Simon Brett - Star Trap

‘Ah, the young are always jealous. They are so afraid, they feel that if they are not the absolute best in the world, then they are the absolute worst. Only with time can they understand that most are destined to be fairly good or fairly bad, that the world is made up of mediocrity and that only a chosen few, like dear Christopher, will be the best.’

Charles tried to move her from generalisations to the specific. ‘You mean they were jealous of each other?’

‘But of course. They would not be normal if they weren’t.’

‘And was that jealousy ever expressed in violence?’

‘Violence?’ Her eyes widened and again she stiffened as if he were trying to find scandal. ‘Of course not I kept a respectable school, Mr Bostock. Nowadays, if one can believe the newspapers, violence in the classroom is commonplace. I did not allow it in my school.’

‘No, of course not. That’s not what I meant.’ Charles covered his retreat clumsily, realising that he wasn’t going to get any answers to that question. But then it struck him that a bit of well-placed journalistic boorishness might be productive. ‘Of course, Miss da Costa, another thing we keep reading about in the newspapers is sex in the classroom.’

‘Sex.’ She gave the word Lady Bracknell delivery.

‘Yes, I mean, a group of young adolescents together, it’s inevitable that they’re going to form relationships. I was wondering, I mean, say these three youngsters, was there also some kind of emotional attachment between them?’ He was glad he had come in disguise. Charles Paris could sever have managed this crudeness of approach.

The question touched a nerve which had apparently been exposed before. ‘Mr Bostock, I don’t think there is any need to go over this ground again. The investigation by the local education authority in 1963 revealed that I was quite blameless in that matter.’

Intriguing though it was, Miss da Costa’s dark secret had no relevance to his current enquiries, so Charles tried to retrieve some of the ground he had lost. ‘I’m sorry, I think you misunderstand me. I’m not talking about 1963. As you know, I’m interested only in Christopher Milton. What I meant by my question was, was there maybe some early schoolboy romance we could mention? You know, the women readers go for all that stuff. “My first romance.” It was a perfectly innocent enquiry.’

It worked. ‘Oh, I see.’ She sat back. ‘I’m sorry, but I have had cause in my life to be somewhat wary of the press. When one has figured in the private life of the great…’ Again she left the hint of her wildly romantic past dangling to be snapped up by anyone interested. Charles wasn’t, so she continued after a pause. ‘Well, of course, when you are speaking of young people, of beautiful young people, yes, l’amour cannot be far away. Oh, I’m sure at one time or another, all three of them were in love with each other. All such sensitive creatures. Yes, I have seen the two boys wildly, madly in love. I have seen them both look at Prudence in a way… in a way one can recognise if one has seen it directed at oneself. Then one understands. Ah, I sometimes wonder if one has loved at all if one has not heard a lover’s voice reciting Swinburne soft in one’s ear. Don’t you?’

He thought that Charles Paris, and Alfred Bostock’s answers to that question might well be identical, so he tried to get the conversation back on the subject and avoid the Ellen da Costa Anthology of Love Poetry. ‘Hmm,’ he offered, in a way that he hoped dismissed Swinburne. ‘I was wondering, do you know if either of the affairs with Prudence continued after they left the school?’

‘Mr Bostock, I do not like your word “affair”; it implies impropriety at my school.’

‘I’m sorry. You’re misunderstanding me again. I just meant, you know, the… friendships.’

‘That, Mr Bostock, I’m afraid I don’t know. For the first year after they left, I heard a little of them — well, that was inevitable. I act as agent for all my pupils for their first year out of school.’

‘You mean you put them under exclusive contract?’

‘I prefer to think that I protect them from some of the sharks and exploiters in the agency business. But after the year, I heard nothing of Garry or Prudence. Of course, I heard a great deal about Christopher. Everywhere these days, one hears about Christopher. Did you see this in the local paper?’ She opened one of the blue ledgers and pointed to the cutting from the previous day’s edition. It was already neatly glued in. Charles found the promptness of its filing sad. It opened a little window on to the great emptiness of the old lady’s life. He told her that he had seen the article and rose to leave.

Now she seemed anxious to detain him. ‘Did you notice, he said in the interview that he’d try to come and see me while the show’s down here?’

‘Yes. Well, I believe that the company are doing a great deal of rehearsal at the moment.’

‘Oh yes, I fully understand.’ She reclined elegantly in her chair, the High Priestess of the Cult, prepared to wait forever for her Mystic Experience.

Charles rang Julian Paddon from a phone-booth on the front. ‘Hello, how’s the family?’

‘Sensationally well. Damian has inherited my own innate sense of the theatre. I went to see them yesterday and he shat all over the nurse who was changing him. What timing. I think he’ll grow up to be a critic.’

‘And Helen?’

‘Fine. Uncomfortable, which is I believe a feature of the condition, but extremely cheerful. Normal cervix, I understand, will be resumed as soon as possible. No hint of purple depression or whatever it is. Can’t wait to get home.’

‘When will that be?’

‘Monday, I hope.’

‘Listen, Julian, I wanted to pick your brains again. You remember we were talking last week about the old Cheltenham company you were in with Christopher Milton.’

‘Oh yes.’

‘You did say that an actor called Gareth Warden was also in the company?’

‘Yes.’

‘Seen anything of him since?’

‘No. Why do you ask?’

‘Oh, it’s just something I’m trying to work out You’ve no idea what happened to him?’

‘Vanished off the face of the earth so far as I know.’ Julian’s words gave substance to a thought which had been forming in Charles’ mind. Christopher Milton tended to make people who challenged him ‘vanish off the face of the earth’. Was the key to the current set of crimes in a crime which had been committed long before?

‘Hmm. I see. Another thing — you don’t remember by any chance what Christopher Milton’s sex-life was like at the time?’

‘Good God. What do you want — times, dates, with whom, number of orgasms achieved? It was twenty years ago, Charles. It’s hard enough to remember what my own sex life was like.’

‘I mean just in general terms.’

‘Blimey. Well, let me think — I don’t remember him being gay, though I could be wrong. I don’t remember him taking up with anyone in the company — mind you, there wasn’t much spare there, they tended to get snapped up pretty quickly. I don’t even recall a sort of regular popsie coming down for weekends. Oh, it’s a long time ago. I honestly don’t know, Charles. I mean, keeping a track of actors’ love-lives is like doing a National Census of rabbits. Sorry, I just can’t remember.’

‘Oh well, never mind. And you can’t ever recall hearing him speak of a girl called Prudence Carr?’

‘Nope.’

‘Does the name mean anything to you?’

‘Nope.’

‘Oh. Well, I — ooh, one last thing — when he had his breakdown, was it caused by anything personal, you know, a girl who’d chucked him or…’