Star Trap (11 page)

The party disembarking from the Corniche still did not take any notice of their pursuers. The four of them walked straight into the foyer and the driver slid the car away to the hotel car park.

‘Well . . .' said Gerald.

‘Well, I guess we've found out where he's staying.'

‘Yes. Yes, we have.'

‘I could have asked him and saved us the trouble.'

‘Yes, but at least this way we can tell if he's lying.'

‘What on earth do you mean? Why should he lie about staying in the newest, poshest hotel in Leeds?'

‘I don't know.' They both felt very foolish.

‘By the way, Gerald, why aren't you staying at the Dragonara? I thought that was your usual style.'

‘I didn't know it existed. Polly, my secretary, booked me into the Queen's. More traditional, I think . . . I'm only here for the one night. I suppose I could try and get transferred, see if there's a room here.'

‘What good would that do?'

‘Well, then I'd be in the hotel, I could spy, I . . .'

‘What are we spying on? What do we want to find out?'

‘I don't know.'

‘All we want to do is see that Kevin McMahon doesn't get a chance to have a go at Christopher Milton.'

‘Yes.'

‘And since he's got Dickie Peck and his driver in the hotel there with him, I think we're superfluous.'

‘So what should we do?'

‘Go to our several beds,' said Charles, with mingled desire and depression at the thought of his.

‘All right. I suppose we'd better. Mind you, we're going to feel pretty silly in the morning if we hear that Christopher Milton's been murdered.'

They needn't have worried. Christopher Milton survived the night unharmed. But Kevin McMahon was found beaten up in the car park by the bus station.

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHARLES DIDN'T HEAR about the new accident until he reached the theatre for rehearsal. A silent breakfast with Ruth had been followed by a silent lift in her Renault 5L to the city centre. She started work at nine, so he had time to kill. They parted in silence and he wandered off in the direction of the Dragonara for no apparent reason.

To occupy his mind with trivialities, he pretended he was trailing the man in front of him. The head he followed was completely bald with enormous ears like the handles of a loving cup. Charles varied his pace, playing a game with himself, committing details to memory, checking the time. At five to nine the man went in the front entrance of the Dragonara and the game was over.

Charles looked round for someone else to use as a dummy and then felt a wave of hopelessness. What was the point of playing at detectives when his performance was so abysmal on occasions that required real detective abilities?

The ‘what was the point?' gloom deepened to embrace his emotional life too. Another night of angry sex with Ruth had depressed him. What was the point of it? He had left Frances to get away from the ties and twists of a ‘relationship', hoping to find some kind of freedom. And he had accepted the limitations which the emotional free-lance shares with all other free-lances – delays between engagements and sudden terminations of contracts. But it wasn't just that. Casual sex didn't give him enough and anything deeper soon got claustrophobic. If he was going to go through all the hard work of making something work, he might just as well try again with Frances. At least he had got a start there.

But Frances had got a boy friend. So the rumour went, and he had no cause to disbelieve it. And that seemed to change it all. It twisted his emotional outlook. He would not admit to himself that he was prey to so simple an emotion as jealousy, but the fact that Frances was not floating unattached in the background made any other relationship more threatening, as if now he was really looking for something lasting. Which he wasn't . . . Oh, hell, why couldn't he just think of Ruth as a nice time in Leeds, all to be over and forgotten in a week? But guilt crept in, and though he was conscious of his depression over-dramatising everything, he was unable to get out of the pointless spiral of his thoughts.

He quickly got news of Kevin's accident when he arrived at the theatre. The police were there. They had taken over one of the dressing-rooms, where they were questioning members of the cast. There were constant assurances that no one in the company was suspected, but certain facts had to be established – who Kevin was, where he was staying and so on.

The details of the beating spread quickly. Kevin was in the Infirmary though he was not seriously hurt. Apparently he had spent the evening drinking, moving on to a small club when the pubs closed. He had been kicked out of there at about two, and wandered round for some time – he couldn't remember how long – and then been jumped by someone who punched him in the face, kicked him about the rest of his body, left him unconscious and stole his wallet. The police regarded it as a simple mugging and were looking for someone local.

They did hear about the altercation between Kevin and Dickie Peck and when the agent arrived with his protégé at ten-thirty, he was questioned. But it transpired that the two of them, along with Wally Wilson and Pete Masters, the young musical director, had been up most of the night working on a new number to replace
Liberty Hall
. They had mutually dependent alibis.

That was a blow to Charles' simple reading of the situation. He had leapt to the conclusion that Dickie Peck must have got at Kevin, continuing the scene that had started in the green room. And if there had only been Christopher Milton and Wally Wilson to corroborate Dickie's alibi, he would still have believed it. But if Pete, the M.D., also vouched for him, that changed things. He was not one of the star's immediate entourage and the most unlikely person to submit to intimidation. So maybe it was just an attack by a mugger unknown. But it did seem too much of a coincidence.

And if it was a coincidence, it was a very happy one for Christopher Milton. There was no dissenting voice when he announced that
Liberty Hall
was to be dropped and that the whole day until the evening performance would be spent rehearsing the new number which had been written overnight.

He was very ebullient and cheerful. He made no pretence now that David Meldrum was directing the show and leapt around the stage telling everyone what to do and demonstrating. He showed no fatigue after the long night and was supremely creative. His enthusiasm for the new song was infectious and they all worked hard to give it life.

Pete Masters, the M.D., had written a simple but catchy tune and was very pleased with himself. Wally Wilson had written the lyric and when Christopher Milton first sang it through with the piano, Charles could feel the gyrations of Oliver Goldsmith in his grave accelerate yet again.

Not ‘I beg to differ' or . . . and so on through four more verses of variable scansion and anachronism. Christopher Milton ended the song with a flourish and Charles couldn't help joining in the applause that followed it. He was once again struck by how good Christopher Milton was. The applause was not sycophancy; it was the genuine praise of professionals.

But in spite of the performance, the song was hopelessly wrong for the show. Charles knew it and felt he had to say something. He was just assembling a tactful objection when Mark Spelthorne came in with his own drawling complaint. Typically, it was completely selfish. ‘But we can't really have that number there, Christopher. I mean, that would make it three solos for you in a row. Surely, it would be better for the balance of the show if we had an ensemble number at this point.' (What he really meant was, ‘I had a lot to do in
Liberty Hall
. Now I've lost a number.')

Christopher Milton did not snap back at Mark. He didn't bother when Dickie Peck was present to do it for him. ‘That's nonsense,' barked the agent. ‘The audience will have come here to see Christopher Milton and the more of him they see, the happier they'll be.'

‘There is such a thing as over-exposure,' Mark Spelthorne observed in a voice that wouldn't remain as cool as he wanted it.

‘Something you're never going to have to worry about, sonny,' Dickie flashed back. ‘No, it's a great number. Really good. Just done overnight, you know –' (appealing for admiration from the company. Charles' admiration conformed with Dr Johnson's comment about a dog walking on its hinder legs – ‘It is not well done, but you are surprised to find it done at all.') ‘– No, I think this is going to be the number of the show. Make a great single too. I don't see actually why it shouldn't be the title of the show.
I Beg Yours?
, I mean it's catchy and it's –'

‘All the publicity's already gone out,' David Meldrum interposed, thus at least killing that ridiculous idea. But Charles still thought someone ought to question the suitability of the number for a show which, in spite of major surgery and transplants, was still set in the eighteenth century and was about Tony Lumpkin rather than Lionel Wilkins. It would stick out like go-go dancers in the middle of the Ring Cycle.

He cleared his throat to remonstrate, but fortunately Winifred Tuke anticipated him. ‘We can't have this song.'

‘Why not?' asked Dickie Peck aggressively, pausing with a match held up to a new cigar.

‘Well, honestly, darling, I mean, I know we're not doing
She Stoops
. . . straight, but this does make nonsense of it.' It was daring and impressive and she should have left it at that. Instead she went on, getting more actressy and vague. ‘I mean, the whole thing about this play is that it's Town life versus Country and we're already losing that by playing Tony London, but if we start putting in bits from other shows then –'

‘It isn't a bit from another show,' said Christopher Milton softly.

‘Not exactly, darling, but this song is absolutely based on that divine character you play in the telly, and I mean it just isn't Tony Lumpkin . . . is it?'

Her ginny voice faltered as he gazed at her coldly. The tableau was held in silence for a full minute. Then Christopher Milton turned to David Meldrum and said, unfairly, ‘Come on, we should be rehearsing if we're to get this number in by tonight.'

‘And are we?'

‘Yes, we bloody are. For Christ's sake assert your authority.' Which was rich, coming from the person who had done most to undermine it.

I Beg Yours?
was in the show on the Tuesday night. It was under-rehearsed and a little untidy, but the audience loved it. Once again, Christopher Milton's instinct seemed to have been vindicated. The reaction to the rest of the show was mixed, but they latched on to that number.

Ruth was out front. Charles had given her a ticket, though after their silent parting in the morning he wasn't certain that she'd come. However, there she was at the stage door after the show. When he saw her, he felt an awful sense of shame. It was not exactly that he was ashamed of her, but he felt wrong with her. He tried to hurry her away, but Michael Peyton called out to him just as they were leaving, ‘Hey, everyone's going out for a curry. You want to come?'

Charles started to refuse, but Ruth chipped in and said she hadn't eaten and would love to go.

He hated the meal, because he hated being thought of in conjunction with Ruth. He knew how cruel it was to resent someone's company in that way and the knowledge only made him feel guiltier. Ruth, on the other hand, enjoyed herself. Surprisingly, Christopher Milton and Dickie Peck had joined the party, the star having decided to be one of the boys for a night, and he chatted up Ruth shamelessly. She luxuriated in this and Charles, embarrassed by her naive questions and provincial tastes, was annoyed to find that he felt jealous too. To be jealous about a woman whom he was embarrassed to be with, it all got far too complicated to cope with. He drank heavily and wished Frances were there.

Ruth was drunk too and drove back unsteadily, chattering about Christopher Milton, to the grim inevitability of bed.

There was a small paragraph in the
Yorkshire Post
on the Wednesday morning, which mentioned the mugging of Kevin McMahon. From the management's point of view, it could have been worse. It didn't make a big issue of the incident and, on the bonus side, it was a free advertisement for the show.

The morning's rehearsal schedule was more work on
I Beg Yours?
, which didn't involve Charles, so, hoping to shrug off the depression engendered by the scene with Ruth, he set off for the home of Kevin McMahon's parents. Remembering a mention of Meanwood in their conversation in the pub, he easily found the right McMahons in the phone book and rang them to check that Kevin was out of the Infirmary.

He travelled by bus. The pebble-dash semi had a two-tone doorbell.

Mrs McMahon was small and sixtyish, with fuzzy white hair. She went on about how nice it was for one of Kevin's friends from the play to come along and treated Charles like one of her son's school friends. She also muttered regretfully about this terrible thing happening to Kevin on the night of his great triumph.