Simon Brett - Situation Tragedy

The letter made Charles think about her death again. Straight after the pilot he had thought about it quite a lot, and in the eight weeks since it had nagged occasionally at his mind.

Because of his interest in detection and the tendency, that seemed to increase with age, to find himself repeatedly involved in criminal cases, his first instinct was that Sadie Wainwright had been murdered. Falls, he reasoned, are always murders disguised. In detective fiction the next most popular question, after ‘Whodunnit?’, is ‘Did he fall or was he pushed?’

It could have been an accident. On the evening of her death, Charles himself had noticed the rickety nature of the fire escape, and he heard later that the railing that had given way had been eaten through to nothing with rust. On the other hand, Sadie Wainwright, whatever one thought of her character, had seemed to be a supremely efficient woman. Not the sort to make silly mistakes.

Nor, from her surface behaviour, the sort to take her own life.

And, given a theory of murder, one didn’t have to look far for people with a motive. Charles knew nothing of her personal circumstances, but it seemed likely that if she behaved at home anything like she did in public, she could well foment considerable resentment in a husband or lover. She had worn a chunky gold wedding ring, but that didn’t mean a lot in television; Charles often thought that a broken marriage was one of the qualifications for a job in the medium.

But putting domestic fury, the most common cause of murder, to one side, the studio day had supplied an ample sufficiency of people with reasons to want her out of the way. Indeed, Charles wondered whether there was anyone working on the pilot of The Strutters whom she hadn’t insulted.

And almost all of them could, in theory, have had the opportunity to get rid of her. He didn’t know how many knew of the fire escape short cut. Presumably members of W.E.T. staff were more likely to have the information, but any one of the actors or actresses could have been told, just as he had been.

He had tried many times to reconstruct the events of that evening. He felt fairly confident that Sadie Wainwright had died after he had gone up to the bar. Though he had not actually looked down into the car park, he would surely have noticed the collapsed railing. Anyway, his natural talent for getting to bars quickly had put him ahead of most of the field of suspects.

He remembered that when he reached the bar, the only person present from The Strutters recording had been Peter Lipscombe, realising the full potential of his job. That seemed to rule the Producer out of any conjectural list of suspects, but all the others whom Sadie had insulted remained in with a good chance. The fact that Mort Verdon, the discoverer of the body, was the only one who had appeared from the fire escape, did not mean he was the only one who had gone out there. Any murderer worth his salt would have taken the elementary precaution of returning from his crime to the bar via the more conventional lift.

And many of the potential suspects had appeared to be in a highly emotional state. High emotion does not necessarily indicate a recent act of murder, but it can be a pointer.

Bernard Walton had looked unnaturally tense, though that could be put down to anxiety about the future of his series. Walter Proud, too, seemed to be suffering, and admitted a recent altercation with the victim of the ‘accident’. And Scott Newton, the young man whose authority his PA had systematically undermined, had been a very late arrival in the bar, and had entered in a terrible nervous state. Any one of those might have had sufficient motive to kill Sadie Wainwright.

But then so might anyone else. That was what really made Charles think the death had been an accident after all. The PA had been so rude to everyone, had antagonised so many people, that it seemed invidious to attribute her death to any one individual. It was more as if the communal will had been so unanimously hostile that an indulgent God had given her a little nudge on the fire escape as a gesture of magnanimous serendipity.

Apparently, an inquest had brought in a verdict of accidental death. No doubt the police had done their customary efficient enquiries. Why should Charles Paris question their findings?

It was all a long time ago, he decided, and he needed a drink. He had been feeling very poor and made firm resolves to cut down his expenditure.

Also, as often happened when he was feeling at his most abject, he had resolved to make contact with his estranged wife, Frances.

But Peter Lipscombe’s letter had shifted the mood. Though it didn’t contain money, it contained the prospect of money. It gave him the confidence to risk bouncing another cheque on the way to his favourite drinking club, the tatty little Montrose round the back of the Haymarket.

And he could always ring Frances another day.

‘First let me say what a pleasure it is to see you all here, and all looking so well. I get that sort of bubbly feeling that everything’s going to be okay with The Strutters. We’ve got a wonderful cast, a good team, some terrific scripts, and I think the whole project’s going to be jolly exciting.

‘Now what I plan to do today — I’m sorry, what Scott and I plan to do today — ’ the producer inclined his head graciously towards his Director, who acknowledged the gesture with a grin, ‘- is to have a leisurely read-through of the first five scripts — Number Six will be with us soon — which wonderboy Rod Tisdale has provided for us. .’

The wonderboy in question maintained his customary facade of a man on a bus counting the lamp-posts.

‘Now this read-through is just so’s we get a feeling of the shows — we’ll deal with any problems that may come up later. Since we start the filming in a couple of days, I think it’s just as well that you should understand the context in which your scenes occur.’

This was a concession that didn’t always happen. Charles had frequently been involved in the pre-filming of scenes which were totally meaningless to him as he acted them (and often equally meaningless when he saw the completed product on the screen).

‘Now we’ve got some really exciting locations for the series, so I think the filming should be a lot of fun.’

First time it ever has been, thought Charles sourly. His memories of filming were all of interminable waits, often in vile conditions, usually in the company of huge numbers of people with whom he had nothing in common. But he knew that directors loved it; practically every television director he’d ever met said how much he’d rather be working on film and then started the traditional moan about the demise of the British film industry. He even knew actors who enjoyed it.

‘One location in particular, which we are awfully excited to have, is the one we’re using for the Strutters’ own house exteriors. As you know, that didn’t come up in the pilot, but it was pretty well described — a large expensive house with a lot of grounds, conveniently placed on the edge of a golf course. Well, our Location Manager spent a lot of time trying to find just the right place and then — what a stroke of luck — we had the ideal house offered to us, just like that, out of the blue. And offered by someone we all know very well. Yes, good old Bernard, Bernard Walton. . he’s said we can use his place. Which just happens to fit the bill exactly. .’

Peter Lipscombe paused for impressed reaction and got a rather apathetic murmur of appreciation. Like Charles, most of those present had come to distrust Bernard Walton’s magnanimous gestures. There was usually an ulterior motive — in this case, no doubt. just to show how big-hearted he was, or to keep a kind of proprietary interest in the series, or to make sure he appeared in any publicity shots that might be taken on his premises or, thought Charles cynically, just to pocket the substantial facility fee which W.E.T. would inevitably pay for the location.