A Comedian Dies Read online

  The warm applause of her superannuated audience suggested that they wanted to get back into the amber too.

  The act which followed the lovely Vita Maureen and Norman del Rosa came from the opposite end of the musical spectrum. First, there was a longish delay, filled with thumps and muffled curses from on-stage, and then the curtain rose to reveal a pop group called Mixed Bathing.

  Mixed Bathing was obviously a group in search of an image, which had tried to cover all its options by dressing each member in a different style. The lead guitarist/vocalist affected electric green satin trousers and a silver lamé string vest. The rhythm guitarist wore a striped blazer and white flannels. The keyboard player had on a black leotard and top hat, while the drummer wore a complete army combat kit.

  Musically they suffered in the same way and again had tried to deal with the problem by playing a very wide pop repertoire, in the hope that some of it must inevitably suit their styles. And to ensure that it should all sound indistinguishable anyway, they played at very high volume.

  The array of electrical equipment on-stage explained the long delay before the group’s appearance. They were walled in by banks of speakers and amplifiers. When they launched into their first number, Under the Moon of Love, those painted panes of glass in the Winter Gardens’ dome hitherto undisturbed by the wind, joined their fellows in a cacophony of rattling. The waves of sound fluttered the old-age pensioners like sweet wrappers in a windy playground. It was a relief to most of the senses when Mixed Bathing reached their final earth-shaking chord and the curtain fell.

  It next rose to reveal Lennie Barber manhandling a small cart onto the stage. He was having difficulty in doing this, first because his hands were encumbered by giant mittens and, second, because one of the cart’s wheels had been caught by some offstage obstruction. He gave a sharp tug and it lurched on. A rattle of laughter came from the geriatric audience, uncertain whether or not this was part of the act.

  It was a shock for Charles to see Lennie Barber. He was unmistakably the one who had starred in Short Back and Sides on the radio and The Barber and Pole Show on television, but the familiar contours of his face had shrunk with age. The cheeks, puffed out with affront in a thousand publicity photographs, now hung slack, and deep furrows scored the old laugh lines round his mouth into a mask-like parody. But the greatest surprise was the hair. The old sleek outline of black, raked back from a parting, had now fluffed out into an aureole of springy white. It was only the lack of Brylcreem and the passage of time that had made the change, but perversely it gave the impression that the old Lennie Barber was dressed up, disguised as an old man for a comedy sketch.

  His costume also seemed wrong. Gone was the trademark of the white coat from Barber and Pole’s famous Barbershop Sketch; in its place the comedian wore a short red jacket over red and white striped waistcoat and trousers. On his head was a small red bowler hat. He looked like an old print of a comedian from a vanished age.

  The mittens added to the incongruity. They did not fit the style of the rest of his costume and their great size suggested that they hid some terrible swelling or deformity.

  Barber’s material was also strange. He started on a sentimental note with a little song about being The Simple Pieman. The chorus was quite catchy.

  Don’t ask me why, man,

  It’s just that I’m an

  Ordinary Simple Pieman.

  When he came out of the song, he changed gear abruptly. He was no longer recreating an old music hall act; he was modem, sharp, even slick. It was a great change from the old days. In the shows with Wilkie Pole he had been robust, optimistic, slightly self-important, always ready to put down his gormless partner. But now he had tried to break out of the old mould and find a style of his own. Charles regretted the change; he knew he shouldn’t, but he would have liked a wallow in nostalgia.

  However, the comedian’s opening patter echoed Charles’ mood, so it was not without appeal.

  ‘Hello, how are you all doing out there? Comfy? Right. I tell you, those seats out there are unbelievably comfy. Old girl we had in earlier in the year found them so comfy she stayed in her seat for a fortnight.’ A pause. ‘Mind you, she was dead.’

  Charles and Frances seemed to be the only members of the audience who laughed at that one. For the rest it was too near the truth.

  ‘Matter of fact,’ Barber continued, ‘we get a lot of dead people coming to this show. Well, I assume that’s why nobody laughs.’

  ‘Talking of death, did you hear about the Irishman who tried to commit suicide by jumping off the top of the Empire State Building? He missed the ground.’

  The preoccupation with death was not going down well with the audience. The act was dying on its feet. Lennie Barber changed gear. ‘Actually, the place I’m staying here in Hunstanton, the landlady’s a real character. First day I arrived I said, are the sheets clean? She said, yes, I washed them only this morning. If you don’t believe me, feel them – they’re still damp.’

  From then on he was into the familiar territory of Your Favourite Seaside Landlady Jokes. The audience, which, like all audiences, felt more comfortable with jokes they had heard before, began to respond. The restraint remained, but there were a good few wheezy chuckles.

  Charles found it strange. At the start Lennie Barber had had something, a certain attack, in spite of the audience apathy. But he had gone into the seaside landlady routine with resignation, performing on automatic pilot. Though the audience preferred this Identikit comedy, Charles, as a performer, could recognize that the comedian had opted out. His comic potential was being diluted to nothing. Just as age looked like a disguise on the real Lennie Barber, so did this undistinguished style of performing. In fact, to call it a style was a misnomer; it was lack of style that made it so colourless. But through the drabness of the performance, Charles could still feel the power coming across the footlights.

  Lennie Barber’s modest ovation was followed by the return of These Foolish Things to do their dance again. This time they were miming to When You Need Me, though only an expert would have noticed. However, there was a more significant change. One of the unalterable precepts of the great Chuck Sheba was that all dance groups should comprise an equal number of boys and girls. And, whereas in the opening routine there had been four of each, there were now four boys and only three girls. The seven of them continued with their smiles screwed in as if nothing had happened, but one couldn’t help noticing. Charles found it rather funny. Four men would stand in wait; three girls would cavort across the stage and launch themselves into their arms; three men would twirl round with their burdens; and the fourth would also twirl round, trying to look as if he had a girl in his arms too.

  The absence of one of the girls was made the more obvious to Charles by the fact that the missing one was the prettiest. All of them had a kind of lacquered, manufactured beauty, but she had looked more authentically beautiful than the others. Long bouncy blonde hair, sweet childish face, trim figure. Charles had found his eyes constantly on her during the opening number and now she wasn’t there, he felt cheated. Still, she didn’t come back and, at the end of the dance, the group spread out in another depleted fan, the curtain fell to a rattle of applause and the lights came up for the interval.

  Walter Proud was leading the four of them to the bar in the hopeless quest of an interval drink, when he stopped and greeted a stocky man with a small bald head. ‘Dickie.’

  ‘Oh hello, Walter.’ The man called Dickie spoke without enthusiasm. He didn’t remove from his mouth the cigar at the end of which two inches of ash hung precariously.

  Charles recognized Dickie Peck, one of the biggest agents in the business. They had met when Charles had been working with Peck’s client, Christopher Milton, on the troubled pre-London tour of Lumpkin!, a musical loosely based on She Stoops to Conquer. Dickie Peck had either forgotten this previous meeting or chose not to recognize Charles.

  He also seemed anxious to get away from Walter Proud,
but the television producer was equally keen to keep him in conversation. ‘What are you doing here, Dickie?’

  ‘Came down to see Bill Peaky.’

  ‘About . . .’

  ‘About a project.’ The delivery was calculated to stop further inquiry.

  ‘Ah. I’m down here to see him too.’

  ‘Really? If you’ll excuse me . . .’

  But Walter wasn’t to be shaken off that easily. ‘Great act, isn’t he, Bill Peaky. Really going to be very big. I mean, it’s original. All that business with the guitar. Nobody else doing that. Except Billy Connolly. But he’s too blue for the family audience. I like to think that the reason for Peaky’s success is that he’s up to date, marrying the old music hall comedian bit with the world of pop music that the kids understand. You know, they really identify when they see someone come on-stage with an electric guitar. Any yet he doesn’t alienate the older audience either.’

  Dickie Peck was plainly uninterested in Walter Proud’s theories of comedy. ‘Sure. Well, I’m going round to –’

  At that point he was interrupted by the arrival of a thickset young man in a sharp blue suit and a heavy gold identity bracelet, who spoke with the brash confidence of an East End street-trader. ‘Hello. Mr. Peck, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m Miffy Turtle, Bill Peaky’s personal manager. Actually, I also represent the group, Mixed Bathing, and Lennie Barber as well, but –’

  ‘Nice little package deal you’ve sorted out for yourself with this show,’ observed Dickie Peck shrewdly.

  Miffy Turtle accepted the compliment from a fellow agent with a tense little smile. ‘I heard you were out front this afternoon, Mr. Peck, and thought I should make myself known. Gather you’d like to meet the boy.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Well, if you come round to the dressing room after the show, Billy’d be just delighted. I’m sure we’d be able to find a bottle of something.’

  ‘By the way, my name’s Walter Proud. We met. I’m the television producer who –’

  Dickie Peck answered Miffy as if Walter had not spoken. ‘I have to get back to town rather quickly. There’s a charity premiere tonight. I’d better have a word with Peaky now.’

  Miffy Turtle was taken aback. ‘Well, oh well, yes, I’m sure that’d be all right. Come on round. I’ll show you the way.’

  The two agents set off towards the pass-door by the stage.

  ‘Oh, I think I’d better come along and see him now too. Come along, Paul.’ And Walter Proud, with his writer in tow, hurried along to join them, uninvited. ‘Actually,’ he continued when he caught up, ‘I was just off to the Gents, but I know there’s one backstage.’

  ‘You’ll find the lock doesn’t work,’ said Miffy Turtle in a tone of voice which implied that he didn’t want the producer with them.

  ‘Never mind, I’m not proud. Well, I am, actually,’ quipped Walter, and he tagged along unabashed, drawing the scowling writer after him.

  Charles looked at Frances. ‘Seems we’ve lost our company. Let’s go and join the geriatrics for weak tea and Nice biscuits.’

  The second half of Sun ’n’ Funtime opened with the Shannon Sisters, who delivered a Muzak version of Don’t Give Up On Us, Baby. They were genuine sisters, four of them, dressed in identical scarlet catsuits. They were similar to look at and all of them not quite attractive in a different way, as if somewhere there was a fifth sister, a missing matrix, who really was attractive and of whom all the others were inferior copies.

  The audience loved them. If only their grandchildren were like that.

  Next came Los Realitos, a troupe of jugglers and contortionists who were about as interesting as jugglers and contortionists usually are.

  Now all that remained on the bill were Bill Peaky and yet another dose of These Foolish Things for the finale. Charles was hoping that Peaky would be worth seeing; otherwise the whole afternoon was going to be living proof that variety was dead.

  He felt a prod from the row behind and smelled the gin-fumes as Walter Proud whispered in his ear. ‘This boy is good, really good. One of the most original acts around. Going to be very big.’

  The curtain rose on an empty stage. Empty, that is, of human life; the tons of Mixed Bathing’s hardware remained in evidence. And an electric guitar on a stand in the middle.

  Then Bill Peaky entered in a follow-spot. He had a cheeky face beneath a spray of ginger hair and was dressed in a beige three-piece suit and high-collared purple shirt. The audience immediately burst into applause. Charles, it seemed, was alone in his ignorance of the show business phenomenon that was Bill Peaky.

  The comedian picked the guitar up nonchalantly as he approached the front microphone. He was very self-possessed, confident that he would get the laughs when he opened his mouth. He grinned and the audience tittered in anticipation. Then he leaned forward to the microphone to deliver his first line. As he did so, he struck an open chord on the guitar and took hold of the microphone stand with his left hand.

  There was a loud report and a flash from somewhere. Bill Peaky’s body snapped rigid like a whip. For a second his face registered surprise. Then agonizing pain as he was flicked back from the microphone by the force of the electrical charge. He crashed into the pile of amplifiers, twitched violently and crumpled down in a dead heap on the floor.

  CHAPTER TWO

  FEED: I heard on the radio this morning that the police are looking for a man with one eye.

  COMIC: Typical inefficiency.

  At the inquest on the Friday there were no surprises as to the cause of Peaky’s death. He had had the full force of the mains going through his body and the shock to his system had stopped his heart.

  How the accident had happened was rather more interesting to the technically-minded. An extension lead from the plug-box at the side of the stage to Mixed Bathing’s amplifiers had been wired incorrectly. Being cheap High Impedance equipment, it had joined not the Neutral wire but the Live wire with the Earth in the jack-plug fitted into Peaky’s guitar. This potentially dangerous set-up need not have been lethal, if Peaky had not touched the microphone stand. The microphones were part of the theatre’s PA system, also High Impedance, but correctly plugged. When Peaky touched his incorrectly wired guitar and the microphone stand at the same time, he became an unwilling link in a mains circuit.

  The immediate question that this raised was: why hadn’t the accident happened before? How was it that Mixed Bathing’s string-vested guitarist/vocalist had gone through a whole act treating the microphone as an ice-lolly and caused no shocks except to the audience’s ear-drums?

  The explanation was quickly forthcoming. After Mixed Bathing’s set, when Lennie Barber pushed on his pie-cart, a wheel had caught in the lead and snatched the wires out of the plug. Rather than mending it in the middle of the show, the broken cable had been replaced, during These Foolish Things’ second appearance, by another made-up extension lead which had been found in the theatre’s electrical store. It was on this lead that the Live and Neutral wires had been incorrectly connected.

  So the blame for the accident, if any, lay with the person who had originally made up this lethal cable. According to the evidence of the local Entertainments Officer, who managed the Winter Gardens, the lead had been lying around the electrical store for some time and had almost definitely been made up by the previous Theatre Electrician, who had retired three years previously and died within six months of retirement. He had not been well during his final months in the job and this was not the first example of faulty workmanship dating from that period. For the sake of the man’s widow, the Entertainments Officer hoped that the results of her late husband’s carelessness would not have to be published.

  So that was it really, Charles thought to himself as he sat in the cramped Coroner’s Court. An unfortunate accident, which no one could have foreseen. The Coroner was bound to bring in a verdict of death by misadventure, with recommendations that safety precautions in the theatre
should be tightened up.

  Charles had watched the inquest with interest. Since his involvement in the strange affair of Marius Steen, violent death had begun to exercise an almost unhealthy fascination on him. Frances disapproved of this new hobby with its inevitable by-product of detective investigation, but that didn’t stop her from following the inquest proceedings with consuming interest. It was a welcome diversion. Once you had exhausted Sun ’n’ Funtime and the Amusement Arcade, there was not a lot to do during a wet September in Hunstanton.

  The little Coroner’s Court was full, with intrigued members of the Sun ’n’ Funtime company and representatives of the nation’s Press, for whom the death of a momentarily popular comedian carried a brief news value. Bill Peaky’s widow was also present, an attractive blonde girl in a black suede coat.

  Apart from the Entertainments Officer, evidence was given by the policeman who had first been called to the scene of the accident, by the Police Surgeon who had examined Peaky’s body, by the resident Theatre Electrician and by Charles (known as Chox) Morton, who, as Road Manager for Mixed Bathing, was responsible for the group’s equipment.

  Morton was an emaciated individual in dirty blue jeans and a colourless pullover. His pale sunken face was curtained with long, straggly brown hair. He seemed to be in a state of high nervous tension, constantly interlocking and unwinding his fingers as he gave his evidence. No doubt he was in a blue funk in case he should be held responsible for the faulty equipment.

  The only other person to be questioned was Miffy Turtle, Peaky’s manager, who was asked whether his client was usually careless with his electrical equipment. Turtle revealed that Peaky was most punctilious about safety and made a habit of checking out his guitar during the interval with a device known as a Martindale Ringmain Tester. He could only assume that the arrival of the well-known agent Dickie Peck in his dressing-room had led Peaky to omit his usual interval routine.