Play to the End

by Robert Goddard

  “Yes. Of the bladder, mostly. I don’t know about ‘a lot,’ though. More like a steady trickle. Terminal cases, usually, I’m afraid.”

  “And this has gone on…since the company closed?”

  “Yes. Well, cancer often develops a long time after exposure…to whatever causes it.”

  “And what does cause it…in these cases?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But Gav might,” put in Syd.

  “Yes. I suppose he might.” I looked back at Audrey. “How many cases are we talking about?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “Go on. Just a guesstimate. I won’t quote you on it.”

  “Well…” She thought for a moment, then said, “Several dozen at least.” And then she thought for another moment. “Maybe more.”

  I must have left the Latin in the Lane later than I’d thought. By the time I reached North Street it was five past midnight. The city centre’s main thoroughfare was cold and empty. There was no knot of raucous students waiting for transport back to the campus. And no sign of Denis.

  I retrieved his mobile number from my phone and rang it. No answer. I tried again. Still no answer.

  I stood at one of the deserted bus stops, wondering what to do next. Denis might have got on the student bus, I supposed, although a trip out to Falmer would only leave him with the problem of how to get back. Or he might have pulled himself together and returned to his lodgings. But there we came to a gaping lack of information. I didn’t know where he was staying.

  Unable to think of any other recourse, I rang Brian Sallis. There was a slur to his voice when he answered and a blurred hubbub in the background. I imagined he was in a restaurant somewhere, with Melvyn and most of the cast. And I imagined they were having a good time—unlike me.

  “Toby? Where are you?”

  “A bus stop in North Street, since you ask.”

  “What? Get yourself down here. We’re at the King and I in Ship Street. Great squid, let me tell you.”

  “Nice idea, Brian, but I have to find Denis Maple. Do you know where he’s staying?”

  “He’s probably tucked up in bed by now.”

  “I don’t think so. And this is urgent. Where is he staying?”

  “No need to shout, old chap. Anyway, I haven’t got that info on me, Toby. Somewhere in Kemp Town, I think. Hold on. I’ll ask.” But asking did no good. No-one’s memory was working too well. I cut Brian off in the middle of further urgings for me to join them and rang Denis’s mobile again.

  Still there was no answer. “Where are you, Denis?” I said aloud. “Where in hell are you?”

  Could he have headed for the Sea Air? It was one possibility I could check fairly easily. And it was in the same general direction as his lodgings, so there was some frail kind of logic to it. I started walking. Fast.

  Within minutes, I’d reached the Old Steine. Traffic was thin and buses there were none. The stops to left and right were all empty. I started across towards St. James’s Street, redialling on my mobile as I went. Yet again, there was no answer.

  But then, just as I was about to give up, I heard a bleeping, joining the ringing tone in a weird stereo. I was halfway along the pavement that runs past the northern side of the gardens around the Victoria Fountain. I stopped dead and listened for a second, hardly able to believe what I was hearing. The phone stopped ringing and the message service cut in. I cancelled the call and redialled. The phone started up again. I turned to my right, towards the fountain.

  There was a figure lying on the ground near the base of the fountain, readily mistakable for one of the many deep shadows cast by shrubs, benchends and cast-iron dolphins. I knew it was Denis before I reached him. He was lying on his side, legs drawn up. As I stooped and rolled him over onto his back, his mobile fell out of his hand.

  “Denis? Denis, are you all right?” But he was as far from all right as you can get. His mouth was open. But he wasn’t breathing. His eyes stared sightlessly up at me, a shaft of lamplight catching the whites. I felt beneath his ear for a pulse, then at his wrist. Nothing. I jabbed at the 9 button on my mobile. A chasm of time opened around me in the darkness and the silence. At last, there was an answer. I demanded an ambulance. I gabbled out our location. “He’s not breathing,” I shouted. “I think his heart’s stopped. I need you here now.”

  It’s a straight run from the hospital. The streets were empty. The ambulance was probably there within five minutes. It felt infinitely longer, of course. I dredged some first-aid principles out of my memory and tried to kick-start Denis back to life with mouth-to-mouth and chest compressions. But it’s more than likely my technique was too faulty for any good to have come of it. I felt stupid and helpless and desperate. And responsible. Yes. I felt that as well.

  Death’s the biggest absolute of all. Strange, then, that we can be so vague about the moment of its arrival. The heart stops beating. The body stops moving. Later, eventually and reluctantly, the brain closes down. When exactly that happened to Denis Maple—at what precise minute he finally blinked out of existence—is a matter for futile debate. Was it before I found him? Or while I was manhandling him to no effect? Or during the ambulance ride? Or later still, at the hospital? I don’t know. I never will.

  The pronouncement, though: I can be clear about that. A nurse came to me in the hospital waiting area. “I’m afraid it was too late,” she said. “We couldn’t save him.” Denis was dead, a heart attack the preliminary verdict. I’d mentioned his heart trouble, so it must have seemed a straightforward case to the doctors. Something like this was always on the cards for a man in his fragile state of health. Alcohol; stress; over-exertion: anything could have brought it on. He was just unlucky to have been alone when it happened.

  Unlucky? Yes, Denis was certainly that. Maybe his biggest misfortune was to be a friend of mine. I put him up for the understudy job. He needed something undemanding to ease his way back into acting. And he needed the money. So, I helped him out.

  Of this world, it now transpires. The strain of performing last night. The strife he ran into afterwards. And the events of tonight, which I can never ask him to relate or explain. I brought those down on his head. And his heart.

  I must have phoned Brian. Or else I must have asked the nurse to do it for me. I can’t remember exactly how it happened. But at some point he was there at the hospital, along with Melvyn and Jocasta and Mandy. They were all there. And so was I.

  But Denis wasn’t. He was nowhere.

  “What happened?” they asked me. And I tried to tell them. But I didn’t really know. And what I did know can have made little sense. A garbled call. A search. A discovery. A death. You could squeeze the context and meaning out of it if you were so minded and all you’d be left with is a medical fact. Denis’s heart stopped. And so did he.

  They delivered me back to the Sea Air, concerned that I was in shock and shouldn’t be left alone. I roused myself sufficiently to persuade them that I’d be all right. Eventually, they left.

  In the morning, Brian will notify the rest of the cast and company. Then he’ll contact Denis’s next of kin. “A tragic misfortune” is probably how he’ll describe it. Not like Jimmy Maidment’s suicide. There’s no cause to think this is a jinxed production. As for the rest of us…life goes on. And so must the play. Let’s see it in proportion. Denis wasn’t well. A game guy, but an ailing one. Even understudying was too much for him. It’s sad it had to happen. What else is there to say?

  I sit here in my room, with my whisky and my tape recorder, trying to piece together in my mind what must have happened. After the second act got under way, Denis probably went for a meal with Glenys. (I can check that with her in the morning.) Then what? A few drinks on his own somewhere? (Glenys is no night owl.) A film, maybe? If I’d looked, I might have found an Odeon ticket stub in his pocket. It’s a trivial detail in itself, of course. The fact is that around eleven o’clock Denis must have got back to his lodgings and found the man mountain f
rom Embassy Court waiting for him. Or spotted him waiting and beaten a retreat. Maybe he was followed. That would explain him taking refuge in a bus queue. Maybe he just thought he was followed. Same difference, really. So, he phoned me. The only one who’d take him seriously. But the bus arrived before I showed up. He didn’t get on. He waited for me. Not for long, though. Maybe he saw man mountain again. Maybe he just panicked. Same difference again? I don’t think so. I was only five minutes late. Surely he’d have hung on that long. My guess is that he left because he had to. He was followed. Or chased. Was he running when the pain hit him? He must have known what it was. He headed for the benches by the fountain to rest. Or to hide. He took out his phone to make a call. For an ambulance, maybe. Or to me. Whichever it was, he never got as far as dialling the number. He went down. And stayed there. His pursuer melted away into the night. Precious minutes slipped by. Too many minutes. Until I found him.

  What do I do now? They were getting at Denis to warn me off, to show me what they were capable of. They can’t have meant to kill him. They can’t have known he had a weak heart. But he did. And now he’s dead because of it. And because of them. And because of me. Somebody should pay for that. Yes. Somebody really should.

  WEDNESDAY

  I woke this morning to the fleeting delusion that Denis Maple’s death was just a dream. Reality soon had me back in its grip, however. I’d slept for seven solid hours, but didn’t feel more than superficially refreshed. It was gone ten o’clock. I was due to meet Gavin Colborn at noon. And there was someone else I needed to see first.

  Already, my day was barely under control. My days on tour had previously been slow, short and empty. But that had changed now I’d come to Brighton.

  I showered, shaved and dressed hurriedly. Then I called Jenny. She didn’t sound pleased to hear from me. And she didn’t want me to come round to Brimmers; I could say what I wanted over the phone. But I couldn’t. In the end, I think she understood that. We settled on the Rendezvous at 11.15.

  Heavy rain was falling from an ashen sky, the rain driven diagonally up Madeira Place by the wind beating in off the sea. The weather made the route I took to the Rendezvous, along the storm-lashed front and up Black Lion Street, a crazy choice. But I wasn’t ready to cross the Steine yet and to pass the spot near the fountain where I’d found Denis. I wasn’t just looking for answers. I was avoiding some as well.

  I wondered if the staff of the Rendezvous had begun to notice Derek Oswin’s absence, or to recognize me as a regular. They gave no sign of either as I bought a coffee and joined Jenny at her table.

  She was looking stern and impatient. I think she’d been debating with herself whether I was in danger of becoming as much of a nuisance as Derek. Clearly, she had no idea what I was about to tell her.

  “Denis Maple’s dead.”

  “Oh God.” Shock silenced her for a moment. Then she asked, “What happened?”

  “Heart attack.”

  “That’s dreadful. I’m sorry, Toby. You and he got on so well. It must be a blow. To the company as well. I mean, coming after Jimmy Maidment…When did this happen?”

  “Just after midnight.”

  “And when did you hear about it?”

  “I was there when he died, Jenny. Or just after. He’d phoned me. He was worried, you see. Worried and frightened. Somebody was following him. Chasing him.”

  “Surely not.”

  “Surely yes. You know why he and I met here yesterday morning? Because Denis wanted to tell me something. Something he reckoned I had to be told about.”

  “What?”

  I studied Jenny’s face as I related Denis’s story and the events of last night. I blurred the context, of course. I said nothing about Syd Porteous or the meeting with her fiancé’s uncle he was setting up for me. Nor did I mention said fiancé’s virtual offer to me of a film part. The rain sluiced down the window behind me. Steam rose from the espresso machine. And skittering there, in the faintest twitches of Jenny’s mouth and the flickers of her gaze, I read the beginnings of doubt. She wasn’t sure—she wasn’t absolutely certain—that all this amounted to nothing.

  “I’m sorry Denis is dead,” she said, breaking the silence that fell after I’d finished. “He was a lovely man.”

  “Yes. Which would be tragic enough. But he didn’t need to die. That makes it worse than a tragedy.”

  “You don’t know what happened after you spoke to him. You can’t know. He may have…imagined the man at his lodgings.”

  “No. Denis was as level-headed as they come.”

  “He was also a sick man. For all you know, sicker than he was letting on.”

  “I’ll give you that. It’s possible, entirely possible. But something more than his own imagination tipped him over the edge. And that something comes back to me.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “I’m deducing exactly what I’m supposed to deduce, Jenny: that paying attention to Derek Oswin isn’t a good idea. That I should lay off. That I should leave well alone.”

  “Denis was drunk by his own admission on Monday night and probably drugged too. You can’t draw any conclusions from what he thought happened to him at Embassy Court.”

  “I think I can.”

  “Well, you can’t.” She glared at me. “It’s absurd.”

  “Reckon I’ve got it all wrong, do you?”

  “Yes. I do. Why in God’s name should anyone want to stop you speaking to Derek Oswin?”

  “Presumably they’re afraid of what he might tell me.”

  “What can he tell you, Toby? He worked for a plastics company, not MI5. For Christ’s sake, pull yourself together.” She blushed and looked around, suddenly aware that she’d been speaking too loudly. She hunched forward and dropped her voice. “Listen to me. You’re upset about Denis. You’re getting this out of proportion. There’s no conspiracy going on. There’s just…life…and death.”

  “I suppose a heart attack’s better than cancer.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “A lot of Colbonite’s staff died of cancer. Did you know that?”

  She didn’t answer. Maybe she couldn’t answer. She stared at me, blinking rapidly, struggling to decide there and then whether the things I’d said reflected any more than my desire to believe the worst of Roger Colborn. She wanted to believe the best of him, naturally. Neither of us was exactly unbiased. Which made the truth hard for us to come by—or to recognize when we did.

  “I may have given Roger the impression yesterday that I could be bought off. Could you put him right on that for me, Jenny? There’s no deal.”

  Now she was angry. I’d taken a step too far. I’d lost her. “Nobody’s trying to buy you off, Toby.” She pushed her chair back, the feet squealing against the floor, and stood up. “I’m not going to listen to any more of this. It’s—” She steadied herself, holding up both hands and closing her eyes as she took a deep breath. Then she opened them and looked down at me.

  “Jenny, I—”

  “No.” She looked at me a second longer. “Not another word.” She turned and headed for the door.

  Leaving me to stare into my coffee and begin the all too easy task of calculating how I could have handled our conversation so much better. The waitress came over to clear Jenny’s cup. As she did so, the spoon fell out of the saucer and clattered down onto the table.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “Me too,” I murmured.

  I was still slumped over the dregs of my coffee some minutes later when my mobile rang.

  “Toby, it’s Brian Sallis. How are you feeling this morning?”

  “Much the same as last night, Brian. How are you?”

  “Rather shook up, actually. But I, er…just wanted to…check you were OK.”

  “I’ll be on stage tonight. You don’t need to worry.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant…generally.”

  “Generally? On the grim side of OK, I suppose.”

&n
bsp; “This has knocked the wind out of everyone’s sails, Toby. I’ve been…notifying people all morning. There’s a lot of…distress.”

  “Denis was a popular guy.”

  “So he was. Look, on that subject, could you do me a favour?”

  “Try me.”

  “I spoke to Denis’s brother earlier. Ian Maple. He’s coming down here today. He wants to know what happened and, well, you know more than anyone.”

  “You want me to talk to him?”

  “I’m meeting him off the train and taking him round to the undertaker’s. After that, I’m not sure what he’ll want to do. Could I ring you this afternoon and fix something up?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it. It’s shaping up into a pretty bloody day, to be honest, with the press to handle and…everything else. Melvyn’s gone back to London, by the way. I mean, that was the plan all along, but—”

  “We wouldn’t want Melvyn to have to change his plans.”

  “No.” Ordinarily, Brian would have sprung to our director’s defence, but he didn’t seem disposed to make the effort this time. “Thanks again, Toby. I’ll be in touch later.”

  It was close to noon when I left the Rendezvous, dashing from shelter to shelter through the rain to the Cricketers, where the foul weather had kept custom to a minimum.

  Rain or shine made little difference to Syd Porteous, however. He was already installed with a pint and a crumpled newspaper. He greeted me with a frown of concern and a solicitous pat on the shoulder.

  “Sorry to hear you’ve lost one of the company, Tobe. Bit of a facer, that.”

  I looked at him in some dismay, unprepared as I was for the news to have spread so fast. “How did you know?”

  “It was on the local news this morning.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Nothing much. Denis Maple was his name, right? Understudy. Heart attack, apparently.”

  I nodded. “So it was.”

  “The name rang a bell. Tell me to mind my own if you like, Tobe, but was it him you had to rush off and meet last night?”