A Decent Interval

by Simon Brett

  She was silent for a moment, marshalling her memories. ‘She picked up her mascara from the table, opened it and brought the brush up to her lashes …

  ‘Then I’m not exactly clear what happened. It was like the mascara stung her eye or … I don’t know. She kind of leapt up from her seat in shock and fell backwards over it. And the back of her head went down hard on the stone floor.’ Peri Maitland winced. ‘I can still hear the sound it made. I can’t believe how loud it was. I sometimes wake in the night hearing it.

  ‘I could see immediately that Katrina was dead. So I just got the hell out of the place.’

  FIFTEEN

  What Peri had told him completely changed all of Charles’s thinking about Katrina Selsey’s death. It had been an accident. And yet not totally an accident. He remembered seeing the discoloration around the dead girl’s eye, as if she had rubbed it. And the only witness of her actual death had talked about Katrina’s eye being stung. What was in the mascara? Had it been sabotaged?

  Of course, he’d asked Peri these questions, but she couldn’t help. She hadn’t inspected the dressing room, just got out of the Grand Theatre as quickly as possible, hoping that no one would ever know that she had returned there at all that evening. She had got a cab to the hotel and joined up with her married lover.

  Not for the first time Charles Paris felt the frustration of the amateur detective. He bet the police had done forensic tests and already knew what noxious substance had been introduced into that mascara tube. They were probably well on their way to knowing who put it there too. How could he compete when the police had all the evidence and information? It wasn’t fair.

  Idly, Charles wondered whether, assuming Peri Maitland had been telling the truth about Katrina Selsey’s last moments, the death could be regarded as murder. If, as seemed likely, the mascara tube had been doctored by someone with a grudge against the girl, would he or she be legally responsible for the death? It was reaction to the pain in her eye which had made Katrina leap back, stumble over her chair and have her fatal fall. But the mascara-adulterator couldn’t have anticipated that sequence of events. And didn’t the definition of ‘murder’ involve the concept of intent? Charles wished he knew more about the law, but he reckoned the most the perpetrator could be charged with would be manslaughter.

  It was still a very vindictive thing to do. Depending on what was actually in the mascara tube, it could have caused permanent damage to the girl’s eye. And though Katrina Selsey had gone out of her way to antagonize many of the Hamlet company, who would feel strongly enough to take that kind of revenge?

  These thoughts circled around Charles Paris’s mind as the private hire car drove him back from the boutique hotel. The chauffeur hadn’t gone off to collect a superstar from an airport, he had just waited for Charles. He was set to take him back to his digs, but Charles, realizing he hadn’t had any lunch, asked to be dropped at The Pessimist’s Arms instead. He’d got The Times with him; he wouldn’t look lonely if he was doing the crossword.

  He ordered a pint and, remembering his unfortunate experience of the Sunday Roast, asked for a ham sandwich. Surely not even The Pessimist’s Arms could get a ham sandwich wrong?

  Charles was about to take his pint and paper to the alcove he’d occupied before when he saw someone he recognized. Milly Henryson, with a glass of sparkling mineral water and a noxiously unappetizing wrap on a plate in front of her. She looked very forlorn.

  ‘Hi.’ Charles acknowledged her and then felt uncertain as to whether he should force his company on her. Fortunately, she gestured to the empty chair opposite and said, ‘If you’d like to join me …?’

  He sat down and grinned. ‘I’m rather surprised that this is your sort of place.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ she said ruefully. ‘You are witnessing my first and – having just tasted that wrap – very definitely my last visit. No, I was just at a loose end and …’

  Oh dear. She did look rather upset. Charles hoped nothing had gone wrong between her and Sam Newton-Reid. He bit back the urge to ask a how’s-lover-boy type of question.

  But she answered without its being asked. And the news was not terminal.

  ‘Sam’s at an interview in London. For a leading part in a new drama series the Beeb are doing.’ She couldn’t keep the wistfulness out of her voice. However much love is felt for the person who’s got lucky, there’s an instinctive bit of every actor which wishes they’d got the break instead.

  ‘He’ll be back in time for the show tonight?’

  ‘Oh. Of course he will. It’s all been organized by Tony Copeland, whose television company is involved in the series somehow. He’s got fingers in so many pies.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘And now Tony’s backing Sam in Hamlet, he’s going to get him lots of other stuff to “raise his profile”.’

  ‘Seems to be the way things are done these days,’ said Charles Paris lugubriously, wondering whether he’d ever actually had a ‘profile’. ‘There are actors who—’

  He was interrupted by the sullen barman bringing his food across. Looking at the curling bread, garishly pink filling and sad garnish of crisps, Charles realized that he’d been wrong. The Pessimist’s Arms could even get a ham sandwich wrong.

  He took a bite to see whether the presentation was outclassed by the taste. It wasn’t.

  ‘So …’ said Milly Henryson in a tone close to despair, ‘I wonder how much longer Sam and I will be acting in the same kind of shows.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll get the breaks. You’re very good too.’

  The look the girl gave him showed that his words had not carried sufficient conviction. Milly was a realist. She wasn’t ‘very good’. She was ‘quite good’, and she knew it. She could have a perfectly satisfactory career in the theatre – particularly given how pretty she was – but she was never going to be in the same league as her boyfriend. Or perhaps, Charles thought gloomily, her current boyfriend.

  ‘And I don’t even feel secure that I’m going to keep the part of Ophelia.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I’ve been told I’m playing it, right, but I’m still expected to do some of the stuff I was doing as an ASM. You know, I’ve been told I’ve got to help with the get-out on Saturday night.’

  Charles was surprised by this news, but he tried to sound reassuring as he said, ‘I’m sure that’s just a temporary thing. You know, with everything else that’s been going on, the stage management haven’t yet had time to bring in someone else. I’m absolutely certain Tony Copeland is planning to keep you on as Ophelia.’

  ‘Oh yes? You don’t think he’s more likely to get in a “name” for the West End? Someone who brings a bit more publicity with them? One of the StarHunt runners-up, maybe?’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not the sort of thing that Tony’d do.’ Though even as he said the words Charles knew it was exactly the sort of thing Tony’d do. He tried to shift the direction of the conversation. ‘Did Sam go up to London by taking a cab to Swindon and then getting the train?’

  ‘Oh no, he got the full Tony Copeland Productions treatment.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘He was driven up and he’s being driven back by Doug Haye.’

  ‘There’s posh for you. He’s very honoured. I’m never quite sure what Doug does in Tony’s set-up.’

  ‘More or less everything, it seems. Being Tony’s driver is his main job, I think, but he helps out with other stuff.’

  Milly spoke distractedly, though. The desolation Charles had seen in her face when she thought she was alone had returned.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘Sam adores you.’

  ‘Yes, he does now,’ she agreed. ‘But if his career takes off stratospherically …’

  ‘No reason why he shouldn’t continue to adore you. He seems to me an extremely sensible young man. Head very definitely screwed on the right way.’

  ‘I hope so. I just couldn’t manage without him. A
nd I know having relationships with actors is difficult.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Charles, trying to lighten the mood. ‘Have you had a lot of them?’

  ‘No. But when I said I wanted to go into the business, my headmistress at school always said that being married to an actor was sheer hell.’

  ‘Oh.’ Then Charles realized that she was talking about his wife, Frances. Which didn’t make Milly’s remark the most comforting he had ever heard.

  After the couple of pints at lunch he had gone back and fallen asleep. When he woke, his digs still didn’t seem very congenial, so he went to the theatre early to have another go at The Times crossword in the Green Room. The grid didn’t prove very tractable. He was having one of those days when the clues seemed blankly impenetrable. His conversations with Peri Maitland and Milly Henryson had lowered his mood and his cruciverbal incompetence did nothing to lift it.

  The Green Room door was open and Charles heard footsteps approaching from the Stage Door. And voices. ‘Thank you very much,’ Sam Newton-Reid was saying. ‘It would have been a hell of a trek to do it by train.’

  ‘No problem. I had stuff to sort out in London too.’

  Charles Paris recognized the second voice immediately. He had last heard it in discussion with Bazza at The Pessimist’s Arms. Moving quickly to the Green Room door, Charles was quick enough to see Sam Newton-Reid turning out of sight on the stairs up to his dressing room.

  And to see the stockily-built figure making his way out of the Stage Door.

  It was Tony Copeland’s factotum, Doug Haye.

  SIXTEEN

  A shrewd observer might have noticed a slightly distracted quality in the performances of the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father and First Gravedigger in that night’s Hamlet. Charles Paris’s mind was full and racing. He recalled every detail of the conversation he’d overheard in The Pessimist’s Arms after Jared Root’s accident. At the time he remembered thinking it could have implied that Bazza had set up the sabotage. Now Charles knew that the stagehand had been talking to Doug Haye, a whole new set of possibilities opened up.

  He’d never seen Bazza joining the post-show drinkers in the pub nearest to the Grand Theatre, but then the man was a local who lived in Marlborough and probably had his own favourite drinking hole. On the premise that he had once seen the stagehand there, Charles reckoned it might be The Pessimist’s Arms. So he found his weary footsteps wending towards the same unattractive venue for the second time that day.

  His hunch had been right. Bazza was sitting in the same alcove as he had with Doug Haye, but now in lugubrious isolation. He was more than halfway down a pint, which gave Charles the perfect opening. ‘Can I get you another of those?’

  The lanky young man looked up with something that could almost have been a grin. ‘Never been known to refuse an offer like that.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Six-X.’

  ‘Leave it with me.’ At the bar, reckoning that Bazza as a local would know the best beer, Charles ordered two pints of Wadworth’s 6X and returned to the alcove with them. He took an exploratory swig. ‘Excellent.’

  ‘Never fails,’ Bazza agreed. ‘This may be a pretty grotty pub, but they know how to look after their beer.’

  This masculine badinage was all very well, but Charles realized that he hadn’t really prepared for the conversation he was about to embark on. He’d been so preoccupied with the connection he’d now made between Bazza and Doug Haye that he hadn’t worked out how to broach a subject which might very quickly lead to accusations.

  Still, having got to this point, he had to lumber in somehow. ‘I actually wanted to talk to you, Bazza,’ he began clumsily, ‘about Doug Haye.’

  ‘Tony Copeland’s Rottweiler? Why?’

  ‘It goes back to the accident that happened to Jared Root …’

  ‘Oh yes?’ There was a new caution in the young man’s eyes.

  Charles was circumspect. He didn’t want to leap straight to a confession of his eavesdropping. ‘Well, given what happened there … and given what’s happened since with Katrina … there’s been a lot of gossip backstage.’

  ‘When isn’t there a lot of gossip backstage? You should know what theatre people are like by now.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘So are you saying you’ve been listening to backstage gossip, Charles?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘About what in particular? Some illicit shagging been going on? I’m usually fairly quick to spot that, but I haven’t been aware of much going on with the Hamlet lot … though there might be something developing between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. If you know about that … Come on, Charles, give me the dirt.’

  ‘Sorry, I can’t. Quite possible there has been something going on, but I haven’t been aware of it either. Anyway, that wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Charles was not finding this easy. ‘The fact is, Bazza, as you say, actors are very good at spreading rumours around, and getting the wrong end of sticks, and building up conspiracy theories.’ The stagehand didn’t say anything, just looked at him as he struggled on. ‘And obviously there’s been a lot of talk about the two … accidents … and whether or not they’re connected.’

  ‘So what makes you think they might be?’

  ‘I didn’t actually say I thought that. I just said that a lot of people in the company do think that.’

  ‘OK, so the show’s got some jinx on it, is that it? It is Hamlet we’re doing, Charles, not Macbeth.’

  Time to stop beating about the bush. ‘Some people have been saying that the accident to Jared was arranged.’

  ‘Arranged? How do you mean – arranged?’

  ‘That it was set up. That the piece of the skull was made to fall on him deliberately.’

  Bazza’s eyes were very narrow now. ‘And who would want to do that?’

  ‘Or then again, to ask another pertinent question, who would have the opportunity to do that?’

  ‘What’re you saying, Charles?’

  ‘I’m saying that, if Jared’s injury wasn’t accidental, then the only people who could have set it up would be members of the backstage crew.’

  ‘Like me, for instance?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘I don’t like at all. I don’t like being accused of things by overdramatizing actors.’

  ‘I’m not accusing you.’

  ‘Well, you’re coming damned close to it. Too close for my liking.’

  ‘But if it wasn’t an accident—’

  ‘Do you have any proof, Charles?’

  ‘Not proof as such.’

  ‘Of course you don’t. Because there is no proof. A piece of scenery fell by accident on Jared Root – that’s all that happened. Anyway, why do you imagine that I – or any other member of the backstage crew – might want to sabotage the show we’re working on?’

  ‘I can only think of one reason why you might do that.’

  ‘And what is it?’

  ‘Because you were paid to do so.’

  Bazza reacted as if he’d been slapped in the face. ‘Oh, I see. And who are you suggesting might have paid me?’

  ‘Doug Haye,’ Charles Paris replied coolly.

  That brought Bazza to his feet, towering over his accuser. For a moment Charles feared that he was going to be hit, but the stagehand restrained himself. Instead, in a hissing whisper he spat out, ‘Don’t you ever dare spread that accusation anywhere! If you do, by God you’ll regret it!’

  And with that Bazza stormed out of The Pessimist’s Arms, leaving his second pint of 6X untouched.

  Charles Paris sipped away at his own, feeling quite pleased with himself. Though the stagehand hadn’t actually admitted to accepting money from Doug Haye to arrange Jared’s accident, the strength of his reaction demonstrated that Charles was very definitely on the right track.

  It seemed silly not to drink Bazza’s pint as well as his own, so Charles felt suit
ably mellow when time was called and he left The Pessimist’s Arms. A nightcap of Bell’s back at the digs and he thought he’d sleep well.

  The weather had changed. He must remember to take an overcoat with him when he went to the theatre the following day. The autumn days were still mild, but the evenings had started to get chilly.

  He’d done the route from pub to digs so often that he didn’t have to think about it. Left out of The Pessimist’s Arms, along the road, another left, through an alley, turn right. Less than ten minutes.

  It was when he was in the alley that he heard the footsteps behind him. Close behind him. He quickened his pace. But when he heard his name called, he stopped and turned. To find himself facing the solid bulk of Doug Haye.

  The force with which the man’s left hand grabbed his lapels slammed Charles Paris against the wall. On Doug Haye’s upraised hand the inadequate light from a distant street-lamp glinted on the metal edge of a knuckleduster.

  SEVENTEEN

  ‘Hold it there, Doug!’ said a voice. And Doug did hold it there. To the considerable relief of Charles Paris. The knuckleduster had stopped millimetres away from his chin.

  ‘Let go of him.’

  The grip on Charles’s lapels was released with some reluctance. He looked towards the silhouette framed by the entrance to the alleyway.

  ‘I think we ought to talk,’ said Tony Copeland.

  The producer wasn’t staying in a lavish boutique hotel like the people from Pridmore Baines. He had opted for an old coaching inn in the centre of town, solid, unexciting. As well as a bedroom, he had a sitting room, though, and it was there that he had the bottle of room-service whisky delivered, along with an ice bucket and a single glass.

  ‘I don’t drink,’ he said, ‘but I gather you do.’

  ‘Well …’ Charles shrugged sheepishly. ‘Has been known.’

  ‘Help yourself.’

  Charles did so.

  ‘I’m not going to apologize for Doug’s actions because that might suggest that I had something to do with them, that he was acting on my instructions. He’s very loyal and he makes decisions very much off his own bat … both of which are qualities which I admire in people who work for me.’