A Comedian Dies (19 page)

‘Nice place.' Charles said it to gain a little time and because he thought he might as well at least start on a friendly basis.

Miffy glowed. ‘Yes, I'm pleased with it. I've always had this theory that if you're going to move into the big league, you got to look as if you're there already.'

‘Not a bad principle. And you are moving into the big league?'

‘Sure I am. Whole scene needs a shake-up. All the top names in the agency business are old men now. Need a bit of young blood. It's wide open.'

‘Good.'

‘Good for my clients, yes. Now, like I said on the phone, I only deal with Variety stuff. Fine while you're with Lennie doing that sort of work, but if the calls start coming through from the Royal Bloody Shakespeare Company, I wouldn't know where to begin.'

‘The Royal Bloody Shakespeare Company has managed to do without my services for the past eleven years and I doubt if they're planning a major policy switch.'

‘No, I was speaking, like, generally. I mean, that's what you are basically, an actor, isn't it?'

‘I suppose so.' Charles hesitated. He was feeling uncomfortable. He could go on with this banter indefinitely, but if he didn't make some sort of move soon, he was going to walk out in ten minutes under contract to the man he had come to accuse. He blurted out, ‘I've come about Bill Peaky'.

‘Bill Peaky.' Miffy looked bewildered.

‘Yes. I know he was murdered.'

‘Murdered.' Again the repetition sound genuinely flummoxed. But Charles did not have a chance to assess the reaction. He heard the soft click of a door behind him and saw Miffy Turtle's eyes rise, puzzled, to the person who had just come in.

Charles turned to find himself looking up the barrel of a small black pistol at the end of which was a tight-lipped Carla.

Miffy spoke first. ‘What the hell are you doing, love?'

Her voice had entirely lost its elocuted veneer. ‘It's all right, Miff. I should have told you before. He came sniffing round the house with this murder story, but I thought I'd thrown him off your scent. Now it looks like we're going to have to keep him quiet.'

She waved the gun vaguely, but not vaguely enough to be reassuring. ‘Now, please, Mrs. Pratt,' Charles remonstrated.

‘Keep still. I don't know how he worked it out, Miff, but you must've made some mistake, not cleared your tracks properly. What are we going to do with him?'

‘I don't bloody know.' The agent sounded extremely confused. He had not started the afternoon with any plans for silencing and disposing of the bodies of men who knew too much and his mind was taking a little while to accommodate the idea.

‘How did you find it out, Mr. Paris?' asked Carla, the gun still describing unsettling pirouettes in her hand.

‘Various things. I found out that Miffy hadn't been in your husband's dressing room during the interval on the day he died. That Dickie Peck was set to steal your husband as a client. And then I . . . discovered that you two were lovers. So I put two and two together.'

‘And got bloody seventeen.' Miffy Turtle was through his confused stage and a definable mood had now emerged. That mood was extreme anger. ‘I don't know what you're talking about. Murder? What is this? Are you rehearsing for a play or something? Or is it some bloody stupid practical joke? 'Cause the humour's wearing a bit thin and I –'

Carla silenced him. ‘Miffy, don't bother. You're not going to persuade him off it now he's got the idea into his head. We got to decide what to do with him. If he goes to the police –'

‘If he goes to the police, they'll laugh their bloody heads off and tell him not to waste their time. Good God, Carla, d'you really believe I killed Bill?'

‘Well . . .'

‘Go on, do you?'

She faced her lover defiantly. ‘All right. Yes, I do. And what's more, I don't care. I don't love you less for it. In fact, I love you more. To think you would do that for me, to think you were prepared to get that little creep out of my life so that we could be together . . . I'll do whatever you say. What are we going to do about him?' She pointed the gun at Charles.

Miffy was silent. When he spoke, his voice was cold. ‘Listen, Carla. One, I don't believe Bill was murdered. Two, if he was, I didn't do it.'

She broke the ensuing silence, but didn't get far before he snapped back at her savagely. ‘And let me tell you that to hear you thought me capable of murdering him is the worst news I've had for some long time. Good God, I thought we knew each other, trusted each other.'

‘But you kept saying you wished he was out of the way. You said you wanted us to get married and –'

‘Yes, I said that. Whether I still mean it after this afternoon I'm not so sure. But I meant I wanted him to divorce you. I am not a killer, Carla.'

Suddenly she broke. Her lover's anger destroyed her and she sank weeping to the floor. The gun dropped noisily beside her.

Miffy didn't go to help. He looked coldly at Charles, who had been ignored through the preceding exchange, and said, with some dignity, ‘I think you'd better leave my office'.

‘No, I'm sorry. I came here certain that you killed Bill Peaky and you still haven't given me any reason to change my opinion. You certainly had the motive and you had the opportunity. Unless you can provide yourself with an alibi for the whole of the interval, I'm still not going to be satisfied.'

‘All right.' Miffy Turtle sounded dangerously grim. ‘I took Dickie bloody Peck round to Bill's dressing room. I then went to find one of the dancers who was ill. She hadn't appeared in the first-half closer and I wanted to know why. I had money in that show; I was concerned about the production.'

‘The girl was Janine Bentley?' Charles knew the answer, but still asked the question.

‘Yes. I found her with the theatre St. John's Ambulance man and stayed with her until a taxi came to take her home.'

So there it was – back to Harry, the St. John's Ambulance man. Checkable, certainly. But fairly convincing. Unless Janine and Miffy were in league. Unless the St. John's Ambulance man had killed Peaky. Charles suddenly felt very tired and very much like a man on the eve of his fifty-first birthday. ‘I'll check your alibi,' he said defiantly, but without conviction.

‘You bloody check it. And think yourself lucky I haven't knocked your bloody block off.'

Charles rose with what dignity he could muster. He was almost at the door when Miffy spoke again. His voice had softened now and was musing, curious. ‘Do you really think Bill was murdered?'

Charles nodded.

‘Good God.' Miffy shook his head sadly. ‘I knew he was unpopular, but I didn't think anyone . . .' He stopped. ‘Unless . . .'

‘Yes?' Charles was alert for any clues to help him out of the confusion which was building up inside his head.

‘Only one person I know might have done it.'

‘Hmm?' He tried not to sound too eager.

‘I don't know. I probably shouldn't say it, but I did hear him having an argument with Bill. Also he's a junkie, so I shouldn't think he knows what he's doing when he's had a fix. Hmm. I don't know.'

‘Who are you talking about?'

‘Boy called Chox Morton. Roadie with Mixed Bathing.'

‘And you say he's on drugs?'

‘Sure. Silly little bugger. Heroin. He won't be around two years from now, I bet. Killing himself.'

‘And he had an argument with Bill Peaky?'

‘Yes. Needless to say, he was very secretive about the drugs thing. I found out by accident and he was in a terrible state, making me swear never to tell anyone. He was terrified of being handed over to the police. Not afraid of going to prison or anything like that, just terrified of being taken away from his fix. It didn't concern me, so I said I'd keep quiet about it. Unfortunately Bill also found out and he was less willing to keep his mouth shut.'

‘He did go to the police?'

‘No, no, that wasn't Bill's way. He was a nasty little sod. He liked having power over people. Girls, in particular, but everyone. To have a secret about someone and hold it over them, he liked that. That's what he would have done with his knowledge of Chox's addiction.' Miffy was silent for a moment. ‘However he went, the world's well rid of him.'

This remark induced a new burst of crying from Carla, still lying on the floor behind the Chesterfield. Miffy looked over in her direction, but did not move. The lovers had a lot of talking to do, if they were to salvage their relationship.

And Charles Paris was going to have to do a lot of thinking.

COMIC: It's a really rough area – if you see a cat with a tail on round there you know it's a tourist.

‘Good God, Charles. Every time you ring me up you've got a new suspect.'

‘I've been through a few since we last spoke.'

‘Well, I hope you're being a good little amateur detective and checking out all these supposed alibis. Somebody capable of murder is not going to balk at telling the odd lie, to get them off the hook.'

‘From your tone I gather you've done Janine's alibi.'

‘I have actually. I spent a long afternoon on the phone yesterday checking out Harry, the St. John's Ambulance man in Hunstanton. It took me a long time to find him – I started with the theatre and kept getting new numbers. Tracked him down to his sister's in Lowestoft where he was having anchovy paste sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Chatty old boy, you may gather. Anyway, he remembered the occasion perfectly and confirmed that Janine had been with him right through the interval. Together with Miffy Turtle.'

‘You just asked him like that?'

‘No, I was a bit subtle. I implied it was a legal matter of urgency and discretion and that members of the Royal Family were not uninvolved. The old boy was very flattered to be asked. Got quite excited about it.'

‘I see. So, as I thought, those two are out of the running.'

‘It's all very well to say “as I thought”. True detective work is the product of endless painstaking research, of inquiry and counter-inquiry.'

‘So I've heard. Maybe that's why I'm not a true detective. Mind you, I think I'm getting somewhere this time.'

‘With Suspect Number 348? This boy called Chips?'

‘Chox.'

‘All the people in this case have such ridiculous names.'

‘That's show business, Gerald. Anyway, Chox is certainly a strange piece of work. If he is a drug addict, it explains quite a lot about him. Yes.'

This last word was spoken with a sudden insight, which prompted Gerald to ask, ‘Yes what?'

‘I've just thought of something else. Heroin addicts inject into their forearms, don't they?'

‘I don't know. Not exactly the circles I move in, Charles.'

‘I'm sure they do.' Anyway, when I grabbed the boy's arm a couple of days ago, he reacted pretty violently. Said he was afraid I was queer and he'd had nasty experiences that way, but thinking about it now, I reckon I'd hurt his arm or he was afraid I'd pull his sleeve up and expose him. I think junkies get pretty secretive about their addiction. Read something somewhere that that's part of the attraction, a kind of self-punishment, death-wish thing. That's why they often inject themselves in squalid places, lavatories and so on. And why they sometimes deliberately use infected needles.'

‘This wealth of detail is a fascinating insight into the circles
you
move in, Charles.'

‘Oh come on, Gerald, you're a solicitor. You must come up against drugs cases from time to time.'

‘I'm pleased to say that the only occasion I have come up against one was when the teenage son of a titled client of mine was found to have marijuana on his person. At Ascot.'

‘I might have guessed. And no doubt you got him off on the grounds that he was reacting against a nanny who'd always told him to keep off the grass.'

‘Something like that, yes.'

‘Anyway, I'm going to find out a bit more about Mr. Chox Morton. If what Miffy Turtle said was true, he had a motive – and I must say, that business about Bill Peaky liking to have holds over people confirms the impression I had got of his character. He does seem to have been a really unpleasant bit of work. I wasn't sure for a bit, because his wife painted such a different picture, but now I've discovered she was lying, the verdict seems to be more or less unanimous.'

‘You're rambling, Charles.'

‘Sorry. Just working it out for my own benefit. Yes, Chox had a motive all right. He also had the knowledge to commit the crime. He was better qualified than anyone, knew that sound system inside out, would have heard about the old theatre electrician dying, no problem. It's funny.'

‘What?' asked Gerald, exasperated at Charles' long stream-of-consciousness monologue.

‘When I last saw him, Chox raised the subject of Peaky's death. Quite unprompted. Said how he had described the electrocution process to some of the company. I think perhaps in a twisted way he was boasting about the crime, crowing at the fact that he had got away with it.'

‘Or perhaps he was testing, trying to find out how much you knew, how far you were behind him.'

‘No. I'm sure he doesn't know I'm even investigating. Lennie Barber's the only one in the case who knows anything about my futile hobby. Him and Walter Proud.'

‘I see. How's the show going, by the way?'

‘Somewhat jerkily. Nothing gets rehearsed for more than thirty seconds before Barber wants to change it. Then there's a long discussion where he agrees with everyone that he's going to be doing something different in the show. We start rehearsing again and he wants to change another line back to a hoary old joke which went down very well in the fifties. Classic comedian's insecurity, I guess. Terrified of anything new.'