A Comedian Dies Read online

  Miffy was silent. When he spoke, his voice was cold. ‘Listen, Carla. One, I don’t believe Bill was murdered. Two, if he was, I didn’t do it.’

  She broke the ensuing silence, but didn’t get far before he snapped back at her savagely. ‘And let me tell you that to hear you thought me capable of murdering him is the worst news I’ve had for some long time. Good God, I thought we knew each other, trusted each other.’

  ‘But you kept saying you wished he was out of the way. You said you wanted us to get married and –’

  ‘Yes, I said that. Whether I still mean it after this afternoon I’m not so sure. But I meant I wanted him to divorce you. I am not a killer, Carla.’

  Suddenly she broke. Her lover’s anger destroyed her and she sank weeping to the floor. The gun dropped noisily beside her.

  Miffy didn’t go to help. He looked coldly at Charles, who had been ignored through the preceding exchange, and said, with some dignity, ‘I think you’d better leave my office’.

  ‘No, I’m sorry. I came here certain that you killed Bill Peaky and you still haven’t given me any reason to change my opinion. You certainly had the motive and you had the opportunity. Unless you can provide yourself with an alibi for the whole of the interval, I’m still not going to be satisfied.’

  ‘All right.’ Miffy Turtle sounded dangerously grim. ‘I took Dickie bloody Peck round to Bill’s dressing room. I then went to find one of the dancers who was ill. She hadn’t appeared in the first-half closer and I wanted to know why. I had money in that show; I was concerned about the production.’

  ‘The girl was Janine Bentley?’ Charles knew the answer, but still asked the question.

  ‘Yes. I found her with the theatre St. John’s Ambulance man and stayed with her until a taxi came to take her home.’

  So there it was – back to Harry, the St. John’s Ambulance man. Checkable, certainly. But fairly convincing. Unless Janine and Miffy were in league. Unless the St. John’s Ambulance man had killed Peaky. Charles suddenly felt very tired and very much like a man on the eve of his fifty-first birthday. ‘I’ll check your alibi,’ he said defiantly, but without conviction.

  ‘You bloody check it. And think yourself lucky I haven’t knocked your bloody block off.’

  Charles rose with what dignity he could muster. He was almost at the door when Miffy spoke again. His voice had softened now and was musing, curious. ‘Do you really think Bill was murdered?’

  Charles nodded.

  ‘Good God.’ Miffy shook his head sadly. ‘I knew he was unpopular, but I didn’t think anyone . . .’ He stopped. ‘Unless . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ Charles was alert for any clues to help him out of the confusion which was building up inside his head.

  ‘Only one person I know might have done it.’

  ‘Hmm?’ He tried not to sound too eager.

  ‘I don’t know. I probably shouldn’t say it, but I did hear him having an argument with Bill. Also he’s a junkie, so I shouldn’t think he knows what he’s doing when he’s had a fix. Hmm. I don’t know.’

  ‘Who are you talking about?’

  ‘Boy called Chox Morton. Roadie with Mixed Bathing.’

  ‘And you say he’s on drugs?’

  ‘Sure. Silly little bugger. Heroin. He won’t be around two years from now, I bet. Killing himself.’

  ‘And he had an argument with Bill Peaky?’

  ‘Yes. Needless to say, he was very secretive about the drugs thing. I found out by accident and he was in a terrible state, making me swear never to tell anyone. He was terrified of being handed over to the police. Not afraid of going to prison or anything like that, just terrified of being taken away from his fix. It didn’t concern me, so I said I’d keep quiet about it. Unfortunately Bill also found out and he was less willing to keep his mouth shut.’

  ‘He did go to the police?’

  ‘No, no, that wasn’t Bill’s way. He was a nasty little sod. He liked having power over people. Girls, in particular, but everyone. To have a secret about someone and hold it over them, he liked that. That’s what he would have done with his knowledge of Chox’s addiction.’ Miffy was silent for a moment. ‘However he went, the world’s well rid of him.’

  This remark induced a new burst of crying from Carla, still lying on the floor behind the Chesterfield. Miffy looked over in her direction, but did not move. The lovers had a lot of talking to do, if they were to salvage their relationship.

  And Charles Paris was going to have to do a lot of thinking.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  COMIC: It’s a really rough area – if you see a cat with a tail on round there you know it’s a tourist.

  ‘Good God, Charles. Every time you ring me up you’ve got a new suspect.’

  ‘I’ve been through a few since we last spoke.’

  ‘Well, I hope you’re being a good little amateur detective and checking out all these supposed alibis. Somebody capable of murder is not going to balk at telling the odd lie, to get them off the hook.’

  ‘From your tone I gather you’ve done Janine’s alibi.’

  ‘I have actually. I spent a long afternoon on the phone yesterday checking out Harry, the St. John’s Ambulance man in Hunstanton. It took me a long time to find him – I started with the theatre and kept getting new numbers. Tracked him down to his sister’s in Lowestoft where he was having anchovy paste sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Chatty old boy, you may gather. Anyway, he remembered the occasion perfectly and confirmed that Janine had been with him right through the interval. Together with Miffy Turtle.’

  ‘You just asked him like that?’

  ‘No, I was a bit subtle. I implied it was a legal matter of urgency and discretion and that members of the Royal Family were not uninvolved. The old boy was very flattered to be asked. Got quite excited about it.’

  ‘I see. So, as I thought, those two are out of the running.’

  ‘It’s all very well to say “as I thought”. True detective work is the product of endless painstaking research, of inquiry and counter-inquiry.’

  ‘So I’ve heard. Maybe that’s why I’m not a true detective. Mind you, I think I’m getting somewhere this time.’

  ‘With Suspect Number 348? This boy called Chips?’

  ‘Chox.’

  ‘All the people in this case have such ridiculous names.’

  ‘That’s show business, Gerald. Anyway, Chox is certainly a strange piece of work. If he is a drug addict, it explains quite a lot about him. Yes.’

  This last word was spoken with a sudden insight, which prompted Gerald to ask, ‘Yes what?’

  ‘I’ve just thought of something else. Heroin addicts inject into their forearms, don’t they?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not exactly the circles I move in, Charles.’

  ‘I’m sure they do.’ Anyway, when I grabbed the boy’s arm a couple of days ago, he reacted pretty violently. Said he was afraid I was queer and he’d had nasty experiences that way, but thinking about it now, I reckon I’d hurt his arm or he was afraid I’d pull his sleeve up and expose him. I think junkies get pretty secretive about their addiction. Read something somewhere that that’s part of the attraction, a kind of self-punishment, death-wish thing. That’s why they often inject themselves in squalid places, lavatories and so on. And why they sometimes deliberately use infected needles.’

  ‘This wealth of detail is a fascinating insight into the circles you move in, Charles.’

  ‘Oh come on, Gerald, you’re a solicitor. You must come up against drugs cases from time to time.’

  ‘I’m pleased to say that the only occasion I have come up against one was when the teenage son of a titled client of mine was found to have marijuana on his person. At Ascot.’

  ‘I might have guessed. And no doubt you got him off on the grounds that he was reacting against a nanny who’d always told him to keep off the grass.’

  ‘Something like that, yes.’

  ‘Anyway, I’m going to find out a bit more ab
out Mr. Chox Morton. If what Miffy Turtle said was true, he had a motive – and I must say, that business about Bill Peaky liking to have holds over people confirms the impression I had got of his character. He does seem to have been a really unpleasant bit of work. I wasn’t sure for a bit, because his wife painted such a different picture, but now I’ve discovered she was lying, the verdict seems to be more or less unanimous.’

  ‘You’re rambling, Charles.’

  ‘Sorry. Just working it out for my own benefit. Yes, Chox had a motive all right. He also had the knowledge to commit the crime. He was better qualified than anyone, knew that sound system inside out, would have heard about the old theatre electrician dying, no problem. It’s funny.’

  ‘What?’ asked Gerald, exasperated at Charles’ long stream-of-consciousness monologue.

  ‘When I last saw him, Chox raised the subject of Peaky’s death. Quite unprompted. Said how he had described the electrocution process to some of the company. I think perhaps in a twisted way he was boasting about the crime, crowing at the fact that he had got away with it.’

  ‘Or perhaps he was testing, trying to find out how much you knew, how far you were behind him.’

  ‘No. I’m sure he doesn’t know I’m even investigating. Lennie Barber’s the only one in the case who knows anything about my futile hobby. Him and Walter Proud.’

  ‘I see. How’s the show going, by the way?’

  ‘Somewhat jerkily. Nothing gets rehearsed for more than thirty seconds before Barber wants to change it. Then there’s a long discussion where he agrees with everyone that he’s going to be doing something different in the show. We start rehearsing again and he wants to change another line back to a hoary old joke which went down very well in the fifties. Classic comedian’s insecurity, I guess. Terrified of anything new.’

  ‘How are the writers reacting?’

  ‘Pretty badly. Steve Clinton roars with laughter and cracks fatuous jokes; Paul Royce wanders around like Hamlet and keeps staging dramatic walkouts. The trouble is that Barber has no respect for writers at all. He comes from a tradition where you didn’t have them, or, if you did, they were something you didn’t mention, like bad breath. All in all, it doesn’t make for the easiest working atmosphere.’

  ‘Can’t wait to see the show. I’ll be there.’

  ‘It’ll probably all be marvellous. From what I’ve seen of him, Barber’s instincts about material are usually right.’

  ‘How’s the director coping?’

  ‘Oh, he walks around composing Rembrandts in his mind’s eye and saying how he doesn’t get on with Aquarians. The whole thing’s a riot.’

  ‘Sounds it.’

  ‘Yes, I’m glad I’ve got a murder investigation to think about. Keeps my mind off the show.’

  Rehearsals in the RNVR Drill Hall had broken down again. This time it had been over the line, ‘It’s like a quack doctor charging for worthless advice – a duck-billed platitude,’ which Lennie Barber felt (with, to Charles’ mind, some justification) was neither very funny nor suited to his style of performance.

  In the course of the row, Paul Royce walked out again, Steve Clinton said ‘Keep your hair on – as the Commissioner said to Kojak’ and laughed a lot, Wayland Ogilvie decided he had to go and have a conference with the designer about a rococo mirror and the PA Theresa told two of the support characters that they should go and have wardrobe fittings.

  The rehearsal being effectively over, Lennie Barber and Charles Paris went round to the pub (having first hidden behind a hedge until Steve Clinton had left the vicinity – a precaution which was becoming routine for everyone on the production).

  The new Barber and Pole started in a determined way with large whiskies. ‘How’d you reckon it’s going, Lennie?’

  ‘Death.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s got a chance?’

  ‘God knows. Depends how it goes on the night. And how many actual jokes we can get in instead of bloody university revue lines.’

  ‘Do you want it to work?’

  The old comedian looked at Charles in amazement. ‘Of course I want it to work. What do you take me for?’

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that sometimes you seem so cynical, it’s hard to believe that you have any real ambition.’

  Lennie Barber’s eyes flickered as he assessed this remark. ‘Do I? Do I really do that, Charles? Yeah, I suppose I do.’ He rubbed his thumb against the point of his chin reflectively. ‘And if I do, my boy, it’s very simply what a psychologist would call a defence mechanism. I don’t want to tempt providence, but of course I want the bloody show to work, of course I want to be a star. What do you think it’s been like for me, having been at the top, to slide slowly downwards? Every time I watched the bloody telly I’d see some new comic. At first it was blokes who’d been on the same bill as me when I’d toured the Number Ones – except they’d been way down the bill and I’d been the top. I think that was the worst bit really, when it was people I recognized, people I knew weren’t as good as me. After a bit they were just faces that come on. I’d never seen any of them before and, as far as I was concerned, they all looked exactly the same. Styles changed a bit, different jokes came round, but it was all the same really, and I knew I could do better. Comedians nowadays, they’re nothing . . . Did you hear that great line Arthur Askey come up with when Granada started that Comedians series? ‘I see they’ve opened a new tin of Irish comics,’ he said. That’s what they all are now – pre-packaged, inoffensive, characterless. OK, I sound like an old man wittering on about things being better when I was young. Well, I am an old man and, what’s more, things bloody were better when I was young. Comedy certainly was better, Variety was. Television has taken the guts out of everything. No rough edges, no . . . nothing.’ He was silent, then emptied his glass with a positive movement. ‘But I want to come back, even if it means television. Yes, I want this show to be a thumping great, enormous, copper-bottomed success.’

  Charles felt closer to Lennie Barber at that moment than he had since they had first met. Gone was the mask of cynicism and the disquieting obsession with his bowels; it was the real man who had been talking.

  Barber looked at his watch. ‘Better be off, I suppose.’

  ‘Aren’t we going to have another drink?’ Charles was reluctant to break the new mood between them.

  ‘No, I don’t think that I . . . Well . . .’ The comedian looked embarrassed. ‘The fact is, I haven’t got any money with me. It’s my round and I like to pay my bit. Better be off, I think.’

  ‘No. I’ll get them.’

  ‘But you got the last lot.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Come on, while we’re still both flush with telly money.’

  ‘Huh.’ Barber seemed to be about to pass an opinion on what he thought of telly money but decided against it. ‘Look, tell you what . . . how about you lend me a fiver and I get them and pay you back?’

  ‘Fine.’ Charles handed over the money and their glasses were refilled. Barber took the change.

  ‘Pay you back when I get to a bank.’

  They sat companionably with their whisky. Charles began to feel a glimmer of enthusiasm for the project. He liked the idea of working with Lennie Barber. And, if the show were anything like a success, it could be a very profitable partnership. His brief experience had taught him that Light Entertainment fees were considerably fatter than Drama ones. And then there were all the extras that that sort of work led to – club bookings, businessmen’s lunches where large piles of notes were handed over in payment, commercials. Charles had always said that that sort of show business was not for him, but then he had never been offered it. Given the opportunities it could bring he might not take such a high moral tone.

  Lennie Barber broke into his speculations. ‘You got anywhere about Bill Peaky?’

  ‘You mean the murder?’

  ‘Yes. Last time you mentioned it you were trying to track down that girl Janine.’

  ‘I found her. She didn�
��t kill him.’

  ‘Any idea who did then, Monsewer Poirot?’

  Charles hesitated. He had to be careful to whom he confided his suspicions. On the other hand, he did need to find out more about Chox Morton, and Lennie Barber had been in the same company right through the summer. Besides, Charles trusted the comedian completely. He took the plunge and mentioned Chox’s name.

  ‘Really? Well, he certainly had the technical knowledge.’ Lennie Barber screwed up his face and reviewed the suggestion. ‘Yeah, but why?’

  ‘Did you know he was on drugs?’

  ‘Yes, I did actually. Silly little bugger. Good God, there are enough natural things around to shorten your life without adding to them. I used to drink – I mean really drink – so I suppose I know a bit what it’s about. What, you reckon he just got high and didn’t know what he was doing?’

  ‘No. Bill Peaky found out the drugs thing and threatened to shop him.’

  ‘Did he? Well, surprise, surprise. Yes, that’s true to form. Whoever did kill him, you know, did the world a great service.’

  ‘I reckon Chox is highest on the list of possible at the moment. If only I could get some sort of evidence, if only someone had seen him on the stage during the interval . . . Lennie, you know that theatre. Do you reckon he could’ve fixed the wiring without anyone seeing him?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure he could. For a start, the first thing anyone on-stage does when the first-half curtain comes down is get off. Go to their dressing rooms, cup of tea in the Green Room, whatever. So it was very unlikely anyone would be around to see him.’

  ‘Except Norman del Rosa doing his Peeping Tom act.’

  ‘But surely he’d have mentioned if he had seen anyone apart from Peaky?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘And even if anyone had seen Chox, I don’t reckon they’d have thought twice about it, Charles. He was always wandering about the place with cables under his arm. Part of the furniture. Added to which nobody’d be looking for anything suspicious, anyway. You forget that you’re the only person who thinks of this thing as murder.’