Situation Tragedy

by Simon Brett

  ‘You can’t learn lines that are in character,’ was the thought that went through every mind in the room. But nobody said it.

  ‘I mean, for a start, since when has Colonel Strutter called Mrs Strutter ‘darling’?’

  ‘Oh, but all married couples call each other “darling”. Don’t they, darling?’

  ‘They certainly do, darling.’

  ‘Not Colonel Strutter. He wouldn’t go in for that sort of sentimental nonsense. He never calls his wife anything.’

  ‘But he has to call her something,’ complained Sam Tennison.

  ‘Well, he doesn’t.’

  ‘But everyone calls everyone something. Don’t they, darling?’

  ‘They most certainly do, darling.’

  ‘Anyway, that’s only a detail,’ George Birkitt steamrollered on. ‘The plot is full of silly things too, which are just out of keeping with the rest of the series that we’ve already made. I mean, that business at the end with the samurai sword. Have you ever met a Japanese with a samurai sword?’ He turned to the Japanese actor who was playing the Strutters new neighbour. ‘I mean, have you got any samurai swords?’

  ‘Yes, many,’ replied the Japanese with a polite smile.

  ‘Well, that’s neither here nor there. As a pay-off for an episode of The Strutters it’s just hopelessly out of keeping.’

  ‘Oh no,’ murmured Mort Verdon, who was sitting by Charles. ‘Don’t cut the samurai sword. I spent most of last week finding somewhere that would hire the thing to us. They’re about as easy to come by as a banana in a convent.’

  ‘Now come on,’ Peter Lipscombe was saying bonhomously. ‘I’m sure everything’s really okay with this script. Just change the odd word here and there and . . .’

  Charles relaxed. Barton Rivers had delivered Aurelia to the rehearsal and then driven away. If anything was going to happen, it wouldn’t be yet a while.

  Idly he wondered what form the next attack would take. Shooting? Stabbing? Bombing?

  He also wondered idly who would be its target.

  But the week passed very quietly at the Paddington Jewish Boys’ Club. Those whose work took them into W.E.T. House, like Mort Verdon, came back speaking of strikes and rumours of strikes, but the atmosphere in the rehearsal room remained peaceful. All of the Strutters team had benefited from the few days’ rest and seemed relaxed. George Birkitt, whose objections to the script had really only been a way of asserting himself, was content with a few minor word-changes. The offending ‘darlings’ were excised, which made the script a revolutionary new departure in the literary careers of Willy and Sam Tennison, and George became quite mellow. He didn’t really mind about having less lines than usual; if the truth were told, he was quite relieved – there was now a chance he might be able to learn them. But the tantrum had been necessary to him. As he said to Charles, ‘Well, you know I’m the last person on earth to throw a scene, but occasionally one does have to put one’s foot down and remind them who one is, or they trample all over you . . . er, one.’

  He had also been persuaded that the pay-off should be left unaltered.

  This was not because he thought it was right, but to avoid trouble; he had finally accepted it with a don’t-say-I-didn’t-warn-you shrug. After all, if the whole show was likely to be dubbed, it didn’t really matter whether the jokes were funny or not. The viewing audience would laugh with recorded hilarity just as much as they would with the sounds of a so-called live audience.

  Because, as the week progressed, there seemed less and less chance of the show’s being recorded on the normal schedule. The security men’s go-slow was unlikely to be resolved; the worry was how many more unions were likely to join them. The threat of the strike that Charles had jokingly predicted, of ITV staff for greater disparity of pay from BBC staff, loomed larger.

  As a result of this, the rehearsal room saw more of Peter Lipscombe than it had since Bob Tomlinson took over as Director. The Producer appeared almost every day, bringing news of fresh possibilities and contingency plans. Nothing dented his Little Noddy image, though. Everything was still going to be okay, they were still working on the most exciting series to have hit television since Logie Baird’s early experiments. Maybe the pitch of these assertions rose to a more hysterical level as the week went on, but nothing stopped them pouring out.

  And everything seemed to be normal with Dame Aurelia Howarth and her husband. The senile homicide delivered his wife to the rehearsal room in the Bentley and picked her up at the end of the day’s work. On no occasion did he come inside the building.

  The only significant moment came when Aurelia, who always did the correct thing, asked Bob Tomlinson, ‘Darling, if this beastly go-slow happens and we have to rehearse/record the show through the day, do you mind if Barton sits in and watches? He does so enjoy coming to the recordings.’

  ‘No, that’s all right, love,’ said the director, who, in spite of his resistance to show-biz schmaltz, had, over the weeks, like everyone else, developed a soft spot for Dob Howarth.

  She turned to Charles, who was standing nearby, and gave him the exclusive benefit of her smile. ‘How are things?’ she asked lightly.

  ‘Getting somewhere,’ he said confidently, the intimacy between knight errant and damsel in distress re-established.

  Aurelia looked up with sudden understanding. Once again he felt sure that she suspected Barton too.

  And he also felt sure that, if the old lunatic was going to strike again, he would do so on the studio day.

  Just as he was about to leave Hereford Road for rehearsal the day before the recording, Charles received a package through the letter-box. It was in a padded brown envelope and for a moment he couldn’t imagine what it might be. Then the Kew postmark and the feel of the contents told him it must be his rare copy of R. Q. Wilberforce’s Death Takes A Short Cut.

  Because he was late, he shoved the package into his pocket and caught a cab to the Paddington Jewish Boys’ Club. The cab was just another example of how having money in his pocket made him feel wealthy. He still hadn’t managed to get through to Frances about the Greek idea; must try again.

  Not much rehearsal ever gets done the day before studio, because the timing revolves around the Crew Run. This is the occasion when, as actors often put it, ‘the anoraks move in’. In other words, all the studio staff, cameramen, sound-boom operators and so on, come to see the show in rehearsed form and follow it in their camera scripts (often typed up by the PA into the small hours of the previous night).

  The Crew Run on this occasion was scheduled for twelve noon and, as the hour drew near, tension mounted. No one was quite sure of the latest on the industrial front and there were constant calls for various union members to go to meetings, which might or might not lead to strike action. Until all the crew turned up, it would not be known whether the show could go ahead. In their present militant mood, the technicians were liable to regard one member’s absence as an instance of under-manning which would not allow the rest of them to proceed.

  Mort Verdon twittered around with gloomy cautionary anecdotes from W.E.T. House. How the waitresses in the Executive Dining Room had walked out, leaving the Catering Manager to serve a lunch party of ten, given by Nigel Frisch. How a fellow Stage Manager had been having his bacon roll handed over the canteen counter when the call for a meeting came over the loudspeakers, and how the sweet-smelling breakfast had been whisked back from under his hungry nose. How a particularly bolshie studio team had insisted on reboiling a kettle and remaking tea for every rehearsal of a brief scene in a drama production. Mort got very dramatic about it all.

  But gradually the anoraks assembled. Peter Lipscombe was for once silent and even anxious as he counted the crew members. One by one they came in through the rehearsal room door and, with the instinct of their breed, homed in on the coffee machine and tins of biscuits.

  So the Crew Run was achieved. It even went quite well. George Birkitt remembered most of his lines. Peter Lipscombe thought it
was a terrific episode and the whole series was jolly exciting.

  Afterwards, as everyone disbanded, the mood was cheerful. The crew had been friendly and no one doubted that the show would get made the next day.

  George Birkitt, flushed with the success of his feat of memory, asked if he could buy Charles a drink. Charles conceded the requisite permission. He felt relaxed. Nothing would happen till the studio day.

  ‘Stupid thing came up the other day,’ said George Birkitt with a sheepish grin, as they sat outside a mews pub drinking pints of Guinness. ‘Had a call from the headmaster of my old school – asked if I’d open the school fête. I must have “arrived”, they usually get some retired Colonel or something.’

  ‘It’s the Colonel Strutter image.’

  ‘I suppose it is. Flattering in a way, mind.’

  ‘Are you going to do it?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not sure. Depends what else I have on round the date. I’ve referred him to my agent.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Well, you do have to be bloody careful. I mean, you do one of these things as a favour, word gets out, and suddenly they’re all clamouring round.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘Believe me, it happens. Anyway, it’s easier if my agent sorts out the financial side.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that either.’

  ‘Got to be canny, Charles, got to be canny.’

  They both drank deeply into their Guinness. George Birkitt continued, ‘Rang my wife the other day.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘Do you know her? Stephanie Roscoe.’

  ‘I know her as an actress. I didn’t know you were married.’

  ‘Oh yes. We’ve been separated for a few years. You know, her career really took off when she got that part in the Royals telly series.’

  ‘I read about it.’

  ‘Made life very difficult for us. I was going through a bad patch, you know, professionally. Puts strain on a marriage, when one partner’s very successful and in demand, and the other . . . ain’t. So, after a lot of fighting, we split up. Best thing at the time.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘You’re divorced, aren’t you?’

  ‘Not actually divorced. Just separated.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘I found an actor’s life incompatible with matrimony.’

  ‘It’s difficult, certainly.’

  ‘Must be even more difficult if you’re both in the business. When you’ve got professional rivalry to add to the other pressures.’

  ‘Doesn’t help, Charles. You very rarely get show-biz marriages where the two careers balance exactly. For every pair of Lunts, there must be a hundred Dobs and Bartons.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course, I was never jealous of Stephanie. Problems were just logistical. I mean, she was – is – a sweet girl, but really no great shakes as an actress. Just had a couple of lucky breaks. So jealousy was never really appropriate.’

  ‘No. Haven’t heard much about her recently. What’s she been up to?’

  ‘Not a lot, poor darling. Got a bit over-exposed, I think, with the Royals thing. So I thought I’d just ring, see how she was.’

  ‘And how was she?’

  ‘Fine, fine. Pity about this damned go-slow. I was going to ask her to come along to one of these recordings.’

  So that she can see George Birkitt’s name above the title, thought Charles, as the other continued, ‘Still, I’m taking her out to dinner in a couple of days. See if there’s anything left.’

  ‘Hope there is, for your sake.’

  George Birkitt shrugged. ‘Doesn’t worry me one way or the other. Just be interesting to see her, though.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Strange, you know, during the time she was successful with that series, while I was spending a lot of time sitting around at home while she was off at rehearsals and premieres and things, I got really paranoid about it. You know, began to doubt my own abilities.’ He laughed. ‘Even started to believe Stephanie’s publicity and think she was more talented than I was. Huh, but strange how quickly one gets like that. Most difficult part in the world, second fiddle, specially for a man.’

  ‘But you don’t have any worries about that now?’

  ‘Good Lord, no. Everything’s turned out fine recently. I really think this series could do me a lot of good, you know.’

  ‘I’m sure it will. Same again?’

  ‘That would be very pleasant.’

  As Charles went into the pub with the empty glasses, he mulled over what George had said about the pressures of being second fiddle. A lifetime of it could unhinge someone. Suppose you married a wife when you were both at about the same level in the business. And then you watched her rise to international success, while your career made no noticeable advance. You saw her become the toast of London and New York, you heard her name on everyone’s lips, you saw her picture everywhere. You stood by while she became a pin-up of the Forces, you witnessed her career mature with her years, you saw her break into television with the same unerring success, you read the announcement that she had been made a Dame of the British Empire . . .

  That kind of pressure could drive a man insane. And who knew what revenge he might take on the world which had put him in a position of such constant inequality.

  He wondered again where Barton Rivers would strike next.

  With four pints of Guinness inside him, he wandered back to Hereford Road through the bleary sunlight. It was really too nice an afternoon to go back to the bedsitter, but he had a vague intention of ringing Frances. The school of which she was headmistress must have broken up by now. It would be good to speak to her. George’s words about the pressures of show business marriages had reminded him of the advantages of his own.

  Then, after he had spoken to her, he might go out to the park. Walk round the Serpentine, maybe.

  It was when he was inside the stuffy bedsitter that he became aware of the bulky package in his pocket. Oh yes, of course, his R. Q. Wilberforce. In his Guinness-sodden state, he couldn’t really think why he had it.

  He pieced it together slowly. Oh yes, it had started with that book Romney Kirkstall had had, the biography of Aurelia Howarth in which there had been a still from an aborted film called Death Takes A Short Cut. Then later Romney said he’d seen a copy of a book with that title in a Charing Cross Road bookshop Barton Rivers had recommended to him. So Charles had gone to the bookshop, been put in touch with Gregory Watts and . . . yes, yes, of course.

  He took the brown padded package out. There was a little red plastic tag which would open the bag along a line of perforations.

  He took hold of the tag and pulled it.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  DEATH TAKES A SHORTCUT

  by

  R. Q. Wilberforce

  CHAPTER 1

  THE TRAVELLER’S RETURN

  Maltravers Ratcliffe had risen and broken his fast early, so that he was already installed behind his desk, with a long black cigarette holder between his teeth, reading through his accumulated correspondence, when his wife appeared at the library door.

  ‘So my bonny has come back to me,’ she announced with joy.

  ‘Over the sea to Skye,’ he rejoined merrily, as he rose to greet her. ‘Except, in my case, it was over the sea and through the sky. I came on the aeroplane to Croydon. Podd brought the Bentley down to meet me at the ‘drome, and we fairly flew again as we drove back here!’

  ‘You should have wakened me on your arrival.’

  ‘No, no, Eithne my love. Even the nonpareil of beauty can reap benefit from a little beauty-sleep.’

  Nor was his description fanciful: Eithne Ratcliffe was possessed of a beauty that would quicken the blood in any man’s veins. Though slight, she was perfectly proportioned, and her carriage was superb. The golden hair that was her chiefest glory had been cut in the modern style, but its waves owed nothing to the artifice of coiffeurs. And her eyes! What eyes! Their
hue of purest blue would have made a cornflower despondent; sapphires could offer but feeble comparison to them.

  ‘Was your business in Paris successfully concluded?’ she enquired of her handsome spouse.

  ‘Successfully enough,’ he conceded carelessly. ‘Although, as is ever the case, I trapped the small fry in the certain knowledge that the big fish swam away unscathed.’

  ‘Was it . . .?’ Eithne questioned tremulously.

  ‘Our old enemy?’ Maltravers nodded with gravity. ‘That same Teutonic devil was behind this latest outrage. Backed by an international conglomerate of Jewish bankers, he was planning to flood the gold bullion market with counterfeit ingots. Had he succeeded, he’d have crippled all the major economies of the Western world! Shares would have gone down to cat’s meat prices and hundreds of perfectly decent small houses would have gone smash!’

  ‘But you prevented the swindle?’ demanded Eithne, her wonderful eyes sparkling as she looked at her husband.

  ‘Oh yes, I scotched his scheme easily. It was like eating jam. Once I had worked out that someone must be manipulating prices on the Bourse, I found out who it was first pop. A little Jewish thimblerigger, who I may say won’t be seeing much scenery except the inside of a prison for the next twenty years. The Sûreté were very grateful. I’ve been awarded one of their croix d’honneurs’.’

  Charles’ concentration on the words wavered, but his interest was fiercely aroused. He skimmed verbose description of Maltravers Ratcliffe’s cricketing prowess and a long, somewhat precious discussion about where the couple should spend the weekend. This was resolved at the end of the first chapter . . .

  With a merry laugh, Maltravers cried, ‘I’ve had my fill of crime for a while! Let’s away to Derbyshire to play cricket. I happen to know Lord Wainscott fields a scratch team that’s none so dusty. Tell Podd and Smithers to commence packing for us immediately! We’ll take the Bentley and they can follow along in the Sunbeam. Oh, and tell Wallace to prepare a luncheon-basket, so that we are free to lunch where the scenery’s good. Then we’ll leap into the Bentley, my angel, point the bonnet towards Derbyshire, and be there in two twos!’