Classic Calls the Shots (28 page)

To kill him.

‘Back,' I yelled to the PC still with me, leaving the wounded security guard with his mate. I was already racing towards the house, my breath coming in gasps. I realized the PC had hesitated, so I had to shout back, ‘Bill Wade's alone there.' More time lost while I did so.

I didn't wait to see whether he was following me. I just hoped to heaven that he was. I could take on any woman I reckoned, but one with a gun was a different matter. I needed the advantage of surprise. I had to hope that Bill was still in the living room and thanks to the angle at which I was approaching the terrace, with the marquee shielding me, I might be out of their sight line if the woman was already with him. I might be able to think of something. But suppose I didn't? I pushed that thought away. Of course I would. At times like this, reason isn't always to the fore.

As we reached the house, reason obliged, and I clutched at it. There was a way into the house at the side of the building,
if
it was open. The killer would be expecting any relief operation to be through the French windows, not through a door from the house. I looked round to see where my cavalry was. At first I thought I was it, but thankfully it showed up. The young PC had caught me up as I pushed my way into the house. ‘What on earth is this door doing unlocked?' I muttered fleetingly. Had Bill's killer come this way? Could be. And where were they? Was Bill still in the living room? Had he been frogmarched somewhere else? Was he already dead? I cut through all this. Find him first. Try the living room.

Then I heard the sound of voices. They were there. Voices raised. I could hear Bill's. I could hear a woman's husky voice too. Was it the same that had been calling out ‘
Bill, Bill, come to me
'? Was it Margot's?

I tried to cling to sanity. How could this be Margot Croft herself? I remembered at last the Victorian murderer who had flashed through my mind earlier. He'd killed the actor/manager William Terriss at his stage door. He just waited patiently for his quarry to come along and stabbed him to death.
In revenge.
This woman was the same. She had a plan and calmly executed it bit by bit. Somewhere there had been a pattern, which I had not picked up.

This woman really did not care if we arrived provided that Bill was dead. Was she planning to kill herself too? Another suicide? I was advancing all the while step by step. The woman's back was to me as I pushed the door open a little way. I could see Bill. He was facing her, as though he'd always known her. I couldn't read his face. Montgomery meets Rommel face to face. No time for crazy thoughts now. She was chatting almost conversationally to Bill.

‘Never me, never me, always you, Bill.'

She must have known that people would soon come so there must be something she wanted to tell him, part of the plan. Now
I
needed a plan. Who was this woman, her back to me and clad in a long bedraggled skirt? That voice . . .

‘She killed herself because of you, Bill. You took her from me and everything else too.'

The gun was trained on Bill. If she intended to kill herself and saw me, I stood a chance. But if she saw me and Bill was her sole target, she would shoot him first before I could grab her. It would be blindingly stupid for me even to try it. And then I remembered the bulletproof gear I wore.

‘Are you armed?' I whispered to my cavalry.

‘No.'

Silly of me to have asked. Budget cuts. ‘I'll go then. You follow.'

My hand felt sweaty on the knob as I pushed the door fully open. No going back now. Dear God, was I mad? Too late to change my mind. The cavalry was behind me, at least.

As she heard me and turned just fractionally Bill leapt forward, bless him. I heard a shot as I threw myself forward and bore her to the ground. The gun went off again, but wherever the shot went it wasn't into any of us. As I gripped flailing arms, Bill tore the gun away. The cavalry and I had her in our grasp and pulled her over on to her back.

I froze. Chalk-white face plastered like a painted clown's with heavy lipstick, massive blue eyeshadow, a long brown wig, skirt, jacket, but no full breasts. No woman. This was a man. And one who had been with us all the time. No gentle face now. Why had I never noticed that his eyes were so completely mad?

It was Chris Frant.

Stand on a tower in the middle of a maze and look out over the pattern of the hedges below and you have an overview of all the little innocents trying to find the right way round it. Be one of those innocents yourself, and you'd be just as adrift as I felt. In theory I could have put all those indications of a warped personality together. Mazes have plans behind them. Work out what it is and you're there. Or should be. Plenty of innocents are thwarted at the last hedge before the centre.

Bill and I sat in his study as the night hours ticked on. We'd been checked over by the first-aiders, given our preliminary statements, ignored everyone's recommendations for shock relief and assured the police we'd be here the next morning when the SOCOs returned. Not a murder scene, thank heavens, but attempted murder provided that the security guard pulled through. The police were a new gang to me, being in a different area to Charing, and it was a relief to find I was actually ‘known' to their computer because of my work for Dave Jennings. It saved the hassle of explaining how I came to be wearing bulletproof gear.

Neither Bill nor I could face sleep. Something had to be said between us before we could do so, and it had to start with Bill.

‘That racket,' Bill said eventually. ‘
Running Tides
, of course. He must have taken it from the film and made his own recording of that speech. Easy enough for him to get hold of it from the studios given enough time.'

‘And that he had. Over ten years.' The police had already found an intricate sound system rigged up in the trees outside the wall, with small powerful speakers and an amplifier. They were high up, where the patrolling guards would not have noticed them. They would have been searching at ground level. Bill told me that Chris had driven over early that day to set the system up, then gone back to the studios, joined the bus to attend and leave the party – and once back at the hotel driven back again to stage his coup.

‘He wanted to tell me the whole damn story before he shot me,' Bill said with a kind of wonder. ‘He was convinced Margot would have loved him if it hadn't been for me. He was an extra; I doubt if she'd even have noticed him.'

‘I remember his telling me he auditioned for the lead in
Running Tides
without success.'

‘Yeah. He brought that grudge up too. I had no idea. Wouldn't have stood a chance.'

Like Terriss's killer, I thought, who believed Terriss had ruined his stage career. ‘He blamed you for that?'

‘Yeah. And for the fact that his wife walked out on him last year. My fault too, apparently. He tried for Robert Steed in
Dark Harvest
too. Another black mark against me. If he did, the news didn't reach me. He'd have been ruled out right away.'

‘Because of his acting?'

‘No. There's just something about star quality that stands out, and he hasn't got it.'

I thought of all the non star players in this world, and of how the Bill Wades brush them aside. Unfair to blame the Bill Wades though. They have to reach for the best. Others find their own level, their own achievements, but once in a while there's one who doesn't. And Chris was one of them.

‘Margot Croft was the starting point though?'

‘Margot. Yeah. You know, when he was there, in the room, he really thought he was Margot. That caricature of a face. He was wearing identical clothes to those she wore in
Running Tides.
Who'd have thought it? He looked so normal. And I thought I was a good judge of character.'

‘Is he clinically deranged, do you think?'

‘Not to him. Pure logic, the whole damn charade. He told me calmly how he planned to take everything from me because I'd driven Margot to suicide, and before I died I'd know exactly how he felt.'

I'd been working on the right lines then, but the thought gave me no comfort.

‘He said he disliked Louise because she had taken Margot's place as lead actor. Next he decided to blow my wife away just as I'd taken Margot from him. And then it would be my turn. But Joan . . . I couldn't understand that, and told him so. He looked at me as though I was the crazy one. She'd guessed, he said. So naturally he had to kill her or she would spoil his plan for killing me. He strangled her, then returned with Graham to have a witness to finding the body. He was quite matter of fact about it. He was sorry, but it had to be done.'

‘Would he have killed himself after you?' I felt cold at heart.

‘Who knows the answer to that? I doubt if he did.' He paused. ‘It's gone five, Jack. Feel like a kip? I guess I'll just stay here. You?'

‘Me too.'

‘We'll catch up sometime, Jack. A few days maybe. I've some thinking to do.'

My mobile was ringing. Louise was frantic with worry. The first news bulletin had been that there had been a shooting at a house in the Weald of Kent, the second that it was the home of film director Bill Wade. I assured her that Bill and I were safe, but that everything else would have to wait until the police had done with us.

I could hear a sob of relief in her voice. ‘I'll be at Frogs Hill, waiting,' she said.

That sounded good. The police had come back at dawn which was precisely thirty minutes after Bill and I had decided to call it a day and nod off. They had left us alone for a while because they were at work in the woods, and didn't move into the house until an hour later. The security guard had come out of surgery, was in intensive care and expected to make a full recovery. Good news there, then. Something to cling on to, while Bill and I still floundered in a morass of whys and might-have-beens. We left the police to their job, and some time later that morning we gave them formal statements in the incident van. The van looked out of place drawn up by the Auburn, still defiantly parked outside the front entrance, its purple paint addition still in evidence. Bill didn't give it a second glance. The first was enough. ‘Time for that later,' he said briefly.

I thought I should ring Dave before I left Mayden Manor. He was at his desk, Saturday or not. ‘Heard the news, Jack. Bit of a scrap, eh? Glad you're OK. So's Brandon.'

My stock had indeed risen! ‘Give me Mark Shotsworth's crowd any day,' I tried to joke. ‘At least I know what sex I'm dealing with.' That white mask of make-up had haunted what little sleep I had had, and it wasn't going to go away for quite a while.

‘At least it wasn't Nigel Biddington.'

‘How's that going?' I'd almost forgotten that he'd been one of my suspects for murder.

‘Big time. We're doing a stake-out. Let you know what happens.'

Stake-out of what, I wondered, but hadn't the energy to ask him. ‘Thanks for your help, Dave.'

‘Over what?'

‘The bulletproof gear.'

‘I'd forgotten about that. Useful, was it?'

‘Turned me into a cross between Superman and Bonnie Prince Charlie. I felt safer going in.'

‘That's what budgets are for. Speak to you later on the Biddington front, Jack. You're going to love it.'

I didn't give a second thought to Dave's gleeful quip. I wasn't in the mood. Nevertheless coming back to the security of Frogs Hill was bliss. The sound of a newly tuned engine in the Pits, and the sight of Zoe's clapped-out Fiesta were comforting. I parked the Alfa, but saw no sign of Louise's. My spirits dropped even further. Had she given up on me? The farmhouse felt empty and lonely as I walked in.

But I was wrong. Louise was there. She told me her car was being given a loving once-over by Len and Zoe. All was suddenly right with the world again. I should have told her all about what had happened. I should have told her how much I loved her. I should have shown her how much.

I did none of these three things.

Instead, I fell asleep.

I seemed to be on automatic pilot for the next few days. On my own. Louise had a job in London and I had a general feeling of waiting in the wings for something to happen on stage. There were a lot of comings and goings with the police both at Charing and Sissinghurst in whose areas Angie and Joan's murders had taken place. I was questioned so closely I half expected to be arrested myself for attacking Chris, but this didn't happen. The guard was already off the critical list. Chris had been formally charged but whether his mental condition would enable him to stand trial or not was doubtful. I'd even had to pay a visit to the Studios, which seemed full of ghosts without Louise and the cast of
Dark Harvest.
Editing was in progress, and all was quiet as I walked around.

There was of course also Pen Roxton. I opened Wednesday's
Graphic
to find that this time I was the hero of her fantasy. I read the article with some trepidation, expecting to find heavy hints that Bill was the real guilty party rather than the poor misguided actor. Fortunately Pen hadn't thought of that one – yet.

I rang her to congratulate her – not quite the right word perhaps but it would do – on the story, and she seemed pleased to hear from me.

‘Great,' she said. ‘Now show your gratitude. I've dug out all I can about Chris Frant and his sad quest for stardom and all that, plus his crush on Margot Croft.'

‘He's been charged, Pen,' I said patiently. ‘You can't use it.' Bang, the trap shut.

‘So now you can tell me the
real
story, darling.'

‘You've got it,' I said through clenched teeth. Big mistake to ring Pen about
anything.

‘Come on now. You're hiding something. I can smell it a mile off.'

‘
I-am-not-hiding-anything.
'