A Comedian Dies (3 page)

Charles recognized Dickie Peck, one of the biggest agents in the business. They had met when Charles had been working with Peck's client, Christopher Milton, on the troubled pre-London tour of
Lumpkin!,
a musical loosely based on
She Stoops to Conquer
. Dickie Peck had either forgotten this previous meeting or chose not to recognize Charles.

He also seemed anxious to get away from Walter Proud, but the television producer was equally keen to keep him in conversation. ‘What are you doing here, Dickie?'

‘Came down to see Bill Peaky.'

‘About . . .'

‘About a project.' The delivery was calculated to stop further inquiry.

‘Ah. I'm down here to see him too.'

‘Really? If you'll excuse me . . .'

But Walter wasn't to be shaken off that easily. ‘Great act, isn't he, Bill Peaky. Really going to be very big. I mean, it's original. All that business with the guitar. Nobody else doing that. Except Billy Connolly. But he's too blue for the family audience. I like to think that the reason for Peaky's success is that he's up to date, marrying the old music hall comedian bit with the world of pop music that the kids understand. You know, they really identify when they see someone come on-stage with an electric guitar. Any yet he doesn't alienate the older audience either.'

Dickie Peck was plainly uninterested in Walter Proud's theories of comedy. ‘Sure. Well, I'm going round to –'

At that point he was interrupted by the arrival of a thickset young man in a sharp blue suit and a heavy gold identity bracelet, who spoke with the brash confidence of an East End street-trader. ‘Hello. Mr. Peck, isn't it?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'm Miffy Turtle, Bill Peaky's personal manager. Actually, I also represent the group, Mixed Bathing, and Lennie Barber as well, but –'

‘Nice little package deal you've sorted out for yourself with this show,' observed Dickie Peck shrewdly.

Miffy Turtle accepted the compliment from a fellow agent with a tense little smile. ‘I heard you were out front this afternoon, Mr. Peck, and thought I should make myself known. Gather you'd like to meet the boy.'

‘Yes.'

Well, if you come round to the dressing room after the show, Billy'd be just delighted. I'm sure we'd be able to find a bottle of something.'

‘By the way, my name's Walter Proud. We met. I'm the television producer who –'

Dickie Peck answered Miffy as if Walter had not spoken. ‘I have to get back to town rather quickly. There's a charity premiere tonight. I'd better have a word with Peaky now.'

Miffy Turtle was taken aback. ‘Well, oh well, yes, I'm sure that'd be all right. Come on round. I'll show you the way.'

The two agents set off towards the pass-door by the stage.

‘Oh, I think I'd better come along and see him now too. Come along, Paul.' And Walter Proud, with his writer in tow, hurried along to join them, uninvited. ‘Actually,' he continued when he caught up, ‘I was just off to the Gents, but I know there's one backstage.'

‘You'll find the lock doesn't work,' said Miffy Turtle in a tone of voice which implied that he didn't want the producer with them.

‘Never mind, I'm not proud. Well, I am, actually,' quipped Walter, and he tagged along unabashed, drawing the scowling writer after him.

Charles looked at Frances. ‘Seems we've lost our company. Let's go and join the geriatrics for weak tea and Nice biscuits.'

The second half of
Sun 'n' Funtime
opened with the Shannon Sisters, who delivered a Muzak version of
Don't Give Up On Us, Baby
. They were genuine sisters, four of them, dressed in identical scarlet catsuits. They were similar to look at and all of them not quite attractive in a different way, as if somewhere there was a fifth sister, a missing matrix, who really was attractive and of whom all the others were inferior copies.

The audience loved them. If only their grandchildren were like that.

Next came Los Realitos, a troupe of jugglers and contortionists who were about as interesting as jugglers and contortionists usually are.

Now all that remained on the bill were Bill Peaky and yet another dose of These Foolish Things for the finale. Charles was hoping that Peaky would be worth seeing; otherwise the whole afternoon was going to be living proof that variety was dead.

He felt a prod from the row behind and smelled the gin-fumes as Walter Proud whispered in his ear. ‘This boy is good, really good. One of the most original acts around. Going to be very big.'

The curtain rose on an empty stage. Empty, that is, of human life; the tons of Mixed Bathing's hardware remained in evidence. And an electric guitar on a stand in the middle.

Then Bill Peaky entered in a follow-spot. He had a cheeky face beneath a spray of ginger hair and was dressed in a beige three-piece suit and high-collared purple shirt. The audience immediately burst into applause. Charles, it seemed, was alone in his ignorance of the show business phenomenon that was Bill Peaky.

The comedian picked the guitar up nonchalantly as he approached the front microphone. He was very self-possessed, confident that he would get the laughs when he opened his mouth. He grinned and the audience tittered in anticipation. Then he leaned forward to the microphone to deliver his first line. As he did so, he struck an open chord on the guitar and took hold of the microphone stand with his left hand.

There was a loud report and a flash from somewhere. Bill Peaky's body snapped rigid like a whip. For a second his face registered surprise. Then agonizing pain as he was flicked back from the microphone by the force of the electrical charge. He crashed into the pile of amplifiers, twitched violently and crumpled down in a dead heap on the floor.

FEED: I heard on the radio this morning that the police are looking for a man with one eye.

COMIC: Typical inefficiency.

At the inquest on the Friday there were no surprises as to the cause of Peaky's death. He had had the full force of the mains going through his body and the shock to his system had stopped his heart.

How the accident had happened was rather more interesting to the technically-minded. An extension lead from the plug-box at the side of the stage to Mixed Bathing's amplifiers had been wired incorrectly. Being cheap High Impedance equipment, it had joined not the Neutral wire but the Live wire with the Earth in the jack-plug fitted into Peaky's guitar. This potentially dangerous set-up need not have been lethal, if Peaky had not touched the microphone stand. The microphones were part of the theatre's PA system, also High Impedance, but correctly plugged. When Peaky touched his incorrectly wired guitar and the microphone stand at the same time, he became an unwilling link in a mains circuit.

The immediate question that this raised was: why hadn't the accident happened before? How was it that Mixed Bathing's string-vested guitarist/vocalist had gone through a whole act treating the microphone as an ice-lolly and caused no shocks except to the audience's ear-drums?

The explanation was quickly forthcoming. After Mixed Bathing's set, when Lennie Barber pushed on his pie-cart, a wheel had caught in the lead and snatched the wires out of the plug. Rather than mending it in the middle of the show, the broken cable had been replaced, during These Foolish Things' second appearance, by another made-up extension lead which had been found in the theatre's electrical store. It was on this lead that the Live and Neutral wires had been incorrectly connected.

So the blame for the accident, if any, lay with the person who had originally made up this lethal cable. According to the evidence of the local Entertainments Officer, who managed the Winter Gardens, the lead had been lying around the electrical store for some time and had almost definitely been made up by the previous Theatre Electrician, who had retired three years previously and died within six months of retirement. He had not been well during his final months in the job and this was not the first example of faulty workmanship dating from that period. For the sake of the man's widow, the Entertainments Officer hoped that the results of her late husband's carelessness would not have to be published.

So that was it really, Charles thought to himself as he sat in the cramped Coroner's Court. An unfortunate accident, which no one could have foreseen. The Coroner was bound to bring in a verdict of death by misadventure, with recommendations that safety precautions in the theatre should be tightened up.

Charles had watched the inquest with interest. Since his involvement in the strange affair of Marius Steen, violent death had begun to exercise an almost unhealthy fascination on him. Frances disapproved of this new hobby with its inevitable by-product of detective investigation, but that didn't stop her from following the inquest proceedings with consuming interest. It was a welcome diversion. Once you had exhausted
Sun 'n' Funtime
and the Amusement Arcade, there was not a lot to do during a wet September in Hunstanton.

The little Coroner's Court was full, with intrigued members of the
Sun 'n' Funtime
company and representatives of the nation's Press, for whom the death of a momentarily popular comedian carried a brief news value. Bill Peaky's widow was also present, an attractive blonde girl in a black suede coat.

Apart from the Entertainments Officer, evidence was given by the policeman who had first been called to the scene of the accident, by the Police Surgeon who had examined Peaky's body, by the resident Theatre Electrician and by Charles (known as Chox) Morton, who, as Road Manager for Mixed Bathing, was responsible for the group's equipment.

Morton was an emaciated individual in dirty blue jeans and a colourless pullover. His pale sunken face was curtained with long, straggly brown hair. He seemed to be in a state of high nervous tension, constantly interlocking and unwinding his fingers as he gave his evidence. No doubt he was in a blue funk in case he should be held responsible for the faulty equipment.

The only other person to be questioned was Miffy Turtle, Peaky's manager, who was asked whether his client was usually careless with his electrical equipment. Turtle revealed that Peaky was most punctilious about safety and made a habit of checking out his guitar during the interval with a device known as a Martindale Ringmain Tester. He could only assume that the arrival of the well-known agent Dickie Peck in his dressing-room had led Peaky to omit his usual interval routine.

As anticipated, the Coroner brought in a verdict of death by misadventure, with recommendations that safety precautions in the theatre should be tightened up.

As Charles and Frances were leaving the Coroner's Court they heard someone bustling to catch up with them through the crush. They turned to see the pianist, Norman del Rosa, auburn wig gleaming over flushed face. ‘I'm so sorry,' he said, ‘but it is Charles Paris, isn't it?'

Charles admitted it was.

‘Norman del Rosa. We worked together on a pantomime in Worthing, remember.
Cinderella.
You gave your Baron Hardup.'

‘Ah yes,' Charles agreed vaguely. He remembered the pantomime but he couldn't remember any Norman del Rosa being involved in it.

His face must have betrayed his ignorance. ‘Oh, you remember, Charles. You were with that little dancer, Jacqui, who –'

‘I don't think you've met my wife, Frances,' Charles interposed hastily. Jacqui had been one of his early peccadilloes (who, surprisingly, had turned up again in the Marius Steen case), and he did not particularly want Frances reminded of her. ‘I'm sorry, Norman, I really can't recall –'

‘Of course, the name. I was called Bobby Marquette then.'

‘Ah yes. It comes back. I'm so sorry. With the change of name and . . .' He just stopped himself from saying ‘that frightful wig.' ‘And . . . er . . . things, I just didn't make the connection.'

‘Think nothing of it, dear boy. Delighted to see you.'

At that moment they were joined by the lovely Vita Maureen, who (surprise, surprise) turned out to be Norman del Rosa's wife. After exchanges of pleasantries, since the musical double act showed no signs of leaving, Charles commented conversationally, ‘Nasty business, this.'

‘Oh, my dear,' cooed Vita Maureen tragically, ‘you have no idea, but no idea. What it's been like being in the company for the last few days. Hell, darling, isn't the word.'

‘Everyone pretty upset over Peaky's death, you mean?'

‘But devastated, darling.'

‘He was popular in the company, was he?' Charles' curiosity to find out the background to the death could not be contained.

‘Oh, everyone loves a star, don't they, darling?'

From his experience in the theatre, particularly from working with an egomaniac called Christopher Milton, Charles very much questioned the truth of this assertion. Norman del Rosa also seemed to have misgivings. ‘Well, my love, I'm not sure that –'

But his wife did not let him get into the flow of his objection. ‘It really is such a pleasure to meet you both,' she interrupted. ‘Quite honestly, there are so few people of one's type in a place like this. You must come and have tea with us on Sunday. You will still be here, won't you?'

And before Charles and Frances had time to marshal their excuses, they were committed to tea at four o'clock on Sunday at the Devereux Hotel.

When they got back to the Waves Crest Guest House, Charles found a message asking him to ring his agent.

This was almost unprecedented. Maurice Skellern was the laziest agent in the business. Charles only stayed with him because he had no hopes of dramatic changes in his acting career and because he was too soft to face the inevitable scene of severing their association. Besides, Maurice was quite amusing and a useful fund of theatrical gossip. He never got any of his clients jobs, but he did keep them up to date with who was sleeping with who and how. Charles rang up about once a fortnight for his dose of backstage dirt.