Simon Brett - A Comedian Dies

‘What are you talking about? I haven’t come to hurt you.’

‘Don’t play with me.’

‘Listen, my name is Charles Paris. I was in Hunstanton when Bill Peaky died. I have reason to believe that his death was not as straight-forward as it may have appeared.’

‘Then you haven’t come to hurt me?’

Charles shook his head gently. Slowly the girl sagged as the fierce tension left her. Then the first wave of crying struck and her body shook as the emotion took over. Charles took her gently by the shoulders and led her into the sitting room.

After about five minutes the weeping subsided and she lay back in her chair, limp as a rag doll.

Charles felt an enormous weight of pity for the girl, but at the same time he knew that while she was weak and relaxed was a good time to tackle her about Peaky’s death. ‘Janine, I think someone tampered with the wiring of Bill Peaky’s guitar and killed him deliberately.’

‘Oh.’ The inflated face looked at him vaguely. ‘You mean he was murdered?’

Charles nodded.

‘I never thought of that,’ said the girl, still bemused. But then she seemed to see some logical consequence of the premise and became animated. ‘No. He couldn’t have been. You must be wrong.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Charles didn’t like bullying this poor ruined child but, having started, he pressed on. Make the conclusion swift. ‘I know quite a lot about you, Janine. I know you were having an affair with Bill Peaky and I know he broke it off the day he died. I also know that you were ill, or pretended to be ill, after that scene with him. I am suggesting that you took your revenge on him by changing the wiring on his amplifier lead and thus causing his death.’

The girl’s expression had altered subtly. Now it looked as if a smile might be on the broken lips. Charles knew that his speech didn’t have the rhetorical force he had hoped for and he added, rather feebly, ‘Well, what do you say?’

‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’ Her surprise sounded genuine. ‘I changed the wires on his amplifier? I don’t know what an amplifier looks like and I can’t even change a plug. I think you are giving me credit for technical abilities I just don’t possess. Where am I supposed to have picked up all this electrical knowledge?’

‘You learned it from your guitarist boy-friend.’

‘Who, Bill?’

‘No, the one before. The one in the rock group.’

‘I never had a boy-friend in a rock group.’

He felt an enormous desire to believe her. She looked so vulnerable, poised gingerly on the armchair. But he knew he must not be swayed by sentiment. If the girl were really mentally ill, with homicidal tendencies, then he must take no risks.

‘Listen, Janine, I’ve been through it all and the evidence against you is pretty convincing. Unless you can persuade me that you have an alibi for the time when the wiring was tampered with, then I think you had better start explaining a few things.’

‘An alibi? What is this?’

‘Let me refresh your memory about that afternoon. You danced with the rest of the group in the opening number of the show. Then you went to see Bill Peaky, who told you he didn’t want to marry you. You had a row and then started to feel ill, either genuinely or for tactical reasons. As a result you didn’t dance in the first-half closer. A taxi was summoned to take you home, but I happen to know that it didn’t arrive until the second half had started. That gave you plenty of time to fix the wiring. The old cable had been broken during Lennie Barber’s act, but the new one was checked out at the beginning of the interval. So during the interval you crept backstage and changed the wiring.’

She leaned back, all tension gone, exhausted. ‘I think you must be mad. Or is this another of his elaborate games?’

‘Whose?’

She looked piercingly at him for a moment. ‘Never mind. So you are asking me for an alibi, are you? For the interval?’

‘That’s right.’

‘As it happens, by coincidence, I have one.’ The words were spoken without irony, just with infinite weariness. ‘I sat with the theatre St. John’s Ambulance man right through the interval until my taxi arrived. His name’s Harry. You can check with him. He’s at the theatre for most performances. So many old bods go to the shows there, they need someone standing by with the oxygen mask.’

‘Oh. I will check,’ said Charles assertively. But even as he said it, he knew she was telling the truth. As so often in his detective career, he felt his paper house tumbling around him at the first seismic tremor of logic. There was a pause. Then he asked, ‘Who beat you up?’

‘It’s not your business.’

‘Was it your boy-friend?’

A tremble of her features betrayed the truth, but she repeated, ‘I told you, it’s none of your business.’

‘And that’s why you left the group so suddenly?’

‘I could hardly turn up and dance sexily like this, could I? Assuming I could even move at the time, which I couldn’t.’ Her retort had a spark of character that suggested a warmer, livelier Janine who would be nice to know in happier times.

‘And you thought your boy-friend had sent me to duff you up some more?’

‘He said he’d kill me.’ In her fear she forgot to deny that the beating-up was her boy-friend’s work.

‘When he found out about you and Peaky?’

‘Yes. Oh, it was all such a mess. I had been with him for two years and, I don’t know, I suppose I thought all relationships were like that, all the anger and the silences, seeing no one else when we were together, all that. Then when I met Bill, he was nice to me, sort of jolly, didn’t seem to take life seriously. And I thought it’d work.’

Poor kid. She was one of those girls doomed from the cradle only to get mixed up with men who were bastards. Gently Charles asked, ‘How old are you, Janine?’

‘Nineteen.’ As she said it, she looked ten years younger, a child who had fallen over in the playground.

He felt a surge of anger. ‘Good God. What kind of bastard does that to a girl?’

‘You don’t know him. He can be so kind, so gentle. He gets these black moods, though, and, well, he’s got problems.’

‘He certainly has.’

She looked at him, puzzled, then seemed suddenly to see an implication of his remark that worried her. ‘Mr. Paris, are you sure Bill was murdered?’

‘Pretty sure.’

‘I see. I think you’d better go.’ She rose painfully to her feet.

Charles’ reasoning was a few seconds behind her’s, but now he understood what had caused her anxiety. ‘I suppose,’ he began casually, ‘that your boyfriend’s revenge might not have stopped with you.’

‘I said I think you had better go.’

‘He might see Peaky as equally guilty. Possibly more guilty.’

‘My mother will be back soon.’

‘And the kind of guy who would beat you up like that’s not going to be too squeamish about murder.’

‘I said go.’

‘No. You tell me who he is. Who is your boy-friend?’

She stood before him, battered but defiant. ‘I’ll never tell you. And you won’t find out from anyone else, because nobody knew.’

The second part of her assertion he doubted. If they had lived together for two years, even in the anonymous world of London flatland, someone must have seen them together.

But the first part he accepted. She wouldn’t tell him. In spite of her injuries, she had an indomitable will. And Charles was feeling so depressed by the waste of her beauty that he could not bring himself to try to bully it out of her.

He left.

On the bus back to East Croydon Station, his mind worked slowly and logically through all she had said. And its conclusions were encouraging. Although Janine had not told him her boy-friend’s name, she had narrowed down the possibilities dramatically.