What Bloody Man Is That (11 page)

‘Oh, don't worry. I don't need much sleep. Anyway, once I've been woken up, that's it for the night. I never get back to sleep.'

‘Thank you, Mr Scholes. Shall we go up to your office?'

‘Fine. See you in the morning, Charles.'

‘What, we'll be rehearsing as usual?'

‘We must. Ten o'clock call, as ever. Somehow I've got to get this show on.'

‘What show is it you're rehearsing on at the moment, Mr Scholes?' the policeman asked politely.

‘Macbeth.'

‘Oh. That's the play that's meant to be bad luck, isn't it?'

‘Yes,' said Gavin wryly. ‘
The Scottish Play
.' Then the implication of Warnock's death struck him again. ‘Oh Christ, I'll have to get another Duncan.' He looked hopefully at Charles who was walking past him with concentrated caution. ‘Charles, I wonder if you'd mind . . .?

‘Sorry.' A shake of the head. ‘Not that I don't want to help out, but I am the Bleeding Sergeant, aren't I? I think I'm as versatile as the next actor, but even I can't envisage standing up on the stage and saying, “What bloody man is that?” to myself.'

‘No. No,' said Gavin wistfully. ‘Pity . . .'

The police kindly drove Charles back to his digs. When he got up to his room, and before he collapsed into the long-desired haven of bed, he looked through the curtains to the road outside.

The police car was still there.

A chill thought struck him.

Was the alcohol making him paranoid?

Or was he under surveillance?

THE NEXT morning the police car had gone, so Charles shrugged off his anxieties. Or at least he would have done, if shrugging hadn't been far too painful an activity for the delicately poised time-bomb which was now balanced on top of his neck. He had the worst hangover he could remember.

The gentle September light seemed to laser through his eyeballs into his brain. He took one look at his landlady's bacon, eggs and fried bread and had to leave the dining room, thus causing irremediable damage to their relationship – his landlady was one of those women whose emotional life is conducted solely through the medium of food and for whom every unconsumed crust or potato-skin is a mortal affront.

He couldn't face the claustrophobia of a bus, so he walked to the Pinero, arriving a little after ten. But the fresh air didn't help.

And what greeted him at the theatre did little to improve his mood. He was met at the Stage Door by the policeman of the night before who, courteous as ever, said, ‘Mr Paris, good morning. As I mentioned last night, I would like to talk to you a little further. Mr Scholes has kindly said that we may use his office, so if you'd care to come up with me straight away . . .'

‘Oh yes. Fine. But I am meant to be rehearsing. Perhaps I'd better have a word with Gavin to –'

‘That's quite all right, Mr Paris. I have spoken to Mr Scholes. I won't keep you any longer than necessary.'

‘Oh. All right.'

They didn't speak again until they were up in Gavin's office. It was a crowded room, its every surface high with copies of
Spotlight,
scripts, set designs and the other impedimenta of theatre production.

The policeman sat at Gavin's desk and indicated a low chair for Charles. ‘Mr Scholes' secretary was kind enough to offer to make us coffee if we wanted any.'

‘It would be very welcome. Black, please.'

‘Of course.'

The policeman, like a good host, went to the door and arranged the order. Then he returned to the chair. He looked very alert, in good condition for someone who had presumably been up most of the night.

‘Sorry,' said Charles. ‘I didn't get your name in all the confusion.'

‘Detective Inspector Dowling.'

‘Ah.'

The Detective Inspector looked up as someone entered the room. It wasn't the coffee. Instead, Charles was aware of the other plain-clothes policeman of the night before moving silently to take a chair in the corner behind him. ‘Detective Sergeant Halliwell will once again be taking notes. We have to have a record, obviously.'

‘Of course.'

There was another pause while Gavin's secretary brought in the coffee. Charles gulped at his too avidly, burning his tongue.

When the door was safely closed behind the secretary, Detective Inspector Dowling, who had yet to touch his own coffee, looked directly at Charles. ‘Mr Paris, how well did you know Mr Belvedere?'

‘I only met him about ten days ago, when we started rehearsal. Before that I'd heard a certain amount about him, but we'd never actually met.'

‘How had you heard about him?'

Charles shrugged. Incautiously. It still wasn't a good idea. His head felt as fragile as ever. ‘The theatre's a fairly small profession. You hear about people. Particularly the so-called “characters”. Stories tend to build up about people who're “larger than life”.'

The Detective Inspector nodded. ‘And what had you heard about Mr Belvedere?'

‘That he was an actor of the old school . . .'

‘Could you clarify what that means for . . .' A helpless gesture of the hands ‘. . . a mere layman?'

‘I suppose that it means Wamock worked in a more flamboyant style than modern actors. More expansive . . . if you like, more hammy . . .' Charles caught the incomprehension on the Detective Inspector's face, ‘. . . likely to be a bit over-the-top . . .' That evidently wasn't much clearer, ‘. . . tended to overact a bit . . .'

‘Ah. Thank you. I understand. And what else did you hear about him?'

‘That he could be difficult.'

‘Difficult for whom in particular?'

‘For a director. Actors of that generation don't really think directors are necessary, just kind of jumped-up stage managers. They think all the important bits of theatre come from the actors themselves.'

‘Thank you. This is fascinating, Mr Paris . . . you know, for me, coming into a place like this, knowing, I regret to say, very little about the theatre and theatrical people . . .' He paused, then changed his tone. This, Charles was beginning to recognise, was a technique with the Detective Inspector. First he would disarm with courtesy, then come in hard with the questions he really wanted to ask. ‘Would you say Mr Belvedere was liked amongst the group?'

It sounded wrong, the word ‘group'. ‘Company' he should have said. But then, by his own admission, he knew nothing about the theatre.

Still, there was only one answer to the question. ‘No. He wasn't liked. I mean, some people were amused by him – he could be very funny, though usually in a pretty vicious way – but I would be lying if I said he was liked.'

‘Hmm.' The Detective Inspector paused again. ‘Did you know that Mr Belvedere was homosexual?'

‘Well, yes, obviously . . .' Charles shrugged again. Ooh, he must stop doing that. ‘But I mean, in the theatre, so many people are, you don't really think about it.'

‘No, I suppose not.' For the first time, Charles caught a whiff of prejudice in the Detective Inspector's voice. For all his politeness and ingenuous enquiries, the man seemed to be building up a personal case against the theatre and theatrical people. Perhaps he was one of those who had always thought of actors as drunken, effeminate layabouts. If that were the case, what he had seen during the previous six hours would have done little to dispel the impression.

‘I gather from Mr Scholes that Mr Belvedere was also a heavy drinker.' The ‘also' suggested the Detective-Inspector was compiling a catalogue of the dead man's moral shortcomings.

‘Yes.'

‘From the way he was found last night, one might assume that he had drunk a whole bottle of brandy.'

‘Yes.'

‘He also, I gather, had had a fair amount in the bar in the course of the day . . .?'

‘Yes.'

‘Surely that would be an excessive amount for him to drink?'

‘Excessive, yes, but not out of character. I mean, he was notorious for going on benders.'

‘I gather quite a few actors do that . . .'

‘Some.' Charles found himself avoiding the Detective Inspector's eye.

‘Do you think it possible that Mr Belvedere broke into that store-room in search of alcohol?'

‘Well, one doesn't want to speak ill of the dead . . .'

‘Much as I appreciate your delicacy, Mr Paris, I'm afraid we in the police sometimes have to ignore such niceties.'

‘Of course. Well, yes, then I would say it is possible. When I spoke to him before going into my dressing room last night, he did express an intention to get very drunk.'

‘Did he?' The Detective Inspector's head shook slightly in disbelief at the existence of people who behaved like that. ‘Hmm, well, that would certainly conform with our findings so far. It'll have to be checked, but it seems fairly certain that Mr Belvedere's walking stick was the instrument used to force the padlocks on the door and cupboard.'

‘Ah.'

There was another silence, before the next question was posed with studied casualness. ‘What do you think Mr Belvedere died of, Mr Paris?'

‘I'm sorry?'

‘Seems a straightforward question. What do you think killed him?'

‘Well, I hadn't really thought.' It was true. In the shock of discovering the body, and in the alcoholic haze in which he had discovered the body, Charles had not asked himself this basic question. ‘I don't know. I suppose, a heart attack . . .? A stroke . . .? He was grotesquely overweight. Or maybe just alcoholic poisoning . . .?'

His interrogator shook his head. ‘None of those. He died of asphyxiation.'

‘You mean he was strangled?'

‘No, no. We don't have to be so melodramatic, Mr Paris. Asphyxiation simply means the obstruction of the body's respiratory system. You don't have to strangle someone to achieve that. There are many other ways of cutting off the supply of air to the lungs.'

‘So what do you think happened in this case?'

‘Well, we'll have to get it confirmed by forensic tests, but the police doctor's made a few educated guesses. I'll tell you what we think, because it's possible you might have some evidence to support our theories . . . you know, having been on the spot when it happened . . . albeit dead to the world at the time.' This time there was no mistaking the edge of contempt in the Detective Inspector's look.

‘Right, here's a scenario for what might have taken place. Mr Belvedere leaves the bar at closing time. He's had a lot to drink, but, being an alcoholic, he still wants more. He goes down to his dressing room and waits. You see him down there, but he presumably doesn't know that you stay in the building. He switches out the light in his dressing room, so that the Stage Doorman won't realise there's anyone there when he does his final rounds before locking up.

‘When he's confident that the theatre's empty, Mr Belvedere, by now desperate for a drink, makes for the store-room. Using his walking-stick as a lever he forces open the door and then does the same to the lock of the cupboard. He steals a bottle of brandy and starts drinking it down, there on the spot. The brandy, on top of all the other alcohol he's had in the course of the day, makes him stagger around a bit, and that's when he pulls down the beer pipelines. Or maybe he just does that out of spite, or to make it look as though it's been an outside raid by kids . . . it's not really important which, the important thing is that the lines get broken.

‘Then, finally, the alcohol gets to him, and he passes out, flat on the floor.

‘Unfortunately, though, when the beer lines got broken, so too did the lines carrying gas to pump the beer. That gas, of course, is carbon dioxide, and an elementary knowledge of chemistry will tell you that it's heavier than air and so sinks to the ground. When it gets to the ground, it forces out the oxygen and so, for anyone who happens to be lying there, it's really rather bad news. Particularly in a room where there's a step up to the door, so that the gas stays trapped on the floor. Of course, someone in normal health would react, would rise to his feet when he started to have difficulty breathing. But for someone who was lying there in a drunken stupor . . .' The Detective Inspector shook his head ‘. . . I'm afraid it's going to be very bad news indeed.'

‘And that's what you think happened?' asked Charles.

‘Seems a reasonable assumption. Subject to confirmation, as I say. See what comes out at the inquest. But yes, that's the way it looks at the moment.'

‘So you think it was an accident?'

Detective Inspector Dowling's eyes narrowed. ‘The only alternative to it being an accident, Mr Paris, would be murder.'

‘Yes.'

The policeman sighed. ‘I know actors make their living by dramatising things, but I don't think it's really necessary in this case. Looks like a straightforward accident to me. I don't think we need set in motion all the paraphernalia of a murder enquiry.'

‘Then why are you telling me all this?' Charles was, in part, relieved that the threat of his being a murder suspect had lifted, but he was also intrigued about the reasons for his interrogation.

‘You were on the spot, Mr Paris. You may have seen something that invalidates my theory.'

‘Well, yes, I did, actually.' Charles leapt in without thinking of the implication of his words.

‘Oh yes?' The Detective Inspector was suddenly alert. Once again he had snapped from casual courtesy to incisive interrogation. ‘And what was that?'

‘The brandy bottle.'

‘What about it?'

‘Did you find a second brandy bottle?'

‘No. Just the one.'

‘And you know it came from the store-cupboard?'

‘We assume that.'

‘Because when I saw Warnock, before the store-room had been broken into, he already had a bottle of Courvoisier.'