Merely Players

by J M Gregson

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Recent Titles by J.M. Gregson from Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Recent Titles by J.M. Gregson from Severn House

  Detective Inspector Peach Mysteries

  DUSTY DEATH

  TO KILL A WIFE

  THE LANCASHIRE LEOPARD

  A LITTLE LEARNING

  MERELY PLAYERS

  MISSING, PRESUMED DEAD

  MURDER AT THE LODGE

  ONLY A GAME

  PASTURES NEW

  REMAINS TO BE SEEN

  A TURBULENT PRIEST

  THE WAGES OF SIN

  WHO SAW HIM DIE?

  WITCH’S SABBATH

  WILD JUSTICE

  Lambert and Hook Mysteries

  AN ACADEMIC DEATH

  CLOSE CALL

  DARKNESS VISIBLE

  DEATH ON THE ELEVENTH HOLE

  GIRL GONE MISSING

  A GOOD WALK SPOILED

  IN VINO VERITAS

  JUST DESSERTS

  MORTAL TASTE

  SOMETHING IS ROTTEN

  TOO MUCH OF WATER

  AN UNSUITABLE DEATH

  MERELY PLAYERS

  A DCI ‘Percy’ Peach Mystery

  J.M. Gregson

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First world edition published 2010

  in Great Britain and in 2011 in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  Copyright © 2010 by J.M. Gregson.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Gregson, J.M.

  Merely players. – (DCI Percy Peach mystery)

  1. Peach, Percy (Fictitious character)–Fiction. 2. Blake,

  Lucy (Fictitious character)–Fiction. 3. Police–

  England–Lancashire–Fiction. 4. Television actors and

  actresses–Fiction. 5. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title II. Series

  823.9’14-dc22

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-250-4 (ePub)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6984-5 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-316-8 (trade paper)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  To David Browne, who read thirty-two of my

  books in eight weeks of a hard winter, and

  retained his habitual optimistic and

  good-humoured approach to life.

  ‘All the world’s a stage,

  And all the men and women merely players:

  They have their exits and their entrances;

  And one man in his time plays many parts.’

  Shakespeare, As You Like It

  ONE

  There was just enough light from the single street lamp outside for him to get his bearings. No need for the torch.

  He stood perfectly still for five seconds, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dimness, registering in turn the panels on the closed doors, their brass handles, the frames of pictures on the walls. The stairs climbed steeply away from him into the dimness above. He knew the layout of the place, knew which of the invisible doors to open when he had climbed those stairs. As his vision improved and more landmarks of this familiar place dropped into their slots, confidence seeped back into him, coursing with the adrenalin through his veins.

  The silence was profound. It was what he needed, of course, what he had expected and prayed for when he had planned this. Silence meant that the world around him was asleep, unaware of what he was about, of what he had come here to do and was about to achieve.

  Yet just for a second he wanted noise, some neutral, indeterminate, masking noise, which might cover the next movements he had to make. Stupid and irrational: noise would have meant some other presence here, other ears, which might pick up the sound of his movements and forestall what he had come here to do. What he must do, unless he was prepared to spend the rest of his life within prison walls, with an eye perpetually on the watch for what other men in a place like that might do to him.

  It was the thought of prison which freed his limbs from the fear of discovery which had for a moment immobilized him. He stole to the bottom of the stairs and began to climb them. His limbs moved in slow motion, with the exaggerated caution which in other circumstances would have been ridiculous. His battered trainers were set with elaborate care on the extreme left and right of each tread, so as to minimize the creaking that was surely inevitable in stairs of this age. His feet inside the shoes were like the paws of a cat, feeling each foothold carefully before committing the weight of his body to it.

  It seemed to take him several minutes to climb to the landing, but he knew it was no more than fifty seconds. He had practised this over the years, knew to within a second or two exactly how long it took him to creep up a straight flight such as this. He paused for a moment when he reached the landing, casting his eyes to left and right as one did automatically on reaching a new floor, checking that everything he could see was silent and unthreatening, even though he knew that was how it would be.

  Every door was closed. His eyes had now adjusted so completely to the dimness that he could make out some of the details on the pictures which were hung here. He could see high trees beside the glimmer of a lake in a painting, the white teeth and open mouth of a smiling child in a close-up photograph. Irrelevant. Too much information. Potential distraction. Cut out all emotion. Emotion was an enemy, when you operated in this trade.

  He knew which door he wanted, knew also that it wouldn’t be locked. The certainty about that was a tiny reassurance. The second door on the left as he turned at the top of the stairs and moved along the landing. He paused for a moment with his hand on the handle, nerving himself for the crisis, for the final, climactic seconds of the role he was playing in this. Not long now, but he had to be perfect in every move and every reaction. He took a deep, silent breath and depressed the handle with infinite care. The door opened soundlessly, as he had always known it would.

  The curtains were thin at the single wide window, allowing the light from the lamp outside to show more than he would have expected of the room. He stood for a moment with his hands at his sides, checking that there was no one behind the door, that everything was as he had expected it to be. He knew that it had gone well so far. It must not be r
uined now, in this last and simplest of its phases. Everything was as he expected: there were no chairs out of place, no stray shoes upon the floor which might trap him into a stumble and ruin everything.

  He took in the glint of light upon the wardrobe, the whiteness of the door to the en suite, the clear definition of the slight figure beneath the blankets on the big bed. Then he moved across the room, stood for a moment beside the bed, and raised his arms to do what he had come here to do.

  ‘Hold it right there, Phillips!’

  The command was like a gunshot, unnaturally loud after the long silence which had preceded it. He whirled to the doorway of the en suite, face aflame with sudden fear, eyes flashing with the knowledge that he could never achieve what he had climbed the stairs to do. Framed in the doorway was the figure he had known he would see, with the pistol pointed steadily at his heart. ‘What the hell—’

  ‘CUT!’

  The director’s voice, the one they had all known must come at this point. The collective releasing of breath. The collective nervous laughter, loudest of all from that inert mass upon the bed which had played no part in the scene. The woman sat up, flinging aside the blankets, fully clothed, flicking her long hair back over her shoulders in the relief of the movement which was now allowed to her. ‘I wanted to sneeze all the way through that! I thought I’d never last out!’

  ‘What a trooper!’ said the man who had burst out from the en suite to save her.

  It wasn’t clear whether he was sincere or ironic in that, but the director stepped forward on to the set and became for the moment the centre of interest. ‘That was good, girls and boys! I’ll need to run it through and check things out, but I think we have a take.’

  ‘Can we fall out, then?’ said the actor who’d sprung out to arrest the intruder in his murderous actions. He was clearly pre-eminent among the actors who were now emerging from various places around the set.

  The director glanced at his watch, attempting to preserve the fiction that he and not their star controlled events here. ‘I should think so, yes. It’s too late to set anything else today. Good work, everyone! And I think you were right, Adam. That scene is more tense without any music at all. There’s no need for us to gild the lily.’

  ‘You don’t think Jim took too long to enter the house and climb the stairs? I was beginning to think something had gone wrong by the time he actually arrived.’

  ‘Always happy to build up an entrance for the star of our show,’ said James Ellison, the actor who had played Phillips. This time there was no mistaking the sarcasm.

  ‘Always happy to build up an entrance for the star of our show,’ said James Ellison, the actor who had played Phillips. This time there was no mistaking the sarcasm.

  TWO

  The villain who almost committed murder in the television drama was not the star of the series. That was the man who sprung out of the en suite bathroom to interrupt his fell designs, a character named Alec Dawson. The actor who played this role was Adam Cassidy. He had a face which would have been immediately recognized by three-quarters of the people in Britain and a fair number in each of the hundred and eighty-four countries of the world in which the series was shown.

  That is the power and the dubious influence of television on the diverse cultures of an ever smaller planet.

  For many of the leading figures involved, television brings the easiest sort of fame. Men and women who half a century earlier would have been jobbing actors in repertory theatres, with a frenzied weekly workload and the perpetual fear of unemployment in an overcrowded profession, are now translated by television soaps into not only national but world stardom. Indeed, their dialogue is often dubbed into the tongues of people who have no experience whatever of the places in which these sagas are so assiduously set and documented. ‘A mad world, my masters!’ Nicholas Breton called our earth, and it is no less mad almost four centuries later.

  It is a world in which vanity flourishes and has perforce to be indulged. It takes a remarkably detached and balanced man to withstand the pressures towards egotism, and Adam Cassidy was certainly not that man. His acting ability was not negligible, but it was limited. Like some of the stars of the great days of Hollywood before he was born, Adam had fallen by chance into a part and a persona which made the most of the attributes he had. The Call Alec Dawson series had brought him a success which meant that he could make millions of pounds without needing to step beyond his limited range.

  Adam had always had the looks. Even when the greater talents around him at his drama college had confined him to carrying spears and speaking pathetically few lines, his looks had been noted. Others had dominated the stage in the modern and period pieces where Adam had secured his first small parts, but agents had noted his looks and his bearing. His voice was clear, but his projection was limited: his words did not carry to the back of the larger theatres. But he had an impressive profile, a charming smile, and a willingness to work. In due course he was taken on by an enthusiastic young agent.

  He was given a small part in a television sitcom. Its storyline involved two established female stars sharing a flat. Adam was one of the many eligible bachelors who flitted through the strivings of the pair for permanent partners. A female reviewer in one of the tabloids noted him as the best of the beefcake in a modest series and the editor chose to set one of Adam’s publicity pictures beside her column. There was an immediate response from readers. Moreover, this was in August, the traditionally slack time and ‘silly season’ for news. So the paper ran the beefcake debate for a full week. Some readers suggested alternative ‘hunks’ and others supported the original review in asserting Cassidy’s physical charms. It was trivial stuff, cynically exploited, but for an obscure and not over-talented young actor, there is truly no such thing as bad publicity.

  The industry which was to become Adam Cassidy had been launched.

  The sitcom was a limited success and ran for only two six-programme series. But the writers noted that their previously unknown beefcake had now acquired that awful modern attribute, ‘celebrity status’. He was given greater exposure and a few more lines in the second series. The two established female stars were made to swoon over him in private and compete for his attention in public. They were both more than ten years older than their quarry, so that writer and director saw fit to make their pursuit of their handsome hero increasingly desperate and a little ridiculous.

  That didn’t do the status of the young actor with the short speeches and the gorgeous profile any harm. When the sitcom’s final episode was concluded, the general verdict was that although a tired format should be mercifully put out of its misery, a new television presence had been established.

  There were enough offers of work to gladden the heart of any agent. Adam now switched to one who was both shrewd and perceptive. Tony Valento was a failed actor himself. He told his clients that and very little else. Tony saw the limitations as well as the natural attributes of his young client. Television was Cassidy’s natural metier, Valento assured him; privately, the agent congratulated himself that he need never canvas theatre producers on Adam’s behalf again. Tony secured him a series of smallish parts in successful productions. He was an innocent young man among the highly experienced elderly cast in an episode of Midsomer Murders; he emerged as the innocent victim of a complex plot to frame him in the last scene. He was the idealistic young sergeant assisting a cynical superintendent in a forgettable one-off drama – he put his life on the line to save a young mother, and received a stern official police rebuke for his heroism, whilst the television audience applauded his actions.

  When the BBC made their big-budget drama of the year, Great Expectations, it was Adam Cassidy who figured as that bright young man of the world, Herbert Pocket. The director severely pruned some of his scenes after seeing the rushes, and a couple of the older critics compared his performance unfavourably with that of Alec Guinness in David Lean’s ancient film, but in the great television scheme of things, that s
carcely mattered.

  Adam Cassidy had his appearance in a classic. His agent duly added ‘versatile’ to his list of attributes. He was continually in work. He even managed to learn a little about his limitations, and became a more effective performer as a result.

  Now, at forty-two, he was an undoubted television star and a national, even an international, name. The series specially written for him, in which he played Alec Dawson, a private detective who received a series of glamorous and perilous assignments, was now in its fourth series and more popular than ever. The plots were unlikely, even occasionally preposterous, but no one seemed to mind that. They weren’t meant to be taken seriously, were they? And Adam Cassidy had the good sense to put exactly that idea forward in a succession of carefully timed chat show appearances. He announced that he didn’t take either the series or himself too seriously. The British public liked that in their heroes.

  As is quite usual in such situations, there was an increasing discrepancy between the way the public chose to perceive their star and the reality of the person himself. Very few people would turn their backs on stardom, but it is a difficult status to cope with. People stop telling you what they think and start telling you what you want to hear. That makes it difficult for you to be objective, and eventually you become unwilling to trust what people are saying to you. You can rely on very little of what you hear, and you begin to choose that little for yourself. In extreme cases, you begin to believe the greatest lies of all: your own publicity.

  Your agent and most of those who work with you are riding on the back of your success. They note the signs of megalomania which are beginning to appear in you, but feel powerless to challenge them without jeopardizing their own fortunes. Only those closest to you can tell you the truths you do not wish to hear, and even they may do so at their peril. Adam Cassidy’s first wife, Amy, warned him that he should not confine his contacts with his children to posing with them and their expensive toys for publicity photographs. ‘I can’t shut myself away in the house and play happy families, woman!’ Adam had told her.