by Simon Brett
Gordon Tremlett looked at him aghast. ‘Me, love? No! I have the most terrible head for heights – stand on a weighing machine and I get dizzy. No, no. Anyway, I can’t be bothered with technical things when I’m on stage. Leave all that to the stage management. I’m always giving all my concentration to my performance.’
Yes, ensuring that it’s so unconvincing it wouldn’t be tolerated in any amateur dramatic society in the country, Charles thought. That reminded him of the review, and of Frank Walby. ‘Have you seen this week’s Gazette?’
This got a predictable actor’s response. ‘And how, love! Not a bad little spread, eh?’
Obviously sheer quantity of coverage had erased the memory of Frank Walby’s qualitative strictures. Still, the journalist had obviously interviewed Gordon for the front page article. Might be worth probing a little.
‘Frank Walby wrote it, I see.’
‘Oh yes. Phoned through agog to talk to me, absolutely agog.’
‘Did you mention his review?’
Gordon Tremlett’s face took on a saintly expression. ‘I think, Charles, something an actor has to learn . . .’ He paused, and a note of reproof entered his voice, as if Charles had obscurely offended ‘. . . is magnanimity in the face of criticism. It is not for me to cast judgement on Frank’s aberration, just to feel sorry for his circumstances.’ In an elaborate whisper, he added, ‘He drinks, you know.’
So that was it. The review had now been dismissed as a symptom of alcoholic dementia. The punctures in Gordon Tremlett’s ego had been repaired and it had been reinflated.
Charles allowed a silence to ensue. He knew exactly what he wanted to say next, but he wanted to present it with that what-on-earth-can-I-think-of-to-say-next desperation common to all hospital visits.
‘It never occurred to you, I suppose, Gordon, that the hanging was anything other than an accident?’
‘Charles! What on earth do you mean?’
‘Well, the rope had always been the right length before. Why should it suddenly be wrong?’
‘What, you mean someone was trying to get at me?’
Charles shrugged. ‘It’s an idea.’
‘Yes, it is. How thrilling.’ Gordon seemed captivated by the suggestion, gleefully contemplating all of its dramatic possibilities. He no doubt had visions of inviting back all of the Rugland Spa Players to his bedside for sessions of intriguing speculation.
‘You’re suggesting, Charles, that someone might actually have tampered with the rope?’
‘As I say, just an idea.’ Charles made it sound as much as possible as if he was suggesting a game of I-Spy or some other device to while away the afternoon.
‘Yes, well, I suppose anyone could have gone up into the flies and tampered. It was all right for the matinée on Wednesday, and there’s never anyone in the theatre between the matinée and the evening show. Everyone rushes out to grab a drink or a bite to eat . . .’
‘Right. So anyone who wanted to would have been pretty safe going up to the gallery and sabotaging the tackle.’
‘Yes. Oh, Charles, how exciting!’
‘Very unlikely to have been seen doing it.’
‘You’re right.’
‘The question is – who?’
‘Well, if they weren’t seen, we’ve no way of knowing.’
Gordon had obviously never gone through the mental processes involved in detective investigation.
‘No, start from the other end. If anyone had been seen tampering with the rope, it would probably have come out by now. Instead, let’s try and think who might want to tamper with the rope.’
‘Sorry, not with you, love.’
Good God, how had someone as thick as this managed to run a bank?
‘I mean – who might want you out of the way?’
‘Oh, I see.’ The seriousness of the idea struck Gordon. ‘Oh, I’d never thought of it like that.’
‘No. Well, would you say you had any enemies in the company?’
‘Oh, I don’t think so. I mean, I’m just another actor, like the rest of you, you know, mucking in, sharing the knocks, the ups and downs of theatre life, the cameraderie of the company . . .’
Dear oh dear. Soon he was going to burst into ‘Born In A Trunk’, or produce a piano from under the bedclothes and say, ‘Let’s do the show right here!’
‘Okay, if you haven’t got any enemies, do you perhaps know something about someone that they might want suppressed?’
‘Sorry?’
‘People do have secrets. You might have stumbled on something they’d rather have kept quiet.’
‘Oh, I’m with you. Well now, let me see.’ He looked round with elaborate caution. ‘I know that Laurie and Nella are having an affair.’
‘Gordon, the whole company knows that.’
‘Do they?’
‘Yes. Anything else?’
‘Well . . .’ Again the Official Secrets routine. ‘I have a strong suspicion that Kathy Kitson’s hair is not naturally blond.’
Charles sighed. This was uphill work. ‘That’s hardly the sort of secret someone’s going to commit murder to keep quiet.’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘But there’s no one else about whom you know anything discreditable?’
‘I don’t think so, no.’ Charles rose. ‘Well, except for Tony.’
‘Tony?’
‘Well, perhaps this is telling tales out of school . . .’
‘You can’t stop there.’
‘No.’ Excitement at the drama of the situation quickly overcame Gordon Tremlett’s scruples. ‘Well, I don’t know if I’d mentioned this to you, love, and if I haven’t, I think you may have difficulty in believing it – but before I came into the business I used to be a bank manager.’
‘No, Gordon. Really?’
‘Oh yes. Here in Rugland Spa. And Tony had his account at my branch and . . . well, be wasn’t very good at managing his money.’
‘What, anything criminal?’
‘Oh no, love. Just incompetent. Always asking for overdrafts, you know, always hard up.’
‘Aren’t we all?’ said Charles, to keep the conversation light.
Gordon looked puzzled. ‘Are we?’
‘Never mind. So Tony was always bad with money?’
‘Terrible. With his own money, that is. He seemed to run the theatre all right, but his own affairs were in a terrible mess.’
‘Did the theatre have its account at your bank too?’
‘No.’
So in fact Gordon Tremlett didn’t know how Antony Wensleigh ran the theatre’s financial affairs. But he might have been about to find out. Donald Mason had asked him to look through the theatre’s books to check some ‘inconsistency’.
But Gordon Tremlett never got round to checking that ‘inconsistency’. Before he could do it, he was nearly killed by an ‘accidental’ hanging.
Chapter Nine
A DISTURBING NUMBER of variables fitted into the new scenario. Casting Antony Wensleigh in the role of villain explained a great deal which had hitherto been obscure. For a start, it made sense of the Artistic Director’s anxious air of abstraction and his somnambulistic approach to the production of Shove It. If, as Charles was beginning to suspect, Tony had had his hand in the till of the Regent for some years, all the current demands for enquiries would naturally be very disturbing for him. And the threat of investigation by his former bank manager, who had no illusions about his financial affairs, might lead the Artistic Director to extreme measures.
Or maybe he had other reasons for wanting to silence Gordon Tremlett. Maybe there was something else that an investigation which questioned the actor might reveal. Charles wondered. The odd thing about Gordon Tremlett’s status was how he had become a professional actor so late in life. His talent was not so exceptional for anyone to make an effort to secure his services, and yet he had got his full Equity card. The only way he could have done that was to be given one of the Regent Theatre’s two provisional
cards granted annually, and after great competition, to two Acting A.S.M.s, usually straight out of drama school. Why should Tony Wensleigh have awarded one of these prizes to Gordon? Previously Charles had just taken this as another example of the Artistic Director’s bumbling bonhomie, based on his life-principle, ‘I like everyone to be happy’. But his new suspicion put the incident in a more ominous light. Maybe Tony’s magnanimity was in fact some sort of payment for services rendered. Had his bank manager showed especial liberality in the granting of overdrafts on the understanding that his way into the professional theatre would thus be eased?
If that were the case, it was not something that would do any credit to Tony Wensleigh if it came out in the course of an enquiry. And it provided a further reason for silencing the former bank manager.
Another variable which slotted in with unappealing logic when Tony was cast as the villain was the attack on Charles himself. Hitherto his recollections of the evening of the stabbing had been lost in a blur of alcohol, but now the new concentration of his mind brought its events into sharp focus.
He recalled, with great accuracy, the whispered conversation he had had with the Artistic Director backstage, persuading a sceptical Tony Wensleigh of his fitness to play Sir Reginald De Meaux. Charles remembered the excess of eloquence in which he had asked what threat was posed by ‘one slightly drunken middle-aged actor’. It was not, he had said, as if he were about to expose the Artistic Director, denounce him to the Board, reveal a long history of fraud and peculation.
It had been random word-spinning, but to a man who actually had a long history of fraud and peculation, it must have sounded horribly pertinent and implied stores of knowledge of which Charles was innocent.
So Charles Paris, like Gordon Tremlett, had to be silenced. And only his drunken doze had made that silencing ineffective.
Charles shivered at the thought, because presumably he still posed a threat to the increasingly paranoid Artistic Director, and presumably there might be another attack.
He did not think that Tony Wensleigh was a deliberate criminal, just a weak man who had slipped into an escalation of crime. His first financial fiddling had probably arisen out of incompetence, and then increased until he could not manage without it. As its scale grew, so had his fear of exposure, which had led him to the two attempted murders. Like Watergate, the cover-up had been worse than the original crime.
But unfortunately, the new scenario remained conjectural. Charles had no hard evidence that Tony had been responsible for the two attacks. Nor did he even have evidence of any of the financial misdemeanours.
But he had a feeling that Donald Mason might be building up a dossier on those. In spite of his occasional assertions that he must support his colleague, the General Manager was clearly having to spend too much of his time dealing with Tony’s administrative failures. The booking of the rehearsal room was just an example of negligence, but the incident of the hire of the Henry VIII costume was potentially more serious. If Tony really had hired it for a private function and slapped the charge on to the theatre’s account, that might be symptomatic of a general tendency to regard the theatre’s funds as his own private bank.
These petty malpractices might be overlooked in an Artistic Director of undoubted flair, but there now also seemed to be big question marks over Tony Wensleigh’s artistic judgement. Choosing a play as totally inappropriate to Rugland Spa as Shove It was not an action likely to inspire confidence, and the way he was directing the piece was equally disturbing.
If Tony was into wholesale fiddling, Charles wondered for a moment why it hadn’t come into the open earlier, but decided that Donald Mason’s arrival a year before had stirred things. From all accounts, the previous General Managers of the Regent had been lazier, less forceful individuals, no doubt content to let the Artistic Director run his own company without too many questions as to how he was doing it.
Of course, Charles reflected, most of his suspicions against Tony arose from things he had heard from Donald Mason. But he felt inclined to believe them. His respect for the General Manager had risen considerably since their first meeting. Donald had shown such surprising humanity over his drunken lapse that Charles felt a debt of gratitude. Donald had also, in the face of opposition from Tony, offered Charles the new part in Shove It.
And he really did seem to care about the welfare of the Regent. Provincial theatres were very weak institutions and needed all the support they could get. It was a great bonus when someone of Donald Mason’s undoubted administrative flair channelled his energies in their direction.
And if he had come to the theatre as General Manager to discover, presumably gradually, that the Artistic Director was not only lowering the artistic standards, but was also guilty of criminal malpractice, it must have put him in a very difficult position. The theatre was too exposed to survive a public scandal, and yet if its Artistic Director was a positive liability, some action would have to be taken.
And it would have to be taken before the Artistic Director took any further action himself. If Charles’ conjecture was correct and Tony Wensleigh had deliberately tried to silence both him and Gordon Tremlett, then anyone else who knew anything to his discredit might also be under threat.
With Donald Mason as the most obvious next target.
Bad habits are quickly born, and on the Wednesday evening Charles decided that, his absence from the matinée curtain call having passed unremarked, nobody was very likely to notice whether or not he was there for the evening one. He therefore hastily shuffled off Sir Reginald De Meaux’s mortal tweeds, and slipped out of the theatre towards the adjacent pub. He needed a quiet pint and a think.
There was a phone-box between the Stage Door and the pub door. He hesitated by it for a moment, contemplating ringing Frances, but then decided he’d do that with more confidence after a drink.
Armed with the requisite pint, he moved into the corner of the bar. It was fairly empty, that sagging time of the evening when the drink-after-work crowd have reluctantly returned to their loved ones and the drink-before-bed crowd have not yet arrived. Act Two of The Message Is Murder was still unwinding its tortuous convolutions, so there were no refugees from the Regent. The pub was given over to the dedicated drinkers, and Rugland Spa was far too nice an area for there to be many of those.
The ones who were there seemed to be on their own, so there was little conversation, except from the girl and boy behind the bar discussing cavity wall insulation. Of the customers only one old lady talked. She was probably on her own too, though that didn’t prevent her from directing her monologue to a crumpled figure who sat at the same table, with his back to Charles.
‘You see, I know you,’ the old lady asserted, after a slurp of bottled Guinness. ‘Soon as you come in here I recognized your face. You come in here often, don’t you?’
‘Oh yes, an habitué of all the pubs,’ the slumped figure agreed. ‘Here, the George, the Railway Inn, the King’s Arms, Hare and Hounds, you name it.’
‘Thought so.’ The old lady nodded her head complacently. ‘Never forget a face, I don’t, never. Got one of those photographic memories, I have.’ She continued nodding, rather too long, in a way that left some doubt as to her mental fitness. ‘Your name’s George, isn’t it?’
The slumped figure was unable to agree with this.
‘Oh well . . .’ The old lady didn’t seem put out by her error. ‘I knew a George once. Funny, he was. Used to wait outside the Convent and drop his trousers. Up the Angel, this was. You know Islington? Had a nice budgie, he did. Wanted me to take it when they took him to the Old People’s. I said, no, I can’t be doing with birds. All that cleaning out the cages, millet in your carpets . . . ooh, no. Not for me. Can you be doing with birds?’
‘No.’ The man had reached that stage of drunkenness when he would agree with anything. Perhaps he even regretted saying his name wasn’t George. Anything for a quiet life.
‘My daughter got a bird. Canary, hers is. Don�
��t like that either. Not that I’d tell her. No, I’m grateful to her. She took me in when I had to move, didn’t let me go to the Old People’s. Not like George. So I wouldn’t breathe a word against that bird, not in her presence. Might be hurtful.’ She took a contemplative swig of Guinness. ‘Still don’t like it, though. Doesn’t even talk. Can’t see much point in having one that doesn’t talk. I mean, there’s no other point to them, is there? You’d think if you got one that didn’t talk, you’d take it back. You would if it was a washing machine,’ she concluded sagely and finished her Guinness. She held the glass up a long time, so that all the beige bubbles could drain down into her mouth.
Whether this was a deliberate hint, or whether he had just finished his own drink and felt full of alcoholic bonhomie, this prompted her companion to offer her another, which she simperingly accepted.
It was when he rose to get the drinks that Charles recognized the man as Frank Walby, theatre critic and arts correspondent of the Rugland Spa Gazette & Observer. He had the chipped plaster cherub look of Dylan Thomas. As Charles thought this, he realized that Walby’s voice had the even lilt of Welsh in it. Local boy, probably. Rugland Spa was not that far from the Welsh border. Charles drained his own pint and joined the critic at the bar, where the latter was trying to distract the staff from discussion of their heating bills.
‘Frank Walby, isn’t it?’
The arts correspondent agreed, without surprise, that it was. He had reached that stage of drunkenness when nothing seems incongruous, when the sudden appearance and conversation of strangers are part of a blurred natural sequence.
‘I have to thank you for a very nice review in the Gazette.’
‘Eh?’
‘For the show at the Regent.’
‘Oh.’ Frank Walby hiccoughed a laugh. ‘You can’t mean the current production. No nice reviews there.’
‘Yes, I do. My name’s Charles Paris.’
‘Oh.’ The memory of the name had been eroded by alcohol.
‘The dead body,’ Charles prompted.
‘Oh. Oh yes.’ Walby laughed again. ‘Rather back-handed compliment, though.’
