Murder in the Title

by Simon Brett

  ‘But –’

  ‘I’m sorry, Charles, but my mind’s made up and nothing’s going to shift me.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Tony . . .’ The drink was also making him unusually pertinacious and eloquent. ‘Look, what threat am I to you? What harm can one slightly drunken middle-aged actor do to your “position as Artistic Director”? What do you think I’m going to do – expose you, denounce you to the Board, reveal a long history of fraud and peculation?’ He paused after this flight of rhetorical hyperbole. ‘All I’m going to do is to go on stage and be a dead body. I haven’t even got any lines to cock up. Please, Tony. Please let me do it.’

  At this point Tony Wensleigh gave a classic demonstration of his qualities as a decision-maker. ‘Okay, Charles,’ he said. ‘You go on. But don’t show me up.’

  What appeared from the auditorium to be the interior of a cupboard was a little niche made of two small flats. The third side, invisible from out front, was not there, allowing easy access for dead bodies. But space backstage was so cramped by the large box-set of Wrothley Grange that Charles had to spend most of the act in position. And once inside the cupboard, its miserly proportions offered him the alternatives of standing bolt upright against the back flat or sitting with his legs twisted through the cleats and stage weights that supported the set. Charles had always found standing preferable.

  The flats of the cupboard were old and had been used many times. On the back of one was scribbled ‘Uncle Vanya – Act Two’, on the other ‘When We Are Married – L. Fireplace’, and these scrawls perhaps reflected their original provenance. But the stretched canvas had been repainted many times and many colours since then, and contributed to a wide variety of theatrical experiences.

  The feel of the thick paint was comfortingly familiar against Charles’ hands, as he stood against the back wall of his cupboard. Must stand, mustn’t lean, he kept telling himself. His full weight could easily overtopple a flat and, since most of the others were nailed together with lathes at the top, might easily bring down more. He had already done enough wrong that evening; he didn’t want to add the total collapse of Wrothley Grange to his misdemeanours.

  But he did want to lean against something. The uncontrollable phase of his drunkenness had passed, to be replaced by a deep, deep tiredness. The heat of the stage lights through the canvas door before him, the familiar backstage smells of sawdust, size and dusty drapes, and the relentless banalities of Leslie Blatt’s dialogue, all contributed to his fatigue. He just wanted to go to sleep.

  If he just closed his eyes for a little . . . just for a little, he wouldn’t miss his cue. He closed them, then opened them again with a start as he lurched against the back of his cupboard.

  No, be safer if he sat down. Just for a minute. Professor Weintraub was still going on about bird-watching, so he’d be safe for a little doze. Just a little doze.

  A noise very close woke him. A strange noise, a sudden ripping, a tearing of cloth. It seemed to come from just above his head.

  He looked up, blinking in the darkness. But even as he did so, he heard Lady Hilda De Meaux asking her maid if she’d mind getting one of the folding card-tables out of the cupboard by the fireplace.

  ‘No, of course not, milady,’ Wilhelmina replied, and the door of Charles’ sanctum swung open, flooding him with light.

  And in that light he saw something sticking through the flat at the back of the cupboard.

  Then he saw Wilhelmina’s startled face looking down at him, and realized that his recumbent position was totally obscured from the audience with a large sofa.

  Instinctively trying to save the act, he leapt up with a throttled cry, staggered forward to his correct dying position and fell with what he thought was not a bad death-rattle.

  It was only as he lay still and heard the edge in Kathy Kitson’s voice pronouncing the curtain-line that he realized he had completely buggered up the play’s plot. Professor Weintraub was going to need a great deal of confidence to make his assertion in Act Two that, from his examination of the corpse, it was clear that Sir Reginald had been dead for at least eight hours. Oh dear, more recrimination.

  There certainly was, plenty, as soon as the curtain fell. Kathy Kitson was the most vociferous, but none of the cast showed much charity to Charles.

  He hardly noticed. He let the abuse wash over him. His mind was fixed elsewhere.

  It was fixed on what he had seen at the back of his cupboard when the door opened. Clear in the light, before it was hastily withdrawn, he had seen the sharp blade of the prop duelling sword.

  It had been thrust with some force through the canvas of the flat from backstage.

  And, but for the drunken lapse which had moved Charles from his usual position, the sword would have gone straight through him.

  Chapter Four

  ‘COURSE, I’VE HAD drunks before . . .’ Mimi drew her pale green candlewick housecoat round her with the confidence of a woman for whom the world could hold no surprises. ‘Oh yes, lot of my gentlemen been drunks.’

  Charles grunted. At half-past nine in the morning the last thing he wanted to hear about was Mimi’s ‘gentlemen’.

  ‘Mind you, real drunks they was, most of them. I mean, drunks on the grand scale.’

  So even his drunkenness was to be disparaged. Mimi was capable of disparaging anything. Why, not for the first time Charles asked himself, did he never end up with the theatrical landladies one always heard about, the ‘treasures’, the motherly ones, the ones for whom no trouble was too great? They did exist, they must exist – too many actors talked about them for their existence to be complete fiction. There were even, if the stories were to be believed, sexy landladies, whose bed and breakfast were really worth having.

  But Charles Paris never ended up with them; he always got the Mimis of this world, the censorious, the resentful, the mean, the . . . God, Mimi couldn’t even cook. He looked down with distaste at waxy eggs which had brought half the frying pan with them, and wooden fried bread which had brought the other half. A pair of tomatoes shrivelled like used condoms. And her tea . . . Some vital ingredient seemed to have been omitted from its making. Tea, perhaps.

  Granted, he was not in much of a state to appreciate any food. Nausea bobbed like an extra uvula in his throat. But even in that condition he could recognize the true horror of Mimi’s culinary efforts.

  ‘One drunk I had – Everard Austick. You met him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Now he was a drunk. Completely lost his senses when he’d had a skinful. Came home one night so drunk he told me I couldn’t cook. Imagine that.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Said I cooked like an Irish labourer mixing cement.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Didn’t mean it, of course. Ate up his scrambled eggs like a lamb the next morning.’

  That’s what made Mimi so difficult to deal with-her unassailable confidence. Whatever was said to her, whatever complaint about her sloppy housekeeping, she seemed impervious. Worse than that, she took everything as a compliment. Her self-image remained perfectly intact. She saw herself as the lovable figure of the theatrical landlady who always eluded Charles.

  ‘Always comes back, Everard Austick, when he’s working Rugland Spa. All my gentlemen always come back. It’s like home from home with you, Mimi, that’s what they all say.’

  God, thought Charles, a lot of actors are supposed to have depressing home lives, but not many of them could be that bad.

  And yet what she said seemed to be true. She kept a visitors’ book, and Charles had not escaped scanning its pages. And there was the evidence – names, dates, comments – ‘Just like being back with Mum’, ‘Ee, you spoil me, Mimi’, ‘Lovely as always’ . . . Did she practise some mass sorcery on her victims? Or had her very first theatrical gentleman lost his nerve and, by putting something nice in the visitors’ book, embarrassed all his successors into doing the same?

  Charles was determined that, when his stay was up, he would
write exactly what he really thought of Mimi’s hospitality. But, even as he had the thought, he felt his conviction drain away and knew that he would succumb like all the others to smirking insincerity.

  ‘Oh yes, I seen drunks,’ she reiterated. ‘All the famous ones stay with Mimi. Ask specially to stay with Mimi. Because, you see, they know I’ll never pass judgement, never tell them how contemptible they are.’ With this, she flashed Charles a look of withering judgement and total contempt.

  ‘Oh yes, they all stay with Mimi. You name them, they’ve stayed with me.’

  ‘George Frederick Cooke?’ Charles hazarded maliciously.

  ‘Oh yes, he always comes. Whenever he’s in the area he pops in to see Mimi.’

  Another of Mimi’s little charms was name-dropping. Whoever was mentioned, she knew them; and if discussion ensued, she knew them better than the person she was talking to.

  ‘What about Edmund Kean?’ Charles continued recklessly. ‘Has he stayed with you?’

  ‘Just the once,’ said Mimi tartly. Then she again looked sharply at her guest. ‘Oh, did I say – there was a telephone message for you?’

  ‘No, you didn’t.’

  ‘From the General Manager at the theatre.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I didn’t wake you. Told him you was sleeping it off.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Mimi.’

  ‘Think nothing of it. Anything for my gentlemen.’ She gave a sickly smile, as usual obscuring whether she was aware or not of her own ironies. ‘Anyway, he wants you to go and see him.’

  No surprise, really, thought Charles. Long time since I’ve been sacked. The prospect gave him a perverse pleasure; it was the logical culmination of the previous day’s kamikaze behaviour.

  ‘When does he want to see me?’

  ‘Soon as convenient, he said.’

  ‘I’d better go straight away.’ Charles rose.

  ‘Oh no, you’ve got time to finish your eggs.’

  Charles sank back into his chair.

  The administrative office was at the top of the Regent Theatre, above the bar. When Charles entered, it was empty. The room, snatched out of storage space as an afterthought, was cramped but, compared to most of the theatre administrative offices he had seen, well organized. Its tidiness, he thought, probably reflected the mind of the General Manager. Donald Mason, it seemed, had been with the Regent less than a year, but had made a quick impression on the efficiency of the theatre. His predecessors, according to Gordon Tremlett who knew about such things, had been, to a man, creatures devoted to the principle of minimum effort.

  An in-tray and an out-tray were neatly aligned on the desk, with a telephone and intercom placed exactly between them. The in-tray was empty, a commendable sign of industry at that time in the morning. The out-tray was fairly full, and on top of it was a hand-written note.

  The writing was recognizably tiny. Charles had received a good-luck note in the same hand on the opening night of The Message Is Murder.

  He couldn’t read the note in the in-tray without crossing the room to peer at it. Which he knew he shouldn’t do.

  But which, with the recklessness of a man about to lose his job, he did.

  The note read as follows:

  SORRY ABOUT THE TOTAL COCK-UP OF EVERYTHING.

  NO EXCUSES.

  YOURS ABJECTLY,

  TONY

  Oh dear. What was the Artistic Director’s latest feat of mismanagement?

  Charles heard a movement outside the door and moved hastily across to the other side of the room. Donald Mason entered in another of his executive suits, looking grimly flustered.

  ‘Sorry, Charles, won’t keep you a minute. One important call I must make.’ The General Manager dialled without disturbing the symmetry of the telephone’s position on his desk. ‘Ah, Mr Hughes. Donald Mason here, Regent Theatre. Just checking the position on the Drill Hall. Yes, yes, that’s what I heard. Hmm. No, of course I can see your point of view.’ The General Manager sighed. ‘Oh yes, I did mention it to him, but it must have slipped his mind. Yes, well, he’s got a lot on his plate, particularly when he’s in rehearsal for a show. Yes, I agree, he always does seem to be in rehearsal for a show. Well, we must make allowances, mustn’t we? The old artistic temperament, eh? What? Oh, yes. Anyway, no hard feelings on my side. Mr Hughes. You gave us plenty of warning and, if it’s booked, it’s booked. Okay, sorry again. ’Bye.’

  He put the phone down and looked at Charles with a grim smile. ‘Sometimes, you know. I feel like one of those men who follows a big parade with a shovel and cleans up after the horses. Except it’s a one-man parade that goes by the name of Antony Wensleigh.’

  ‘Ah.’ Charles didn’t feel he could comment on the Artistic Director’s behaviour.

  ‘Know what he’s done now? Only lost us the Drill Hall for rehearsals. Caretaker told us weeks ago the Badminton Club wanted to book it, but he’d hold it for us so long as he got written confirmation. Which he didn’t get – and guess who should have done it?’ He sighed. ‘So now we’ll have to get somewhere else as of the week after next, and that’s going to cost us more, and once again the budgeting all goes up the spout and . . . Still, I shouldn’t burden you with my problems.’

  ‘No.’ Then Charles volunteered, ‘I rather assume that I have problems of my own.’

  ‘Yes. So you know why I’ve asked you to come here.’

  Oh God. The interview was beginning to sound like something out of a Billy Bunter school story. Charles wondered whether he should have stuffed a newspaper down the back of his trousers.

  Donald Mason looked at his out-tray. Seeing Tony Wensleigh’s note, he casually picked it up, folded it and put it in his inside pocket. No need to advertise the Artistic Director’s lapses. He then picked up the next piece of paper from the tray. ‘I’ve had a report from the Stage Manager about your behaviour during last night’s performance.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You were late for the “half”, and then, when it came to the moment – and I use the word advisedly – of your performance, you did not play your part as rehearsed, and the general opinion seems to have been that you were . . .’

  Charles finished the sentence for him. ‘Smashed out of my mind.’

  ‘Yes.’ The General Manager paused. ‘A lot of people would regard such behaviour as grounds for dismissal.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve talked to Tony about it, and he says there’s no question about it – you should go.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re just contracted for the one show?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Oh, for God’s sake, get on with it. ‘And my role is hardly onerous. It won’t be difficult to get someone else rehearsed up to take over.’

  ‘No.’

  Oh, get on with it. What else is there to say? But Donald seemed hesitant. It was unlikely that someone with his abrasive manner would have difficulty in sacking an actor, but maybe he was finding it awkward. Charles decided to help him out.

  ‘Obviously I’m sorry for the trouble I caused, but I fully understand that you have no alternative but to show me out and –’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that.’

  Donald Mason’s words were so unexpected that Charles gaped at him.

  ‘No, Charles, there are alternatives.’ Then, with surprising gentleness, the General Manager continued, ‘People usually have a reason for getting drunk. What is it – domestic problems?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Woman?’

  For a second Charles felt tempted to spill it all out, to succumb to pathos, to plead for sympathy. But, hell, no. He couldn’t define the situation with Frances to himself, let alone spell it out to a stranger. ‘No, I just got drunk. I sometimes go on these benders. I know it’s unprofessional and stupid, but . . .’ He shrugged.

  ‘Hmm. My inclination, Charles, is always to give people a second chance.’ This again seemed inconsistent with Donald Mason’s brusque image. ‘If you want
to stay, I’m prepared to ignore Tony’s opinion and let you. What do you say?’

  Charles felt embarrassingly emotional. ‘Well, I . . . er . . .’

  ‘I mean I’m sure it’s not the sort of thing that’s going to happen again.’

  This was once more back to the headmaster’s study. I’m going to give you one more chance, Paris, and I’m going to trust you, because in my experience most chaps respond to trust.

  ‘So tell me, do you want to stay in the show?’

  ‘Well, yes, I would be very grateful if . . .’ Mumble, mumble, grovel, grovel.

  ‘Good, that’s settled then.’ The General Manager screwed up the Stage Manager’s report and threw it into his waste paper basket. ‘You know, I think part of the trouble for you is that you’ve got so little to do in this show.’

  ‘Maybe. I think we should try to get you more involved in the company. Perhaps there’ll be a part in another of our forthcoming productions.’

  ‘Well, that’d be very . . .’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  At that moment the intercom on Donald’s desk buzzed and a female voice crackled, ‘Mrs Feller in the foyer. She wants to come and see you about Shove It.’

  ‘Oh God. Okay, send her up.’ Donald Mason rose from his desk and straightened his tie. ‘Have you come across the redoubtable Mrs Feller, Charles?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You will. She’s Rugland Spa’s answer to Mrs Whitehouse. A one-woman Puritan Backlash, who only comes to the theatre to count the number of letters in the words.’

  ‘So she isn’t going to care for Shove It.’

  ‘No. There’ll be protest meetings, picketings, strong letters to the local paper . . . Honestly, what a bloody stupid choice of play for Rugland Spa. Over half the population’s past retirement age – they’re hardly going to lap up the Anglo-Saxon diatribes of Royston Everett.’

  ‘The theatre’s got to do some modern stuff.’

  ‘Modern, yes, but it doesn’t have to be obscene. I sometimes think Tony’s judgement has gone completely. He’s just lost touch with reality.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘Still, again not your problem, Charles. Anyway, with regard to you, we’ll leave things as they are – Okay?’