A Series of Murders (2 page)

The table he joined was, predictably enough, a theatrical one. A couple of the policeman-extras, who still thought of themselves as actors and were not yet reconciled to a lifetime of ‘background' work, were sitting there.

Also in uniform, though in his case a grey chauffeur's uniform, was Jimmy Sheet, who played Stanislas Braid's faithful driver, Blodd. Though Sheet was now concentrating on acting, the admiring glances of a few secretaries in the canteen reminded Charles that the young man had only recently given up his career as a pop singer.

The others at the table were Will Parton, Mort Verdon, and Tony Rees, the last two Stage Manager and Assistant Stage Manager, respectively. Charles had worked with Mort on a previous W.E.T. series,
The Strutters
, and appreciated the willowy man's outrageously camp humour. Tony Rees he didn't know well, but he had a lot of time for Will Parton, the writer who had adapted most of the
Stanislas Braid
scripts from the crime novels of W. T. Wintergreen. Will had a good line in cynical repartee, which was responding well to Mort's contrasting style as Charles joined them.

‘Right, tell me, who's this an impression of?' Mort demanded, suddenly erasing all expression from his face and freezing.

‘A zombie?' Will hazarded.

‘Close, close.' Mort relaxed. ‘No, that was Russell Bentley looking happy.'

‘Ah, of course.'

‘And this one?' Mort recomposed his face into exactly the same anonymous pose.

This time Will caught on. ‘Russell Bentley looking sad!'

‘Exactly, boofle,' Mort agreed. ‘And this morning, of course, we saw Russell Bentley stamping her little foot, didn't we?'

‘Missed that,' said Will. ‘I wasn't in the studio.'

With relish in the telling, Mort supplied the details of the recent conflict.

‘I don't blame him,' Will said at the end of the narration, ‘if he's having problems finding the character. I've read every one of the bloody books of W. T. Wintergreen, and dear Stanislas Braid still seems completely cardboard to me.'

‘But then dear Russell is a completely cardboard actor,' Mort observed judiciously, ‘so it's actually very good casting.'

‘Which is more than can be said for some of the other casting,' Jimmy Sheet announced.

Mort cocked a quizzical eyebrow at him. ‘Now who
could
you mean?'

‘Are you not feeling at home in the role of Blodd yet?' asked Will.

‘What?' Jimmy Sheet was instantly on the defensive. ‘Don't you worry, I can manage it fine. All right, I know I done the singing for a few years, but I started out as an actor. Italia Conti School, all that.'

‘That wasn't what I meant,' Will reassured Jimmy. But Charles wondered. Will was very good at needling people in an ambiguous way; he had an infallible knack of homing in on someone's insecurities.

‘All I was saying,' Will continued soothingly, ‘is that the lovely W. T. Wintergreen has put almost exactly as much reality into the character of Blodd as she has into dear old Stanislas himself. I don't envy you playing the part.'

‘Oh, I reckon it's all right,' said Jimmy. ‘Not too hard. Way I see him, Blodd's a sort of fairly chirpy cockney type, you know, good to have around, keeps everyone cheerful. Bit of an eye for the girls, too.'

Will Parton nodded gravely. ‘I'm glad you see it that way. Because that's exactly how I've written the part.'

Charles caught Will's eye, and both of them had to look away to avoid giggling. Jimmy Sheet didn't realise he was being sent up. The character he had described had very little to do with the character of Blodd as written, but it was a very good portrait of how Jimmy Sheet saw himself. Just as Russell Bentley was playing Russell Bentley, so Jimmy Sheet clearly intended to play Jimmy Sheet.

‘Has W.T.W. herself been around today?' asked Charles diffidently, shifting the subject.

‘She was in the gallery this morning,' Mort confirmed. ‘With her dear loopy sister.'

‘And they were both poking round the set first thing,' added Tony Rees in his truculent Welsh voice. ‘Disapproving of all the props and that.'

Will laughed bitterly. ‘How's Rick bearing up to them?'

‘With difficulty.'

‘I can imagine. I make a solemn vow' – the writer laid his hand on his heart – ‘that in future I will only adapt the works of dead authors. I cannot stand any more of the genteel interference of people like W.T.W. and Louisa. Why can't they do what all other writers involved in television do – just take the money, do as they're told, and shut up?'

The deep cynicism of this reminded Charles of Will's unsuccessful attempts to be an original playwright and the contempt in which he held his lucrative television contracts.

‘Anyway, I think there'll be tears before bedtime,' said Mort Verdon piously. ‘Poor young Rick is not finding life easy between the demands of his ageing star and his extremely aged crime writer.'

‘Not to mention his rather less aged starlet,' Will threw in casually.

‘Who do you mean?' asked Charles.

But Jimmy Sheet knew straightaway. With a smile of complicity to Will, he said, ‘That was what I meant about casting.'

‘Ah.'

‘Not the greatest little actress in the world, I'd say.'

‘As an actress, Sippy Stokes is absolute death.' Then Will added mischievously, ‘And she hasn't even got the excuse of having been a pop star for the last five years.'

‘'Ere, what do you think you're –?'

‘I was joking, Jimmy. Just joking.'

Jimmy Sheet subsided with a grin, but he didn't look totally reassured. Once again, Will's attack – if attack it was – had been ambiguous.

Sippy Stokes, the object of their bitchery, had been cast for the series in the role of Stanislas Braid's beloved daughter, Christina. This was another character who worked better for enthusiasts of the crime novels of W. T. Wintergreen than for Will Parton. He had had considerable difficulties in making the part even vaguely playable, though he was quite pleased with the lines he had eventually come up with. Played by an actress of real skill and energy, he reckoned they would just about work.

On the evidence of the rehearsal of the previous week and of that week's filming, Sippy Stokes was not such an actress. Even Russell Bentley, usually far too absorbed in giving his performance as Russell Bentley to notice what any of the rest of the cast did, had been heard to comment on her incompetence.

‘No, some people are born actresses,' Will Parton mused aloud, ‘some achieve actressness, but I'm afraid you could thrust everything you liked upon Sippy Stokes and you'd never make her into one.'

‘She speaks well of you, too,' said Mort.

‘Well, quite honestly,' Will persisted, ‘I would have thought the basic minimum requirement for an actress is the ability to act.'

‘Don't you believe it, boofle. Lots of actresses have made very good careers from completely different “minimum requirements”.'

‘Nell Gwynne, for example,' Charles suggested.

‘Yes, very good example. I mean, she did all right. Now there was a girl who knew her onions.'

‘Or her oranges.'

‘Thank you, Charles – always rely on you for a cheap line, can't we? Point I'm making, boofle, is that you never hear much about what old Nellie was like as an actress, do you. Never read any notices . . . “Nell Gwynne made an enchanting Ophelia . . .”'

‘Or even “I would have enjoyed the evening more without Nell Gwynne's Juliet”.'

‘Yes. Mind you, Charles, I don't think any critic would be quite that vicious.'

‘Ah.' Charles grimaced apologetically.

‘Oh, really? Who?'

‘
Surrey Advertiser
. And I'm afraid the actual line was “I would have enjoyed the evening more without Charles Paris's Romeo”.'

‘Oh, bad luck. Anyway, point I'm making, boofle, is –'

But Mort Verdon never got on to the point he was making, for they were interrupted at that moment by the arrival of Ben Docherty, the Producer, and Dilly Muirfield, the script editor, of
Stanislas Braid
. Will Parton greeted their appearance with a groan. He knew it would be him they wanted to see, and he knew it would be about more rewrites that they wanted to see him. ‘As someone once said,' he had growled at Charles a few evenings before, ‘you don't write for television, you rewrite for television.'

Sure enough, there were ‘a couple of points' on the next week's script that Ben and Dilly wanted to ‘just have another look at,' so Will allowed himself to be dragged away, protesting that he was sure Shakespeare didn't have this trouble.

Though the coffee break had another five minutes to run, the taciturn A.S.M., Tony Rees, also reckoned it was time he was getting back to the studio, and Jimmy Sheet wanted to check some lines in his dressing room.

Mort Verdon regaled Charles with a few scurrilous stories about Ben Docherty's drinking, mostly along the lines of ‘My dear, he was once so pissed he contracted a whole cast for a series one afternoon, completely forgot he'd done it, and contracted a completely different lot the next morning,' but then he, too, had to return to check through some props for the next scene.

That left Charles with his two policemen, the background artistes.

‘This is the first episode, isn't it?' asked one of them. Charles confirmed that that was indeed the case.

‘And that police station is a regular set?'

‘Oh, yes.'

‘And you're a running character?'

‘Yes,' said Charles, still having a bit of difficulty in accepting his unusual good fortune. ‘In every episode.'

‘Ah.'The background artiste nodded with satisfaction. ‘That's good.'

Charles was curious. Why?'

‘Well, you're always going to need policemen on a police-station set, aren't you?'

‘Um.'

The background artiste winked at his companion. ‘And got to keep familiar faces, haven't you? Can't keep changing the personnel in a village police station, can you? I think we could be in for a series here, Bob.'

They both looked so pleased at the idea that Charles hadn't the heart to disillusion them, to tell them that the whole point of Little Breckington Police Station, as created by the inimitable W. T. Wintergreen, was that it only had one policeman. Sergeant Clump was the village bobby; he did everything on his own; it was only in this one episode that he enlisted the help of police from other areas.

But there was no need to tell the two background artistes that. Charles knew too much about theatrical dreams and hopes to crush them so gratuitously.

HE WANDERED BACK to the studio shortly after half past eleven. Better just check what they were moving on to next. He still quite fancied a drink, but he didn't want to look desperate. Of course, there was the half bottle of Bell's back in his dressing room, but no, he should resist that. Drinking in secret always made him feel a bit like a secret drinker. Whereas having a drink in the W.E.T. bar had a more open, honest – almost virtuous – feel to it.

The rehearsal light rather than the recording light showed outside the double doors of Studio A, so Charles was not worried about slipping inside. He looked out across the five sets cunningly angled by the designer to fit into the studio space. Cameras and mobile sound booms on long cables prowled between the different locations.

Apart from the Little Breckington Police Station set, there were the hall, sitting room, and billiard room of Breckington Manor, the stately home of Stanislas Braid (who of course had aristocratic parentage and for whom money had never been a problem).

There was also the set of the great man's study, whose bookshelves were meant to reflect his polymathic knowledge. The ornaments in the room attested to his extensive travels and the gratitude of wealthy – in many cases, regal – clients all over the world. No doubt the silver elephants expressed the thanks of some maharaja whose daughter's kidnapping Stanislas Braid had solved when the entire police force of India had been baffled. The fine decanter and glasses were no doubt the gift of a Viennese countess whose husband's murderer Stanislas Braid had unmasked when the entire police force of Austria had been baffled. The fine brass candlesticks on the mantelpiece probably bore witness to the relief of a Greek shipping magnate after Stanislas Braid had defused the bomb whose whereabouts had had the police of twelve nations baffled.

And so on, and so on. At least, thought Charles Paris, whose role as Sergeant Clump was to express the continuing bafflement of the police on a weekly basis, W.E.T. hasn't stinted on the set dressing. Everything looked very solid and real. The prop buyers must have had their work cut out to find that lot. Charles didn't think he'd ever been in a television production with so many props.

No,
Stanislas Braid
would look good. But, as so often in television, Charles worried about the difference between the look of the product and the product itself. With no discredit to Will Parton, who had worked miracles with what he had been given, the scripts did have a dated feel. Not a period feel, which, Charles suspected, was what W.E.T. was really striving for, but a dated feel. There is all the difference in the world between a loving re-creation of a past period and something that just looks old-fashioned. And though it was early on in the series to form judgements, Charles had a nasty suspicion that
Stanislas Braid
would achieve the second effect.

Nothing was actually being rehearsed when Charles came into the studio, but there was a huddle of activity over in front of the sitting-room set. He moved toward it, but as he drew closer, he realised that the activity was just another argument between Russell Bentley and his Director. This time it must have been more serious, because Rick Landor had actually come down on to the studio floor and was speaking to his star without the mediation of a floor manager. Also on the scene were the thin, faded figures of W. T. Wintergreen and her sister, Louisa, no doubt contributing their own objections to the argument.