Murder in the Title (25 page)

‘Alexander Pope, I think.'

The journalist nodded. ‘Sounds right. And somebody else said it was incurable.'

‘That, I happen to know, was Abraham Cowley.'

Frank Walby mimed clapping. ‘Oh, go to the top of the class, that boy. Very good.'

‘I seem to have a knack of remembering depressing quotations.'

‘Oh, you should do a book of them I can see it –
The Oxford Book of Depressing Quotations
, edited by Charles Paris. “Ideal bedside reading for all would-be suicides.” Sell like hot cakes, that would.'

Charles grinned. Maybe the evening wouldn't turn out so badly after all.

‘You've heard you'll have to wait a bit to review
Shove It
?'

‘Yes. Friday, isn't it?'

‘Uhuh. Should be. Are you going to do another of your swingeing notices?'

‘I'm not sure. I don't know that the last one really did the theatre much good. And, God knows, it needs all the help it can get at the moment.'

‘Yes.' With his new knowledge of Donald Mason, Charles now realized that the appeal for Walby to judge the Regent's productions more rigidly was just another cynical device to weaken the theatre further. ‘No, I think you should go back to your old cosy style.'

‘You may be right. Will I like
Shove It
?'

‘Well, don't let me prejudice you in any way, but I think you'll hate every minute of it.'

‘Oh dear.' Walby groaned. ‘I can imagine exactly what I'll write The bold decision to stage that controversial play,
Shove It
, was fully justified at the Regent Theatre last night. A splendid cast did more than justice to . . .' Pap, pap, pap.'

‘But generous to an ailing institution.'

‘Yes. And at least it won't get me any threatening letters.'

‘Why? Did the last one?'

‘Oh yes. Didn't I show you this?' He pulled a crumpled letter out of an equally crumpled jacket and handed it over.

Charles skimmed the contents. ‘. . . filthy abuse of my work . . . showing your total ignorance of the theatre . . . not the sort of thing I take lightly . . . would advise you to be careful walking round after dark . . . not the first time I've had to defend myself from bastards who attack my work . . .' He looked up. ‘It's not signed.'

‘No, but it's obvious who it comes from, isn't it?'

‘Leslie Blatt?'

‘Yes.' Walby chuckled. ‘Out to murder me – and presumably anyone else who disparages his magnum opus.'

Charles stared. His mind was racing. ‘He hasn't made any attack on you?'

‘No,' Walby replied with a grin. ‘I wait in fear and trembling.'

‘Maybe you should,' said Charles slowly.

He pieced it together. Perhaps there were two parallel but unconnected sequences of crimes. The crimes against the theatre, perpetrated by Schlenter Estates' cuckoo in the nest. And crimes against individuals, perpetrated by a crazed failed writer.

First, the stabbing . . . Leslie Blatt had thought ‘young Mr Smartypants' was in the cupboard. And Rick Harmer had constantly derided the quality of
The Message Is Murder
.

Then the hanging . . . Gordon Tremlett, in his unthinking way, had spoken to the author of his ‘rubbishy old play'.

And Antony Wensleigh, in his letter to Leslie Blatt, had said what he thought of it in no uncertain terms. And Antony Wensleigh had died.

For the first time, Charles wondered whether it really had been suicide.

Frank Walby was looking at him, rather puzzled by his silence.

‘Frank, total change of subject – Tony's death . . .'

‘Yes. What about it?'

‘You covered it for the press, didn't you?'

‘Yes. Even made the nationals – just.'

‘You think it was for real, don't you?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘That it really was suicide?'

‘Oh, you want it to be a murder, do you?' The journalist chuckled. ‘High drama that would be, wouldn't it? No, I'm sorry, Charles. It was obviously intentional. He left this note. The police showed it to me.'

‘Who was it addressed to?'

‘Nothing written on the envelope. Just an ordinary Regent Theatre one.'

‘Can you remember the exact wording?'

‘Don't know, but I wrote it down.'

The crumpled jacket yielded an equally crumpled shorthand notebook. Frank found the place and handed the book over.

The words Charles read he had seen before.

‘SORRY ABOUT THE TOTAL COCK-UP OF EVERYTHING. NO EXCUSES. YOURS ABJECTLY, TONY.'

Charles rushed into the theatre. His mind had done a complete U-turn, but was picking up speed in its new direction.

He was no longer thinking of Tony's apparent suicide as the work of Leslie Blatt. His suspicion had returned firmly to Donald Mason.

The coincidence was too great. Tony wouldn't have couched his suicide note in exactly the same words as his apology of the rehearsal room booking mix-up, though to someone who had not seen the letter in its original context, it could well read that way. Donald Mason had recognized that ambivalence and its potential future value when he had pocketed the note. And forgotten that Charles Paris had witnessed his action.

Nella Lewis was in the Green Room, sorting through some
Shove It
props. She looked mournful, bereft of Laurie Tichbourne and knowing that she was pretty unlikely ever to see him again. But Charles had no time for chat and sympathy. He just waved and went on stage to the ladder to the gallery.

He tried to remember exactly what Tony Wensleigh had said on the evening he died. He had been manic, nearly hysterical, but certain points had emerged both in his conversation with Charles and in his phone-call to his wife.

One was that he reckoned he definitely had an enemy within the Regent Theatre set-up. Charles could now confidently identify that person as Donald Mason.

The second point was that, after a long period of confusion, Tony implied that he had at last made some breakthrough, perhaps found actual proof of his enemy's malpractices.

Third, he intended to confront his enemy. And, perhaps already suspicious of his opponent's ruthlessness after the accident to Gordon Tremlett, he wanted to have the gun with him when he made the confrontation.

Charles had rushed out of the prop store when Tony fired at him (a firing he now felt sure had been unintentional). Tony hadn't followed him, but had locked the back door and gone out at the front into the administrative office. Before the details of the suicide came out, Charles had assumed that the Artistic Director had gone to confront his General Manager.

Suppose, after all, that was what had happened. Tony had bearded Donald in his office and presented him with the evidence of his misdoings. An argument had developed, in the course of which Donald had got hold of the gun and shot his accuser. He then arranged the scene to look like suicide, put the note he had kept in the drawer, and went backstage.

He would have had plenty of time to do this before Charles arrived. And, while the actor had gone the long way, round the outside of the theatre, Donald could have cut through either the props store or the Wardrobe store. (In fact, Charles reasoned, if he had taken the latter course, he could almost guarantee not to be seen. It would have been towards the end of Act Two, when almost all of the stage staff were busy arranging the hanging of Colonel Fripp, and all of the rest of the cast were on stage.) Donald could then sit in the Green Room with a paper, which was how Charles found him when he broke the news of Tony's death, and give the impression he had been there for hours.

But what was the evidence that Tony had produced which so threatened Donald? Perhaps he had found out the Schlenter connection and intended to reveal it at the Extraordinary Board Meeting of the following evening. Though Donald was unworried by exposure after Tony was dead, an attack from the living Artistic Director might ruin his plans and build up sympathy for the Regent's plight.

Whatever it was, Charles felt convinced that the key to the secret lay in the props store.

He opened the door and switched on the light. The nearer bulb, which Tony Wensleigh's bullet had shattered, had not been replaced, but the far side of the room, which was the part Charles was interested in, was clearly illuminated. He moved across through the bizarre juxtaposition of halberds and croquet mallets, fridges and thrones, wooden lamp-posts and polystyrene boulders.

He remembered Tony Wensleigh shuffling together a pile of breastplates when Charles had disturbed him. Had he been hiding something?

Charles started cautiously sifting through the armour. The breastplates were just the top of the pile. Beneath was an assortment of small props – cigar boxes, biscuit tins, ice buckets, jewel cases.

It didn't take him long to find what he was looking for.

They were inside a treasure chest. It was crudely painted, like something out of a pirate cartoon, and presumably only got an airing when the right pantomime came up. A fairly safe hiding-place, unlikely to be investigated from one year's end to the next.

They were papers, most of them with Antony Wensleigh's signature. Some meant nothing, but one or two Charles could identify.

There was a letter to the costume hire company, cancelling the order for a Henry VIII ensemble.

There was a letter to the caretaker of the Drill Hall, confirming that the Regent Theatre wished to continue their booking.

There were cheques to settle accounts with wigmakers and scenery builders, cheques that never arrived, prompted reminders and lowered the theatre's public credibility.

There were charming letters to actors, which they never received and so added the Regent to the list of unhelpful theatres that didn't give a damn.

There was the whole history of the tarnishing of the public image of Antony Wensleigh and the theatre he so loved.

It must have been so simple. The prop store was directly next to the administrative office. Tony Wensleigh would rush in early, before rehearsal, or late, after rehearsal, and scribble off a few letters. Donald Mason, in the office all day, would have leisure to select which letters could be mislaid to best effect and slip them into his secret cache whenever he wanted to. Then he had only to play on the Artistic Director's natural abstraction and vagueness to convince him of his omissions, meanwhile maintaining a whispering campaign about his colleague's inefficiency and perhaps worse.

But Tony had discovered what was going on and intended to reveal all to the Board at their Extraordinary Meeting.

First, though, he had confronted his enemy.

Charles decided to do the same. The discovery of the papers made him so angry that, whatever the risk, he had to satisfy the anger by another confrontation with Donald Mason.

He braced himself behind the front door of the props store.

Then he swung it open.

As he suspected, it opened straight into the administrative office.

But there was nobody there to confront. The room was empty.

Back in the props store, he looked again at the papers and realized their worthlessness. They confirmed Donald Mason's position as saboteur at the Regent, but he had already confessed to that. And that was the crime he would never be charged with.

With regard to murder, Charles still had nothing. Nothing but a strong conviction.

The note was not enough. He had been alone when he witnessed Donald pocketing it. Maybe forensic tests could prove it had been written a few weeks earlier than it was supposed to have been, but Charles didn't reckon much on his chances of persuading the police to get to the point of forensic tests.

No, he was stymied again. Lots of suspicion – no proof.

He felt furious. He looked at his watch. Still not half-past six. Frank Walby would probably still be in the pub. Back to Plan A for the evening. Get hideously smashed.

He stood there for one last moment in the props store.

Vividly his mind played back his last encounter with Tony Wensleigh.

The man had straightened the pile of breastplates and . . . something else. A string or something. He had tucked a string behind the grandfather clock.

Charles moved towards it. He couldn't see anything.

He shifted the clock round and light spilled into the spaces behind.

It wasn't a string. It was a wire.

A thin grey wire.

One end led down to a ventilation brick in the wall to the administrative office.

The other led up into the back of the grandfather clock where the movement had once been, but where now nestled a portable cassette recorder.

The ‘Play' button and the ‘Record' button were both pressed down. But when Charles cancelled them and tried to rewind, nothing happened. The batteries had been allowed to run down. No one had ever switched it off.

The man who switched it on had not lived to switch it off.

Metaphors, Charles reflected wryly, do also have literal meanings, as he recalled Martha Wensleigh's report of her husband's words on the evening of his death:

‘He said he'd finally sorted it out. He said it had all been very confusing, but he was getting there. Soon he'd have it all taped and the pressure would be off.'

Nella was still in the Green Room.

‘Is there a cassette recorder anywhere in the building?' Charles asked, panting after his rush down the ladder.

She looked surprised. ‘Yes, there's one we sometimes use for playing in sound effects at outside rehearsals.'

‘Can I use it?'

The Green Room, he decided, was too public; the wrong person might walk in; so he took the recorder to the Number One dressing room, which had a door which locked.

‘You come and listen, Nella. I want a witness.'

‘What is all this?'

But she was intrigued and followed him into the dressing room. He locked the door and put the cassette in the player. He switched on.