‘What are we spying on? What do we want to find out?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘All we want to do is see that Kevin McMahon doesn’t get a chance to have a go at Christopher Milton.’
‘Yes.’
‘And since he’s got Dickie Peck and his driver in the hotel there with him, I think we’re superfluous.’
‘So what should we do?’
‘Go to our several beds,’ said Charles, with mingled desire and depression at the thought of his.
‘All right. I suppose we’d better. Mind you, we’re going to feel pretty silly in the morning if we hear that Christopher Milton’s been murdered.’
They needn’t have worried. Christopher Milton survived the night unharmed. But Kevin McMahon was found beaten up in the car park by the bus station.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Charles didn’t hear about the new accident until he reached the theatre for rehearsal. A silent breakfast with Ruth had been followed by a silent lift in her Renault 5L to the city centre. She started work at nine, so he had time to kill. They parted in silence and he wandered off in the direction of the Dragonara for no apparent reason.
To occupy his mind with trivialities, he pretended he was trailing the man in front of him. The head he followed was completely bald with enormous ears like the handles of a loving cup. Charles varied his pace, playing a game with himself, committing details to memory, checking the time. At five to nine the man went in the front entrance of the Dragonara and the game was over.
Charles looked round for someone else to use as a dummy and then felt a wave of hopelessness. What was the point of playing at detectives when his performance was so abysmal on occasions that required real detective abilities?
The ‘what was the point?’ gloom deepened to embrace his emotional life too. Another night of angry sex with Ruth had depressed him. What was the point of it? He had left Frances to get away from the ties and twists of a ‘relationship’, hoping to find some kind of freedom. And he had accepted the limitations which the emotional free- lance shares with all other free-lances — delays between engagements and sudden terminations of contracts. But it wasn’t just that. Casual sex didn’t give him enough and anything deeper soon got claustrophobic. If he was going to go through all the hard work of making something work, he might just as well try again with Frances. At least he had got a start there.
But Frances had got a boy friend. So the rumour went, and he had no cause to disbelieve it. And that seemed to change it all. It twisted his emotional outlook. He would not admit to himself that he was prey to so simple an emotion as jealousy, but the fact that Frances was not floating unattached in the background made any other relationship more threatening, as if now he was really looking for something lasting. Which he wasn’t… Oh, hell, why couldn’t he just think of Ruth as a nice time in Leeds, all to be over and forgotten in a week? But guilt crept in, and though he was conscious of his depression over-dramatising everything, he was unable to get out of the pointless spiral of his thoughts.
He quickly got news of Kevin’s accident when he arrived at the theatre. The police were there. They had taken over one of the dressing-rooms, where they were questioning members of the cast. There were constant assurances that no one in the company was suspected, but certain facts had to be established — who Kevin was, where he was staying and so on.
The details of the beating spread quickly. Kevin was in the Infirmary though he was not seriously hurt. Apparently he had spent the evening drinking, moving on to a small club when the pubs closed. He had been kicked out of there at about two, and wandered round for some time — he couldn’t remember how long — and then been jumped by someone who punched him in the face, kicked him about the rest of his body, left him unconscious and stole his wallet. The police regarded it as a simple mugging and were looking for someone local.
They did hear about the altercation between Kevin and Dickie Peck and when the agent arrived with his protege at ten-thirty, he was questioned. But it transpired that the two of them, along with Wally Wilson and Pete Masters, the young musical director, had been up most of the night working on a new number to replace Liberty Hall. They had mutually dependent alibis.
That was a blow to Charles’ simple reading of the situation. He had leapt to the conclusion that Dickie Peck must have got at Kevin, continuing the scene that had started in the green room. And if there had only been Christopher Milton and Wally Wilson to corroborate Dickie’s alibi, he would still have believed it. But if Pete, the M.D., also vouched for him, that changed things. He was not one of the star’s immediate entourage and the most unlikely person to submit to intimidation. So maybe it was just an attack by a mugger unknown. But it did seem too much of a coincidence.
And if it was a coincidence, it was a very happy one for Christopher Milton. There was no dissenting voice when he announced that Liberty Hall was to be dropped and that the whole day until the evening performance would be spent rehearsing the new number which had been written overnight.
He was very ebullient and cheerful. He made no pretence now that David Meldrum was directing the show and leapt around the stage telling everyone what to do and demonstrating. He showed no fatigue after the long night and was supremely creative. His enthusiasm for the new song was infectious and they all worked hard to give it life.
Pete Masters, the M.D., had written a simple but catchy tune and was very pleased with himself. Wally Wilson had written the lyric and when Christopher Milton first sang it through with the piano, Charles could feel the gyrations of Oliver Goldsmith in his grave accelerate yet again.
When you’re out on the fiddle
And you’re trying to pull a con
And the cops come in the middle
Of the trick you’re trying on,
Then all you’ve gotta do
Is just give a little pause,
Give a little smile
And come back with ‘I Beg Yours?’
Not ‘I beg to differ’ or ‘I beg to remain…’
Not ‘I beg your pardon’, but an easier refrain,
Not ‘I’ve lost my bottle’ and not ‘I’ve lost my drawers -
The answer’s very simple -
All you say is ‘I Beg Yours?’
When you’re selling some jew’l’ry
And the jew’l’ry don’t exist
And the victim of your fool’ry,
(Who you thought was very… drunk)
Turns out to be a cop
And says he’ll bring down the laws,
Don’t lose your cool,
But come back with ‘I Beg Yours?’
Not ‘I beg to differ’ or… and so on through four more verses of variable scansion and anachronism. Christopher Milton ended the song with a flourish and Charles couldn’t help joining in the applause that followed it. He was once again struck by how good Christopher Milton was. The applause was not sycophancy; it was the genuine praise of professionals.
But in spite of the performance, the song was hopelessly wrong for the show. Charles knew it and felt he had to say something. He was just assembling a tactful objection when Mark Spelthorne came in with his own drawling complaint. Typically, it was completely selfish. ‘But we can’t really have that number there, Christopher. I mean, that would make it three solos for you in a row. Surely, it would be better for the balance of the show if we had an ensemble number at this point.’ (What he really meant was, ‘I had a lot to do in Liberty Hall. Now I’ve lost a
