What Bloody Man Is That (10 page)

‘Are you okay?'

The figure of Gavin loomed over him. Russ Lavery's anxious face was also just on the edge of his field of vision.

‘Yes, yes, I'm fine.' Charles knew the words were coming out slurred, and hated himself for it. Without dignity, he pulled himself up against the bar and, in an unsuccessful attempt at insouciance, waved a furry ‘Goodbye' to the assembled throng before making his ignominious exit.

The stairs to the foyer had taken on the quality of an escalator, and he moved down them gingerly, hand gripping what seemed to be a moving rail. He staggered through the pass-door and strode resolutely but elliptically along the passage.

This involved passing the open door of Warnock Belvedere's dressing room. The old actor's huge body was piled on top of a defenceless plastic chair. He was swigging from a full bottle of Courvoisier, but he cocked his monocled eye at Charles's erratic approach.

Finishing his swallow, he observed with relish, ‘What a bloody shambles of a day.'

‘Hear, hear.' Charles's hand found the support of the door-frame, which proved to be further away than it looked.

‘Nothing you can do with a day like this but get well and truly plastered.'

‘That,' Charles agreed, with a bizarre attempt at poise, ‘has been my solution to the problem.'

‘The ideal now, in fact, to complement this bottle . . .' He waved the Courvoisier. ‘. . . would be a nice juicy little bumboy.'

‘Ah,' said Charles.

‘Not your sort of thing, is it . . .? By any chance . . .?'

In his fuddled state, it took Charles a moment to realise that he was in fact being propositioned. The idea seemed incongruous. He didn't know whether to be flattered or insulted.

But he wasn't too drunk to know that he should refuse the offer. ‘Sorry,' he mumbled apologetically. “Fraid it's never appealed . . .'

‘Ah well,' Warnock mused. ‘Don't know what you've been missing.' He took another swig from the bottle. ‘I'll have to content myself with just the booze.' He looked appreciatively at the Courvoisier. ‘What it is to have a generous friend.'

Charles suddenly felt almost faint from weariness. ‘Must go. Tired out. Just get my coat and . . .'

He eased off the door-frame and propelled himself towards his own dressing room. His eyelids were weighted with lead.

He pushed through the door. The light from the passage illuminated the chair in front of his mirror, and he made towards it without bothering to switch on the dressing room light.

At the third attempt, he slumped into the chair. By then the door, self-closing as the fire regulations demanded, had clicked shut and he was in the dark.

But he didn't mind. He lowered his head gratefully on to the table in front of the mirror, and, in a matter of seconds, Charles Paris was asleep.

HE WOKE WITH a head like a hornet's nest, a mouth like a blocked drain, and a desperate need to pee.

For a moment he didn't know where he was. The darkness was total. Then, remembering, he felt along the table towards a light switch.

The sudden blaze drove red-hot nails into his eyes. He blinked in agony. Not time to get to the Gents along the passage. He used the wash-basin noisily, comforting himself with the thought that some of the old actor-laddies reckoned that brought good luck.

He swayed erratically until he had overcome the apparently insuperable problem of doing up his zip. Then he looked at his watch.

Ten to three. Ugh. He must get back to his digs.

There was no light in the passage outside. Oh no, the Stage Doorman must have thought the theatre was empty, and locked up. God, he might be stuck in there till the morning. That'd give the rest of the company a good laugh, he thought ruefully.

He found a switch in the passage and deluged himself with more scalding light. He made his way gingerly towards the Stage Door, hoping against hope that it might just be secured on a latch that could be opened from the inside.

As he edged along, he noticed that the door to Norman's store-room was open. Curious, he moved closer.

The padlock had not been unlocked, but one of the rings to which it was attached had been wrenched away from the door-frame. The screws still stuck forlornly out of the metal plate.

There was no light in the store-room, so he found the switch and once again light seared his eyeballs.

When he had stopped blinking, he stepped down into the room and looked at the scene that greeted his aching eyes.

The padlock on the spirits cupboard had also been forced, and one or two bottles had crashed on to the floor. Also, a couple of the tubes which ran from the kegs to the ceiling had been pulled down.

And on the floor, in the middle of this chaos, face-down, lay Warnock Belvedere.

Beside him was his walking stick. Ragged scrapings on its shiny surface suggested that it had been used to force the padlocks.

In Warnock's hand the bottle of Courvoisier was still clasped. It was empty. Beer from one of the broken plastic pipes bubbled fitfully over the thick tweed of his suit and into his stained beard.

God, the old soak must have been desperate. Finished the brandy bottle and still needed more. So he'd broken into the store-room, tried first to get some beer, and then attacked the spirits cupboard.

As Charles Paris looked down at the crumpled, sodden heap on the floor, and as his own head throbbed like an old dishwasher in its final cycle, he swore that he would never touch another drop.

Oh well, better wake the old bugger up, he thought. See if we're both going to be locked in here for the night.

He reached down to shake the prostrate actor's shoulder, but got no response.

He shook harder; then turned Warnock over on to his back.

The face revealed was grotesquely more purple and congested than usual.

Nobody was going to wake up Wamock Belvedere.

Ever again.

CHARLES TRIED the Stage Door and the main doors in the Foyer. He tried the delivery door through which he had helped Norman with the beer kegs and he even tried the big shutter door of the scenery dock. They were all firmly locked from the outside.

He was imprisoned in the theatre with the corpse of Warnock Belvedere.

It gave him an uncomfortable feeling. He was unwilling to go back and look at the body, for in his imagination it had become more grotesque, the colour more livid, the eyes more bulging. Charles shuddered at the image. He felt ghastly. Apart from anything else, his head still seemed to be full of disgruntled piranha fish, nibbling away at it.

He would have to summon help. He went up to the administration area. The Artistic Director's door was locked, but fortunately Gavin's secretary had an extension line in the outer office. Charles picked it up. The dialling tone prompted him to wonder whom he should ring.

Obviously the police. But maybe he should ring Gavin first. After all, the Pinero was Gavin's responsibility; he should be informed of the accident as soon as possible.

Yes, the director first, then the police.

Gavin lived alone. There had been a wife for some years, but because of his obsession with the theatre, she had rarely seen her husband. And when she finally walked out, Gavin had hardly noticed her absence.

The phone was answered on the third ring. Gavin sounded fully alert. Maybe he had been awake, agonizing over his production and how he was going to make up the lost rehearsal time. If that was the case, the news Charles was about to give wasn't going to ease his troubles.

‘Gavin, it's Charles Paris. I'm calling from the theatre.'

‘Why the hell are you there?'

‘I got locked in by mistake.'

‘And you want me to come and let you out?'

‘Maybe, but in fact it's worse than that. Warnock Belvedere's here too.'

‘You and Warnock staying behind . . . well, there's a turn-up. What were –?'

Charles cut through this untimely attempt at humour. ‘Listen, Wamock's dead.'

There was a silence from the other end of the phone. Then, in an appalled whisper, Gavin Scholes' voice said, ‘What, in my theatre?'

The police voice which answered the phone was impassive as it took down the details of what had happened. Or if the voice had any colouring at all, it was a tone of slight sceptical disbelief. Charles cursed all the alcohol he had had that night. He knew his speech was still slurred.

He explained that the theatre was locked, and gave them Gavin's address, so that the keys could be picked up. Yes, Mr Scholes would be awake; they had just spoken on the phone.

Right. The police would be along as soon as possible. Would Mr Paris please remain where he was until they arrived.

Fat bloody chance of doing anything else, he thought as he put the phone down.

The theatre was aggressively silent now, and it seemed full of the looming presence of Wamock Belvedere's body.

Charles shivered again. God, he felt terrible. Really needed a drink. As he walked down towards the foyer, he looked wistfully through the padlocked grille of Norman's bar.

For a moment, he thought of the open store-room downstairs All those bottles. Or easy enough to fill a glass from the dribbling beer tubes . . .

But no. He didn't want to confront that congested face again.

Besides, he was going to give up the booze. Wasn't he?

The police were there in ten minutes, but it was a long ten minutes for Charles Paris. They came in through the Stage Door and he met them in the passage which led to the dressing rooms. There were two uniformed officers, but he could hear the sounds of other cars drawing up outside.

Charles felt very weary and unsteady. His words, he knew, were still fuzzy with drink, and he did not miss the sceptical exchange of looks between the two policemen as he showed them where Warnock Belvedere lay.

They thanked him politely and asked where they could find a telephone. They asked if he would mind waiting in the theatre for a while. In his dressing room? Yes, that would be fine. They wouldn't keep him longer than was necessary.

In the dressing room, Charles's head once again found the cushion of his table, and once again he dropped into a dead, unhealing sleep.

‘Excuse me, sir. Mr Paris.'

His shoulder was being shaken, and it took him a moment or two to realise where he was.

The policeman who was waking him was a new face. Not in uniform, this one.

There was another unfamiliar figure in the doorway, and, beyond, he could see the anxious face of Gavin Scholes.

‘Sorry,' Charles mumbled through a mouthful of slimy cotton-wool. ‘Middle of the night, you know. Very tired.'

‘Yes, very tired, I'm sure, sir.' Was he being hypersensitive to hear a hint of reproof in the policeman's voice? Oh, why on earth had he drunk so much?

‘We don't want to keep you here longer than necessary this evening. But we would be most grateful if you could just describe exactly what happened.'

‘What, you mean when I found Warnock . . . the, er, body?'

‘Well, yes, and before that. We've spoken to Mr Scholes about the earlier part of the evening. If you could take it from the moment that you left the bar at closing time . . .?'

Suddenly the two policemen were sitting and one had a pencil poised over a notebook to take down Charles's words.

There didn't seem much to tell. Charles had spent most of the time between leaving the bar and discovering the body in an alcohol-induced stupor. How much detail did they want, he wondered. Did he have to tell them about peeing in the wash-basin? He decided to edit that detail out of his account.

‘Why didn't the Stage Doorman realise that you were still in the theatre?'

‘My dressing room light was not switched on.'

‘That seems rather strange. Why were you sitting in the dark?'

‘Well, I just . . . I just didn't switch it on.'

‘I see.' The words were delivered without emphasis, but their implication was apparent. The policeman turned to the door where Gavin still waited.

‘Mr Scholes, would the Stage Doorman check that all the dressing rooms were empty?'

‘He should do, yes.'

‘So, if he didn't, you're saying he was failing in his duties?'

No, that wasn't at all what Gavin wanted to say. His Stage Doorman had been at the Pinero for eleven years, and Gavin was very loyal to his staff. Somehow, these policemen had a way of making everything sound suspicious.

‘Let's just say that on an evening like this the Stage Doorman might be more casual than when we've got a show on.'

‘I'm sorry. Could you explain that?'

‘I mean that, while we're in rehearsal, there are fewer people around by the end of the evening. When there's a play actually in performance of course all the cast would be here till late, and there'd still be a lot of members of the public in the bar and so on.'

‘Ah. I see. Thank you very much, Mr Scholes.' The unemotional tone was evenly maintained.

‘Mr Paris, could you describe exactly what you saw when you went into the store-room? And, indeed, why you went in there in the first place?'

Charles explained about seeing the forced padlock, and described what he saw in the store-room. He knew he didn't do it very well. The words seemed too big for his mouth, and many of them got mixed up between his brain and his tongue.

At the end of his recitation the policeman thanked him politely and asked for the address where he was staying.

‘I don't think we need keep you any longer this evening, Mr Paris. I'm sure the best thing for you to do will be to go back to your digs and . . . sleep.'

Again Charles wondered if he was unduly sensitive to that hesitation. Had the policeman really just stopped himself from saying, ‘. . . sleep it off'?

‘Yes. Sure. Thank you.' He rose gracelessly to his feet.

The policeman also rose and turned to Gavin. ‘I would like to talk to you a little more, Mr Scholes, about the late Mr Belvedere. If you don't mind . . .? I realise it is very late.'