Killings on Jubilee Terrace

by Robert Barnard

  ‘I see,’ said Charlie slowly. Timing could be of the essence, he thought, and he distrusted their obviously fallible memories. ‘And were you and Bill Garrett the only ones who went to the Red Deer?’

  ‘Oh yes. It was a heart-to-heart.’

  ‘So in theory anyone else could have been at Bridge Street where the fire was by, say, nine-twenty?’

  ‘In theory,’ said Carol Chisholm. ‘But many of us have wives, husbands, partners, parents. We could all have people who could vouch for our being home by then.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Charlie, with a suppressed sigh that said he really didn’t need to be taught to suck eggs. ‘Now, one last thing and I’ll take myself off. Bet Garrett implied that several of you here had slept with her. “Touched her” was the expression she used – rather a nice, genteel way of putting it, that. If any of you want the fact to remain private if possible, hold your peace and tell me when I or one of our people interview you later today or tomorrow. But if you’ve no objection to its being known, or if it’s already well known…’

  He paused and looked around. Harry Hornby, or rather Les Crosby who played him, raised a finger.

  ‘Me. Not a nice experience. Never repeated.’

  ‘Right. Thank you… Oh, Mr—’

  ‘Marston. Philip Marston. Peter Kerridge in the soap. It’s well known to all the cast I should think. It lasted – what? half a week. Three or four days. Not a grand passion.’

  Charlie looked round and saw that Marjorie had made a tentative signal to him.

  ‘Not me. But Vernon Watts and she were on and off – so to speak – lovers. She was available whenever he wanted her, if she hadn’t anything better on the horizon.’

  Charlie looked around the group for a last time, registered that there had been no lesbian confessions, then let out a deep breath.

  ‘No more then? Thank you very much. The list may need enlarging, so I’ll keep it open.’

  Chief Superintendent Collins sat in his chair staring ahead of him with distaste and feeling very superintendentish. On the other side of the desk Chief Inspector Birnley was trying not to squirm, but Collins was sure he was squirming mentally, and he was glad.

  ‘Let’s get this straight: you went to the press conference intending to announce that the two dead people were Hamish Fawley and Bet Garrett. Why?’

  ‘Why? Well I felt sure they were the two, and thought that the press had a right to know.’

  ‘Any copper knows that we tell the press what we think they’ll find out anyway, not what they imagine they have a right to know.’

  ‘I thought having the names in the public domain could bring people forward who had valuable information.’

  ‘You thought having two Jubilee Terrace actors instead of just the one would make it twice as big a story. What did you think when you saw someone at the door of the press room trying to shove a piece of paper in your hand? That he was advertising a bargain sale at British Home Stores?’

  ‘Oh, it was just that uppity twerp Rani trying to make himself important. I was just thinking of the press conference.’

  ‘I bet you were. But you somehow didn’t think that, as he was standing at the door of the press conference room, it was likely that the paper had something in it that you should see before you spoke to the ladies and gentlemen of the press?’

  ‘Oh, I thought it was just that full-of-himself Paki making a lot of a little.’

  ‘He’s Indian. And he wasn’t, was he?’ Birnley was silent. ‘Was he?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘He – on orders from Peace – was trying to stop you making an almighty fool of yourself. And you went ahead and made one.’

  ‘I’ll put out a statement—’

  ‘You’ll put out nothing. I should by rights remove you from the case. You can stay in nominal charge, orchestrate the course of the investigation, in close collaboration with Peace, but you will never, repeat never, give another press conference on this case.’ Or on any case, Chief Superintendent Collins said to himself. He looked long and hard at Birnley. ‘Is that understood?’

  There was a long, hostile silence. Then Birnley shifted in his chair.

  ‘Understood.’

  Filming was starting (a schedule was not to be put aside, not for a little thing like a pair of bodies) and the informal meeting between Charlie and the cast of Jubilee Terrace had broken up. As he was wavering over which corridor would take him to the office of Melvin Settle, the script editor, he was caught up by Garry Kopps.

  ‘Going anywhere nice?’

  ‘I thought I’d have a word with Mr Settle.’

  ‘Nice-ish.’

  ‘But you’re top of my list of the cast members I want to talk to.’

  ‘I won’t ask why. It’ll be my reputation as the Terrace’s intellectual. Or maybe the fact that I’m the only male in the cast who hasn’t been with Bet Garrett.’

  ‘Really? And why would that be?’

  ‘I’m sure you know the other part of my reputation, Inspector. My tastes lie in another direction. Mind you, I think that even if I was hetero I wouldn’t be in the least attracted by a granite-breasted and granite-voiced tart like Bet Garrett.’

  ‘I don’t think I would either.’

  ‘Wife and kidlets at home, Inspector?’

  ‘Wife Felicity. Children: Carola nearly five and Thomas six months.’

  ‘It sounds a real idyll. Pity: there are so many gay policemen these days, and soldiers too, that it’s a real bonus if uniforms turn you on. But it doesn’t sound as if I could possibly persuade you to “absent thee from Felicity awhile”.’

  Charlie sighed.

  ‘If only you knew how often I’ve heard that joke.’

  ‘I’m sorry to bore you. You must live in cultured circles.’

  ‘I do. Felicity used to do teaching for Leeds University English Department. Every one of her colleagues tried the joke at one time or another, and every one of them thought they were being original.’

  ‘Sounds like the acting profession. We all spill over with quotations, usually from plays we’ve been in. Well, I’ll give up any thought of seducing you. It’s so long since I had a boyfriend it’s like an automatic response to try it on with anyone young and attractive. Fancy a coffee?’

  He gestured towards a dispensing machine. Charlie flinched.

  ‘Couldn’t we run to a canteen cup from a percolator?’

  ‘The canteen will be full of cast who aren’t filming, discussing the second coming of Bet Garrett. The coffee is vile from that machine, but there’s a nice little alcove round the corner with a view over the Burleigh Road and complete privacy. It takes your mind off the coffee.’

  Charlie nodded, and in a couple of minutes he was sipping a cup of coffee that was every bit as nasty as the ones in the Millgarth Police Headquarters, and looking out on a view that was also not much better than the one there.

  ‘You wanted to talk to me, I’d guess,’ he said. Garry Kopps smiled, not at all ashamed or embarrassed.

  ‘Yes, I did. I guessed that underneath that cool and rather intimidating exterior there was a mind that was meeting with a crowd of actors for pretty much the first time and panicking at the newness of it all.’

  Charlie didn’t readily admit to panic, so he just smiled neutrally.

  ‘And soap actors are a thing apart, or many of them are. If you went and talked to actors from any theatre company they could almost all make a fair fist at roles over a pretty wide spectrum – some would be roles they were made to play, some would be roles they could fit themselves quite comfortably into.’

  ‘So they could play King Lear and Sir Andrew Aguecheek and anything in the latest sitcom on telly?’

  ‘Exactly. You sound as if you have had some stage experience.’

  ‘Twelfth Night at school. I played Sir Toby, though I shared the role with a well-stuffed pillowcase. It was billed as the first all-black Twelfth Night, as if that excused it. The bookings were so bad we ca
ncelled the public performances and just played to the school. They booed and threw things.’

  ‘Why all black?’

  ‘Because we were. Top to toe. Brixton.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘Get on with the soap actors. Why are they so different?’

  ‘Because some of them aren’t exactly actors at all. They’ve played the working men’s clubs, they’ve done acts for children’s parties, they’ve even made good after being extras on stage or television. One way or another they’ve got the acting bug, but they aren’t really actors, and many of them can only play a tiny range of parts not very different from their actual selves.’

  ‘Any examples?’

  ‘Well, Vernon Watts was the best example from Terrace. He was a third-rate comedian in the music halls and clubs. When he got the job he used to play Bert Porter as a third-rate comic. Used to complain if any of his scenes didn’t have a joke in them. The scriptwriters usually complied, because it was easy. The joke could be as bad as they liked, because the point about Bert Porter was that he thought he was hilarious and wasn’t.’

  ‘I get you. Who else could you say has this limited range?’

  ‘Well, Winnie Hey, and probably Les Crosby, who plays Harry Hornby.’

  ‘But someone like Hamish Fawley was much more of a real actor?’

  ‘Oh yes. To take an obvious point, he was playing a homosexual but he didn’t have a gay bone in his body, and he did it very well, in private sincere and straightforward, in public a bravura caricature of stereotypes especially when he was playing with homophobic characters. He could play competently a wide range of parts, but probably no one role would show any great depth or empathy.’

  ‘I think I get you. Who else would come under this heading: Bill Garrett?’

  ‘Oh yes. Like the rest of us he wonders whether he couldn’t have made it big in the real world of the theatre.’

  ‘But why don’t they – you – branch out?’

  ‘Children, for one thing. And Bill until recently had an expensive wife. But as often as not the real reason is timidity. They look at that comfortable bank balance and they ask themselves: “What would I do without it?” It’s like being on the Titanic and instinctively keeping close to the lifeboats. Some of us made a big brave decision when we decided to be actors. Now we are actors, our native working-or lower-middle-class caution has come into play, and it tells us to stay in our cushy beds, safe and warm, and warns us that if we were professionally stretched, we might not stretch well.’

  Charlie thought.

  ‘That means, I suppose, a lot of nervy, frustrated, neurotic actors, aghast at the lack of challenge in their work – pretty much like the rest of us.’

  ‘Pretty much, yes.’

  ‘Does it also mean that the most stable and contented ones are those who, by and large, are acting themselves?’

  Garry shook his head.

  ‘Not really. They quite soon get the notion that they are actors, and get the notion too that they should be given bigger and bigger challenges. It’s like Fortinbras thinking he can play Hamlet.’

  ‘So the result is very much the same?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Or is this just you generalising out from yourself,’ said Charlie in his friendliest voice, ‘and making everyone else out to be as mixed up as you are?’

  Garry Kopps shrugged.

  ‘You pays your money and you takes your choice.’

  ‘Well, I would not class Marjorie as a neurotic,’ said Charlie. ‘Nor Winnie, come to that. Verdicts on the rest will have to wait till I get to know them better.’

  And he got up and, directed by Garry, went in the direction of the Chief Script Editor.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Scripting a Death

  ‘Sit you down,’ said Melvin Settle, gesturing Charlie towards an upright chair with arms on the other side of his desk. The office was papered with photographs, and also had a sort of map which seemed to be charting the present and future plot-lines of Jubilee Terrace, major and minor. Charlie, with another wave, was given permission to get up and examine it closely. When he sat down again he said:

  ‘I’m interested in why Hamish Fawley was asked back to play in Jubilee Terrace.’

  Melvin Settle frowned.

  ‘This keeps coming up. What’s your problem? It was natural enough. We’d sent Cyril off to San Francisco – or was it LA? – anyway, to somewhere appropriate. But it made sense to bring him back to die.’

  ‘Did it? You could just have said he’d died over there. Lady Wharton could have flown over for the funeral. Or he could just have been forgotten. Hamish was the sort of cast member who no one would want brought back, or so I’d have thought.’

  ‘Christ yes, you’re right about that. You saw him, didn’t you? If I’d had one more sneer at my scripts because they weren’t Ibsen or Strindberg or whatever he tried to convince us he was used to playing I would have – well kicked his arse.’

  ‘Most cast members seem to have felt like that. So who invited him back?’

  ‘Oh, Reggie… Wait, I’ve got it.’ He paused feeling there was need for an explanation. ‘There’s so much writing, rewriting, replotting, taking out sick actors, or ones accused of drunk-driving or indecent assault, that I get muddled. It’s not all regular, prearranged progress from A to B – sometimes plot-lines simply get forgotten, or get overtaken by events, including events in the outside world. That’s what happened then.’

  ‘What? Something got overtaken by events?’ asked Charlie. Settle nodded. ‘What event?’

  ‘The death of Vernon Watts. Bert Porter. That was back in June or July.’

  ‘I thought he was a – sort of – background actor. Someone who’s around, and commenting on important storylines, rather than important himself.’

  ‘He was, but characters like that still have to be given a proper storyline now and then,’ said Melvin. ‘Often it’s something quite minor: a relative comes to stay and can’t be got rid of. Some minor character is suddenly given the conviction that she’s got cancer. But on occasion it can be something quite major.’

  Charlie thought.

  ‘I’d guess Vernon Watts’s plot-line was minor,’ he said.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘I’ve just heard Mr Kopps’s assessment of his talent as an actor.’

  ‘Well, that’s probably quite accurate. You can trust Garry’s judgements. Vernon couldn’t have coped with a strong storyline. This was just a side-issue to much stronger stuff: Vernon, or rather Bert, had taken on paper deliveries for Harry Hornby. We like to keep abreast of social changes. These days newsagents find it difficult to recruit paper boys and girls. Pay isn’t good enough for the greedy little buggers. So often pensioners are taking on the jobs.’

  ‘Yes, that’s happened in Slepton, where I live,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Right. Well the storyline was that Bert was getting interested in one of the paper girls – not sexually, we wouldn’t touch anything like that. Leave that to the Australian soaps. She’s just standing in for the daughter he and Gladys never had. And she plays along with this, because she’s a kind kid – the kid in the plot-line, not the actress. This is the sort of plot you can close down any time you like: Bert has a heart-to-heart with someone who tells him what a fool he’s making of himself. End of story. End of part for young hopeful playing the girl.’

  ‘But the plot-line never got filmed?’

  ‘Exactly. Vernon fell under the bus.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  Melvin shrugged.

  ‘Nothing much. It wasn’t urgent. The story was going to develop very slowly. It had just begun with a little solo conversation between Bert and the girl: “What are you doing at school?” stuff. It ended, I remember, with Bert saying: “I never did well at school, but it hasn’t done me any harm later in life.” A bit pathetic that, with Bert earning the odd quid delivering papers, and the girl knowing it… Come to think of it, that
may have been the last time Bert spoke in Jubilee Terrace.’

  ‘So what happened when news of his death came?’

  ‘Well, we all knew we – the scriptwriters that is – had to put on our thinking caps for something to take its place.’

  ‘Who came up with the solution?’

  ‘Reggie, actually. Not one of the scriptwriters. He just handed us the idea and told us to get writing.’

  ‘But why Hamish? Why bring back Cyril Wharton?’

  ‘All he said was that Hamish was available. He often was.’

  ‘But you’d never taken him up on it before? Brought him back for a fortnight’s holiday, visiting his old mum?’

  ‘No… You’d have to ask Reggie, but I think he’d seen that the cast needed a shake-up. They get slack and lacklustre doing the same thing over and over again, the same clichés, the same facial expressions, in the same settings. Another thing is that Reggie got very little cheek from Hamish. Far less than me, or the other actors. So he could have this shake-up for the rest without being disturbed by it himself.’

  ‘I see. But as far as plots were concerned it meant two disasters in a short time.’

  ‘We made very little of Bert’s death, just because the replacement stuff with Cyril might include a funeral as well. No scene by the grave, just Gladys and her mates in the Duke of York’s, discussing the service.’

  ‘I see,’ said Charlie thoughtfully. ‘I’m beginning to get an idea about the scriptwriting team. It sounds as if you have to negotiate with the actors, or at any rate field demands from them for storylines that feature them, or that they think would give them good opportunities.’

  Melvin Settle roared with laughter, though he didn’t entirely convince Charlie he was wrong.

  ‘Then I’m afraid I’ve given you a very odd impression. Yes, they come along to us with bright plot-ideas, always featuring themselves. No, we don’t negotiate with them. We placate them and send them away with the idea that we’ll think about it. The older ones of course know that that’s the last they’ll hear of it. Occasionally they come up with a good idea. In the nature of things that’s bound to happen: they’ve lived with the character, often for years. In that event the actor will probably go on daytime television boasting about his brilliant idea. But in general we’ve got ideas and to spare with ten scriptwriters on the case, and the idea has to be really brilliant, and to fit easily into the Jubilee Terrace format and ethos, to be taken up.’