A Comedian Dies (10 page)

‘Oh thanks,' said a rather deflated Alexander Harvey.

At that moment Walter Proud bustled up with Charles' Bell's and his own gin. He greeted the man in the grey suit effusively. ‘Nigel, great to see you. How goes it?'

‘Fine, fine,' said the man in the grey suit.

‘You haven't got a drink. What is it? Still the Campari?'

‘That'd be very nice, thank you.'

‘What about you, Alex? Lennie? Actually, Nigel, when I've got the drinks, I'd like to bend your ear for a moment about a couple of ideas.'

‘Fine, line.' The man grinned vaguely as Walter disappeared into the bar scrum, then turned sharply to Alexander Harvey. ‘Who is that?'

‘Walter Proud. Used to be at the BBC.'

‘Oh yes, I've met him somewhere. He's not with us at the moment, is he?'

‘Yes, three months' contract. Meant to be coming up with ideas. Tonight was one of his.' Alexander Harvey grimaced.

‘I see. I've got to go and talk to Paul over there. Excuse me.' The man in the grey suit flicked Charles and Barber a professional smile and moved away with Alexander Harvey in tow.

Charles looked at the comedian quizzically. ‘He's Nigel Frisch, Director of Programmes here and one very important person.'

Walter emerged from the scrum of drinks. ‘Oh, where did they go to?' He handed a very large Scotch to Barber, who pointed to the other side of the bar. ‘I'll take the drinks over. You know, Lennie, I'm really excited by what happened tonight. I think we're on to something. I think we can get a show going, built round the old Barber and Pole routines – I mean, not just old stuff, get in some young writers, you know, give it a bit of edge, kind of revue format – we'd be on to a winner. It wouldn't be just the nostalgia appeal, though that's there. I reckon if you can present the public with a package that's got nostalgia and is modem at the same time, then you've got to be on to a winner. Lennie Barber, I think you could be on the verge of the biggest comeback there ever was. Well, what do you say?'

Lennie Barber shrugged without changing his expression. ‘I say “Oh yeah?”'

‘Yeah. Certainly.'

‘Show me the contract and I might believe you.'

‘Well, at least sound a bit excited about it.'

‘If I got excited every time I heard a producer say I was on the verge of a comeback, I'd have dropped dead years ago. Once you've been an overnight success more than a couple of dozen times the novelty wears off.'

‘This time it's for real. This one's going to be big.'

‘Yeah, sure.' Barber spoke as to a child. ‘You go and take those drinks over to your important friends.' As Walter moved away, the comedian downed his Scotch in a single gulp.

‘Get you another one, Lennie?'

‘No, Charles. I haven't got the cash with me to buy you one.'

‘Well, I can get it now, or lend you the money or –'

‘Don't like being in debt, sorry. No, I'll go and join that little group over there round the director. Since I'm going to appear on the bugger's expense claim whether he buys me a drink or not, I think he can get me one.'

Charles stood alone and drank. His mind kept coming back to Janine Bentley. Pretty girl. Long golden hair. Not an intelligent face, but a sweet one. Appealing, childish really. Where was she?

‘Look, I do want to talk about the series potential in this thing, Charles old man.' It was Walter back again. Nigel Frisch and Alexander Harvey had only required him as a waiter for their drinks and had not volunteered to include him in their conversation. Charles' mind was not on series potential. ‘Walter, you know that show at Hunstanton . . .?'

‘Yes.'

‘You saw it a few times, I gather?'

‘Yes.' Walter looked at him blankly.

‘Did you meet one of the dancers called Janine?'

The producer's look changed from blankness to slight suspicion. ‘Yes, I met her.'

‘Apparently she was having an affair with Bill Peaky.'

‘Yes, or he was with her, whichever way you like to put it. So what? Do you disapprove?'

‘No, no. It's just . . . I don't know, they're supposed to have had a quarrel on the afternoon he died.'

‘Yes, somebody mentioned that. She was serious about him; he wasn't about her. Apparently Janine had been in touch with Peaky's wife and told her what was going on, imagining, I think, that the wife would give up her claims and allow the course of true love to run smooth.'

‘Really. And that's what annoyed Peaky?'

‘I gather so. It'd annoy most men. I'd have been pretty damned annoyed if any of my little bits on the side had told Angela.' Somehow the sexual bravado in his tone didn't carry conviction.

‘Hmm. Do you know what Peaky's relationship with his wife was?'

‘Well, they were married. Sorry, being facetious. I don't know. I think OK, but Bill used to put it about a bit.'

‘So I heard. Incidentally, Walter, do you know Peaky's wife – widow, I should say?'

‘I've met her. Carla. Pretty girl. Lives out towards Epping Forest somewhere. Wouldn't say I know her really.' Walter Proud drained his gin reflectively. ‘Pity about Bill Peaky. Really talented boy. I thought I'd get some kind of show going there. Still, it's an ill wind. If I hadn't gone to Hunstanton to see him, I wouldn't have made contact with old Lennie Barber again and tonight wouldn't have happened.'

Gerald Venables, who had been ensconced in a corner of the bar with the head of the television company's contract department, offered to drive Charles home. ‘So where do you go now, big boy?' he asked as the Mercedes purred along.

‘I reckon finding Janine is still the first priority.'

‘Cherchez la femme.'

‘But since the trail seems to have gone cold there at the moment, I think I might cherchez the family instead for a bit.'

‘Whose family?'

‘Peaky's family. I think I'll get in touch with his widow.'

COMIC: Do you know, I'm going to marry a widow?

FEED: Are you? Ooh, I wouldn't fancy being the second husband of a widow.

COMIC: I'd sooner be the second than the first.

Charles rang the phone number Walter Proud had given him the next morning. He asked to speak to Mrs. Peaky and was told he was speaking to Mrs. Pratt, who was Bill Peaky's widow. He should have realized that Peaky was too good a name for a comedian to be genuine.

He had decided that when he spoke to her, he would not attempt any subterfuge. Since she had not been in Hunstanton at the time, she could not possibly have been implicated in her husband's death and she was likely to be interested to hear of any suspicious circumstances.

She spoke slowly, treading her accent with caution like a tight-rope walker, all right at her own pace, but at speed in danger of falling into the Cockney below. ‘What's it about?'

‘You don't know me, Mrs. Pratt, and I hope you don't mind my calling you. My name's Charles Paris. I was present in Hunstanton when your husband died.'

‘Yes?'

‘I'm sorry. I don't want to upset you, but I've since heard things that make me wonder whether his death was in fact an accident.'

‘Whether it was . . . What, you mean that someone might have . . . that he might have been murdered?'

‘I believe it's possible.'

There was a long pause from the other end of the phone. When it came back, her voice was strained, less at pains to hide its origins. ‘Do you have any suspicions as to who might have murdered him?'

‘Suspicions, vague thoughts, nothing concrete. I wanted to talk to you about it.'

‘Me? But I –'

‘I'm sorry. Please don't misunderstand me. Of course I'm not wishing to imply any suspicion of you. I just wanted to talk to you about your husband, ask if you know of anyone with a sufficiently strong grudge against him to . . . I'm sorry, I thought you would be interested.'

‘Yes, of course I am. It's just a bit of a shock. I mean, it never occurred to me that . . . You're convinced that it was murder?'

‘Fairly convinced, yes.'

‘As I say, it's a shock.'

‘Of course. Can we meet?'

‘I think we should.'

‘Just say where and when.'

‘Do you mind coming out here? I'm sorry, it's difficult to park the children at short notice. Can you come today?'

Charles' professional calendar was as empty as usual. ‘Certainly. Tell me how to get to you.'

There was no evidence of the children when he arrived at the house. Presumably Carla Pratt had managed to park them at short notice after all.

The house was in Chigwell, a nice area for an East End boy like Bill Peaky to aspire to when he started to make a bit of money. No doubt all the neighbours were company directors, professional footballers and minor racketeers. The building was a bungalow that seemed to have sprawled out of control, with a double garage and hacienda-style arch-ways that had been added to take the curse off its thirties redbrick lines. The frontage was all wrought iron, black wrought iron gates relieving black wrought iron railings.

This motif was continued inside the sitting room where black wrought iron supported glass shelves, plant pots, light fittings, marble-topped tables and a series of photographs of Bill Peaky's triumphs. The curled black metal gave the room a coldness, a newness, as if the decor were for show, not for living in.

Carla Pratt was also dressed in black, but she had a higher cuddlability rating than the wrought iron. Her curves were less machined and warmer. Charles had seen her distantly at the inquest, but never without a coat and so had not appreciated her splendid contours. He recalled Walter Proud saying she had been a dancer and child-bearing had not slackened the athleticism of her figure. Nor did the black glazed cotton dress, worn presumably as a token of mourning, do anything to disguise her shape. Indeed, it offered fascinating grounds for conjecture as to whether she was wearing one of those negligible bras made of flimsy stuff like they wrap supermarket chickens in, or none at all.

Her blonde hair had been recently (and expensively) cut and she looked fit and lively. If she was suffering from the pains of widowhood, she disguised it well.

Having sat Charles down and provided him with a cup of coffee (instant, but one of the more expensive blends), she asked him to give his grounds for suspicion and he ran through the business of Norman del Rosa's revelation again.

‘That doesn't prove murder,' she said with what sounded like relief. Presumably someone who has just reconciled herself to her husband's death is not anxious to have to change her whole pattern of thinking on the subject.

‘Doesn't prove it, but it does make the death seem rather odd. The particular electrical set-up which caused it would have been bound to show up on the ringmain tester.'

‘So you think someone fiddled with the wires after Bill tested it?'

‘That would seem a logical conclusion.'

‘Hmm.' She seemed to be waiting for him in some way, waiting for him to come to the point. Maybe she still feared that he was building up to an accusation. ‘But why? Why should anyone do that?'

‘One of my reasons for wanting to see you was the hope that you might be able to answer that question. The old “Did your husband have any enemies?” routine.'

‘I see. Let me think.' It didn't take her long. ‘No. I don't think so.'

‘You mean everyone liked him?'

‘Yes.' She looked at Charles, as if daring him to challenge her assertion.

He had no intention of challenging it, but it seemed odd. This certainly did not tally with what everyone else had said about Peaky. Still, Carla was his widow. Maybe in her eyes he could do no wrong. And, of course, she had not been in the company with him to hear his slights against fellow-performers.

‘But, Mrs. Pratt, someone who has as much success as your husband, and so quickly, is likely to cause jealousy among other people in the business. Didn't you ever hear of that sort of thing?'

‘Not in Bill's case, no.' She said it with great determination. Difficult to tell whether or not she was protesting too much. Feeling that maybe she had not made her point, she added, ‘He was a wonderful man'.

Charles lowered his eyes and regretted that he had never had the pleasure of meeting the young comedian. ‘So you can't imagine anyone wanting to get him out of the way?'

‘No. No one except a maniac or someone like that. Why should anyone in their right mind want to destroy our lives, leave the two boys without their Dad, leave me a widow? It's madness.' She didn't look particularly ruffled as she delivered this speech, but it could have come from genuine feeling. Emotion is revealed in many ways. Charles felt an indefinable suspicion as to her sincerity but decided that he was being hypersensitive.

‘I agree, it is madness, Mrs. Pratt, but if it were murder, would you mind my investigating it?'

‘How'd you mean?'

‘I mean, do you want me to find out all I can about the circumstances or would you rather I forgot all about it?'

‘No. If there is some possibility that he was murdered, I'd have to know. I mean, if I said forget it, it'd sound like I didn't care.'

‘Only to me. No one else would know.'

‘That's true.' She vacillated. ‘But no, we've got to find out. I loved him. I've got to know.'

Her final avowal again sounded pedestrian, but maybe that was as emotional as she ever got.

Still, she had given Charles a cue and he was obliged to pick it up. ‘You say you loved him. You mean it was a happy marriage?'

‘Of course,' she snapped.

‘I'm sorry to ask you this, but I've talked to other members of the Hunstanton company and they have suggested that perhaps your husband was not always . . . completely faithful?'