A Deadly Habit

by Simon Brett

‘On what?’

  She shrugged. ‘Virtually anything these days. Desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone.’

  ‘And is there any way of telling whose machine it’s been watched on?’

  ‘Might be if you could check their machine. But since you don’t know whose machine it is, that might be a bit tricky.’

  Charles recognized that he had been optimistic. ‘So, what have you got?’ he asked.

  ‘Only a couple of bits.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Think about it, Charles. That Monday was the first time we’d been in the theatre. The dressing room had presumably been locked up since the last show finished the week before. The dressing rooms weren’t allocated till lunchtime. So, assuming the camera was set up to spy on Liddy, it wouldn’t have started recording until she first entered the room that day.’

  ‘What, is it switched on remotely?’

  ‘Charles, these things are motion-detecting. They switch themselves on when they sense movement in the room. I’ll show you.’ Kell pressed a few buttons on her laptop. ‘I downloaded this.’

  Given the size of the camera, the picture quality was surprisingly good. The recording started just as Liddy switched the light on and closed the door after entering her dressing room. She was dressed in what she’d worn for rehearsal on that Monday morning. She looked around the room that she thought was going to be hers for the next three months. She put her bag and the door key down on the ledge in front of the mirror – their rattle was very clear on the recording – then leant forward to check her make-up. Satisfied that it would pass muster, she moved out of shot. There was the sound of a door opening, presumably to the bathroom. Charles was very grateful the camera couldn’t follow her in there. There was already something very uncomfortable about seeing Liddy so very alive on the day of her death, without any further assault on her dignity.

  The screen went blank for a very short moment, then showed Liddy coming back into shot, doing up the belt of her jeans. Another quick check in the mirror prompted her to take a brush out of her bag and tidy her hair. Then she picked up her belongings and, having switched the light off, left the room. The camera seemed to wait for the sound of her door being locked from the outside, before switching itself off.

  Kell paused the playback.

  ‘So that,’ said Charles, ‘would be when she came downstairs to the Green Room and we all went off for lunch at the coffee shop?’

  ‘Has to be. Unfortunately, a little gadget like this isn’t sophisticated enough to have a time code.’ She looked at Charles, her expression still grim. ‘Do you feel up to watching the next bit?’

  He nodded, and Kell pressed the button. She fast-forwarded through some footage of Liddy Max entering her dressing room, switching on the light, disappearing out of shot and reappearing dressed in a monk’s habit. At that point, Kell readjusted the replay to normal speed.

  There was a knock on the door. Liddy Max opened it, to admit a figure in a monk’s habit, with the cowl over his head. The angle at which he entered and shielded his face suggested that he knew where the camera was.

  With the minimum of preparation, and no conversation, the hooded man embraced the girl. She seemed ready for him, clutching at him. He lifted her to sit on the ledge in front of her make-up mirror. She opened her legs to wrap around him and the couple made urgent love.

  ‘Are you going to tell the police about this?’ asked Charles.

  ‘Why would I do that?’ asked Kell. There was a silence. Then she asked, ‘Are you?’

  ‘Why would I do that?’ asked Charles.

  Kell had things to do, and it was a very thoughtful Charles Paris who climbed up the stairs to his dressing room. He still had more than an hour before the ‘half’ (that magic cut-off point, thirty-five minutes before curtain-up, when all the company must have checked in before a performance. Arriving at the theatre after the ‘half’ was a major crime in the canon of thespian law.)

  He sat in front of his mirror, feeling shock and a variety of attendant emotions. His first reaction was to reach into his bag for the habitual half-bottle of Bell’s that lived there. But he realized he hadn’t got one. The impact of his ‘Growing Out’ meeting at Gower House that morning had stopped him from buying a replacement for the last empty.

  Oh well, he’d just have to think without alcoholic stimulus.

  The footage he had just seen prompted two major questions. Who was Liddy’s lover? And who had set up the camera to spy on her in her dressing room?

  The first was the more difficult to answer. The cowl worn by the man making love to Liddy made him hard to identify with any certainty. As Charles had observed earlier, all the male actors in The Habit of Faith were more or less the same height. And the way the lover did not speak and moved around the room, keeping his back to the camera, suggested that he knew it was there.

  Of course, the man need not have been a member of the company. Liddy had spoken of having a ‘hot date’, but that could easily have been someone who had nothing to do with the theatre. It could even have been her husband. From what he’d said, a reconciliation with Derek had sounded unlikely, but who could say what went on inside a marriage? And the ease with which the pair had coupled suggested some level of familiarity. Maybe they’d got to the point in their relationship where they could only make love when dressed as monks?

  But no, Charles could not produce certain identification of the man involved without further research.

  The question about who had planted the camera in Liddy’s dressing room – and for whose gratification it had been planted there – was easier to answer. In fact, there was only one suspect.

  While Charles Paris, in keeping with contemporary right-on thinking, tried not to be ageist, sexist or a proliferating number of other ‘ists’, he could not help recognizing that Gideon was not high up in the animal magnetism stakes. Though the stage doorman seemed able to inspire devotion in Baz (and possibly Morry), his success in the traditional dating stakes might well not have been high. For someone like Gideon to get his kicks in less conventional ways, like voyeurism, did not seem an unlikely scenario.

  Also, Gideon knew the Duke of Kent’s Theatre intimately. He had probably – a fact Charles could check with Kell – been informed of the allocation of dressing rooms for The Habit of Faith before any of the company. So he would have known which one would be occupied by the only female member of the cast, Liddy Max. With all the keys available on the board in his cubby-hole, Gideon would have been uniquely placed to enter that dressing room and plant his spy camera.

  And, if that were not enough evidence to convict the stage doorman as a Peeping Tom, Charles knew for a fact that it was Gideon who had ripped out the camera and dumped it in the Techie’s Drinking Club.

  Now, as if to confirm his guilt to anyone who still had any doubts about it, Gideon had done a runner.

  No, identifying the suspect had not presented Charles with too much of a problem. Actually finding that suspect might offer more of a challenge.

  He checked his watch. Still nearly an hour before the ‘half’. Well, it was worth trying.

  Working on hunches sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. When it did, Charles felt he was on an incredible high. On the right track, his judgement had been vindicated, and nothing could stand between him and the result he was hoping for.

  That’s what he felt when, at quarter past six that evening, he found the door to the ‘Techie’s Drinking Club’ unlocked.

  He didn’t have a torch with him, and he didn’t need it. None of the spotlights was on, but a small lamp on the drinks table was.

  Gideon lay flat on his back, his vast stomach rising from the floor like some geographical feature. Three empty vodka bottles stood upright by his side.

  As Charles drew closer, he could smell the acrid vomit, on which the stage doorman had choked away his life.

  SIXTEEN

  ‘I’ve had three days in the last week without a drink.’

  ‘Charle
s, you didn’t give a figure for your current mood. Out of ten?’

  ‘Oh, I suppose … two.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be feeling so low if you’ve done three days without a drink. You should be feeling proud of yourself.’

  ‘No, it’s nothing to do with the booze. It’s … other, personal things.’

  Ricky was far too tactful to ask for anything more.

  Charles was surprised to find himself at the ‘Growing Out’ session for a second time. In the course of the week, he had been through a variety of attitudes to the TAUT set-up. After the shock of finding Gideon’s body, his emotions had been even more volatile.

  But what had swayed it for him, what had taken him back to Gower House, was the desire to report back to his fellow attendees the three days he had coped without a drink. It was a strange kind of brownie pointage he was after, an aspiration that he couldn’t really explain, but that felt important to him.

  He had told no one, not even Kell, about what he had found in the Techie’s Drinking Club. Unwilling to invite further encounters with the police, he reasoned that Gideon’s body would be found soon enough by somebody else. And so it proved. On the Thursday morning, Kell had sent out a text to all the company, announcing the stage doorman’s death. She provided no details of how it had happened, but said the theatre management would be sending appropriate condolences to his family.

  Charles wondered who that family was. He realized that he knew very little about Gideon, apart from the fact that he had problems with drinking and voyeurism. Maybe somewhere there would be a worshipping mother unhinged by grief at her bereavement? Maybe Baz would be equally affected? Possibly even Morry?

  The thought of Baz suggested to Charles that he should try to track him down. Baz was Gideon’s drinking companion. He might know more about the circumstances of his friend’s death. He might even have been with him for that final session with the vodka …? But Charles wouldn’t know where to start trying to find someone who lived on the streets.

  He wondered whether the police knew of Gideon’s connection with Baz. Since his own interview with them, he had wondered a lot about what the police knew, how their investigation into Liddy Max’s death was going. Presumably, they hadn’t already tied up the case with a neat bow, concluding it was an unexplained accident? Or maybe they had? What had the poor girl’s post mortem revealed? As Charles now knew, her body would have shown signs of recent sexual activity. Though ignorant of such forensic matters, he reckoned that Liddy’s unknown lover, even if he had worn a condom, would have left some physical record of their encounter.

  And yet he hadn’t heard of any of The Habit of Faith company being asked to provide DNA samples. Not for the first time, Charles Paris felt frustrated by the inscrutability of official enquiries. Outside the realms of Golden Age detective stories, the police had never shown much enthusiasm for sharing their findings with amateurs.

  Still, presumably at some point there would be an inquest into Liddy Max’s death. And Gideon’s, come to that. Maybe more information would emerge then.

  The word written that day on the flipchart in Gower House was ‘Change’, and the participants were discussing the difficulties of making changes that might help them control their addiction. Charles was struck by the choice of words that Ricky used. He could have said ‘conquer’ addiction, but he deliberately selected ‘control’. The TAUT method did not offer quick fixes. It was not proscriptive in the way of Alcoholics Anonymous. Total abstinence might be the ultimate goal of its therapy, but it recognized that there were other achievable advances on the way to that state.

  He was once again struck by the honesty of the people sitting in the circle with him. Though addicts are notoriously mendacious about their habits, in that room there seemed to be no point in lying. They respected the confidentiality that they had agreed to, and benefited from the opportunity to talk. Charles recognized that the participants came from a wide range of backgrounds. Only a few shared with him the advantage of a university education. One couldn’t even read. But all were prepared to communicate. And some of their stories – like that of the scaffolder who couldn’t go up a ladder first thing in the morning without half a bottle of vodka inside him – Charles found amazing.

  But within the last week, there had been a subtle change in his attitude. At the first session, he had stood outside the group, congratulating himself on the fact that his problems were not as severe as theirs. Now there was a sliver of an idea in his brain that his addiction might be part of the same narrative.

  As the session went on, Charles once again found himself wondering what ‘TAUT’ stood for. He must remember to ask Ricky at the end.

  But when the hour and a half was up, he forgot the question, because the facilitator wanted a word about something else. Charles’s worries that he might have said something inappropriate during the meeting were quickly allayed. Ricky was just wondering whether he might like to try attending the ‘Weekend Group’ at four the following day. ‘It’s less structured, just you and the other participants chatting amongst yourselves, really, but you’re clearly articulate, and might find it useful.’

  To his surprise, Charles found himself agreeing to the suggestion.

  And forgetting to ask what ‘TAUT’ stood for.

  Weeks passed, without a lot of progress on the investigation front. The Habit of Faith cast seemed to forget that Liddy Max had ever been part of the company. Imogen Whittaker grew into the role of The Girl and started getting a lot of attention, being lined up for fashion shoots and having her dating history chronicled in gossip columns. The A Star is Born understudy-takes-over scenario seemed to be working out very well. But Charles couldn’t for the life of him work out any way of implicating her in the death of Liddy Max.

  The excitement about Imogen’s potential grew when it was heard among the cast that Justin Grover had invited one of the American producers of Vandals and Visigoths to see The Habit of Faith. This could have been merely a professional courtesy, but the rumour grew that his visit was, on Justin’s recommendation, to check out the potential of Imogen Whittaker as a new character in the expanding movie franchise. The suggestion led to a lot of backstage jealousy – and a lot of overacting at the relevant performance as other actors tried to make their impression on the producer.

  The departure of Gideon from the scene caused even less of a ripple. Though a stage doorman is part of the fabric of a theatre, he is distinct from the play’s company, and his replacement, a very camp ex-actor called Wallace, slipped easily into the vacant role.

  So, Charles Paris continued in his unrewarding role as Brother Benedict, The Monk Who Just Listened To All Of The Other Monks Who Maundered On In Long Speeches About Their Own Internal Conflicts. Oh well, he was getting paid West End money.

  The promised late-night drinking sessions with Kell didn’t materialize.

  But Sunday lunch with Frances – and without alcohol – became something of a fixture.

  It was five weeks into the run when, on the ribbon-trellised board by Wallace’s cubby-hole, appeared a flurry of pink envelopes addressed by hand to all company members, acting and backstage. They contained invitations from Justin Grover to after-show drinks to celebrate his birthday. The venue was the room in the Duke of Kent’s where they’d been entertained after the Press Night, and the date was a Thursday.

  This presented Charles Paris with an unaccustomed dilemma. During the previous weeks, because Thursday was the evening between his ‘Growing Out’ and his ‘Weekend Group’ meetings at Gower House, he had got into the habit of making it one of his non-drinking days. Was it possible that he might go to a backstage party and not drink? He had heard of leopards changing their spots, but that would be a total tiger-skin transplant.

  Charles only had a brief conversation with Kell about Gideon’s death. She told him the police – the same two, Tricker and Bowles – had interviewed her again. ‘Just logistics, really. When I’d last seen him in the theatre, that kind of
thing.’

  ‘Anything specific about how he’d died?’

  ‘Nothing that hasn’t already been round the company.’

  ‘So, what did they ask you, specifically?’

  ‘The only questions that weren’t to do with timings were about his personality. Whether I’d ever seen him being violent towards anyone in the company? Which, of course, I hadn’t.’

  ‘Do you think they were suspicious that he might have attacked Liddy?’

  Kell shrugged. ‘That’s a possible interpretation, but they certainly didn’t suggest that. The impression they gave was that they were just tying up the loose ends, you know, finishing the paperwork.’

  ‘Did they say any more about Liddy?’

  She shook her head. ‘They didn’t mention her. I asked them if they thought the two deaths were connected, and they went all official on me. “Investigations are still proceeding”, you know, all that stuff. But again I got the impression they were just wrapping things up.’

  ‘So, going on from their question about Gideon possibly being violent,’ he persisted, ‘they might have concluded that he pushed Liddy down the stairs?’

  ‘They might, Charles, they might not. You might think that. I might think that. As is customary with members of the constabulary, Tricker and Bowles volunteered the minimum of information about their mental processes.’

  And that was as near as Charles Paris got to the official conclusions about the deaths connected with the Duke of Kent’s Theatre.

  Justin Grover was in expansive mood at his birthday party. ‘I haven’t invited any of the producers along,’ he announced, ‘because I want this to be a fun occasion.’

  Charles recognized the tactic. All actors have an ambivalent attitude to the producers of their shows. Recognizing their power, their investment and their rights of hire and fire, company members will always be scrupulously polite – and even ingratiating – towards the money men. They will constantly assert how honoured they are to be part of such a prestigious production.

  But when the producers are not in the room, the actors’ attitudes to them are rather different. Any complaints about the circumstances in which they’re working do, ultimately, have to be placed at the door of the production company. If the rehearsal period is too short, if the set design is too tacky, if the costumes ‘look like they’ve come from the Oxfam shop’, if the cast are not allocated enough complimentary tickets for their friends, then the same organization is to blame. Above all, if the actors think they are not being paid enough – and all actors always think they’re not being paid enough – then it’s the producers’ fault.