Murder Unprompted: A Charles Paris Murder Mystery (17 page)

He slept a lot of the Sunday and Monday and, when awake, just mooched about his bed-sitter in the gloom that inevitably followed moments of high excitement.

He thought of ringing Frances, but something deterred him. She had spoken of meeting the following weekend and going down to Juliet’s. That possibly meant that she had something else on this weekend. Or would be busy sorting things out at school with the run-up to half-term. He didn’t feel up to the mildest of rebuffs from her; he seemed to have got back to a relationship like an adolescent infatuation, reading rejection in the most innocent of her actions.

His mood also deterred him from ringing Dottie Banks. It was something he still intended to do, but he felt he should be at a peak of confidence to arrange such an encounter.

Still, the rest did him good, and the performance on the Monday evening was better. It was well received by a fairly small house. About a third full. The publicity of Michael Banks’s death had now been replaced in the public’s mind with news of fresh disasters, and the show was running on its own impetus. The Variety Theatre’s position off the main West End beat, the obscurity of the play, and the
(pace
George Birkitt) lack of star names – all the elements which pessimists had predicted would work against the show – were now beginning to take their toll.

Paul Lexington seemed, as ever, undaunted by the small audience. It was Monday night, he said, and that was always bad. The following for this kind of play would build up by word-of-mouth, he insisted. The coach-parties hadn’t started to come in yet. And he was going to give a rocket to Show-Off, whose performance on the publicity front had been absolutely dismal. Get another burst of publicity in the second week, and the show would be fine. Every production went through troughs.

As ever, he sounded terribly plausible, and Charles was as willing as all the rest of the cast to believe what he said. How true it all was, Charles didn’t wish to investigate. And how the show was now funded, how tightly Paul Lexington was running his budget, what his break-even percentage of audience was, indeed how much of the audience was made up of paying theatre-goers and how much of free seats; all these were questions to which he knew he was unlikely to get answers.

All they could do was work from day to day, from performance to performance, and through the second week, Charles started to feel his confidence in the part building up again. The play settled down with its new cast. The size of the audience didn’t increase noticeably, but the faithful few who did turn up seemed appreciative.

He even got another nice review. Obviously there had been no notices after the first night, and few of the critics of the major papers would have had time, let alone interest, to give the play a second viewing; but a North London local paper with a weekly deadline had sent along its critic on the Monday of the second week, and their review appeared on the Thursday.

The significant sentence read as follows: ‘The part of the father, played by an actor unfamiliar to me, Charles Paris, grows in stature through the evening until the powerfully climactic scene of confrontation with his daughter.’

It was not, of course, unambiguous praise. Indeed, it could have been read merely as appreciation of Malcolm Harris’s writing; it was the part, after all, not the acting, which was said to grow in stature. And, to the cynically analytical mind which Charles usually applied to praise, the review could be read to mean that the part grew in stature until the powerfully climactic scene of confrontation with his daughter, at which point, in the hands of this actor, it diminished considerably.

But, on the whole, he thought it was good. Like all actors with reviews, he checked through it for quotability, and decided that, with only slight injustice to the meaning, and the excision of a comma, he could come up with the very serviceable sentence, ‘Charles Paris grows in stature through the evening’.

He even wondered if he ought to suggest to Paul Lexington that that sentence was put on a hoarding outside the theatre, but didn’t quite have the nerve. The Producer had been satisfied with snipping out from the same review the words, ‘a thoroughly solid evening’s entertainment’, to join the other encomiums that guarded the Variety’s portals.

(These others, incidentally, demonstrated once again Paul Lexington’s very personal definition of truth and his skill in the use of small print. Since he hadn’t got any London press reviews, he had used the Taunton ones, and artfully disguised their provenance. Thus the passerby would observe in large letters the exhortation, ‘I urge everyone to go and see
The Hooded Owl
now! –
Times
’. He would have to go very close indeed to the hoarding to read the word
‘Taunton
’ between ‘now!’ and ‘
Times
’.

In the same way, the
Observer
, which acclaimed ‘an evening of theatrical magic’, was the
Quantock Observer
; and the
Mail
, who had ‘rarely been so entertained’, was the
Western Mail
.

The cheekiest of the lot was actually from a London newspaper. ‘One of the greatest dramas in the history of the British Theatre’ was, as its by-line claimed, from
The Daily Telegraph;
it had come, however, not from the Arts page, but from the front-page description of Michael Banks’s murder.

There were no flies on Paul Lexington.)

Charles cut out and kept his probably-nice review. He never kept bad ones. That was not just vanity. He always found that, while he could never exactly fix the wording of the good ones, the bad remained indelibly printed on his brain, accurate to the last comma.

Though over thirty years had passed, he could still remember how his first major role for the Oxford University Dramatic Society had been greeted by an undergraduate critic (who, incidentally, later became a particularly malevolent Minister of Health and Social Security):

‘Charles Paris had a brave stab at the part, but unfortunately it did not survive his attack’.

On the Wednesday matinée, when the house was minimal and so was the cast’s concentration, Charles came rather unstuck with his deaf-aid.

To be honest, it wasn’t his fault. Or it wasn’t
completely
his fault. He got fed the wrong line.

Inevitably, it was in the Hooded Owl speech, the play’s focus for either triumph or disaster. Charles had just turned to face the glass case, having made the analogy of the Hooded Owl and God. The line he should have received next was, ‘Why not? This stuffed bird has always been in the room.’ But, unfortunately, what the A.S.M. read to him was, ‘Why not? This bird has always been stuffed in this room.’

And, even more unfortunately, that was the line Charles repeated. The audience probably didn’t notice anything wrong; their reactions were so minimal, anyway, that it hardly mattered. But Lesley-Jane certainly did, and she started to giggle. That, and the mild hysteria that a tiny audience always engenders, got Charles going too, and the pair of them were almost paralysed by laughter. It was what actors call a total ‘corpse’, and, although they managed to get through to the end of the play, any tension they might have built up was dissipated.

The lapse was duly noted by the Stage Manager and no one was surprised to be summoned on stage at the ‘half’ for the evening show, and receive a dressing-down from the Company Manager.

‘You’re all meant to be professionals,’ Wallas Ward berated them petulantly, ‘and this sort of behaviour is unforgivable. We already have our problems with this show, and we’re at a very pivotal point. If we are to survive in the West End, we have to guarantee that
every
performance is up to scratch. Nothing brings a show’s reputation down quicker than the rumour going round the business that the cast has started sending it up. You really should know better.’

Charles owned up, like a naughty schoolboy. ‘Sorry, it was my fault. I got fed the wrong line.’

‘Well, you should have been concentrating on what you were saying. You are meant to think, not just relay the lines like some glorified loudspeaker.’

‘Yes, I know. I’m sorry. Lapse of concentration. Won’t happen again.’

‘It’d better not. I think you ought to be off the deaf-aid by now.’

‘What?’ Charles was very taken aback.

‘Well, you are going to learn the lines at some point, aren’t you?’

‘Oh, I . . . er . . . I hadn’t really thought about it.’ He hadn’t. Now he had sorted out the technique of using the deaf-aid, he found it wonderfully relaxing. The strain of remembering the lines was removed, and he could enjoy the acting. It hadn’t occurred to him that at some point his life-support system would be taken away.

‘
I
think you should be off the deaf-aid now,’ asserted Wallas Ward righteously. ‘But Paul says wait a bit, no hurry, and it’s his decision.’

‘Right, well, I’ll wait till I hear from him.’

‘And, in the meantime, let us have no repetition of this afternoon’s disgusting display of amateurism.’

Very good, Wallas, yes, Wallas, certainly, Wallas, said all the cast, touching their forelocks in mock-abasement.

‘Maurice Skellern Personal Management.’

‘Still holding out for the twenty per cent, I see, Maurice.’

‘Charles, one has to pay for personal service in this day and age. It’s the same all over the board, you know.’

‘Humph.’

‘Well, and how’s the show going?’

‘Oh, thank you for asking. I take it that question is an example of your Personal Management, the individual care you lavishly bestow on your clients.’

‘Exactly, Charles.’

‘Listen, Maurice, we last spoke nearly a fortnight ago. Since then, not only has the show opened in the West End, but also I, your client, have taken over the leading part. And during that time, what kind of “individual care” have I received? Not even a lousy telephone call. I always have to end up ringing you.’

‘I’m never sure where you are, Charles.’

‘Rubbish. You could always find me if you tried.’

‘I think you’re being very hurtful, Charles. I spend all day beavering away on your behalf and –’

‘Oh, damn it, Maurice, can’t you –’

‘That’s very good, Charles, very good.’ Wheezes of laughter wafted down the telephone line.

‘What?’

‘Beavering – damn it. Very good.’

‘Listen, Maurice, as I say I am now playing the lead in this show, and I think it is about time you sorted out some deal on the money I get for doing it.’

‘Now, Charles, if you would calm down a moment and allow me to get a word in, I would be able to inform you that I have already negotiated just such a deal for you.’

‘Then why the hell didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because the details have only recently been finalised with Paul Lexington.’

‘Well, when did you ring him?’

‘He rang me, actually.’

‘When?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘And I suppose that was the first you knew of my taking over the part?’

‘It was, as it happens.’

‘I don’t bloody believe it. Your office must have a great pile of sand in it instead of a desk, so that you can keep your head buried all bloody day.’

‘Now, Charles . . . An agent’s job is difficult enough without his clients being offensive.’

‘All right. Tell me what the deal is.’

Charles had devoted considerable thought to this subject. He knew that he wasn’t the most eminent actor in the world, but he still knew that nobody played a starring part in the West End for peanuts. He had to be on three hundred and fifty a week minimum, surely? Maybe a bit more. Maybe a lot more.

‘Paul Lexington was very fair on the phone, I thought, very fair.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘What he said was . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘. . . that he’d continue to pay your existing contract –’

‘But that’s only a hundred and fifty a week.’

‘Wait, wait. But, on top of that, he was prepared to pay a supplement.’

‘Oh good.’

‘Because you are actually playing the part.’

‘I certainly am.’

‘A supplement of ten pounds for each performance you do.’

‘Ten pounds! But that’s nothing!’

‘It’s quite generous for an understudy.’

‘But I’m not an understudy. This isn’t the part which I was understudying, anyway. And I am actually playing the part.’

‘Not according to Paul Lexington.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘According to him, you are acting as understudy. And, in a few weeks when he sees how business is going, he will make the decision as to whether to confirm you in the part or to recast.’

‘Good God.’

‘As I say, I thought it very fair. I mean, considering your stature in the business.’

‘Thank you very much,’ said Charles dully.

‘I pushed him up, you know. He only wanted to give you eight pounds a performance, but I pushed him up.’

‘Terrific, Maurice.’

But the sarcasm was wasted. ‘Good, I thought you’d see it my way. And now perhaps you understand what I mean by Personal Management.’

‘Oh yes, I think I do.’

‘Good. Well, nice to talk to you.’

‘Hmm. I don’t suppose your Personal Management and “individual care” would actually extend to coming along to see the show, would it?’

‘Oh now, Charles . . . I spend all day in the office slaving away on your behalf. Surely you don’t want me to give up my evenings too. Do you . . .?’

Michael Banks’s death niggled away at Charles like a hole in the tooth. He had done all the sums, and he knew only one answer fitted, but still something snagged. There seemed little doubt that Alex was the murderer, but Charles felt somehow he owed it to his friend to isolate the element about the case that was worrying him.

So, just before the ‘half’ on the Thursday night, he knocked on Lesley-Jane Decker’s dressing room door.

She was dressed in a silk kimono and lying on the daybed when he went in. Her face was scoured of street make-up, prior to the application of her stage make-up. The result was pale and sickly, stress lines showing how much she would look like her mother in a few years’ time. It was brought home to Charles for the first time how much of a strain the last weeks must have been for a girl of her age. To have broken off one affair and started another, then to have witnessed the shooting of her new lover by the old one, was quite a lot to take. He knew some actresses, hard-boiled as eight-minute eggs, who would have revelled in the situation, casting themselves as
femmes fatales
with enormous relish. But Lesley-Jane didn’t seem the type. Her sophistication was paper-thin, and underneath she was just a very young, and probably over-protected, girl.