Situation Tragedy (14 page)

There was a pause. They both drank from their glasses of wine. What Bernard said next took Charles completely by surprise. ‘Which is why,' he pronounced slowly, ‘I need your help.'

‘I'm sorry?'

‘I need your help. I need someone involved in
The Strutters
to keep me informed as to how things are going.'

‘What?'

‘Listen, that series is thriving at the expense of my series. The company's decided they can't do both. That's been obvious since the spin-off was first mooted. They can't give Dob and George Birkitt star billing in one series and then put them back as supports in
What'll the Neighbours
. . .'

‘So you've known from the start that they wouldn't make any more of yours?'

‘No, no, I thought they'd make more with new neighbours. Pay off Dob and George and introduce a new couple. I talked to Rod Tisdale about it and we worked out a few story-lines. But now they've cancelled the series flat.'

Bernard looked at the light through his wine glass before continuing.
‘What'll the Neighbours Say?
will only come back if
The Strutters
doesn't get made.'

Charles nodded, waiting.

‘I keep trying to think what could stop it from getting made. The best thing I can think of is if Dob were to die.'

It was spoken very casually, but Charles felt a cold chill. It seemed incredible that he was with the same man whose philanthropy with the spastics he had witnessed a couple of hours earlier.

‘Unfortunately,' Bernard went on, ‘though she's the right sort of age to pop off at any moment, she seems remarkably robust. Have to wish for something else. That's why I'm glad you're there in the cast, Charles.'

‘Why?'

‘Well, I think you owe me a few favours. I mean, I got you the job, after all.'

‘Are you asking me to sabotage the show?'

‘No, no, no. Nothing as dramatic as that. I just want you to keep me in touch with the production, how it's going, you know. There may be something I can use. I mean, how did this week's recording go, for instance?'

‘Not very well.'

‘Good. That's exactly the sort of thing I want to hear.'

Charles tried to recover himself. The new direction of the conversation had come as a shock to him. It had confirmed his conjecture about Bernard's motivation, but he had not expected such a direct statement of the situation. ‘I suppose then,' he began slowly, ‘you must have been pretty pleased to hear about Sadie's death. And Scott's. Both liable to slow down the advance of the series.'

Bernard nodded. ‘Yes. Except that neither of them slowed it down enough. No, I'm delighted so far. The series seems to have got off to a very unpropitious start. But it's not enough. It's still going ahead. I need something a bit more central than those two deaths. A rather more permanent spanner in the works.'

He stumbled a bit over the last sentence and Charles suddenly realised that the star was very drunk. He must have been at the bottle all day, maybe every day since he had heard of his show's cancellation. That would account for his atypical indiscretion and the strangeness of his approach. But it didn't explain away his desire to destroy
The Strutters.
That was real enough.

Simultaneous with Charles's realisation, the power of the drink seemed to get through to Bernard, who looked blearily about him.

‘Sadie,' Charles nudged gently.

‘Sadie.' The name was repeated without emphasis.

‘She came to your dressing room after the pilot . . .'

‘Yes.'

‘And she called you a bastard.'

‘Yes.'

‘You had an argument and a little later she fell to her death from the fire escape.'

‘Yes.'

‘What did you argue about?'

Bernard stopped nodding and a look of cunning came into his face. ‘I'd complained to the Producer about the allocation of dressing rooms. She regarded this as sneaking behind her back.'

‘I see. And Scott?'

‘Scott drove too fast.'

That was all he got. In a moment Bernard started drinking black coffee, suddenly aware of the state he was in. He clammed up, realising he had said too much already.

But Charles was pleased with what he had heard. There was now no doubt about the strength of Bernard's motivation and his desire to destroy
The Strutters
at any cost. And, though he hadn't confessed to either of the murders, he had been at least enigmatic about them. And he had effectively asked for Charles's help in his sabotage plan.

All that was needed was evidence to link the two deaths to Bernard. At least now Charles had a clear line of investigation. After rounding off the evening at the Montrose, he went to bed relatively content.

His content was broken the next day at lunchtime when the radio news announced the death of Rod Tisdale, who had been run over by a vehicle which didn't stop.

Not very funny. Minor accidents are funny, fatal accidents aren't. Basic rule of comedy.

More pertinently, Rod Tisdale had already delivered the six scripts he was writing for the series, so his removal did not impede the progress of
The Strutters
in any way.

What was more, he was a person to whom Bernard Walton looked to provide him with a new star vehicle.

And, most galling of all to any theorist trying to see a pattern of murders committed by the star, Rod Tisdale had been killed at nine o'clock the previous evening. At which time the main suspect was sitting in the Greville Club, dining with Charles Paris.

The case was once again wide open.

West End Television Ltd,

W.E.T. House,

235–9 Lisson Avenue, London NW1 3PQ.

18th June, 1979.

Dear Charles,

I thought I'd just drop everyone a note after recent events to assure them that, in spite of problems you all know about, everything is okay on
The Strutters
front and all of us here are still confident we've got a very exciting property on our hands.

Until recently we weren't certain whether Rod Tisdale was going to write the remaining scripts in the series or not. He was undecided about it. Obviously now the decision has been made for us, and I am delighted to be able to announce to you that the rest of the series will be written by none other than Willy and Samantha Tennison! I'm sure you're familiar with their work from hosts of successful sit coms, but if your memory needs any nudging, let me just mention such series as
Flat Spin, Daisy and Jonathan, Your Turn, Darling, Oh, What a Pair of Au Pairs!
and that charming show set in a cookery college,
Oh, Crumbs!

Willy and Sam are delightful people and great chums and I'm sure will be absolutely
right
for
The Strutters.
I've asked them to come along to our next read-through, so that we can all get a chance to meet up.

Thank you, incidentally, for your continuing hard work on the series. We really have got a smashing cast and I think that's one of the most important ingredients in a really exciting show. Let's put our troubles behind us and look forward to the success
The Strutters
is inevitably going to be!

With the warmest good wishes,

Yours sincerely,

Peter

PETER LIPSCOMBE

Producer
The Strutters

When Bob Tomlinson arrived at the Paddington Jewish Boys' Club Hall for the next read-through the following Wednesday and found Willy and Sam Tennison holding court, he said he was going out for a sandwich and would come back in half an hour, by which time everyone had better be ready to start work.

The atmosphere of the second read-through had cleared, and everyone seemed a lot more cheerful. Rod Tisdale's death, apart from shattering Charles Paris's murder theories, had not had much effect. He had been such an unobtrusive person to have around that his absence was hardly remarked at all.

And any void he might have left was more than filled by Willy and Sam Tennison. They were a roly-poly little pair of writers, a married couple who that day affected patchwork shirts and matching yellow jeans. They were awfully affectionate and flirtatious with each other all the time, and talked in a manner very similar to the scripts of their sit coms. Since most of their success had been based on a series of interchangeable shows which dramatised the small happenings of their own lives, this was hardly surprising.

The viewing public knew everything about them. Their student lives in adjacent flats had hit the screen in the hilarious form of
Flat Spin
. The early days of their marriage had been chronicled in the series
Daisy and Jonathan
. The wacky tribulations of having children took comic form as
Your Turn, Darling
and the increasing affluence these scripts brought them provided the basis for
Oh, What a Pair of Au Pairs!
Their revolutionary attempt to do something different with
Oh, Crumbs!
had been weakened by the fact that the catering college where the series was set was run by a couple called Rob and Mona Partridge, who bore a remarkable similarity to all their other couples.

The Tennisons also had a disconcerting habit of always talking as if they were being interviewed and volunteering information that no one had ever asked for.

Peter Lipscombe thought they were wonderful. He laughed constantly at their shared monologue.

‘Well, I don't know, darling,' said Willy Tennison.

‘Don't know what, darling?' asked Sam Tennison.

‘How we're going to get six scripts together in time, darling.'

‘Oh, we'll manage somehow, darling. Lots of midnight oil.'

‘But is it going to be worth it with the price oil is these days?'

‘Oh, I've got a friend who's a sheik.'

‘I thought your friend was the milkman.'

‘Well, this guy's a kind of milk sheik.'

‘You know people always ask us how we manage to work together all the time, you know, as man and wife. Don't they, darling?'

‘They do, darling.'

‘And I always say that there are four of us. There's a husband and a wife and a writer and another writer.'

‘And never the twain and the twain shall meet.'

‘Yes. Or at least one twain never meets the other twain.'

‘Otherwise, darling, there'd be a twain crash.'

‘Oh, lovely, darling. I'll write that one down.'

While her husband committed the gem to paper, Sam Tennison continued, ‘Willy always uses a blue notebook, while I like pink ones. We never go anywhere without our notebooks, do we, darling?'

‘Never, darling. Never know when the Muse will strike.'

‘As one pussy cat shop steward said to the other.'

‘Oh, darling, that's another one for the book.'

Charles prayed for the return of Bob Tomlinson. He also mentally fabricated a new series which would chronicle the remainder of Willy and Sam Tennison's lives if he had his way. There'd be
Mum's The Word!
for when their tongues were cut out,
There's a Funny Thong!
for when they were garrotted, and, to cover their funerals,
We're Only Here for the Bier!

Eventually, Bob Tomlinson and belligerent sanity returned.

‘Hello, Bob, I'm Sam . . .'

‘And I'm Willy . . .'

‘Shut up.'

‘We're your new writers.'

‘Are you? Well, I don't want you round my rehearsal rooms. Send your scripts in by post. You've already wasted enough time this morning. We've got a tight schedule. We're losing two days' rehearsal with the filming we've got to pick up. Incidentally, everyone, the overnight shoot for Ep. Six is fixed for Thursday fortnight. 5th July. Okay, read!'

‘But, Sam and I had hoped –'

‘But, Willy and I had hoped –'

‘Didn't you hear me? Piss off.'

He was a good man, that Bob Tomlinson, thought Charle.

The overnight filming Bob had mentioned was for an insert into the last
Strutters
script Rod Tisdale wrote. In fact, it was the last full script of any sort that he wrote, but anyone who searched through its fabric for some final message from the writer to the world would have been disappointed. All he would have found was a predictable plot, dressed up with sixty-seven familiar jokes, fifty-two of which were destined to receive laughs from the studio audience and the remaining fifteen to have artificial ones imposed in the dubbing suite. Not a great memorial to a human being (which is what Rod Tisdale must have been, though he never gave any sign of it).

Charles had found out as much as he could about the writer's death, but there was not a lot. His relaxed rehearsal schedule (given a pragmatist like Bob Tomlinson as director, fourteen lines and two moves didn't take long to perfect) allowed him time to go to the inquest, but information seemed to be scarce.

Rod Tisdale had lived in a block of flats in a quiet road in Maida Vale. At nine o'clock on the previous Friday evening, 15th June, he had left the block and started out across the road, where he had been knocked over and killed by a vehicle travelling at considerable speed.

There had been no witnesses of the accident, though people in other flats had heard the impact. By the time they looked out of their windows, only parked cars were visible.

Rod Tisdale had lived alone, and had apparently spent the day in his flat working. Investigations so far suggested that he had not spoken to anyone on the telephone except for his agent, and had not then mentioned any plans to go out. There was nothing in his diary to indicate why he set out at nine o'clock. He might have been walking towards Maida Vale tube station. He might have been going to the local pub (though he was very rarely seen in there). He might just have been going out for a walk.

Police investigations would continue to try to track down the errant vehicle which had killed him, so an adjournment was requested. The coroner granted it in a voice that did not expect much more to be discovered and commented on the alarming increase in hit and run accidents.