Not Dead Only Resting Read online

  Table of Contents

  The Charles Paris Mystery Series

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  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

  NOT DEAD, ONLY RESTING

  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.

  This title first published in Great Britain in 1984 by Victor Gollancz

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

  Copyright © 1984 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: 978-1-4483-0009-9 (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 Chris

  “With respect to the extravagance of actors, as a traditional character, it is not to be wondered at. They live from hand to mouth: they plunge from want into luxury; they have no means of making money breed, and all professions that do not live by turning money into money, or have not a certainty of accumulating it in the end by parsimony, spend it. Uncertain of the future, they make sure of the present moment. This is not unwise.”

  WILLIAM HAZLITT (1778–1830)

  “On Actors and Acting”

  Chapter One

  TRYST WAS NOT Charles Paris’s usual scene. It was an expensive restaurant, very fashionable with the most successful members – and, in many cases, the gayest members – of the theatrical profession. Charles Paris was an indigent actor on whom success had rarely smiled, and he was unarguably heterosexual.

  But that Saturday evening at the end of August he was the guest of two men who were ideally qualified as clients of Tryst. William Bartlemas and Kevin O’Rourke formed mutually a phenomenon of the British theatre. Though both had, way back in prehistory, been actors, they had long since given up performing in favour of a spreading collection of theatrical memorabilia connected with two great actors, Edmund Kean and William Macready. Fuelled by Bartlemas’s substantial private income, they scoured the country for relics of their idols, returning religiously to London for the opening of every show at a West End theatre, where their first night presence in the fifth row of the stalls was regarded by managements with the awe that soothsayers reserve for comets. The couple’s habits of dressing identically and talking in an unending shared monologue were just the kind of eccentricities to endear them to the British theatrical establishment, and possibly no one ‘in the business’ enjoyed greater universal goodwill. Certainly, when a chance meeting the previous week had led to his invitation, Charles Paris had leapt at the opportunity of spending an evening in Bartlemas and O’Rourke’s company.

  ‘It’s lovely to see them making such a go of it . . .’ William Bartlemas was commenting on the success of Tryst.

  ‘Really humming with the right sort of people . . .’ Kevin O’Rourke concurred.

  ‘Sir John over there . . .’

  ‘Maggie with someone new . . .’

  ‘And he’s so young. I swear that’s how she keeps her complexion – melts down young actors for their glands . . .’

  ‘Hmm. Ooh, and look who Bernard Walton’s with . . .’

  ‘Well, there’s a turn-up. And what does her husband say, I wonder . . .?’

  ‘Super fodder for the gossip columns . . .’

  ‘Super. Oh, look, there’s Bertram Pride doing his “I am a celebrity’ number”.’

  ‘Well, after that Lexton and Sons series, he is . . . almost . . .’

  ‘Who’s the pretty girl he’s with . . .?’

  ‘Don’t know. A late booking from Rent-A-Tottie, perhaps . . .’

  O’Rourke’s sally brought a shriek of laughter from Bartlemas. It ended with a breath-pause, when Charles almost had a chance to say something, but O’Rourke beat him to it. ‘Oh yes, dear, but all the right people here . . .’

  ‘Including . . .’ Bartlemas inclined his head towards Charles. ‘Including of course our guest . . .’

  Charles Paris grinned wryly. ‘Not in the same league as that lot, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Now come on, don’t do yourself down . . .’

  ‘He’s so modest, isn’t he, Bartlemas . . .?’

  ‘Far too modest. Always has been . . .’

  ‘You’re a very fine actor, always have been . . .’

  ‘Never forget your Bassanio, will we . . .?’

  ‘Lovely Bassanio . . .’

  ‘Anyway, tell me, Charles . . .’ Bartlemas put on an expression of mockseriousness. ‘What’s next for you?’

  ‘What’s next?’ asked Charles, puzzled.

  ‘Yes, dear. Work. What are you doing at the moment?’

  ‘Ah.’ Charles grinned again, this time ruefully. ‘At the moment I am “resting”.’

  ‘Oh dear . . .’

  ‘Oh well, sure something’ll turn up soon . . .’

  ‘Been resting long, have you?’

  ‘Except for two days on a radio play last week, it’s just coming up for three months.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I am rested to the point of torpor.’

  ‘Bad luck, Charles. Still, it’s happened before.’

  ‘Many times.’

  ‘You’ve had your little patches out of work since you started.’

  ‘It might be more accurate to say, Bartlemas, that I’ve had my little patches in work.’

  ‘Well . . . Something’ll turn up.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Charles agreed. ‘Micawberism is the only philosophy for an actor.’

  ‘Who’s your agent?’ asked O’Rourke. ‘Does he beaver away on your behalf?’

  ‘Maurice Skellern,’ Charles replied. The faces of the other two fell.

  ‘Oh . . .’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘Hardly a human dynamo, is he?’

  ‘No,’ said Charles.

  ‘And what about that lovely wife of yours . . .?’

  ‘Dear Frances . . .’

  ‘You two back together again, are you . . .’

  ‘I’m afraid not. Frances is having a wild affair with a schools inspector . . .’

  ‘Oh dear . . .’

  ‘That sounds serious . . .’

  ‘I’m afraid it is. When I last spoke to her she was asking about our getting a divorce.’

  ‘What to marry this . . .?’

  Charles nodded, suddenly too emotional for speech. His hosts could not pretend they hadn’t noticed the change of mood, and there was an uneasy silence, ended by the timely arrival at their table of Tristram Gowers, who owned the restaurant and whose name had provided its punning title.

  ‘Bartlemas, O’Rourke – my dears!’

  The flamboyance of his greeting betrayed his background as a professional actor. Indeed, like many actors who go into other professions, Tristram Gowers seemed at times as if he was playing the part of a restaurateur rather than actually being one. He dressed invariably in a black velvet suit, with a froth of green silk scarf at his neck. He was a little under six foot, and carried himself as if holding in an unruly stomach. His hands flashed with rings, which, in spite of their value, looked as if they had just been collected from the props cupboard; and his face, too, seemed to have been dressed for the part of an Identikit restaurateur in a revue sketch. Over-large glasses with transparent rims gave him an owlish appearance. His walrus moustache was obviously real, but contrived to look as if it owed its adherence to spirit gum. The silver-grey toupee which crowned his characterization made no pretence at reali
ty. Though it lacked an actual pigtail, it had the air of something devised by Wig Creations for a Restoration drama.

  In fact, Charles noted around him three contrasting examples of hairdressing artifice. The wiry remnants of Bartlemas’s hair were brushed up into a foam of dyed ginger; O’Rourke’s surviving strands were trained across his scalp like piped icing over a birthday cake; but for sheer audacity Tristram Gowers’ toupee collected all available awards. Whereas the others still tried to maintain the illusion of natural growth, Tristram had found baldness the stimulus to the creation of a new art form.

  The restaurateur clasped Kevin O’Rourke’s small face between his large hands. ‘O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, how are you?’

  Charles would have put down the quotation from As You Like It to mere theatrical flamboyance, had not Bartlemas whispered, ‘True, you know, they are cousins . . .’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Tristram Gowers and Kevin O’Rourke asserted together.

  ‘Have you met Charles Paris, Trist . . .?’ asked Bartlemas.

  The brown eyes behind the owl glasses took Charles in for a moment before saying, ‘No, I don’t think so. Of course, I know the name.’

  If that was the way he wanted to play it, Charles didn’t mind. He could understand why Tristram Gowers might be embarrassed about their previous meeting. True, it had been some fifteen years before and the amnesia might be genuine. But Charles suspected that Tristram did not wish to be reminded of the time before he ‘came out’, the time when he had still been married to the actress, Zoë Fratton, before he met Yves Lafeu and discovered his real nature.

  It was as if Charles’s thought of Yves prompted Bartlemas’s next question. ‘And how is Him In The Kitchen, Trist . . .?’

  ‘Very nice,’ Tristram Gowers replied, with a coy smile.

  ‘Being a good boy or a naughty boy . . .’

  Charles recognized this as a reference to Yves Lafeu’s occasional promiscuity. Though the restaurateur and his chef were very much a couple, the younger man enjoyed sporadic infidelities. These led to blazing rows between the two, rows which often erupted openly in the restaurant, and which, indeed, were regarded by regulars as one of the attractions of Tryst.

  ‘Goodish,’ Tristram replied judiciously. ‘Occasional lapses. Picked up a nasty little trollop down at the Sparta couple of weeks back.’

  Bartlemas and O’Rourke giggled at this reference. Charles assumed the Sparta must be some sort of gay club.

  ‘Had to put a stop to that very quickly,’ Tristram continued in a school-mistressy way. ‘Still, all be fine now. For a whole month I’m not going to let him out of my sight.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Hols, Bartlemas, hols. Fermeture annuelle.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Didn’t you know, dear? Didn’t you read the notice on the door?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We close down for September every year. Go away for the whole month. We’ve got this house near Cahors. Didn’t you know? Oh, I tell you, dears, you’re very lucky to get seats tonight of all nights. As of tomorrow, poor London has a whole month of being Tryst-less.’

  ‘Quelle tristesse,’ sighed O’Rourke, and was rewarded by gales of giggles.

  ‘So when are you actually off?’ asked Bartlemas, as the hysteria subsided.

  ‘Soon as we’ve tidied up here,’ Tristram Gowers replied. ‘What we do every year. Get the restaurant in order, lock up and away we go. Six-thirty ferry from Dover tomorrow morning, then we just drive on from Calais till we get to Mas-de-Pouzard.’

  ‘Which is where you have the house?’

  ‘Uhuh. Eleven kilometres outside Cahors. Wonderful views over the River Lot. Pure heaven.’

  ‘Don’t you stop on the way down?’

  ‘No, love, we just press on till we’re there. Share the driving. We can’t relax until we’re actually there.’

  ‘You don’t even stop for the odd menu gastronomique . . .?’

  ‘No, we’re positively monastic in our restraint. I sort out sandwiches which we eat on the way. Mind you, once we’re there, then we really start serious eating.’ Tristram smiled in delicious anticipation.

  ‘Does Yves come from that part of France?’ asked Bartlemas.

  ‘No, dear. My “in-laws” – whom I have yet to have the pleasure of meeting – and may that pleasure be eternally deferred – live in Reims. Very solid, I gather. Petit bourgeois – with the emphasis on the “petty”.’

  ‘So,’ asked Charles, ‘you close up here, then pack and –?’

  ‘No, dear, no. The whole operation has been organized for weeks. Everything’s packed already. The Volvo’s stuffed to the gills. I’ve done it all, of course. Yves, the “great chef”, is far too sensitive to deal with the minutiae of life.’ The mockery of the emphasis was not wholly friendly. ‘Still, I suppose it makes sense. Though I say it myself, I can state, without unbecoming immodesty, that I am one of the world’s great packers. I begin by emptying the car completely, get. it as clean as an operating theatre, and then start the actual packing. It is a work of art when I’ve finished, you know. I know exactly where everything is. Which is just as well, because I don’t get much help from him when it comes to unpacking.’

  ‘So what time do you have to leave?’

  ‘Try and get away by half-past three. Should be no problem. The flat’s all tidied up; passports, currency, tickets . . . all sorted out.’

  Tristram Gowers’ obsessive pride in his organizational skills was beginning to grate on Charles, so he was quite relieved when the restaurateur changed the subject and, prefacing his question with a huge ‘Anyway’, asked, ‘what are you going to eat tonight?’

  ‘Is Yves . . .’ asked Bartlemas breathlessly, ‘doing his divine. . . .’

  ‘But divine . . .?’

  ‘Sucking pig?’

  Tristram held the pause dramatically, then announced, ‘He is.’

  ‘Three sucking pigs, please, Trist . . .’

  While they ate their pâté en croute, Bartlemas and O’Rourke regaled Charles with lavish descriptions of the main course, and when it arrived the sucking pig lived up to their Roget’s Thesaurus of superlatives. Perhaps because of their conversation with Tristram, they drank the strong black wine of Cahors, and Charles began to feel better.

  The ache of his feelings for Frances and the nag of being out of work both dulled. He felt whole, eating and drinking well, with entertaining friends, in pleasant surroundings.

  The decor of Tryst was dark red, and the walls were liberally scattered with gilt-framed playbills and old tinted prints of actors long-dead.

  ‘They have got some lovely stuff . . .’ Bartlemas observed, as he mopped up the last juices of sucking pig with bread.

  ‘Divine memorabilia . . .’

  ‘Nothing to do with Edmund Kean of course . . .’

  ‘Or William Macready . . .’

  ‘Of course . . .’

  ‘I mean, they wouldn’t dare . . .’

  ‘Tristram knows we’d scratch his eyes out if he dared buy anything and not offer it to us . . .’

  ‘Yes. Actually, you know,’ said O’Rourke airily, ‘Tristram’s going to leave all his theatrical stuff to me . . .’

  ‘Ooh, you big fibber!’

  ‘It’s true, Bartlemas, true. Scout’s honour. He said if he and Yves both died in a car accident or something, then I could have it . . .’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Yes. I am his cousin, you know . . .’

  ‘Of course . . .’

  ‘Nearest relative . . .’

  ‘Hmm . . .’

  Charles looked round the restaurant, as Bartlemas and O’Rourke went through the motions of some formal private squabble. It was strange to see the rich end of the acting profession. As with people in most businesses, Charles tended to mix with actors of about the same eminence and income as himself, but in the theatre the identity of those people changed more quickly than in other areas. Most actors had in them the potential for sudden failure or prosperity. A coincidence, a sudden break, could lift any one of them to stardom; overexposure, one part badly played, or just the lack of suitable jobs, could bring any one of them quickly down to the semi-anonymity of most of their profession.

  Charles could see examples of the system at work in that room. Bernard Walton. They’d worked together at the beginning of the younger man’s career, and Charles had acted as a kind of mentor to Bernard. But then television sit-coms and the West End had turned Bernard into a household name, earning considerably more in the average month than Charles did in a good year. Charles felt glad that he had his back to the star and could only see a reflection in the glass of one of the playbills. He didn’t want to be recognized and drowned in Bernard Walton’s patronizing bonhomie.