Merryll Manning Is Dead Lucky

by Johm Howard Reid

  She pulled herself free and turned to go. I reached out and touched her hand. “Not so much of the old,” I urged. I wasn’t a sergeant-major either, but I let that error pass. “Where are you going? I thought you were going to stay here with me.”

  “I’m going to look in on Sedge. You saw him yourself. He badly needs someone to hold his hand. Do you mind?”

  “Yes! Of course, I mind. You’re my girl now.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see some evidence.” A toss of the head, another quick smile and she flounced away. “Don’t forget to put on your mustache the way I showed you,” she called out, as she tripped away, and I was left alone.

  Hang it all, idiot that I am, I was really falling for the woman. No doubt about it! I was hot and sweaty, itching all over. I had to force myself to calm down so that I could spend at least ten minutes staring at myself in the mirror. You have to keep working your mouth while the glue on the mustache sets, otherwise it freezes your lips so that you can’t talk properly.

  Sedge had prepared a few jokes which I tried to memorize. Finally, when I thought I was ready, I strolled down to the set. Now that I’d settled into the costume, I was half sorry that I didn’t meet anyone on the way.

  Trevor Holden, the youth useful, was waiting for me. “Where’ve you been?” he hissed.

  “How did you know it was me?” I asked jokingly.

  Making a mock bow, the youth exclaimed, “Your audience is waiting!”

  “Already?”

  “Now!”

  “Don’t I get a chance to rehearse? I’m not ready to go on right now!”

  No answer. Hustling me across the tiny stage, and then pushing me forward, he signaled for the auditorium lights to be dimmed and the bright arc lamps on the set to be switched on.

  Blinded, I was facing an audience I couldn’t see. There were a few titters – presumably at my appearance – and then silence.

  “Hello there, all you lucky people!” I said. “We’re all set to give you a great time – I mean to have a great time this afternoon, aren’t we? Before our host and quizmaster, Sedge Cornbeck, comes out to greet you all, I’ll just explain a few little things about these TV screens you can see just above my head here. You can all see them okay? Well, what do they say?”

  Zero response.

  Hell!

  “Laugh! There it is now on the monitors. We all of us know how to laugh, don’t we? I think the best thing about laughter is that it makes us all so happy; but my wife says that the best thing about laughter is that you don’t have to pay for it! Doesn’t cost you a dime. All it costs is your time!”

  Dead silence! I was obviously making little impression. This comedy game was much harder than I thought. I desperately tried to recall one of the jokes I’d just memorized. Hell! I glanced at the slip of paper I’d curled up in the palm of my hand. Lawyer! A legal joke. What was it? I couldn’t remember, but suddenly another joke came flying out of the past. “You know what the judge said to the pickpocket? ‘I’m sentencing you to ninety days.’ And the pickpocket thought that was a bit harsh as he’d stolen only two dollars. ‘I’m doing you a favor,’ the judge said. ‘I thought you were a professional man, but it seems I was wrong. If you can’t earn a decent living as pickpocket, you’re better off in jail.’

  No response! Yes, this game was definitely a hundred times harder than I thought – and Sedge made it all look so easy! I tried again. “And speaking of judges, I have a friend named Jack who’s a lawyer. He’s just settled a very tough probate case. Jack was representing some of the heirs who thought they’d been done out of their dad’s will. ‘It was tough, tough, tough!’ Jack told me. ‘Tough going all the way – and despite all my efforts, the heirs ended up with almost as much money as I did!’ You can’t beat Jack. He got his share of the jack all right! Stayed up all night, getting tight!”

  Laughter!

  “You’ve all heard about the lion who was king of the jungle. He asked the hippo, ‘Who’s the king around here?’ Well, the hippo was quick to flatter the lion. ‘Who’s king? You are! Who else but you? You, you, you!’ So then the lion put the same question to the giraffe: ‘Who’s the king around here?’ ‘Why, you’re the king, of course!’ answered the giraffe. ‘You’re the king of kings, the emperor of emperors, the sultan of sultans!’ So then the lion put the same question to the elephant. ‘Who’s the king around here?’ Well, the elephant didn’t answer, but he stomped on the lion and then picked the lion up in his trunk and threw him thirty feet into the air. The lion landed in a bog, but somehow he managed to get back to the shore and began to lick himself dry. ‘You didn’t need to get so sore,’ he said to the elephant. ‘If you didn’t know the answer, you just had to say so.’ ”

  Laughter! They laughed! Maybe it was the prompting of the autocue that did it or the laughter of some of the technicians on the stage behind me, but they laughed. The audience laughed!

  After that, it was easy. Clear convulsions all the way. It wasn’t that I’d warmed them up so much as they’d warmed to me. And once this happens – once that magic rapport between the performer and the performed-to is somehow established – you can get away with anything. A wink will get a smile; a nudge, a chuckle; and even the most feeble puns, laughter!

  As for the program itself, however, it was close to the pits. The contestants were an uninspired and phlegmatic lot: art and artists, music and musicians, great scientists, the war in Europe, endangered species, and great moments in philately. If these were the best Spookie could come up with, I was beginning to regret my abandoning-the-ship bargain. I could lick this lot hollow. Despite Sedge’s frantic efforts to bring them to life, they were just as dull as last week’s crop. Even the sudden-death play-off between music and science created no drama, science falling flat on his very first question. The show was wrapped up in record time, the crowd filed out in bored if orderly fashion, and none of my four security officers had a thing to report. None of us had noticed anything in the least way suspicious or untoward and it was beginning to sink in that Dune-Harrigan was dead and that the poison had died with him. Whichever way you looked at it, I’d done myself out of $80,000!

  “What was all that laughter before the show?” asked Sedge, marching up to me as soon as the door closed on the last members of the audience.

  “I told a few jokes,” I explained.

  “Who asked you?”

  “You did.”

  “Stick to your own job in future.”

  I wasn’t taking this. “You made it my job!” I yelled at him. “Ask Monty.”

  The producer had just that moment stepped down from his booth. “A perfect tape!” he trilled, rubbing his hands.

  “What was so perfect about it?” Sedge wanted to know.

  “No re-takes, no inserts, no editing,” explained Ace Jellis, coming up behind. “It can go to air almost exactly as is.”

  “God help the viewers,” I murmured.

  “What’s the matter?” Monty asked. “Didn’t you like it?”

  “Yes, what’s the matter with you?” asked Jellis.

  “It was dull.”

  To my surprise, Sedge laid his hand on my shoulder. “Merryll’s right,” he said. “It was the worst show I’ve ever done. Well, no use crying about spilt milk. I’m going to get changed and pray we do better next week.” He turned back to grab a face towel from his podium, then stalked off to his dressing-room.

  “What’s eating him?” Monty asked, once he was sure Sedge was out of earshot.

  “Yes, indeed! What’s his problem?” Jellis echoed.

  “He’s too uptight,” guessed Monty. “I don’t like it. Bad for the show.”

  “Yes, bad for the show,” came the echo.

  “It’s not just nerves,” Monty surmised. “It’s willful temperament.”

  “Temperament – that’s just exactly the right word!” Jellis agreed, shaking his head.

  “I’m getting mighty sick of it.”

  “We’re all getti
ng mighty sick of it,” came the echo.

  I was forced to listen to this lively exchange, but it wasn’t improving my temper any. At any second, I was likely to make a remark I’d later regret. I was searching for a way out when I spotted one of my security men returning from the audience exit. “Time to make sure we’re all locked up nice and tight,” I said, turning on my heel.

  I’d walked no more than four or five paces when I heard a scream – a piercingly hideous cry that stopped us all in our tracks, a wail of sudden terror that volleyed and echoed across every wall of that tinseled set. Never before had I heard a more devastating, blood-stopping scream than that banshee cry!

  None of us moved. We heard someone come running and stumbling down the corridor towards us. Before any of us had so much as budged a foot, Sedge was back on the set, his eyes rolling widely, his skin ashen where he’d started to towel off his make-up. “Spookie!” he screamed. “Oh, God, I saw her! Spookie’s dead! She’s dead! Damn bloody hell, she’s dead!”

  Sedge fell to the floor in a dead faint.

  18

  “Would you mind showing Sergeant Huggins where were you standing again, Mr. Manning?” asked Inspector Borne. His voice was tired, weary, exhausted. It was now getting on to seven p.m.

  “As I told you and Huggins, just about right here.”

  “Why didn’t you accompany Mr. Cornbeck to his dressing room? You knew of the threats against him.” Inspector Borne betrayed no emotion in his manner or bearing – least of all, anger. He had long ago resigned himself to all the flurries of human failure and stupidity.

  “He didn’t ask me. Besides, I was busy here.”

  “It seems none of you took these threats seriously.” Borne’s voice had no accusing edge. He was simply stating the mournful fact.

  “That’s just not true, inspector,” Mr. Kent argued. “We took the threats so seriously, that’s why we employed Mr. Manning here.” Kent’s tone implied that he was blaming me. Maybe he was right?

  “I told you what steps I took,” I declared. “What more could I do? None of the threats were made against Miss Williams. None of them!”

  “She wasn’t guarded?” asked Borne. “Not in any way?”

  “Of course not! None of us believed she was in any danger whatever.”

  “Yet it seems, Mr. Manning, that she was the one who came into first contact with your contestants?”

  “That’s true.”

  Borne began to pace up and down. “It seems she was the one who did all the interviews and kept all the files. Yet none of you reasoned – even for a moment – that she was in any danger?” He wasn’t blaming us. He simply wanted to know if there was at least one of us who had any sense of reality.

  “No.”

  “It’s easy enough to have hindsight, inspector,” observed Mr. Kent. “Obviously, the notes were designed to throw us all off the track – so we would take steps to guard everyone but the intended victim.”

  Intended victim! I wanted to shout that Miss Williams was a girl who lived and breathed, not a statistic or a cross-reference! But I held my tongue.

  Inspector Borne ignored Kent’s explanation. “And all the files are gone, you say?”

  “Yes, I made the connection straight away,” I answered. “I raced to Spookie’s office. Her filing cabinet was open – empty!”

  “Hundreds of files?”

  I nodded. “The killer had plenty of time. The show runs for an hour, including commercials, but taping can take anything up to two or three hours. It’s my theory, he had an audience ticket. He arrived early. Nothing unusual about that. Many patrons are dead keen to get a seat at the front. Anyway, this guy knew his way around. He’d obviously been here before. People can come to every broadcast they wish – so long as they have a ticket. Anyway, he heard Sedge and Spookie talking in his dressing room. He waited for Sedge to leave, stepped in, knifed the girl, took her keys, closed the door, walked back to her office, shuttled the files out to his car, put them in the boot and the back seat under a coat or something, waited for the end of the show, and then drove his car out with the first of the crowd.”

  Inspector Borne continued to pace up and down without speaking. Up and down the tatty set, from contestant number one’s table to Sedge’s podium, and back again. Up and down until finally Kent growled out in exasperation, “You know how upset we are, inspector, we all are, all of us, but our work must go on – and that’s doubled with all our files missing!”

  “And with your announcer in hospital?” Borne asked.

  Mr. Kent spread his hands. “Sedge was always very highly strung. You’re dealing with show people here, inspector. He walks back to his dressing-room after the show and he finds the girl sitting in his chair. He touches her and she falls to the floor, staring up at him with those dead eyes. Even you or I would be affected by a sight like that. He runs back here and he literally collapses on the floor. Naturally, we send him to a hospital. A private hospital. The station has an arrangement…”

  Borne had come to a halt right in front of Kent. “A graphic description,” he murmured, “from someone who wasn’t here!”

  “No, I wasn’t,” Kent admitted, “But Monty filled me in on all the details.” He nodded towards the bantam producer.

  Borne’s voice was mild. “Then I won’t be needing you any more, Mr. Kent.”

  The station manager had virtually asked to be excused, but now he was reluctant to go. He launched into a long and unnecessary speech on the station’s abhorrence of violence and his desire to co-operate in bringing the slayer of one of its employees to justice. Halfway through this embarrassing exercise in self-justification, Borne nodded to Sergeant Huggins who walked to the door and held it open. Kent had no option but to leave.

  As it turned out, that was a very stupid action on Borne’s part. Kent went back to his office all right, but now that he himself was in the clear, he and his secretary phoned the story to every newspaper and wire service in L.A.

  After having Kent shown to the door, Borne then motioned to Monty Fairmont and the two men talked quietly – even the producer’s shrill voice came down to a high-pitched whisper – but the acoustics of the set were so tuned that the rest of us could easily hear what was said. Monty confirmed that he, Ace Jellis and Trev Varnie had last seen Spookie alive in Sedge’s dressing room. All three of them were then busy on the set, where they were joined by the sponsor, Peter Tunning. None of them had left the set for any reason at any point. Sedge had remained in his dressing-room until he was called.

  Borne called over Ace Jellis, Trevor Holden, Peter Tunning and myself to confirm Monty’s story.

  “Who was the last person to see Miss Williams alive?” asked Borne.

  “We all were,” Monty replied.

  “Sedge was,” I couldn’t help interrupting.

  “Why do you say that?” asked Borne, his voice hardly more than a whisper.

  “She told me!” I answered. “When she left me she told me she was going to call in on Sedge.” To hold his hand!

  “I don’t understand,” murmured Borne.

  Monty had turned around and was glaring at me stonily, so I addressed my answer to him. “You remember, Monty: You, Ace and Miss Williams took me along to wardrobe and decked me out in that checked coat and the false mustache.”

  “That’s so right!” Ace Jellis agreed.

  “I was there too!” said young Trevor Holden.

  Borne exhaled softly. “None of you told me this before.”

  Each of us had a different excuse. “We were all there together!” exclaimed Monty. “What does it matter?”

  “I forgot about it,” Jellis said.

  “It was on our way,” said Trevor.

  “I was going to tell you,” I said, “but I had other things to ask you. You never gave me a chance.”

  “What does it matter?” asked Monty. “We were all of us together.”

  “Not bloody quite!” cut in Trevor, staring at me.

  “Th
at’s right!” Monty remembered. “Ace, Trev and I left Manning alone with the girl.”

  “In wardrobe,” Jellis agreed.

  “Now just a damn minute!” I exclaimed. “She left me in wardrobe and said she was going to call back on Sedge.”

  “Who else was present in this wardrobe?” asked Borne.

  We all looked at each other.

  Finally, Monty said, “No one.”

  “We were there by ourselves,” Jellis agreed.

  “Monty has a key,” said Trev.

  “And where is this wardrobe room?”

  Monty waved, “Upstairs.”

  “In admin,” I was quick to point out. “Not in this building. Next door.”

  “That’s right,” said Trev.

  “Do I have this straight?” Borne asked wearily. “The three of you left Miss Williams alone with Mr. Manning?”

  Three heads nodded.

  “That was the last time you saw her alive?”

  Agreed!

  “Then all three of you walked together to this set?”

  Trev elected himself spokesman. “Too right.”

  “Together?” Borne asked.

  No doubt of it.

  Borne turned to me. “So it seems you were the last person to see the girl alive?”

  I lost my block. “That’s where you’re bloody wrong!” I yelled. “Sedge was.”

  Borne stepped to the door and opened it. “All of you will wait for me here. I will want detailed statements from each of you. Keep an eye on them, Huggins! Mr. Manning and I are going to Miss Williams’ office to examine what’s left in her desk.”

  “You’re wasting your time,” I told him as we stepped across the alleyway into admin. “I’ve already been through her desk. Nothing, I told you.”

  “What you didn’t tell me was that you were possibly the last person to see her alive. What else are you holding back?”

  “You didn’t give me a chance. I didn’t mention Dune-Harrigan either. I believe these murders are connected.”

  “Who’s Dune-Harrigan?”