Dead on Cue (20 page)

The woman stopped what she was doing, and walked over to them. She was around thirty, Woodend guessed, and perhaps a little sturdily built. Her eyes were red, and she didn't look at all happy.

‘Yes?' she said tremulously, as if she would much rather be somewhere else.

‘This policeman wants to know about Val Farnsworth,' the set dresser told her. ‘She was a sort of a friend of yours, wasn't she?'

Tears began to well up in the woman's eyes immediately. ‘She . . . I . . . can't talk about it now,' she said.

Then she turned and hurried away towards the other side of the studio.

‘I never imagined she'd taken it so badly,' the set dresser said, nonplussed. ‘If I'd known she was going to break down like that, I'd never have called her over.'

‘Aye, she did seem rather upset, didn't she,' Woodend agreed thoughtfully.

The woman had gone back to her own set, but instead of resuming her work she stood in one corner, head bent and shoulders heaving.

‘I think I'll just go an' have a word with her – see what the trouble is,' Woodend told the dresser.

He was halfway between the two sets when he noticed that Monika Paniatowski had entered the studio, and was making a beeline for him. What the bloody hell was his sergeant playing at? he wondered.

Paniatowski came a halt just in front of him. ‘Are you Chief Inspector Woodend?' she asked, deadpan.

‘Aye, that's me,' Woodend agreed.

‘Mr Wilcox sent me to find you,' Paniatowski explained. ‘There's been a call for you from Whitebridge. Your chief constable's been taken seriously ill, and they want you back there as soon as possible.'

B
ill Houseman very rarely took enough time off work in the middle of the day for a full luncheon, and as his wife sat opposite him in the Red House Restaurant, she found herself wondering why, when everyone else in the studio seemed to be in such a panic about getting the next show together in time, he had chosen to do it on that day. She wondered, too, why he had hardly said a word during the starters, though it was obvious that he had something preying on his mind.

It was after the waiter had brought them their main courses that Houseman looked up from his steak, and with an expression in his eyes which could have been pain, anger, or sadness – or a combination of all three of them – and said, ‘I want you to stop coming to the studio.'

‘You want
what
?' Diana asked.

‘I want you to stop coming to the studio,' Houseman repeated firmly.

Diana slid a mouthful of poached salmon into her mouth, and chewed on it thoughtfully. She knew now why he'd taken her out to lunch. He'd done it so they could have this particular conversation in a place where he was almost sure that she wouldn't make a scene.

‘What's brought all this on?' she asked, when she'd swallowed the salmon.

‘I thought after I'd shown you just how seriously I took it the last time, you'd learned your lesson,' her husband said. ‘But you haven't, have you? I can't prove it yet, but I'm sure you're up to your old tricks again.'

Diana Houseman smiled. ‘My old tricks,' she said, savouring the words almost as much as she'd been savouring the salmon. ‘What a quaint, old-fashioned way you have of putting it.'

‘You promised me when you married me—'

‘I promised you
nothing
,' his wife said cuttingly.

‘I asked you if you'd stop carrying on as you had been—'

‘And I said I'd try. Well, I
have
tried.'

‘But not very hard.'

Diana sighed. ‘Do you really think you've been giving me what I need in bed?' she asked.

‘I put in long hours at the studio,' Houseman said, suddenly defensive. ‘I'm exhausted by the time I get home. Soon I should be able to hand some of the day-to-day running of the show over to someone else, and then I won't—'

‘You'll never hand it over,' his wife interrupted him. ‘You'd never give up an ounce of control if you had any choice in the matter. And even if you did, it wouldn't make any difference. As far as you're concerned, a sex drive is what you take to get to a stag night.'

‘That's very clever,' Houseman said bitterly. ‘Who made it up? One of your boyfriends?'

‘What did you want out of marriage?' Diana demanded. ‘A dumpy little wife who'd keep your meals warm until you decided to come home, and never leave the house unless she was on your arm? Or did you want a wife who every other man looked at longingly when she walked past – a wife who all your drinking friends wished belonged to them? Because if that's what you wanted, you've got just what you paid for.'

‘The price is too high,' Houseman told her. ‘I didn't think it would be, but it is.'

‘I'm sorry, but the deal is done and it's too late to start asking for a refund now,' his wife said indifferently.

Why did their arguments seem, inevitably, to follow this same route, Houseman wondered. Why did he always suddenly find himself in retreat?

‘If you can't change, couldn't you at least try to compromise a little?' he pleaded.

‘That would depend on exactly what sort of compromise you have in mind,' his wife told him.

‘If you must have affairs, at least try to be discrete. Stay away from the studio, as I asked you to. And stay away from any other men I know personally, as well.'

Diana smiled again. ‘Just the
men
?'

‘All I'm asking is that you don't do anything to embarrass me within my own social circle – or with the people outside it who look up to me.'

Diana Houseman laughed as if her husband had said the funniest thing imaginable. ‘People who look up to
you
, Squeaky?'

‘I told you never – ever – to call me that!' Houseman said angrily. ‘That's all behind me now.'

‘Is it really?' his wife asked. ‘Do you want to hear the joke that's going the rounds at NWTV?'

‘This isn't the time or the place for jokes.'

‘But I think you'll really like this one. What's the difference between
Squeaky, Squiggy and Softy
and
Maddox Row
?'

‘I don't want to—'

‘On
Maddox Row
, the characters can
just about
move without somebody's hand up their backsides.'

Houseman put his head in his hands. She should never have said that, he thought – she should never have chipped away at what he had come to regard as the very foundation stone of his being.

Diana giggled. ‘They can
just about
move without somebody's hand up their backsides,' she repeated.

And Bill Houseman, who had rescripted so many lives for the fictional people of
Maddox Row
, found himself starting to rescript his own. He had been frightened of too many things for far too long. It was time to fight back. He would make a phone call to the studio as soon as he left the table – a phone call which would set in motion a campaign which would demonstrate, once and for all, that he was
Madro
and
Madro
was him. But before that, he would deal with his wife.

Houseman took his hands away from his face, and looked Diana squarely in the eyes. ‘I'll divorce you,' he said.

His wife, still not understanding the transformation which had taken place in him, smiled again. ‘Don't be silly, Bill,' she said. ‘You know you'd never do that. You couldn't stand the humiliation of going through a divorce.'

‘Do you think that would be any worse than the humiliation I'm going through now?' Houseman asked. ‘At least if we were divorced, there might be the possibility of seeing some light at the end of the tunnel.'

Now – finally – Diana began to pick up some of the danger signals. Perhaps she had pushed him too far, she thought. Perhaps she had led him such a dance that it really
would
be less painful for him to divorce her than to go on as they were.

‘If you divorce me, I'll make sure I take you for every penny you've got,' she threatened.

Houseman laughed – and to her horror she realised that it was with genuine amusement.

‘Do you really think that any judge in the land, after what he'd heard
in open court
about the way you've behaved, would hand all my hard-earned money over to you?' he asked. ‘You'd be lucky if he let you leave with the coat on your back.'

Oh God, he's right! Diana's brain screamed, as it was flooded with realisation and panic. There isn't a judge in the country who'd give me a penny!

She looked down at her hand, and realised that it had started to tremble. ‘You're . . . you're bluffing about a divorce, aren't you?' she said, and this time she was the one who was almost pleading.

‘Maybe I
was
bluffing at the start,' Houseman admitted. ‘But, do you know, I'm really not any more.'

‘We could work things out if we really tried,' Diana said.

‘Oh, there'll be jokes and finger-pointing behind my back for a few weeks after the case, but then it will all die down again,' Houseman said, as if she'd never spoken. ‘And then I'll be free – free to find myself another gorgeous blonde if I want to, one who
does
know how to behave herself.'

‘Don't you think you're being a little hasty?'

‘No, I don't,' Houseman said, his voice growing more and more triumphant. ‘You were right – you'll never change. The best thing I could do would be to cut my losses.'

‘But what will become of me?'

Houseman positively beamed. He was no longer the cuckolded husband. He was Errol Flynn. He was Clark Gable. Tall, confident and masculine.

‘What will become of you?' he asked. ‘I don't really know. And frankly, my dear, I don't
give
a damn!'

F
alse modesty had never been one of Monika Paniatowski's failings, and she was well aware she could sometimes change the atmosphere of a room just by walking into it. Normally, however, the atmosphere she created was one of interest – and perhaps of speculation. This time, as she entered the scriptwriters' office, it was as if she'd brought a chill Arctic wind with her – a wind which had instantly frozen Ben Drabble and Paddy Colligan to their desks.

For a few moments the icemen were perfectly still, then Drabble, thawing a little under Monika's questioning gaze, managed to say,

‘It's . . . it's Miss Peignton, isn't it?'

‘That's right,' Monika agreed.

‘And . . . er . . . how can we help you, Miss Peignton?'

‘Mr Wilcox would like to see copies of the draft scripts right away, please,' Monika told him.

The two writers exchanged uneasy glances.

‘To tell you the truth, we've hit a few snags we didn't expect, and there's not much to show him yet,' Ben Drabble said awkwardly.

‘Yes, we've still not got beyond a very rough outline,' Paddy Colligan chimed in, with very little conviction.

‘Mr Wilcox expected that,' Monika said. ‘He told me to ask for
whatever
you'd got.'

The muscles in Ben Drabble's left cheek twitched as he remembered the phone call he'd had from the Red House Restaurant not ten minutes earlier. ‘Honestly, we don't really have anything
at all
,' he said apologetically.

The office door swung open so violently that it crashed noisily against the wall, and turning, Monika saw Diana Houseman framed in the doorway.

The platinum blonde seemed to have lost all of the self-assurance she'd displayed the last time they'd met, the sergeant thought. Mrs Houseman's hair was dishevelled, her cheeks were unnaturally red. But it was her eyes which were really telling – they were as wide and troubled as those of a frightened rabbit caught unexpectedly in the beam of a car's headlamps.

‘I . . . I thought you'd be alone,' Diana Houseman gasped.

Who was she talking to? Monika wondered. Drabble? Or Colligan? Both of them looked shocked, but more by the sudden nature of her instrusion than the fact that she was there at all.

‘I need . . . I need to talk to you,' Diana Houseman continued, still looking in the general direction of both men, so it was impossible to say which one she was addressing. ‘It's very important.'

‘We're always here to help in any way we can, Mrs Houseman,' Ben Drabble said awkwardly. He looked pointedly at Monika. ‘If you'd excuse us, Miss Peignton . . .?'

‘But what about the script?' Monika asked, more to see how he would react than anything else.

‘I've told you, we've nothing to show to Jeremy Wilcox at the moment,' Ben Drabble said irritably.

‘He won't like that,' Monika replied.

Ben Drabble snapped the pencil he was holding in his hands. ‘I don't care whether he likes it or not,' he said. ‘If Jeremy Wilcox has got any complaints, tell him to take them up with the producer. Now, if you wouldn't mind leaving us . . .'

Yes, but leaving who, exactly? Monika wondered as she backed out of the room and stepped into the corridor. Did Drabble mean all three of them? Or was he just talking about himself and Diana Houseman?

How many people had he and Constable Pickup spoken to in Sladebury? Rutter asked himself as he drove back to Whitebridge.

Fifteen? More than that?

And what had they learned from all those interviews? Absolutely bugger all of any use!

Val Farnsworth had been a smashing kid, the villagers had all agreed – a bit wild sometimes, but there'd been no real harm in her – and they were tremendously proud of what she'd achieved.

But there was one person in the village who didn't share everyone else's admiration of Val, Rutter reminded himself, remembering what the landlord of the Red Lion had
almost
said. So perhaps it was still possible to squeeze one small pearl of information out of the day after all.