Star Fall

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Come and sit down, you must be frozen,’ Melling said, urging him towards one of the chairs. It was the sort you wallow in, and Slider felt tiredly that he wished he was here on a social visit so he could enjoy it. ‘Let me get you a drink. Scotch, gin, vodka? Wine? Shall I open a bottle of champagne?’

  ‘Nothing for me, thank you,’ Slider said.

  ‘Oh, don’t say that! You’ll have some wine with lunch, at least? I’m sure even your ferocious bosses must allow you to eat and drink like a human being.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve already had lunch,’ Slider said firmly. He was aware that all this was an act, but what it was supposed to be telling him he wasn’t sure. Or even if it was aimed at him. Alex seemed to be getting grumpier by the syllable. ‘But don’t let me stop you. We can talk while you eat.’

  ‘Oh, all right, but you’ve taken the fun out of it,’ Melling said. ‘Alex, bring in the tray. Are you sure I can’t get you anything? A cup of coffee? A glass of water?’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ Slider said. Between the sofa and the fire was a large coffee table, wooden, with a glass top under which was a deep recess lined with green baize, on which was displayed a collection of snuffboxes of various shapes and sizes, every one an exquisite artefact. ‘Your collection?’ he said, leaning forward to look. ‘I was told you were especially interested in snuffboxes.’

  ‘They have everything,’ he said. ‘The art of the miniaturist, without all those tedious faces of other people’s relations. I always think they are like a form of jewellery. I’d like to wear them on a charm bracelet.’

  Slider smiled at the enthusiasm. ‘They are very lovely,’ he said.

  Alex came back in and thumped a laden tray down on the table, skimming it past both Slider’s and Melling’s noses and making them jerk back inelegantly.

  ‘Ah, lunch,’ said Melling lightly, with a hint of threat. Alex went back out. ‘Excuse him, he’s in rather a paddy today. Mislaid his teddy bear, or something. Are you sure I can’t tempt you? Look, it’s all finger food, easy to manage, no mess. We just couldn’t bear to leave this lovely fire, so we thought we’d have a mini-buffet in front of it.’

  As a rule, Slider loathed buffets. Atherton said he suffered from Smorgasphobia. But this one was a masterpiece. There were all sorts of cold delicacies laid out with garnishes of salad – prawns, smoked salmon, and slivers of ham and different cheeses all arranged on bite-sized crackers, along with small pieces of sausage, olives, and what looked like tiny squares of cheese flan. Slider was glad his sandwich was recent enough to help him withstand temptation. ‘No, thanks, I’m fine.’

  Alex came back in with a bottle of wine and glasses.

  ‘Ah well, let the feasting begin!’ Melling said, took a plate and helped himself. He sat on the sofa. Alex filled the glasses and slumped like a puppet with its strings cut into the other chair. His arms were so long, he could reach the food without moving. ‘So, what do you want to talk to me about, Inspector?’ Melling asked, having inhaled a couple of hors d’oeuvres and washed them down with a gulp of wine. ‘Oh, I say, I can’t keep calling you that! Too terribly Sleuth circa 1972. Haven’t you got a first name?’

  ‘I think we should keep things on a formal footing,’ Slider said. He’d never been very good about people using his first name. He liked to keep it for friends and family. In a brief flash of irrelevant memory he remembered he had never heard his parents call each other by their first names in all the time he’d known them.

  ‘Oops. All right, can I call you Mr Slider?’ Slider nodded to that, and before he could ask a question, Melling went on, ‘If you’ve been talking to our Gavin, he’ll have given you the usual line about how we’re all one big happy family on Antiques Galore!’

  ‘Is that what it is – a line?’ said Slider.

  ‘Gavin’s got PR in his blood. No, his blood is PR. Stab him and it wouldn’t be red that poured out, it’d be black and white – liquid press notices. And that programme is his baby. It’s his raison d’être. It’s what he has instead of a life, poor poppet.’

  ‘So you’re not one happy family?’ Slider persisted.

  Melling opened his eyes wide. ‘Well, we’re definitely a family: quarrels, bitchiness, rivalry, spite, shifting loyalties, doing each other down. Like all families up and down the land.’ He emptied his glass. It was a large glass and left little red ticks at his mouth corners, like the Joker’s.

  Slider wished he’d caught Melling in a suit and without his Rudy for an audience. ‘Was Mr Egerton generally liked?’ he asked, hoping the ‘Mr’ would steady him.

  ‘I don’t think Rowland cared about being liked. He just wanted to be worshipped. And of course the punters obliged. They adored him. They took him at his own evaluation, which is what all of us really want, isn’t it?’

  ‘What about among the other cast members?’ Slider asked stolidly.

  Melling eyed him sidelong. ‘You’re not going to let me have a bit of fun, are you? Oh well!’ He refilled his plate and dropped the flamboyance a notch. ‘No, Rowland wasn’t entirely liked, but nobody hated him enough to kill him, if that’s what you’re after. He was a poseur. He was full of it.’

  What Mr Porson called a bit of a bolshoi artist, Slider thought.

  Melling went on, thoroughly warmed up now. ‘He was selfish, and he was grabby, and not above bending the truth to his own advantage.’

  ‘Specifically?’

  ‘Oh, he always wanted the best pieces for himself, and he’d elbow anyone out of the way to get them.’

  ‘The trawl?’ Slider suggested.

  ‘You know about that, do you? Well, Rowland was mustard during the trawl – mustard, pepper and a good dash of Tabasco as well. And it wasn’t only for the programme. You see, if the punter wants to sell afterwards – and a lot of them do: it’s not all fun when a painting you bought for a fiver turns out to be worth fifty k. I mean, you’re living in a suburban semi in Shinfield, how are you going to keep it safe? How can you afford the insurance? How can you be sure your neighbour’s teenage son isn’t going to jemmy open your window one night? You can’t trust your friends any more. You can’t get a wink of sleep. So of course they want to get rid of it, realize the cash, go on a Mediterranean cruise. And they naturally offer it to the specialist who presented it. They don’t have to, but they don’t know anyone in the business, and they feel a sort of gratitude, bless their woolly little hearts.’

  ‘And I suppose that can be lucrative to the specialist?’

  ‘Oh yes. Especially if they cream a bit more off the top to take account of the punter’s ignorance.’

  ‘Did Mr Egerton do that?’

  Melling looked away, pursed his lips. ‘I don’t want to speak ill of the dead. But there were suspicions. And then there was the poaching.’

  ‘I heard about the snuffbox.’

  He looked back. ‘Oh, did you? Well, I could have got the punters a better price, if he’d let them come to me. I know everybody in that field. I asked him to send them to me. He should have sent them to me, by the unwritten rules. In fact, I should have presented it in the first place. But he was too busy playing the great star and having them lick his boots.’

  ‘So you were angry with him.’

  Melling shrugged. He was fashionably thin, and his shoulders looked dangerously pointed as they shot up towards his ears. He could have given himself a double trepanning. ‘We had a fair old ding dong, but you mustn’t take that sort of thing too seriously. Any business has a bit of dog-eat-dog about it. And show business is full of edgy characters trying to grab the limelight. But it’s all superficial. Most of the time we all just get on together. We always go out for drinks together after the recording, and all these little issues are put aside.’

  Slider felt Melling was trying to have it both ways. ‘But I understand the row you had with Mr Egerton two weeks ago was more personal than that. You said things about his relationship with Mr Lavender.’

  Melling stared a moment, th
en laughed, largely and showily, as if he was on stage. ‘Oh, that! No, you mustn’t mind that. I was just teasing him. I like to pull old Rowland’s tail from time to time. You see, the man’s a raging queen, but he can’t bear to have it pointed out. It makes him as mad as a wet cat, so of course I can’t resist poking him from time to time, just to see the fireworks.’

  ‘You mean he’s homosexual?’ Slider asked.

  ‘No, no, I don’t mean that. He’s a queen in the theatrical sense – loves the display and the make-up and the clothes and the adoration of the audience. He’s a hairdresser. An interior designer. A natural Barbra Streisand fan. Camp as a row of tents and gay as a striped parrot. But not in a sexual way. No, he only has eyes for women. In fact, I understand, from some very reliable loose gossip I heard, that back in the day he was always bedding the female punters and the locals – even one of the TV presenters once. Quite a cocksman. So naturally when I egg him on to come out and make John an honest man it drives him nuts.’ He smiled. ‘Most enjoyable.’

  ‘You say “back in the day” – do you mean he wasn’t pursuing women any more?’

  ‘“Pursuing women” – what a lovely phrase! Well, he seems to have settled down a lot recently. I don’t know what he gets up to in his private life, of course, and I’d be surprised if there wasn’t someone in tow, but he’s been much more patriarchal with the punters lately. No more winks and pinches and sly assignations. I think it’s part of his new image, now he’s doing so much more for the Beeb, as the Last Word on Antiquity. He has to have a bit of gravitas. But—’ He hesitated.

  ‘Yes?’ Slider said. ‘Please don’t hold back anything. You never know what might be helpful.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Melling, ‘I’d tell you anything I know for sure, don’t worry. I wouldn’t scruple. I’m not a deep well, I’m a babbling brook.’

  Alex made a sound at that moment, and both of them looked at him. But his face was calm, his eyes blank. He put another hors d’oeuvre whole into his mouth and chewed, staring into space.

  ‘You were saying?’ Slider prompted.

  Melling looked at him. ‘Well – and I don’t know this for sure, you understand – but I think he was involved in a rather more serious way for the past couple of years. That could be another reason for his change of behaviour. And I suspect it was someone on the show.’

  ‘Why do you suspect that?’

  He looked uneasy. ‘I don’t know, really. I can’t put my finger on it. It was just an undercurrent of feeling.’ He thought for a moment. ‘There was the Fabergé box.’

  Slider’s attention pricked like a dog smelling liver sausage. ‘A green malachite box?’

  ‘Yes – is it important?’

  ‘It might be. Go on.’

  ‘Well, it was on the show – quite a while ago. Rowland discovered it on the trawl. It wasn’t wildly valuable, but it was interesting because everyone thinks of Fabergé as nothing but the eggs. Also it was decorated with unpolished diamonds, which is unusual. I happened to be standing nearby when he was talking about it to the owners – I remember he made some joke about diamonds in the rough. He was quite taken with it, and in the end it went forward for the recording. And after the show, when I went into his dressing room to see if he was ready to come to the pub, there he was, standing there, unwrapping the tissue-paper from around it. When he saw me he tried to cover it up again, but I said, “Is that the Fabergé box? Did they sell it in the end?” and he said, “No, it’s a present.”’

  ‘From the owners?’

  ‘I asked him that. He said, no, from someone else, and that’s all he would say. When I pressed him he changed the subject. Well, I suspected at the time that he’d chased the punters and bullied them into selling it cheap. He’s done that before, I can tell you. Very persuasive, our Rowland, when there’s a profit to be made. But afterwards I thought he might have been telling the truth. Someone else from the show could have caught them before they left and bought it for him. And who would do that but a woman? A woman he was having an affair with.’

  ‘But you’ve no idea who?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not a clue. There’ve been some cute production assistants, and there’s Sylvia Thornton who does old clothes – she’s not on every show, and I don’t remember if she was there that week. And there’s Felicity Marsh, the presenter – she’s quite tasty, and I’ve seen them hugger-mugger once or twice. Though of course that could just be him trying to get the best spots. He’s always hanging around Gavin, too. But I do know he kept the box, rather than sold it on, because he had a Christmas party every year for the Antiques Galore! cast, and other TV people who might be useful to him, and I’ve seen the box there in his drawing room, in pride of place.’

  That expression again, Slider thought. He pondered a moment, while Melling and Alex ate and drank, watching him brightly like cats for his next movement.

  ‘You say Mr Egerton wasn’t homosexual,’ he said at last. ‘What about Mr Lavender?’

  Melling did his large and lovely laugh again. ‘Oh, John! Good heavens, no! The straightest of the straight. He’s like a lovely old headmaster, or the colonel of the regiment, upholding the old standards, ever so slightly dismayed at the things that go on nowadays. But lovely old-fashioned manners. Very painstaking, too. He’d be the one you’d go to if you wanted a difficult, boring job done, and wanted it done properly. His powerful sense of duty would carry him through. “No slacking in the ranks, there!” No sense of humour, bless him. Just the tiniest bit grim, if you ask my opinion. You wouldn’t cross him.’

  ‘So what was his relationship with Mr Egerton?’

  Melling thought a moment, selecting the words. ‘He was like a big, fierce, loyal guard dog. Nothing would shake his devotion to his master. Whatever Rowland needed, Rowland would get. He did a trawl of his own, you know, before any of us got out there. That’s how Rowland got so many of the plums. And he really knew his stuff. I’ve often thought the show should have hired him to do research and pre-select the best objects – you know, visit the area beforehand. But he was a one-man dog. He wouldn’t have obeyed commands from anyone else.’

  ‘How did he feel about your teasing?’

  Melling looked uncomfortable for the first time. ‘To be honest, he didn’t like it. Not because he cares what I say about him – he has hide like a rhino wearing Kevlar – but because he could see it upset Rowland. I sometimes wondered if I’d get a stiletto between the ribs as I walked back to the hotel.’ Slider raised an eyebrow, and he smiled apologetically and said, ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t say things like that to a policeman. It was a metaphor. I can’t see him doing anything violent. He could have punched me many a time if his leanings were that way. I think he was too polite for retaliation – he’d have thought it bad manners. But inside that dour exterior there’s a raging cauldron, you mark my words. Passion of an uncommon order.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’ Slider asked.

  ‘Well, nobody could be that dull all the way through, could they?’ Melling said lightly. ‘And there’s his devotion to Rowland, who often treated him in a very offhand way. That suggests some well of … I don’t know. Something. Love, or something.’ He reflected a moment, frowning. ‘Of course, Rowland had terrific charisma. And a man like John with no charisma couldn’t help admiring him. He must have felt grateful that a star like Rowland even bothered with him. And I’m sure his shop reaped the benefits from Rowland being famous. So all in all, there’s nothing surprising about old John’s devotion.’

  The wine was all gone, and Alex stood up abruptly and said, ‘Coffee?’ It was the first word Slider had heard him utter. It didn’t give much scope for analysis, but Slider would have bet it was said with a foreign accent.

  ‘Yes,’ said Melling, coming back from his thoughts. He looked at Slider. ‘Will you have some?’

  ‘No, thanks all the same. I must be going,’ said Slider, standing up. Melling stood too, and he said, ‘By the way, when was the last time you went to
Mr Rowland’s house?’

  Melling did the laugh again. ‘You aren’t thinking I did the old boy in, just because we had a row a fortnight ago?’

  Slider gave him a steady look. ‘It’s just routine, sir. If your fingermarks are likely to be in the house, we have to eliminate them.’

  ‘Oh, good one! Most unthreatening,’ Melling said jocularly. ‘Well, as a matter of fact I haven’t been there since the Christmas party. Rowland and I weren’t best buddies. I only got the invitation as part of a job lot. And if the place hasn’t been cleaned since then …! I assume he has a cleaner. Unless John dons the pinny and dusts all his little treasures for him.’ He roared with laughter at his own wit. ‘I can just see it! What an image!’

  ‘And if you wouldn’t mind just telling me,’ Slider went on, unmoved, ‘what you were doing yesterday?’

  ‘I was at an auction at the Guildhall in Northampton nearly all day, and Alex was rehearsing. He’s with the Royal Ballet. I went to meet him when he’d finished, and we went for a meal with friends at the Café des Amis.’ He gave Slider an amused look. ‘Do you want their names and addresses?’

  ‘Not necessary at this stage, thank you,’ Slider said. ‘It’s just a routine question.’

  Melling seemed to feel he was being encouraged. ‘It really wasn’t me that killed poor Rowland, you know,’ he said, grinning. ‘How did they do it, by the way? Candlestick, lead pipe, dagger in the library?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to tell you that, sir,’ Slider said stiffly, hoping to quell the merriment.

  ‘Of course you’re not!’ Melling cried, unquelled. ‘Well, thank you for coming, inspector. I’ve really enjoyed your visit.’

  That’s what we’re here for, to entertain the public, Slider said as he was ushered back out into the cold. But he didn’t say it aloud.

  SIX

  The Woes of the Name