Situation Tragedy

‘Maybe.’ Charles grinned. The atmosphere between them had relaxed and he felt he could ask his question. He also felt a bit sheepish about the elaborate charade he had prepared for this interview. Direct questions so often succeed in getting direct answers.

But John Odange was still conducting the conversation. ‘Okay. I’ll tell you anything I can, man. Though I don’t think there’s much. I didn’t see anything odd. I was too busy pouring cream over the fat cats from television.’

‘It’s not something you saw, it’s something you said.’

John Odange shrugged and smiled disarmingly. ‘I said a lot that night. Man, did I say a lot that night.’

‘Yes, what interests me is that at one point you complained about all the film vehicles and cars that were blocking the roads.’

‘Perfectly justified complaint, man. It was like there was a Cup Final on.’

‘Yes, I agree. But what I want you to remember is exactly what you said. You gave a great list of all the cars there were blocking streets. .’

‘All company cars too, I bet.’

‘Probably. What I want to know is, was that just a random list you made up, or had you actually seen all the cars you mentioned?’

‘What you mean exactly?’

‘You said, as I recall, that the streets were full of BMWs, Rovers and Mercs.’

‘Sure.’

‘Did you actually see all those?’

‘Certainly did.’

‘You also mentioned Daimlers.

John Odange smiled wryly. ‘Ah, I think I might have been guilty of a little poetic licence there. I didn’t see a Daimler; it just fitted in the rhythm of my rhetoric.’

Oh dear. That didn’t augur well for the next question, the important question. ‘You also mentioned Bentleys.

‘Yes.’

‘Does that mean you saw a Bentley?’

‘Sure did.’ Charles breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Yes, there was a dirty great brute of a Bentley hidden behind an old garage in a side street. I saw it as I walked along here.’

‘What colour was it?’

‘Green. Great big green bugger. Vintage, I’d say.’

There was only one person connected with The Strutters who possessed such a car. And that was a person who was supposed to be at home in bed on the night of the filming, while his wife went to the location in a minicab.

Charles had got the information he required. He might have felt a little more satisfaction with his detective skills, though, if he had actually interviewed his informant, rather than being interviewed by him.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Barton Rivers had had the opportunity on every occasion. When Sadie Wainwright died, he had been in W.E.T. House and would have had plenty of time to arrange the broken railing and help her on her way. The Bentley had been the last car down before Bernard’s Rolls on the day Scott Newton met his end. There was no reason why Barton shouldn’t have parked for a few moments out of sight by the gates and slipped back after Bernard Walton had passed to topple the flower-urn. A Bentley made a very effective weapon to run over Rod Tisdale, and its presence near the filming location made it quite possible that Barton had slipped out in the confusion to sabotage the light that killed Robin Laughton.

Four deaths, and he could have done them all. In fact, it made much more sense to suspect Barton than his wife. Charles now felt rather sheepish about his suspicions of Aurelia. Even if her supposed motivation, the protection of her little dog, were not now irrelevant, there was still a strong incongruity of her in the role of murderer. She seemed a remarkably sane woman and, particularly in the case of Rod Tisdale, very unlikely to have been able to commit the crimes, even if she had wished to. So far as Charles knew, she couldn’t drive, and the idea of that wispy beauty deliberately running someone over was ridiculous.

And yet it had been definitely to her that Sadie had addressed the words which had stimulated thoughts of murder in the first place. That still fitted rather uncomfortably into the new scenario. Charles’s only possible solution was that Aurelia had threatened the PA in a fit of anger, never meaning to carry out her threat, but that Barton, in his unhinged gallantry, had leapt to his wife’s defence and done the deed.

And had he had the same motivation for the other crimes? Were they all born of some perverted sense of honour? Or was there perhaps no continuing logic to them at all? Were they just random blows from a madman?

Because there was no doubt that Barton Rivers was mad, but whether there was any method in his madness, Charles could not yet work out. The only consistent thread in the deaths was that they were all directed against people connected with The Strutters (though, as yet, no member of the cast had been injured). Maybe that fact supplied logic; maybe this massacre was the actor’s revenge on all the production staff he had ever worked with. It seemed far-fetched.

But if a madman were stage-managing all the deaths, that did at least explain their random nature. Rod Tisdale’s was the only one aimed at a specific target. All the others could have struck at a variety of people, or could have misfired and injured nobody.

But was Barton just gleefully playing the role of an unselective god of destruction, or was there somewhere in his fuddled mind a pattern to the killings?

Another question that worried Charles was the unavoidable one of how much Aurelia knew of her husband’s activities. Obviously she wasn’t an accomplice, but, as the deaths mounted, she must have come to suspect something. If Barton had stopped and slipped back to move the urn at Bernard’s place, even if she didn’t think it odd at the time, subsequent events must have made her suspicious. Equally, she must have known that he was out in the car at the time of Rod Tisdale’s death.

And yet she seemed to want the business sorted out and ended. Charles could not forget her appeal to him which had filled him with such crusading fervour. ‘And I do appreciate what you’re doing for us. If there is a solution to all this, then I’m sure you’re the one to find it.’

In the light of his recent thinking, her words took on a different emphasis. The important word became ‘us’. I appreciate what you’re doing for us. Was she tacitly admitting that the problem was one that she and her husband shared? That she knew what he was doing, but was powerless to stop him?

Another thought followed hard on that. He remembered when he had asked whether Cocky had been poisoned, Aurelia’s face had registered shock. Perhaps the dog had been killed, and perhaps Barton had done it, as a threat to buy his wife’s continuing silence. Maybe he had threatened her own life too. Charles knew that many things happened inside marriages which were invisible to outsiders. Was it fear that kept Aurelia Howarth so tightly bound to her lunatic husband?

He didn’t think he was going to find out any answers to these questions until The Strutters got back into production again. Three of the deaths had taken place on production days, and the fourth, Rod Tisdale’s, had been right in the middle of a very busy rehearsal schedule. Charles somehow didn’t think much would happen until they started work on the next batch of shows. And then he was determined to watch Barton Rivers like a hawk whenever he came near the production. There was still no real evidence to trap the madman. But Charles was determined to find some before there was another ‘accident’.

He got a batch of new scripts through the post a couple of days before the next read-through. Willy and Sam Tennison had made predictable changes in the show’s direction. Not only, as anticipated, had they brought in a semi-permanent girlfriend for the Nick Coxhill figure, they had even got the Colonel and Mrs Strutter exchanging darlings like newly-weds. This softening of their relationship weakened the aggressive crustiness of the Colonel’s character and, since that was the main basis of the series’ comedy, Charles thought George Birkitt might have something to say about it at the next read-through.