Best Served Cold

by Sally Spencer

He might well be, Paniatowski thought, but he was scarcely in the tradition of the friendly family solicitors – heavy tweed suits and an avuncular air. No, this man had sharp features and shifty darting eyes, and while he possibly did know a little about trust funds and entailments, it was unlikely that they had featured much in his professional life.

  ‘Strictly speaking, you’re only being questioned as a witness, Miss Cavendish,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Our conversation is not being recorded, and in these circumstances most people don’t consider it necessary to have their solicitors present.’

  ‘Is my client a suspect in the murder of Mark Cotton?’ Graves asked, in a harsh North London accent.

  ‘At this stage of the investigation, everyone in the Whitebridge area – and beyond – is, to a greater or lesser extent, a suspect,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Everyone in the Whitebridge area and beyond wasn’t backstage when Mark Cotton did his neck stretching exercise,’ Graves countered, sitting down and indicating to Lucy Cavendish that she should do the same.

  ‘Did you go up to the fly loft at any time yesterday, Miss Cavendish?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you see anyone else up there?’

  Lucy Cavendish glanced across at her solicitor, who nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘It was just after we’d finished the final rehearsal. Most of the cast and all the stagehands had already gone away, but I was waiting on the stage for Mark, who was still in the dressing room.’

  ‘Why were you waiting for him?’

  ‘He was the director of the play, and my client wished to discuss one of the nuances of her role in it with him,’ Graves said, before Lucy Cavendish had time to answer.

  ‘So it wasn’t that you were hoping, even at that late hour, to persuade Mark Cotton to take the role of Bel-Imperia off Sarah Audley and give it to you?’ Meadows asked innocently.

  ‘No comment,’ Graves said.

  ‘What made you look up at the fly loft?’ Paniatowski asked Lucy.

  ‘I was practising dying,’ the other woman replied.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘In the play, I stab myself and then fall to the ground. I was making sure I’d got it right.’

  ‘So you weren’t so much looking up at the fly loft as having your eyes directed there by your position on the stage. Is that what you’re saying?’

  Lucy looked at her solicitor again.

  ‘Yes, that’s what she’s saying,’ he confirmed.

  ‘What can you tell me about the person you saw, Miss Cavendish?’

  ‘It was very dark up there, and I only got a second’s glance, but I think it was a woman.’

  ‘She was wearing a skirt?’

  ‘No, she was wearing trousers – or maybe even a tracksuit. But then, so do all the women – myself included.’

  ‘How did you get on with Mark Cotton?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘I got on with him as well as everybody else did.’

  ‘Which, from what we’ve gathered in the investigation so far, wasn’t terribly well at all.’

  ‘All right,’ said Lucy Cavendish, ‘I got on much better with him than everybody else did.’

  ‘You had an affair with Mark Cotton back in 1957, didn’t you?’ Meadows asked.

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘It began right after Cotton ditched Sarah Audley, didn’t it? Or perhaps it began even before that.’

  ‘I had a romantic relationship with him, yes, but I will neither confirm nor deny that sex was involved.’

  ‘And have you renewed that “romantic relationship” with him while you’ve been in Whitebridge?’

  ‘No. Definitely not.’

  ‘Are you still a member of the acting profession, Miss Cavendish?’

  ‘I play the occasional role on television, and I’ve done some modelling for mail order catalogues. I also own a property and rent out rooms to actors who are on tour.’

  ‘So you’re a theatrical landlady?’

  Lucy Cavendish wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t care for that particular term,’ she said. ‘It sounds so dowdy.’

  ‘How did you feel when you were asked to come back to Whitebridge after all these years?’

  ‘How do you think I felt? I was over the moon. I was getting a second chance to make it big.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Meadows asked.

  ‘Yes, it is! Oh, I know what you’re thinking – she looks at least thirty-three, and that’s too old to be a star. But that’s where you’re wrong – there’s been a big shift in the last few years, and older women are considered very sexy now. Just look at Sophia Loren.’

  ‘True, but then you’re no Loren,’ Meadows said, under her breath.

  ‘You didn’t need any persuading to come back?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘So Phil McCann needn’t have bothered coming to see you.’

  ‘How did you know Phil came to see me?’ Lucy Cavendish asked. ‘Silly me – he probably told you himself!’

  ‘One more question,’ Paniatowski said. ‘None of the other people we’ve questioned felt it necessary to have their solicitors present, so why did you?’

  And this time, Lucy Cavendish didn’t even need to look at Graves before answering, ‘No comment.’

  ‘So what did you make of that?’ Paniatowski asked.

  Meadows grinned. ‘I think Lucy Cavendish is either lying or telling the truth,’ she said. ‘Perhaps she really did see someone up there in the fly loft. Then again, she could have been trying to create some sort of tenuous alibi for herself – because if she saw someone up in the fly loft, she couldn’t have been there herself.’

  ‘If she was telling the truth, then she’s not really been much help at all, because we know that someone had to be up in the fly loft, and she can’t even tell us anything about that person.’

  ‘She thinks it was probably a woman.’

  ‘But she can’t be sure. That’s if she’s telling the truth. If she’s lying, she’s either trying to cover for herself or someone else. Do you think she was being honest when she said she hadn’t embarked on another affair with Mark Cotton?’

  ‘No,’ Meadows said.

  ‘Neither do I,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘So I think I might send young Jack Crane round to the Royal Victoria to make a few inquiries.’

  She reached into her handbag for her cigarettes. She wished she could stop doing that.

  ‘Why do you think Lucy Cavendish brought her solicitor with her?’ she asked Meadows.

  ‘Because she doesn’t trust the police.’

  ‘And why doesn’t she trust the police?’

  ‘Because she’s obviously been in trouble with us before.’

  Paniatowski nodded. ‘Yes, she has, hasn’t she?’ she agreed.

  SIXTEEN

  ‘Your mind seems to be somewhere else, this afternoon,’ Mark Cotton said.

  Sarah Audley sighed, wistfully. ‘I suppose I was thinking back to the time when we first did this play – twenty years ago. I had quite a crush on you back then, you know.’

  ‘Did you? I had no idea. But I’m assuming you’ve got over it by now.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’ve quite got over it. But I still enjoy working with you. In fact, I adore it.’

  Crane groaned. They were working, he assumed, to a script that Cotton had written – and a bloody awful script it was!

  He looked up and saw Meadows standing in the doorway.

  ‘How’s it going?’ she asked.

  ‘If this were played upon a stage, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction,’ Crane replied.

  Meadows grinned. ‘As your sergeant, I’m really going to have to start rationing your use of Shakespearean quotes,’ she said. ‘It’s the least I can do for the rest of the team.’

  ‘Inspector Beresford wouldn’t recognize a Shakespearean quote if you stuffed it up his nose,’ Crane said.

  ‘
And probably neither would the boss,’ Meadows conceded. ‘Speaking of whom, she wants you to get off your arse and do some real detective work for a change.’

  Crane stood up.

  ‘Thank God for that,’ he said.

  Paniatowski was looking straight into the camera.

  ‘A forty-two-year-old man has been taken into custody and is helping us with our inquiries,’ she said.

  ‘Will you be arresting him?’ asked the person attached to the hand which was holding the microphone.

  ‘I have no further comment to make at this time.’

  The phone rang in the hallway, and Louisa went to pick it up.

  ‘You’re on the telly, Mum,’ she said.

  ‘What!’ Paniatowski asked, alarmed.

  Louisa laughed. ‘Don’t worry, you’ve not been caught by Candid Camera. They haven’t got anything new from you, so they’re using old footage – a sort of Monika Paniatowski’s Greatest Hits.’

  ‘How were things at school?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘Awful.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. I should never have—’

  ‘They weren’t awful because of what happened last night. And anyway, I’m going to have to get used to seeing stiffs if I’m ever to be the first female chief constable of Mid Lancs.’

  ‘Then what was the problem?’

  ‘My so-called mature contemporaries.’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘The rest of the girls in the Sixth Form. They’ve been a real pain. “Do you know who did it, Louisa?” “Has your mum told you who killed gorgeous Mark Cotton?” They never bloody stopped.’

  ‘You shouldn’t swear, Louisa,’ Paniatowski admonished.

  ‘Well, honestly, it was enough to make a saint swear,’ Louisa countered. ‘Why couldn’t you have been a rock star or something – that would have caused me far less trouble.’

  Paniatowski laughed. ‘I’ll be home as soon as I can,’ she promised.

  ‘I won’t hold my breath waiting,’ her daughter said.

  Tony Brown sat in a lonely corner of the Bull and Bush. He was holding a gin and tonic in his hand – his third in less than half an hour – and he was going over, in the minutest possible detail, his interview with the two policewomen.

  He should have done better, he told himself. He was an actor – albeit a rather rusty one – and he should have been able to project a much more appealing image than the one he had projected.

  He took another slug of his drink.

  But it could have been worse, he thought. Meadows and Paniatowski didn’t like him, and they didn’t trust him – but at least they hadn’t come anywhere near guessing the truth.

  He pushed the interview to the back of his mind, and unwittingly allowed another interview – a less official but much more unpleasant one – to slide into the space the first had vacated.

  It is Thursday, which means they have had a full three and a half days of rehearsals, and it is already plain to the entire cast that although Geoff Turnbull may be out of touch with contemporary theatre techniques and, in addition, is rarely sober, he would still make a much better job of directing The Spanish Tragedy than Mark Cotton is doing.

  And Cotton knows the tide is moving against him, which is why he corners Tony when no one else is around.

  ‘I need your help,’ he says. ‘I want you to tell the rest of the cast that they’ve got the wrong attitude to these rehearsals, and that they need to do something about it.’

  ‘Why would they listen to me?’ Brown asks.

  ‘Why? Because they all like you! Because they all think you’re a nice guy.’

  That’s true. Phil McCann has always been regarded as the diplomat of the company, but he himself is unquestionably the nice one.

  ‘One of the reasons they like me is because they know I’m honest,’ Tony Brown says. ‘If I told them they had the wrong attitude, they’d know I was lying, and my credibility would just melt away.’

  ‘Are you saying it’s my attitude that’s wrong?’ Cotton demands.

  ‘Yes, isn’t that obvious – even to you.’

  ‘If you were still a full-time actor, I’d have no power over you,’ Cotton says. ‘But you’re not an actor any more, are you? You’re a schoolteacher – and, because of that, all I need to do to destroy you is to pick up the phone.’

  ‘You won’t do that,’ Brown says, but there is a fearful note in his voice which says that he thinks Cotton just might.

  ‘I don’t know why I ever agreed to do this show,’ Cotton whines, suddenly completely engulfed in self-pity. ‘I was a huge success on television. I was making a lot of money and my fans adored me. But I wanted more, didn’t I? Stupid, stupid, stupid!’

  ‘Mark …’ Tony Brown says softly.

  ‘I’ve got a sort of magic about me, and if this play fails, the magic will be gone. If it fails, I go down.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to fail,’ Tony tells him. ‘All you need to do is change your attitude a little – and I can help you with that.’

  But Cotton has not been listening.

  ‘And if I go down, I’ll make bloody sure that I drag you down with me,’ he says.

  The gin and tonic was gone. Tony Brown rose to his feet and walked unsteadily across to the bar to order another one. He had tried to do what Cotton had asked, it had cost him his integrity, but it still hadn’t worked, and by Friday, he had accepted that he was doomed.

  But that wasn’t the case any more. If he could just keep his head – if he could avoid the strong urge to confess – then there still might be a light at the end of the tunnel.

  ‘You were around the stage for most of Monday, weren’t you, Mr Turnbull?’ Paniatowski asked.

  Geoff Turnbull stared at the wall, and said nothing. It was hard to work out whether his lack of focus was due to nerves, or to drink, though she suspected it was a little of both.

  Paniatowski repeated the question.

  ‘Yes, I was,’ Turnbull agreed.

  ‘And you were watching everything that was going on?’

  ‘That was part of my job.’

  ‘So did you notice anybody going up to the fly loft?’

  Once more, the witness was silent.

  ‘Mr Turnbull!’ Paniatowski said forcefully.

  ‘Do you know how the town council feel about all this?’ Geoff Turnbull asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They can’t blame me, can they? I wasn’t in charge. I should have been – it was only right and proper for me to be in charge – but I wasn’t.’

  ‘Did you go up to the fly loft?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘No, I …’

  ‘Did you see anyone else go up?’

  ‘No.’

  He was either a brilliant actor or he was coming apart at the seams, Paniatowski thought.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Turnbull, that will be all for the present,’ she said.

  ‘If you see someone from the council, will you make it clear to them that Mark Cotton was in charge, and if anyone’s to blame for what happened, it’s him,’ Turnbull said.

  The woman behind the reception desk in the Royal Victoria had a name badge that identified her as Elaine Rodgers. She was in her early forties and seemed both smart and competent.

  ‘I’d like to ask you some questions about Mark Cotton,’ Crane said, when he’d shown his warrant card.

  The receptionist smiled. ‘Mark Cotton,’ she said, ‘born eighth of April 1934 in York, to Arthur Cotton and Doris Cotton née Hoskins. Studied at the Halifax School of Dramatic Art. First major role – Aladdin, in the Kingston-upon-Hull Christmas pantomime.’

  ‘You’re a fan of his,’ Crane said.

  ‘I used to be a fan of his – a very big fan,’ Elaine Rodgers said, with some emphasis.

  ‘And why aren’t you a fan of his any more, Elaine? It’s not because he’s dead, is it?’

  ‘No, life or death has got nothing to do with it. James Dean has been dead for over twenty years, you know, and
when I see one of his old films I still go weak at the knees.’

  ‘So what did Mark Cotton do to offend you?’

  ‘He didn’t so much offend me as shatter all my illusions,’ Elaine Rodgers said.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Crane invited.

  ‘Well, I thought all my birthdays had come at once when the manager told us that he would be staying here,’ Elaine said. ‘Of course, we were instructed not to bother him – we were told that we couldn’t even mention the fact that he was staying here to anyone from outside the hotel – but the possibility of just seeing him every day was enough to make me positively giddy.’

  ‘And did you see him every day?’

  ‘No, for the first four days, I didn’t see him at all, but he was there, all right – room service told me that – so he must have been slipping in through the staff entrance.’

  Thus both evading his fans and maintaining his image as a humble actor who was trying to go back to his roots, Crane thought.

  ‘I take it that you did get to see Cotton eventually,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right. It was Friday lunchtime. He was wearing a hat and a muffler, and if I hadn’t known he was staying in the hotel and been on the lookout for him, I probably wouldn’t have spotted him at all.’

  ‘You’re sure it was him.’

  ‘I’m positive.’

  ‘So what happened next?’

  ‘He stood there, watching the lifts. When one of the lifts arrived, this blonde woman, who’d been hanging about for quite some time, stepped into it. But Mark Cotton didn’t follow immediately. He waited until the doors had started closing before he got it. And that’s what burst my bubble.’

  ‘I think you’ll have to explain that,’ Crane admitted.

  ‘Typical man,’ Elaine said. ‘I’ve given you all the facts, but you still can’t see it from a woman’s point of view, can you?’

  And then she smiled – to show he should not take the criticism too much to heart.

  Crane smiled back.

  ‘So what should I have seen?’ he asked.

  ‘This is the 1970s, and I’ve nothing against people having affairs, as long as neither of them is married,’ Elaine explained, ‘but the men should show some respect for the women they’re having the affair with. And that wasn’t respect – it was almost as if he was ashamed to be seen with her, which, as far as I’m concerned, means he was treating her little better than he’d have treated a prostitute. Well, you can’t have under-the-blanket fantasies about an insensitive brute like that, can you? And that’s why I’m now an ex-fan.’