A Comedian Dies (23 page)

Then the policeman said something which turned out to be very comforting. ‘Sorry you've got to turn up. I realize it's a nuisance. It's just bad luck that you were the one who found him. In fact, it could have been someone else.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘There was another bloke went into the lavatories just before you. While we reckon the body was there. Only he didn't look under the door. If he had he'd be the one we'd be dragging off to the inquest.'

‘Who was he?'

‘Oh, just a bloke who works for the company. Scene shifter, I think he is.'

And the third person was explained. Not a villain with murderous intent, just a scene shifter who needed a pee.

So there it was. Chox Morton had killed Bill Peaky. When he realized Charles was on to him, he had tried to kill his pursuer with the light-switch. Then he had tracked him down to the television studios and was out to get him. But he needed a fix. That would give him the confidence and steadiness he required for his next murder.

Unfortunately the latest batch of heroin he had bought was bad quality. Chox had passed out after the injection and never recovered consciousness.

It wasn't a solution that could ever be proved, but Charles knew it had to be right. Indeed, from the start of the case, it had looked unlikely that Charles would ever find proof of who had killed Bill Peaky; he had been relying on deducing the culprit and extracting some sort of confession. Chox was now past confession.

Charles had worked by educated guesswork and he reckoned he had got the answer right. But it was something he would have to keep for himself. He would not have the satisfaction of other people acknowledging his success.

He thought about the solution again, and again it worked. Not perfectly but as near as made no difference.

Charles sometimes found himself thinking of life as a series of circles, all of different sizes. No two quite fit on top of each other. Whether in a marriage or any other relationship, though the two personalities may seem to fit exactly, there is always a little overlap, a little sickle of discontent where the circles do not match.

And so it was with the case. Bill Peaky's death was the first circle and the conclusion that Chox Morton had killed him was the second. They didn't match exactly, without more information to fill out the second circle, but damned nearly. And nearly is about the best you can hope for in anything.

COMIC: Did you hear about the television star who was so vain that every time he opened his fridge and the little light came on, he took a bow?

The audience for
The New Barber and Pole Show
was made up of coachloads of people from social clubs. They were greeted by Charlie Hook, a little-known comedian who had been booked for the occasion as warm-up man. After five minutes of telling the audience they were all really wonderful people who were going to see a really wonderful show with some really wonderful artists and written by some really wonderful writers, he established that very few of those out front had ever seen a television recording before, so he started to explain a bit about the process. He explained that this company, unlike other companies, did not have signs which were held up saying ‘Laugh' and ‘Applaud', but if anyone missed any of the jokes, a big spike would come up through their seat. He explained that he should have welcomed the parties, which he proceeded to do, telling them all that they were really wonderful people and concluding by saying, ‘And if there's a party of seventeen with red hair, I'll see her round in my dressing room afterwards.' With these and similar witticisms, he warmed the audience up. Or maybe softened them up. By the time he had finished they were all ready for a cozy evening's bingo. But not necessarily for
The New Barber and Pole Show
.

The audience wanted someone to make contact with them, to talk to them directly, but for the sake of the show, it should have been Lennie Barber and not Charlie Hook. Still, Charlie Hook had been booked and the theory was that his presence took the pressure off the star.

In Lennie Barber's case, it put the pressure on. For a start, here was competition from another comic. And, second, Charlie Hook was talking close to the audience, while Lennie was separated from them by thousands of pounds' worth of hardware, lumbering brutes of prehistoric proportions, the butting triceratops heads of cameras, the menacing pterodactyl spread of sound booms and the brontosauran bulk of cranes overhead. For a comedian who fed on audience response, it was death.

Charlie Hook introduced Barber to the audience with the assurance that he was a really wonderful person, and Lennie came forward to the warm-up mike to tell a few jokes and begin to make contact. But when he was halfway through his second gag, the Floor Manager indicated that it was time to start and the microphone went back to the really wonderful Charlie Hook who told the audience it was time to start.

From that point on, Lennie Barber had no opportunity to make up his lost contact with the audience. The logistics of recording the programme took over. There was a hell of a lot to fit in before nine-thirty when the plugs would be pulled out, and the comedian's schedule was a manic sequence of sketches and costume changes. With all the retakes made necessary by faulty camera work, fluffed lines or Wayland Ogilvie's dissatisfaction with the pictures
qua
pictures, there was no time for idle banter.

All the stops and starts broke the rhythm of Barber's performance. He needed, as he had done at the Leaky Bucket Club, to dictate his own pace, but here there were any number of factors, most of them mechanical, to prevent him from doing so. The strain was beginning to tell. In spite of the constant ministrations of dolly make-up girls, the comedian was sweating profusely and he looked his age. Suddenly to Charles it seemed cruel to put an old man through these savage hoops.

The more he felt the show going away from him, the harder Lennie Barber worked. His delivery grew louder, his takes bigger. Charles could see the sound boom operators wince as the comedian started to shout and no doubt in the box the size of the performance was causing the same reaction. It was getting too big for television, a medium that relies on subtle changes of intonation and eyebrow acting. Lennie Barber seemed to have forgotten about the camera; all he knew was that there was an audience out there that he had lost and he was doing his damnedest to win them back.

The climax came in his closing monologue. It was twenty past nine and no doubt relief was creeping into the control box because it looked likely that all the show would get recorded. But it had to go straight through to the end; there would be no time left for more retakes.

Perhaps knowing this, or perhaps just driven by a comedian's instinct for survival, Lennie Barber abandoned the script altogether. He advanced forward from the set, forcing the cameras to take ugly shots which included other cameras and equipment, and he addressed the audience directly. He was ill-lit and, from the television point of view, a disaster. But he was brilliant.

He went into a quick five minutes of his club act and, for the first time in the evening, he came alive. The jokes were mostly too blue ever to be televised and the weeks of rehearsal and agonizing over the script all went for nothing.

But the audience roared. Suddenly here was something they could respond to. Not a neatly-packaged ersatz jokezak product viewed distantly and discontinuously from monitors, but a great comedian giving one of his greatest performances. It was five minutes of brilliance, until the clock crept round to nine-thirty and the anxious Floor Manager called a halt.

Charlie Hook's closing jokes went for nothing. The audience had been spoiled by the sight of a real comedian. The show too had presumably been spoiled. In the box no doubt Wayland Ogilvie was calling down curses on all Aquarians. But for Charles it had been one of the most exciting moments of theatre he had ever seen.

At the end of the recording he was standing behind the set with one of the support actors, who observed, ‘Bloody unprofessional, wasn't it?'

‘Bloody professional, I would have said. It was brilliantly funny.'

‘Yes, but it wasn't television, love, was it?'

Charles met Lennie Barber on the stairs going up to the dressing rooms. The comedian looked old and exhausted, but his face bore an expression of chastened triumph, like a schoolboy who had just screwed his headmistress. He knew he was going to be expelled, but it had been worth it.

‘End of my telly career, Charles,' he said mischievously. ‘Sorry about that. I hope you didn't think this show was going to make your fame and fortune.'

‘Not really.'

‘Read a book once that said all comedians have got this kind of death-wish thing. Well, that was my kamikaze mission.'

‘Had you planned it?'

‘No. I just didn't want that audience to go home cheated. They come here to be entertained and that was the least they deserved. Come and have a drink.'

Inside his dressing room Lennie Barber opened another bottle of Scotch. (He had got through one already that day.) ‘If I can't get rid of the pain in my guts any other way, then I'll burn it out with alcohol. Cheers.'

They drank gratefully. The recording, the camera rehearsal, the long, long day in the studio, might have taken place years before.

There was a knock on the door and Walter Proud came in. He wore his professional producer's smile and the firmness of his jaw showed the professional producer's determination never to admit disaster. ‘Terrific, boys, really terrific. Lovely, Lennie. It's really going to be very big, this. Must go to a series and really turn the ratings on their heads.'

Lennie Barber didn't say anything. He just looked at the producer and smiled sceptically.

Walter Proud blushed. ‘No, really, it'll edit together a treat,' he said defensively.

‘Yeah, well, maybe.' Lennie Barber seemed to dismiss the possibility from his mind. ‘Anyway, sorry I didn't use any of that extra material you got last night.'

‘Oh, never mind. Didn't need it.'

‘What extra material was that?' asked Charles curiously.

‘Oh, Walter had got some one-liners from some other writers which he reckoned might help strengthen the monologues.'

‘Yes, I only remembered it when we were in the restaurant last night,' said Walter, ‘so I left Lennie eating away in Dollops and came back here to my office to get it.'

FEED: Do you know, they say that whisky kills more people than bullets.

COMIC: Ah well, that's because bullets don't drink.

Charles got out of make-up as soon as he could and hurried down to the bar. Everyone would be there, he knew.

It was certainly crowded. Before diving into the mêlée, he stood back and tried to see Walter through the forest of bodies. No luck.

Near him Gerald Venables was talking to Nigel Frisch. As he watched, the television executive moved away and the solicitor caught his eye.

‘Charles. Drink? Bell's, I take it.'

‘Thanks. Have you seen Walter?'

‘Over there somewhere. Hmm. I'm afraid not the most stimulating evening I've ever spent.'

‘No, not marvellous. Still, maybe it'll edit all right or look better on the screen or something.'

‘Maybe. Though, from what Nigel Frisch was saying, we may never have the opportunity to find out.'

‘You mean he's not even going to put it out?'

‘Far be it for me to say that and then be proved wrong. I'm sure anything he said to me was purely off the record and I'm sure it'll be some time before the official verdict on the show filters down to you through the official channels, but he gave me the impression that it might well not go out. In fact, to use his own words, he said he'd rather transmit an hour of rained-off cricket.'

‘I see.' But Charles couldn't summon up much interest in the fate of
The New Barber and Pole Show
; his mind was seething with new thoughts about the deaths of Bill Peaky and Chox Morton.

‘In fact,' Gerald continued, ‘Nigel gave me the impression that they never had much faith in the project in the first place. But because they'd got a lot of staff and studios booked for the Bill Peaky show, they thought they might as well do it on the off-chance.'

‘I see. Yes, that sounds about right – get an old man to work his guts out for a fortnight on the off-chance – that's how television companies work.'

‘There's no need to be satirical, Charles.'

‘Look, are you going to get me that drink or not?'

‘All right, all right. Keep your hair on. Is this deterioration in your customary sunny humour because of the show or because of the murder case? Incidentally, you must bring me up to date on that. Have you got a complete, perfect solution yet?'

‘No, not yet.'

‘Well, it's about time –'

‘Give me half an hour.'

Walter Proud was standing at the bar guarding a large round of drinks. ‘Ah, Charles, one of these is for you.' Charles reached out towards a Scotch. ‘No, sorry, that one's Lennie's. Take this.'

Charles took the drink gratefully and took a long swallow for confidence. ‘Walter, I wanted to –'

But the producer had turned away with outstretched arms. ‘Lennie?'

The old comedian was sweating and looked ill, but he sat down on a bar stool and attacked the large whisky that was thrust into his hand.

‘Well, Lennie, what did you think? Really?' Walter's professional beam was fixed in place. He was trying to move them all from the knowledge that the show had been a disaster to the alcoholic reassurance that maybe it hadn't been so bad after all.

‘I thought it was shit, if you want my honest opinion,' said Barber. ‘Hardly worth editing, if you ask me.'

‘Oh come on, it wasn't that bad.'