by Simon Brett
‘It must be. You can only respond to art if you identify with the artist. That’s how I worked. I’d read into everything someone had written, until I felt the person there at the centre. And then I’d identify. I’d become that person and know how to react to their work.’
‘You’re reading English, I assume.’
‘No, History.’
‘Ah.’
‘Just taken my degree.’
‘O.K.?’
‘Yes, got a First.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘Not that it means anything.’ Martin’s mood suddenly gave way to gloom. ‘Nothing much does mean anything. I criticise Hood for not believing in things and there’s me . . .’ He looked up sharply. ‘Have you read my play?’
‘No, I’m sorry. I will get round to it, but—’
‘Wouldn’t bother. It’s rubbish. Nothing in the middle.’
‘I’m sure it’s going to be very interesting.’ Charles tried not to sound patronising, but was still greeted by a despairing snort. Martin rose suddenly. ‘I must go. I’m late. Got to rehearse Mary. The composer’s body not yet decomposed and we rehearse.’
‘You’re punning yourself, like Hood,’ said Charles, trying to lighten the conversation.
‘Oh yes. I’m a punster. A jolly funny punster.’ Martin let out one of his abrupt laughs. ‘A jolly punster and a murderer. I killed him, you know.’
‘No. You were the instrument that killed him.’
This struck Martin as uproariously funny. ‘An instrument. Do you want to get into a great discussion about Free Will? Am I guilty? Or is the knife guilty perhaps? Where did the will come from? The knife has no will. I have no will.’
‘Martin, calm down. You mustn’t think you killed him.’
‘Why not? The police think I did.’
‘They don’t.’
‘They asked so many questions.’
‘It’s the police’s job to ask questions.’
‘Oh yes, I know.’
‘Why? Have you been in trouble with them before?’
‘Only a motoring offence, sah!’ Martin dropped suddenly into an Irish accent.
‘What was it?’
‘Planting a car bomb, sah!’ He burst into laughter. Charles, feeling foolish for setting up the feed-line so perfectly, joined him. Martin’s laughter went on too long.
But Charles took advantage of the slight relaxation of tension. ‘Listen, the police can’t think you did it. No one in their right mind would commit murder in front of a large audience.’
‘No,’ said Martin slyly, ‘no one in their right mind would.’ This again sent him into a paroxysm of laughter. Which stopped as suddenly as it had begun. He looked at Charles in a puzzled way, as if he did not recognise him. Then, in a gentle voice, ‘What’s the time?’
‘Twenty-five to eleven.’
‘I should be at rehearsal.’ He rose calmly. ‘Do try to read my play if you can.’
‘I will.’
‘See you.’ He slouched out of the room.
Charles lay for a moment thinking. Martin seemed to be on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The end of finals is a stressful time for most students. Charles suddenly recalled the state he had been in after Schools in 1949. Three years gone and then the apocalyptic strain of assessment. How good am I? What will I do in the real world? Or, most simply, who am I?
He tried to imagine the effect of a shock like Willy’s death on someone in that state. A harsh cruel fact smashing into a mind that could hardly distinguish reality from fantasy. Inside his sick brain Martin might think he was a murderer, but Charles felt sure he was not. Martin Warburton needed help. Medical help possibly, but certainly he needed the help of knowing that he was only an unwitting agent for the person who planned the murder of Willy Mariello. The facts had to come out.
And the show had to go on. He turned to the script. On sober reflection, though the day before’s run-through had been promising, there was a lot that needed improvement. Particularly the Pathetic Ballads. They should have been the easiest part of the programme with their well-spaced jokes and obvious humour. But it was hard to find the balance between poetry and facetiousness. He concentrated and began to recite Tim Turpin.
Tim Turpin he was gravel blind,
And ne’er had seen the skies:
For Nature, when his head was made,
Forgot to dot his eyes.
So like a Christmas pedagogue—
‘Um. I’m so sorry.’ Brian Cassells was peering apologetically round the door.
‘Yes?’
‘Look, I’m sorry to break into your rehearsal, but I wonder if you could give me a hand to carry something.’ And So Much Comic . . . was shelved again.
Outside the Office stood Willy Mariello’s forlorn guitar in its black case, leaning against a large amplifier. It had been brought up from the Masonic Hall after Tuesday’s drama. By the door was a thin girl with long brown hair and those peculiarly Scottish cheeks that really do look like apples. Tension showed in the tightness of her mouth and the hollows under her eyes. ‘Charles, this is Jean Mariello. Mrs Mariello, Charles Paris.’
She nodded functionally. ‘I’ve come to collect Willy’s things.’
‘Yes. Charles, I wonder if you could give me a hand with this amplifier. If we just get it out on to the street, I’ve phoned for a taxi.’
‘O.K.’ Brian was patently embarrassed and wanted to get rid of Jean Mariello. His administrative ability did not run to dealing with recent widows.
They placed the heavy amplifier on the pavement. Willy’s wife followed with the guitar. Brian straightened up. ‘I’d better go. I’ve got some Letrasetting to get on with.’
‘What am I going to do the other end?’
Brian paused, disconcerted by her question. Charles stepped in. ‘It’s all right. I’ll go with you. I wanted to go over that way. Off Lauriston Place, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh . . . Oh well, that’s fine. I’ll go and get on with the . . . er . . . Letrasetting.’ Brian scuttled indoors.
Charles felt he should say something fitting. ‘I’m sorry.’
Jean Mariello shrugged. ‘Thank you.’
The taxi arrived and they travelled for a while in silence. Charles felt the need for some other inadequate condolence. ‘It must be terrible for you. We were all very shaken.’
‘Yes, it’s been a shock. But please don’t feel you have to say anything. Willy and I weren’t love’s young dream, you know.’ The accent was Scots and she spoke quietly, but there was a hard note in her voice.
‘Did you live together?’
‘Up to a point. Though one or other of us always seemed to be touring or something.’
‘You’re a musician too?’
‘Yes. I sing in folk clubs. Not Willy’s sort of music. We grew apart musically as well as everything else.’ She leant forward and tapped the glass partition. ‘If you drop us just here . . .’
Meadow Lane was lined with grey houses, considerably smaller than those of Coates Gardens. They had the dusty shabbiness of the Old Town. Most of the windows were shrouded with grey net. But on the house they stopped by the windows were clean and unveiled.
Charles let Jean pay the driver. She turned to him. ‘Can you manage that on your own? It’s heavy.’
It certainly was. Also an awkward size. His hands could not quite clasp round it. But he was determined to manage.
As she opened the front door, he noticed a worn stone slab over it which dated the house: 1797. Inside, however, the place had been extensively modernised. There was no sign of a fireplace in the front room, but there were new-looking central heating radiators. Everything gleamed with fresh white paint. There was even a smell of it. The room was empty of furniture, but a ladder and a pile of rubble in the corner indicated decorating in progress.
He lowered the amplifier gratefully on to the uncarpeted floor. ‘Would you mind putting it against the wall there where people can’
t see it? The catch has gone on the window and I don’t want to encourage burglars.’
Another effort moved the amplifier to the required position. He stood up. Jean Mariello had left the front door open and stood with her arms folded. He was expected to go.
And he was never likely to get such a good opportunity for finding out more about Willy. No point in beating about the bush. ‘Mrs Mariello, do you think your husband was murdered?’
She was not shocked or angry, she seemed to expect the question. ‘No, I don’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘No one wanted to kill him. Listen, Willy wasn’t a particularly nice person. He was mean and lazy. But those aren’t reasons for anyone to murder someone.’
‘No. But you can’t think of anything he might have done to antagonise anyone in that Derby lot?’
‘I’ve hardly met any of that Derby lot, so I wouldn’t know. Listen, Mr Paris, I can understand your curiosity, but the police have asked me all these questions and so has everyone I’ve met for the past two days. I’m getting rather bored with it, and I’d be grateful if you would stop.’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Mariello, but I do have a reason for asking.’ And he told her of his encounter with Willy in the Truth Game. At the end he paused dramatically.
She did not seem over-impressed. ‘You say he seemed troubled?’
‘Yes.’
‘Probably some horse he’d backed had been beaten.’
‘No, it was more than that. I’m sure it was. Something that really went deep.’
‘Nothing went very deep with Willy. That Truth Game could have meant anything. What makes you so sure it was something serious?’
He could only supply a lame ‘Instinct’.
To give her her due, Jean Mariello did not actually laugh out loud. ‘Well, instinct tells me, from knowing him pretty well, that the only thing that upset Willy was not getting his own way. He was spoilt. He’d had a lot of success and it went to his head. Used to be just a builder’s labourer, playing guitar in his spare time. Then the group took off and suddenly he was famous. Everyone gave him everything he wanted and he started getting bad-tempered if anything didn’t fail into his lap. If he was upset, it must have been that some girl had slapped his face.’
‘There were a lot of girls?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know if he’d been particularly involved with anyone recently?’
‘We didn’t discuss it. We went our own ways. Listen, Willy was a slob. All right, I’m sorry he died, but he was no great loss.’
Charles was shocked by her honesty and his face must have betrayed it. Jean laughed. ‘Yes, you’re wondering why I married him. Well, I was only seventeen, I wanted to be a musician and I wanted to get away from my parents. And Willy was different then—it was before he became successful. He was less sure of himself and, as a result, less selfish. We both changed. He became a bastard and I got a lot tougher. In self-defence.’
There was a slight tremor on the last words, the first sign of human feeling that she had shown. The callous attitude to her husband’s death was a protective shell, distancing her from reality. It was true that she had not loved him, but the killing had affected her. Charles changed his approach slightly. ‘When did you last see him?’
‘Last Friday. I went down to Carlisle to start a tour of folk clubs. Then this happened. I’ll be joining the tour again as soon as I’ve got things sorted out.’
‘And Willy didn’t seem upset when you left?’
‘He was exactly as usual.’
‘And you’ve no idea what he was doing over the weekend?’
‘Screwing some bird probably. Decorating here maybe. Rehearsing his bloody show. I don’t know.’
The edge was creeping back into her voice. She wanted Charles to leave. She wanted to be on her own. Maybe so that she could break down and cry her heart out. There was not time for many more questions. ‘Why did he get involved in the show in the first place?’
‘Puce split up. Willy had delusions of grandeur—wanted to get it together as an all-round entertainer. Another Tommy Steele. No big impresario offered him a contract, but Derby University offered him a part in their tatty show. I suppose he saw it as a rung on the ladder to stardom.’ She put an infinity of scorn into that word.
‘Sounds unlikely.’
‘Maybe there was some other reason. Look, Mr Paris—’
‘I’m sorry. I’ll go. Can I just ask you again—was there anyone you can think of, however unlikely, who might have profited by your husband’s death?’
‘First let me ask you—why are you so interested in all this? It’s nothing to do with you.’
‘No, you’re right, it’s just . . . I was there . . . I saw it . . .’ He petered out. Tried again. ‘There are people who will feel happier when the facts are known. I mean, there’s so much gossip and speculation and accusation down at Coates Gardens . . .’ As he spoke, he knew it was not true. In fact there had been surprisingly little discussion among the students. Once they had exhausted the inherent drama of the situation, they all seemed quite happy to accept that it was an accident and get back to the more important drama of the shows they were putting on. ‘No, I’m sorry, I can’t really answer your question.’
‘Hmm. I’ll answer yours. The only person who stood to benefit from Willy’s death was his widow, who would thus get out of an unsatisfactory marriage without the fuss of divorce. In other words, the only person with a motive was me.’ She laughed sharply. ‘Goodbye, Mr Paris.’
He wandered disconsolately along Meadow Lane and looked back at the house. It was in a better state of repair than the others, walls and chimney repointed, missing slates replaced. And inside, was Jean Mariello as tidy and controlled? Or was she crying? He’d never know. All he did know was that she did not kill her husband. Her talk of motives had just been a contemptuous challenge to him. She had not been in Edinburgh at the time of the murder, and in the Truth Game Willy had specified that the person whose secret he had discovered was connected with the Derby group. No progress.
He felt in need of company. As a long shot, he tried the bell of Anna’s flat as he passed. Just after twelve, no reason why she should be there.
She wasn’t. He went into the Highland chic of the Ensign Ewart pub opposite and started drinking whisky. As he drank, the whole business of playing at detectives seemed increasingly pointless. If only there were someone around he could discuss the case with. Maybe some great detectives manage on their own, he thought as he downed the second large Bell’s, but right now I’d give anything for Dr Watson to walk through that door.
But the Doctor did not come and Charles drank too much on his own. The whisky did not make him think any more clearly. He looked round the pub. The office workers of Edinburgh were in huddles with their backs to him. A loud group of American tourists was being ignored at one table. The Festival influx was not welcomed by the residents. Charles tried to get another drink, but could not attract anyone’s attention. Being invisible at a bar is one of the loneliest experiences in life and he felt depressed for the first time since his arrival.
It was the interview with Jean Mariello that had done it. Up until then he had been cheerful, even buoyant after the night with Anna. But Anna was not there and it did not take long for her image to get distorted. He needed her presence to restore reality. But she was as elusive as Dr Watson.
His eyes gave up trying to catch the barman’s attention and wandered over to a notice board on which the grudging management had stuck a few of the dozens of handbills which earnest theatrical groups had thrust on them. They were on a metal clip. Oxford Theatre Group on top. That was inevitable. Their headquarters was opposite the pub and so they had a head-start on that pitch in the popular Fringe game of sticking your poster over everyone else’s.
Beside the Oxford bill was another that looked familiar. Good God, it was one of the greatest DUDS on the Fringe, Charles Paris’ So Much Comic, So Much Blood, opening Monday
19th August at one fifteen p.m. He felt a sense of urgency that amounted almost to panic.
‘Yes, sir, what can I get you?’
‘Nothing. I’ve got to rehearse.’ The barman’s bewildered stare followed him out of the pub.
Outside in the street he realised that he had had an excessive lunch for a working actor and trod with care down the steep steps of Lady Stair’s Close to the Mound. The light seemed very bright. He thought he saw the familiar figure of Martin Warburton ahead. He hurried to catch up. ‘Martin!’
But the figure did not stop. It turned right at the bottom of the steps and Charles saw the beard and glasses. It was not Martin.
He awoke on his camp-bed at about five with the worst sort of afternoon hangover. The urgent rehearsal schedule he had promised himself had petered out rather quickly. He hoped that he had not been seen lying there by too many of the group. A middle-aged man asleep in the afternoon. No doubt snoring. The monotone of the piano upstairs indicated a revue rehearsal. He hoped Anna had not seen him.
A cup of coffee might help. He eased himself downstairs to the kitchen. The day’s cook, a large girl with corkscrew curls, was chopping up more of the inevitable cabbage.
‘Where’s the coffee?’
‘Over there, behind the cornflakes.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘I’ll make you some . . .’
‘Thanks.’ He made to sit on a chair by the table.
‘. . . if you don’t mind doing something for me.’
‘What?’
‘Just empty that, would you?’
‘That’ was a large cardboard box full of rubbish—papers, sweepings, cigarette ends, kitchen refuse. The bottom felt unwholesomely soggy on his hands. Charles Paris, haulage contractors. Amplifiers, refuse—distance no object. He negotiated the load through the kitchen door and made his way to the dustbins.
There was a little room at the top of one of them. He balanced the box on the edge and tried to let the contents slip gently in.
They all came with a rush, covering his hands with tea leaves and a yellow slime that had been food. Little scraps of paper scattered all around the bin.
