‘Time to get back.’ Richard started to get up.
Sher was still partly in that real world of the past, but the images had gone, replaced by that appalling voice whose chief offence was that it inhabited the wrong body. His own voice when he answered was not quite his own, it had the ringing cold austerity of the master.
‘I said that if Sherlock Holmes put his logical mind to them, he could solve these killings. That is true. And if you were really Watson it would be possible to confide in you. But how is it possible even to speak reasonably to somebody like you? To give such a person the name of Watson is absurd.’
‘Charming I must say. Really charming,’ Basil said, but Sher did not hear this. He had got up and walked away, out of the plastic restaurant towards the studio, where there was at least a colourable imitation of reality. He was in the covered way between the two when he felt a hand on his arm. Willie was by his side. The little Pole’s tubby body was vibrant with excitement and anger. The accenting of his English was stronger than usual.
‘Sher, you will please come back and apologise. Immediately.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You heard him jeering at me.’
‘He was simply joking, that’s all,’ Willie’s voice became cajoling. ‘You are a professional, Sher. You know as well as I do that when you are working with somebody you must be on good terms. You have to work with Basil, and not just once but to work with him closely, over and over again. Whatever you feel, you must remember that he is a wonderful Watson to your Sherlock, a perfect foil for you.’ Spacing out the words so that their importance should be recognised, Willie said, ‘We could not make a change now, we could not give Sherlock Holmes another Watson, any more than we could give Watson another Sherlock Holmes. Do you understand?’
He did understand. He knew that he had been wrong, and when Willie said again that he must apologise he did not resist. Willie said something about tension, and the unfortunate trouble which had meant taking scenes out of order. He went through the apology, speaking with studied Holmesian formality. Basil heard it with what was surely a malicious glint in his pig-like eyes, Willie put an arm round each of their shoulders and, with a worried-looking Richard Spain behind them, they went back to the studio.
‘Cut,’ Richard said. There was some sort of altercation on the studio floor. He asked the floor manager, ‘Jerry, what’s the trouble?’ When he heard the reply he smacked hand to forehead. ‘More problems with Sherlock,’ he said to Willie before going out of the room and down the iron stairs. Willie took the band off another cigar.
‘Would it help if you came in on a wider angle?’ Jerry was saying to Camera Two.
‘It will bleeding well not help, Jerry, my old love,’ Camera Two responded cheerfully. ‘If I go any farther I lose half the bleeding room, and Sher with it. And if I only move a couple of feet–’
‘Okay, okay, you’ve made your point.’ Under the lights Jerry was sweating in his shirt sleeves.
‘I don’t quite get it. What’s the problem?’ Richard asked.
‘The problem is that in this scene we’ve got Sher in the bedroom, waiting for Joseph to open the window. Well, from where he is he can’t see the window. If I keep him in shot he’s got to be here.’ He indicated a place in the bedroom. ‘We could move a foot or so either way, but it doesn’t help. And if we get Sher to where he wants to be, which is across in the comer so that he can see the window being opened, we’ve got to shift Camera Two and Camera Three and then bring ’em back again, which means a break and a lot of rearrangement.’
‘Why does Sher have to see the window opening?’
‘Ask him.’ Jerry rolled his eyes up to heaven.
Sher and Sarah were both on the set. Sher was sitting on a sofa with an expression of martyrdom on his face, Sarah in an armchair looked bored. Richard bent down and whispered to her that they’d get this straightened out in a couple of minutes. Then he sat beside Sher, and asked him what was the trouble.
‘Richard, I just cannot create the required impression of tension when in fact I’m unable to see a glimpse of the window.’
‘But, Sher why do you have to see it? We’ve got you on Camera Three showing you ready and waiting. You know just what’s going to happen, and that Harrison’s going to come in the window. Then we cut to Camera Two showing him come in. I don’t see the problem.’
The deep-set eyes looking at him had an uncomfortable intensity of feeling in them. ‘Richard, you’ll forgive me for saying I’ve been around longer than you. This is a crucial scene, and you expect me to get the right feeling into it when I can’t even see Harrison’s entrance, which is the point of the whole scene.’
‘Other people do it. All the time.’
Sher said nothing. Richard kept his patience with an effort. ‘If we change the script the whole scene’s got to be rearranged, we’re going to waste an hour setting it all up. I’ve got time trouble as it is. I’d like to go straight through it as it stands. Can we do that, please, Sher.’ He managed to make the last sentence something between an order and a request. Then he went back to the control room, where Willie asked if he had ironed everything out.
‘I hope so. It’s Sher, he’s being ridiculous.’ He gave a murmured explanation to Willie while the room below was got ready for action again. The clapper boy said, ‘Scene one-o-three, take two,’ and Sher came into the room, spoke to Armie Harrison, sent her out of the room, made up a dummy to look like her, and settled down in his corner, hidden from the sight of anybody at the window. They played the scene through successfully enough, though without a lot of life, until the moment when Holmes looked across the room. At this point Sher moved round out of camera shot.
‘Cut,’ Richard said, then to Jerry: ‘Ask Sher what he’s doing. He’s not supposed to move, he knows that. If he moves we can’t hold him in camera.’
Jerry spoke to Sher, then spoke into his mike. ‘He says he moved so that he can see the window.’
‘Just ask him to play the scene as we rehearsed it, without moving across the floor, okay, Jerry?’
‘Right.’ Jerry had a long conversation with Sher, then came back. ‘He doesn’t think it will work, but he’ll do it.’
‘Good of him. When you’re ready.’
Beside Richard, Willie put down his cigar, leaned forward. ‘Scene one-o-three, take three,’ the clapper boy said.
They watched the screens in front of them. The scene got to the point where Holmes looked across the room. They cut to the other camera, with Joseph entering the room.
‘Thank the lord,’ Richard said, and then, ‘What the hell’s happening?’
Sherlock Holmes had walked off the screen, off the set.
‘Jerry, Jerry,’ Richard called. ‘What’s happened to Sher, where is he?’
The floor manager’s voice was carefully neutral. ‘On his way up to you, I think.’
Richard said to Willie incredulously, ‘Jerry says he’s coming up here.’
There are some unwritten laws in television, and one of them is that the control room is sacred to producer, director and editorial staff, and is never visited by actors. Although the law is unwritten it is strictly observed. When steps sounded on the iron stairs, and the door opened to reveal Sher, it was an act that challenged the authority of producer and director.
Sher took two steps inside, and began to speak. ‘Richard, I’m sorry, but it’s impossible. Willie, you must see –’
Willie got up. His voice was not loud, but the words fell hard as sleet.
‘You have no business here. Get back on to the floor and play that scene.’
Sher put out a hand. ‘ButWillie–’
‘Listen to me. I will have no more nonsense. If you do not go down there and play the scene the way it was written and rehearsed, I will cancel this whole production.’ Richard started to speak. ‘Be quiet, Richard, I mean this.’
Sher looked at Willie as though he had been stabbed in the heart. Then he murmured something which might have
included the word ‘Sorry’, and went down the stairs again.
‘Preposterous,’ Willie said. ‘He’s mad.’
‘Scene one-o-three, take four.’
The scene went through without a hitch, cut away to Joseph, and then back to Sher springing out when the hiding-place of the treaty had been revealed. The rest of the action went smoothly enough, and although Sher played a little in the manner of a sleepwalker, that might have been considered merely the deep thoughtfulness of Sherlock Holmes. The last exchanges between Sherlock and Irene were reasonably convincing, and they rolled the final credits over a shot of Sarah Peters.
Afterwards Willie briefly congratulated Richard, and then left without speaking to the rest of the cast. When the director went to make peace with Sher, he found that the actor also had gone home.
Chapter Twelve Sherlock Finds His Watson
The Naval Treaty was taped on a Thursday. On Friday just after midday Willie Lowinsky called at the Baker Street flat. He wore a sheepskin coat and a Russian-style fur hat, and carried chrysanthemums and a bottle of Mumm, which he gave to Val. Sher was looking at some press cuttings, and greeted him by raising a hand. In the living-room Willie stood with his back to the mantelpiece, hands behind him warming before an imaginary fire, and beamed at them both.
‘This weather is coming straight from my own Russian steppes. I shall take to hand muffs if it goes on.’
‘I thought you were a Pole, Willie,’ Val said.
‘Russia, Poland, the weather’s all the same. Val, I don’t think that bottle of pop wants to be too cold on a day like this. Just two minutes in your freezer will be enough.’ He followed her out to the kitchen. ‘How is Sher?’
‘Much as usual. Why?’
‘We had some trouble at the studio last night. He didn’t tell you?’ She shook her head. ‘I thought perhaps he was under some special strain.’
‘Not so far as I know. You know what he’s like, when he’s doing one of these Holmes things he thinks about nothing else. What do you mean, trouble?’
‘Never mind. Let’s drink the pop.’ He smiled and patted her bottom. She thought, not for the first time, that he was an in-sufferably patronising little man. Back in the living-room he popped the cork, and Sher dragged himself away from his press cuttings.
‘Willie. This is very kind.’ He sipped. ‘Glass of Mumm, delicious.’
Willie looked at the bottle, which he had wrapped in a cloth. ‘I shouldn’t have thought you could have seen the name.’
‘Only the comer of the label. The Mumm label is distinctive. Willie, what would you say to the idea of my playing Sherlock Holmes? In real life, I mean.’
Willie stared. He had come ready for recrimination and argument, but Sher seemed to have forgotten about the trouble at the studio. ‘What do you mean?’
The thin, keen features looked eagerly towards him ‘I said to an interviewer that Sherlock Holmes could have solved the Karate Killings. Suppose I took on the case.’ He touched the pile of cuttings. ‘I got these from an agency. They’re all about the killings.’
Willie glanced at Val, who sat composed as usual on a sofa, and then back at Sher. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Perfectly serious.
‘I don’t know what you have in mind.’
Sher looked slightly irritated. ‘What I have in mind, obviously, is that Sherlock Holmes will solve the mystery of the Karate Killings.’
Willie wondered if Sher was altogether sane. At almost the same moment it occurred to him that there could be enormous publicity in the idea. Would the publicity be self-defeating, was it worth risking the chance that Sher would make a fool of himself, did it matter anyway? ‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘But how would you go about it? What resources would you have that aren’t open to the police.’
‘I have my public.’ He tapped his knee. ‘You know how many letters I get, sent here to Sherlock Holmes. Imagine the response if it is made known in the press that I am investigating the Karate Killings in person, and that I am actually asking for information about the cases to be sent to Mr Sherlock Holmes at this address.’
Willie refilled the champagne glasses. The more he thought about the idea, the better the publicity prospects seemed. Perhaps it would be possible to plant a few clues for Sher to follow up? ‘It might work, it just might work.’
‘I knew you’d see it.’ Sher got up and walked up and down, talking excitedly. ‘It will be Sherlock Holmes versus Scotland Yard all over again. The genius of an individual against the ponderous movement of a machine, the inductive method of one man against a state bureaucracy. Except, of course, that the one man will be helped by the people of Britain because they have faith in him, have an instinctive understanding that he is working for them.’
‘Do stop talking such bloody rubbish.’ There was a flush on Val’s cheek. It occurred to Willie that he had never seen her so animated, not even when they were making love. ‘Don’t you see all Willie’s thinking about is a publicity gimmick? And that’s all it is anyway. You don’t imagine you’re really going to solve these crimes, do you? You know nothing about police work, you wouldn’t know where to start. And stop looking at me in that pitying way. Just ask Willie, that’s all. Ask him if he’s taking it seriously.’
Willie began to say something, but stopped when Sher put up a hand. ‘It isn’t a question of what you think, or of what Willie hopes to get out of it. I realise that he’s thinking about publicity for the series. But the important thing is this. Can Sherlock Holmes, using the methods that were so successful in the past when Scotland Yard failed, solve crimes that are taking place today? That, my love, is the question.’
‘I think you’re round the bend.’ She turned to Willie. ‘And you must be out of your mind to encourage him. I’m going down to Greenwich. I hope you’ll have forgotten this rubbish by the time I get back.’
After she had gone Willie didn’t, as he had intended, read the riot act to Sher about his behaviour. He talked instead about the possibilities in the quest for the Karate Killer, and only at the end mentioned what had happened on the previous day.
‘If I blew my top, Sher, I’m sorry.’ Willie always savoured phrases like blew my top because they made him feel particularly English. ‘But what you did was very naughty. It mustn’t happen again, I tell you that.’
Sher looked as though he didn’t know what Willie was taking about and then said, ‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry.’
‘And so you should be, my lad. A series like this is a strain, I know that. We now have two weeks before undertaking our next masterpiece, and I want you to have a complete rest in your mind from the series. Then when we start again, if there are little problems you will see that they are little and not big.’
‘But Sherlock Holmes will look for the Karate Killer.’
Willie put an arm round Sher’s sloping shoulders. ‘Of course he will. But no more tantrums. No more, or daddy spank.’
It is always said that bad news travels fast. When Willie got to his office he found a note asking him to speak to Mr Dryne urgently. J O Dryne was the new Assistant Director. His predecessor, who had favoured drama in the image of the modern, had left after putting on a trilogy interpreting an unborn child’s attitudes towards its mother, its father and its sister, seen through a series of unconnected and often undecipherable images which were meant to be a view of life from the womb, intercut with gruellingly realistic passages between father, mother and sister. Dryne had been trained as a statistician. He wore conservative pin-stripe suits, plain ties, and had lips like two razor blades stitched together. He had one joke, which he repeated often with only slight variation. ‘I don’t know what’s good and I don’t know what I like, but I do know what other people like. The ratings tell me.’
‘I hear there was trouble with Sheridan Haynes yesterday.’ Dryne said. They were in his office, not at the Connaught, and the Director was not present. The signs in the tea leaves were ominous, and the fact that Dryne knew about the row so qui
ckly tended to confirm the belief held by many that his spies were everywhere. ‘Tell me about it.’
Computer men like Dryne made Willie feel uneasy, and even afraid. He began on a modified, carefully edited account of what had happened, but was cut short.
‘That’s not what I heard, but it doesn’t matter. Have a look at these.’ Dryne passed over sheets which gave details of the viewing figures for the new Sherlock Holmes series. Willie had already seen the figures for the first three programmes, and they had not been good. Episodes four and five showed that the decline was continuing, and more steeply. ‘I dare say Haynes’ behaviour has been a contributory factor, but the figures speak for themselves.’
‘Sher isn’t a difficult character. He’s been under strain.’
‘I understand he’s been a problem all along, but as I say it’s not important. These figures are what matter. Do you have any comments?’
‘Only that figures aren’t always an accurate guide, especially when they’re just for part of a series. Interest in Sherlock Holmes is permanent. Perhaps we have to shift the formula a little more–’
‘Those arguments were used at the end of the last series, to justify starting this one. They can’t be used again. Clearly the appeal held by Sherlock Holmes is now exhausted.’ Dryne’s eyebrows were thin razor lines like his lips. Between them were two vertical lines of anxiety or ambition. ‘Obviously the series has been under discussion. Its prestige value, and the success you mention, have been taken into consideration. If these considerations had not existed, it would have been off the box by now. As it is, we shall have to pay for our mistakes. There are two more episodes to be taped. These will be completed, and the present intention is to show them all. Even that cannot be guaranteed, although there must presumably be a level below which the figures will not sink.’ An adjustment of the lines in his mouth made it clear that this was a sort of joke. ‘And that will be the end. Perhaps I should say that you are the first person to be told. Until the last two episodes have been taped, this should be regarded as confidential information.’
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