Death of a Scriptwriter hm-14

by M C Beaton

  She arose early on the first day of filming and dressed carefully. The weather was fine, unusually fine for the Highlands of Scotland, with the moors and tarns of Sutherland stretched out benignly under a cloudless sky. She put on a Liberty print dress – good clothes lasted forever and did not date – and a black straw hat. Had the postman not decided to change his schedule and deliver the mail to Patricia’s end of the village first, then her feeling of euphoria might have lasted longer, but a square buff envelope with her publishers’ logo slid through the letter box.

  She picked it up, sat down at the table and slit it open with an old silver paper knife which had belonged to her father.

  She pulled out six glossy book jackets.

  She stared down at them in shock. Certainly the old title was there – The Case of the Rising Tides – and her name in curly white letters, Patricia Martyn-Broyd. But on the front of the jacket was a photograph of Penelope Gates, a nude Penelope Gates. Her back was to the camera, but she was holding a magnifying glass and looking over one bare shoulder with a voluptuous smile. Larger than Patricia’s byline was the legend ‘Now a Major TV Series, Starring Penelope Gates as Lady Harriet.’

  On the back of the jacket was more advertising for the TV series, along with Jamie Gallagher’s name as scriptwriter, Fiona King as producer, then a list of the cast.

  Her hands trembled. What had gone wrong? She had seen such detective stories on the bookshop shelves but had never bought them, assuming that the writer was some hack who had written the books from television scripts rather than being an original writer.

  Angry colour flooded her normally white face. A naked woman portrayed as her Lady Harriet – elegant, cool, clever Lady Harriet!

  She went to the sideboard and took out a bottle of whisky which she had won in a church raffle the previous year, poured herself a glass and drank it down.

  Then she phoned Pheasant Books in London and demanded to speak to her editor, Sue Percival, whom she considered much too young for the job.

  “Hi, Patricia!” said Sue in that awful nasal accent of hers which always made Patricia shudder.

  “I have just received the book jackets,” began Patricia.

  “Great, aren’t they?”

  Patricia took a deep breath. “They are disgusting. I am shocked. They must be changed immediately.”

  “What’s up with them? I think they’re ace.”

  “What has a naked actress to do with the character I created? And who is going to buy this? The covers make me look like some hack who has written up the book from the TV series.”

  “Look here,” said Sue sharply, “you want to sell your book, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, the bookshops will take a good number if it’s going to be on TV. Without that book jacket, we may get very low sales indeed. I am sorry you feel this way. We’ll see what we can do when your next book is reprinted.”

  The angry flush slowly died out of Patricia’s cheeks.

  “Are you there?” asked Sue.

  “Yes, yes,” said Patricia in a mollified voice. “You must understand I know little about marketing.”

  “Leave it to us, Pat,” said Sue. “You’ll be a star.”

  Patricia said goodbye and slowly replaced the receiver. Another book to be published. And what did it matter what they put on the cover? It was her work the public would be reading.

  ♦

  Josh Gates awoke around his usual time, eleven in the morning. He remembered that Penelope was due to start filming that day. He smiled. He felt unusually well. Penelope had begged him to slow down on his drinking, and he only had a couple of pints the evening before. He was pleased with Penelope. The money was good, and this detective series would make her name. No more would people think of her as some sort of trollop.

  Josh had strangely old·fashioned ideas. Films on Sky and cable television channels were full of writhing, naked bodies, but he ignored all that. Penelope taking off her clothes for anyone but him reflected badly, he thought, on his masculinity.

  He had given his promise that he would not appear on the location. Penelope had hugged him and said that it would spoil her acting.

  He wondered idly how to spend his day. He decided to go down to John Smith’s bookshop in St. Vincent Street and find something to read.

  He crawled out of bed and picked up the clothes he had discarded the night before and put them on.

  The bookshop, as usual, was crowded. He thumbed his way through several paperbacks and then, on impulse, asked an assistant whether he could look at the catalogue of forthcoming books.

  She handed him an autumn catalogue, and he thumbed down the index until he found Patricia Martyn-Broyd’s name. He turned to the page indicated and found himself staring down at a full-page spread advertising The Case of the Rising Tides. The book jacket was there in all its glory. He glared at the naked photograph of his wife and let out a roar of, “Slut!” The bookshop assistants went calmly about their work. Any bookshop had its daily quota of nuts as far as they were concerned.

  Sweating with fury, he went to the map section and jerked out a road atlas, blinking to clear his fury-filmed eyes until he located the village of Drim. Then he bought an ordnance survey map for the Sutherland area and strode out of the shop, taking great gulps of air.

  “I’ll kill her!” he yelled to an astonished passerby.

  Two policemen strolling along St. Vincent Street stopped for a moment and looked at the retreating figure of Josh.

  “Nutter,” said one policeman laconically.

  “I know that one,” said the other. “Thon’s Josh Gates, married to that actress. Probably drunk.”

  “How do you know him?”

  “Booked him for drunk and disorderly last year.”

  “Who’s he going to kill?”

  “Only himself, the way that one goes on. Fancy a hot pie?”

  ♦

  Fiona sat in Drim Castle in her makeshift office, biting the end of a pencil. She was upset at the script for the first episode. But her protests had caused Jamie Gallagher to throw the scene of all time and threaten to get her sacked. “Back off,” Harry Frame had told her. “BBC Scotland want Jamie’s work, and that’s what they’ll get.”

  But Fiona felt her job was going to be little more than a gofer, as Jamie fretted about camera angles and lighting. He had quarrelled not only with her, but with the production manager, Hal Forsyth, and with the director, Giles Brown.

  Jamie had also tried to get Sheila Burford fired after he had tried to get into her room at the hotel. Sheila had phoned reception, and a couple of burly gamekeepers from the Tommel Castle Hotel estate had forcibly removed Jamie from outside her door.

  But Harry Frame refused to be moved on the subject of Sheila. “That lassie has potential,” he said, meaning, thought ‘ Fiona bleakly, that he wanted to get into Sheila’s knickers as well.

  Despite the blazing sunshine outside, the inside of the castle was cold and dark.

  She sighed and ran over the budget again. If only Jamie would get well and truly drunk and fall into a peat bog and disappear forever.

  ♦

  Hamish Macbeth, entering Drim Castle half an hour later, looked like a pointing gun dog, thought Sheila as she met him in the hall. His nose was in the air, and one leg was raised as he halted in midstride.

  “What’s that smell?” he asked.

  “I can’t smell anything,” said Sheila, blue eyes limpid with innocence. “Oh, maybe it’s the joss sticks. They’re starting with the commune scene in the first shot.”

  “That’s pot,” said Hamish.

  “Cannabis? Oh, I’m sure you are mistaken. We’re all drunks here.”

  Nose sniffing busily, Hamish moved forward.

  “You’re imagining things,” said Sheila as Hamish headed inexorably for Fiona’s office. She raised her voice and shouted, “You cannot possibly believe that any of us would smoke pot!”

  Hamish opened the door
of Fiona’s office and went inside. The window was wide open.

  “Why, it’s Mr. Macbeth from Lochdubh,” said Fiona. Hamish went to the window, which was on the ground floor. He leaned out and picked up a roach from the flower bed and then held it up before Fiona. “Yours?”

  “Look here, Constable,” said Fiona, “I’m under a lot of stress. It’s not cocaine. If you ask me, pot should be legalised. It’s a harmless, recreational drug.”

  “I picked the pieces o’ a driver out from his car after it had gone over a cliff last year. He’d been smoking your recreational drug. I’m a policeman and it’s not legal, Miss King.”

  “Call me Fiona.”

  “Whether it’s Fiona or Miss King, you are breaking the law.”

  Fiona saw her career falling in ruins before her eyes, and all because of one measly joint.

  She reached for her handbag. “Perhaps this matter can be sorted out amicably, Officer.”

  “Don’t even think of bribing me,” said Hamish. “You’re in bad enough trouble as it is.”

  “I wasn’t going to bribe you,” said Fiona, near to tears, although that had been her intention. “I was just going to show you how little of the stuff I have.”

  “Then show me.”

  Fiona took out a packet and handed it over.

  Hamish turned round and said to Sheila, “Close the door.”

  Sheila closed the door and came to stand behind Fiona.

  “It’s the people up here that could do with your money,” said Hamish. “I have no wish to disrupt the film. I’m giving you a warning. Don’t let me catch you or anyone else with this stuff again.” He put the packet in his pocket and threw the roach back out of the window.

  Fiona sighed with relief after he had left. It was not as if she were addicted to the stuff. That was the great thing about pot. You could take it or leave it. Still, there was a little left in that roach. She climbed out of the window and began to look for it.

  ♦

  In her caravan, Penelope put on her costume for the opening shots and thanked her stars that Josh was safely in Glasgow. It consisted of a gauzy, near-transparent Indian gown under which she was to wear nothing. The first scene was to be shot with the members of Lady Harriet’s commune on the shore of Loch Drim. Penelope had planned her future on the journey north. When the series was filmed and just about to be aired, she would take her final payments and put them in a new account in her name only. She would tell Josh that payments had been delayed to explain why the cheques did not appear in their remaining joint bank account. Then she would leave him and go to London, and with any luck he would drink himself to death before he found her.

  A girl arrived to do her makeup, and then Sheila came to drive her down to the set. “I wonder what the locals are going to think of that getup,” said Sheila, “not to mention our famous author.”

  “I won’t have to cope with it,” said Penelope. “That’s Fiona’s job.”

  ♦

  There was quite a large audience on the waterfront to watch the first day of filming. Dressed in sixties Beatles style, the hippies wandered about, smoking and chatting. “What do you think of your leading man?” Sheila asked Penelope as they moved forward to join the others.

  “He’s all right,” said Penelope, who privately thought that Gervase Hart, who played the part of the chief inspector, was painfully like Josh in drunkenness and bad temper. But she had learned quickly in her career never to criticise any actor. “He doesn’t appear in this scene, so I won’t be seeing him today.”

  “Places,” called the director, Giles Brown, a thin, nervous man with a straggly beard.

  Sheila helped Penelope out of her coat. There was a gasp from the assembled locals.

  Her costume did not leave much to the imagination, thought Hamish as Penelope’s voluptuous curves were revealed by the thin gown.

  The cast had rehearsed their lines over and over again in a cold, grimy church hall in Glasgow. The Highland day was sunny and warm, and there was an air of gaiety about the cast.

  Then a voice cried, “Stop! This cannot go on!”

  Everyone turned round. The little minister, Mr. Jessop, was thrusting his way to the front of the crowd.

  “That woman is nearly naked!” he shouted.

  Fiona moved quickly forward. “It’s only a film, Mr. Jessop,” she said placatingly.

  The minister was red with anger. “I will not have such goings-on in my parish.”

  Then Hamish saw Patricia’s car driving down the hill into Drim. More trouble, he thought.

  Patricia got out of her car and edged her way to the front of the crowd, saying in her authoritative voice, “I am the writer. Let me through.”

  Then she stopped, aghast at the sight of the hippies and the nearly naked Penelope, and all the joy of getting yet another book back in print fled from her mind. “What is this travesty?” she asked in a thin voice.

  The minister swung round, sensing an ally. “Just look at that woman,” he cried, pointing a shaking finger at Penelope.

  Patricia looked and quickly averted her eyes.

  “It’s like this, Minister,” said Jamie Gallagher with a false smile and truculent eyes. “Lady Harriet is head of this commune in the Highlands, and – ”

  “My Lady Harriet!” Patricia was now as white as she had been red a moment before. She had consoled herself on the road over with the thought that the naked Penelope Gates on the cover of her book had just been a publicity stunt. Had she not seen weird and wonderful covers on paperback editions of Dickens? But for this slut to play Lady Harriet, noble, gallant, intelligent Lady Harriet, was past bearing.

  “I forbid it,” she said. “There is nothing in my book about any hippie commune.”

  “There’s nothing in your book that’s filmable,” said Jamie. “Och, calm down, woman. It’s just a bit of poetic licence.”

  “I shall have it stopped!”

  “You can’t do anything about it,” said Jamie. “You signed the contract.”

  Patricia stared at Fiona. “Is this true?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “And who is this man?” demanded Patricia, who had forgotten what Jamie looked like.

  “This is Jamie Gallagher, our scriptwriter.”

  “You are a charlatan,” said Patricia to Jamie. “Why say you are going to film my book and then change the whole thing?”

  “I am making it suitable for television,” said Jamie. “Can someone get this woman off the set and keep her off?”

  “You are not filming pornography in my parish,” howled the minister.

  “I think we should all go to the castle and talk this through,” said Fiona.

  ♦

  “How are things going in there?” Hamish asked Major Neal.

  “Stormy, I think. I’m sorry for Miss Martyn-Broyd. She seems to be in shock.”

  “They seem quieter now,” said Hamish, cocking an ear in the direction of Fiona’s office. “I’m surprised to hear that BBC Scotland think so highly of Jamie. You wouldn’t think he could write anything intelligent.”

  “Oh, did you see Football Fever?”

  “Who didn’t?” replied Hamish. Football Fever had been a television documentary on the lives and passions of Scottish football fans. It had been witty, clever and fascinating and had sold all over the world.

  “Well, that was Jamie’s script.”

  “You can’t tell a book from its cover,” said Hamish sententiously.

  “It’ll probably look all slick and clever when we see the finished result.”

  “You could be right,” said Hamish. “Here they come.”

  The minister emerged with Fiona, Giles Brown and the production manager, Hal Forsyth. They were all laughing and chatting.

  “So that’s all settled,” said Giles, clapping the minister on the back.

  “Most generous of you,” said the minister.

  Greased his palm, thought Hamish.

  Then came Jamie, who strode pa
st without a word. Where’s Patricia? wondered Hamish.

  When they had all left, he found her sitting alone in Fiona’s office, clutching a script.

  She looked up and saw Hamish. Her eyes were bleak. “I’ll kill him before I let him get away with this.”

  “Who?”

  “Jamie Gallagher. I told him right in front of all of them. ‘I’ll kill you.’” She began to cry.

  Hamish sat down next to her and put an arm around her shoulders. “There now,” he said. “Just think about your books.”

  “I am thinking about them,” sobbed Patricia. “Look, at this!”

  She unfastened the clasp of her large handbag and took out one of the book jackets.

  “Oh, my,” said Hamish. “The things they do. But I saw a paperback of Jane Austen’s Emma and if you didn’t know the work, you’d have thought it was porn. Before I came up to the castle, I saw some press down by the waterfront. Why don’t you go and say your piece to them? It pays to advertise.”

  Patricia dried her eyes and blew her nose. “It’s all a nightmare. I just want to forget about the whole thing. It’s the end of a dream.”

  “You’ll have a whole new readership. It could be the start of the dream.”

  “I don’t want the sort of readers who will be attracted by that cover.” Patricia put the cover back in the handbag and closed it with a snap. “What happened to the world?” she said, looking about her in a dazed way.

  It moved on and left you behind, thought Hamish, but he did not say so.

  After he had said goodbye to Patricia, he went back to the waterfront. “How did you square it with the minister?” he asked Fiona.

  “Contribution to the church – and that.” She pointed at Penelope.

  Penelope was in the same gown, but underneath she wore a long silk underdress.

  “Cleaning up the act?”

  “Oh, we’ll have the saucy bits in a set where we can keep the public out,” said Fiona. “Where’s Patricia?”

  “Gone home to have a good cry, I should think. Why the hell buy her book if you want to change it that much?”

  “We wanted a Scottish location, and the plot isn’t bad. She should be grateful and shut up.”