Murder in the Title (2 page)

And she made for her dressing-room.

In the stalls an old lady fumbled with the cellophane on her box of After-Dinner Mints. ‘Not much of a part for that actor, the one who dies, is it?' she observed to her companion.

‘No,' her companion agreed.

‘I wonder if it's someone we know from the television.'

Her companion turned the pages of her programme with arthritic hands. ‘No, the name doesn't mean anything to me.'

‘What is it?'

‘Charles Paris. You heard of him?'

‘No, dear.'

AFTER THE CURTAIN-CALL
Charles Paris tried again to ring his estranged wife Frances, but again there was no reply.

There were no spirits at the brief first night party, so Charles had to make do with a glass of bitter Spanish red. It was not what he needed, but it was better than nothing. It might dissipate the headache left from the day's earlier excesses. He knew he was weak-willed to react to stress by drinking, but stress had a very debilitating effect on his will. His resolutions to drink less always occurred when he was feeling strong-willed, and at such times he didn't need the support of excessive drinking anyway.

He didn't want to talk to anyone at the party, just to pickle his distress in private, but the theatre's General Manager, Donald Mason, dragged him across to a middle-aged couple who were introduced as Herbie and Velma Inchbald. Donald, who had the incisive manner and affected the pin-striped suits of corporate middle management, was difficult to refuse.

The Inchbalds were well-dressed – possibly over-dressed for the first night of a play at a provincial rep theatre. Herbie, who compensated for his stocky shortness with an Einstein mane of grey hair and a large cigar, wore a dark velvet suit and a velvet bow-tie, which at first sight gave the impression of evening dress. His wife's pudgy, powdered face was squarely framed by black hair which looked like (and quite possibly was) a wig. The precise definition of her curves was expensively obscured by a blue full-length dress in some ruched semi-transparent material, but the space it took up suggested they were ample. The fat of her neck and fingers was constricted by jewellery.

‘Herbie is Chairman of the Theatre Board.' Donald Mason supplied this information and bustled off efficiently.

‘Ah,' said Charles Paris.

‘First time you've worked at the Regent, Mr Paris?'

Yes. If working is the word for what I'm doing, he thought savagely. Does being a dead body count as working? Though of course someone has to play it – can't have non-Equity stiffs crashing the union closed shop.

He contented himself with saying, ‘Yes.'

‘Grand little theatre,' Herbie Inchbald affirmed complacently. He pronounced the word ‘thee-ettah', which made Charles' hackles rise. He knew it was mere snobbery, hut he could never believe that people who said ‘thee-ettah' were true friends of the medium.

‘Won't find a better little rep for a few hundred miles, I can tell you,' Herbie Inchbald continued. ‘No, people come a long way to see our little shows.'

‘From as far away as Leominster,' Velma Inchbald agreed. ‘Even some from Worcester.'

‘Ah.'

‘Do you know Herefordshire well, Mr Paris?'

‘Not very, no.'

‘You'll find it's a lovely county.'

‘Oh, good.'

The conversation seemed about to go under for the third time. Charles handed it a straw to clutch at. ‘Did you enjoy the show tonight?'

Under normal circumstances modesty would have stopped him from asking the question, but he felt that the size of his contribution to this particular production absolved him from any charges of fishing for compliments.

‘Oh, yes, grand show.'

‘Grand,' Velma agreed.

Charles wondered whether his hearing was going, along with other waning faculties like hoping, coping and bladder control. Could it really be that they had enjoyed
The Message Is Murder
? He hadn't spent very long rehearsing the piece, because of the nature of his part, but it had been long enough to form the opinion that the play was the direst piece of codswallop ever to be exhumed from the mortuary of dead plays.

‘You mean you thought it was well done?' This seemed marginally more likely than that they had actually enjoyed the writing.

‘Well done, and a damned good little play.'

‘Yes, a good little play,' echoed Velma.

Charles must have failed to disguise his disbelief, because he found himself being asked if he didn't like the piece.

‘Well, erm, it's probably not my favourite sort of play. I mean, I often wonder how plays like that do get chosen. I mean, there are thousands of really good plays around and . . .'

‘Herbie helped choose the play.'

‘Oh. Did he?'

‘Yes, I did. Well, credit where it's due, Donald first suggested it. But soon as I read it, I thought it was a grand little play.'

‘And then you read it again when we were in Corsica in the summer.'

‘That's right, I did. Still thought it was grand.'

‘Ah.'

‘You see, Mr Paris, in a local rep you have to give the public what they want. All right, maybe
The Message Is Murder
isn't experimental, hasn't got any arty-farty pretensions, but it's damned good entertainment. Nothing like a thriller to bring the crowds in – especially if it's got “murder” in the title. And you know, Leslie Blatt's a local author too – retired to Bromyard – so that's another attraction. Oh yes, a good thriller, a Shakespeare, the pantomime, of course – those are your bankers at a local rep. Those are the sort of things people in Rugland Spa want to see. Get those under your belt and then you can afford to be a bit experimental. I mean, do you know what our next production is . . .?'

‘Yes, I heard.'

‘
Shove It
, that's what it is.
Shove It
. Now there's a modern play, if you like. Going to raise a few eyebrows in Rugland Spa, isn't it, Velma?'

‘I should say so.'

‘But it's the sort of show we ought to do . . . every now and then. And with Kathy Kitson in it, the people'll come along.'

‘Yes . . .'

‘We're very proud of the Regent here in Rugland Spa, Mr Paris.'

‘Yes, well, it's a lovely old theatre,' said Charles, trying to soften the accusation in Herbie Inchbald's tone.

‘Certainly is. Built in 1894, you know. Chequered career, like most theatres. Kept opening and closing under different managements. Closed completely after the last war – sold and used as a repository for corn.'

‘A tradition that is still maintained,' Charles joked ill-advisedly.

‘What?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Anyway, virtually derelict in the early sixties, then some far-sighted lads on the council took it in hand – all refurbished – reopened in '62.'

‘And has been going ever since?'

‘More or less, yes. Nasty scare, what, three years back? Big offer for the whole Maugham Cross site – that's what this part of the town's called – from a property company. Don't know if you know them – Schlenter Estates?'

‘No.'

‘Oh well, they're big. Anyway, lot of the council wanted to sell, but we organized local opinion and held on. Close call, though. After that we reconstituted the Board, and I got in Lord Kitestone to be our Patron.'

‘Oh,' said Charles in a way that he hoped sounded interested. The name had been delivered in a way that required reaction.

‘Willie Kitestone owns Onscombe House, stately home out on the Ludlow road,' Velma added helpfully. ‘Very large place.'

‘Ah . . .'

Once again the conversation lay inert, and Charles tried a tentative kiss of life. ‘So many provincial theatres these days seem to depend for their survival on the local council.'

‘Oh yes.'

‘And the Arts Council, of course.'

‘Oh yes.'

‘Still, we're all right here.' Velma Inchbald smiled sweetly. So long as Herbie's on the council. He's a real thee-ettah-lover.'

Charles couldn't think of anything to say. He didn't like the Inchbalds and that made him feel guilty. He should have liked them, he should have approved of their support for the theatre, his profession needed more people with their attitude. And yet . . . And yet they seemed to him just boring and slightly pompous.

No doubt a reflection of his own mood. But he felt cussedly disinclined to resuscitate the conversation yet again.

Herbie did it for him. ‘Of course, it's not just me,' he said magnanimously, in a voice that seemed to invite contradiction. ‘A lot of other people help make the Regent a going concern. I mean, you know Donald – he's a real firecracker. Full of ideas. Only been here a year, but he's really made some changes. Bright young man is Donald. I'm always ready to listen to his advice.'

‘And of course Tony works so hard.' Charles felt he should mention the Artistic Director. Though Antony Wensleigh was somewhat vague and a bit of an old woman, there was no questioning his commitment to the Regent Theatre.

‘Yes.' The word contained less than whole-hearted endorsement from Herbie Inchbald. ‘Mind you, he'd be lost without Donald. And we have to be careful. This theatre's under constant threat you know. Prime position in the town. Good few developers like to snap it up. Only take a little bit of mismanagement for the place to cease to be economically viable. Then it closes, I get out-voted on the council – there's plenty of Philistines on that council, you know – and before you can say knife, the Regent's gone to make way for another supermarket, or hotel, or what-have-you. And that'd be terrible.'

‘Terrible,' Velma concurred.

After
The Message Is Murder
Charles didn't feel so sure. And despised himself for the meanness of the thought.

He managed to escape the Inchbalds and get another glass of the Spanish red, which was tasting increasingly as if the bottle had been left open for a week. It matched the sourness of Charles' mood.

He knew its basic cause, but he also knew that it had been aggravated by the events of the evening. It really hurt him to have been described as unprofessional by Kathy Kitson at the end of the first act. And it hurt the more because he knew the charge was justified. No excuses about the state of emotional tension he was in could excuse his childish giggling at the idiocies of Leslie Blatt's dialogue.

As he thought of the playwright, he looked across to the old man, whose claw-like hands were pawing his eighteen-year-old companion, trying to dissuade her from her assertion that she really ought to be going home. Charles shuddered. For a man in his fifties with a taste for young actresses, the sight of Leslie Blatt prompted unwelcome comparisons.

Still, one thing he could do – indeed, should do – to regain some of the day's lost ground, was to make his peace with Kathy Kitson.

He looked across at her. She had changed out of her Lady Hilda De Meaux costume, but didn't look any different. Kathy Kitson never looked any different. She was an actress who lacked the humility Mahomet had shown to the mountain. She didn't go to her parts; they came to her. And if a few of the lines – or even the whole emphasis – of the play had to change to accommodate her performance, then that's the way it had to be.

Kathy Kitson's only performance consisted of Kathy Kitson, her hair set that afternoon, walking elegantly round stages in waisted silk dresses, and speaking with brittle elocution whatever lines she thought appropriate to Kathy Kitson. This she had done endearingly in West End comedies during the fifties, popularly in the television sit com,
Really, Darling?
during the late sixties, and with decreasing éclat in decreasingly prestigious provincial theatres during the seventies and into the eighties. This performance she had finally brought, with the desperation of the last dodo, to
The Message Is Murder
at the Regent Theatre, Rugland Spa.

And this performance, to judge from what she was saying to a young man in a leather jacket as Charles approached, was the one she intended to give in the forthcoming production of that searing indictment of contemporary society by one of Britain's most controversial young playwrights,
Shove It
. .

‘You see, darling,' she murmured huskily, ‘I don't think all that . . . language is necessary.'

‘But,' protested the young man in the leather jacket, ‘Royston Everett's language is an authentic reflection of life on the streets of Liverpool.'

‘I'm sure it is, darling, but one can't just present plays for the people of Liverpool.'

‘It's not
for
the people of Liverpool, it's
about
the people of Liverpool. Everett was brought up in Toxteth. He knows what he's talking about.'

‘I'm sure he does, but that is not really the point. You see, my feeling is that playwrights tend to fall back on bad language when their confidence is threatened.'

‘Oh.'

‘When they're afraid their points won't get across, they reinforce them with bad language.'

‘Well –'

‘In my young day that wasn't necessary. We used something else to reinforce the playwright's points – an old-fashioned little thing called
acting
.'

This left the young man in the leather jacket without speech, and gave Charles the opportunity to intervene. ‘Kathy, I just wanted to apologize –'

‘And another thing I think is unnecessary,' she went on, turning a deep-frozen, silk-clad shoulder to Charles, ‘is all this nudity.'

‘Oh, but sometimes,' the young man in the leather jacket protested, ‘it's absolutely essential.'

‘No, darling.' Kathy Kitson's put-down was gentle, but firm. ‘Again, a good actress can give the impression of nudity while remaining dressed.'