Situation Tragedy

by Simon Brett

  ‘Perhaps I did once, but as we get older, our judgement gets less reliable.’

  ‘Your judgement is as good as it has ever been. And yet I heard you say to Peter Lipscombe on two occasions that you thought those books would make a good television series. I didn’t know what the books in question were at that stage or I’d have smelt a rat earlier.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Nor do I completely, but I’m getting there.’ Charles paused and built his thoughts up slowly. ‘You knew, of course you knew, that those books had no potential at all for television and yet you still very deliberately brought them to Peter Lipscombe’s attention. Why? I think you wanted them read, you wanted someone to see the parallels with the crimes that surrounded the Strutters series. Yes, in spite of what you say about wanting to keep your husband’s crimes quiet, I think you were deliberately trying to draw attention to the books’ parallels with what he was doing. And, if you’d given them to anyone other than a television producer, the connection might have been made a lot earlier.’

  Aurelia looked crestfallen. ‘All right, so what if I did? I couldn’t actually betray Barton, but by offering the books I was at least opening up the possibility that someone might work out what was happening.’

  Charles was almost seduced by her meekness, but not quite. ‘If that was the case, why didn’t you offer more help, show the books to the police or something, tell someone? And why did you sound so disappointed when I said I’d worked out the connection just now?’

  Aurelia now looked angry. ‘You’re talking nonsense, Charles. Why else would I lend the books?’

  He looked at her very straight. ‘I think you lent them as an insurance policy. So that they were there if anyone started connecting the deaths. And so that if suspicion started to move towards you, it could be diverted towards Barton.’

  He wasn’t sure, but he knew that he had to hold her stare until she gave way if he was to have any chance of finding out the truth.

  It took a long time, but eventually she lowered her eyes. ‘So . . . it’s confession time, is it?’

  ‘I think so.’ With caution and discomfort, Charles sat down. ‘You killed Sadie Wainwright?’

  ‘It was an accident. Really, an accident.’ The wonderful blue eyes looked totally sincere, but Charles was getting suspicious of their messages. ‘It was a stupid thing. She had been being unpleasant about Cocky all day, really offensive. Then, when we were walking up the fire escape, she said something even viler and I lost my temper. I pushed her and the railing gave way. That is the truth.’

  ‘So Cocky was the motivation?’

  ‘Yes. And after that night’s filming, I thought you’d worked it out. That’s why I poisoned him.’

  ‘Poisoned Cocky?’

  She nodded. ‘I thought if you saw how little I was affected by his death, you’d discount him as a motive against Sadie. But then Romney came along with his wretched card and I broke down, so it . . .’

  Charles tried to slow things down, so that his mind could accommodate the new information. ‘Okay, Sadie’s death you say was an accident.’

  ‘Yes, and she was such a peculiarly unlovely person I can’t think that anyone was too upset by it.’ She spoke with a kind of blind selfishness, the murderer s immunity to other people’s existence. ‘Anyway, I didn’t want investigations and things. I had my image to think of.’ Image – the star’s eternal motivation. Was the perfect marriage to Barton just another reflection of the image?

  Charles nudged on. ‘But Sadie’s wasn’t the only death.’

  ‘No. As I say, she was an accident, really. I thought she would soon be forgotten, but . . .’

  A new set of facts fell into place. Scott Newton had been in a terrible state after the recording of the Strutters pilot, Scott Newton had wanted a private word with Aurelia at the first read-through, Scott Newton had been suddenly affluent at the filming at Bernard Walton’s house. ‘But,’ suggested Charles, ‘Scott Newton had seen Sadie die and, being under a certain amount of financial pressure, had started to blackmail you.’

  Aurelia nodded. ‘I gave him one big pay-off, but he wasn’t going to be satisfied with that. So he had to go.’ It was said very matter-of-fact.

  ‘You moved the flower-urn yourself?’

  ‘Barton did it.’

  ‘You told him all about the –’

  She laughed unattractively. ‘I told him that Scott was one of von Strutter’s spies, and that we had to destroy him. And I said the only way we could thwart the Teutonic devil was to use his own murder methods. The way Sadie died had been a coincidence, but I suddenly saw that it could fit very conveniently into a pattern.’

  ‘And Bar ton didn’t question what you were suggesting?’

  ‘Not at all. He took to it instantly. It was what he’d been waiting for all his life, for someone to share his delusions.’ She spoke of her husband as one might of a large and inconvenient pet.

  ‘And it was after Scott’s death that you gave Peter Lipscombe the books, so that he could make the connection between the two crimes if he chose to?’

  ‘Yes. He mentioned the possibility of their being connected in one of his little notes and that got me worried.’

  ‘And, if they ever were discovered, you’d set it up so that Barton would get the blame.’

  ‘He’d never betray me. Never betray a lady,’ she said dismissively’.

  Charles sighed. ‘That still doesn’t explain the deaths of Rod Tisdale and Robin Laughton.’

  ‘No’ Aurelia agreed. ‘It doesn’t.’ She let out a sudden peal of laughter. It was a famous sound, a sound that had been heard on millions of recordings of I Dream of Dancing, but at this moment its gaiety was not infectious. ‘I’m afraid I was hoist with my own petard.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I am afraid I had planted the idea of a von Strutter conspiracy rather too firmly in my poor husband’s head. He started recreating the other murders completely off his own bat. Obviously what I had asked him to do had struck a chord. Barton was happy, happier than he had ever been. I think he felt that murder was going to be the one thing in his life that he had ever been good at.’

  ‘So you had nothing to do with the last two deaths?’

  ‘Nothing at all. Mind you, they were not without convenience. They shifted suspicion from me. The death of that tiresome Floor Manager put you off the scent, for a start.’

  She smiled. It was the same famous smile, but its charm had gone. Charles recoiled from the image of this woman playing on her husband’s illness, winding him up like some demented clockwork mouse to the random murders of people she regarded as irrelevant. That was it, he realised – through all the charm, she had never recognised the relevance of anyone in the world but herself. Perhaps, given more understanding, more care from his wife, Barton’s descent into insanity could have been checked.

  But it wasn’t the moment for conjecture. ‘And Barton’s attack on me – was that just random?’

  She shook her head slowly, with another little smile. ‘No, I’m afraid that was my suggestion. I planted the idea, I have to confess. Your inquisitiveness was becoming rather disturbing, and I saw a good way of satisfying my husband’s lunacy and removing a danger to me.’

  ‘I’m honoured.’

  ‘Yes.’ She paused. ‘Now, of course, you represent even more of a danger to me.’ She looked at her watch and Charles realised why she had vouchsafed him this long confession. She had been playing for time, awaiting the return of her demented assassin.

  The door opened, and Barton Rivers entered with his customary idiotic gallantry. He seemed totally unsurprised to see Charles. ‘Bung-ho, old boy,’ he said. ‘Lovely weather for it.’

  ‘Barton,’ commanded Dame Aurelia Howarth, ‘Mr Paris is being rather tiresome.’

  The death’s head turned to face him. ‘I say, old boy. Mustn’t worry the little lady. Perhaps you ought to be off.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that,
Barton,’ she snapped. ‘I mean, get rid of him.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘He’s one of von Strutter’s spies.’

  ‘Oh, can’t have that, eh? Don’t understand the rules of cricket, that lot.’

  ‘Kill him, Barton!’

  The old man stepped forward, the claws shot out and Charles felt himself lifted out of his chair. The strength was enormous and terrifying. His arms were clamped to his sides and, in his weakened state, he was unable to move.

  The eyes in the skull-face glinted at him, horribly close.

  But then they seemed to lose focus, to waver, and change to the confused eyes of a senile old man.

  ‘Difficult, you know, old girl,’ said Barton. ‘Only one of the Teutonic devil’s tricks we haven’t used is the old samurai sword, and I’m afraid I haven’t got one of those on me.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how it’s done,’ Dame Aurelia Howarth hissed. But she was up against the unassailable logic of lunacy. ‘Oh, but it does, old thing. There’s a right way and a wrong way, you know.’

  ‘Just kill him!’

  ‘Have to find a sword first, my angel. Have to think. I wonder if there’s anything else we could do, or has von Strutter finally triumphed?’

  Charles Paris felt very tired, while this surreal discussion about his death went on. He wanted to laugh, but hadn’t got the energy.

  Then the door opened again and he looked up with relief to see the startled face of Mort Verdon. ‘Oops, sorry, boofles. Thought you’d all gone.’

  Barton Rivers did not appear to notice the new arrival, but relaxed his hold on his victim’s arms. Aurelia fixed Charles with an expression of hatred, but seemed to recognise that nothing could be done with Mort there. ‘Come on, Barton.’

  The living skeleton did not react.

  ‘Maltravers,’ she murmured.

  He came to life. He gave her a gallant little bow, and offered his arm. ‘Of course, Eithne, my angel. We’ll soon get this ghastly business sorted out.’

  She took his arm almost reluctantly. She seemed hypnotised by him, half-attracted, half-repelled. And there was something else in her look, which with a shock Charles recognised as fear. As Barton led his wife out of the dressing room door, he seemed very much in command of their relationship.

  ‘Come, let’s away, my fair one, and we’ll be there in two twos.’

  Relief, and the expression of amazement on Mort Verdon’s face, reduced Charles to helpless laughter. As amazement changed to concern, he realised he was hysterical.

  ‘Oh God,’ he finally managed to say, ‘I’ve never been so glad to see anyone.’

  Mort Verdon flicked an eyebrow with his little finger. ‘I bet you say that to all the boys.’

  Charles giggled again and then sobered up. ‘You look a worried man, Mort.’

  ‘I am, boofle, I am.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Always the same when you’ve got something valuable in the studio. It gets nicked.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The samurai sword has completely disappeared, dear. Completely.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Charles realised that his ordeal was not yet over.

  ‘That’s why I’m going round the dressing rooms and –’

  ‘Mort,’ said Charles.

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  ‘Would you mind walking out with me?’

  Mort Verdon’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Well now,’ he said, ‘there’s a novelty!’

  There was no sign of the Bentley or its owners as they left the dead stillness of W.E.T. House, but a cruising taxi was passing and Charles hailed it. He’d feel safer inside than exposed on the streets.

  He was going to give the Hereford Road address, but suddenly panicked that Aurelia might know it. He felt certain they’d be out to get him, but he didn’t know how. Perhaps there would be a clue in the R. Q. Wilberforce books. He asked the driver to take him to Hampstead.

  Stanley Harvey objected that it was very inconvenient and ill-mannered, but Charles was in no mood to be stopped. He bulldozered his way into the little man’s library and flicked quickly through Death Takes A Short Cut.

  It was unhelpful. Then Charles remembered Stanley Harvey had mentioned some other R. Q. Wilberforce papers in the filing cabinet, and he demanded to see them.

  It was the only thing he could think of. Perhaps there would be some further clue, some pointer that might help him avert the final tragedy.

  With bad grace, Stanley Harvey opened the filing cabinet. Charles riffled through the piles of manuscript and letters at speed, not certain what he was looking for, but convinced that there must be something.

  In a few minutes he found it. A pointer, yes, but it didn’t point in the way he had expected.

  There was just one sheet. It was headed as if it were the start of a new book, but at the bottom of the page, a thick line had been ruled. All that was written below that was the date, 30th January 1944.

  DEATH TAKES THE HONOURABLE COURSE

  by

  R. Q. Wilberforce

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL

  Maltravers Ratcliffe looked at his wife as he put down the ‘phone, and felt the glow of wonder and gratitude that her visage always aroused in him. The golden hair! The heavenly blue eyes, more precious than a Rajah’s treasure store! Eithne’s small face was set in the lines of courage, as together they listened to the distant, ominous boom of the guns.

  ‘London has fallen, my angel,’ he announced with his same old debonair carelessness.

  She gasped: though it was the news that she had feared, to hear it confirmed was still a profound shock to her sensibilities.

  ‘So von Strutter has triumphed!’

  ‘Triumphed over this sceptred isle,’ her husband rejoined with the spirit, ‘but never over Maltravers Ratcliffe!’

  ‘It is inevitable that the Teutonic devil will seek you out to exact his ghastly revenge.’

  ‘Inevitable,’ he confirmed. ‘But let him seek! To seek is not to find! Come, my angel, we will go for a drive! Tell Wallace to provide a luncheon-basket and tog up in your gladdest rags!’

  They drove towards the South. The Bentley swallowed the miles keenly, relishing the open road. Never had the Garden of England looked more beauteous! Never had Maltravers and Eithne Ratcliffe been so much together, so equal in their love! They took their luncheon in a flowery dell and chattered amiably of cricket and of their happiness.

  Then the great Bentley, smoothly seeming to sense its destination, headed towards the sea, towards those white cliffs which, until this last devil, had hitherto daunted every foreign invader.

  As they neared the cliff-top, Maltravers Ratcliffe, without diminishing the great car’s speed, took his wife’s small hand in his. ‘Take heart, my angel!’ he cried cheerily. ‘We may thank our stars that we have had each other. Onward now, my fair one – and we’ll be there in two twos!’

  The news of Aurelia Howarth and Barton Rivers’s fatal car crash was on the radio the following morning. It wasn’t the first item. That was of course the ITV strike.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  DAME AURELIA HOWARTH

  The death of Aurelia Howarth, who died in a car accident together with her husband, Barton Rivers, robs the British theatre of one of its most glittering and best-loved stars. Born Anne Howarth, she was the daughter of a grocer and spent her early years near Guildford. Her great natural talents led to her enrolment in the stage school from where she progressed to the chorus of a West End revue, Careless Rapture, at the tender age of fifteen. She was ‘spotted’ in this show by the great Andre Chariot, who gave her solo spots in some of his revues, and later taken up by the impresario C. B. Cochran, one of the most famous of whose ‘Young Ladies’ she became. Her biggest successes of this period were in Parisian Trifles, Only the Night and Shimmering Stars. It was in this last show that she first sang I Dream of Dancing, the song that she made her own and which virtually became her signature tune
. She also went with Shimmering Stars to Broadway where, under the title of Box of Tricks, it became one of the hits of the season, and established Aurelia Howarth as an important new star in America. During the Thirties she played leading roles in many British films, of which the most memorable are probably Lovers’ Moon, Princess of Dreams and Tomorrow’s Gone. During the War she worked indefatigably entertaining the troops, services which were recognised by a CBE in 1947. In the post-war years her career took a new turn and she started to build a reputation as a straight actress. Long runs in the West End in such shows as The Long Climb, Here We Go A-Wassailing and The Former Mrs Wellington demonstrated her versatility. Then, at an age when many people contemplate retiring, Aurelia Howarth started to work in the growing medium of television, where she proved very popular, particularly in the role of the scatty Mrs Strutter in the comedy series, What’ll The Neighbours Say? She was working on a new series in the same character at the time of her death. Throughout a long career in the theatre, Aurelia Howarth was one of the few performers who commanded universal love and who never did a malicious action to anyone. Both in the profession and with the public, her popularity never waned. She was created a Dame of the British Empire in the recent Birthday Honours List. She married Barton Rivers, a revue performer, in 1918 and their one son, Hilary, was killed in action in 1944.

  There was no separate obituary for Barton Rivers. Neither his reputation as an actor nor as a writer justified it.

  Charles Paris tried ringing his wife Frances on and off for about three days and, when he still didn’t get any reply, he rang their daughter Juliet at her home in Pangbourne.

  ‘No, Mummy’s not there at the moment.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘It’s school holidays. She’s away.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Naxos.’

  ‘That’s Greece, isn’t it?’

  ‘One of the islands, yes.’

  ‘Do you happen to know if she went on her own or . . .’