Merryll Manning Is Dead Lucky (23 page)

    “No-one’s accusing you, Mr. Fairmont,” interposed Inspector Borne. “Mr. Manning has pointed out what seems to me a very salient fact. Let’s examine it calmly. His envelope is addressed to Mr. Don Ellin. The only people who know how to spell this name are: One, Mr. Manning himself, who has no alibi at all for the crime – ”

    “What the hell’s going on inside your thick head?” I yelled. “I’ve told you twenty million times that after leaving wardrobe, I went straight to the set. I never went near Sedge’s bloody dressing room.”

    “One, Mr. Manning himself,” resumed Borne, “who has no alibi at all for the crime – which incidentally was not committed in Mr. Cornbeck’s dressing room, but in the corridor.”

    “I wondered what all those forensic people were checking out,” Boss Kent interrupted.

    “Two, Mr. Arthur Kent – ”

    “Just a goddamn minute there, inspector!”

    “Kent is alibied by his wife and daughter – not a strong alibi but better than none. Three, Mr. Montgomery Fairmont, alibied by Mr. Moonbeam and Mr. Fabbro.”

    “What moonbeam?” I asked.

    “Mr. Aloysius Moonbeam, a.k.a. Ace Jellis, alibied by Mr. Fairmont and Mr. Fabbro. Five, Mr. Sergio Fabbro, a.k.a. Peter Faber, alibied by Mr. Moonbeam and Mr. Fairmont. That seems to be it. Five who knew how to spell
Ellin
.”

    “Peter wasn’t with us in wardrobe,” I pointed out. “But Trev Lynn was. You’re forgetting him.”

    “But according to you, Mr. Manning, he wasn’t present when you chose your name.”

    “I told Trev,” said Monty. “I even wrote it down for him so that he could introduce Manning to the contestants at the rehearsal.”

    “Six, Mr. Trevor Holden, alibied by Mr. Fairmont and Mr. Moonbeam. Is that it?”

    “I said Peter wasn’t with us in wardrobe. He wasn’t with us in Sedge’s dressing room either,” I remembered. “In fact, I never saw him until after the show.”

    “That is right,” confirmed Faber, his dark glasses glittering with reflected light. “When I arrive, I go straight to the control room. I have told the inspector.”

    Borne nodded. “Mr. Faber arrived on the set about twenty to thirty minutes before time and went to the control booth. Both cameramen saw him.”

    “I say
hello
,” explained Peter.

    “That narrows the range,” I began, staring hard at Monty Fairmont and Ace Jellis. With Faber eliminated, they were now only alibiing each other.

    “I’ve got bad news for you boys,” growled Boss Kent. “I told one other person.”

    My heart missed a beat.

    “I was in the hospital, visiting Sedge. Trying to persuade him to come back to the show, pronto! We need him.”

    “Thanks for the vote of confidence!” I exclaimed.

    “We’re getting into the final countdown,” Boss Kent explained. “You’re in the semi-finals. You’ve got to win that, if you can!”

    “I thought I lose?”

    “The semi-finals, you win.”

    “How come?”

    “Don’t you read the rules? In the semi-final, you’re part of a team. The team that wins, each man goes into the final – where it’s every man for himself.”

    “How much do I get if I win?”

    “Winning team gets $24,000. There’s three of you, so that’s $8,000 each. The losers get one of Peter’s vouchers. Two hundred dollars discount off any mega-travel plan of your choice.”

    “Getting back to present affairs, Mr. Kent, you wrote down the Ellin name for Mr. Cornbeck when you visited him at the hospital?”

    “Sure I did. Sedge has a thing about names. Thought he get a kick out of Don Ellin.”

    Inspector Borne sighed, “Better add Mr. Cornbeck to our list.”

    “You’re dead right!” I rashly agreed. “He could easily have killed Kathie either before or after the show. Yet he seemed so convincingly upfront. An amazingly convincing performance. He fooled me.”

    “He fooled all of us,” growled Boss Kent. “But Sedge is an actor – damn it!”

    “Remember how he denied seeing Spookie again after the show?” Monty squealed. “He said she never came to his dressing room.”

    “There he was telling the truth,” I said. “He met her in the corridor.”

31

No live audience. Even that was fouled up. The great Kent was unaware that tickets had already been distributed. As a result, I had to detail my four security guards at the gates just to turn people away. None of them went very willingly either. A few ghouls even managed to get past the cordon and were knocking on the door to the sound stage. Fortunately, I’d persuaded the great Kent to hire an extra man, but that left none for the set. True, the place was full of policemen but they were under Inspector Borne’s control. If anything went wrong, I was ultimately responsible. No excuses.

    At least the security side of my job kept me busy. One of the unnerving things about TV acting is that once you step in front of that camera – no matter how crowded the set – you’re basically alone. The whole show depends on you. But what’s worse, when it comes to help, you depend on yourself. The director and the producer sit way up in a control booth, right out of your sight line, issuing orders by loudspeaker during rehearsal, but dead silent once the show’s on air. The floor manager’s no help either. His waving hands tell you when to speak and when to shut up, but not what to speak, and how! For “what”, you rely on the autocue, a mechanical monster disguised as a camera, its lens replaced by an illuminated screen on which every word of your patter speeds by with merciless momentum. No tool for the novice, it takes time and practice to master the autocue. I looked at it but didn’t try to read it. Instead, I armed myself with a sheaf of important-looking notes on which I had everything written down. And for the questions, of course, I had Sedge’s cards.

    It was a queer feeling. I was reading Sedge’s cards, handling them, making use of them, like being privy to a part of Sedge’s innermost mind and the secrets he’d guarded so zealously – and all the while, I knew a secret even more devastating: He had killed Kathie. Possibly Dune-Harrigan too. Why? What was the connection? The police would find out. Even now they were closing in…

Sedge was arrested on Tuesday afternoon, just in time for the evening news bulletins. Every station used the arrest as their lead-off item – even ABC News which had relegated Kathie’s murder to bottom of the bill, close to Tomorrow’s Weather.

    On Wednesday night, just about every TV set in America  was tuned to
80 Questions
. The opposition wasn’t just wiped off the air, it was utterly demolished.

    Alas, the show itself was even more tedious than usual. The contestants were not just the usual dull bunch, this lot were positively moribund. Maybe Sedge could have whipped them into a mild frenzy, but I doubt it. They were frozen in formaldehyde. The winner was a 47-year-od waitress from Kentucky. Her claim to fame was that her mum once worked for Colonel Sanders. Her specialty: Pop music of the sixties. Despite her win she managed to make Elvis Presley and his contemporaries as lively a topic as dried dodo feathers.

    On the other hand, I suppose our regular viewers didn’t notice any difference. As for the acres of new adherents, they were able not only to satisfy their curiosity, but feed their deep hunger to be part of the events their neighbors and friends were all talking about.

    Did I come out of the show as handsomely as on the previous week? No! But maybe I was being overly super-critical. Our regular broadcasters received only thirty-eight complaints – three down on the previous week’s: “Who is this imposter? What’s happened to our lovely Mr. Cornbeck?” There are some dear old souls out there who watch everything on the box but the news.

32

“Your honor?”

    “Yes, Mr. Frost?”

    “I represent the defendant, Edward ‘Sedge’ Cornbeck, your honor.”

    “Does the defendant wish to enter a plea, Mr. Frost?”

    “Most definitely, your honor. My client pleads ‘Not Guilty’ to all charges, your honor, and pleads his complete innocence of, and non-involvement with any of these crimes as listed in the charge sheet.”

    “So entered. Any further comment, Mr. Frost?”

    “Not at this stage, your honor.”

    “Mr. Spinks! I take it you are appearing for the District Attorney?”

    “I guess I am, your honor.”

    “I’m surprised the D.A. himself is not with us this morning. Not only is the press box filled to capacity, but half the courtroom itself seems to be full of reporters.”

    “Regrettably, the D.A. has lost his voice, your honor. He can’t even talk in a whisper. He sends his regrets to your honor and hopes to be with us ASAP.”

    “Please convey the court’s regrets to the D.A. Are you then ready to proceed, Mr. Spinks?”

    “I wish to make these proceedings as brief as possible, your honor. Briefly, we rely on strong, if circumstantial, evidence in regard to the murder of Kathleen Irene Williams. We have evidence that links the defendant directly with this crime. We will prove that the defendant had a romantic liaison with the deceased, that he wished to break off this attachment, and that he had both the opportunity and motive for the murder. Furthermore, he constructed an elaborate plot, both to divert suspicion from himself and yet make it easy and possible for him to affect this brutal crime. But like all of his kind, your honor, he finally over-reached himself. He had perpetrated almost the perfect crime, but I guess he tried just once too often to divert suspicion from himself. He was caught in the act. Would you call Nurse Gwendolyn Withers to the stand, please?”

“Your name is Gwendolyn Withers and you are a nurse at the Highkeep Private Hospital?”

    “Yes, sir.”

    “Last Thursday afternoon, did the defendant give you some letters to post?”

    “Yes, sir. Mr. Cornbeck gave me a small bundle of letters.”

    “How many?”

    “I don’t remember.”

    “A small bundle? Twenty?”

    “Oh, no, sir. I would have remembered twenty.”

    “Ten?”

    “That would be about right.”

    “Do you remember any names?”

    “No, sir.”

    “Addresses?”

    “They seemed to be all addressed to people at some studio in Hollywood.”

    “What time was this?”

    “Just after lunch. About two o’clock, sir.”

    “You remember the time, but you don’t remember any of the names on the envelopes?”

    “No, sir. I looked because I wanted to see if there was someone I knew – from the movies or the TV, I mean. But there was no-one I knew at all.”

    “What did you do with the letters, nurse?”

    “I took them downstairs and put them in the postbox.”

    “And put them in the postbox! Thank you, Nurse Withers!”

    “Any questions for the defense, Mr. Frost?”

    “Yes, indeed! Nurse Withers, you’ve just testified that you examined these ten letters the defendant handed you to post for him?”

    “No, sir.”

    “I think you misunderstood me, nurse. You’ve already testified that you looked at the envelopes. At the names and addresses?”

    “Yes, sir. But I don’t remember them, other than what I told the other gentleman. I post so many letters.”

    “You’re sure – positive – there were ten envelopes?”

    “Yes, sir. There were ten letters. Ten, I’m sure. I counted them. He gave me just the right money for the stamps. Just exactly the right money. Not a cent more and not a cent less. Just exactly the right money. And he probably earns more money in a minute than I earn in a week!”

    “Exactly. And you purchased the stamps yourself and pasted them on?”

    “Yes, sir. I waited in line – and this was my lunch break, mind! – and I purchased the stamps and I stuck them on!”

    “So when you were sticking the stamps on the envelopes, I guess you had ample opportunity to determine whether the addresses were written – handwritten – or whether they were typed?”

    “Beg pardon?”

    “Were the addresses written by hand or were they typed?”

    “Written by hand? Typed? Did he have a typewriter, sir?”

    Mr. Frost made a whistling sigh. “That’s what I’m asking you, Nurse Withers. Handwritten or typed?”

    “I don’t know. I’m sure I don’t remember. I post letters all the time.”

    “And most of them are typed?”

    “Oh, no, sir! Most of them are written.”

    “Most of them, nurse, or nearly all of them?”

    “Nearly all of them, sir.”

    “So it’s highly unusual for you to post letters with typed addresses?”

    “Oh, no, sir. Doctor Gilmore and some of the other doctors give me typed envelopes to post all the time!”