surroundings and want to change it all-smother everything with paint, take down a door… and never finish the job. We got turned out of one flat after he decided to take down the partition between the bedroom and sitting-room. Living with Willy was not an experience that gave one a feeling of home. I feel nothing for this place.’
‘Oh well, it’s in reasonable condition. You should get a good price for it.’
She snorted contemptuously. ‘The building society should get a good price for it.’
‘Ah. Still, Willy…’
She shook her head. ‘Willy had no money. He spent everything he made with Puce, not that there was much left after all the agents and managers had taken their bites. There may be a few royalties to come, but they’ll go on the bank loan he got for the deposit on this place and the arrears on the mortgage.’
‘Arrears?’
‘Yes. Willy got the mortgage on the basis of his earnings last year and the assumption that that level of income would continue. Then the band split up and he had virtually nothing. I don’t think one single repayment has been made to the building society. Mind you,’ she added bitterly, ‘I only discover this when he’s dead and I have to go through his mail.’
‘So you’re not exactly a rich widow?’
He got a scornful ‘Huh’ for that. ‘Mr Paris, I can’t believe that you came here to talk homes and gardens and mortgages. And if you didn’t, your five minutes and my patience are running low.’
‘I’m sorry. But just before I ask what I really came for, tell me why Willy bought this house.’
‘It fitted the image of what he wanted to be. Saw himself as the great landowner, in his ancestral home in front of his blazing fire. The man of property, Willy, like all social upstarts, couldn’t wait to be rich enough to be Conservative. The Socialist pose, the sub-hippy world of rock music-that meant nothing to him really. It was only a stage he had to go through. He wanted to be stinking rich with servants to do everything for him. Trouble was, he was a bloody awful business man and couldn’t keep any money for more than five minutes.’
There was a pause. Jean Mariello looked at her watch and Charles realised he could not beat about the bush any longer. ‘I really wanted to ask you about Willy’s sex life.’
‘Oh. Well, of recent years I’m not really an expert on that.’
‘No. 1 wanted to know about another woman.’
‘I didn’t take a great deal of interest in his other women either.’
Charles ignored the rebuffs and ploughed on. ‘When he was in Derby-you know, he stayed after the band had played there-do you know if he had a girl then?’
‘I assume so. I can’t think he stayed for the scenery.’
‘He never mentioned a girl?’
‘No. We didn’t discuss our private lives.’ She glanced at her watch.
‘Do you know if he had a girl around recently? You know, in the week before he died?’
She laughed incredulously. ‘I wasn’t here much of the time. You know that. What do you want me to do-say if I found stains on the sheets or hairs on the pillow?’
‘Yes, if necessary.
That took her aback. She paused and then said in a softer voice. ‘All right then, I would say, from the evidence of dirty laundry, that Willy did commit yet another desecration of our marriage bed between the Friday when I left and the Tuesday when he was killed.’
‘Yes?’
She spoke slowly, as if unwillingly dredging her memory. ‘Oh yes, he’d had someone. Hairs on the pillow, all the old familiar signs.’
‘What colour hairs?’ asked Charles breathlessly.
‘Blonde.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Five minutes. Goodbye, Mr Paris. We won’t meet again.’
The audience for So Much Comic, So Much Blood was larger and they saw a competent performance by Charles Paris. There were some laughs, although the show had no more animation than a slot-machine. As Charles’ voice wove its way through Hood’s tortuous puns, his mind was elsewhere.
After the show, he gathered his possessions together for a quick exit. There was something important that had to be done before three o’clock.
The women’s wards in the Royal Infirmary off Lauriston Place are much the same as in other hospitals. The one Charles entered had the usual mixture of patients. An old lady stared ahead with liquid blue eyes, her long white hair radiating over the pillows. A plump bed-ridden blonde chattered to a morose husband. A homely housewife’s face still registered surprise at being hospitalised and half-listened to the sympathy of a lady in a hat. Screens hid one bed and prompted unhealthy thoughts. A thin, thin woman with shiny skin lay as still as her pillow. And, in the corner bed, was a young girl with her plastered left leg raised on a pulley.
Visiting ended in ten minutes; no time to waste. ‘Hello. Are you Lesley Petter?’
The girl looked up and acknowledged that she was. Brown hair, shrewd brown eyes, well-proportioned but unremarkable features. Hers was the sort of face that needed emotion to animate it; in repose it was ordinary.
Charles’ approach had brought some light into her eyes. Anything was more interesting than the pile of magazines, thrillers and ragged-edged French novels.
‘I’m Charles Paris.’
‘Oh. You’ve taken over my lunch time show.’
‘Yes. It’s an ill wind.’
She laughed wryly. ‘How’s it going?’
‘O.K.’
‘It’s about Thomas Hood, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ He did not want to elaborate, though the girl’s intelligent eyes indicated sensible opinions on the subject. ‘I’m really here for a purpose.’
‘Of course.’ She was disappointed, but philosophical. ‘Though I can’t think what purpose of yours could involve me.’
‘No. Maybe it doesn’t involve you.’ He tried to think of a way to phrase his questions. ‘I… there’s… I don’t know, your group
… D.U.D.S., there’s something strange going on there.’
‘It must seem strange to an outsider coming in.’
‘No, I expect that, as a middle-aged man with a bunch of whizz-kids. I mean strange in… well, there’s Willy Mariello’s death.’
A shutter of caution flicked across her eyes. ‘Yes. That was terrible.’
‘And, of course, your accident.’
‘Yes.’ She seemed anxious to move the dialogue into a more flippant direction. ‘Somebody must have whistled in the dressing-room or quoted Macbeth or had real flowers onstage or broken another of the show business taboos.’
Charles laughed. He was also relieved at the postponement of his questions. ‘You know it all. Do you want to go into the theatre?’
‘Yes, I did. But… I don’t know how good I am as an actress. Oh, I’d done bits all right, but the thing I’m really good at is dancing: She looked down the bed at the grotesque suspended limb.
‘It’ll heal all right.’
She patently did not believe his diagnosis, though she said ‘Oh yes’ as if there were no question.
Charles retreated to safer ground. ‘Anyway, I’m sure you must be a good actress. I mean, you were playing Mary and doing the revue and..’
‘I got the parts, yes. I don’t know how I’d have done them, whether I’d have got good press or…’
‘Well…’ He could not think of anything suitable. ‘Anna got a very good notice for the revue.’ It was just a statement, without malice or jealousy.
‘Yes, I gather she did.’ Charles instinctively and defensively made it sound as if he hardly knew who was being referred to.
‘And I think she’ll be better than I would have been in Mary.’
‘Who knows.’ He found himself blushing. ‘As I said, it’s an ill wind.’
‘Yes.’
There was a slight pause. A bell sounded, muffled, from an adjacent ward and he blurted out his question.
