Dead Giveaway (8 page)

‘Ooh,’ sighed the audience, contemplating a fate worse than death.

‘If, on the other hand, it’s the crown, you, Tim Dyer, will instantly become the proud owner of a brand-new Austin Metro!’

‘Aah,’ sighed the audience, reassured, and burst into spontaneous applause.

‘Right, are you ready, Tim?’

The contestant, still praying and now glistening with sweat, nodded. All the lights faded except for those on the wheel and on Barrett’s lectern.

‘Here we go.’ Barrett held the edge of the wheel and gave it a hefty pull. It span wildly.

The host returned to his lectern and watched. Tim Dyer didn’t move a muscle. The audience was totally still.

‘Nerve-racking stuff, this,’ said Barrett Doran. ‘Tense moment.’

He reached for the red-and-blue-striped glass in front of him.

The wheel showed little sign of slowing down. ‘Goes on for ever,’ said Barrett Doran jovially. ‘Dear, oh dear, the excitement’s too much for me. Need a drink of water to calm me down.’

He took a long swig from the glass.

The wheel was slowing. The audience started shouting at it, willing it to stop by the crown. Every eye was on a monitor, hypnotised by the decelerating ring of hats.

Suddenly they were all aware of a strange noise. It was a gasping, a desperate, inhuman wheezing.

A camera found Barrett Doran, from whom the sound came. The audience had time to register the face rigid with shock, before, pulling the lectern down with him, he crashed to the floor.

Full studio lights snapped up. Technicians rushed forward. The celebrities rose to their feet, overturning their long blue desk.

In the circle of hats Tim Dyer stood, pointing up at the still crown directly above his head. But no one looked at him. All eyes were drawn to the middle of the set, where Barrett Doran lay dead.

CHARLES PARIS HEARD about Barrett Doran’s death that evening. It was hard to escape it in the W.E.T. bar, where much less dramatic events were regularly inflated into Wagnerian productions. He heard that doctors and the police had been called, but had left W.E.T. House and was on his way back to his Bayswater bedsitter before anyone mentioned the word ‘murder’.

The next morning the death was reported on radio and in Charles’s
Times
, but it was not until the afternoon’s edition of the
Standard
that it was suggested the incident might have been caused by anything other than natural causes. Two days later the press announced that a woman was helping the police with their enquiries into Barrett Doran’s death, and the following day a 24-year-old employee of West End Television, Caroline Postgate, was charged with his murder. Then, as always with British crimes, all information on the case would cease until the trial.

The girl’s name meant nothing to Charles, but, having been virtually on the spot when the murder happened, he felt intrigued by it and wanted to find out more. His first move was to contact his agent. Maurice Skellern, though completely deaf to vibrations of new productions coming up which might lead to jobs for his clients, had a very good ear for theatrical gossip, and was likely to know as much as anyone about a juicy theatrical murder.

Still, first things first. Charles asked the mandatory question about whether there was any work coming up.

Maurice Skellern laughed wheezily down the phone, as if this was the best joke he had heard for a long time. He did not answer the question; nor did Charles really expect him to. He knew that, on the rare occasions when something did come up, his agent would ring him.

Maurice was quickly on to the real subject of the conversation. ‘Had a bit of excitement the other night at W.E.T., I gather.’

‘You could say that.’

‘You got any dirt on it to tell me?’

‘’Fraid not. I was ringing you in search of the same.’

‘But come on, Charles. You were actually
there
.’

‘Up in the bar.’

‘So what else is new? So how much do you know?’

‘Just that he died on the set at the end of the recording, and now some girl I’ve never heard of has been charged with his murder.’

‘Well, what can I tell you? For a start, he was poisoned. Did you know that?’

‘No. With what?’

‘Cyanide.’

‘Ah.’ One or two things began to fall into place. ‘Cyanide which was being used for the programme in the studio next door?’

‘You have it in one. Something that boring little poseur Melvyn Gasc was doing, apparently. Seems the cyanide got nicked from there and put into poor old Barrett’s glass instead of water.’

‘Gin.’

‘What?’

‘Instead of gin. Barrett’s water-glass on the set was filled with gin.’

‘Was it? How do you know that?’

Discretion dictated a slight editing of the next reply. ‘One of the researchers was talking about it. So presumably this girl who’s been arrested was the one who substituted the cyanide?’

‘Yes.’

‘Caroline Somebody-or-other. Know anything about her?’

‘She was an Assistant Stage Manager on Melvyn Gasc’s programme. She had been left in charge of all the props and that, so it was easy for her to lift the cyanide.’

‘Ah.’ Light began to dawn. ‘Was this girl nicknamed Chippy?’

‘That’s right. Why, you know her?’

‘I met her that night.’

The girl’s beautiful, fragile face came into his mind. So, when he saw her, she had been contemplating murder. Perhaps that explained the tragedy in her deep, dark eyes.

‘Needless to say, there was a background,’ Maurice went on. ‘She and Barrett had been having an affair. He had just broken it off. Classic situation. “Hell hath no fury . . .”, all that.’

‘Yes,’ Charles agreed pensively.

‘Not a lot more I can tell you,’ his agent concluded. ‘Though I gather, talking to people in the business, nobody’s that sorry. Barrett Doran doesn’t seem to have made many friends on his way to the top.’

‘Having seen him in action, I’m not too surprised.’

‘No. Presumably means they’ll have to remake the pilot. Wonder if you’ll get booked again . . .’

‘Not if anyone’s got any sense. It was a daft idea having an actor as one of the people in that round.’

‘Ah, but nobody has got any sense in the game-show world.’

‘You mean otherwise they’d be doing something else?’

‘Stands to reason, doesn’t it? Anyway, why do you say it’s such a daft idea having an actor for the round?’

‘Because the whole premise of that part of the game is based on people’s anonymity, and actors, by definition, aren’t anonymous. They’re always in the public eye.’

‘Are you saying somebody recognised you?’

Charles was forced to admit that this had not been the case.

‘But, come the game, you mean subconsciously they all recognised you and all identified you as the actor?’

Charles was forced to admit that two out of the four contestants had thought he was a hamburger chef.

Maurice Skellern thought this very funny. His asthmatic laughter was still wheezing down the line when Charles said his goodbyes and put the phone down.

He stood for a moment on the landing of the house in Hereford Road. He was feeling shaken. Not by the news of the murder, but by the thought of his illicit sips of gin from Barrett Doran’s glass. A little bit later and his thirst might have killed him. It was an unpleasant
frisson
.

He wondered whether he should ring his wife and tell her how close he had come to death. His relationship with Frances was once more in the doldrums. They had long ago separated, but ties remained and, like two pieces of wood floating down a river, they occasionally bounced back together again for brief periods. The love between them was too strong for either to form other permanent relationships, but soon after each reconciliation, the same old difficulties of living together reasserted themselves, and once again they would drift apart.

It had been a couple of months since their last such parting and, though he knew nothing would have changed, Charles needed to make contact again. Perhaps hearing that he had nearly swallowed a fatal dose of cyanide would make Frances forget their recent disagreements. It would be a good opening gambit, anyway.

He looked at his watch. No, of course not. It was a quarter to twelve in the morning. Frances was headmistress of a girls’ school. She wouldn’t mind his ringing her there in a real emergency, but just to mention casually that he’d nearly been poisoned . . . forget it.

On the other hand, at that time of day the pubs would be open. After his shock, Charles felt he deserved a little pampering. He went down to his local and had a few pints. By the third he had forgotten about the idea of ringing Frances. And, if he thought anything about Barrett Doran’s death, it was only pity for the beautiful, sad girl who had been driven to such extremities by love.

And, but for a phone-call he received the next morning, he might have never thought any more about it.

The pampering of the previous lunchtime had escalated into evening pampering in various pubs and clubs where Charles always felt confident of meeting other actors. As a result, he was moving somewhat tentatively around his bedsitter, as if his exploding head was unattached and had to be balanced between his shoulders, when the telephone on the landing rang.

‘Hello.’ He hadn’t intended it to come out as a growl, but that was the only sound of which his voice was capable under the circumstances.

‘Could I speak to Charles Paris, please?’

‘This is he . . . him.’

The caller then seemed to identify itself as ‘Sidney Danson’, which did not immediately ring bells. His fuddled mind was slowly registering that it was an unusually high voice for a man, when she mentioned West End Television and he knew where he was.

‘What can I do for you, Sydnee?’

‘It’s about Barrett Doran’s death.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘You know Chippy’s been arrested and charged, don’t you?’

‘I had heard.’

‘Well, I don’t think she did it. I just can’t imagine her . . . not killing him.’

‘Ah.’

‘Could we get together and talk about it?’ She spoke very directly, with the confidence of someone who spent most of her working life on the telephone.

‘We can meet if you like, but I don’t think I’m going to be a lot of help to you. I didn’t see anything. I was only in the studio for that first round.’

‘I still think you could help.’

‘Hmm. Have you any reason for thinking Chippy didn’t do it?’

‘Instinct.’

‘Not always very reliable, I’m afraid, instinct. The police aren’t fools. On the whole, they don’t make an arrest until they’ve got a pretty good case worked out.’

Sydnee did not answer this objection. ‘I’d like to talk about it,’ she persisted.

‘Okay. When do you want to meet?’

‘Could you make it for a drink this evening after work?’

Charles was again reminded of how most people’s lives were defined by the boundaries of work, while at times the only structure in his own seemed to be imposed by licensing hours, but he didn’t comment. ‘Sure.’

‘Say . . . half-past six?’

‘Fine. Where, down at W.E.T.?’

‘No. Better off the premises. Too many people with their own theories down here. Do you know Harry Cockers?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Cocktail bar. Covent Garden. Just off Floral Street.’

‘I’m sure I could find it. What, there at six-thirty?’

‘Yes.’

‘One thing, Sydnee . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘Why did you get in touch with me?’

‘One of the Stage Managers here mentioned you. Mort Verdon . . . you remember him?’

‘Sure.’

‘He said you’d sorted a few things out when those murders happened on the
Strutters
series.’

Charles felt childishly pleased as he put the phone down. He was amused by the idea that, while his acting career remained undistinguished, his reputation as an amateur detective was spreading.

The venue currently called Harry Cockers had been through many identities in the previous decade, as various kinds of bars and restaurants became fashionable. Its latest manifestation was very Thirties, with bright jagged lines along every surface, and wall-panels showing geometrically-stylised silhouettes of dancing figures in evening-dress. Overhead large fans swished.

It was full at that hour, and as he gazed at the clientele crowding the long bar, Charles felt infinitely old. The variegated flying-suits, the strident colours of fabrics and hair, the lurid make-up which would have been condemned at Drama School as ‘horribly over the top’, all seemed to point up the incongruity of his crumpled figure in its loyal sports jacket.

He needn’t have worried. The bright young things at the bar were far too involved in themselves and each other to notice him as he peered from flying-suit to flying-suit, trying to identify Sydnee.

She wasn’t there. At least, she wasn’t there unless she had dyed her hair another colour (which was of course not impossible). He sat at an empty table on the outskirts of the action. If she was there, she could find him. He knew his own appearance hadn’t changed in the last few days (or probably the last few decades).

He was gratified to discover that his invisibility did not extend to the staff. He had hardly sat down before a waiter, whose tail-coat and white tie seemed at odds with the yellow-and-green-striped hair and the Christmas Tree decoration dangling from the ear-lobe, materialised to take his order. He drew Charles’s attention to the infinite list of highly-priced cocktails on the card in front of him.

‘Er, just a large whisky, please.’

‘On the rocks?’

‘Please.’

The waiter vanished, very quickly to return with a tall glass so full of ice that the whisky had paled almost to invisibility, and a large bill.

Charles sipped his drink, while mortifying thoughts about how old and out of touch he was ran through his head.

Sydnee’s hair was still the same copper-beech colour when she appeared a few minutes later. Her flying-suit this time was electric blue.

‘Hi,’ she said, offering no apology for her lateness. Television time, Charles remembered, except for the unshakable rigidity of studio schedules, is always approximate.