Situation Tragedy (10 page)

So, since it was a nice sunny day, and since Bernard Walton's garden was a very pleasant place to loll in, Charles spent a pleasant afternoon lolling. Occasionally he would stroll back to the filming to show a token interest, but nothing ever seemed to be happening. They were always waiting. Waiting for the sun to emerge from behind a cloud. Waiting for an aeroplane to pass, so that its sound wouldn't affect the recording. Waiting, on one occasion as Charles passed, for Debbi Hartley to complete a costume change.

This had clearly been taking some time. The men whose function it was to wear lumberjack checked shirts were looking at their watches and smiling, as the odds on overtime shortened. Scott Newton and Peter Lipscombe, who had appeared at some point during the day to see that everything was okay, were looking extremely frustrated. At last the director could contain himself no longer. ‘Oh, for Christ's sake!' he cried. ‘What the hell is she changing into?'

‘An actress?' Mort Verdon asked, almost inaudibly.

Once, just for a change of scene, Charles wandered down the steep zigzag of the drive towards the main road. He had it vaguely in his mind to walk along by the river. An interest in fishing, which he had not recently indulged, drew him to rivers. But when he got to the bottom, he saw that the Thames was a good deal further away than it had looked. There was a two-mile stretch of fields to traverse, so he turned round and started back up the drive.

It really was steep. It made him realise, gloomily, just how out of condition he was. Not enough exercise, too much booze. He knew he should take more of the first and less of the second, but something stubborn within him resisted the notion. It made him think of Frances. That was the sort of advice Frances would give him. She was nearly always right. That was what at times annoyed him about her and made him, perversely, turn against her advice.

He must ring her, though.

Half-way up the drive he felt puffed and sat on the wall for a moment by one of the tall flower-filled urns. He leant his back against it, but it wobbled, so he sat upright and looked over the deep green to the Thames.

Must start fishing again, he thought. Must start fishing, and must see Frances. In some way, the two intentions seemed related. Could it be that both of them offered the prospect of a kind of peace?

The day's filming finished in time. At twenty past five, Scott Newton said the magic words, ‘It's a wrap,' and it was all over. The director looked buoyantly confident. The men in lumberjack checked shirts looked disgruntled for a moment, and then started dismantling everything with a speed and efficiency that hadn't been approached during the day. There were fixed payments for their tidying-up time, so there was no point in hanging about.

Everyone was now in a hurry to be off. The actors made for the coach. They still had ahead of them the tedious business of returning to the W.E.T. dressing rooms where their day clothes were. Aurelia Howarth, to the annoyance of Wardrobe, said that she and Cocky were tired and so she'd go home in her frock and bring it back the next day. Barton Rivers appeared, white-gloved and grinning, to squire her to the Bentley. He shook everyone's hands and urged everyone ghoulishly to play up, play up, and play the game.

The traffic jam on the gravel in front of the house was increased when Bernard Walton brought his dark blue Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud out of the garage. He had to be up in Town for the Charity First Night of some new movie, and was suddenly dressed in a midnight-blue dinner suit, with a midnight-blue butterfly bow at the neck of a froth of pale blue shirt. He didn't lock the house, since his housekeeper remained. (Bernard Walton was unmarried. He and his Publicity Manager had not yet found a woman who would keep her fashion value long enough for him to justify this step.)

Charles, in the mellowness of the afternoon's wine, felt confident that however the traffic was sorted out, the coach would probably he the last to leave, so he didn't rush into it to sit and wait.

The Bentley went first, its huge power held back to cope with the dangerous curves of the hill. Aurelia turned and waved, while Barton grinned ahead. They looked like something out of a Thirties film. The noise of the engine faded quickly to silence as they passed out of sight. The steep bank cut off sound quickly and ensured that the domestic calm of the great Bernard Walton should not be disturbed by the vulgar sounds of traffic on the main road below.

Bernard himself set off next, the Rolls moving faster than the Bentley, secure in its knowledge of every contour of the steep drive. Once again the powerful engine sound died quickly.

Scott Newton moved over to the side of his Porsche, his face beaming the unrestrainable smile of a father with his first daughter. But once there he hesitated. He wanted to make a departure which would be noticed, or rather by which his car would be noticed, but he wasn't sure how to time it.

The sight of Peter Lipscombe came to his rescue. The Producer, having checked with everyone that everything was okay, was about to get into his company BMW and return to London. Scott Newton called across to him, ‘Last one back to W.E.T.'s a sissy.'

The producer smiled. I'll be back before you, Scott.'

‘No chance. Yours doesn't go as fast as this.'

‘I'm not saying it does. But I know the back ways when we get to Town. You may get there first, but I'll beat you through the rush hour. I've done it back from here within the hour.'

‘Want a bet on it?'

‘Fiver.'

‘You're on.'

The Producer and Director walked towards each other and shook hands. ‘What's more,' said Peter Lipscombe, ‘I'm so confident I'll beat you, that I'll let you go first.'

Scott Newton thought for a second, but then decided to take advantage of the offer and make his exit while everyone was still watching. He leapt into the silver Porsche, gunned the engine and shot off in a burst of gravel.

The sound of the engine faded, but just before it disappeared, the note changed to a scream of metal. This was followed by a series of heavy thuds, and then a great boom which seemed to shake the hill on which the house stood.

Charles Paris reached a viewpoint of the accident a little behind the younger men who had rushed down the drive. There was no doubt what had happened.

Round one of the hairpins in the drive, an urn lay in the middle of the gravel, its bright confusion of flowers spilled in the fall. The ridges swept up by the Porsche's tyres showed how Scott, coming on the obstruction blind and too fast, had swerved to avoid it. And how the car had got out of control.

The scarred flower beds and uprooted shrubs charted its passage down the hill. The jack-knifed TIR lorry from Spain showed what it had met when it reached the main road.

And, because there was nothing else in sight that could be it, the shapeless mass like crumpled kitchen foil must have been the silver Porsche.

West End Television Ltd,

W.E.T. House,

235–9 Lisson Avenue, London NW1 3PQ.

30th May, 1979.

Dear Charles,

Just a note to fill you in on developments on
The Strutters
front. Obviously we were all very shocked by what happened but we mustn't let our imaginations run away with us. People are talking about our two misfortunes and saying they must be connected and that it's a bad luck show and . . . All rubbish! The show must go on and the show will go on. There is no danger of anything stopping the advance of this very exciting project.

I am delighted to be able to tell you that we now have a new Director for the series, and even more delighted to say that he's Bob Tomlinson, whose work I'm sure you know from such hit series as
No Kidding, O'Reilly and Truly, Last, But Not Least
and, last but not least, that smashing show set in a municipal rubbish dump,
Hold Your Nose and Think of England!
From that list of credits, I don't need to tell you that Bob certainly knows his stuff when it comes to sit com!

I can't think that Bob's going to want to make major changes to the schedule, but I'm sure you'll hear in plenty of time if any of your calls are different. I look forward to seeing you at the read-through next Monday, 4th June, and am confident that, after this rather unfortunate start, we are going to have a really exciting and successful series.

With the warmest good wishes,

Yours sincerely,

Peter

PETER LIPSCOMBE

Producer
The Strutters

The payphone on the landing at Hereford Road rang the morning Charles received the letter. The various Swedes were out at their various Swedish occupations, so he answered it.

‘Hello, Charles, it's Walter.'

‘Oh, hello. How are things?'

‘So-so. I hope you don't mind my ringing, but I want to pick your brains.'

‘You're welcome to anything you can find there.'

‘It's a slightly ticklish thing, actually. I read in the paper about that poor boy's terrible accident . . . you know, your Director. Obviously I was terribly shocked, but I couldn't help thinking, you know, the way one does, that that must leave your series without a Director. So I thought I might give Peter Lipscombe a buzz and see what gives, but I though I'd check with you first, just to make sure nothing's been sorted out yet.'

Charles didn't like the drift of the conversation, and said rather shortly, ‘I've just heard. We've got a new Director.'

‘Oh. Who?'

‘Bob . . . Tomlinson I think it was.'

‘Ah, yes. He's never out of work. Yes, of course. He would be free. He was going to do that series about the dance band called
Hands Off My Maracas
, but it's been cancelled because of problems with the Musicians' Union. Oh well, never mind . . . We must meet up for a drink again sometime, maybe.'

‘Sure.'

‘And you will let me know if you hear anything coming up, won't you?'

‘Yes. Of course.'

Charles went back into his room feeling depressed. Of course Walter had to follow up any job possibility that might emerge, but it was unpleasant to hear him reduced to the role of professional vulture. For a moment suspicion of Walter returned. Certainly he was someone who might hope to gain from Scott Newton's death, and he'd made no secret of his resentment of the young man's success.

But there were many arguments against casting Walter in the role of the director's murderer. The first, and most potent, was that he hadn't been at the scene of the crime. Short of introducing a conspiracy theory or the use of a hired killer, there was no way he could have toppled the flower urn which had caused Scott's death.

And why should anyone want Scott dead? He had seemed pleasant enough, not the sort to raise instant antipathy like Sadie. Just an ambitious young television director with money problems.

Mind you, the money problems seemed to have resolved themselves. The new clothes, the new car . . . Charles's mind did a little spurt. Suppose Scott had witnessed the first murder and blackmailed the killer, thus providing a motive for his own death . . .? Hmm, there might be something there, but there was a distinct lack of hard evidence.

And, anyway, was there even a murder to investigate? There seemed no real reason to think that the young man was the victim of anything more sinister than an accident. The police, who had made extensive investigations at the scene of his death, seemed satisfied with this solution. And, after all, a young man, flushed with success after a good day's filming, showing off a powerful and unfamiliar car, was unlikely to be concentrating much on his driving. And the urn of flowers could have fallen of its own accord. Charles knew from having leant against one that they weren't fixed, just balanced on the wall.

Yes, it could have fallen of its own accord. But it was a substantial piece of terracotta and there had been no wind. Perhaps a bird could have flown into it or a rabbit or something brushed against it . . . or maybe the vibrations of one of the passing cars had dislodged it, but it all seemed pretty unlikely.

Maybe one of the cars had scraped against the wall and bumped the urn off . . . But logic was against that too. Whereas one could imagine that the ancient Barton Rivers, at the wheel of his huge Bentley, might be less than secure on the tight turns of the drive, he and Aurelia had not been the last people to go down it. Bernard Walton had followed them and, apart from the fact that he must have known every curve of the approach to his house perfectly, he was unlikely to scrape the gleaming surface of his precious Rolls. And he wouldn't have been able to drive over the urn if Barton's Bentley had dislodged it before him.

So either it just fell, or someone deliberately moved it. And if it had been deliberately moved, it must have happened just after Bernard's Rolls had driven past.

If it was a murder, and if it had been planned, then the perpetrator was likely to be someone who knew the layout of Bernard's grounds, someone who had been there before. The list included Bernard himself, obviously, and, from what they had said during the day, Aurelia and Barton and Peter Lipscombe. Presumably the unfortunate Scott had also been down on a recce to check the location, and who knew how many people would have accompanied him? Certainly the Designer, certainly the Location Manager, possibly Janie Lewis, the PA, possibly dozens of other people. That was the trouble with a crime committed in television – there were always so many people about, it was difficult to reduce lists of suspects.

Charles concentrated, and tried to remember where everyone had been at the moment of Bernard Walton's departure in the Rolls. The conjectural saboteur of the urn need not have been in a car; he, or she, could have walked down the hill and moved it. But the picture didn't come back to him with any clarity. He just remembered a lot of people milling about, clearing up; he couldn't place individuals.

No, he came back to one fact: if the urn was moved in order to cause an accident, then the person with the best background knowledge and the best opportunity to do it was Bernard Walton.