A Series of Murders (12 page)

‘I don't think Mr. Parton's experiences are really relevant, Mr. Paris. It is not as if he is a creator of characters; he is merely a journeyman, an interpreter of other people's original work.'

‘I think you may be underestimating the skill that he brings to what he does.'

‘Mr. Paris, he clearly doesn't care about it. He sees his work on the
Stanislas Braid
series as just another job of work.'

‘Well, yes, but –'

‘Do you know, before he started adapting them, he had not even read one of the W. T. Wintergreen books?'

Charles found it interesting to note how Winifred constantly used the pronoun ‘we' when describing the writing of the books and yet could speak of ‘the W. T. Wintergreen books' as if they were somehow detached from her.

She allowed a pause for him to appreciate the full enormity of Will Parton's ignorance, and Charles had a horrible fear that he was about to be asked how many of the books
he
had read.

But the danger passed. ‘As I say, Mr. Paris, there are far too many things in the production which the West End Television people have got completely wrong.'

‘Yes, I am sure there are a few
details
that –'

‘We are not talking about details, Mr. Paris. We are talking about major points in the tone of voice and the characterisation in the books which have been wantonly altered.'

‘Ah.' There seemed little point in making further attempts to describe how television worked; better just to sit out their objections and mutter occasional condolences. They had dragged him out all this way just to have a moan, and a moan they were going to have, whether he liked it or not.

‘For a start,' Winifred Railton began her catalogue, ‘they have got the character of Stanislas Braid completely wrong.'

Charles said nothing.

‘He is meant to be an intellectual, and yet it is clear that that actor, Russell Whateveritis . . .'

‘Bentley.'

‘. . . Russell Bentley has probably never read a book in his life.'

‘Miss Railton, the whole point about acting is that actors
take on
characters. Just as you don't have to be a murderer to play the part of a murderer, so you don't have to be an intellectual to play the part of an intellectual. You act. You become another personality. You think yourself into the way that personality would react and behave.'

‘That Russell Bentley doesn't. He makes no effort to think himself into anything. He is exactly the same when he's playing the part as when he's not.'

This observation was so unanswerably true that Charles could think of no response to it.

‘What's more,' Louisa Railton suddenly burst out, ‘that actor's got dark brown hair, and anyone who's read even a couple of pages of any of the W. T. Wintergreen books knows that Stanislas Braid didn't have dark brown hair!'

There was a childlike petulance in the outburst, and when her sister calmed her, Charles realised that Winifred did treat Louisa almost like a child. She was protective, overprotective, as if she wanted to keep from her younger sister the truth of what the world was really like.

‘While one regrets,' Winifred conceded, ‘that the physical appearance of the characters is wrong, that worries me less than the fact that their
souls
are wrong.'

‘Their souls?' Charles echoed weakly. He sneaked a look at his watch. Dear God, it was only twenty past four. He'd asked the cab to pick him up at five-thirty, reckoning that two hours was probably an appropriately genteel time to spend over tea. The thought of over an hour more of this catalogue of complaints was deeply depressing. While he could feel sympathy with the Railton sisters' objections, he knew that there was nothing he could do to help them. They had been involved with the characters of the W. T. Wintergreen books for over fifty years. They knew nothing of the workings of television. There was no level at which his explanations would make any sense to them.

‘Yes, their
souls
,' Winifred confirmed. ‘Russell Bentley is nowhere near the soul of Stanislas Braid. And that other young man is hopelessly wrong for Blodd. Blodd is not meant to be a cockney. It is stated quite clearly in all the books that Blodd was brought up in Cornwall.'

‘Surely that's a relatively minor point?'

‘It would be a relatively minor point if the soul of the character were right. But it isn't. No one reading the W. T. Wintergreen books could doubt that Blodd is a lugubrious character – positively melancholic at times. And yet this young man plays him as if he were running a side-show at a funfair.'

‘Don't any of the characters seem right to you?' Charles pleaded.

‘Well, now, the new girl who started yesterday, she seemed right for Christina.'

‘Yes,' Louisa agreed softly. ‘The colouring's right, apart from anything else.'

‘Except, of course, they're destroying everything by not calling her Christina. They've got this dreadful idea about introducing someone called Elvira. I mean, the idea that Stanislas Braid could have two favourite daughters is just so ridiculous and incongruous.'

‘And the idea that he would call one of them Elvira . . .'

‘. . . . almost defies belief,' W. T. Wintergreen concluded bitterly.

‘Well, I think, Miss Railton, that I can set your mind at rest on that matter.' Thank goodness there was at least one detail on which he could bring the two poor old dears comfort. He related the conversation he had had with Maurice Skellern about his availability for an extra fortnight, and they were forced to concede that that was encouraging news.

‘But,' he concluded, ‘with regard to the other things W.E.T. is doing, I'm afraid I can't be of much help to you. I can't make them change their policies.'

‘Oh, no, we know that,' said Winifred. ‘You don't think that was why we invited you down here, do you?'

‘Well, I hadn't really thought . . . I don't know . . .'

‘We invited you down here,' she continued firmly, ‘to give you some tips on how you should play the part of Sergeant Clump.'

‘Oh, did you?' said Charles weakly.

‘Yes. Now tell us – how do you see the character of Sergeant Clump?'

‘Well,' he began cautiously, ‘I'd seen him rather as a not very intelligent village policeman.'

‘Yes, he
is
a not very intelligent village policeman . . .'

‘Oh, good,' said Charles with considerable relief.

‘. . . but there's so much more to him than that. Isn't there, Louisa?'

‘Oh, yes, Winifred. So much more.'

‘I mean, when you get into his
soul
. . .'

‘Yes, when you get into his
soul
. . . .'

And for the remaining hour of his stay the two Railton sisters proceeded to fill Charles Paris in on the hidden depths of the soul of Sergeant Clump.

It was the most exhausting hour of his life. He greeted the arrival of his cab as if it were a food lorry in a refugee camp.

When he finally got back to Hereford Road, Charles Paris drank two inches of Bell's whisky and fell fast asleep before he even had time to take his clothes off.

He completely forgot about his intention to ring Frances.

TWO PLAINCLOTHES policemen arrived at the St. John Chrysostom Mission for Vagrants to interrupt rehearsals on Wednesday morning. They were making some inquiries into the death of Sippy Stokes, ‘just checking out,' as they put it, ‘how exactly she met her end.' The word
murder
was not mentioned, but its shadow immediately loomed in the minds of everyone present.

The new Director was furious at this disruption in his schedule. ‘I am the Director of this show,' he kept saying, ‘and it's my job to see that it gets made.'

The policemen were impassively firm; they knew he had a job to do, but they also had a job to do. Could they please talk to the members of the cast and production crew who had been in the studio on the previous Wednesday morning? Grudgingly, the new Director gave way, and the relevant members of his team were trooped away to be questioned in the St. John Chrysostom Mission for Vagrants Great Hall.

The police said that they had no reason to believe that the death of Sippy Stokes had been anything other than accidental, but in cases like this they did feel an obligation to find out as much about the background as possible.

Charles wondered what new evidence they had uncovered. As he had many times before in his detective career, he envied the police their research facilities. There's nothing like an encounter with a professional criminal investigation to make an amateur sleuth profoundly aware of his amateur status. Why couldn't Charles Paris have been blessed with a convenient brother-in-law on the force, like Lord Peter Wimsey's Inspector Parker? Even Stanislas Braid was not above picking Sergeant Clump's so-called brains when he needed a little privileged information.

But Charles had no such handy informant. He could only guess the stage of investigation that the police had reached. Perhaps something had come up at the post-mortem. Maybe the doctor's bland conviction that all he had to do was find the relevant fallen object to fit the dent in Sippy Stokes's skull had proved inadequate. None of the objects had fitted? They were now looking for a murder weapon? An anonymous letter had been sent to the police announcing that Sippy had been murdered? Charles could only conjecture.

The policemen didn't give the impression that their inquiry was particularly urgent, though. They seemed to be going through the motions rather than conducting a life-or-death investigation. Their manner was that of men who had been given a directive from above to make certain inquiries; they were doing as they were told but didn't have much faith in the value of what they were doing. Whether that was actually the case, or whether their apparent diffidence masked an uncompromising determination to get at the truth, was another question at whose answer Charles could only guess.

They asked the assembled crowd of actors and production staff what they had been doing between eleven and twelve the previous Wednesday morning, and all the answers conformed with what Charles had witnessed in the canteen and Studio A during that period.

All the answers except one. Tony Rees, the quiet A.S.M. who seemed content to live in the shadow of the more flamboyant Mort Verdon, produced a different version of events from what Charles remembered.

‘I went to the canteen for coffee as soon as the break was called,' the young man told the police. His voice was so rarely heard that it was quite a shock to hear how thick the Welsh accent was. ‘I was going back to the studio when I remembered I had to pick up a props list from Design Department. So I went up there.'

‘And what time did you get back into Studio A?'

‘I don't remember exactly.'

‘Well, was it before twelve o'clock or after?'

‘Definitely after,' said Tony Rees.

The police did not question this answer, but Charles Paris knew it was a lie. He clearly remembered seeing the A.S.M. behind the set at about a quarter to twelve, only moments before his unpleasant discovery in the props room.

He also remembered that at the moment Tony Rees had looked extremely guilty.

Immediately on his return from the St. John Chrysostom Mission for Vagrants Great Hall to the St. John Chrysostom Mission for Vagrants Lesser Hall, Charles was swept up into rehearsal by the new Director. (‘I'm Director of this show, and already far too much of my time has been wasted this morning.') When he next had a break, Charles noticed with dismay Tony Rees had left the rehearsal room.

The following day he wasn't there, either. According to Mort Verdon, the A.S.M. was laid up with the flu. So Charles couldn't pursue his most intriguing line of investigation.

In fact, the only constructive thing he did the rest of that week was to pluck up courage and ring Frances. She agreed to have dinner with him on Saturday night. She didn't sound over the moon about the idea, but at least she agreed.

‘Dear, oh, dear, Charles Paris, are you becoming a theatrical smoothie?'

‘Hardly, Frances.'

‘Well, I mean, taking me out to dinner at Joe Allen's.' She looked around the dark wood-panelled basement, with its long noisy bar, its red checked tablecloths, its blackboard menus, its swooping waiters in long white aprons.

‘Oh, come on. We're only here because the food's good. And it's cheap.'

‘Nothing to do with the fact that it's a favoured haunt of stars of stage and TV?'

‘No, of course not. I'm not like that.'

‘No?'

‘No. Anyway, they didn't give us a table by the wall where they put the stars.'

‘They didn't, did they, the rotters? Perhaps you have a little way to go before you're really a big telly name.'

‘Shut up, Frances.'

‘But it's true, Charles. You are different. Subtly different. Being in lucrative employment has wrought a mysterious change in you.'

‘No, it hasn't.'

‘You wouldn't have taken me to Joe Allen's a year or so ago. You'd have made some disparaging remark about theatrical trendies if the place had even been mentioned. Now you think it's just possible that you might be becoming a theatrical trendy.'

‘No, I don't.' But the idea she had planted did, for the first time in his life, have a little sneaking appeal. Why, after all, shouldn't he be successful? He'd waited long enough, in all conscience. He'd served his time. Why shouldn't Charles Paris become famous in his declining years?

And if he could be a success in his professional life, why couldn't he get his private life sorted out, too? Time for decisive action.

‘Frances . . .' he began.

‘Yes?'

‘I wanted just to talk for a moment about us.'