Star Trap

by Simon Brett

  But nobody else seemed worried and certainly no one talked of links between the incident and Kevin’s mugging. It seemed strange to Charles that in a large company of actors, who are the most superstitious of people, no one had spoken of bad luck or a jinx on the show. Perhaps he was too close to it. If it hadn’t been for his unconventional recruitment, he probably wouldn’t have found anything odd himself.

  But at least this could be investigated. If Winifred Tuke had been slipped something, the chances were it had happened in the theatre. So, in the dead time between the matinée and evening performance, Charles took a look around.

  The silence of empty dressing-rooms is almost tangible. He could feel the great pull of sentimentality which has led songwriters to maunder on about the smell of grease-paint, the limpness of unoccupied costumes, the wilting flowers, the yellowing telegrams of congratulation and all that yucky show business rubbish. Distant sounds from the stage, where the indefatigable Spike and his crew were going through yet another flying rehearsal, served only to intensify the silence.

  Fortunately, Winifred’s hasty exit had left her dressing-room unlocked. Inside it was almost depressingly tidy. A neat plastic sandwich-box of make-up, a box of tissues and a Jean Plaidy paperback were the only signs of occupation. Someone with Winifred’s experience of touring didn’t bother to settle in for just a week.

  What Charles was looking for was not in sight, but it didn’t take him long to find it. His clue came from the smell on Winifred Tuke’s breath during rehearsals and, more particularly, performances. It was in the bottom of the wardrobe, hidden, in a pathetic attempt at gentility, behind a pair of boots. The middle-aged actress’s little helper, a bottle of Gordon’s gin.

  The investigation was an amateur detective’s dream. It was so easy Charles almost felt guilty for the glow of satisfaction it gave him. He opened the bottle and sniffed. Gin all right. He took a cautious sip and immediately felt suspicious. It wasn’t the taste, but the consistency, the slight greasiness the drink left on his lips.

  He poured a little into a glass and his suspicions were confirmed. Though it didn’t show through the dark green of the Gordon’s bottle, in the plain glass it was clear that the liquid had separated into two layers. Both were transparent, but the one that floated on top was viscous and left a slight slime round the glass. He dabbed at it and put his finger to his tongue. Yes, he wouldn’t forget that almost tasteless taste in a hurry. It was his prep school matron’s infallible cure for constipated boys – liquid paraffin.

  He was excited by the discovery, but controlled his emotions while he washed up the glass. The slime clung on stubbornly and he had to wipe at it with a tissue.

  A doubt struck him. If he had discovered the doctoring of the drink so easily, why hadn’t Winifred noticed it? But the concealment of the gin bottle in the wardrobe answered that. If she kept her drinking a secret (or at least thought she did), then probably she would only whip the bottle out for a hasty gulp and pop it straight back to its hiding place. And if she’d been drinking during the show, she would probably put the greasy taste down to make-up on her lips.

  Charles felt breathlessly excited. Here at last was evidence. Though every other apparent crime could have been an accident or the work of a vindictive outsider, the bottle was evidence of deliberate misdoing, committed within the company.

  He had to keep it. In a case where facts were so thin on the ground he couldn’t afford not to. Winifred Tuke was far too genteel to report its disappearance and, considering the bottle’s contents, he was doing her a favour by removing it.

  His holdall was in the green room, so he set off there, gin bottle in hand. Stealth was unnecessary; nobody would be in for the evening performance for at least an hour. He trod heavily on the stairs, awaking the echoes of the old building. He pushed open the green room door with a flourish and realised that he had forgotten the stage staff.

  Spike and some others were slumped on sofas, reading newspapers. Charles made an involuntary movement to hide the bottle.

  He needn’t have worried. Spike was the only one who stirred. He looked up mildly and said, ‘Didn’t think that was your usual tipple, Charles.’

  Charles made some half-joke about ringing the changes, put the bottle in his holdall and went out to the pub. He gave himself a mental rap over the knuckles for bad security. It didn’t really matter, because only Spike had seen him. But it could have been someone else and it was his job as investigator to keep a low profile.

  Still, he’d got the bottle. Perhaps a diarrhoea weapon lacked the glamour of a murder weapon, but it certainly warranted a large whisky.

  Now all he had to do was find a link between the bottle and his chief suspect. Difficult. Dickie Peck had returned to London that afternoon. Never mind, the investigation would keep until he rejoined the company.

  Significantly, with the agent away, in spite of occasional flashes of temper from Christopher Milton, there were no more incidents while Lumpkin! was in Leeds.

  PART III

  Bristol

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHARLES WAS GLAD to get to Bristol. He hadn’t enjoyed the previous few days. Investigations apart, Leeds had ended in scenes of cynical recrimination with Ruth. After a final fierce coupling on the Sunday morning and a silent drive to the station, he had had a long slow journey to King’s Cross for her unspoken accusation to fester in his mind. He couldn’t just laugh it off. As many times before, he cried out for the ability to say, that was good while it lasted, or that didn’t work, oh well, time to move on. But he was bad at the sort of insouciance that should have accompanied his style of sex life. Feelings kept snagging, he kept feeling sorry for people, kept feeling he was using them. And, as always, lacking the self-righteousness necessary for anger, he ended up feeling self-disgust.

  A half-day in London hadn’t helped his mood. The bed-sitter in Hereford Road had not got less depressing in his absence. With the change in the weather it was as cold as a morgue when he opened the door. Nor did Sunday papers he’d bought offer any cheer. Bombs in London restaurants and the continuing apparent hopelessness of the Herrema siege led to fears of the imminent collapse of society, that terrible plunging feeling that tomorrow everything will stop and animal chaos will reign.

  He rang his wife Frances in an attempt to shift the mood. But her phone just rang and rang and he stood, his finger dented by the twopence in the coin-box and his mind drifting, trying to remember what she had said in their last conversation about this new man she was seeing, forming silly fantasies of her with the new man, even of her upstairs in their bed with him, hearing the phone and saying, ‘Shall we answer it?’ and him saying, ‘No’. It was stupid, childish; it was as if he were again a sixteen-year-old, his stomach churning as he asked his first girl out to the pictures. And this was Frances, for God’s sake, Frances whom he knew so well, who was so ordinary he had left her. But his feelings swirled around, unanchored. He put the phone down.

  Back in his room (the telephone was outside on the landing) he had turned immediately to the obvious solace, a half-full (or, in his current mood, hall-empty) bottle of Bell’s. He drank with the kamikaze spirit of self-pity, sadly identifying with Everard Austick.

  So Bristol, by comparison, was pleasant. He got a lift down on the Monday morning with a couple of the dancers who lived in Notting Hill and, apart from the fact of being in company, the staged sparkle of their camp chatter put him in a good mood. Then there was where he was staying. Julian Paddon, an actor friend from way back, was a member of the resident company at the Old Vic and had issued an immediate invitation when he heard Lumpkin! was coming to Bristol. His wife Helen was charming and had the enormous advantage after Ruth that Charles didn’t fancy her at all (and even if he had, she was eight months pregnant and thus satisfactorily hors de combat).

  Julian, whose nesting instinct, always strong, had been intensified by regular employment and the prospect of an addition to his family, had rented a flat in a Victorian h
ouse in Clifton and Charles was made to feel genuinely welcome.

  Lumpkin! too responded to the new town. The day’s break after the heavy rehearsal schedule in Leeds meant that everyone came to it with renewed vigour. The makeshift musical arrangement for I Beg Yours? had been improved and expanded by Leon Schultz, an American arranger flown over at enormous expense by an edgy management. The song was greatly enhanced and on the first night in Bristol it stopped the show. Once again Christopher Milton’s theatrical instinct had been vindicated. The management was so pleased with the song that they asked Schultz to do new arrangements for all other numbers in the show. It would mean a lot more rehearsal, but in the new mood of confidence no one complained.

  Away from the gloom of Leeds, Charles found it difficult to believe in thoughts of sabotage. The long sequence of crimes he had rationalised became unreal, another part of the general confusion over the show and Ruth which Leeds had meant for him. When he unpacked at Julian’s flat, he had to look closely at the Gordon’s gin bottle to convince himself that anything criminal had ever happened.

  Part of his relaxation was due to Dickie Peck’s absence. His suspicions had now homed in firmly and until the agent rejoined the company, he did not fear further incidents. What he should do when another occurred was something he tried not to think about.

  Anyway, rehearsals kept him busy. Desmond Porton from Amulet Productions was to come and see the show on the Thursday and give the final all-clear for the scheduled first night at the King’s Theatre on Thursday, November 27th. That gave a sense of urgency and a healthy edge of determination to everyone in the show.

  The first two nights made Charles begin to think he was, for possibly the first time in his life, about to be connected with a success. Apart from reflections on the irony of a fate which withheld major triumph from shows he had cared about in favour of the commercial banality of Lumpkin!, it was a pleasant feeling.

  He was sitting in the pub during the Tuesday performance (having dutifully checked in for the ‘half’ and let the stage manager know where he’d be) when the girl approached him. Her pale blue eyes had the unfocused stare of contact lenses, but there was nothing vague about her manner. ‘Are you in Lumpkin!?’ she asked, the directness of the question emphasised by an American accent.

  ‘Fame at last,’ he replied with irony. ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Good, I thought I recognised you. I saw the show last night.’

  ‘Ah.’ Charles left the pause for comment on his performance which no actor can resist.

  But the girl didn’t pick up the cue. ‘My name’s Suzanne Horst,’ she said. ‘I’m a free-lance journalist.’

  He emitted another ‘Ah’, again succumbing to an actor’s instinctive reaction that the girl wanted to write something about him.

  She soon put him right on that. ‘I’m trying to make contact with Christopher Milton.’

  Of course. He blushed for having suspected anything else, and let out another multi-purpose ‘Ah’.

  ‘Would you introduce me to him?’

  ‘Well . . .’ This was rather difficult. The past month with Christopher Milton had revealed to Charles how carefully the star’s contact with the press and media was regulated by his agent. To introduce an unexpected journalist could be a serious breach of professional etiquette. ‘I think probably the best thing you could do would be to make contact with his agent. It’s Dickie Peck of Creative Artists.’

  ‘I don’t want to mess about with agents. Anyway, I’m here in Bristol. What’s the point of contacting a guy in London about someone who’s only a hundred yards away at this moment?’

  There wasn’t a great deal of logic about it, but that was the way stars worked, Charles explained.

  She was not put down. ‘Yes, I know that’s the correct way to go about things, but I don’t want to go the correct way. I want to go the way that’ll get me the interviews I’m after.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what to suggest.’ Charles felt churlish, but thought he was probably doing the right thing. ‘What are these interviews you are after?’

  ‘One’s for radio. Only got Radio Brighton interested at the moment, but I’m sure I’ll be able to get it on one of the networks. That’s only secondary, anyway. The main thing I want him for is an article I’m doing on the nature of stardom. Want to know what makes him tick, you know.’

  ‘Who’s that for?’

  ‘Don’t know who I’ll offer it to yet. Cosmopolitan, maybe.’

  ‘It hasn’t been commissioned?’

  ‘No, but I’ll sell it all right.’ Whatever Miss Horst lacked, it was not confidence.

  In fact she didn’t lack much. Certainly not looks. Her shoulder-length hair was that streaky yellow which might be the natural result of sun on brown hair or the unnatural result of hairdressers on any colour. Her belted Burberry formalised but did not disguise her lithe figure, and though her overpowering confidence might be a slight deterrent, the general effect was distinctly tangible. ‘Can I get you a drink?’

  ‘Thank you. A vodka and tonic, please.’ The barman eyed Charles knowingly as he supplied the drink. Suzanne didn’t seem to notice. ‘Are you sure you can’t introduce me?’

  ‘Honestly, it is difficult. You know, people like Christopher Milton have to guard their privacy very carefully. I’m afraid they tend to be a bit resistant to journalists.’

  ‘But, look, I’m not going to do a big exposé or anything. It’ll be an appreciative piece. I mean, I’m a fan.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s really the point. It’s rather difficult to get near him.’

  ‘But you see him at rehearsal, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, yes, but –’

  ‘Then you could ask him if he’d be prepared to do an interview with me.’

  Her persistence didn’t make it easy. Charles cringed with embarrassment at the thought of putting the girl’s request to Christopher Milton. It was difficult to explain to someone outside the closely defined relationship that exists between actors in a working context. ‘Look, I’m sorry, I really don’t think I can.’

  ‘Why not? You do know him, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I do, but –’

  ‘Well then,’ she said, as if that concluded the syllogism.

  ‘Yes.’ Under normal circumstances he would have given a categorical ‘No’, but under normal circumstances the people who made this kind of request didn’t look like Suzanne Horst. He said something about seeing if he had a chance to raise the matter at rehearsal (which he had no intention of doing) and asked the girl how much journalism she had done.

  ‘Oh, quite a lot in the States. I got a degree in it, but the scene over there isn’t very interesting, so I decided to check it out over here.’

  ‘What, you’ve given yourself a sort of time limit to see if you can make it?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll make it.’

  Charles was beginning to find this self-conviction a little wearying, so he brought in a damper. ‘Yes, unfortunately it’s a bad time to get started in that sort of area at the moment. Journalism’s getting more and more of a closed shop. It’s like acting, getting increasingly difficult to make the initial break into the business.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Suzanne, as though explaining to a child, ‘People with talent always get through.’

  He couldn’t think of anything to say after that.

  But Suzanne suddenly got an idea. ‘Hey, you could actually be quite useful on this stardom article.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, you could give me a bit of background on Christopher Milton. After all, you’re working with him.’

  Charles was hesitant, but overruled. She had whipped out a new shorthand notebook and a freshly-sharpened pencil and was poised in the attitude of someone who had taken a degree in journalism. The question came out formal and rehearsed. ‘Tell me, as an actor, what do you think it is that makes some people stars?’

  ‘And some dreary old hacks like me? Hmm. Well now �
�’ dropping into an American accent – ‘what is a star? What is it that picks out one from the myriad throng of the moderately talented and gives him that magic name? What is it that sets one talent glowing in the limelight, that scatters the moondust of stardom on that one chosen head? Is it of the earth or is it made in heaven? Perhaps in that Great Casting Agency in the Sky, there sits the one Eternal Agent who –’

  ‘Look, are you taking the rise out of me?’

  He lapsed back into his normal voice. ‘No, sorry. I was just getting my bearings. Stardom? I don’t know really. In the sort of theatre I normally do it’s rarely an issue.’

  ‘But I suppose, if I had to give an opinion . . . Well, talent certainly, that must be there. Not necessarily a great deal of it, nor anything very versatile. In fact, there should be no versatility. The star must always be recognisable – if he puts on voices, he must put them on almost badly, so that everyone knows it’s him. That’s talent. Okay. What else? Dedication certainly, the conviction that what he does is more important than anything else in the world.’

  ‘Isn’t that likely to lead to selfishness?’ Suzanne interposed with studied professionalism.

  ‘Inevitably. Bound to. Hence, presumably, all the stories that one hears of stars hating competition and being temperamental and slamming dressing-room doors and that sort of thing.’

  He realised that it could get a little awkward if Suzanne asked him to relate his last observation to the star of Lumpkin!, and hurried on before she had the chance. ‘I think there’s also something about the way the entertainment industry works, certainly for actors. Being an actor is, potentially, the most passive function on earth. Most actors are completely dependent on directors, because it’s directors who control the jobs. Some manage to assert themselves by deep commitment to their work, or by directing or writing and devising shows. Some do it by political affiliations . . . starting street theatres, workshop communes, even – in cases of extreme lunacy – joining the Workers’ Revolutionary Party. Some do it by forming their own companies, that kind of thing. But what I’m getting at is, that, given this lack of autonomy, when an actor becomes very much in demand, as a star might be, he wants to dictate his own terms. It’s years of frustration at living on someone else’s terms. It’s also a self-preservation thing – once someone’s got to the top, he tries to do everything to ensure that he stays there, and that may involve being careful about the people he works with, seeing that none of them are too good. I mean, often when you see a show with one big star name above the title and the rest of the cast nonentities, it’s not just because the star’s fee has exhausted the budget, it’s also so that he shows up in such mediocre company. The Whale among Sprats syndrome.