A Series of Murders (6 page)

‘Why?'

‘For a start, W. T. Wintergreen is no Agatha Christie.'

‘And Russell Bentley is no Joan Hickson.'

‘No. And then again, the way they're making it is all wrong. W.E.T.'s trying to do it on the cheap, as usual. I mean, that half-on-film and half-in-studio stuff just looks so old-fashioned nowadays. The international market wants series that're all on film.'

‘And you'd much rather be directing something that's all on film?'

‘Need you ask?'

No, Charles needn't have, really. All television directors think they're film directors manqué. And most of them nurse secret fantasies of one day single-handedly reviving the British feature-film industry.

‘About Sippy . . .' Charles began again.

‘Hmm?' Rick responded wearily.

‘Your relationship was still happening . . . you know, when she died?'

The director's eyes narrowed. For the first time he showed signs of resenting Charles's probing. ‘What makes you ask that?'

‘I don't know. You just didn't seem to take much notice of each other round the studio.'

‘There is such a thing as professionalism, Charles.'

‘Yes, yes, of course. I know.' There is also such a thing, he reflected, as not wishing to draw attention to the operations of the casting couch. Particularly if the person cast did not show such exceptional abilities on a television set as she presumably did on the couch.

‘No,' he went on, taking a calculated risk. ‘I mean, if I'd been asked to say who – if anyone – in the company Sippy was tied up with, I'd probably have plumped for Jimmy Sheet.'

That one hit home. Rick Landor's eyes blazed. ‘Well, you would have been wrong, then, wouldn't you, Charles?'

But the vehemence of the denial meant that the matter was at least worthy of further investigation.

Not at that moment, though. The editor had just returned with the right tape, and at the same time Rick's P.A. appeared with a tray of coffee and packets of biscuits. Charles made his good-byes.

He may not have got much information out of Rick Landor, but the visit to the editing suite had filled him with a bubble of excitement. Something he had seen there had brought bursting to the surface an idea that he had vigorously suppressed since his discovery of Sippy's body.

The frozen picture of Stanislas Braid's study on the editing monitor had differed in one particular from the set on which Charles had worked that afternoon. Differed indeed from the set that he had seen when he returned from his coffee break the previous morning.

On the later occasions there had been two candlesticks on Stanislas Braid's mantelpiece. In the scene that had been recorded about the time of Sippy Stokes's death, only one candlestick was in evidence.

Where was the other one?

Was it fanciful to imagine that the base of a candlestick might fit the dent in the young actress's head?

Or fanciful to imagine that Sippy Stokes had been murdered?

IT WAS A NOVEL experience for Charles to ring his agent when he was working. Usually, such calls were made during those long sags in his career when it looked as if nobody would ever employ Charles Paris again in the history of the universe. At such times, though ringing his agent didn't actually help – Maurice Skellern was so incompetent that he never knew of any jobs coming up – it did at least spread the misery.

But for that Friday morning's call the circumstances were totally different. Charles was at the beginning of a three-month contract for W.E.T. For once in his life he had a guaranteed income; he could see some way ahead financially – not very far ahead, it was true, but three months further ahead than he usually could. So it was almost with an air of condescension that he dialled his agent's number.

‘Maurice Skellern Artistes,' the voice at the other end of the line grudgingly conceded.

‘Maurice, it's Charles.'

‘Oh, Charles, I nearly rang you yesterday.'

‘Really?' For Maurice to have rung him would have been almost unprecedented.

‘Had a couple of availability checks.'

‘On me?' That, too, was an event of sufficient rarity to be included in one of Arthur C. Clarke's collections of astounding phenomena.

‘Yes, it was some feature-film company and . . . oh, er, yes, the National Theatre.'

‘What? Why on earth didn't you contact me?'

‘Well, you're not available, are you, Charles? You're tied up with W.E.T. for the next three months.'

‘Yes, but . . .' It was true, though. Wasn't that typical of his life, Charles thought bitterly. For nearly two years his phone had been so silent he had kept considering getting British Telecom to check whether it was still working; for two years the producers, directors, and casting directors of every theatre, film, and television company in the world had been clinically immune to the magnetism of his talent; and then suddenly, once he was working, the interest started flooding in.

Or did it? He had no proof that the calls had actually happened. And inventing them was an excellent way for Maurice to make it look as if he were being a punctilious agent. Though Charles was not basically a suspicious person, he took much of what his agent told him with a cautionary pinch of salt.

‘Did they really call, Maurice?'

‘Who?' came the innocent reply.

‘These people from the film company and the National.'

‘Charles, would I lie to you?'

Yes, of course you would, you old bastard. And often have. But he didn't voice the thought. What was the point?

Maurice moved hastily on, not giving his client time for second thoughts about answering his question. ‘Nasty business you had in the studio the other day.'

‘What?'

‘That actress. Slippy . . .'

‘Sippy. Mind you, that's no less silly than Slippy. Yes, she had chosen to call herself Sippy Stokes. At least I assume she had chosen it. No one's actually christened “Sippy”, are they?'

‘Wouldn't have thought so. At least she'd have been safe with Equity. No likelihood of a clash with someone else of the same name.'

‘True.'

‘Nasty business, though. Getting crushed by all those props falling on top of her.'

‘Maurice, how is it that you know all this?'

‘Like to keep my ear to the ground.'

‘Yes, but how is it that you keep your ear to the ground to pick up all the gossip but never know who's doing any casting or where there are any jobs going?'

‘Ah, now, come on, Charles, be fair. Who was it who tickled up the interest from this feature-film company and the National Theatre?'

It was wonderful, Charles reflected, how these two – probably fictitious – calls out of the blue to check availability had now metamorphosed into opportunities that Maurice had painstakingly engineered on his client's behalf. But once again it wasn't worth pointing out the anomaly.

‘Anyway,' his agent went on, ‘be a big compensation bill for W.E.T.'

This seemed to be a universal first reaction to the news of Sippy Stokes's death.

‘Yes, I guess so. Incidentally, since you seem to know everything about it,' Charles went on with heavy but wasted irony, ‘you haven't heard any suggestions that the death was not an accident, have you?'

‘What, murder or something like that, you mean?'

‘Well, it's a thought. She wasn't the most popular person round the production.'

‘No, haven't heard anything like that. Isn't the buzz I'm getting from my sources, anyway.'

Not for the first time in their relationship, Charles wondered who on earth Maurice's ‘sources' might be. Whoever they were, they were pretty good. For relaying gossip, that is. Not for the business of finding out where the jobs were. In that they were as hopeless as Maurice Skellern himself.

‘Mind you,' the agent continued, ‘I gather the police are still investigating, so maybe something'll come out at the inquest.'

‘Well, if you do hear anything, Maurice . . .'

‘I'll let you know. And anytime, anything you want found out, so long as it's in “the business”, you know you have only to ask.'

‘Sure.'

‘But,' said Maurice, moving on with enthusiasm, ‘have you heard who's taking over Sippy Stokes's part?'

There was a particular note of glee that always came into his voice when he was imparting information he felt confident his audience didn't know, and it was there as he asked this question.

‘No. No, I knew they'd recast, but I haven't heard who it's going to be.'

‘Name “Joanne Rhymer” mean anything to you?'

‘The “Rhymer” bit does, obviously. Any relation to Gwen Rhymer?'

‘Daughter.'

‘Ah.' The name brought back not wholly unpleasant memories for Charles. ‘I wonder if she shares her mother's well-known proclivities?'

‘Which proclivities?'

‘I was only thinking of the promiscuity, actually. I mean, in the old days Gwen Rhymer used to be called the Blue Nun.'

‘Blue Nun?'

‘Yes, like the wine.'

‘Eh?' Maurice was being more than usually obtuse.

‘Blue Nun is recommended as the ideal accompaniment to all meals,' Charles spelled out, ‘and Gwen Rhymer used to be called the Blue Nun because she . . . went with everything.'

‘Ah, with you. Nice one, Charles, nice.'

‘So her daughter's getting the part . . . hmm. Big advantage that can be for a young actress, having a parent in the business.'

‘Yes, well, if you think of the number of producers who probably still fancy getting inside the lovely Gwen's pants, the daughter could pick up quite a few favours, I'd imagine.'

‘And of course if she does carry on the family tradition, she could pick up a good few in her own right. Oh, well, I will look forward to meeting her on Monday. That's when we've got the read-through for ep. two, “The Italian Stiletto Murder”.'

‘Still having read-throughs, are you?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Well, most series like this, once you get up and running, they dispense with the read-through. Go straight into rehearsal.'

‘I think to call the
Stanislas Braid
series “up and running” would be a gross distortion of the truth, Maurice. Apart from the problems raised by the recasting, Russell Bentley's making very heavy weather of the whole thing. He's not going to give up the read-throughs in a hurry. They give him his first opportunity to cut new directors down to size.'

‘Dear, oh, dear,' said Maurice with fond nostalgia. ‘Russell Bentley. He's been around forever. I remember all those dreadful movies in the fifties –
The Hawk's Prey
, was that one of them? They were all stinkers, anyway, that's all I remember. Ah, well, there's always been a strong spirit of forgiveness in the British public.' He chuckled. ‘Anyway, have fun, Charles. Keep smiling.'

‘Incidentally, Maurice, I'm intrigued. How is it you manage to know more about the production I'm working on than I do myself?'

‘My job, isn't it? Someone's got to have their finger on the pulse of this business, haven't they? I mean, where do you think you'd be if you hadn't got me looking after your interests?'

The possible answers to this question were so varied and the options they offered so attractive that Charles didn't bother to say anything.

Charles put down the receiver of the pay phone on the landing and went slowly back to his room. He filled the kettle and switched it on for coffee, then moved a couple of shirts spread out over his armchair in lieu of ironing and sat down.

He looked around the bed-sitter and saw it as a stranger might. Tatty, tacky, and untidy. The bed lumpy under its crumpled yellow candlewick. The furniture, which had been painted grey so long ago that it might even have been at a time when grey was trendy. The discoloured, dead gas fire. The dusty plastic curtain that hid the sink and gas ring, and beside it, as if to mock his infirmity of purpose, the equally dusty but more attractive curtain he had bought some months previously to replace it.

But that sort of activity required so much effort. Well, perhaps not effort. After all, it was simply a matter of transferring the hooks from the old curtain to the new one and hanging it up. No, the problem was more one of will. He had to want to do it, had to want to make his environment attractive, to turn the anonymous room into a home.

It was something he had never been good at. Frances had been good, very good. She turned everywhere they lived into a home, and while they were living together, he had liked the warmth of that feeling. But after he had walked out on the marriage in pursuit of some unattainable concept of freedom, he had reverted to type. Reverted to the sense that everything was temporary, that he was just camping until he sorted his life out. But his life remained resolutely unsorted-out; his bed-sitter, resolutely unimproved and anonymous.

For a moment, as he looked around the room, he contemplated moving. Why not? Buy somewhere, put a foot back on the bottom rung of the property ladder he had formerly climbed with Frances. After all, at the moment he could afford it. W.E.T.'s fees were very generous. And, in spite of Rick Landor's gloomy prognostications for its success, there had been talk of a second series of
Stanislas Braid
. According to Will Parton, there were enough W. T. Wintergreen titles to do at least six more. And then they could move on to new story lines, ‘opening the writing out,' as Dilly Muirfield put it (or ‘wheeling in the massed hacks,' as Will put it).

Yes, this one could run and run. And having his face seen in the country's living rooms on a weekly basis might bring Charles Paris the actor back into fashion. (Well, into fashion – he had to admit he'd never really been there before.) Yes, it might all be all right. He probably could risk the commitment of buying somewhere.