Murder Unprompted: A Charles Paris Murder Mystery (11 page)

‘Which acts as a receiver?’

‘Exactly.’

‘But does it work?’

‘It has worked in some very eminent cases. Has to be modern dress obviously, and ideally an elderly character. You can’t have Romeo swarming up the balcony in doublet, hose and hearing aid. But the part Micky’s playing . . . why not?’

‘I’m amazed. I never heard of that being done.’

‘Well, now you know. And if ever you see an actor on stage with a deaf-aid that is not integral to the plot – be suspicious.’

‘Has Micky agreed to use it?’

‘He’s still blustering and saying he never will and he once learnt lago in three days, but he’ll have to come round. There’s no alternative. Except for the obvious one.’

‘Which is?’

‘Reverting to the original casting.’ Alex Household let out the words in a hiss of frustration.

‘Which they won’t now they’ve got Micky’s name all over the posters.’

‘No, of course they won’t.’

‘I agree, it’s a bit of a cheek, asking you to do it.’

‘Oh, you should have heard the way it was put. Paul Lexington at his greasiest. Of course, Alex old man, it could be done by an A.S.M., but you do know the part so well, you could time it properly. And of course we would raise your money for doing it.’

‘By how much?’ No actor could have resisted asking the question.

‘Fifty quid a week.’

‘That’s pretty good.’

‘Oh yes, Paul Lexington pays you well for totally humiliating yourself.’

‘So you told him to get stuffed, did you?’

‘No, I haven’t yet.’ A cold smile came to Alex Household’s lips. ‘And do you know, I’m not sure that I will.’

‘You mean you’ll accept it?’

‘I just might.’

‘Good idea,’ said Charles soothingly. ‘Take the money and don’t think about it. That’s always been my philosophy.’

‘Yes.’ Alex’s mind was elsewhere. ‘Because now I come to think about it, it could be a good job.’

‘Sure, sure.’

‘A position of power.’

‘Power?’

‘Yes. How does one gain revenge for humiliation’?’

‘I’ve no idea.’ Charles didn’t like the way the conversation was going. The old light of paranoia gleamed in Alex’s eye.

‘Why, you humiliate someone else.’

‘Maybe, but –’

‘And if you’re stuck in the wings feeding lines to some senile old fool who can’t remember them . . .’ he laughed harshly, ‘. . . then it’s really up to you what lines you feed.’

By the Saturday morning Michael Banks had accepted the inevitable. He sat in shamefaced silence while Paul Lexington explained to the company what was going to be done and was still silent, but attentive, while Wallas Ward, who had encountered the deaf-aid on a previous production, demonstrated the apparatus.

They started rehearsing with it straight away. Alex Household sat in a chair by the wall, smugly reading the lines into a small transmitter with an aerial, while Michael Banks moved about the stage area with the deaf-aid in his ear.

‘We can’t really work out sound levels properly until we get into the theatre. Better just work on timing the lines,’ advised Wallas Ward.

‘Come the day,’ asked Alex languidly, ‘where will I perch? On the Prompt Side?’

‘No. You’d be too near the Stage Manager’s desk there, might pick up his cues on the transmitter. No, you should sit OP.’ Wallas Ward used the theatrical jargon for the side opposite the Stage Manager.

‘Fine,’ said Alex, obtrusively cooperative.

They started. It was not easy. Michael Banks was not used to acting with a voice murmuring continuously in his ear, and Alex Household found it difficult to time the lines right. If he went at the natural pace, Michael Banks got lost and confused, unable to speak one line while hearing the next. The only way they could get any semblance of acting was for Alex to speak a whole sentence, Michael to wait for the end, and then repeat it. This method didn’t work too badly in exchanges of dialogue, but again it was disastrous in the long speeches. With all the waits as the lines came in, the pace slowed to nothing. The lines were coming out as written, but the play was dying a slow death.

Michael Banks struggled on gamely for about an hour, but then snatched out his ear-piece and said, ‘I’m sorry, loves. It’s just not working, is it?’

‘Persevere,’ said Wallas Ward. ‘Just persevere. It takes a long time to get used to it.’

‘How long? We don’t have that much time.’

‘Keep trying.’

It was painfully slow, but Michael Banks kept trying. His memory might have gone, but he showed plenty of guts.

Bobby Anscombe was due at three. Then they would do a run for him. By then they had to have mastered the device. By unspoken consent they worked on through their lunch-break. Every member of the company was willing their star to succeed.

Slowly, slowly, the pace started to pick up. Alex spoke more quickly and Michael Banks lost the flow less often.

It was a cooperative effort between the two. It had to be. Alex’s task of dictating the pace was quite as difficult as Michael’s of delivering the lines. And Charles noted with relief how Alex was rising to the challenge. Whatever resentments he might feel, whatever threats he might have voiced against the star, the understudy was now totally caught up in his task, spacing the lines with total concentration, caught up in the communal will for the subterfuge to work.

They staggered through the second act. It was half-past two, and the minutes were ticking away till Bobby Anscombe’s appearance. The tension in the room built up, the concentration of the entire company focusing on Michael Banks, living every effort with him.

He was approaching the big speech about the Hooded Owl, the speech which Malcolm Harris had rightly claimed to be the centre of his play, the speech that the star had not once got through since he had abandoned his script. All was silent in the rehearsal room, except for the actors speaking their lines.

The big speech was the climax of a scene between Michael and Lesley-Jane, playing his daughter. The dialogue which ran up to it showed good pace, and the strength of the star’s performance, absent in recent days, began again to show through.

The speech was partly addressed to the Hooded Owl of the title and ended with the bird in its glass case being smashed on the floor. Though this was to happen every night in the run, the Stage Management had requested that, to save on glass cases, the action should be mimed during rehearsal.

Lesley-Jane cued the big speech, and no one breathed. ‘But, Father,’ she said, ‘you will never be forgotten.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Michael Banks with new authority. ‘Oh yes, I will.

‘Three generations of us have lived in this house. Three generations have passed through this room, slept here, argued here, made love here, even died here. And the only marks of their passage have been obliterated by the next generation. New wallpaper, new furniture, new window frames . . . the past is forgotten. Gone with no record. Unless you believe in some supernatural being, taking notes on our progress. A God, maybe – or, if you’d rather, a Hooded Owl . . .

‘Why not? This stuffed bird has always been in the room. Imagine it had perception, a memory to retain our follies. Oh God, the weakness that these walls have witnessed! And this bird has lived through it all, has seen it all, impassively, in silence.’

He picked up the glass case and looked at the bird reflectively. Then, with a sudden change of mood, he shouted, ‘Well, I’m not going to be spied on any longer!’ and dashed it to the ground.

They all burst into applause. Lesley-Jane threw her arms round Michael Banks’s neck. The sense of achievement was felt by every one of them. Not only had he mastered the lines, he had also delivered the speech with greater power than it had ever received, either by him in rehearsal, or by Alex in performance. And yet Alex had contributed. Something of his timing, something of his delivery had come into Michael Banks’s performance, giving it new depth and stature. The applause was for the joint effort.

It was five to three. Paul Lexington held up his hands for silence. His glowing face showed that he was aware of the breakthrough. ‘I think we’re going to be all right. We’ll stop it there. Thank you all for your hard work. Bobby’ll be here in a minute, and I want you all to give him a performance that’ll blast him out of his seat!’

The run was not perfect, but it was good. Occasionally the timing between Alex and Michael went and the star lost his lines, but for most of the play the flow was maintained. Bobby Anscombe, who had reacted badly when he had first heard of the deaf-aid idea, was forced to admit at the end that it might work. Like everyone else, he recognised that there was no alternative.

‘O.K.,’ he announced to everyone in his usual grudging style. ‘We’re still in business. Just. But you’re all going to have to work a darned sight harder. The last week’s rehearsal has been a virtual write-off, and you’re meant to be facing a preview audience on Monday.’

‘You think we go ahead with that?’ asked Paul Lexington. Clearly cancelling the previews had been one option the producers had discussed.

‘We’ll go ahead. The show needs the run-in, and even if it’s bad, there won’t be too much word-of-mouth outside the business. And any word-of-mouth’d be better than what we’ve got at the moment. What the hell’s happening on the publicity front?’ He rounded on his co-producer as he asked the question.

‘Show-Off say it’s all in hand.’

‘A bit late to have it in hand. It should be out of hand and all over the bloody media by now. Is
anything
happening?’

‘Micky’s doing
Parkinson
tonight – the Beeb’s sending a car about six, Micky . . .’

The star acknowledged this information with an exhausted nod.

‘. . . and then there’s supposed to be an interview in Atticus in
The Sunday Times
tomorrow.’

‘Better than nothing, but where are the bloody posters?’

‘Apparently some delay about those. You know, the people who put them up are quite difficult to organise.’

‘I know that . . .’

‘But it’s supposed to be sorted out now.’

‘I should bloody well hope so. We open on Thursday and at the moment we’ve made about as much noise as a fart in a hurricane.’ Bobby Anscombe turned to Peter Hickton. ‘All set for the get-in at the Variety tonight?’

The Director nodded with relish at the prospect of a sleepless night of hard work.

‘Tech. run tomorrow night and D.R. Monday afternoon?’

‘That’s it,’ Peter Hickton confirmed.

‘Hmm. Well, for God’s sake see that Micky and Alex get some practice with that bloody walkie-talkie tomorrow afternoon. There’s a long way to go before it sounds natural.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Paul Lexington diplomatically. ‘We’ll sort it out. This is going to be a show you’ll be proud to be associated with, Bobby.’

The investor barked a short, cynical laugh. ‘Bloody well better be. Don’t forget, Paul, we still haven’t got a contract. I can still pull out if I don’t like it.’

‘Yes, sorry about that. There’s been so much on this week I just haven’t had time to get the details of the contract finalised.’

Charles wondered whether this was true or whether Paul Lexington was once again using delaying tactics for devious reasons of his own. Distrust of the producer was now instinctive.

Bobby Anscombe gave an evil grin. ‘I don’t mind having no contract if you don’t. Gives me the freedom to walk out at will.’

But nobody believed his threat. They all knew that
The Hooded Owl
had just survived a great crisis. For the first time that week, they all dared to feel confident that the show would open the following Thursday, as planned.

THERE’S NOTHING like a long Technical Run to dissipate any euphoria attached to a theatrical production, and that was the effect of the one held for
The Hooded Owl
on the evening of Sunday, 26th October, 1980.

As is often the case with such events, it started late. Peter Hickton had had trouble with the resident stage crew at the Variety over the Saturday night. He was used to working with crews who knew him and who, like his casts, were prepared to work round the clock to achieve the effects he desired. The staff of the Variety did not have this attitude. They had no personal loyalty to him and were too strongly unionised to accept his way of working. Peter Hickton, unaware that co-operation could be bought by payment of ‘negotiated extras’, responded to the crew’s apparent lethargy by throwing one of his tantrums, which had only served to make them less willing to help out. Paul Lexington and Wallas Ward had had to devote much energy to smoothing ruffled feathers, nobody had got much sleep, and everything was way behind schedule.

When eventually, after ten o’clock at night, the run started, it was very slow. Apart from the unfamiliarity of the entrances and exits and the other customary problems for the cast, Peter Hickton had not had time to complete the lighting plot, so much of that was being done in the course of the run, which meant endless waits while new lighting settings were agreed. This left the cast standing around; they got bored and giggly, which set off explosions of bad temper from the technical staffs working around them. The atmosphere degenerated.

Members of the resident stage crew wandered round, looking at their watches and making dark remarks about amateurism and provincial rep. and the folly of trying to bring in a show so quickly and the unlikelihood of its being presentable in time for the Monday night preview.

Paul Lexington rushed around, also looking at his watch and working out how much overtime he was going to have to pay (or, to Charles’s suspicious mind, how much overtime he was going to avoid paying).

The latest technical innovation, the deaf-aid transmitter, did not make things any easier. For a start, the resident sound engineer didn’t like it, because he hadn’t been consulted about its introduction and he maintained that he should be responsible for all sound equipment. This led to a circuitous discussion with Paul Lexington about whether it was sound equipment or not, which was only settled after much wrangling (and, almost definitely, money changing hands).