Simon Brett - So Much Blood

‘There’s an Oxford one, but I don’t know if it’s in print.’ You might be able to pick up a second-hand one somewhere. Or there are some fairly good selections. But look, if you want to borrow mine, do. I should know my words by now.’ He held the copy across the table.

The Laird was touched. By his values, lending a book was the highest form of friendship. ‘That’s very kind. I’ll look after it.’

‘I know you will.’

‘And I’ll make it a priority to find one for myself. Oh, you know I envy that kind of facility with words. Not just the facility-we all happen on puns occasionally-but the ability to create something out of it. It must be wonderful to be a writer.’

‘I don’t know. It was hard graft for Hood. If he hadn’t had to work so hard, he might have lived longer.’

‘Yes, but at least it’s congenial graft. I mean, writing, you’re on your own, you get on with it, you don’t have to keep getting involved with other people. You just write and send your stuff off and that’s it. A sort of remote control way of making a living.’

Charles laughed out loud. ‘James, you’ve got it all wrong. Hood would disagree with you totally. He didn’t just sit at a desk toying with his muse and packing the products off in envelopes to editors. All his life was spent scurrying round, selling his own work, sub-editing other people’s, setting up magazines. No question of remote control, his Liveli-Hood, as he kept calling it, was very much involved with other people.’

‘But some writers don’t have to do all that, Charles.’

‘Very few. In my own experience of writing plays, about ten per cent of the time is spent actually writing; ninety per cent is traipsing round like a peddler, hawking the results to managements or television companies.’

‘Oh dear. So what you are saying is that a writer’s life is just as sordid and ordinary as everyone else’s?’

‘If not more so. Hood himself, in his Copyright and Copywrong, said of writers, “We are on a par with quack doctors, street preachers, strollers, ballad-singers, hawkers of last dying speeches, Punch and Judies, conjurers, tumblers and other diverting vagabonds.”’

‘How very disappointing. I think I’d rather forget you told me that and keep my illusions of ivory towers and groves of Academe.’

They talked further about writing. James Milne admitted that he would have liked to produce something himself, but never got around to it. ‘Which means perhaps that I haven’t really got anything to say.’

‘Maybe. Though writing doesn’t have to say anything. It can just be there to entertain,’ said Charles, reflecting on his own few plays.

‘Hmm. Perhaps, but even then the writer must get a bit involved. Begin to identify with his characters.’

‘Oh, inevitably that happens.’

The Laird paused for a moment, piecing his thoughts together. ‘I was wondering if there could be anything of that behind this murder.’

‘What do you mean? Anything of what?’

‘Identification. I mean, if there’s anything in the actual situation of the killing, the way it happened.’

‘I’m still not with you.’

‘Willy Mariello was playing David Rizzio in a play based on the life of Mary, Queen of Scots. Now there are certain obvious parallels between Willy and Rizzio. There’s the Italian name, for a start. I know there are lots of Scots with Italian names, but it’s a coincidence. Then they both played the guitar.’

‘So what you’re suggesting,’ Charles said slowly, ‘is that someone got obsessed with the whole Mary, Queen of Scots story and identified with Rizzio s murder and… Incidentally, who did kill Rizzio?’

‘A lot of people, I seem to recall. I think Darnley was the prime mover. Who’s playing Darnley in the show?’

‘I don’t know. I could check. And you think when we’ve got that name we’ve got our murderer?’ He could not keep a note of scepticism out of his voice.

‘It’s just another possible line of enquiry. Something that struck me.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Well, we’re not getting far on any other tack, are we?’

Charles hesitated. ‘No.’

‘You haven’t found out anything else, have you?’

‘No,’ he lied. For some reason he did not want to tell anyone about Pam Northcliffe’s story of Willy and Lesley. Not yet.

The Laird was going to browse round some book shops, but Charles did not feel like it. He was still wound up after the performance, and, since licensing hours did not permit his usual method of unwinding, he decided an aimless stroll round Edinburgh might do the trick.

The stroll soon ceased to be aimless. He had only gone a few hundred yards and was turning off George IV bridge into Chambers Street when he saw Martin Warburton. Striding along on the opposite side of the road with the same expression of blinkered concentration that he had had the day before. And again heading for Nicholson Street.

It is a lot easier following someone when you know where he is going and Charles felt confident of Martin’s destination. He was right. The boy again disappeared behind the blue door.

The excitement of seeing the same thing happen two days running quickly gave way to confusion as to what should be done about it. Charles still did not know which flat Martin had gone into and did not feel in the mood for an elaborate masquerade as a reader of gas-meters to gain access. Apart from the risk of illegal impersonation, what would he say if he did find Martin? There was probably some simple explanation for the boy’s actions. He had friends living in the flats. Maybe even a girl-friend. Something quite straightforward. Charles was just letting his imagination run riot and suspicion was clouding his judgement.

But he did not want to go. He might be on the verge of some discovery. Better join the bus queue opposite while he worked out a plan of campaign.

As he stood with the laden housewives and noisy schoolchildren he knew it was not really getting him anywhere. No plan of campaign emerged. If he really wanted to find out what Martin was doing, then the only course was to enter the flats. Otherwise he might just as well give up the whole business, leave Willy Mariello to the police and forget any detective fantasies he might be nurturing.

A bus arrived and the queue surged forward, canny housewives wedging themselves into good seats and practised schoolchildren scampering upstairs to good fooling-about positions. One or two of them gave curious looks to the man at the stop who still queued altruistically without taking his due prize of a seat. The maroon and white bus passed on.

Charles felt exposed and ridiculous on his own at the bus stop. He turned to go, determined to chuck the whole business and resign himself to just being an actor, when he heard the bang of a door on the other side of the road.

It was the blue one, and a thin figure was walking away from it towards the centre of the city. Walking with a determined gait, but not walking like Martin Warburton. It was a slightly unnatural heavier step.

And not looking like Martin Warburton either. A woollen hat gave the impression of short hair. A beard and moustache. Glasses. Dressed in an old donkey jacket and shapeless twill trousers. A khaki knapsack slung across one shoulder. And this strange ponderous walk.

It was the figure whom Charles had seen the previous week on the steps down to the Mound. And it was Martin Warburton in disguise.

By eleven o’clock that evening Martin’s identity games did not seem very important. One reason was that the afternoon’s adventures had not led to anything. Charles had continued tailing his disguised quarry halfway across Edinburgh until Martin had disappeared inside the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Queen Street. Rather than risk raising suspicions by a confrontation inside the building, the self-questioning sleuth had waited twenty minutes some way down the road. Then he had followed the donkey jacket back to Nicholson Street, missed a few more buses while the young man was reconverted into Martin Warburton and trailed behind that familiar figure back to Coates Gardens. All of which left Charles with sore feet and the feeling that if Martin wanted to do his Edinburgh sightseeing in disguise, that was his own affair. And that Charles Paris needed a drink.