Simon Brett - Murder Unprompted

So he made a cup of coffee (realising, sensibly for once, that he’d had enough alcohol) and sat down in the low upholstered chair with wooden arms that was one of the room’s few comforts.

It didn’t take long before he was thinking of Michael Banks’s death. Something about it disturbed him — not the obvious facts of its shock and tragedy — but some discordant element, something that didn’t ring true. His dormant detective instinct was stirring.

For the moment he set aside the obvious solution. Say Alex Household hadn’t murdered the star, then who else might have had motive and opportunity to do it?

Michael Banks had been a man who inspired love, but even so Charles could produce quite a list of people who might have had a grudge against him. Whether any of the grudges was strong enough to justify murder was another consideration he put on one side for the time being.

Paul Lexington resented the money he was having to pay to Michael Banks since Bobby Anscombe had backed out of the production. His sums worked better with the star out of the way

Malcolm Harris had been furious with Michael Banks for, as he mistakenly thought, making arbitrary cuts in the author’s precious speeches.

George Birkitt resented Michael Banks’s precedence over himself. Dottie Banks might have resented her husband’s apparent liaison with Lesley-Jane Decker and killed him out of jealousy.

Lesley-Jane Decker, if she was having an affair with Michael Banks, might have turned against him because he tried to break it off or committed one of the million other offences which men can commit against women with whom they are having affairs.

Valerie Cass might have resented Michael Banks’s affair with her precious daughter, either because of his age or because she was just jealous.

That seemed to be it, as far as motives were concerned, and, even to produce that list, he’d had to scrape the barrel a bit.

And some of the people who had motives were excluded from suspicion by lack of opportunity. Lesley-Jane Decker had been on stage at the time of the shooting, so, unless she had brought in a hired killer, seemed to be in the clear.

Dottie Banks had been sitting in the auditorium, so she was exonerated, with the same proviso.

The remaining four had all been backstage at the relevant time, or could have been, but the motives Charles had managed to dredge up for them didn’t survive close scrutiny.

Paul Lexington had too much at stake in the production to take the risk of being discovered as a murderer. And, although he had benefited from the publicity surrounding the death and from the cheapness of the star’s replacement, he would also have benefited from Michael Banks’s drawing power, had he survived. No, too fanciful to consider him in the role of murderer. He might well be guilty of swindling people, but not of shooting them.

Valerie Cass’s motive seemed pretty feeble, too. She might well be capable of attacking someone who threatened Lesley-Jane or the girl’s career, which she lived with such fierce vicariousness, but there was no sign that Michael Banks did represent such threat. On the contrary she seemed rather to welcome Lesley-Jane’s attachment. She liked the reflected glory of her daughter’s being with such a famous star, and thought it could do nothing but good for the girl’s future in the theatre. Had it been Alex Household who had been shot, the situation would have been different, because she so patently disapproved of him but with Michael Banks as victim, it was difficult to cast her in the role of murderer.

And to think of George Birkitt in that light was just ridiculous. He resented Michael Banks, but no more than he resented anyone else more famous than he was. He was far too lazy (and not bright enough) to plan a murder.

Malcolm Harris was a slightly different proposition. He was clearly not a very stable person. He was absolutely obsessed by his play, and might regard what he saw as wanton tampering with it as a threat to his whole personality. But he was also a great admirer of Michael Banks, who was his dream casting for the role, and, unless one introduced very tortuous psychopathology, for him to murder the star was utterly unlikely.

And for any of these suspects to have done it, one had to posit a very unlikely set of circumstances. They would have had to know where Alex’s gun was in the Green Room, they would have had to run the risk of being observed on the O.P. side of the stage when they committed the murder. . This last was not such a great risk, because most of the stage staff were needed on the Prompt Side at that point in the play for a forthcoming scene change.

But there was one witness the potential murderer could not avoid, and that was the main suspect. No one could have gone into the O.P. wings and shot Michael Banks without being seen by Alex Household.

At that point all theories of alternative murderers fell apart.

Alex Household had a history of mental instability and paranoia. He had recently had a starring part and a new girl-friend, both of which he saw as part of a new start in his life, taken away by Michael Banks.

He had voiced threats against the star, and that very evening showed signs of starting another breakdown.

He had been sitting all evening in exactly the spot from which the gun had been fired. He was still there right up until the moment of the shooting, because Michael Banks, who didn’t know his lines, was still delivering them correctly and therefore still having them fed to him.

The gun that had shot the star was Alex Household’s gun, on which, Charles had discovered at dinner that evening, the police had found no fingerprints but those of the owner.

And, if anyone needed further proof of guilt after that, Alex Household had run away from the scene of the crime. And, in spite of police demands that he give himself up and intensive searches, he was still at large.

Anyone who tried to prove Alex Household didn’t do it, when faced with all that evidence, needed his head examined.

Oh, sod it. It was five o’clock. Charles went back on his resolution and poured himself a large Bell’s. Maybe lull himself into a little sleep. All this thought of death was unsettling him.

He remembered the words of Tate Wilkinson, the eighteenth-century actor-manager. ‘No actor can speak of death without a bottle in his hand.’

Charles Paris knew what he meant.

The Saturday’s performances of The Hooded Owl were not very good. In the euphoria of getting through the first night, Charles had forgotten how much concentration that effort had taken, and found it difficult to get back the rhythm of his lines with the A.S.M.. The sleepless night and the excesses which it had incorporated did not help, either.

And the rest of the cast were less altruistically supportive. They too were suffering from exhaustion after recent events, and had less energy to carry Charles; their main concern was just to keep themselves going. They had all reached that stage following a crisis, which can often be more difficult than the crisis itself, when it is no longer a matter of one superhuman push, but husbanding resources for an indeterminately prolonged period of stress. There was huge relief when the curtain fell on the Saturday night performance. No talk of going out for meals then, the cast rushed off to their respective homes, grateful for the knowledge that they would not have to be back in the Variety Theatre until the ‘half’ on the Monday evening.

There was still no news of Alex Household, though police investigations were being vigorously pursued. Either he had gone to ground very effectively and was in hiding, or — and this was a rumour that spread increasingly amongst the cast — he had killed himself. The more days went by, the more likely it became that the end of the police search would be the discovery of a corpse. It was a thought that depressed Charles considerably.