by Simon Brett
Murder Unprompted
( Charles Paris - 8 )
Simon Brett
Simon Brett
Murder Unprompted
CHAPTER ONE
Charles Paris was in the Number One dressing room.
True, the Number One dressing room at the Prince’s Theatre, Taunton, was distinguished from the other dressing rooms only by the white plastic numeral screwed on to the door. In size and lack of amenities they were all identical.
And true, Charles was sharing the Number One dressing room with another actor, Alex Household, who had a larger part in the play.
But the fact remained that, for the duration of the three-week run of The Hooded Owl, Charles Paris would be in the Number One dressing room and, though publicly he always affected lack of interest in such petty distinctions (‘Men are led by toys’, he would say, loftily quoting Napoleon), he was secretly delighted. However cynical he appeared, however logical he was about the likelihood of a sudden breakthrough at the age of fifty-four, his actor’s imagination could still leap in seconds to the pinnacles of theatrical success. Dreams of sudden public recognition of his talents had survived almost unchanged from his teens, and reality, in the form of modest achievements and much ‘resting’ since he had started in the business in 1949, could make little impression on them.
So, though he would never actually speak of it, even in his most drunken moments (which in his case were quite drunken), Charles still nursed the tiny hope that The Hooded Owl would be the one, the play on whose crest he would ride into the West End, where his true worth would be instantly appreciated, and he would spend the rest of his life ‘reading scripts’ rather than grabbing any job that came within reach, becoming a regular on television chat shows, participating in ‘Nights of a Thousand Stars’ for charity, and describing his favourite room to the Observer Colour Supplement.
Since he lived in one room, a dingy bed-sit in Hereford Road, London W.2., this last part of the fantasy had not been fully thought through. In fact, none of it had been fully thought through, because, in small measure, he had tasted success. He had been in long runs in the West End, he had even had his own play running in the West End, he had done bits in television and films, and his logical self knew how insubstantial such satisfactions were.
And yet the fantasies persisted. It was just as it had been in his teens. In the early years of adolescence, he had put down all his feelings of dissatisfaction to the fact that he hadn’t got that all-important amulet, a girl-friend. But, to his surprise, at the age of nineteen, after a steady two-year relationship, he had found he was still attributing his discontent to the same cause. Like the horizon, a sense of fulfilment kept its distance, regardless of his position.
But, in spite of that bleak conclusion, hope survived.
Hope for the future of The Hooded Owl was not quite as baseless as it might be for the average production in a provincial theatre. The staple diet of Taunton’s theatre-goers was set-book classics, creaking but well-built thrillers and last year’s West End cast-offs, none of which had any prospects beyond the three weeks of their run. The Hooded Owl, on the other hand, was a new play, and not a bad one at that. If all of the thousands of variables which govern such a process came right, it was not impossible that the play should transfer to the West End.
One person believed that possibility with sufficient conviction to back his belief with money. His name was Paul Lexington, and he called himself a Producer. He certainly had a letterhead on his note-paper to prove it, though details of his actual productions seemed a little less well-defined. He talked confidently of tours he had set up with Music Hall shows and even mentioned putting on a pantomime, though at what level these productions had been mounted, it was difficult to assess. A tour of a Music Hall show could be anything from a glamorous parade of the country’s Number One provincial theatres down to a glorified pub-crawl, with a motley band of barnstormers passing the hat round after a few songs at the piano.
Since Charles Paris had not heard of any major Music Hall tour in the previous few years, he inclined to the opinion that the operations of Paul Lexington Productions had been at the more modest level. On the other hand, impresarios have to start somewhere, Paul Lexington seemed a pleasant and knowledgeable young man and, in a business peopled with the incompetent and the frankly criminal, Charles felt inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.
After all, without Paul Lexington, he would not be currently employed, and, if there was one thing that Charles’s experience in the theatre had taught him, it was the inestimable advantage of having a job over ‘resting’.
The sequence of events which had brought The Hooded Owl to its first night at the Prince’s Theatre, Taunton, had been that usual circuitous trip through an obstacle course by which new plays reach the stage. The work had been written by a schoolmaster called Malcolm Harris who, though of undoubted talent, had no contacts in or knowledge of commercial theatre. He had lavished three years of his spare time on the work and, when he had the final draft neatly typed up with a Letrasetted front page and a transparent plastic folder, the only person he could think to send it to was the Professor of English at the university he had left twelve years previously. The Professor. after a few months’ delay and an apologetically nudging letter from the playwright, had written back in terms of vague praise, which a professional writer would have recognised as a confession of not having read the script, and said he had passed it on to the Professor who headed the university’s recently-inaugurated Drama Department. This gentleman, after a few months’ delay and an apologetically nudging letter from the playwright, had written back to say he had passed it on to an actor friend who was setting up a new fringe theatre company in Surbiton. After quite a few months’ delay, and three apologetically nudging letters from the playwright, the actor scribbled a note back, from an address in Gloucestershire, saying he was sorry he hadn’t yet had time to read the play. And also he was sorry that he seemed to have lost the manuscript. And, anyway, he had decided that the theatre wasn’t for him after all and he’d set up an antique shop with a friend.
Phase One of the offensive was thus over, and Phase Two started with the top carbon of the play, a newly-Letrasetted front page and a new transparent plastic folder. This time, on the advice of his wife’s mother, who’d just read a biography of some playwright out of the library though she couldn’t remember what his name was, Malcolm Harris had sent the play to his local repertory theatre. After a few months’ delay and an apologetically nudging letter from the playwright, the General Manager had returned the script with a duplicated letter, saying thanks very much for sending it, the Play Selection Committee had found it really interesting, but unfortunately it wasn’t the sort of show they were looking for at that time, why not try sending it to an agent? This Malcolm Harris had done, but, unfortunately, due to the random selection method of sticking a pin in the ‘Theatrical and Variety Agents’ section of the Yellow Pages, he had sent it to one who specialised in booking blue comedians and strippers into Working Men’s Clubs. After a few months’ delay and an apologetically nudging letter from the playwright, the script was returned, together with a photograph of ‘Sadie Masso: 38-26-36: Just the Thing to Liven Up your Stag Night or Rugby Club Dinner’, in an envelope without a stamp on it. At this point, that infallible source of advice, his wife’s mother, told Malcolm Harris that she was sure she had seen something about a play-writing competition in some magazine she’d been reading at the hairdresser’s, why didn’t he go in for that? Painstaking research having tracked down the competition, sponsored by a local Arts Festival in the Midlands, the playwright had received his application form and copy of the rules. Obeying these implicitly, he had sent off his ma
nuscript, together with the stamps for return postage and the entrance fee of one pound, and sat and waited. Four months later, he received back through the post a copy of Psychosymbiosis, a Monodrama by George Walsh. Repeated letters to the adjudicating committee of the Arts Festival, trying to retrieve the right manuscript, elicited no response.
Eighteen months had now passed since Malcolm Harris had completed The Hooded Owl, and so far there was no evidence that anyone vaguely connected with the professional theatre had even read it. The playwright was gloomily resigning himself to spending the rest of his days teaching history to recalcitrant adolescents, but the confidence of his wife, who had read the play, and his wife’s mother, who hadn’t, would not allow him to give up. His wife’s mother had heard some successful playwright or maybe it was a producer talking on the radio she thought perhaps on Woman’s Hour and saying that nowadays a successful play needed a star name, so often the star’s interest came first. This suggestion coincided with Malcolm Harris reading a letter to The Times about VAT on theatre tickets from that popular British film and television star, Michael Banks. Since the letter gave his address, and since Michael Banks, in the playwright’s wildest fantasies, would have been ideal casting for the main part, Malcolm Harris took his courage in both hands and sent The Hooded Owl off to the star. Needless to say, Michael Banks didn’t read it, but, being an amiable old boy, he passed it on to his agent, whose organisation had a Plays Department. They didn’t read it either, but a girl on the switchboard was having a brief affair with a young man who wanted to be a theatrical producer and claimed to be ‘on the look-out for a good property’, so she passed it on to him. The young man read the play, recognised its potential, and bought an option to produce it within six months for a sum which delighted Malcolm Harris, but which would have appalled his agent, had he had one.
The young producer’s name was Paul Lexington, and he then set about finding a theatre that would put the play on.
The Hooded Owl was an expensive production for the average provincial company. Though it only had a cast of eight and its contemporary setting limited the Wardrobe costs, it did require three solid representational sets, a very big outlay for a three-week run. Whereas a theatre might spread its budget to allow that kind of expenditure on a certain crowd-puller like a Shakespeare or the annual pantomime, it was very unlikely to invest so much in the uncertainties of a new play by an unknown playwright. Money was tight enough, and no provincial theatre wanted to hazard its local authority or Arts Council grants by rash speculation.
But this was where Paul Lexington had something to offer. He had money. No one quite knew where it came from; he always spoke airily of ‘my investors’, but he gave no clue to their identity. And no one knew how much he could raise, though from the confidence of his tone the amount seemed to be infinite.
So this was the deal that he offered round the provincial theatre companies during the spring and summer of 1979: if they would put on a production of The Hooded Owl, a good play for which he held an option, he would invest the necessary extra production costs for the expensive sets and, ideally, the import of a star name. Then, if the play did transfer to the West End, his production company would present it and the originating company would be credited and receive a small percentage. If it didn’t transfer, then the theatre would have had a more expensive production than their normal budget could run to, and Paul Lexington and his investors would have lost their money.
Only Paul Lexington himself knew how many companies had been offered the deal and turned it down before he got to the Prince’s Theatre, Taunton, but common sense dictated that he must have tried the better-known ones nearer London first. The chances of getting all the people necessary for a transfer, the London theatre managers and the big investors (whose aid, in spite of Paul Lexington’s confident assurances, would almost definitely be needed), diminished the further one got away from the metropolis.
However, the producer was determined to get the show on and was confident enough of the property to think it could make the transfer, even from this West Country base, whose record of getting shows into the West End was not remarkable. (In fact, it had never in its history had an original production transfer, though a few shows had passed weeks there during their pre-London tours.)
But there was a new Artistic Director at the Prince’s Theatre, a young man called Peter Hickton, whose confidence at least matched that of Paul Lexington. He had got the Taunton job some six years out of Cambridge and was determined to maintain his whizz-kid image and make a mark on the theatre nationally. He was ambitious to make the Prince’s Theatre a power-base and incubator of productions for London, in the way that the Royal Exchange, Manchester, and the Arts Theatre, Cambridge, had become in recent years. So, when Paul Lexington arrived with his proposal, Peter Hickton was already looking for a show with transfer potential.
His one condition for backing the production was predictable: that he should direct it. If that was agreed, he was prepared to put all his energies, even down to the enfant terrible tantrums that his track-record required of him, into persuading the Plays Selection Committee that The Hooded Owl should be one of the productions in the 1979-80 season at the Prince’s Theatre, Taunton.
Paul Lexington at first demurred. He had hoped to get a director of greater stature for his production, but he soon had to face facts. Peter Hickton was the only Artistic Director who had shown enthusiasm for the project and, if Paul Lexington Productions were to get their first major show under way at all, there would have to be compromises. (And it was not lost on the producer that Peter Hickton’s residence at Taunton meant directing the show would be part of his job. Sure, he’d have to be on some percentage when the play got to the West End, but at least a director’s fee would be saved for the try-out.)
So the two ambitious young men came to an agreement, and Peter Hickton set to work on the Plays Selection Committee. His success was not total. He managed to get a commitment that the Prince’s Theatre should do The Hooded Owl, but he could not persuade them to do it in the 1979-80 season. He tried all his tricks, being sarcastic, going dead quiet, shouting, walking out of the meeting, even threatening (carefully) to resign: but the best date he could come up with was September, 1980. Seeing that to protest further would be pushing his luck, he agreed with bad grace that The Hooded Owl should be the first production of the 1980-81 season.
Paul Lexington didn’t welcome this delay to his plans, but he was a realist and he wanted to get the show on, so he accepted it. He rang Malcolm Harris to say he had some good news and some bad news: the good news — that the play would definitely go into production at the Prince’s Theatre, Taunton; the bad news — that it wouldn’t happen for another year. He did not mention to the playwright that the six-month option he had bought on the play would be some eight months out of date at the proposed production date, nor did he offer more money to renew the option. He knew that Malcolm Harris was still in a flush of naive excitement about the play actually being produced and wasn’t thinking about money.
So for a year Paul Lexington continued with his other activities, whatever they might be. Nobody knew. Maybe he mounted another Music Hall tour, maybe a pantomime. Maybe he involved his investors in some other production; maybe he made contacts with London theatre managements, so that the delay should be kept to a minimum when the production actually happened.
The one thing he was known to have done during that period was to try to get a star name for The Hooded Owl. As with theatre companies, only he knew how many he approached with the script, how many refusals he got, how many tentative agreements dependent on dates and money. There were two main male parts and one female, so presumably stars of both sexes were approached.
All that was known was the result of his machinations. A fortnight before rehearsals were due to start, which was the time when Charles Paris was engaged to play the second male lead, it was bruited about in the business that the female lead was to be played by a young lady who
had recently, ‘in order to concentrate on her career as a serious actress’, left the cast of the interminably-long-running television soap opera, Cruises.
The fact that she wasn’t much of an actress, serious or any other sort, was irrelevant. The audience would flock to see her. It didn’t matter if she just stood on stage, they would still love her. (In fact, people who had worked with her thought it might be better if she did just stand on stage; they knew the hazards of trying to push her beyond her range.)
Once Paul Lexington had his star name, he was happy to fall in with Peter Hickton’s suggestions for the rest of the cast. So long as they were cheap, competent and available in the event of a transfer, he didn’t much mind who they were. As a result, Peter Hickton cast largely from his regular Taunton company; he knew them, they worshipped him, and he fancied himself in the role of star-maker.
In the lead he cast Alex Household, an actor in his late forties, who had had early success then a rather bad patch culminating in a complete breakdown. but was now coming back, in the view of Peter Hickton, twenty years his junior, ‘stronger than ever’.
In the part of the daughter, Peter Hickton cast Lesley-Jane Decker, an actress eight years his junior, who he thought had ‘enormous potential’. And the way he looked at her didn’t suggest he thought that potential was limited to the stage.
For the part of Alex’s failed brother, Peter reckoned he had had a brainwave. There was no one in the regular Taunton company of the right age, but he remembered an actor he had worked with when Assistant Director at Colchester, who had exactly the right ‘smell of failure’ that the part required. Peter rang the guy’s agent and found, to his delight, that he was free.
To the agent in question, Maurice Skellem, his client’s ‘freeness’ was no surprise. Charles Paris’s engagement diary was a joke on the level of all those corny old lines about The Kosher Book of Pork Recipes, Britain’s Economic Miracle or The Pope’s Book of Birth Control. ‘I’ve sorted out a great job for you, Charles,’ the agent asserted when he rang.
