anyone working on the pilot of
And almost all of them could, in theory, have had the opportunity to get rid of her. He didn’t know how many knew of the fire escape short cut. Presumably members of W.E.T. staff were more likely to have the information, but any one of the actors or actresses could have been told, just as he had been.
He had tried many times to reconstruct the events of that evening. He felt fairly confident that Sadie Wainwright had died after he had gone up to the bar. Though he had not actually looked down into the car park, he would surely have noticed the collapsed railing. Anyway, his natural talent for getting to bars quickly had put him ahead of most of the field of suspects.
He remembered that when he reached the bar, the only person present from
And many of the potential suspects had appeared to be in a highly emotional state. High emotion does not necessarily indicate a recent act of murder, but it can be a pointer.
Bernard Walton had looked unnaturally tense, though that could be put down to anxiety about the future of his series. Walter Proud, too, seemed to be suffering, and admitted a recent altercation with the victim of the ‘accident’. And Scott Newton, the young man whose authority his PA had systematically undermined, had been a very late arrival in the bar, and had entered in a terrible nervous state. Any one of those might have had sufficient motive to kill Sadie Wainwright.
But then so might anyone else. That was what really made Charles think the death had been an accident after all. The PA had been so rude to everyone, had antagonised so many people, that it seemed invidious to attribute her death to any one individual. It was more as if the communal will had been so unanimously hostile that an indulgent God had given her a little nudge on the fire escape as a gesture of magnanimous serendipity.
Apparently, an inquest had brought in a verdict of accidental death. No doubt the police had done their customary efficient enquiries. Why should Charles Paris question their findings?
It was all a long time ago, he decided, and he needed a drink. He had been feeling very poor and made firm resolves to cut down his expenditure.
Also, as often happened when he was feeling at his most abject, he had resolved to make contact with his estranged wife, Frances.
But Peter Lipscombe’s letter had shifted the mood. Though it didn’t contain money, it contained the prospect of money. It gave him the confidence to risk bouncing another cheque on the way to his favourite drinking club, the tatty little Montrose round the back of the Haymarket.
And he could always ring Frances another day.
‘First let me say what a pleasure it is to see you all here, and all looking so well. I get that sort of bubbly feeling that everything’s going to be okay with
‘Now what I plan to do today — I’m sorry, what Scott and I plan to do today — ’ the producer inclined his head graciously towards his Director, who acknowledged the gesture with a grin, ‘- is to have a leisurely read- through of the first five scripts — Number Six will be with us soon — which wonderboy Rod Tisdale has provided for us. .’
The wonderboy in question maintained his customary facade of a man on a bus counting the lamp- posts.
‘Now this read-through is just so’s we get a feeling of the shows — we’ll deal with any problems that may come up later. Since we start the filming in a couple of days, I think it’s just as well that you should understand the context in which your scenes occur.’
This was a concession that didn’t always happen. Charles had frequently been involved in the pre-filming of scenes which were totally meaningless to him as he acted them (and often equally meaningless when he saw the completed product on the screen).
‘Now we’ve got some really exciting locations for the series, so I think the filming should be a lot of fun.’
First time it ever has been, thought Charles sourly. His memories of filming were all of interminable waits, often in vile conditions, usually in the company of huge numbers of people with whom he had nothing in common. But he knew that directors loved it; practically every television director he’d ever met said how much he’d rather be working on film and then started the traditional moan about the demise of the British film industry. He even knew actors who enjoyed it.
‘One location in particular, which we are awfully excited to have, is the one we’re using for the Strutters’ own house exteriors. As you know, that didn’t come up in the pilot, but it was pretty well described — a large expensive house with a lot of grounds, conveniently placed on the edge of a golf course. Well, our Location Manager spent a lot of time trying to find just the right place and then — what a stroke of luck — we had the ideal house offered to us, just like that, out of the blue. And offered by someone we all know very well. Yes, good old Bernard, Bernard Walton. . he’s said we can use his place. Which just happens to fit the bill exactly. .’
Peter Lipscombe paused for impressed reaction and got a rather apathetic murmur of appreciation. Like Charles, most of those present had come to distrust Bernard Walton’s magnanimous gestures. There was usually an ulterior motive — in this case, no doubt. just to show how big-hearted he was, or to keep a kind of proprietary interest in the series, or to make sure he appeared in any publicity shots that might be taken on his premises or, thought Charles cynically, just to pocket the substantial facility fee which W.E.T. would inevitably pay for the location.
After the producer had said a few more times how exciting everything was, the read-throughs started. At first there was a certain amount of cosy laughter, but this diminished. It wasn’t that the scripts got less funny — they maintained unswervingly that level of mediocrity which Peter Lipscombe had hailed as Wildean — but everyone present began to realise the sheer volume of material they had to get through. Five half-hours — even ITV half- hours which read out at twenty minutes (Rod Tisdale’s work was always the right length) — was a hell of a lot of reading.
Charles got very bored as he waited for his fourteen lines per episode. However old he got, he never lost the actor’s adolescent habit of counting his lines. And, though his realistic view of his status prevented him from aspiring to starring roles, it didn’t stop him from finding small parts boring.
He looked around the assembly, wondering idly whether he was in the same room as the murderer of Sadie Wainwright. The little trainee, Janey Lewis, now sat in the PA’s chair to the director’s right, and clutched the PA’s symbol of authority, a stopwatch. So she had benefited directly from Sadie’s demise. Another person with a strong motive?
But then they all had strong motives. Or none of them had. Charles decided in a lazy way that he might try to find out a bit more about Sadie’s background.
In the meantime, he couldn’t help noticing again how attractive Janey Lewis was. She had had her hair cut shorter and more fashionably, and her clothes, too, looked newer and sharper. And there was an indefinable air of increased confidence about her. Maybe this had come with her elevation from trainee status to the full bossing rights of a real PA.
She caught his eye and smiled. Yes, she was attractive. Not mentally, really; conversation with her was like reading a manual of television technique. But physically. . And the older Charles got, the less he thought one should dismiss the physical.
At ten to one they finished reading the third script and a folding wall of the conference room in which they sat was pulled back to reveal a lavish buffet and — yippee! — lots of bottles of wine.
Once he was armed with a plate of chicken and Scotch egg and a large glass of red wine, it wasn’t difficult to buttonhole the PA. She didn’t seem to mind. Charles wondered what else she might not mind. But there was a problem. Had he got the energy to mug up all the vocabulary of television — VTR and MCU and OOV and POV and all that rubbish — which would be essential in this particular seduction? He rather doubted it.
‘Hello, Janey, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘With an E-Y.’ He showed off his memory.
