Murder in the Title Read online

  Table of Contents

  The Charles Paris Mystery Series

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Act One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Act Two

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Act Three

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  The Charles Paris Mystery Series

  CAST, IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE

  SO MUCH BLOOD

  STAR TRAP

  AN AMATEUR CORPSE

  A COMEDIAN DIES

  THE DEAD SIDE OF THE MIKE

  SITUATION TRAGEDY

  MURDER UNPROMPTED

  MURDER IN THE TITLE

  NOT DEAD, ONLY RESTING

  DEAD GIVEAWAY

  WHAT BLOODY MAN IS THAT?

  A SERIES OF MURDERS

  CORPORATE BODIES

  A RECONSTRUCTED CORPSE

  SICKEN AND SO DIE

  DEAD ROOM FARCE

  MURDER IN THE TITLE

  A Charles Paris Mystery

  Simon Brett

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain in 1983

  by Victor Gollancz

  eBook edition first published in 2012 by Severn House Digital an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited.

  Copyright © 1983 by Simon Brett.

  The right of Simon Brett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0008-2 (epub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  To Little Fat Jack

  ACT ONE

  Chapter One

  SUNLIGHT, FILTERED THROUGH the stained glass armorial bearings of the De Meaux family, splashed bloodstains on the painted flooring. The maid, Wilhelmina, pert in her black and white uniform, entered through the heavy oak door to answer the telephone’s insistent summons.

  ‘Good afternoon. Wrothley Grange,’ she intoned, economically providing both temporal and spatial information for those unable to afford programmes.

  ‘No, I’m afraid Sir Reginald De Meaux is not available at the moment. When he’s working on his collection of duelling swords in the study he does not like to be disturbed,’ she continued, thoughtfully revealing the name and a little of the character of her employer, as well as planting a useful murder weapon.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Laurence, the butler, has just had to pop down to the village,’ she apologized, raising comforting expectations that, when Something was Done, there would be at least one obvious suspect who might have Done It.

  ‘No, I’m afraid Lady Hilda is in the rose garden and Master James is playing tennis with Miss Kershaw,’ she responded, filling out the cast list a little.

  ‘No, Professor Weintraub has gone for a walk with Miss Laycock-Manderley and Colonel Fripp,’ she continued, mopping up most of the rest of the cast.

  ‘What, me?’ Coy giggle. ‘Oh, sir, you don’t want to know my name. Well, it’s Wilhelmina,’ she confessed readily, completing the dramatis personae (except for the policemen in Act Three).

  ‘Oh yes, certainly sir, I’ll take a message, just let me get a pencil and paper.’

  This she did, and stood with the one poised over the other. ‘Right. I’m ready. Yes, and the message is . . .? What? Did you say . . . Murder . . .?’

  She looked at the receiver with eight-years-at-stage-school’s worth of amazement.

  ‘Who’s there? Who’s there?’ she demanded jiggling the buttons of the telephone.

  She replaced the receiver and looked out front. ‘Well, I declare,’ she said, momentarily perplexed.

  But her confusion was short-lived. ‘Must have been a crank,’ she concluded with an easily satisfied shrug, and went over to the mantelpiece, her feather duster poised, to draw attention to another potential murder weapon, a heavy brass candlestick.

  With her back thus conveniently to the French windows, she did not perceive the entrance of James De Meaux, dressed, for reasons of plot, in dazzling tennis whites and, for reasons of vanity, in a lot of body make-up. She did not see him deposit his racket on a leather armchair, nor apparently was she aware of his approach behind her until his arms were chastely round her waist.

  ‘Oh, Mr James,’ she protested, fluttering her feather duster without much conviction in order to evade his grasp.

  ‘Come on, Willy. One little kiss,’ James demanded roguishly.

  ‘No, James, not here. Someone might come in. I must go.’ She made for the door, but was prevented from reaching it.

  ‘You weren’t so coy at half-past eleven last night in the summerhouse,’ James reminded her (at the same time setting up a useful point of reference for the untangling of alibis which lay ahead in Act Three).

  ‘That’s as maybe,’ Wilhelmina reprimanded him primly. ‘What a girl does when she’s got her uniform on is very different from what she does when she’s got it off.’

  There had been considerable discussion during rehearsal as to whether this was a deliberately funny line and as to how it should be played. The final decision to play it straight was vindicated by total lack of reaction from the Rugland Spa audience, except for a dirty guffaw from a fourteen-year-old boy who hadn’t wanted to come but been dragged along to the theatre by his parents.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ James pleaded.

  ‘No, really, Mr James. There’s you engaged to Miss Kershaw and –’

  ‘She won’t mind.’

  ‘She’ll be a pretty strange fiancée if she doesn’t.’

  ‘She won’t mind, because she won’t know. Look, Willy, you know the situation . . .’

  In spite of Wilhelmina’s rueful nod, James still proceeded with his explanation, because, although she might know the situation the audience did not. ‘The old man’s money only comes to me if I’m married when he pops off. Now, I know there’s no chance of him dying in the near future . . .’ (Tragic irony, this, if the audience did but realize it.) ‘On the other hand, I don’t want to get caught on the hop, so it’ll be safer if I marry Felicity now just to be sure.’

  ‘Huh. I thought you really loved me – but all you want is a bit of skirt.’

  ‘I do really love you. But even if I did just want a bit of skirt, my father wouldn’t wear it.’

  This line, which no one had thought of as suspect during rehearsal, was greeted by huge laughter. Anxiety glinted in the eye
s of James and Wilhelmina. It intensified as they heard an echoing giggle from behind the door of the tall cupboard by the fireplace.

  ‘He’s got this social thing about dangling with tomest – er, tangling with domestics,’ James fluffed on desperately.

  ‘But surely.’

  Wilhelmina put a full stop after these two words (which were all that the author had supplied in the script), and the pair of them waited ten seconds until the door opened.

  It admitted Lady Hilda De Meaux, who informed them that she had something of enormous importance to impart to her son. On his own.

  Wilhelmina made for the door. But before she could reach it (and before Lady Hilda could reveal her secret), Felicity Kershaw appeared through the French windows in tennis whites, complaining that James was jolly lazy and that she was fed up with always looking for his balls in the long grass (another moment which made the recalcitrant fourteen-year-old think that he had perhaps hitherto underestimated the theatre as a medium of entertainment).

  The cast all looked nervously at the cupboard door, from behind which another snort of laughter had been heard.

  A little idle banter ensued between Lady Hilda and Felicity about how much they could do with a cup of tea, and Wilhelmina was despatched to make the necessary arrangements. She made for the door.

  But her exit was again delayed, this time by the return from their walk of Professor Weintraub, Miss Laycock-Manderley and Colonel Fripp. The Professor, fuzzy in tweed and garlanded with binoculars, cameras and tape-recorder, expressed his hopes for good bird-watching during his stay in the area, stating the intention to try his luck the following day over beyond the pine forest.

  Colonel Fripp, moustache and hackles bristling, advised caution. Surely the Professor knew that in the pine forest was a top-secret army research establishment.

  No? Really? The Professor feigned surprise. How interesting.

  In the ensuing pause Miss Laycock-Manderley suddenly announced that she had returned from their walk early because of a premonition. She was, she explained, psychic, and she was experiencing a strong sense of evil. Something awful was going to happen at Wrothley Grange. The feeling was very powerful. ‘It’s happened to me before,’ she confided, ‘in many different ways. But I’ve never had it like this.’

  Here was another line to tickle the fourteen-year-old’s sense of humour, and again the cast had cause to look with irritation at the cupboard door. Beneath its make-up, Lady Hilda’s face set in an expression of annoyance as she laughed off her guests’ fears and once again suggested-the cure-all of tea.

  James thought this was a jolly good idea, Felicity confessed to being parched, and Professor Weintraub joked heavily about the way everything in England stopped for tea.

  Wilhelmina (for whom the Act had now degenerated into a series of frustrated attempts to exit) was once again sent off to fetch tea. She made for the door. But before she reached it, Lady Hilda remembered that they would not have enough tables for so large a party. Would Wilhelmina mind getting one of the folding card-tables out of the cupboard by the fireplace?

  ‘No, of course not, milady,’ enthused Wilhelmina, glad perhaps of another door to make for.

  In the front row of the Circle, the time-freckled hand of Leslie Blatt, the play’s author, squeezed the knee of his eighteen-year-old companion. ‘This bit’s good,’ he wheezed. ‘Never fails.’

  Wilhelmina turned the handle of the cupboard and the door swung outwards.

  The body of an elderly man in tweeds fell out. It landed neatly on its back in the space between a sofa and an armchair.

  Stuck in its chest was a duelling sword. The red light from the window intensified the glistening wet redness on his shirt-front.

  The cast, disposed in a neat semicircle around the body, gasped as one.

  ‘Oh no!’ screamed Lady Hilda. And then, for purposes of identification, ‘It’s Reginald!’ Finally, for those in the audience of particularly slow perception, she added, ‘Killed by one of his own duelling swords!’

  The duelling sword trembled and swayed as the body shook with suppressed giggles.

  The curtain fell to a clacking of geriatric applause.

  As soon as it was down, Lady Hilda’s face lost its last vestige of benevolence. ‘Bloody unprofessional!’ she stormed. ‘I will not work with people who behave like that. Either he goes or I go!’

  And she made for her dressing-room.

  In the stalls an old lady fumbled with the cellophane on her box of After-Dinner Mints. ‘Not much of a part for that actor, the one who dies, is it?’ she observed to her companion.

  ‘No,’ her companion agreed.

  ‘I wonder if it’s someone we know from the television.’

  Her companion turned the pages of her programme with arthritic hands. ‘No, the name doesn’t mean anything to me.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Charles Paris. You heard of him?’

  ‘No, dear.’

  Chapter Two

  AFTER THE CURTAIN-CALL Charles Paris tried again to ring his estranged wife Frances, but again there was no reply.

  There were no spirits at the brief first night party, so Charles had to make do with a glass of bitter Spanish red. It was not what he needed, but it was better than nothing. It might dissipate the headache left from the day’s earlier excesses. He knew he was weak-willed to react to stress by drinking, but stress had a very debilitating effect on his will. His resolutions to drink less always occurred when he was feeling strong-willed, and at such times he didn’t need the support of excessive drinking anyway.

  He didn’t want to talk to anyone at the party, just to pickle his distress in private, but the theatre’s General Manager, Donald Mason, dragged him across to a middle-aged couple who were introduced as Herbie and Velma Inchbald. Donald, who had the incisive manner and affected the pin-striped suits of corporate middle management, was difficult to refuse.

  The Inchbalds were well-dressed – possibly over-dressed for the first night of a play at a provincial rep theatre. Herbie, who compensated for his stocky shortness with an Einstein mane of grey hair and a large cigar, wore a dark velvet suit and a velvet bow-tie, which at first sight gave the impression of evening dress. His wife’s pudgy, powdered face was squarely framed by black hair which looked like (and quite possibly was) a wig. The precise definition of her curves was expensively obscured by a blue full-length dress in some ruched semi-transparent material, but the space it took up suggested they were ample. The fat of her neck and fingers was constricted by jewellery.

  ‘Herbie is Chairman of the Theatre Board.’ Donald Mason supplied this information and bustled off efficiently.

  ‘Ah,’ said Charles Paris.

  ‘First time you’ve worked at the Regent, Mr Paris?’

  Yes. If working is the word for what I’m doing, he thought savagely. Does being a dead body count as working? Though of course someone has to play it – can’t have non-Equity stiffs crashing the union closed shop.

  He contented himself with saying, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Grand little theatre,’ Herbie Inchbald affirmed complacently. He pronounced the word ‘thee-ettah’, which made Charles’ hackles rise. He knew it was mere snobbery, hut he could never believe that people who said ‘thee-ettah’ were true friends of the medium.

  ‘Won’t find a better little rep for a few hundred miles, I can tell you,’ Herbie Inchbald continued. ‘No, people come a long way to see our little shows.’

  ‘From as far away as Leominster,’ Velma Inchbald agreed. ‘Even some from Worcester.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Do you know Herefordshire well, Mr Paris?’

  ‘Not very, no.’

  ‘You’ll find it’s a lovely county.’

  ‘Oh, good.’

  The conversation seemed about to go under for the third time. Charles handed it a straw to clutch at. ‘Did you enjoy the show tonight?’

  Under normal circumstances modesty would have stopped him from as
king the question, but he felt that the size of his contribution to this particular production absolved him from any charges of fishing for compliments.

  ‘Oh, yes, grand show.’

  ‘Grand,’ Velma agreed.

  Charles wondered whether his hearing was going, along with other waning faculties like hoping, coping and bladder control. Could it really be that they had enjoyed The Message Is Murder? He hadn’t spent very long rehearsing the piece, because of the nature of his part, but it had been long enough to form the opinion that the play was the direst piece of codswallop ever to be exhumed from the mortuary of dead plays.

  ‘You mean you thought it was well done?’ This seemed marginally more likely than that they had actually enjoyed the writing.

  ‘Well done, and a damned good little play.’

  ‘Yes, a good little play,’ echoed Velma.

  Charles must have failed to disguise his disbelief, because he found himself being asked if he didn’t like the piece.

  ‘Well, erm, it’s probably not my favourite sort of play. I mean, I often wonder how plays like that do get chosen. I mean, there are thousands of really good plays around and . . .’

  ‘Herbie helped choose the play.’

  ‘Oh. Did he?’

  ‘Yes, I did. Well, credit where it’s due, Donald first suggested it. But soon as I read it, I thought it was a grand little play.’

  ‘And then you read it again when we were in Corsica in the summer.’

  ‘That’s right, I did. Still thought it was grand.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘You see, Mr Paris, in a local rep you have to give the public what they want. All right, maybe The Message Is Murder isn’t experimental, hasn’t got any arty-farty pretensions, but it’s damned good entertainment. Nothing like a thriller to bring the crowds in – especially if it’s got “murder” in the title. And you know, Leslie Blatt’s a local author too – retired to Bromyard – so that’s another attraction. Oh yes, a good thriller, a Shakespeare, the pantomime, of course – those are your bankers at a local rep. Those are the sort of things people in Rugland Spa want to see. Get those under your belt and then you can afford to be a bit experimental. I mean, do you know what our next production is . . .?’