anything. His usual solutions to the problem-drink and sex-were ineffectual. He drank heavily, but it gave him no elation, merely intensified his mood. And his self-despite was so strong that he knew reviving an old flame or chasing some young actress would only aggravate it. He tried to write, but couldn’t concentrate. Instead he sat in his room, his mind detached, looking down on his body and despising what it saw. Forty-seven years old, creatively and emotionally sterile. He thought of going to see Frances, but didn’t feel worthy of her warmth and eternal forgiveness. She had sent him four stout dependable Marks and Spencer shirts for Christmas, nursing him like a mother who respects her child’s independence. He’d sent her Iris Murdoch’s latest novel. In hardback, which he knew she’d think an unnecessary extravagance.
His only comfort was that the following Monday he was to start filming The Zombie Walks. Though he didn’t view the prospect with any sort of enthusiasm (he’d been sent a script, but hadn’t bothered to read it) he knew that activity of some sort, something he had to do, was always better than nothing. Eventually, if enough kept happening, the mood would lift without his noticing its departure and he would hardly remember the self-destructive self that went with it.
But as he walked through the dim streets of London to Archer Street on the Friday evening, the mood was still with him. He felt remote, viewing himself as a third person. And he had a sense of gloom about the findings of the inquest.
When Jacqui opened the door of her flat, he knew from her face that his forebodings had been justified. She was silent until he’d sat down. Then she handed him a glass of Southern Comfort and said, ‘Well that’s that.’
‘What?’
‘According to the coroner, Marius died of natural causes.’
‘A heart attack?’
‘They had some fancy medical term for it, but yes, that’s what they said.’
‘Well.’ Charles sighed. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. Jacqui looked on the verge of tears, and, as usual, converted her emotion into a violent outburst. ‘Little Arsehole’s been clever, the sod. He must have given Marius an electric shock, or injected air into his veins, or-’
‘Jacqui, you’ve been watching too much television. That sort of thing just doesn’t happen. I’m afraid we have to accept the fact that Marius did die from natural causes, and that all our suspicions of Nigel have been slander, just based on dislike and nothing else.’
‘No, I don’t believe it.’
‘Jacqui, you’ve got to believe it. There’s nothing else you can do.’
‘Well, why did he go down to Streatley on the Saturday night, and make such a bloody secret of it?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps for the reasons he said. He was worried about his father, so he went down, they had a few drinks, then he came back to London.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, that won’t wash.’
‘Why not?’
‘He and Marius didn’t get on at the time. We know that from the new will and the letter to me and-’
‘Perhaps they had another reconciliation.’
‘Piss off, Charles. There’s something fishy and Nigel’s behind it. Marius was murdered.’
‘Jacqui, the most sophisticated forensic tests have proved that he wasn’t.’
‘Well, they’re wrong. They’re all bloody wrong. Nigel paid them off. He bribed them.’
‘Now you’re getting childish.’
‘I am not getting bloody childish! ‘Jacqui stood up and looked as if she was about to hit him. Charles didn’t respond and after a frozen pause, she collapsed into a chair and burst out crying. When he had calmed her, she announced very coolly. ‘I’m not going to stop, Charles. I’ll get him. From now on there’s a war between Nigel and me.’
‘Well, you certainly nailed your colours to the mast by setting up the post-mortem.’
‘Yes. And I’m going to win.’ Thereafter she didn’t mention anything about either of the Steens for the rest of the evening. She cooked another of her frozen meals (country rissoles) and Charles drank moderately (a rather vinegary Spanish Rioja). Then they watched the television. She had just bought (in anticipation of her legacy) a new Sony portable (‘I’ll be sitting about a lot when I get very big’). There wasn’t much on the box, but that night it was preferable to conversation. At ten-thirty, by Government orders, came the close-down. Charles rose and after a few mumbled words about thanks, and keeping in touch, and being cheerful, and seeing himself out, he left.
Jacqui’s flat was on the top floor and the bulb in the light on her landing had long since gone and not been replaced. As Charles moved forward to the familiar step, he felt his ankle caught, and his body, overbalancing, hurtled forward down the flight of stairs.
The noise brought Jacqui to the door and light spilled out over the scene. ‘Charles, are you all right? Are you drunk, or what?’
He slowly picked himself up. The flight was only about ten steps down to the next landing, and though he felt bruised all over, and shocked, nothing seemed to be broken. ‘No, I’m not drunk. Look.’
And he pointed up to the top step. Muzzily outlined in the light was a wire, tied tightly between the banisters on either side. It was about four inches above the step. Jacqui turned pale, and let out a little gasp of horror. ‘Good God. Were they trying to kill me?’
‘No!’ said Charles, as he leant, aching, against the wall at the foot of the flight. Suddenly he realised the flaw in the will Marius Steen had so hastily improvised in the South of France. ‘I don’t think it was you they wanted to kill. Just your baby.’
XIV
The zombie walks was one of the worst film scripts ever conceived. The Zombie (played by a well-known Horror Film Specialist) had walked for a thousand years in a subterranean cavern which was broken open by an earthquake in Lisbon. By means not specified, from Portugal he arrived in Victorian England, where he got the idea that Lady Laetitia Winthrop (played by a ‘discovery’ from the world of modelling, whose acting talent was 36-23-36) was his long-lost love from a world before the subterranean cavern. He therefore determined to seize her from Winthrop Grange where she lived with her father Lord Archibald Winthrop (played by a well-known character actor who did commercials for tea-bags). After the Zombie’s travels through Victorian London (where, incidentally, he committed the crimes attributed to Jack the Ripper) he arrived at the Grange and enlisted the help of Tick, a deformed coachman of evil character (played by Charles Paris). As the Zombie progressed, he committed murder after murder, and his victims, rather than dying and lying down, became zombies too, until at the end Winthrop Grange was besieged by a whole army of the walking dead. Had it not been for the activities of Lady Laetitia’s lover, bold Sir Rupert Cartland (played by an odious young actor who’d risen to prominence by playing a tough naval lieutenant in a television series) making with the garlic and the wooden stakes (a bit of vampire lore crept into the script), Lady Laetitia and her father would have been turned into zombies and carried back to the subterranean cave, where they would never be heard of again. Which, to Charles’ mind, wouldn’t have been a bad thing.
They were filming at Bloomwater, a stately home in Berkshire which had been built by Sir Henry Manceville, an eccentric nobleman, in 1780. Manceville had designed it himself as a great Gothic palace and even incorporated the specially-built ruins of an abbey into one wing. It was a monumental folly, which could have been made for horror films. In fact, had the cinema been invented at the time, it probably would have been. Sir Henry Manceville had been obsessed with ghosts and, in later life, when his eccentricity slid into madness, he used to terrify his servants by walking the Long Gallery, dressed in a sheet, dragging a length of chain and wailing piteously.
Bloomwater’s present owner was a more prosaic figure, Sir Lionel Newman, the paper magnate. He was a man who, like Marius Steen, had risen from humble origins to immense wealth and had surrounded himself with all the symbols of the established aristocracy. His association with Marius Steen had been the reason why Bloomwater was being used for the filming.
Charles found that, as ever, making a film involved much more hanging around than actual work. The director, a little Cockney who glorified in the name of Jean-Luc Roussel, generated an impression of enormous
