years before, they had remained friendly and he had even gone back to her from time to time. She made no demands on him, but her presence, just when he was feeling secure of his relationship with Anna, was embarrassing.
He tried not to be too off-hand when she came round backstage; he had no desire to hurt her. She looked harassed and was obviously having difficulty controlling her two charges outside the school context. The white girl was dumpy and called Candy; the black girl was splendidly tangible and called Jane; both regarded Edinburgh as an opportunity to be emancipated and meet men.
Husband and wife exchanged Edinburgh addresses and parted amicably with vague intentions to meet up again. The encounter brought a little cloud of depression into Charles’ sunny outlook.
It was not until about half past six that the cloud started to look stormy. The Mary cast had been rehearsing all afternoon, but most of them were released for the evening, because Michael Vanderzee wanted to work on the Mary/Bothwell scenes for an hour until Anna had to go to the revue. After a cabbage supper at Coates Gardens, the actor playing John Knox (nicknamed ‘Opportunity Knox’ by the rest of the cast) suggested a trip to the pub. Darnley, Ruthven and Cardinal Beaton thought it was a good idea. So did the new David Rizzio, Sam Wasserman. Charles decided that he too would like a drink.
In the Haymarket pub, he discovered that student unrest manifests itself in reluctance to be first to the bar, so he bought the round. Without conscious engineering, he found himself alone at a table with Sam.
The author of Mary, Queen of Sots was a young American with fine blond hair, a woffly ginger moustache and black-rimmed round glasses. He wore a thick check lumberjack shirt, the inevitable blue jeans and yellow-laced brown boots. He had arrived in Edinburgh that day, just in time to hear the boom of the one o’clock gun fired from the Castle and become immediately embroiled in one of Michael Vanderzee’s workshops.
‘That was after two solid days’ travelling. I got Mike’s telegram from the Poste Restante in Brindisi, and I just dropped everything and came. I mean, my God. I really care about this show…’
As soon as Sam started speaking, Charles realised why the tete-a-tete had been so easily arranged. Sam Wasserman was a bore, one of those instantly identifiable bores who has the ability to make the most interesting anecdote tedious, who can destroy by endless detail. But as well as qualifying as one of this international type, Sam also demonstrated that refinement of the quality which is peculiar to earnest young American academics. A glaze crept over Charles’ eyes as the monologue continued.
‘… In fact, Mary, Queen of Sots derives directly from the presentation techniques I developed in a show based on the Boston Tea Party for my Master’s thesis at U.S. C…’
‘U.S.C.?’ Charles queried weakly.
‘University of Southern California. I did my Master’s there before coming to Derby. In Drama and Creative Writing. When I say my project was based on the Boston Tea Party, I mean of course loosely based. It concentrated on the ethnico-political problems of the American Indians. Viewed of course from a Socialist standpoint. The central allegorical symbol was the fact that the Boston Tea Party was perpetrated by white men disguised as Indians. White usurping the place of red. Like corpuscles. I used the analogy of leukaemia.’
Charles concentrated and tried to nudge the conversation in the direction he wanted. ‘But you come to this show in rather macabre circumstances.’
The nudge was insufficient; Sam needed actual derailment. ‘The macabre is very much an integral part of my writing. And the bizarre. Another image I developed in the U.S.C. show,’ he steamrollered on, ‘was the unusual ability of the Navajo Indians to walk along girders at great height as if they were on the ground. It’s a different spatial concept. I related that to the myopic nature of the social services…’
‘Oh.’ Charles found himself nodding like a toy dog in the back of a car. He made another supreme effort to manhandle Sam off his monologue. ‘What I meant was that Willy Mariello was killed with a knife and that’s why you’re here actually taking part in Mary, Queen of Sots.’
For a moment it seemed to have worked. Sam looked straight at him and was silent for a long time before his continuation showed that Charles had failed. ‘Well, of course, Mary is an entirely different proposition, in spite of certain similarities of technique. And in fact, from an allegorical point of view, it’s very apt that the show should be born in an atmosphere of violence.
‘You see, the basic allegory of Mary, Queen of Sots is the historical parallel. The original Mary’s life was stained with blood. In my version, Mary, Queen of Scots represents Scotland and the natural wealth of her oil resources.’
‘Oh yes,’ Charles mouthed, wilting.
‘Yes,’ said Sam, as if it were a surprising affirmation. ‘Now Mary’s two husbands, Lord Darnley and the Earl of Bothwell, I take to represent England and the good old U.S. of A., the two countries who want to control her wealth. Queen Elizabeth, who ordains her execution, is the Arab states, who hold the real power in oil politics. Neat, huh?’
Charles, suffering from mental indigestion at the thought of this laboured allegory being expounded in Creative Writing, nodded feebly. But he saw a slight chance. ‘Where does David Rizzio fit into this scenario?’
‘David Rizzio represents the ecological lobby who might argue against the exploitation of oil resources in favour of a more medieval economic structure. For that reason, he gets killed off pretty early.’ Sam chuckled at his own intellectual audacity.
It might be a tiny lever to shift the conversation and Charles seized it. ‘But not killed off as early as Willy Mariello was.’
‘No.’
Before Sam had time to relate the death to one of his allegories, Charles pressed on. ‘You must have been pretty cut up to hear about Willy.’
‘Shocked certainly. I mean one is always shocked to hear of a young person’s death; it’s a kind of suspension of continuity. And obviously there was a dramatic element in this particular event.’
‘But you must have felt this more. To lose a friend…’
‘I didn’t know Mariello that well.’
‘I thought it was through you that Willy came to be in this show in the first place.’
‘That’s true, but only indirectly. I suppose the suggestion that he should do the music came from me-I put it up to the D.U.D.S. committee-but that was on the recommendation of someone else.’
‘Who?’
‘A girl involved in the society suggested it. I thought it was a good idea, because, you know, he was a professional musician and into rock music and I, well, I’ve got a kind of basic musical knowledge, but really my talent lies with words. And certainly the settings Mariello did for my lyrics were infinitely superior to anything I could have done. He changed the odd word here and there and I had to pull him up on that, but basically it was great. Besides, I believe very strongly in people working together under a kind of creative umbrella unit.’
‘Why do you think the girl recommended Willy to you?’ Charles asked slowly.
‘Well, like I say, he was very good. And he’d been hanging round the Derby campus for a bit and apparently, after the group he was with split up, he wanted to try something different…’
‘And?’
‘Well, I kind of got the impression that there might be a kind of thing going on between him and this girl. They both played it pretty close to the chest, but I sort of got this feeling that they wouldn’t mind being involved in something together.’
‘Oh,’ said Charles, and then asked the question he had been putting off. ‘Who was this girl?’
‘A girl called Anna Duncan. She’s now playing Mary in my show. I don’t know if you know her.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Charles, ‘I know her.’
That evening he met James Milne back at Coates Gardens and found the Laird eager for another Dr Watson session. Charles had suddenly become unwilling to pursue the business of detection, but he could not avoid a cosy chat over malt whisky.
Sherlock Holmes was always way ahead of Dr Watson in his deductions, but he rarely actually withheld information from his sidekick. Charles Paris did. There were things he wanted to be sure of, half-formed ideas that could not be shared until they had hardened into facts.
They talked mostly about Martin Warburton. Charles told of his long tracking expeditions and the discovery of Martin’s second identity.
‘But surely that makes him our number one suspect?’
