‘First let me ask you-why are you so interested in all this? It’s nothing to do with you.’
‘No, you’re right, it’s just… I was there… I saw it.. ’ He petered out. Tried again. ‘There are people who will feel happier when the facts are known. I mean, there’s so much gossip and speculation and accusation down at Coates Gardens…’ As he spoke, he knew it was not true. In fact there had been surprisingly little discussion among the students. Once they had exhausted the inherent drama of the situation, they all seemed quite happy to accept that it was an accident and get back to the more important drama of the shows they were putting on. ‘No, I’m sorry, I can’t really answer your question.’
‘Hmm. I’ll answer yours. The only person who stood to benefit from Willy’s death was his widow, who would thus get out of an unsatisfactory marriage without the fuss of divorce. In other words, the only person with a motive was me.’ She laughed sharply. ‘Goodbye, Mr Paris.’
He wandered disconsolately along Meadow Lane and looked back at the house. It was in a better state of repair than the others, walls and chimney repointed, missing slates replaced. And inside, was Jean Mariello as tidy and controlled? Or was she crying? He’d never know. All he did know was that she did not kill her husband. Her talk of motives had just been a contemptuous challenge to him. She had not been in Edinburgh at the time of the murder, and in the Truth Game Willy had specified that the person whose secret he had discovered was connected with the Derby group. No progress.
He felt in need of company. As a long shot, he tried the bell of Anna’s flat as he passed. Just after twelve, no reason why she should be there.
She wasn’t. He went into the Highland chic of the Ensign Ewart pub opposite and started drinking whisky. As he drank, the whole business of playing at detectives seemed increasingly pointless. If only there were someone around he could discuss the case with. Maybe some great detectives manage on their own, he thought as he downed the second large Bell’s, but right now I’d give anything for Dr Watson to walk through that door.
But the Doctor did not come and Charles drank too much on his own. The whisky did not make him think any more clearly. He looked round the pub. The office workers of Edinburgh were in huddles with their backs to him. A loud group of American tourists was being ignored at one table. The Festival influx was not welcomed by the residents. Charles tried to get another drink, but could not attract anyone’s attention. Being invisible at a bar is one of the loneliest experiences in life and he felt depressed for the first time since his arrival.
It was the interview with Jean Mariello that had done it. Up until then he had been cheerful, even buoyant after the night with Anna. But Anna was not there and it did not take long for her image to get distorted. He needed her presence to restore reality. But she was as elusive as Dr Watson.
His eyes gave up trying to catch the barman’s attention and wandered over to a notice board on which the grudging management had stuck a few of the dozens of handbills which earnest theatrical groups had thrust on them. They were on a metal clip. Oxford Theatre Group on top. That was inevitable. Their headquarters was opposite the pub and so they had a head-start on that pitch in the popular Fringe game of sticking your poster over everyone else’s.
Beside the Oxford bill was another that looked familiar. Good God, it was one of the greatest DUDS on the Fringe, Charles Paris’ So Much Comic, So Much Blood, opening Monday 19th August at one fifteen p.m. He felt a sense of urgency that amounted almost to panic.
‘Yes, sir, what can I get you?’
‘Nothing. I’ve got to rehearse.’ The barman’s bewildered stare followed him out of the pub.
Outside in the street he realised that he had had an excessive lunch for a working actor and trod with care down the steep steps of Lady Stair’s Close to the Mound. The light seemed very bright. He thought he saw the familiar figure of Martin Warburton ahead. He hurried to catch up. ‘Martin!’
But the figure did not stop. It turned right at the bottom of the steps and Charles saw the beard and glasses. It was not Martin.
He awoke on his camp-bed at about five with the worst sort of afternoon hangover. The urgent rehearsal schedule he had promised himself had petered out rather quickly. He hoped that he had not been seen lying there by too many of the group. A middle-aged man asleep in the afternoon. No doubt snoring. The monotone of the piano upstairs indicated a revue rehearsal. He hoped Anna had not seen him.
A cup of coffee might help. He eased himself downstairs to the kitchen. The day’s cook, a large girl with corkscrew curls, was chopping up more of the inevitable cabbage.
‘Where’s the coffee?’
‘Over there, behind the cornflakes.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘I’ll make you some…’
‘Thanks.’ He made to sit on a chair by the table.
‘… if you don’t mind doing something for me.’
‘What?’
‘Just empty that, would you?’
‘That’ was a large cardboard box full of rubbish-papers, sweepings, cigarette ends, kitchen refuse. The bottom felt unwholesomely soggy on his hands. Charles Paris, haulage contractors. Amplifiers, refuse-distance no object. He negotiated the load through the kitchen door and made his way to the dustbins.
There was a little room at the top of one of them. He balanced the box on the edge and tried to let the contents slip gently in.
They all came with a rush, covering his hands with tea leaves and a yellow slime that had been food. Little scraps of paper scattered all around the bin.
He pushed down the smelly pile and bent to pick up some of the litter. A lot of the paper appeared to have been torn from a big poster photograph. He picked up a piece which had printing on it.
WI
PU
He scrabbled among the other bits until he found the adjacent one which spelled out the title.
WILLY MARIELLO
PUCE
It was ax publicity poster of Willy that someone had shredded into a thousand pieces.
CHAPTER FIVE
How bless’d the heart that has a friend
A sympathising ear to lend
To troubles too great to smother!
For as ale and porter, when flat, are restored
Till a sparkling bubbling head they afford,
So sorrow is cheer’d by being poured
From one vessel to another.
From biblical times the restorative properties of a young woman’s body have been acknowledged, and Charles felt better after another night with Anna. He was amazed how much she affected him. She was beautiful, and she was knowledgeable in bed, but it was not just that. There was something about the honesty of her responses. No extravagant protestations of love, no questions about the future, just an acceptance that what was happening was good. Most people reveal their weaknesses in a close relationship and endear themselves by failure. But the nearer Charles got to Anna the more complete and integrated she seemed. And she made him feel complete too. Not two lost souls leaning against each other for support, but two independent people who
