A Comedian Dies Read online

  The audience wanted someone to make contact with them, to talk to them directly, but for the sake of the show, it should have been Lennie Barber and not Charlie Hook. Still, Charlie Hook had been booked and the theory was that his presence took the pressure off the star.

  In Lennie Barber’s case, it put the pressure on. For a start, here was competition from another comic. And, second, Charlie Hook was talking close to the audience, while Lennie was separated from them by thousands of pounds’ worth of hardware, lumbering brutes of prehistoric proportions, the butting triceratops heads of cameras, the menacing pterodactyl spread of sound booms and the brontosauran bulk of cranes overhead. For a comedian who fed on audience response, it was death.

  Charlie Hook introduced Barber to the audience with the assurance that he was a really wonderful person, and Lennie came forward to the warm-up mike to tell a few jokes and begin to make contact. But when he was halfway through his second gag, the Floor Manager indicated that it was time to start and the microphone went back to the really wonderful Charlie Hook who told the audience it was time to start.

  From that point on, Lennie Barber had no opportunity to make up his lost contact with the audience. The logistics of recording the programme took over. There was a hell of a lot to fit in before nine-thirty when the plugs would be pulled out, and the comedian’s schedule was a manic sequence of sketches and costume changes. With all the retakes made necessary by faulty camera work, fluffed lines or Wayland Ogilvie’s dissatisfaction with the pictures qua pictures, there was no time for idle banter.

  All the stops and starts broke the rhythm of Barber’s performance. He needed, as he had done at the Leaky Bucket Club, to dictate his own pace, but here there were any number of factors, most of them mechanical, to prevent him from doing so. The strain was beginning to tell. In spite of the constant ministrations of dolly make-up girls, the comedian was sweating profusely and he looked his age. Suddenly to Charles it seemed cruel to put an old man through these savage hoops.

  The more he felt the show going away from him, the harder Lennie Barber worked. His delivery grew louder, his takes bigger. Charles could see the sound boom operators wince as the comedian started to shout and no doubt in the box the size of the performance was causing the same reaction. It was getting too big for television, a medium that relies on subtle changes of intonation and eyebrow acting. Lennie Barber seemed to have forgotten about the camera; all he knew was that there was an audience out there that he had lost and he was doing his damnedest to win them back.

  The climax came in his closing monologue. It was twenty past nine and no doubt relief was creeping into the control box because it looked likely that all the show would get recorded. But it had to go straight through to the end; there would be no time left for more retakes.

  Perhaps knowing this, or perhaps just driven by a comedian’s instinct for survival, Lennie Barber abandoned the script altogether. He advanced forward from the set, forcing the cameras to take ugly shots which included other cameras and equipment, and he addressed the audience directly. He was ill-lit and, from the television point of view, a disaster. But he was brilliant.

  He went into a quick five minutes of his club act and, for the first time in the evening, he came alive. The jokes were mostly too blue ever to be televised and the weeks of rehearsal and agonizing over the script all went for nothing.

  But the audience roared. Suddenly here was something they could respond to. Not a neatly-packaged ersatz jokezak product viewed distantly and discontinuously from monitors, but a great comedian giving one of his greatest performances. It was five minutes of brilliance, until the clock crept round to nine-thirty and the anxious Floor Manager called a halt.

  Charlie Hook’s closing jokes went for nothing. The audience had been spoiled by the sight of a real comedian. The show too had presumably been spoiled. In the box no doubt Wayland Ogilvie was calling down curses on all Aquarians. But for Charles it had been one of the most exciting moments of theatre he had ever seen.

  At the end of the recording he was standing behind the set with one of the support actors, who observed, ‘Bloody unprofessional, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Bloody professional, I would have said. It was brilliantly funny.’

  ‘Yes, but it wasn’t television, love, was it?’

  Charles met Lennie Barber on the stairs going up to the dressing rooms. The comedian looked old and exhausted, but his face bore an expression of chastened triumph, like a schoolboy who had just screwed his headmistress. He knew he was going to be expelled, but it had been worth it.

  ‘End of my telly career, Charles,’ he said mischievously. ‘Sorry about that. I hope you didn’t think this show was going to make your fame and fortune.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Read a book once that said all comedians have got this kind of death-wish thing. Well, that was my kamikaze mission.’

  ‘Had you planned it?’

  ‘No. I just didn’t want that audience to go home cheated. They come here to be entertained and that was the least they deserved. Come and have a drink.’

  Inside his dressing room Lennie Barber opened another bottle of Scotch. (He had got through one already that day.) ‘If I can’t get rid of the pain in my guts any other way, then I’ll burn it out with alcohol. Cheers.’

  They drank gratefully. The recording, the camera rehearsal, the long, long day in the studio, might have taken place years before.

  There was a knock on the door and Walter Proud came in. He wore his professional producer’s smile and the firmness of his jaw showed the professional producer’s determination never to admit disaster. ‘Terrific, boys, really terrific. Lovely, Lennie. It’s really going to be very big, this. Must go to a series and really turn the ratings on their heads.’

  Lennie Barber didn’t say anything. He just looked at the producer and smiled sceptically.

  Walter Proud blushed. ‘No, really, it’ll edit together a treat,’ he said defensively.

  ‘Yeah, well, maybe.’ Lennie Barber seemed to dismiss the possibility from his mind. ‘Anyway, sorry I didn’t use any of that extra material you got last night.’

  ‘Oh, never mind. Didn’t need it.’

  ‘What extra material was that?’ asked Charles curiously.

  ‘Oh, Walter had got some one-liners from some other writers which he reckoned might help strengthen the monologues.’

  ‘Yes, I only remembered it when we were in the restaurant last night,’ said Walter, ‘so I left Lennie eating away in Dollops and came back here to my office to get it.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  FEED: Do you know, they say that whisky kills more people than bullets.

  COMIC: Ah well, that’s because bullets don’t drink.

  Charles got out of make-up as soon as he could and hurried down to the bar. Everyone would be there, he knew.

  It was certainly crowded. Before diving into the mêlée, he stood back and tried to see Walter through the forest of bodies. No luck.

  Near him Gerald Venables was talking to Nigel Frisch. As he watched, the television executive moved away and the solicitor caught his eye.

  ‘Charles. Drink? Bell’s, I take it.’

  ‘Thanks. Have you seen Walter?’

  ‘Over there somewhere. Hmm. I’m afraid not the most stimulating evening I’ve ever spent.’

  ‘No, not marvellous. Still, maybe it’ll edit all right or look better on the screen or something.’

  ‘Maybe. Though, from what Nigel Frisch was saying, we may never have the opportunity to find out.’

  ‘You mean he’s not even going to put it out?’

  ‘Far be it for me to say that and then be proved wrong. I’m sure anything he said to me was purely off the record and I’m sure it’ll be some time before the official verdict on the show filters down to you through the official channels, but he gave me the impression that it might well not go out. In fact, to use his own words, he said he’d rather transmit an hour of rained-off cri
cket.’

  ‘I see.’ But Charles couldn’t summon up much interest in the fate of The New Barber and Pole Show; his mind was seething with new thoughts about the deaths of Bill Peaky and Chox Morton.

  ‘In fact,’ Gerald continued, ‘Nigel gave me the impression that they never had much faith in the project in the first place. But because they’d got a lot of staff and studios booked for the Bill Peaky show, they thought they might as well do it on the off-chance.’

  ‘I see. Yes, that sounds about right – get an old man to work his guts out for a fortnight on the off-chance – that’s how television companies work.’

  ‘There’s no need to be satirical, Charles.’

  ‘Look, are you going to get me that drink or not?’

  ‘All right, all right. Keep your hair on. Is this deterioration in your customary sunny humour because of the show or because of the murder case? Incidentally, you must bring me up to date on that. Have you got a complete, perfect solution yet?’

  ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘Well, it’s about time –’

  ‘Give me half an hour.’

  Walter Proud was standing at the bar guarding a large round of drinks. ‘Ah, Charles, one of these is for you.’ Charles reached out towards a Scotch. ‘No, sorry, that one’s Lennie’s. Take this.’

  Charles took the drink gratefully and took a long swallow for confidence. ‘Walter, I wanted to –’

  But the producer had turned away with outstretched arms. ‘Lennie?’

  The old comedian was sweating and looked ill, but he sat down on a bar stool and attacked the large whisky that was thrust into his hand.

  ‘Well, Lennie, what did you think? Really?’ Walter’s professional beam was fixed in place. He was trying to move them all from the knowledge that the show had been a disaster to the alcoholic reassurance that maybe it hadn’t been so bad after all.

  ‘I thought it was shit, if you want my honest opinion,’ said Barber. ‘Hardly worth editing, if you ask me.’

  ‘Oh come on, it wasn’t that bad.’

  ‘Yes, it was, Walter. That bad, and far, far worse. So bad in fact that I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s talk about something else – talk about the telly shows we used to do back at Ally Pally. When it was live, when you just went on and did your act.’

  ‘It wasn’t so very different from now, Lennie.’

  ‘Oh yes it was. We were different, for a start. We both had ambitions then, there were things we believed in. And we both enjoyed what we were doing. I was just flexing my muscles as a comic, beginning to be aware of what I could do. And you were locked away in your world of sound, fiddling with wires, screwdriver flashing away, touching up microphones. And not just microphones. The ladies. There are tales I could tell, Walter, about little dancers and –’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure there are, Lennie, but I think you’re being too pessimistic about what happened tonight. There were bits that –’

  ‘There were bits that were awful and bits that were bloody awful. Why the whole . . . thing.’ Lennie Barber suddenly slowed down. A strange expression flickered onto his face and stayed there. His words slurred. Not just the slurring of alcohol, the effect was too quick for that. ‘What’s . . . going on?’ The words seemed unfamiliar, too large for his mouth, unmanageable. ‘What . . . the hell’s happened?’

  He pushed away from the bar and made as if to step forward off his stool. But his legs would not support him and he collapsed on the bar-room floor.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  COMIC: I say, I say, I say, do you know what is the most important skill for a stand-up comedian to have?

  FEED: I don’t know. What is the moat important –

  COMIC (interrupting): Timing.

  Charles and one of the barmen manhandled Barber up to his dressing room. As they were leaving the bar some loudmouth made a jokey remark about a few drinks too many and Charles had to restrain himself from punching the fellow’s teeth in. Lennie Barber was suffering from something more than alcohol.

  In the dressing room they laid him out on the divan and the barman went off to fetch the duty nurse. Charles looked down at the prostrate body with horror.

  One side of Lennie Barber’s stricken face smiled. ‘You half cheer a bloke up, mate,’ he managed to say. ‘Do I really look that bad?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ Charles tried to smile too.

  Lennie Barber breathed with difficulty. Spittle gathered and dripped unchecked from the corner of his mouth. He looked desperately ill.

  Charles couldn’t stand it. ‘Lennie, do you think he put something in your drink?’

  ‘My drink?’ the slurred voice echoed. ‘My drink? Who?’

  ‘Walter.’

  ‘Walter?’ The frozen face twitched and a gurgling sound issued from the sagging mouth. With sickened understanding, Charles realized the comedian was laughing. ‘Oh, Charles . . . detective to the end. So keen. . . . and so . . . wrong.’

  The door of the dressing room opened and the duty nurse came in. She looked at Barber without betraying any emotion, spoke to him and tested his reflexes. From the left-hand side of his body there was no response. She straightened up and said in a professional voice, ‘I think I’d better phone for an ambulance. Now don’t worry. I’m sure everything will be all right.’ She turned to Charles. ‘Would you mind staying with him until I come back?’

  Wild tigers wouldn’t have stopped him from staying there. As soon as the door closed, he turned back to Barber. ‘What did you mean?’

  ‘I mean you now . . . suspect Walter.’ Each word was dragged out and misshapen. ‘They must keep making, new . . . sticks for you to grab . . . the wrong end of.’

  ‘It wasn’t Walter?’

  Lennie tried to shake his head, but muscles would not obey him. ‘I . . . I killed Bill Peaky.’

  ‘You? And Chox Morton?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But how? I don’t understand.’

  ‘No you . . . don’t. Never did understand. You know how . . . Bill Peaky died, I worked it out . . . planned . . . pulled out the cable with the . . . cart on purpose.’

  ‘And then changed the wires in the interval? But how could you – with your burned hands? You couldn’t handle a screwdriver.’

  ‘No, Charles. Credit me with some . . . subtlety. What kind of . . . murderer fiddles around with a . . . screwdriver? I had a wrongly wired extension lead made up and . . . switched the two round.’

  ‘Oh.’ For a moment Charles felt very stupid. ‘But why did you kill Chox? And how did you kill him, come to that? You were in the restaurant when he was injected.’

  ‘Oh, Charles, Charles. Use your . . . intelligence. With a heroin addict you don’t have to be there. Just . . . give him the . . . tools and he will . . . finish the job.’ This parody of Winston Churchill prompted another spasm of rasping laughter. ‘All I had to do was give . . . Chox the dirty heroin and let him . . . kill himself in his own . . . time.’

  ‘But how did you come to be giving him heroin?’

  ‘Come on, you’ve missed so . . . much. You may not be bad at impersonating Wilkie . . . Pole, but as a detective . . . you’re rubbish. Chox was . . . blackmailing me.’

  ‘How was I meant to know that?’

  ‘You were there when he started it.. .if you could put two and . . . two together.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘At that club in Sutton. When his band broke up. He knew then he was out of a . . . job. No money. So he . . . challenged me.’ Lennie Barber stopped, gasping. The strain of speech on his unresponsive body was enormous.

  ‘You mean when he started talking about Bill Peaky’s death and the terrible things he had seen that day, he was telling you he had witnessed what you had done?’

  Lennie acknowledged this with an exhausted wave of his right hand.

  ‘But how had he seen you?’

  ‘Lighting . . .’ the comedian murmured.

  ‘From the lighting store.’

  ‘He
was in the lighting store?’ Again a tiny wave. ‘What, he had locked himself in there to give himself a fix, because the lock on the lavatory door was broken, and while he was in there, he saw you switching the extension leads?’

  This time Lennie Barber managed a soft ‘Yes.’

  ‘But why didn’t he tell the police at the time?’

  ‘H . . . heroin.’

  ‘He didn’t want them to find out he was an addict?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he would have kept quiet about it forever, but then he lost his job and saw you as a potential source of money. Which is why you had to borrow from me in the bar, although you’d told me you never borrowed money. Oh, my God, I’ve been stupid.’ Now the one great boulder had been moved by confession, other smaller stones of fact were dislodged and started tumbling down in the avalanche of logic. ‘So, when I started suspecting Chox and told you, you had to try and keep us apart. You set up the switch in his room – I remember now, when I arrived you came out of the house with some specious story. You’d broken in . . . how?’