A Comedian Dies Read online

  ‘Well, me and about half of the cast of the show who I’ve so far accused of doing it.’

  ‘Yeah, but nobody suspected murder at the time. By now they’d have forgotten what happened a month ago.’ The comedian’s forehead wrinkled, then cleared. ‘I have thought of something, though. If he did want to be onstage unnoticed while he sorted the wiring out, he could have gone into the lighting store.’

  ‘That was actually on-stage?’

  ‘Yeah, everything all higgledy-piggledy in that place. It was just in the wings. That’s where the faulty cable come from anyway. Also, thing about that was it had a lock on the door, ’cause of the expensive gear they kept there. I used to reckon Chox sometimes went in there to give himself a fix.’

  ‘Yes,’ Charles interpolated, excitedly, ‘that must have been it. Because I remember now, Miffy Turtle said the lock had gone on the Gents that day. So if Chox wanted to hide away, he’d have had to go to the lighting store.’

  ‘Right. Yeah, I reckon that’s what he must’ve done. Not that we can prove it. So it doesn’t really help much.’

  ‘Mmm.’ The inevitable was looming large in front of Charles. ‘So, if there’s no likelihood of my finding any evidence, I guess that means another confrontation.’

  ‘Maybe. I wonder.’

  ‘You have another idea?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just a thought. You see, I got to know Chox quite well while we was down in Hunstanton. I don’t mean I got close to him – I don’t think anyone did that, but I think he kind of trusted me. I wonder if we were to talk to him together . . . I’ve a feeling he might be more forthcoming that way, relax a bit, you know. What do you say?’

  ‘Sounds a great idea to me.’ Anything rather than steeling himself to another solo encounter with a supposed murderer.

  ‘Well, look – What’s the time? Hmm. I got to go back to see Walter, try and get some more of this bloody script sorted out. So that’ll take . . . I don’t know, three bloody years to get it anything like respectable. But let’s say till seven. Can you meet me round Chox’s place about eight?’

  ‘Sure. Where’s he live?’

  Barber gave an address in North Kensington. ‘I’ll ring him first to check he’s going to be in. You ring Walter’s office in a couple of hours and I’ll be able to confirm that. Otherwise, see you there at eight.’

  Charles arrived shortly after eight. The road in North Kensington had been built for prosperous Victorians, but now the trees which lined it were scraped and scabby and the tall façades of the houses diseased by neglect. Paint flaked from porticoes, toothless balcony railings gaped, overflow pipes scored green smears down walls and the doorsteps were littered with dustbins and old magazines. A dusty cortège of outmoded Fords, some wheel-less, some lividly splodged with aerosol paint, lined the gutter. The aerosol artist had also left his blurred testimony on the trees and every bit of wall that he could reach.

  The large front door out of which Lennie Barber emerged had been slashed with lines of spray paint, silver mocking the dirty blue beneath.

  ‘I was waiting just inside the hall, Charles. Not the sort of area to hang about in. Lot of muggings round here. Also not too many friendly white faces, know what I mean?’

  Charles nodded and followed Barber into the dimly-lit hall. The outline of what had once been an impressive sweep of stairs emerged from the gloom ahead. But its classical proportions had been distorted by the random juttings of hardboard walls with which the fine old house had been converted into bedsitters.

  ‘Like I said, Charles, when you rang, he’s expecting us. I said you was coming. He didn’t sound suspicious or anything. I think he may have just had a fix. Didn’t sound all there. If he’s still in the state, it might be good for us. He’ll be relaxed and talk. Then we’ll find out what really did happen.’

  ‘Let’s hope so.’

  The push-button time-switch in the hall produced no more light. Either the bulbs had been nicked or just not replaced by absentee landlords. As Charles and Barber groped their way up the banister, they became aware of the smell of the house – a compound of used cooking oil, beer and wet cardboard. Reggae music and softly accented voices issued from behind the doors of the other bedsitters they passed.

  On the second landing Charles paused to let Barber catch up with him. The comedian was breathing heavily, suddenly an old man. Struggling for his breath, he leaned against the banister and gestured straight ahead through the murk. ‘It’s that one,’ he gasped.

  The door was slightly ajar, but no light showed through the crack. Charles knocked softly. Then harder. Harder again. Nothing.

  Struck by an abrupt sense of panic, he pushed the door open with his left hand and with the right reached round for the light switch.

  He felt its outline and the pain hit him. As his fingers stung with the snapping flash of electricity, he had a vision of Bill Peaky’s wild face as he had grasped the microphone in Hunstanton. At the same time the impact of the shock slammed him, backwards against the banister.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  FEED: There’s a man outside with a nasty look on his face.

  COMIC: Tell him you’ve already got one.

  Charles felt as if some demonic barman had mixed him with ice and fire and was determined to shake him into the cocktail of all time.

  Lennie Barber was crouching over him, his face old and anxious in the half-light. ‘You all right? What happened?’ he kept repeating.

  After a bit, Charles decided that he wasn’t that badly hurt. His fingers still stung and his arm felt numb. The impact with which he had met the banisters was going to leave a great bruised line across his back. But basically, he would survive.

  ‘I’ll be OK, Lennie. Help me up.’

  It hurt, but he could walk. He rubbed his tingling wrist and moved across to the door of Chox’s bedsitter again. There was still silence from inside. From the other doors on the landing there were human sounds, but no one had come out to see what had caused the crash. Perhaps the sounds of violence were too familiar to be investigated. Perhaps it was wiser to keep out of other people’s troubles.

  Charles felt confident that Chox’s room was empty and went in. After a bit of fumbling in the dark, he found a bedside lamp of the Chianti bottle variety that went out of fashion in the fifties, and switched it on.

  The room was a terrible mess. A mattress on the floor served as a bed and hadn’t been made for some weeks. The floor was littered with copies of Melody Maker, New Musical Express and other less-established music papers. In the gaps these left, LP sleeves poked through. Encrusted coffee cups were marooned among the flotsam.

  He moved across to the light switch, aware of Lennie Barber’s frightened face peering round the door-frame. The booby trap had been simple. Chox had merely taken off the plastic cover of the switch and pulled out the wires so that they would be the first thing a reaching hand would meet. Simple, but efficient.

  Charles became aware of what Lennie Barber was saying. ‘I shouldn’t have told him.’

  ‘Shouldn’t have told him what?’

  ‘Shouldn’t have told him you were coming, Charles. Someone must have mentioned that you had this sideline as an amateur detective and he must have realized you were on to him.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘He intended to kill you, Charles. God, it’s just struck me. If I hadn’t been such a short-winded old fart, I could have been the first one into that room.’

  ‘Yes. Just a minute.’ A new thought.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You don’t think Chox is out to get you, do you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I was just thinking back to the accident you had in Hunstanton. When you burned your hands. Had Chox been round to your digs?’

  ‘He had, but –’

  ‘It’s possible that he’d sabotaged your kettle. He seems to have an unhealthy interest in murder by electrical accident.’

  ‘Yes. You had a lucky escape, Ch
arles.’

  ‘Maybe. Of course, the switch wasn’t certain to kill me. As I have proved by standing here before you now.’

  ‘No. Maybe he just wanted to warn you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘To discourage you. To indicate that, if you go on hounding him, he’ll try something a bit less hit-and-miss.’

  Suddenly the electric shock seemed to be on him again and Charles shivered uncontrollably. ‘Do you know,’ he managed to say, ‘at the moment I feel very inclined to take the hint. Let’s go and have an extremely large drink.’

  Fortunately he didn’t have much time over the next few days to examine the ethics of the case. In the brief moments when it loomed into his mind, the questions it posed were quite simple: do I want to go on pursuing Chox Morton or can I be content with the intellectual satisfaction of knowing that he killed Bill Peaky? (There was now no doubt about this last assertion; the booby-trapping of the light switch was tantamount to an admission.) Does Bill Peaky’s death matter anyway, since he was such an unpleasant person? Or is the world just rid of another bastard? Do I believe in an Ultimate Truth, which must always be upheld?

  And each time Charles answered the final question: no. Having reached his solution, he felt no urgency to bring the culprit to justice. He now recognized Chox’s warning for what it was and decided to heed it. Further inquisitiveness might not get off so lightly.

  But the peace he achieved with this nolle prosequi decisions was never complete. He could not forget that he was the possessor of secret knowledge about Chox Morton and it had been for just such knowledge that Bill Peaky had died.

  However, as rehearsals for The New Barber and Pole Show picked up pace, he had little time for such gloomy thoughts. The actual rehearsing was tiring, but the constant breaks for script carpentry were even more exhausting. Every change meant learning completely different lines (or slightly different lines, which was worse). Walter Proud was constantly being summoned from his office to make peace between Lennie Barber and the writers as another of their original gems was replaced by a joke long past pensionable age. Wayland Ogilvie, who had no interest in the words at all (or indeed, the performances; he would have been quite happy photographing bowls of fruit so long as he was allowed to do it artistically), kept complaining that the changes were ruining the composition of his pictures and fulminating quietly against Aquarians. The Stage Manager muttered evilly as props were cut and new ones suddenly required. Generally, Lennie Barber was not making himself the most popular person around the production.

  And yet Charles did not lose his respect for the old comedian; he still felt sure Barber’s instincts were right. The trouble was that, while Barber had an exact image of his own comic persona and knew instantly what material fitted it and what didn’t, he was not articulate enough in talking about comedy to explain his reasons. He would just stop when he came to a line that wasn’t right and could not go on until it had been changed.

  There was nothing prima donna-ish about these constant breaks in the rehearsal; he seemed genuinely to regret his inability to say the lines; but nothing would induce him to take them on trust and try them out on the studio audience.

  ‘We can always edit it out if it doesn’t get the laugh, love,’ Wayland Ogilvie would say in a bored voice.

  ‘Of course it’ll get the laugh,’ Paul Royce would object heatedly. ‘It’s a bloody good line.’

  ‘It may be a bloody good line but it’s not a Lennie Barber line,’ the comedian would reason patiently before Paul Royce once again flung himself out of the room.

  There was one oasis of calm in the turmoil of rehearsals. It was another barbershop sketch which had been taken intact from the original Barber and Pole music hall act. The set-up was as before and so were the catch-phrases, but the jokes were different. Still as corny as in the other sketch and still, handled by Lennie Barber, magic. Again he directed Charles in the timing of the piece, leaving Wayland Ogilvie mouthing at the corner of the Drill Hall. Charles knew the sketch could not fail to work and that, given time to tailor and familiarize himself with the new material, Barber could be brilliant throughout and make a sensational comeback.

  But television schedules are tight and there was only a fortnight of rehearsal for the fifty-minute programme. With constant interruptions for rewrites, as well as the deprivations of costume fittings, design conferences and so on, there was just not going to be enough time.

  Charles was not involved a great deal in the show, in spite of his grandiose billing in the title. He did the barbershop sketch and a couple of other quick items as Wilkie Pole. The rest of the time was filled by modem sketches featuring Lennie Barber and the team of comedy supports, an opening and closing monologue by the comedian and two guest spots.

  The guests were a dance group (not in fact These Foolish Things, but totally indistinguishable from them) and a French singer whose big sad eyes and cloying romanticism won the adulation of agoraphobic housewives and the detestation of their red-blooded British husbands. Because of the tight schedule these two items were to be pre-recorded the day before and played in to the studio audience.

  The dancers presented no problem. They just came in and did the Chuck Sheba dance to their pre-recorded vocal and music tracks, thus filling another three minutes of television time with viewzak.

  But the French singer needed introducing. He was a guest on the show and Walter Proud was keen to have show business guests right through the (conjectural) series, so Lennie Barber had to learn how to give schmaltzy show business introductions. This part of the show probably caused more scripting problems than any other. Lennie Barber did not have the natural fulsomeness of the well-loved television personality at the awards lunch and the French singer’s agent turned down flat the idea of an insulting intro (which would have been the comedian’s natural style). Eventually a compromise was reached and the introduction was rewritten into a little sketch for Barber and Pole.

  The French singer came into vision and Lennie Barber did not recognize him and kept getting his name wrong. Wilkie Pole knew who the man was and was acutely embarrassed by his partner’s ignorance and rudeness. After some linguistic by-play, Lennie Barber finally pronounced the guest’s name correctly (whereupon, on the night, the Floor Manager would cue applause from the studio audience).

  The result of this was that Lennie Barber and Charles Paris were required in the studio on the day before the main recording.

  The French singer proved to be arrogant and humourless, but the little introductory sketch was recorded satisfactorily after the usual long camera rehearsal, false starts, retakes, cutaway shots, etc. As it turned out, Lennie could have delivered a really vicious introduction, since the French singer seemed to have no English except for the tortured words of the song he sang (and from the way he sang it, he didn’t even understand them).

  Charles and Lennie sat in the audience seats while the Frenchman mimed through a rehearsal of his song. He got involved in an altercation with Wayland Ogilvie, which seemed, so far as one could judge from the copious gestures, to be about which of his profiles was the better. Charles and Lennie stopped watching.

  ‘Do you get any excitement, Lennie, sitting here, where the audience is going to sit tomorrow and see you perform?’

  ‘Excitement, no. Nothing. Not in a television studio. You don’t get any feel of the audience when you’ve got all those cameras and monitors in the way. Now if this was a theatre, that’d be something else . . . I can never sit in a theatre without getting a little flutter of excitement. I think it goes back to when I was kid and used to watch my old man from out front. Used to swell up with pride before he come on, could hardly breathe. I’d look round at all the people sitting there and I’d think, They’ve all come to see him, and he’s my Dad. Still get that funny feeling in the theatre.’

  An elegiac mood had descended on them. There was no need to talk. Charles gazed round the studio, taking in the glittery set, the enormous number of people millin
g round the French singer, all the cameramen, sound boom operators, floor managers, scene shifters, make-up girls, prancing wardrobe assistants and grim-faced men whose function was known only to their shop stewards. He felt a slight tremor of fear. Television always frightened him. In front of so many people, apart from the audience, he never felt he could give a natural performance.

  He looked on up to the lights and monitors hanging down from the grid. Then along the gallery that ran round the top of the studio walls. Somebody was standing up there at the corner, looking straight down at him.

  It was Chox Morton.

  Charles touched Lennie’s sleeve very gently. ‘Don’t look suddenly, but Chox is up there.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the lighting gallery.’

  The comedian moved his head slowly until the menacing, emaciated figure came into his line of vision. ‘Shit. Yes. It looks like he doesn’t think you were scared off sufficiently!’

  ‘If he’s come to scare me a bit more, he’s certainly succeeding. What shall I do?’

  ‘Look, you nip out of the studio through the control box. I’ll go and have a word with him and tell him you’ve gone home.’

  ‘He’s hardly going to believe you. I’m still in make-up and costume.’

  ‘He won’t think of that.’

  ‘You mean he thinks I normally go around in a red frock coat and red check trousers.’

  ‘Leave it to me. If I keep him talking long enough, you’ll have had time to get changed. But just stay in the back of the control box for about an hour. He’ll have gone by then.’

  ‘OK. I hope you are right. There’s rather a lot of electrical equipment round this place. Paradise for a murderer like Chox.’

  ‘Don’t worry, the unions won’t let him touch a thing. You can bet that in television there’s a special union in charge of electrocution.’

  ‘Ha bloody ha.’

  Charles sat on a thickly upholstered seat in a small annex separated by glass from the main control room. It was designed for the accommodation of television executives, foreign buyers, agents of very important artists and directors’ girl-friends, but now it was empty. No one wanted to watch the pre-recording of an opening caption sequence on a Tuesday evening at eight o’clock.