Murder in the Title (16 page)

This comment seemed to encompass his whole life. He drooped, exhausted.

‘Tony,' said Charles very quietly, ‘why don't you give me the gun?'

There was an instantaneous change as the man's body snapped alert. ‘Oh no. I may need it.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘There are people out to get me. People who aren't afraid to use violence.'

His words sounded like the definitive statement of paranoia.

‘But, Tony, you can't go round shooting people.'

‘Only in self-defence. I hope it won't come to that. I'm sure it won't. But if someone attacks you, you have to defend yourself. Those who offer no resistance get trampled on, and I've been trampled on for long enough.'

‘Tony –'

‘No, Charles. I know what needs to be done. It's all very clear to me now. I know what needs doing, and at last – thank God – I'm ready to do it.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I mean that all the cheating that's been going on, all the things that have been wrong with this theatre, are about to be sorted out.' He sighed, anticipating the relaxation this moment would bring. ‘Soon it'll all be over. One confrontation . . . if I have the strength to do it . . . and it'll all be over.'

This was beginning to sound uncomfortably like a statement of intent to murder. Charles moved forward. ‘Tony, I think you'd better give me that gun.'

‘No. I'm sorry. I need it. To protect myself.'

Charles stretched out a hand. ‘Tony . . .'

The noise of the gunshot in the enclosed space was thunderous. Charles heard the lightbulb above him shatter and felt the rain of glass on his shoulders.

He looked for a second at Tony. The man's face seemed to register surprise as he looked at the gun, almost as if the firing had been accidental.

But Charles didn't feel inclined to explore that possibility. The barrel still pointed at him, and he was no hero. He turned and rushed out of the door, slamming it behind him.

He had reached the bottom of the wall-ladder and was at stage level before he realized that there were no sounds of pursuit. He froze for a full minute, then gingerly climbed back up the ladder and on to the cast-iron floor of the gallery. He inched his way towards the prop room door, his ears straining for any unexpected sound.

All he could hear came from down below. ‘The deaths will not stop at one,' Miss Laycock-Manderley was saying. ‘The forces of evil demand their toll of blood.'

He reached the door and, leaning against the adjacent wall in best television detective style, reached for the handle. He gave it a sharp turn and a push.

The door did not shift.

He tried a more forceful shove.

Nothing. The door had been locked from the inside.

He put his ear to it. No sound.

He banged on the door with increasing force. But there was no response.

Then he remembered the other exit from the prop-store, the exit that led to the front of the theatre.

That was the way Tony Wensleigh must have gone, crazed by paranoia, with the gun in his hand.

Straight into the administrative office.

Where he was likely to find the man he saw as his greatest enemy – the Regent Theatre's General Manager – Donald Mason

‘WHAT MAKES IT
all so gruesome,' announced James De Meaux, ‘is the fact that it must all have been planned. Someone worked it all out, every ghastly move.'

He stifled a yawn. He really was feeling very tired. Of course, he was playing a major role, and it was the third week, but that shouldn't make him feel so absolutely
drained.
He knew what it was, of course – Nella. Lovely girl, but so inconvenient that she was at
Shove It
rehearsals all day. He could have coped with her very nicely in the afternoons, but all this late night emotion was very wearing. Sex was very nice, he reflected, but not when it interfered with sleep. Be quite a relief really, to get back to his nice little flat in Pimlico. Have a few days' sleep.

‘Yes, but who?' asked Felicity Kershaw. ‘We're still no nearer to working out who did it.'

She was also tired, but happier about it. The guy who'd directed
Scrag End of Neck
at the Bus Depot had turned up to the night before's performance and said she acted like ‘a real cow', which she had taken as a compliment. He had then let her buy him a meal (including Vanilla Ice Cream) at Mr Pang's, while he expatiated on the rights of women. He had gone back to her digs, made love to her relentlessly all night and left after breakfast, having borrowed fifty pounds. She felt fulfilled as a woman.

‘Well, Colonel Fripp was certainly involved. He must have tampered with the telephone. Why else should he bring that great array of screwdrivers in his luggage?'

‘But he didn't hang himself. That was the work of his accomplice.'

‘The mysterious woman.'

‘Whoever she may be.' Felicity Kershaw let out another of her laughs, confident that she was showing exactly what sort of bourgeois cow would be first against the wall, ‘come the revolution'.

James De Meaux looked thoughtful. An infatuated First Fairy had once told him he was very sexy when he looked thoughtful, so he did it whenever possible.

‘We've heard from Professor Weintraub's examination of the body that Colonel Fripp probably died between four and five in the afternoon. It might be worth checking what everyone was doing round that time.'

‘Well, if you want to start with me, darling, my movements were quite simple. I remember exactly. I went for a walk with Miss Laycock-Manderley.'

‘In the rain?'

‘Yes. It was pouring.'

‘Precisely. Pouring. Which makes one thing rather odd.'

‘What's that?'

‘I refer to the fact –' James De Meaux rounded on his fiancée ‘– that, when you returned from that walk, your overcoat was dripping wet, while Miss Laycock-Manderley's was not even damp.'

‘Ah.' Felicity Kershaw was meant to look trapped, and expressed this by clutching her stomach.

‘Do you have any explanation of that for me, Felicity?'

‘Well . . .'

‘Or let me put it another way – what evil hold has Miss Laycock-Manderley over you that would make you lie to provide her with an alibi?'

Then followed one of Leslie Blatt's favourite dramatic devices, which was used liberally throughout his work. Just at the point when a character had asked a relevant question, one that threatened to unravel the plot a little, another character would enter and prevent the answer being spoken.

In this case, the interruption came from Lady Hilda De Meaux. She swept on in her Act Three pearl grey silk dress (Tony had put his foot down, but she had overruled him) and recited, ‘I thought we could all do with a drink, so I've asked Wilhelmina to bring them in here.'

As she said this, she decided definitely that Sylv would wear a midnight-blue silk dress for Act Two of
Shove It
. That's what the character would do. She was, after all, going to appear in public, in the court, and Sylv was the sort of person to really care about her appearance under such circumstances. If she wore that thing Wardrobe had provided, she would look less smart than the two policewomen who flanked her in the dock. That wouldn't do. No, midnight-blue definitely. She would speak to Tony.

‘What a good idea, Lady Hilda,' said Felicity Kershaw, glad of the change of subject. ‘It's not my usual drink, but I could do with a large whisky after all this.'

‘I think I might join you in
one
,' agreed James De Meaux. He'd tried putting the emphasis on every separate word of that line, and none of them sounded right. Tonight's experiment, hitting the ‘one', seemed no more successful than the others.

Wilhelmina appeared in the doorway with a silver salver bearing the impedimenta of whisky and sherry decanters, soda syphon and cut-glass tumblers. ‘Where would you like me to put these, milady?' she asked.

Her mind supplied an obscene suggestion to answer the question. She was now even more tired, the midnight excursions with her factory-owner having continued through the run of the play. She was also disgruntled that he had made no further reference to the West Indies, and wondered whether he had been spinning her a line all the time. On top of that, her period was a couple of days late, which was all she needed.

‘Oh, over by the fireplace, thank you, Wilhelmina. And would you like to call Professor Weintraub and Miss Laycock-Manderley?'

‘No need in my case. I am here already,' said the Professor leaping friskily through the French windows.

Three more performances, he was thinking. Get this one finished and then there are only three more. Then, first thing on Sunday morning, shake the dust of Rugland Spa off my feet and get back to Jerome and the chihuahuas.

‘I wonder,' mused James De Meaux thoughtfully, because Leslie Blatt had to fill in the hiatus till Miss Laycock-Manderley's entrance with something, ‘if there's any way we could make contact with the police. Do you think they'd see, mater, if I did semaphore from the tower?'

‘With the weather like this?' asked Lady Hilda rhetorically. The man in charge of Sound tweaked up his volume control and it rained heavily. ‘They'd never see you, James. When the wind's coming up from the sea, the Grange is virtually invisible from Winklesham.'

‘Oh just an idea.'

Wilhelmina returned. ‘Miss Laycock-Manderley will not be a moment, milady. She is just powdering her nose.'

If I actually am pregnant, she was thinking, I could tell him it's his (which it quite possibly could be) and maybe he'd marry me. Hmm, on the other hand, he has already got a grown-up family. And he doesn't really give the impression that children are any longer what he wants from a woman. Have to ask him directly tonight about the West Indies, at least find out where I stand.

‘Thank you, Wilhelmina. Would you care to serve the drinks?'

‘Yes, milady.'

‘[AD LIB SERVING DRINKS DURING THE ENSUING DIALOGUE]' it said in the script, which is always a risky thing (and often a lazy thing) for a playwright to write, because actors vary so much in their improvisational skills. Some are struck dumb as soon as they have to leave the printed text, while others seize the opportunity to weave elaborate fantasies, build in complicated sub-plots which bear no relation to the main action. Without a strong directorial hand, chaos can ensue.

But Antony Wensleigh's had never been a strong directorial hand. And Felicity Kershaw saw the stage direction as an opportunity to aggrandize her part and to make more of a political statement. On this particular night, fired by the militancy of the director who had spent the night with her, she embroidered more than usual.

‘Oh, a sherry for me. Just a teensy-weensy sherry. I do hope it's South African. I really do so approve of South Africa – at least it's an ordered society. Like it used to be here. Till all these trades unions started to take over with all their unhealthy leftist talk . . .'

She thought that was probably sufficient to make her ironic point and cause discomfort amongst any plutocrats in the audience who would realize that they were being pilloried, so she returned to the line they had rehearsed. ‘Yes, just a small sherry, please.'

The trouble with that sort of ad libbing is that the ‘ensuing dialogue', the dialogue which is meant to be heard, is lost completely. But since this main dialogue conformed to Leslie Blatt's usual standards, it didn't matter that much.

When they were all supplied with drinks, Lady Hilda raised her sherry glass and said, ‘What is the toast to be?'

This was the cue for the spectral entrance of Miss Laycock-Manderley, with the line, ‘How about absent friends?'

But Miss Laycock-Manderley did not appear. There was an ugly pause.

‘Um, how about “Cheers”?' offered Felicity Kershaw, trying to save the situation.

‘Or “Prost!”?' suggested Professor Weintraub, rather overdoing the character bit.

‘“Your good health” maybe?' was Lady Hilda's suggestion.

James De Meaux realized it was one of those awful moments when he ought to
do
something. Everyone else had had a go; he had to come up with something. ‘What about “Bottoms Up”, mater? “Down the hatch” . . .? “Here's mud in your eye” . . .? Um . . .'

He was saved from further meanderings through
The Book of Your Favourite Toasts
by the belated appearance of Miss Laycock-Manderley. She was meant to look spectral at this point, but it was a shock to all the cast just how spectral she looked. She was in a state of shock, wide-eyed and trembling.

‘How about . . .' she quavered, ‘. . . absent friends?'

‘I find that in rather bad taste, Miss Laycock-Manderley, rebuked Lady Hilda, homing in again on Leslie Blatt's text.

‘Simply honouring the dead, Lady Hilda.' Miss Laycock-Manderley's teeth were chattering now, as she continued, ‘And those about to die.'

Lady Hilda looked at her curiously. ‘Would you care for a drink, Miss Laycock-Manderley?'

‘Yes, please. A small sherry would be most welcome.'

Looks more like she needs a massive brandy, thought Wilhelmina, as she poured out the apple juice.

‘Or, no – I think I'll have a whisky.'

Wilhelmina changed decanters and started to pour the cold tea.

‘What did you mean, Miss Laycock-Manderley, when you spoke of “those about to die”?'

‘Ha, Lady Hilda. Do you really believe we have seen the last death of this weekend at Wrothley Grange?' As she spoke, she swayed, threatening to fall.

Wilhelmina took the cold tea across to her.
‘Are you all right?'
the maid hissed.

‘
Terrible news. Just heard backstage
,' was all that could be hissed back before Lady Hilda had finished saying, ‘I think you're being overdramatic, Miss Laycock-Manderley.'