Dead on Cue (2 page)

‘It would work,' Colligan said grudging. ‘But if we're really going to kill anybody off, then I think it should be—'

‘That's settled then,' Houseman interrupted. ‘Make sure that Jack Taylor has a prominent part in next Friday's episode, and then we'll give him the chop the following Monday.' He checked his watch. ‘That about wraps it up. See you on the set just before we go on air.'

He stood up again and bustled importantly out of the room, leaving the two scriptwriters staring at each other. For a while, neither of them spoke, then Ben Drabble said, ‘Well, it
was
his idea.'

Yes, Paddy agreed silently, it was his idea.
Maddox Row
had been Bill Houseman's baby right from the start – and getting on the air at a time when glamorous American shows like
Seventy-Seven Sunset Strip
were all the rage had been no easy task.

A series based on the lives of people who live in a street in a northern industrial town?
the programme planners at NWTV had asked incredulously.
How could that possibly be of interest to anybody? And if it's such a good idea, why hasn't it been done before?

But despite Houseman's relatively lowly position in the corporate hierarchy – he'd been known as ‘Squeaky' Houseman in those days, after one of the three glove puppet mice who'd appeared in his children's show – the man had stuck to his guns and insisted that it
would
work. And he'd been proved right! Unquestionably right!
Maddox Row
, originally scheduled for one thirteen-week run, had been continuously on the air for over two years. It went out twice a week, and drew a regular audience of over twelve million devoted fans.

Ben Drabble picked up his pencil and made a couple of abstract doodles on the notepad in front of him.

‘So what do you think we should do to draw particular attention to the Laughing Postman in his last appearance before we fry him?' he asked.

Paddy Colligan, giving into the inevitable – even if he
knew
it was wrong – sighed resignedly. ‘I suppose we could make Jack have a stroke of good luck,' he suggested.

‘Why, especially?'

‘Because tragedy's always more poignant when it comes right on the heels of happiness.'

Drabble nodded. ‘True,' he agreed. ‘So what kind of luck did you have in mind? A win on the football pools?'

‘Yes, that would do,' Colligan said wearily, wishing he could summon half the enthusiasm he'd once felt for the show.

‘A big win?' Drabble asked.

‘No, the viewers wouldn't like that. He wouldn't be ordinary – the kind of man you could bump into on the street – any more.'

‘A modest win, then? Something he could buy a bigger house with?'

‘Except that he'd never even think of buying a bigger house – because that would involve moving away from the Maddox Row he loves,' Colligan warned. ‘He wouldn't give up his job, either – not for all the money in the world.'

‘So he goes on just as normal,' Drabble said. ‘And even though he could afford to buy a hundred new irons if he wanted to, he repairs the old one himself – and that's what kills him. Nice!'

The two scriptwriters spent another half hour sketching out the sequence of events which would lead to the Laughing Postman's death just before the final credits rolled. There was still more work to do, but by the time the following Monday night came around, they would have it timed down to the last second.

The victim would be seen to jump suddenly. There would probably be a close-up of the shock and agony on his face. But realism would not be taken
too
far. Though the make-up department was undoubtedly up to the job, the camera would not zoom in on a hand whose flesh had been burned away to reveal the bones, because, at half-past seven on a Monday evening, such gruesome details were to be avoided. Thus, the scripted death was planned.

The
un
scripted death – the death that only one person in the entire studio knew was about to occur – would be an entirely different matter. The shock it would deliver to the cast and crew of
Madro
would be much sharper and much deeper than the shock that same cast and crew were planning to inflict on their twelve million viewers. And unlike the carefully sanitised death of the Laughing Postman, it would be a messy affair. In fact, there would be blood everywhere.

T
here were four actors in the rehearsal room – two men and two women – that particular late Monday afternoon. The men were standing on their marks, already playing out their scene. The woman stood against the wall, fairly close to one another, but conspicuously
not
together.

The two men were roughly the same age – in their early forties – but one of them, George Adams, had adopted the stance of a much older man, and was leaning forward as if it required an effort for him to hear what the other man, Larry Coates, was saying.

‘I heard about that row you had with your niece, Sam,' Coates said in a serious, almost mournful voice. ‘It's not right that families should fall out like that, you know.'

‘You're right,' Adams agreed gravely, ‘but now it's happened, I don't know what to do about it.'

‘I didn't think you would,' Coates told him. ‘That's why I popped round an' had a word with her meself.'

‘An' . . . an' what did you say to her?' Adams asked tremulously.

‘I said you never meant to hurt her canary, an' she should know that as well as I do. I pointed out that when somebody gets to your age it's very easy to mistake birdseed for rat poison. An' I reminded her about all the things you've done for her in the past.'

‘An' what did
she
say?'

‘She agreed she should never have lost her temper like that, an' she's comin' round this afternoon to apologise. An' Sam . . .'

‘Yes, Mr Taylor?'

‘You could have been more careful when you were feedin' that bird of hers, now couldn't you? So when she does come round, don't to be too hard on her.'

Adams nodded. ‘I won't,' he promised. ‘It'll be such a relief to have our Edith back again. I don't know how I'd have gone without her. Thank you for all you've done, Mr Taylor.'

Larry Coates shrugged, slightly uncomfortably. ‘There's no need to thank me.'

‘Indeed, there is. You're more than just our postman – you're a marvel. We'd all be lost on Maddox Row if you ever decided to move away.'

Larry Coates gave the infectious laugh which had become Jack Taylor's trademark. ‘Don't go worryin' your head about that, Sam,' he said. ‘I was born an' bred on Maddox Row, an' when I do finally leave, they'll have to carry me out.'

‘That's perfect!' the young assistant director said. ‘You'll have all the old biddies at home thinking of their own nieces and sobbing into their hankies. Let's move on to the last scene just before the commercials, shall we? Jack Taylor's gone off on his rounds, and Sam Fuller runs into Madge Thornycroft.'

Larry Coates, no longer the Laughing Postman, moved across to the edge of the room, and lit up a cigarette. George Adams, losing his old man's stiffness for a second, walked over to another set of chalk marks where Jennifer Brunton was waiting for him. Later, when the show went out, Jennifer would be wearing the hairnet and a steely expression of Madge Thornycroft, the Row's malicious gossip-monger, but at that moment she was elegant enough to be a guest speaker at a Women's Institute – a role she was not unfamiliar with.

‘OK, let's take it from the top,' the assistant director said.

George Adams hunched over again and looked into Jennifer Brunton's eyes. ‘Are you sure all them rumours you've been spreadin' about Liz Bowyer are true?' he demanded.

Jennifer stuck out her jaw, Madge-like. ‘All I know is, I saw her leavin' Ted Doyle's house at well past midnight,' she said.

George/Sam looked suitably shocked. ‘But what were you doin' out on the street at that time of night, Madge?' he asked.

‘I wasn't out on the street. I got up to spend a penny an' I saw her through the window.'

‘Even so . . .?' George said dubiously.

‘An' I know for a fact that Ted's wife has been workin' nights at the pie factory all this week.'

‘Still, if Liz finds out what you've been sayin' about her, she's bound to blow her top.'

‘I don't care
what
she does. When I see somebody doin' somethin' wrong, I don't keep it to myself.'

George Adams glanced stiffly to his left. ‘She's comin' down the street now,' he whispered.

‘Who is?'

‘Liz Bowyer. An' she looks furious. You'd best go.'

‘I'm stayin' where I am,' Jennifer/Madge said. ‘It'd take a better woman than Liz Bowyer to make me turn tail an' run.'

‘Nearly right,' the assistant director told them. ‘Just a couple of seconds too fast. If you, George, could just count one more beat before you say, ‘She's comin' now,' and you, Jennifer, could glare for a moment more before you say you're staying where you are, we should be right on target.'

As the two actors hit their marks again, the rehearsal-room door opened softly, and Ben Drabble entered. He looked around him, ran his hand over the hair covering his bald spot, then made his way on tiptoe to where Larry Coates was standing.

‘I just thought you'd like to know that the decision's finally been made about when you leave the show,' the scriptwriter whispered. ‘Jack Taylor's due to be killed off next Monday.'

Coates grinned. ‘Killed off, is he? How does he die?'

‘He gets electrocuted when he's testing the iron he's just repaired for Dot.'

‘Electrocuted! That's a bit boring isn't it? It would have been more dramatic if he'd been run over by a bus or something.' Larry Coates paused for a second. ‘I bet Paddy wasn't too chuffed about the idea, was he?'

‘No, he wasn't,' Ben Drabble agreed. ‘Jack Taylor was pretty much his creation, you know, and he always hoped you might come back eventually.'

‘No chance of that,' Larry Coates said with feeling. ‘Still, I'm going to miss the Laughing Postman – in a way. I like to tell myself I got the new role on my own merit, but even an egotistical actor like me has to admit that it helped that I'd been playing such a strong character. And I owe that to Paddy.'

The rehearsal-room door swung open again, much more noisily than it had when Ben Drabble had opened it – so noisily, in fact, that it knocked the actors completely off their stroke.

The assistant director swung around, ready to scream at whoever had dared to upset the atmosphere he'd been working so hard to create. Then he saw who was standing there.

‘Can I . . . can I help you, Mrs Houseman?' he asked the platinum blonde in the suede jacket and tight, leopardskin pants.

‘I'm looking for my husband,' Diana Houseman said. ‘Do you have any idea where he might be?'

The assistant director shrugged. ‘When we're only a few hours from going on the air, he's usually got a lot on his plate,' he said.

‘Is that just another way of saying I should bugger off and leave him in peace?' Diana Houseman demanded.

The young assistant director blushed. ‘No, of course not, Mrs Houseman. That wasn't what I meant at all.'

‘Because if it is, Bill will be hearing about it.'

‘I only meant—'

‘As it happens – not that it's any of
your
business – there's something I need to talk to him about urgently.'

‘I'll . . . if you like, I can put a call through to the switchboard and see if they know where he is,' the flustered assistant director suggested.

‘Don't bother, I'll find him myself,' the producer's wife said contemptuously, before turning and slamming the door behind her.

The assistant director waited until he was sure she really had gone, then said in a loud voice, ‘The woman thinks she owns the bloody place.'

‘She owns Bill Houseman – and that's the next best thing,' George Adams said softly to Jennifer Brunton.

The assistant director took a handkerchief out of his pocket, and wiped his brow. ‘Yes, well, now that bit of unpleasantness is over, let's get back to work, shall we?' he suggested shakily. ‘We'll start with the last line from Jennifer before Val makes her appearance.'

‘It'd take a better woman than Liz Bowyer to make me turn tail an' run,' Jennifer Brunton said.

It was Valerie Farnsworth's cue. Hips swinging exaggeratedly, she made her way between the two chalk lines which represented the edges of the pavement on each side of Maddox Row.

‘I want a word with you, Madge Thornycroft,' she said.

Jennifer put her hand on her own hip. ‘Oh aye, you do, do you?' she said. ‘An' what might that word be about?'

‘Have you been spreadin' more of your tales about me, you evil-minded old bat?'

‘I've been tellin' people what I've seen with my own two eyes, if that's what you mean.'

Valerie Farnsworth squared up in front of Jennifer Brunton. ‘Well, it's got to stop,' she said.

‘It'll stop when you learn to start behavin' yourself properly,' Jennifer countered.

‘Oh no, it won't! It'll stop now!'

‘An' if it doesn't?'

‘Then you're goin' to be very sorry you've let that malicious tongue of yours flap so much.'

Jennifer turned to George Adams. ‘You heard her,' she said. ‘She's threatenin' me.'

‘I'll do more than threaten you,' Valerie Farnsworth said. ‘When I've finished with you, you won't know what's hit you.'

‘And we go into the break, leaving the audience holding its breath and hoping to see a resolution in the second half,' the assistant director said. ‘Yet sadly that's not about to happen – so they'll just have to tune in for the next episode if they want to know how it all turns out, won't they?' He turned to Ben Drabble. ‘Do we already know how Liz is going to get her revenge on Madge?'