Cast in Order of Disappearance (10 page)

Charles moved round the great car, looking for any other clues it might give. He felt his foot slip under him and sat down with a jarring shock, landing uncomfortably on a spanner and a piece of plastic tubing. Fate seemed determined to translate his dramatic mission into slapstick.

He found the door which led to the body of the house. Along a corridor and into the large hall. All the walls were hung with hunting prints which were anonymously expensive, bought on advice by a man without natural taste. Two enormous china Dalmatians stood guarding the front door. They seemed to reflect more of their owner's personality. They were Steen the showman; the prints were Steen the man who wanted to gatecrash high society, the man who wanted a knighthood.

There were no lights in evidence, except for a slight glow from the top of a short flight of steps, which must lead to a room above the garage. The room whose light Charles had seen from the front.

He moved purposefully up the stairs and began to feel faint. The drink was telling; he felt his energy wane. He had to get the interview over quickly.

The first room he came to was a kind of study, equipped with telephones, typewriters, and copying machines. The walls were covered with framed photographs of stars from Marius Steen's shows, scribbled with effusive messages. It was a sentimental showbiz touch that again didn't fit the man's character. What he felt was wanted, rather than what he wanted. Bernard Walton's face grinned patronisingly down from the wall.

The study was empty; the light came from the adjacent room. Charles switched off his torch with a dull click and moved towards the half-open door. Through its crack he could see a plush bedroom, dominated by a large four-poster bed. Curtains obscured his view, but the shape of the covers told him that the bed was occupied.

As he entered the room, exhaustion threatened to swamp him, but still he moved forward. Now, in the light of a bedside lamp, he could see Marius Steen lying back on the pillows asleep. The great beak of a nose, familiar from countless press photographs, rose out of the sheets like the dorsal fin of a shark. One large hand lay, palm upward, on the cover.

‘Wake him, tell him and go.' Charles formulated his thoughts very simply with desperate concentration. He staggered forward to the bedside and stood there, swaying. As he reached for Steen's hand, he heard a car drawing up outside the gates. He clutched at the hand in panic, and felt the coldness of death.

IX

Interval

CHARLES WOKE AS if his body was being dragged out of a deep pit, and memory returned slowly to his pounding head. He didn't like it when it came. He could see Steen's face in its pained repose, and felt certain that he was up against a case of murder.

He was lying in bed in Miles and Juliet's spare room. Vague memories of getting there. The rush from Steen's bedroom out through the garage and utility room, as he heard a car stopping on the gravel and footsteps approaching the garage door. Then he remembered skulking breathless behind the bungalow until the car was safely garaged, a rush through the gates, staggering along the road till a police car stopped, warnings—‘Had a few too many, haven't you, sir? Still, won't charge you this time. But watch it' —and ignominious delivery on Miles and Juliet's doorstep.

He heaved himself out of bed and limped downstairs. The bruise on his ankle was cripplingly painful and he felt his forty-seven years. Too old to be involved in this escalating round of violence.

Juliet stood staring at him as he made it to the kitchen chair. She appeared not to have inherited Frances' forgiving nature. ‘Really, Daddy, what a state to come home in.'

‘I'm sorry, love.'

‘Miles was furious.'

‘Oh well.' There were more important things than Miles' sensibilities.

‘I mean, the police coming here. What will other people on the estate think?'

‘You can tell them the police weren't coming for you or Miles.'

‘They wouldn't think that!'

‘Miles can tell them it's just his drunken father-in-law.'

‘I don't think they'd find that very amusing.' She turned away to make coffee. ‘Honestly, Daddy, I don't think you have any concept of human dignity.'

That hurt. ‘Listen, Juliet
darling
. I think I probably have more knowledge of the really important things that give a person dignity than . . .' But it wasn't worth explaining; she wouldn't understand. ‘Oh, forget it. Shouldn't you be at work?'

‘I'm not going in till after lunch. There's not much to do and . . . well, I was worried about you.'

It was the first softening Charles could ever remember hearing from Juliet. It warmed him. ‘Thank you.'

‘Honestly, Daddy, I don't know what you're up to half the time. That peculiar phone-call yesterday morning, and now all this. What on earth were you doing in Streatley anyway? I thought you had taken the cab to Reading.'

‘Yes, I know. The thing is, I had to change my plans. It's all rather involved, but . . .' He paused, and all the boiling thoughts inside him strained for an outlet. He had to tell someone. Why not Juliet? ‘Marius Steen is dead.'

‘Yes, I know.' Her answer was cool and unconcerned.

‘How do you know?'

‘It was on the radio this morning. On the
Today
programme.'

‘What? How did it say he died?'

‘Heart attack, I think it was. Here's your coffee.' As she placed the cup in front of him, Charles looked at his daughter, wondering if she could be involved in this grotesque business. But in her face, as easily read as her mother's, there was nothing devious; she was telling the truth. ‘Anyway, Daddy, why do you tell me that? Was it Steen you went to see last night?'

‘No.'

‘I didn't know you knew him.'

‘I didn't.' He sipped the coffee. It wasn't what he needed. His body felt dangerously unstable and bilious. ‘Juliet, could you get me a drop of whisky?'

‘At this time in the morning? Daddy'—with all the awe of a television documentary—are you an alcoholic?'

‘I don't know. I've never thought about it. Where does liking a drink stop and being an alcoholic start?'

‘I should think it starts when you need a
hair of the dog
the next morning.' Juliet italicised the unfamiliar phrase.

‘Well, I do need one now.'

‘I don't know whether I should—'

‘Oh, get it!' he snapped impatiently. As Juliet scurried shocked to the cocktail cabinet, Charles asked himself whether he was in fact an alcoholic. On balance, he decided he probably wasn't. He could do without drink. But he wouldn't like to have to. It was an old joke—a teetotaller knows every morning when he wakes up that that's the best he's going to feel all day. Drink at least offers some prospect of things improving.

He felt Juliet's shocked eyes on him as he poured whisky into his coffee and drank it gratefully. It made him feel more stable, but desperately tired. Waves of relief washed over him. Steen had died of a heart attack. Thoughts of murder had been prompted only by the events of the previous week and the melodramatic circumstances of the discovery of the body. All the contradictory details evaporated. Charles believed what he wanted to believe. The pressure was off. ‘Juliet love, what's the time?'

‘Twenty past ten.'

‘Look, I think I'll go back to bed for a bit.'

‘But you must have something to eat.' Frances' eternal cry.

‘When have you got to go to work?'

‘Have to leave quarter to two.'

‘Wake me at half-past twelve. Then I'll have something to eat. I promise.'

It wasn't until after lunch and Juliet's departure that Charles remembered about Jacqui, still lying low at Hereford Road. The public announcement of Steen's death had sapped the urgency out of him and yesterday's imperatives no longer mattered. Jacqui was just the frayed end of an otherwise completed pattern and it was with reluctance that he dialled his own number.

Jacqui answered. All of the Swedish girls must be out at their various Swedish employments. Her voice was guarded, but not panic-stricken. ‘Charles? I wondered when you were going to ring. I was just about to leave.'

‘Jacqui, I've got some bad news . . .'

‘It's all right. I heard. On
Open House
.'

‘What?'

‘The radio.'

‘Ah. Well, I'm sorry.'

‘Thank you.' There was a pause, and Charles could feel how fiercely she was controlling her emotions.

‘Jacqui, I'm afraid I never got the photos to him.'

‘That hardly matters now, does it? Nothing much matters now.'

‘Jacqui . . .'

‘I'll be all right.'

‘Yes. I suppose that's the end of it, isn't it?'

‘I wouldn't count on that.'

‘What do you mean?' Charles had an unpleasant feeling he was about to sacrifice his recently-won calm.

‘Do you think he died of a heart attack, Charles?'

‘Yes.'

There was a grunt from the other end of the line, a sound between exasperation and despair. ‘Charles, I can't talk about it now. I'm too . . . I'll talk when—'

‘Tomorrow?'

‘Yes, if I feel OK. Come round when you . . . Evening. Eight or . . .'

‘OK. I'll be there. Archer Street. You'll be all right now?'

‘Like hell.' The phone went dead.

Before Charles left the house in Pangbourne, he took the envelope of photographs out of his inside pocket and looked at them. With Steen's death they had changed. Already they had the air of curios or souvenirs—oddities from another age. The erotic quality had drained from them and they seemed like sepia prints in an album of someone else's relations. Mildly interesting, but ultimately irrelevant.

He looked around for somewhere to destroy them. The trouble with architect-designed houses on estates is that they have nothing like an open fire. The central heating was fired by oil. (Miles had already spoken gloomily of the inevitable price rises which the Middle East situation must precipitate. As he said portentously, ‘You know, Pop, the days of cheap fuel are over.') The cooker was electric. There was no convenient stove to consume the evidence.

Charles took a giant box of matches from the kitchen and went out into the garden. The forty-foot long area was neatly organised. A potting shed of conspicuous new timber, a patio area protected by a screen of latticework bricks, a path of very sane crazy paving winding diagonally across the lawn, a meticulous row of cloches. Only the winter shagginess of the grass gave any hint of rampant nature or humanity.

It had started to rain. Big heavy drops that were cold as they fell, penetrating, on his head and shoulders. In the far corner of the garden Charles saw what he was looking for. Neatly screened by another low wall of lattice-work bricks were a compost heap, bound in by wooden slats, and an empty metal incinerator. He lit the photographs one by one and let the flimsy black rectangles of ash drop into the bin. Finally he burnt the envelope, then stirred the dampening fragments into a black unrecognisable mash.

X

Second Act Beginners

THE OBITUARY APPEARED in The Times the next day, Tuesday 11th December.

Mr Marius Steen, CBE. the impresario, died on Sunday. He was 68. Born in Warsaw in 1905, his full name was Marius Ladislas Steniatowski, but he shortened it for convenience when his parents came to England in 1921. His father was a tailor and for some years the young Steen helped him in his business. But already the attraction of entertainment was strong; Steen spent most of his limited pocket-money on tickets for the music hall and in 1923 launched himself as Mario, the Melodic Whistler. In spite of changes in name and act, he was never a success as a performer, but became increasingly interested in the business of promotion and management. The first act he managed was Herbert and his Horrible Dogs in 1924.

Soon he was progressing from individual acts to the presentation of complete shows. Though he started with wrestling and all-girl revues, by 1930 he was presenting variety bills at music halls all over the country. Through the Thirties he centralised his activities on London and, in 1935, had his first major success with the spectacular revue
Go With The Girls
. None of these early productions had a great deal to recommend them artistically, but Steen always maintained that success must be measured by public reaction alone. And by that criterion his shows were highly successful.

Steen continued presenting revues, with an increasing reliance on scripted comedy rather than just dancing girls, until the outbreak of war. Then he moved into the cinema and, with his customary unflagging energy, set up a series of films in keeping with the jingoistic spirit of the times. Of these the most memorable was
Brothers in Battledress
, directed by William Hankin.

After the war Marius Steen continued to put on shows and gradually he forsook revue for musicals and light comedies.
What's in the Box?
was one of the greatest successes of 1953, and in 1960 Steen's purchase of the King's Theatre off Shaftesbury Avenue heralded a string of commercial triumphs, including
One Thing After Another
, which ran for three years, and, currently,
Sex of One and Haifa Dozen of the Other
.

Steen maintained his interest in the cinema and put money into many ventures including the highly successful Steenway Productions, which make horror films. He was also a major shareholder in three commercial television companies, and was at the time of his death interesting himself in the production of programmes for network on the new commercial radio station.

Marius Steen was often criticised for his healthy disrespect for ‘Art' and there are many stories of this supposed philistinism which he loved to tell against himself. (On first hearing of Michelangelo, he is reputed to have asked ‘Michael who?' His alleged description of opera as ‘fat gits singing' is probably apocryphal.) He was a forthright man who made enemies, but was loved and respected by his friends. He had no hobbies, maintaining that if a person needed hobbies, then there was something wrong with his work. He divided his time between his houses in London and Streatley and a villa in the South of France. In 1969 he was awarded the CBE for services to the theatre.