Cherringham--Playing Dead (10 page)

“And a little bird down the Ploughman told me he made a play for Ellie too.”

“Yuck.”

“Word is she told him where to get off.”

“Good for her.”

“But you know, Sarah — we missed all of that.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I wonder what else we’ve missed?”

“Soon as this rehearsal gets under way, I’m going to head out to Kramer’s house, snoop around a little.”

“You think the answer’s out there?”

“Break-in? Can’t be coincidence.”

Sarah watched Ben appear from the wings carrying a tea tray. He placed it on a small table then exited through the other wings.

Sarah suddenly remembered she hadn’t fed back to Jack after her meeting with Ben.

“Speaking of coincidence. Turns out our butler used to be a writer.”

“Really?”

“Guess writers don’t go round all the time looking like Oscar Wilde or Hemingway. But still — working at Costco?”

“I know. Doesn’t fit.” said Jack. “What kind of stuff did he write?”

“Well, that’s the funny thing. Did a little digging. He wrote some theatre when he was pretty young. Then shifted into soaps for a year and then just … gave up.”

“Did he say why he stopped writing?”

“Wouldn’t talk about it at all,” Sarah said. “I found some scattered credits, lot of gaps and nothing more recent than ten or fifteen years ago.”

“Guess he just burned out? Happens, I guess.”

“But to end up working in a supermarket — that’s so sad.”

“He’s not exactly over-endowed with people skills, Sarah,” said Jack. “Maybe he couldn’t hack the personal stuff. You know — agents, meetings…”

“Maybe,” she said. “Anyway, I’d better get ready, I’m an opener. Spend the whole scene cleaning the fireplace, then I get the killer line ‘will that be all, Miss?’ and exit stage left.”

“Give it everything you got Sarah — next stop Broadway.”

“Don’t be gone too long Jack, will you?”

“I won’t,” he said. “And you be careful, huh? Could be we haven’t seen the last of these ‘accidents’.”

Sarah left Jack to check on Todd and headed back to the dressing rooms. Her mother had been right to ask for help all those weeks ago.

Suddenly it seemed like the whole cast really were under attack.

Jack parked a hundred yards up from Kramer’s rented cottage and strolled down the lane trying his best not to look like a burglar on his way to a break-in. He nodded and smiled at an old lady who was mowing her front lawn.

She nodded back at him but didn’t smile.

Guess I do look suspicious,
he thought.

He knew he didn’t have much time. He hadn’t been able to get away from the dress rehearsal until well into the first half, which, according to Helen’s timings gave him less than an hour before he was needed for a big scene change in the second act.

With luck there wouldn’t be any more “accidents” while he was gone…

He reached the cottage and strolled up the driveway, then slipped into the porch by the little back door.

It only took a minute with his special lock-picks — a handy relic from his NYPD days — and he was in.

The old cottage was dark, with small windows — but he wasn’t going to turn any lights on. He scanned the kitchen. Kramer had clearly left in a hurry — dishes piled high, teabag on the table. A half-empty bottle of Scotch.

But no sign of a break-in. Maybe the star director had made it up? Bit of attention seeking?

Then he went into the sitting room — and saw straight away that this was no story. Furniture had been slashed with a knife, glass broken, vases smashed. Papers and books were scattered everywhere, surfaces cleared, pictures torn from the walls and destroyed.

Whoever had done this had to have been in a frenzy of anger. Or maybe … they were just disguising the true nature of the break-in?

Jack reserved judgement until he’d looked around a little more.

He started with the papers. Hundreds of torn pages of typed script scattered around the room like confetti. Jack realised they were the remnants of TV scripts, ripped from their binders and flung everywhere.

Some of the pages were covers — and on them he could see titles of old British TV shows with dates going back into the nineties.

He picked up an award, broken in two. Heavy glass. On it the words
Royal Television Society — Best Drama Serial — The Fading Light.

Sarah had told him how
The Fading Light
, written and directed by Kramer, had held the nation gripped when she was still a girl at school in Cherringham. The story of Britain’s bloody retreat from the Empire in the forties — a tragic soldier’s tale, it had made Kramer’s name — and launched the career of so many of Britain’s biggest TV and movie stars.

No way would Kramer have destroyed this award.

It represented the high point of his life. This break-in was for real. So why?

Jack put the smashed plaque to one side and approached an old trunk, which lay on its side. The lid had been wrenched back and the contents spilled. More papers, but also props, pictures, photos, scrapbooks.

This was clearly the mother-lode: Kramer’s personal effects, the memorabilia of his long career in theatre and TV. Jack began to go through the pile.

He sorted through faded newspaper articles, reviews of long forgotten shows.

Pictures of Kramer as a young actor before he became a director. Photos of Hollywood stars that Jack recognised.
Variety
, the
Hollywood Reporter
, a wry headline “The Brits have come — and now they’re going!” with a cartoon version of Kramer himself underneath.

More scripts in tatters, and then—

Jack stopped dead in his tracks.

He reached down and picked up the ragged front page of a script. There was no mistaking the title:

The Fading Light
— First Draft

But it was the words underneath that threw everything into sharp focus:

By Ben Ferris

What?

The surly shelf-stacker at Costco’s — the original writer of one of the country’s greatest pieces of TV drama?

Jack sat back on his haunches, trying to fit it all together. The years matched with what Sarah had told him about Ferris’s career — the soap writing then the sudden withdrawal from the business.

Had Ferris written this story, then somehow had it stolen by Kramer? Rewritten? Jack knew that in Hollywood such tales were legion — writers and directors “disappearing” from shows they created, fired, bought out — but did it happen here in genteel England?

Was this Ben Ferris’s revenge? To destroy Kramer’s little theatre show? It didn’t make sense. The accidents which had happened in the theatre weren’t damaging Kramer in any way — they were just undermining the theatre and everyone’s hopes for its success.

There had to be something else.

Jack reached over and pulled at the old trunk until all its contents poured out. A stack of ancient DVDs spilled across the wooden floor. Jack looked at the titles — all shows from the eighties and nineties that Kramer had no doubt directed.

Including the box set of
The Fading Light
. He picked it up and read the small print on the back — no mention of Ben Ferris. Written and Directed by Jez Kramer.

As he was about to throw the box back into the trunk, his eye was caught by an image on the cover.

A dramatic moment from one of the episodes. The hero — he guessed — a young soldier, pointing a revolver at the chest of a pompous looking general … and about to pull the trigger.

Jack looked hard at the image. That revolver. A Smith and Wesson .38 — exactly the same type of gun which Kramer was using in the production.

Coincidence?

No such thing as coincidences.

The gun had to be the same one. And twenty or thirty years ago, the rules were a lot looser when it came to de-activating weapons for props. Chances were Kramer had been lugging this gun — a memento — around all this time without ever checking if it had been made safe.

But where would he have kept it?

Jack scrabbled around in the wreckage of the room, looking for a clue — anything — that might be connected to the gun.

He found it. A small polished wood case with an inscription on the front — “To the boss from the Cast and Crew: keep hitting that target!” He opened the case — the inside was lined with velvet.

There was the space for the gun — and next to it a slot for ammunition.

Empty.

Then he thought of his own gun case back home — and lifted out the velvet tray. Scattered in the dusty base were the remnants of cartridge boxes bought over the years: Remington, Winchester, Federal…

One or two of the bits of cardboard said “blank cartridges”.

But most of them just had the words: .38 special.

Live rounds.

So Jez Kramer was lying when he said the gun had been made safe. He used it himself — what for? Drunken party games? Showing off?

Whatever. Now it looked like someone had broken into his house and just stolen Kramer’s live rounds.

Someone with a big-time grudge.

And now — with a seamless opportunity to commit a murder — one final “accident”.

With a sick feeling in his gut, Jack knew the perfect time for that accident … in the big scene at the end of the play, when Lord Blake turns his gun on the dashing lieutenant, putting a round into his body.

He remembered the pleasure with which Ambrose had described shooting Kramer in that scene.

Blanks or not, Ambrose would be sure to aim at the heart.

And with the bullets stolen … if Jack was right — Ambrose wouldn’t be firing blanks.

Tonight he’d be firing live rounds.

Jack reached for his phone to ring Sarah to warn her.

Then he remembered: final dress rehearsal — all the phones would be off.

The only way to stop this murder was to get to the theatre in time. He checked his watch.

If the rehearsal had gone to schedule, then the curtain would be coming down in twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes to save a life.

Jack turned and ran.

Sarah moved to her place at the side of the stage, standing next to Ben Ferris — whom she now saw in a completely different light.

Meanwhile, Ambrose Goode was making the most of the play’s final moments, leading up to the big confrontation between Lieutenant Henry Collins and Lord Blake.

A case of art mirroring life.

Despite everyone being on edge — or maybe because of it — the rehearsal had gone smoothly. Not too many fluffed lines which Kramer had ignored, allowing the play to roll on.

Though she was sure there would be a lot of notes when the last line was delivered.

Then tomorrow, the grand opening.

She kept glancing to the wings hoping to see that Jack was back, wondering what he found in Kramer’s cottage.

But she only saw Todd, hand on the curtain ropes. Jack had told him that he’d be gone … but it seemed to Sarah that he’d been away for far too long.

And Sarah knew the play needed both of them to carry out the finale.

She sensed Ferris shift on his feet, standing next to her.

Everyone edgy, but Ben Ferris — more than anyone — seemed eager for this to be over.

What must it be like for a real writer to perform such creaky stuff as this?

Ferris, as the butler, kept his eyes locked on Goode who took a step towards Kramer.

“You sir — are a
scoundrel
! To think you could come here, woo my sweet Clarissa and abscond with the Pearl of Bombay? You must think me a fool.”

Kramer, in character, grinned and turned to the assembled party, making eye contact with each one of them.

Sarah had to admit … he was making this all seem quite real.

“Indeed, sir, the information that you are, indeed, a fool would come as no news to
this
assembled party.”

He took a step towards Ellie — who also, acting her socks off — wore a dewy-eyed look of love in her eyes.

Kramer reached out and stroked Ellie’s cheek, his fingers lingering as if testing the quality of some fine material.

“Your daughter loves me, and we shall be wed—”

“Over my
dead
body, Collins.”

Kramer snapped around on that.

“Oh, I don’t think it will be that drastic. True love always finds a way, isn’t that…” back to Ellie, “right, my sweet?”

“And the Pearl that you have stolen?”

Kramer’s hands opened, as if the lack of logic on the part of Lord Blake was transparent.

“I see no evidence of any thievery. Just—”

Kramer turned back to Ambrose Goode: “An old, befuddled man who has misplaced something of tremendous value.”

Sarah had to admit: this was fun, the two of them going at it, “eating the scenery”.

And just then she heard — clear, sharp, even here, from deep inside the theatre — the screech of tires.

Jack. Had to be. He was back.

But Sarah kept her eyes on the scene, in character, while her mind raced with thoughts of what Jack may have found …

*

Quickly, Jack had pulled his Sprite up to the stage door. Not a parking space, but every second counted.

He popped open the car and then raced to the door, yanking it open, and raced on, into the dark corridors of the backstage.

Past the empty dressing rooms — everyone out on the stage for the big final scene.

Quiet
.

So he was in time. But he could guess, only minutes away.

He took a turn at the corner and up the few steps to the backstage area where he could finally hear the lines of the play.

Where Ambrose Goode — Lord Blake — was about to do something to shock the other characters, and hopefully the audience as well.

Without realising how shocking it was actually going to be.

Jack kept racing to the stage. Towards Todd, who heard his steps, turned, put up a finger, indicating that Jack should be quiet.

But Jack didn’t cut his pace at all.

Until he heard Tony Standish, in his role as the wealthy American say, “Now, now Lord Blake, I think this has gone
quite
far enough. The lieutenant here is perfectly honourable…”