A Comedian Dies (24 page)

‘Yes, it was, Walter. That bad, and far, far worse. So bad in fact that I don't want to talk about it. Let's talk about something else – talk about the telly shows we used to do back at Ally Pally. When it was live, when you just went on and did your act.'

‘It wasn't so very different from now, Lennie.'

‘Oh yes it was. We were different, for a start. We both had ambitions then, there were things we believed in. And we both enjoyed what we were doing. I was just flexing my muscles as a comic, beginning to be aware of what I could do. And you were locked away in your world of sound, fiddling with wires, screwdriver flashing away, touching up microphones. And not just microphones. The ladies. There are tales I could tell, Walter, about little dancers and –'

‘Yes, I'm sure there are, Lennie, but I think you're being too pessimistic about what happened tonight. There were bits that –'

‘There were bits that were awful and bits that were bloody awful. Why the whole . . . thing.' Lennie Barber suddenly slowed down. A strange expression flickered onto his face and stayed there. His words slurred. Not just the slurring of alcohol, the effect was too quick for that. ‘What's . . . going on?' The words seemed unfamiliar, too large for his mouth, unmanageable. ‘What . . . the hell's happened?'

He pushed away from the bar and made as if to step forward off his stool. But his legs would not support him and he collapsed on the bar-room floor.

COMIC: I say, I say, I say, do you know what is the most important skill for a stand-up comedian to have?

FEED: I don't know. What is the moat important –

COMIC (interrupting): Timing.

Charles and one of the barmen manhandled Barber up to his dressing room. As they were leaving the bar some loudmouth made a jokey remark about a few drinks too many and Charles had to restrain himself from punching the fellow's teeth in. Lennie Barber was suffering from something more than alcohol.

In the dressing room they laid him out on the divan and the barman went off to fetch the duty nurse. Charles looked down at the prostrate body with horror.

One side of Lennie Barber's stricken face smiled. ‘You half cheer a bloke up, mate,' he managed to say. ‘Do I really look that bad?'

‘No, of course not.' Charles tried to smile too.

Lennie Barber breathed with difficulty. Spittle gathered and dripped unchecked from the corner of his mouth. He looked desperately ill.

Charles couldn't stand it. ‘Lennie, do you think he put something in your drink?'

‘My drink?' the slurred voice echoed. ‘My drink? Who?'

‘Walter.'

‘Walter?' The frozen face twitched and a gurgling sound issued from the sagging mouth. With sickened understanding, Charles realized the comedian was laughing. ‘Oh, Charles . . . detective to the end. So keen. . . . and so . . . wrong.'

The door of the dressing room opened and the duty nurse came in. She looked at Barber without betraying any emotion, spoke to him and tested his reflexes. From the left-hand side of his body there was no response. She straightened up and said in a professional voice, ‘I think I'd better phone for an ambulance. Now don't worry. I'm sure everything will be all right.' She turned to Charles. ‘Would you mind staying with him until I come back?'

Wild tigers wouldn't have stopped him from staying there. As soon as the door closed, he turned back to Barber. ‘What did you mean?'

‘I mean you now . . . suspect Walter.' Each word was dragged out and misshapen. ‘They must keep making, new . . . sticks for you to grab . . . the wrong end of.'

‘It wasn't Walter?'

Lennie tried to shake his head, but muscles would not obey him. ‘I . . . I killed Bill Peaky.'

‘You? And Chox Morton?'

‘Yes.'

‘But how? I don't understand.'

‘No you . . . don't. Never did understand. You know how . . . Bill Peaky died, I worked it out . . . planned . . . pulled out the cable with the . . . cart on purpose.'

‘And then changed the wires in the interval? But how could you – with your burned hands? You couldn't handle a screwdriver.'

‘No, Charles. Credit me with some . . . subtlety. What kind of . . . murderer fiddles around with a . . . screwdriver? I had a wrongly wired extension lead made up and . . . switched the two round.'

‘Oh.' For a moment Charles felt very stupid. ‘But why did you kill Chox? And how did you kill him, come to that? You were in the restaurant when he was injected.'

‘Oh, Charles, Charles. Use your . . . intelligence. With a heroin addict you don't have to be there. Just . . . give him the . . . tools and he will . . . finish the job.' This parody of Winston Churchill prompted another spasm of rasping laughter. ‘All I had to do was give . . . Chox the dirty heroin and let him . . . kill himself in his own . . . time.'

‘But how did you come to be giving him heroin?'

‘Come on, you've missed so . . . much. You may not be bad at impersonating Wilkie . . . Pole, but as a detective . . . you're rubbish. Chox was . . . blackmailing me.'

‘How was I meant to know that?'

‘You were there when he started it.. .if you could put two and . . . two together.'

‘When?'

‘At that club in Sutton. When his band broke up. He knew then he was out of a . . . job. No money. So he . . . challenged me.' Lennie Barber stopped, gasping. The strain of speech on his unresponsive body was enormous.

‘You mean when he started talking about Bill Peaky's death and the terrible things he had seen that day, he was telling you he had witnessed what you had done?'

Lennie acknowledged this with an exhausted wave of his right hand.

‘But how had he seen you?'

‘Lighting . . .' the comedian murmured.

‘From the lighting store.'

‘He was in the lighting store?' Again a tiny wave. ‘What, he had locked himself in there to give himself a fix, because the lock on the lavatory door was broken, and while he was in there, he saw you switching the extension leads?'

This time Lennie Barber managed a soft ‘Yes.'

‘But why didn't he tell the police at the time?'

‘H . . . heroin.'

‘He didn't want them to find out he was an addict?'

‘Yes.'

‘And he would have kept quiet about it forever, but then he lost his job and saw you as a potential source of money. Which is why you had to borrow from me in the bar, although you'd told me you never borrowed money. Oh, my God, I've been stupid.' Now the one great boulder had been moved by confession, other smaller stones of fact were dislodged and started tumbling down in the avalanche of logic. ‘So, when I started suspecting Chox and told you, you had to try and keep us apart. You set up the switch in his room – I remember now, when I arrived you came out of the house with some specious story. You'd broken in . . . how?'

‘Credit card . . . in the lock.'

‘And you hoped to frighten me off, but you weren't sure that you had, so when Chox came to the studios . . . But why did he come if he wasn't after me?'

‘Money,' Barber mouthed painfully.

‘Oh, I see. He'd come for his next instalment. But, rather than give him the money to buy the heroin, you gave him the heroin itself. Adulterated heroin. And so he died.'

Again the frozen features managed a smile as Barber pronounced, ‘Got . . . there . . . at last.'

‘OK, Lennie, I see how you did it, but I still don't understand why. No, I take that back. I understand why you killed Chox. You had to, if you weren't to pay him off for the rest of your life and always go in fear of discovery. But why did you kill Bill Peaky?'

There was a pause. When the voice came, it was very weak. ‘He . . . didn't matter.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘He was . . . nothing.'

‘Yes, from what I've heard of him, I agree, but you don't kill someone for that. Why did you kill him?'

There was a long silence. ‘He . . . passed a remark about my . . . father.'

The words sounded so feeble, the reason for murder so pathetic, and yet Charles could feel through them the enormous ground-swell of resentment that they represented. The clash of two traditions, on the one side, the long history of music hall, of hard work and foul digs for insufficient money, of talent flourishing unrecognised in provincial flea-pits; and on the other, the smart world of television, instant stardom, mushroom reputations fed with all the conveniences and luxuries of script-writers, sycophantic production teams and sharp agents. Given that background, he could understand how a single remark from the swaggering young comedian about the old comedian's idolized father could have signed his death-warrant. Lennie Barber was beyond morality; for him Bill Peaky was nothing but an ugly parasite on the surface of the earth and, as such, to be removed.

The long talk had taken its toll on the comedian. His breathing was slower and the moving eye in his twisted face was heavy. Charles sat with him quietly, wondering whether he had lost consciousness.

But no. The eye flickered again and the voice, soft and distorted almost beyond recognition, murmured, ‘Funny, you know I needed . . . Wilkie Pole . . . the bastard.'

Once more he seemed to pass out, but after a long moment he spoke again. This time the voice was clearer, stronger. ‘Funny . . . a stroke . . . Never thought of a stroke. Thought it would be the old guts.'

The idea seemed to give him satisfaction. Maybe it was the knowledge that he had finally escaped his father's shadow, that he was not destined to die of a perforated ulcer backstage at the Derby Hippodrome.

He didn't speak again after that and was unconscious when the ambulance men arrived.

Charles wandered back down to the bar in a daze. It had only just closed. His interview with Barber had taken no more than twenty minutes. He met Gerald Venables pulling on his immaculate camel overcoat.

‘Well, Charles,' said the solicitor urgently. ‘You said you'd know who killed Bill Peaky in half an hour and that was half an hour ago. Do you, know who did it?'

‘Yes.'

‘Who?'

‘Chox Morton,' said Charles Paris.