“But it’s true,” Reggie blustered. “Once they have it, they know it’s what they wanted.”
“And forget this business about selling to people who don’t want to buy,” Naomi insisted. “That’s not possible. Ask Robbie Kendrew, my opposite number in the Eastern Region if you don’t believe me. Our job is about selling to someone who does want to buy but doesn’t realise it.”
“So when you’re sick of play-acting to crowds like this, give us a ring,” Reggie said, gesturing at the crowded room.
“Thanks, Reggie, but I’ll stick to entertaining folks like these. I may not make the same money as your whizz kids, but I’m much happier.”
“The offer’s there if you change your mind, ducks.” Reggie slipped a familiar arm around Naomi’s shoulder. “Excuse us while we circulate.” With a nod of recognition at Joe, he and his sales manager wandered off.
Carlin turned to the bar, picked up his drink and shook his head.
“He was offering you a job?” Joe asked.
“What? Oh. Yes.” It was as if Carlin had just registered Joe’s presence. “I knew his wife, Wendy, years ago. He seems to think my acting ability would make me a good salesman.”
Joe sipped his lager. “I overheard. Joe Murray. Sanford 3rd Age Club.”
“Eh? Oh. Gerry Carlin. Male lead, Markham Murder Mysteries.” As they shook hands, light dawned in Carlin’s eyes. “You’re the fella Melanie was so worried about, aren’t you?”
Joe laughed. “She was a bit concerned, yes.”
“And have you rumbled it yet?”
“Oh yes.” He laughed again at Carlin’s surprise. “It’s not that difficult. But don’t worry. I won’t say a word.” He drank more lager. “So how come you ended up in this game?”
“Always been an actor, old son.” Carlin’s pride glowed through his words. “Nothing big. Rep, mainly. I’ve had a couple of speaking parts on TV, too. Ever see Inspector Hucknall?”
Joe shook his head. “I don’t watch much TV.”
“Pity. I played a serial killer in one episode.”
Ignoring the obviously ribald comment, Joe felt obliged to explain. “I run a café in Sanford. I have to be up at five thirty every morning, so I feel like a serial killer most of the time. It doesn’t leave me much time for any kind of entertainment, except when we get away on one of our weekend jaunts.” He sipped his lager again. “So is this all you do, now?”
“Occasional commercial, odd bit parts on TV, and last summer, I had to drop out of the Markham Murder Mysteries. I was cast as Davies, the old man in The Caretaker. Three week run in Leicester. Course, with rehearsals and what not, I was missing for a good deal longer than three weeks.”
“How does your wife deal with it?” Joe wanted to know. “I mean, actors are famous for, how do you say it, resting, aren’t they?”
“Not a problem, old son,” Carlin admitted. “Mrs Carlin is no longer an issue. Ran off with a kitchen salesman ten years ago.” He grinned.
Slow to realise that Carlin was taking a rise, Joe eventually smiled. “Yes, very funny. My missus cleared off to Tenerife ten years ago, too.”
“Same here. Norwich rather than Tenerife, but same principle. Mercifully, she didn’t leave with a kitchen salesman.”
From the corner of his eye, Joe caught sight of Sheila and Brenda as they came into the bar. He signalled to them. “My friends,” he explained.
“Two of them.” Carlin was impressed. “Lucky man.”
“Not as lucky as you think,” Joe said, and passed drinks from the bar to the women. “Ladies, meet Gerry Carlin, the late Colonel Haliwell. Gerry, this is Sheila Riley and Brenda Jump.”
“Ooh, a real actor,” Sheila said as she shook hands.
“Yes, but you’re dead, aren’t you?” Brenda complained. “We can’t ask you anything about the killing and Joe won’t tell us.”
Carlin half bowed and kissed the back of her hand. “Were it at all possible, my lady, I would return to the land of the living to aid you in your quest.”
Brenda giggled. “What play’s that from, then?”
Carlin frowned. “None as far as I know. It was a spot of improvisation.”
“It was very good, though,” Sheila commented, her face spelling out her admiration for Carlin. “I do appreciate thespians. I think the ability to cloak your own identity in that of other characters is a wonderful talent, and it must give you deeper insight into the human condition.”
“Er, yes,” Carlin replied. “Sadly, my dear lady, the condition of this human is starving. You’ll forgive me if I disappear to feed my face.”
“What a charming man,” Sheila commented as Carlin left them.
“You think so?” Joe asked. “I think he’s full of…”
“Joe,” Brenda warned.
“I was gonna say, hot air.” He turned to the bar, quickly rolled a cigarette, and said, “Right, girls, I’m off for a smoke. If anyone wants me, I’ll be outside at the front door.”
“Anyone in particular?” Brenda called after him? “The Secretary General of the United Nations?”
Ignoring her, Joe walked out into the night air and lit his cigarette.
The rain had stopped, but the sky remained cloudy. Several hundred yards away, the twin towers of the cathedral were lit up, glowing across the dull sky like a beacon. Light traffic passed the front of the hotel, and from further along the street came the sound of revellers from a pub or disco.
Joe felt a sudden sense of peace. He spent most of his life in a state of semi-permanent irritation, caused mostly by the pressures of long hours and maintaining a viable business. It was an attitude that could have done so much to leave him friendless, but he was not. The members of the Sanford 3rd Age Club were his friends; even the antagonists like Les Tanner, would be there if he needed support, and that gave him the feeling of calm and belonging so often denied others, particularly single men and women over the Christmas and New Year period.
The click of heels on the tiles distracted his attention. He turned to find Robbie lighting a cigarette.
“All right, son?” Joe asked.
Robbie scowled. “If you must know, no, I’m not all right.”
Joe blew a thin cloud of smoke out into the night. “Curious. Listening to your boss, I thought everything in the Grimshaw Kitchens garden was coming up roses.”
“For him, yes. And for that bitch Naomi Barton.”
“She’s the good looking, dark-haired woman who was with him at the bar?”
Robbie nodded. “The good looking, dark-haired woman who’s opening her legs for him.”
“Ah. I see.”
Robbie drew on his cigarette. “I hear you run your own business. Do you favour your employees for sleeping with you?”
Joe laughed. “If Sheila Riley heard you say that, she’d cut off your wedding tackle. And Brenda Jump… well, never mind. No, son, I don’t favour employees who sleep with me, for the simple reason that my employees don’t sleep with me. We’re very old fashioned about such things in Sanford. Besides, I run a café, not a kitchen company.” Joe turned and stubbed out his cigarette, dropping it in the wall-mounted receptacle. Taking in Rob’s angry features, he guessed the younger man was in a mood to get it off his chest. “So, what’s the problem? Is Naomi leap-frogging you by offering her favours to Reggie?”
“He’s ready for retiring, old Reggie,” Robbie explained. “Wendy keeps pestering him to pack it in. That means one of us, either me or Naomi, will take over as sales director. I have seniority. Fifteen years I’ve been with Grimshaws. Started when I was 21 as a sales rep, worked like a dog, I have. Always on target, never took a day off. And when Reggie made me a team manager, I didn’t complain about the extra work. I just did it, and I got my people to do it, too. What’s Naomi done? Dropped her knickers. That’s what.”
“She’s not been there long?” Joe asked.
“Five years. Came in as a sales rep, worked on my team, then she got promoted to Northern sales manag
er. Yet, you can see what’ll happen when Reggie retires. She’ll move up and muggins here will be under her thumb. The bitch.”
Joe rolled another cigarette. “I can see why you’re angry, but you know, it’s only work. If it comes down to it, you can always get yourself another job. Or you can swallow it and carry on. Seems to me that if and when Reggie retires, he’ll still have a hand on the tiller, and if she screws it up, there may yet be an opening for you.”
“Not while he’s taking advantage of the opening between…”
“I get the picture, sunshine.” Joe interrupted. He looked up at the cathedral. “Twenty-four and a bit hours of the year left, and then we start afresh. You never know, lad. The New Year may bring new opportunities.”
Joe turned back into the hotel and the Scampton Room where the DJ had already begun the evening’s entertainment with John Lennon’s Imagine, leaving the dance floor empty.
The chatter and clink of glasses sounded over the music. Sheila and Brenda had found a table and were in earnest conversation with the actor who had played Captain Wilson. George and Owen were hitting on two women, neither of whom Joe recognised, but who were dressed as bobbysoxers. Wendy Grimshaw was still in her corner, Reggie and Naomi sat with her this time, and there was a look of anger about the kitchen magnate’s wife. She talked at both her husband and his sales manager, her virulent stare switching between them. She had been talking to Robbie Kendrew earlier, and Joe guessed she was passing on the whinges young Kendrew had made known at the door.
“Without the bed hopping,” Joe said to himself.
“I am sorry, dollink, I didn’t kvite ketch that.”
Joe found the Countess Lucescu alongside him, holding a glass of what looked like champagne, her little finger extended.
“Zara Lucescu.” Joe smiled. “You could drop that appalling accent.”
“But, ziss iss how I speak, dollink.”
He laughed aloud, then looked around to ensure no one was listening in, and dropped his voice to an audible whisper. “You do know that Varna is in Bulgaria, not Romania?”
“You’re Joe Murray, aren’t you?” The caricatured, Black Sea accent was gone, replaced by a slight cockney lilt. “Bugger,” she said when Joe nodded. “Melanie warned us about you. Still, at least I can, how do you say, drop ze phoney eccent.” She smiled broadly, exhibiting fine, white teeth. “I’m Emma Pemberley, actress, waitress, scene shifter and part time Romanian countess.”
“Waitress?”
“When I’m not scene shifting, rehearsing the others with their parts, I tend to keep the crowd topped up with booze.”
“And yourself.” Joe nodded at the glass.
“Spritzer, I’m afraid. Tiny dash of lime juice to make it look like shampoo.” She sipped from the glass. “Do you know, I don’t think anyone’s ever rumbled the countess so quickly.”
“My friend did.” Joe nodded towards Sheila, still talking with Captain Wilson. “She was a school secretary for years. Clever woman. Very good with history and geography.”
“She’ll need to be with Billy.”
Drinking from his glass of lager, Joe raised his eyebrows.
“Billy Norman. Plays Captain Wilson. Brilliant actor. Very devious, you know. He improvs most of the time, but he can run rings round the rest of us, including the famous Gerry Carlin, Melanie’s blue-eyed boy.” Emma drank more spritzer. “So who’s the other woman? Your wife?”
Joe almost choked. “Hell fire, no. Sorry, I didn’t mean that quite as it sounds. Brenda is one of my best friends, but the thought of marrying her…” He shuddered convincingly. “My wife has gone the way of all good women.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. There’s nothing wrong with Tenerife.”
A puzzled frown creased her brow. “But I thought you meant… Oh. You were taking the mick.”
“Depends how you look at it,” Joe said. “Most good women do want to go to Tenerife. Naturally, most of them come back. Alison never did.” Joe considered the tale close enough to the truth for a stranger. “So, fake Countess Lucescu, what’s your real story.”
He was instantly impressed by the speed with which Emma dropped back into part. “Vell, dollink, there are zo many peoples not tellink it like it really wass. I tink I chust lay low for ze time beink. But if I vere you, I’d keep my eyes on zat McLintock.”
With a broad smile, she ambled back across the room, and Joe moved to join his companions.
“Joe,” Brenda greeted him. “Where have you been? This is Captain Christopher Wilson.”
Joe nodded a greeting. “How are you? Getting over the shock of the old man’s death?”
“You know how it is, sir.”
For all that Joe recognised him as an actor, the tones were still the high, precise English of the Sandhurst military academy.
“You friends were telling me you cast doubt on the map. You have my assurances that it’s absolutely accurate.”
“My friends have misinterpreted me. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the map.” Joe smiled evilly. “But it does call into question some of the information we were given during your debate.”
The other man looked convincingly shocked. “Such as?”
Joe wagged a disapproving finger. “Oh, no. I promised your boss I wouldn’t discuss it with anyone but her. But tell me something, Captain Wilson, if it wasn’t Nazi gold, what was the secret of Chateau Armand?”
Wilson delivered a rueful twitch of the head and a cynical smile. “I was a junior officer, Mr Murray, and if they wouldn’t tell seniors like the colonel, it’s a certainty that they wouldn’t tell me.”
“It must have been something really vital to justify all those deaths,” Joe argued.
The smile faded. “A bloodbath. But then, war is like that, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been to war. One of your brother offices was shot by friendly fire, I believe.”
The brow creased. “Hmm. Lieutenant Creasey. Wandering round in the dark. He was mistaken for a Jerry. Sad business, but these things happen in war.” Defensiveness enveloped the captain. “We gave him a decent burial. Full military honours. More than some of our chaps got.” He got to his feet. “If you’ll excuse me, ladies, sir. I must circulate.”
“Of course,” Sheila said, and gazed in admiration at his departing back.
Brenda nudged Joe. “I think she’s smitten.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Sheila retorted. With a giggle, she added, “He is rather dishy, though, isn’t he?”
“He’s as transparent as glass,” Joe announced.
“Now, Joe, no need to be jealous.”
He laughed harshly. “Jealous? Do me a favour. He’s told more porkies in the last few minutes than I’ve made steak and kidney puddings in the last year.”
“Lee makes the steak and kidney puddings,” Brenda pointed out.
“You know what I mean.”
“We’ve talked at some length to him, Joe,” Sheila said, “and he’s put us on the right track. You’re the one who has it wrong. Brenda and I had it right the first time.” She leaned closer into them, and whispered conspiratorially. “It is Zara Lucescu.”
“That’s funny,” Joe said. “She’s just told me it’s McLintock.”
“Well she would deny it, wouldn’t she?” Brenda observed.
“So would they all,” Joe replied. “I know who it is, and I’ll tell you one thing. It isn’t the Countess Lucescu.”
He gazed around the room and spotted Melanie alone, by the windows. “You’re gonna have to excuse me, too. Like Wilson, I must circulate.”
Taking his drink, worming his way through the dancers, he slid himself alongside Melanie.
“Hello, Joe. I notice you’ve been talking to one or two of our cast. Enlightening?”
“Hmm, yes. But it only confirmed my opinions.”
There was a light-hearted air of challenge in Melanie’s reply. “All right, then, let’s have them.”
He took out his notebook and laid it on the table. “Read it,” he suggested. “That way no one will overhear.”
While Melanie read, Joe looked out over the dance floor. George and Owen appeared to be getting on well with the two women, other couples were jiggling around to The Spice Girls, and there was a general air of good feeling threading through the room. At the bar, the staff were rushed off their feet trying to cope with the crowd, the actors were mingling freely with the guests, and when he checked the Grimshaws’ corner, he found Reggie and Wendy, now alone, enjoying a laugh with Emma Pemberley.
The balm worked its magic on Joe, too. He could not recall the last time he felt so relaxed.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you’d sneaked a look at our scripts.”
Melanie’s words snapped him out of his reverie. “What? Oh. You mean I got it right.”
“Not one hundred percent,” she confessed, “but then you couldn’t. We’re not finished yet, and there are things to happen that you can’t know about… unless you really have looked at our scripts.” She smiled to show she was only joking. “But, honestly, Joe, I never realised we were that transparent.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. You’re not.” He finished his lager. “I’ve been talking to a lot of people tonight, and amongst my members no one has it right. No one has noticed the things I did. That’s not a reflection on them, or on your work. It’s me. My brain is wired up differently. I see things other people don’t, and those notes were what I noticed while the drama was going on. I have more to add, yet.”
Melanie finished her glass of wine. “How many murders have you investigated and solved, Joe?”
“A fair few. I said earlier, in real life, the perpetrators are a good deal less devious than this.” He patted the notebook. “Like your players, they try to hide their crimes, but it’s much more difficult with the real thing. The police have a huge army of science to back them up. Did you know they can even get DNA from a burglar breathing on a window?”
“Really? But I thought you usually show the police up as bumbling idiots.”
Joe laughed. “Nothing like it. I usually come in with a different train of thought to them. They’d get there eventually, I’m sure, but I just see it quicker and that’s because I pay attention to the trivia.” He picked up his glass. “Let me get you another drink. House red, is it?”
Murder at the Murder Mystery Weekend Page 6