and from him the rot seeped through to everyone else involved in the production. The gradual realisation came that as a television series Stanislas Braid was actually not very good. W. T. Wintergreen’s books were dull and dated, and in spite of Will Parton’s valiant efforts, the scripts never quite escaped being dull and dated, too. A charismatic central performance might perhaps have lifted the whole venture, but as the series went on, Russell Bentley’s limitations became increasingly apparent. He was basically a very wooden actor.

  No one ever actually said the series was going to be a disaster. Indeed, to use the word disaster would have been overstating the case. The programmes would go out, and be dutifully watched with half an eye in those millions of households where the control was never moved from I.T.V., but they would never rise above the gently slopping surface of customary television mediocrity.

  In the early days of the production much had been said about prime placings, about the series ‘spearheading the autumn schedules’, but gradually such talk died away, to be replaced by rumours of Stanislas Braid being ‘held over’, even rumblings of that worst of all fates, ‘being held over till next summer’. The summer schedules, everyone knew, were the Sahara of television, in which programmes slowly dehydrated and perished, unseen and unmourned.

  In the same way, the talk of a second series, which had been rife during the first month of recording, trickled away to nothing. The second-series options on the artistes, so carefully agreed by their agents and the W.E.T. casting directors, were destined never to be taken up.

  No one commented on these changes. They had all been in the business long enough to have experienced plenty of previous dashed hopes. The only positive reaction came from Jimmy Sheet. Finally realising the true quality of the vehicle in which he had been intended to make his mark as an actor and remembering who had recommended it to him, he sacked his agent. Then, deciding that he still hadn’t wrung all there was to be wrung out of the music business, he started organising a final international concert tour. He also made a killing on property deals in Miami and started buying up office blocks in Rio de Janeiro.

  Other less organised members of the Stanislas Braid production team also started to make plans for what to do at the end of their contracts.

  Russell Bentley was already committed to a national tour of a venerable stage thriller, which a new producer was convinced could follow the path of other venerable stage thrillers through the provinces and into the West End. So the star, who had by now lost interest in his performance as Stanislas Braid, was much exercised in going through the play script, deciding which lines would have to be changed before he could fully realise his customary performance as Russell Bentley.

  Joanne Rhymer, by diligently working her way through all of the straight men involved in Stanislas Braid, had by the end of the series achieved full Blue Nun status. This was confirmed by the arbiter of such distinctions, Mort Verdon. She was, needless to say, going straight on to another job. Ben Docherty had introduced her to a London Weekend Television producer, who, impressed by the range of Joanne’s talents, had booked her instantly for the role of the hero’s girlfriend (and who knew what else) in his forthcoming series.

  Her mother – surprisingly, given the usual duration of her liaisons – was still with Ben Docherty. As soon as recording on Stanislas Braid was completed, the producer was going to take Gwen Rhymer on a gastronomic tour of France. Assuming he survived the alcoholic and physical demands of that, he would then return to W.E.T. to supervise the remaining post-production work on Stanislas Braid and to start work on ‘an exciting new project’. The exciting new project was a drama series about adolescent problems for schools. Though this assignment might be seen by outsiders as a demotion from the mainstream of television drama, Ben Docherty’s boss had assured him that it was ‘a key appointment in a pivotal area’. What this meant was that the commercial television franchises were shortly going to be up for renewal, and W.E.T. was making one of its periodic assertions of concern in the area of public-service programme-making.

  Rick Landor, having directed the penultimate episode of Stanislas Braid, had some editing and sound dubbing to do on the series and then would be moving on to direct a game show for Thames Television. His ambition of a feature film remained as far off as ever.

  Will Parton’s ambition was a major serious stage play. He had had the idea for years; it was just a matter of finding the time to write it; and throughout the series he had been promising himself that he would settle down to the play, ignoring all other distractions, the minute his work on Stanislas Braid was finished.

  But then he had had an offer from Yorkshire Television to script a series they were doing about nineteenth-century medical pioneers. Only take about three months.

  Well, four or five months with the rewrites. And the money was, once again, very good. Will spent a whole evening with Charles Paris in the W.E.T. bar, agonising over his dilemma, before making the inevitable decision. After all, he reasoned, it was only five months maximum. And the extra money would give him even more of a cushion when he got down to writing what he really should be writing. So the major serious stage play, a project of which he was growing increasingly terrified, was deferred yet again.

  Charles Paris himself had, needless to say, not made any plans for what to do when his W.E.T. contract expired. Presumably, the following week would see him once again signing up at Lisson Grove Unemployment Office, just around the corner from W.E.T. House. It was ironic, really. While he was working there, he had no need to take advantage of that accident of geography, but the minute his employment ceased, he would have to start making the trek over again.

  He’d feel the draft a bit when he was back to just the giro cheque. He had had no difficulty in accustoming himself to the regular W.E.T. money. Or in spending it with equal regularity. Come the end of the final recording in less than a fortnight’s time, it would all be gone. And, of course, on such earnings there would be tax to pay . . . Still, that was next year’s problem.

  He looked around the St. John Chrysostom Mission for Vagrants Lesser Hall and thought how thoroughly W. T. Wintergreen had been forgotten. No one in the rehearsal room, except for Charles Paris, was aware of her own small crime and her sister Louisa’s greater crimes. No one was aware that she had made a confession to the police and been arrested. Nor that in prison, awaiting a trial that must surely have released her, she had quietly died, her life perhaps without purpose after her sister’s death.

  Charles Paris had been the only person from Stanislas Braid to attend the quiet cremation. Had it been one of the actors on the series who had died or a member of the production team, W.E.T. would have been effusive in representation and flowers, but then no one really knew about W. T. Wintergreen’s death. And, after all, she had been only a writer.

  The scene in the rehearsal room was predictable. As foretold by Maurice Skellern, read-throughs had been abandoned, and rehearsals now began straightaway, with blocking movements around the taped-out sets on the floor. Russell Bentley was arguing over some line that he felt was out of character. Ben Docherty was saying it might need changing. Will Parton was remonstrating violently that he wasn’t going to do any more bloody rewrites. Joanne Rhymer was coolly eyeing the young actor who was that episode’s murder victim.

  In other words, it was business as usual on Stanislas Braid. Charles Paris’s
eyelids were heavy. Maybe he could doze off a little of the previous night’s excess before they got to the first Little Breckington Police Station scene.

  Must start looking around for some work, he thought lazily as he drifted off. Not a good time of year, though. Very quiet, the beginning of the summer, as Maurice Skellern always said. Mind you, Maurice Skellern always said every other time of year was very quiet, too.

  There was something else, though, wasn’t there? Something else niggled in Charles’s mind. Something he’d been intending to do for six weeks or so. What was it?

  Oh, yes. Of course. It was Charles Paris’s last thought as sleep took over: Must ring Frances.