Simon Brett - A Comedian Dies

Two naked bodies writhed in the paroxysms of love. Carla’s face was turned to the window, the eyes closed, the mouth open, gasping with pleasure. The man’s face was hidden, buried in her shoulder.

Their bodies arched and snapped together as they climaxed. Then they subsided, panting. After the moment the man drew away from her. Charles saw the chunky gold identity bracelet on the wrist and when the mystery lover swung his legs round to sit on the bed, he could see the man’s face clearly.

It was Miffy Turtle.

CHAPTER TWELVE

COMIC: Two girls talking — one says to the other, ‘Are you going out with your boy-friend tonight or are you going to sit in and watch television?’

‘Doesn’t make a lot of odds, really,’ says her friend. ‘Either way I get a lot of interference .’

The unfamiliar experience of being in work meant that Charles could not immediately pursue his detective investigations, but it gave him time to collect his ideas.

He had decided against confronting the post-coital couple in Chigwell until he had a clearer idea of what to confront them with. But what he had seen turned on its head everything he had hitherto thought about the case.

As he walked from Anerley Station to the RNVR Drill Hall, Wilberforce Street, where the rehearsals for The New Barber and Pole Show were being held, he tried to piece together a new version of Bill Peaky’s murder.

The important change from all the previous versions was that Miffy Turtle was now cast in the role of villain. With that alteration to the Dramatis Personae, a lot of previously indigestible details were liquidized and made palatable.

Charles started from the assumption that the affair between Miffy and Carla had been going on for some time. It was possible that the agent had just been cashing in on the widow’s loneliness the previous evening, but the logic was stronger for a relationship which had started while Peaky was alive. And Charles could now define an impression he had received at the awards ceremony, of a relaxed closeness between the couple. An affair of long-standing also gave Miffy an excellent motive for wanting Peaky out of the way.

Nor was that the only reason for him to kill his client. There was something else that Charles should have deduced in Hunstanton, but had only realized when Dickie Peck mentioned it at the awards’ lunch. The London agent’s sole purpose in going to Hunstanton was to sign up the rising comedy star and, by doing that, he was going to ace out the manager who had struggled up with his client from obscurity. Miffy’s outburst to Lennie Barber in the Leaky Bucket Club showed how sensitive he was to the dangers of losing his artistes just at the point when they began to make real money. If Bill Peaky was as unpleasant and self-centred as everyone suggested, he would have had no qualms about dumping his old friend and agent. That, together with the inconvenience of Carla’s having a husband around, might well push a wide boy like Miffy into crime.

The new theory also explained the inconsistencies in Carla’s behaviour. It had been strange that, when nobody else had a good word to say for her husband, she had painted a picture of a perfect marriage, while admitting her husband’s frequent infidelities. Charles had yet to meet the wife who, whatever her protestations, was genuinely complaisant about her husband’s affairs.

And now he understood Carla’s strange story about Janine Bentley. Having met the dancer, albeit at a time of great physical and emotional pressure, Charles had been struck by her essential level-headedness. Though this could have been one of the many smoke screens of schizophrenia, he preferred to accept his own assessment of her character than the unbalanced one presented by Carla. Anyway, that had been too quick, too glib. The widow knew he was coming full of suspicions, so she had hastily provided him with a convenient focus for them.

Such behaviour made very good sense if Carla was protecting her lover. If she knew Miffy had killed Peaky, or even came to suspect him when Charles first mentioned the idea of murder, then it was in her interests not only to provide the name of a potential murderer, but also to present the image of a desolated widow, whose life had been ruined by the premature loss of a beloved husband. Given the facts of such an idyllic marriage cruelly cut off, it would never occur to Charles that Carla had anything to gain from Bill Peaky’s death.

She had thought quickly that afternoon. Full marks to her. She had thrown him off the scent very effectively. But the strain of thinking on her feet had affected her performance of bereavement and it was that which had made Charles suspicious of her sincerity.

Yes, if Miffy had killed Peaky, everything made sense. Even as he thought it, another piece clicked into place. Miffy, on the scene at Hunstanton for much of the run of Sun ’n’ Funtime, was much better placed than any of the other suspects to check out the theatre’s electrical system and plan the crime.

New confirmatory thoughts kept sparking in Charles’ mind. At last he was really on to something. He would have to go and talk to Miffy Turtle.

The read-through in the RNVR Drill Hall was the first time that Charles had met the director of The New Barber and Pole Show, Wayland Ogilvie. Walter Proud had spoken much of the young man, commending his own original thinking in bringing an established drama director into the less gracious arena of Light Entertainment, and Lennie Barber had mentioned meeting the director over a preliminary script conference. But none of this had prepared Charles for the parrot-faced aesthete with gold wire-rimmed glasses and quilted Chinese jacket to whom Walter Proud introduced him. ‘Looking forward to a long and happy association,’ said the producer jovially.

‘Hope so.’ Charles smiled a stupid smile.

Wayland Ogilvie looked at him intensely for a moment. Then he spoke. ‘Scorpio. I’m quite compatible with Scorpios.’

Charles’ reactions were twofold. First, he thought astrology was an affectation. And second, he was impressed in spite of himself that the director had got his sign right.

Also present at the read-through were Lennie Barber, the two writers Paul Royce and Steve Clinton, a few hardened comedy support actors who had been cast in some of the sketches, Wayland Ogilvie’s PA (a dauntingly attractive girl called Theresa), a Trainee PA, a Stage Manager, an Assistant Stage Manager and a Chief Petty Officer in full uniform. This last turned out to be an official of the RNVR, who gave a short talk on things that could not be done in the Drill Hall. After his departure, the Stage Manager was berated for having allowed him to appear in the first place.

They all sat round a Formica-topped table at one end of the hall. The rest of the space was marked out with lines of different-coloured tapes and upright posts on wooden stands. These were the entrances and the whole surrealist forest represented the set (later in the day to be explained by the designer, who appeared in a beige corduroy boiler-suit).

Walter Proud welcomed everyone, saying how marvellous they all were and how very big the show was going to be and how he, as producer, would be keeping a very low profile and putting everything in the capable hands of Wayland Ogilvie and, once again, how, with a combination of the best artistes and the best writers in the profession, the show could not fail to be very big.

During this speech Charles observed Lennie Barber. The old comedian’s face bore a smile of unambiguous cynicism. How many times must he have heard similar pep-talks, before how many shows which had vanished without a trace? He no longer had any expectations of anything; he knew too much about the injustice and fickleness of the entertainment business to believe in any other power than that of luck.