A Series of Murders (16 page)

‘Stuff like candlesticks and stilettos?'

‘Yes. Got a dealer down Church Street Market I know'll give a good price and not ask too many questions.'

‘So you just pick things up off the set?'

‘Well, carefully, like. I mean, if you do it too obviously, people're going to notice, aren't they? I tend to do it sort of gradual.' As he knew more confidential, the thickness of Tony Rees's Welsh accent increased.

‘So you take something and hide it round the back of the set?'

‘That's it. Then wait till it's quiet.'

‘Lunch break or some time like that?'

‘Uh-huh. And slip it out at my leisure.'

‘I see.'

‘Oh, now come on,' Tony Rees pleaded. ‘We needn't be talking about going to the police over something like that. I mean, that stiletto – I only got twenty quid for it. Hardly talking about the crown jewels, are we?'

‘And the candlesticks?'

‘Got a bit more for them, certainly. But, you know, I reckon the company owes me a favour or two. I mean, all this rationalisation and what-have-you they're doing . . . cutting down the overtime and the amount of jobs there are.'

‘So you reckon you've got to make it up somehow?'

‘That's about the size of it, yes. Pick up what you can where you can.'

‘Do anything for money, you mean?'

‘Why not? Don't look so bloody pious, Charles. Listen, commercial television's taking the public for a bit of a ride. I don't reckon it does any harm for them to be taken for a bit of a ride themselves. In a small way.'

‘You don't feel any guilt about stealing from them?'

‘Course not. They don't notice it one way or the other.'

It all sounded very plausible. Charles thought he probably had found the full extent of Tony Rees's criminal activity. But there were still details he wanted to check. ‘The candlesticks, Tony . . .'

‘What about them?'

‘When did you take them?'

‘End of the last studio day that week. You know, the Thursday, because the Friday was cancelled, wasn't it? There was such chaos in the studio at the end of that day, nobody knowing whether the set was going to stay up or be taken down, you could have walked away with anything.'

‘But that wasn't the first time you'd taken the candlesticks – or at least one of them – was it?'

The A.S.M. blushed.

‘You took one on the Wednesday, didn't you?'

‘Yes, but I put it back.'

‘Why? What actually happened?'

‘Well, tell you what . . . Just after we broke for coffee, we'd done a scene of Stanislas Braid in his study. You know, sitting there and thinking, like –'

‘I remember.' It was the scene that had been frozen on the monitor when Charles had visited Rick Landor in the editing suite.

‘Now, at the end of that scene, I was just clearing the set, and I noticed there's only one candlestick there.'

Just as Charles had noticed on the monitor.

‘So I thought, what the hell, some other bugger's nicked one. They'll have to get another pair, anyway. I may as well have that one.'

‘So you took it and hid it in your usual hiding place behind the set?'

‘That's right.'

‘Then why did you put it back?'

‘Well, bugger me if ten minutes later I don't go back on to that study set and suddenly notice that the missing one's been returned. I reckon they're more likely to look for one than two, so I pop mine back. Felt bloody relieved I did, too, actually, since the whole studio was swarming with police half an hour later.'

‘Yes.' Charles nodded slowly. ‘And it was because you'd moved the candlesticks that you lied to the police about when you'd gone back into the studio . . . You know, later, when they questioned us at the rehearsal room?'

‘Yes, well, don't want to draw attention to yourself, do you?'

‘No.' Charles was silent. Then he asked, ‘Tony, you didn't see anyone either taking the first candlestick or putting it back, did you?'

‘No, I didn't see anyone.'

Someone had done it, though. Charles now had proof that someone other than Tony Rees had taken a candlestick during the break and replaced it shortly afterward.

He also felt fairly sure that while it was in his or her possession, someone had used the candlestick to kill Sippy Stokes.

Back at the hotel he was going to change his lager-stained trousers, but he met Will Parton and the others in the bar and, after a couple more large Bell's, went through with them to the restaurant. They were a large party and commandeered two tables, which they insisted the hotel staff put together. While they didn't actually behave badly, no one in the restaurant was left with any doubt that these were media people, who saw it as part of their mission to liven up Sunday night in Swanage – not, in the estimation of Will Parton, the most difficult thing in the world to do. ‘I've seen more get-up-and-go in a mortuary,' he murmured at one point in the evening.

The group around the tables included Charles, Will, Rick Landor, Russell Bentley, Jimmy Sheet, Joanne Rhymer, and surprisingly, Ben Docherty. The Producer had said at the end of the previous week that he intended to stay in London, but either the need to see how his budget was being spent or the realisation that he was missing a lot of W.E.T.-subsidised drinking made him change his mind, and he had driven down to Swanage on his own.

If it was the drinking that had drawn him, he was not destined to be disappointed. The ‘school treat' atmosphere of the jaunt encouraged them all to order a great deal of wine, and as they relaxed, their conversation became increasingly indiscreet.

‘Here's to
Stanislas Braid
,' said Will Parton, raising his glass, ‘the show that stands a chance now it's got rid of most of the dead wood!'

‘What dead wood do you mean?' asked Charles.

‘Oh, take your pick. W. T. Wintergreen? The bizarre Louisa? Sippy Stokes? Mind you' – Will leaned close to him for a moment and whispered – ‘there are a few other bits of pruning that wouldn't hurt.'

‘Like who, for instance?'

The writer looked across at the show's star. ‘Wouldn't do any harm to have Stanislas Braid played as Stanislas Braid rather than as Russell Bentley, would it?'

Charles grinned.

‘How're the rest of the scripts going, Will?' asked Joanne Rhymer, who was sitting next to Charles (a state of affairs of which, incidentally, he heartily approved).

‘All written months ago. But all no doubt to be rewritten right up to the moment of transmission.' He smiled sweetly at his Producer. ‘Isn't that right, Ben?'

Ben Docherty beamed benignly. He was at the stage of his alcoholic cycle when the drink mellowed him. ‘No, not a lot more. Nearly all done. Just those few tinkerings with the last episode.'

‘It shall be done,
Mein Führer
!' Will Parton barked with a cod Nazi salute. ‘I haff brought here ze book off ze famous Double-Vee Tee Vintergreen to achieve ze tinkerings zat vill be ze Final Solution of ze script.'

Ben Docherty smiled paternally at his writer's excesses.

‘Which book is the last one based on?' asked Charles.

‘
The Transvestite Hermaphrodite Murder
,' Will Parton replied, ‘in which Stanislas Braid is dragged kicking and screaming into the twentieth century.'

‘Ha. Ha. No, what is it really?'

‘The Medieval Crossbow Murder.'

‘Oh, well, I wonder which one of us will be killed by a crossbow bolt from the blue?' Charles mused aloud.

‘Why do you say that?' asked Jimmy Sheet, suddenly alert.

Charles didn't actually know why he was embarking on this particular tack, but having started, he saw no reason not to continue.

‘Well, think about it . . . We try to record
The Brass Candlestick Murder
, and we get stopped by an actual death.'

‘Not by a murder,' said Jimmy Sheet firmly.

‘We don't know that,' said Charles, cavalier in his lack of caution.

‘And certainly not a murder committed with a brass candlestick.' Ben Docherty had now joined in the conversation.

‘We don't know that either,' Charles asserted. He was vaguely aware that he was being reckless, but his inhibitions were down, and he thought he might achieve some useful results by making his suspicions public. ‘I mean, suppose someone had decided they wanted to kill Sippy Stokes.'

‘I don't think this is in the best of taste,' Rick Landor objected quietly.

No, it wasn't. Charles knew it wasn't. He was fully prepared to stop there, but Jimmy Sheet insisted, ‘Go on, Charles. This is interesting.'

‘Well, suppose someone decided to do away with the poor kid, took a brass candlestick off the set during the coffee break, lured her into the props room, hit her over the head with it, and then pushed the shelves of props on top of her.'

After their recent rowdiness, the tables had gone very quiet. Charles knew he was a bit drunk and being rather stupid, but he had got to a point where he couldn't go back. His investigation into Sippy Stokes's death wasn't progressing. It needed a kick to get it moving again, and maybe what he was doing was providing that kick.

‘You've been reading too many of the works of W. T. Wintergreen,' said Ben Docherty flatly.

‘Yeah, it's a load of cobblers, what you're saying,' Jimmy Sheet agreed. ‘I mean, that could never have happened, anyway. And even if it had happened, it's the kind of thing you could never prove.'

‘You could prove it if there had been an eyewitness.'

‘But there wasn't no eyewitness,' Jimmy Sheet persisted. ‘Which is just as well, because there wasn't anything for an eyewitness to see.

‘How do you know?' asked Charles.

There was a new coldness in the former pop star's eyes as he enunciated, ‘Because Sippy Stokes died by an accident. And if anyone had witnessed an accident, they'd have bloody well come forward and told the police.'

‘They might not have done.' Charles knew he was becoming irritatingly tenacious to his idea but reckoned an irritation factor might be useful in drawing reactions out of the assembled group.

‘Are you saying,' asked Ben Docherty, ‘that you witnessed Sippy Stokes being murdered?'

‘No, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that if she was murdered, then someone – not me but someone else – could have witnessed her being murdered.'

‘Any suggestions who?' asked Jimmy Sheet.

It was around then that Charles realised just how drunk he was. He also realised the insane risk that he was taking. If, as was possible, Sippy Stokes's murderer was sitting in that restaurant, then he was issuing a challenge. Almost, it could be said, issuing an invitation to the killer to see that Charles Paris was somehow prevented from making comparable suggestions again.

‘No, none at all,' he replied, caving in and trying to cover up his indiscretion. ‘No, I was only joking. Of course it was an accident, and of course no one saw it happen.'

The conversation moved on smoothly to the prospects for the next day's filming, given the atrocious weather conditions. Charles felt foolish. He also felt uncomfortable and, for the rest of the meal, conscious that Jimmy Sheet, Rick Landor, and Ben Docherty were all looking at him with more than usual interest.

So, partly to dispel his unnerving awareness of their scrutiny, he went on drinking. And continued when the W.E.T. party moved into the bar at the end of the meal.

The rest of the evening passed in something of a haze. Charles remembered being, to his way of thinking, rather scintillating in conversation with Joanne Rhymer in the bar. He remembered how achingly like her mother she looked at close range.

He couldn't quite remember the sequence of words that led to her telling him her room number and asking him to give her ten minutes. He could remember the excitement of anticipation and the unwise decision to have another drink to steel himself for the encounter ahead.

Then he remembered being awakened sometime later by Joanne and finding himself lying fully clothed on her bed. And he remembered all too well the dialogue that followed.

‘I think you'd better be going back to your room, Charles.'

‘Yes. Yes, of course. Um . . . did anything happen?'

‘No. No, nothing happened, Granddad.'

And as the bed in his own room did aerobics beneath him, he remembered wondering whether Frances would consider that impotence made him technically innocent of the charge of making love to another woman.

And he remembered feeling fairly certain that she wouldn't see it that way.

And feeling that it wasn't a very good record, really. He'd promised Frances a year's abstinence from another woman. And – unless she'd excuse him on a doubtful technicality – he'd so far failed to achieve forty-eight hours.

CORFE CASTLE is very properly a favourite spot for tourists. Apart from the castle itself – or rather its remains – which dominate the area from its hilltop setting, the village itself has a charm that has changed little from the beginning of the century. This obviously made it an ideal location for filming in the
Stanislas Braid
series. The cottages, built of fudge-like local stone and topped with slates of similar colour, looked perfect with the Great Detective's vintage Lagonda drawn up in front of them. The sight of figures in thirties costumes pottering along the narrow streets struck no note of incongruity. True, double yellow lines had to be covered and shop fronts dressed up a bit, but the problems, compared to those presented by a London location, were minimal.

At last Rick Landor, as Director, had the opportunity to take a few long shots, confident that his perspective would not be marred by anachronisms.

Or at least he would have had the opportunity if the weather had not been so atrocious.