Simon Brett - Situation Tragedy

Bernard nodded. ‘Yes. Except that neither of them slowed it down enough. No, I’m delighted so far. The series seems to have got off to a very unpropitious start. But it’s not enough. It’s still going ahead. I need something a bit more central than those two deaths. A rather more permanent spanner in the works.’

He stumbled a bit over the last sentence and Charles suddenly realised that the star was very drunk. He must have been at the bottle all day, maybe every day since he had heard of his show’s cancellation. That would account for his atypical indiscretion and the strangeness of his approach. But it didn’t explain away his desire to destroy The Strutters. That was real enough.

Simultaneous with Charles’s realisation, the power of the drink seemed to get through to Bernard, who looked blearily about him.

‘Sadie,’ Charles nudged gently.

‘Sadie.’ The name was repeated without emphasis.

‘She came to your dressing room after the pilot. .’

‘Yes.’

‘And she called you a bastard.’

‘Yes.’

‘You had an argument and a little later she fell to her death from the fire escape.’

‘Yes.’

‘What did you argue about?’

Bernard stopped nodding and a look of cunning came into his face. ‘I’d complained to the Producer about the allocation of dressing rooms. She regarded this as sneaking behind her back.’

‘I see. And Scott?’

‘Scott drove too fast.’

That was all he got. In a moment Bernard started drinking black coffee, suddenly aware of the state he was in. He clammed up, realising he had said too much already.

But Charles was pleased with what he had heard. There was now no doubt about the strength of Bernard’s motivation and his desire to destroy The Strutters at any cost. And, though he hadn’t confessed to either of the murders, he had been at least enigmatic about them. And he had effectively asked for Charles’s help in his sabotage plan.

All that was needed was evidence to link the two deaths to Bernard. At least now Charles had a clear line of investigation. After rounding off the evening at the Montrose, he went to bed relatively content.

His content was broken the next day at lunchtime when the radio news announced the death of Rod Tisdale, who had been run over by a vehicle which didn’t stop.

Not very funny. Minor accidents are funny, fatal accidents aren’t. Basic rule of comedy.

More pertinently, Rod Tisdale had already delivered the six scripts he was writing for the series, so his removal did not impede the progress of The Strutters in any way.

What was more, he was a person to whom Bernard Walton looked to provide him with a new star vehicle.

And, most galling of all to any theorist trying to see a pattern of murders committed by the star, Rod Tisdale had been killed at nine o’clock the previous evening. At which time the main suspect was sitting in the Greville Club, dining with Charles Paris.

The case was once again wide open.

West End Television Ltd,

W.E.T. House,

235-9 Lisson Avenue, London NW1 3PQ.

18th June, 1979.

Dear Charles,

I thought I’d just drop everyone a note after recent events to assure them that, in spite of problems you all know about, everything is okay on The Strutters front and all of us here are still confident we’ve got a very exciting property on our hands.

Until recently we weren’t certain whether Rod Tisdale was going to write the remaining scripts in the series or not. He was undecided about it. Obviously now the decision has been made for us, and I am delighted to be able to announce to you that the rest of the series will be written by none other than Willy and Samantha Tennison! I’m sure you’re familiar with their work from hosts of successful sit coms, but if your memory needs any nudging, let me just mention such series as Flat Spin, Daisy and Jonathan, Your Turn, Darling, Oh, What a Pair of Au Pairs! and that charming show set in a cookery college, Oh, Crumbs!

Willy and Sam are delightful people and great chums and I’m sure will be absolutely right for The Strutters. I’ve asked them to come along to our next read-through, so that we can all get a chance to meet up.

Thank you, incidentally, for your continuing hard work on the series. We really have got a smashing cast and I think that’s one of the most important ingredients in a really exciting show. Let’s put our troubles behind us and look forward to the success The Strutters is inevitably going to be!

With the warmest good wishes,

Yours sincerely,

Peter

Peter Lipscombe

Producer The Strutters

When Bob Tomlinson arrived at the Paddington Jewish Boys’ Club Hall for the next read-through the following Wednesday and found Willy and Sam Tennison holding court, he said he was going out for a sandwich and would come back in half an hour, by which time everyone had better be ready to start work.

The atmosphere of the second read-through had cleared, and everyone seemed a lot more cheerful. Rod Tisdale’s death, apart from shattering Charles Paris’s murder theories, had not had much effect. He had been such an unobtrusive person to have around that his absence was hardly remarked at all.

And any void he might have left was more than filled by Willy and Sam Tennison. They were a roly-poly little pair of writers, a married couple who that day affected patchwork shirts and matching yellow jeans. They were awfully affectionate and flirtatious with each other all the time, and talked in a manner very similar to the scripts of their sit coms. Since most of their success had been based on a series of interchangeable shows which dramatised the small happenings of their own lives, this was hardly surprising.

The viewing public knew everything about them. Their student lives in adjacent flats had hit the screen in the hilarious form of Flat Spin . The early days of their marriage had been chronicled in the series Daisy and Jonathan . The wacky tribulations of having children took comic form as Your Turn, Darling and the increasing affluence these scripts brought them provided the basis for Oh, What a Pair of Au Pairs! Their revolutionary attempt to do something different with Oh, Crumbs! had been weakened by the fact that the catering college where the series was set was run by a couple called Rob and Mona Partridge, who bore a remarkable similarity to all their other couples.

The Tennisons also had a disconcerting habit of always talking as if they were being interviewed and volunteering information that no one had ever asked for.

Peter Lipscombe thought they were wonderful. He laughed constantly at their shared monologue.

‘Well, I don’t know, darling,’ said Willy Tennison.

‘Don’t know what, darling?’ asked Sam Tennison.

‘How we’re going to get six scripts together in time, darling.’

‘Oh, we’ll manage somehow, darling. Lots of midnight oil.’

‘But is it going to be worth it with the price oil is these days?’

‘Oh, I’ve got a friend who’s a sheik.’

‘I thought your friend was the milkman.’

‘Well, this guy’s a kind of milk sheik.’

‘You know people always ask us how we manage to work together all the time, you know, as man and wife. Don’t they, darling?’

‘They do, darling.’

‘And I always say that there are four of us. There’s a husband and a wife and a writer and another writer.’

‘And never the twain and the twain shall meet.’

‘Yes. Or at least one twain never meets the other twain.’

‘Otherwise, darling, there’d be a twain crash.’