Simon Brett - Murder Unprompted

Lesley-Jane Decker landed a very good part in a television series about the Bloomsbury Group, which guaranteed her six months’ work and national recognition when the show hit the screens. She also, in her mother’s absence, got to know her father for the first time, and found she got on with him very well.

Alex Household spent two weeks in hospital and, when he came out. decided to give up acting and join a monastery dedicated to a pantheistic view of the universe.

Peter Hickton kept his cast up most nights rehearsing for the Prince’s Theatre, Taunton’s, annual pantomime, Babes in the Wood, in which Salome Search played a somewhat gnarled principal boy.

Paul Lexington, from his new base in Hull, set up a company called Pierre Productions, whose aim was to put Northern club comics into end-of-the-pier summer seasons.

Malcolm Harris, who had received no money from the production of The Hooded Owl except for the pittance of the long-lapsed option, went back to his school teaching. In his evenings he worked on a play about Mary, Queen of Scots, because his wife’s mother had read somewhere that costume drama was coming back.

Dottie Banks continued to entertain a stream of men in Hans Crescent. Then, to everyone’s surprise, she died of a drug overdose on Christmas Eve. She must have missed her husband more than she showed.

George Birkitt received the first scripts for a new series of Fly-Buttons and sent them back to the producer, complaining that his character hadn’t got enough lines. He also opened two supermarkets, which pleased him greatly. suggesting as it did that people were starting to think of him as a star.

Wallas Ward met a very nice black dancer at a party and settled down with him in Pimlico.

Frances Paris had an offer on the house in Muswell Hill. It was two thousand less than the asking price, but, because the housing market was depressed, and on the advice of her son-in-law, she accepted it.

And Charles Paris? He got drunk.