A Series of Murders (20 page)

‘I haven't heard anyone say that,' said Charles. Which was true enough. Present company, of course, excepted.

‘Good,' said Ben Docherty. ‘Good.'

Thermoses of coffee were brought from the caterers' van. ‘Can we make it a short break?' Rick Landor pleaded. ‘Just ten minutes. We're doing well, but we've still got a lot to do.'

Charles, feeling rather dozy after his whisky with Ben Docherty, accepted a cup of coffee. Rick also had one, which he downed in three nervous gulps. ‘Getting there, getting there,' the Director said.

‘The studio stuff's relatively straightforward this week, isn't it?' asked Charles.

‘Not too bad. Should be simpler than the last one I did, anyway.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Come on, Charles, you remember what it was like. I'm glad I wasn't the one to have to do the dirty deed, but it's a great relief to have had W. T. Wintergreen banned from the premises. She didn't make that week easy for me.'

‘And then, of course,' said Charles casually, ‘there was Sippy Stokes.'

‘Yes, yes, there was.' The director was silent for a moment. ‘Sounds dreadful to say it, but I'm afraid this episode'll be a lot easier without her around.'

‘Oh, but I thought she was your casting.'

‘Yes, I suppose she was. I mean, I put through the booking, but I was under pressure.'

‘Who from?'

‘Sippy herself. Doesn't do to speak ill of the dead, but I'm afraid she was a nasty bit of work.'

‘Weren't you lovers, though?'

‘Yes, we were. But I'd tried to break it off many times. She wouldn't let me. The trouble was, she knew things about me which – well, things that could have got me into quite a bit of bother.'

Yes, thought Charles, remembering the information that Maurice had supplied him with the night before. Something to do with your cocaine habit, perhaps?

But he said nothing as Rick Landor continued, ‘Anyway, giving Sippy the part of Christina was a kind of once-and-for-all payoff.'

‘She blackmailed you into casting her?'

‘That's what it amounted to, yes. It was a habit she had, one of her less endearing habits.'

‘Hmm. Do you think she tried the same trick with Jimmy Sheet? You know, threatened to tell his wife after they'd been out together?'

‘Let's say it wouldn't have been out of character if she had.'

‘I see.'

They gazed out over the sea. It was almost blue. The dark clouds were moving away to the west. It looked as though they would get all the Corfe Castle summer scenes safely done that afternoon.

‘Bad luck, really,' said Charles, ‘having two blackmailers in the same production.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘It was a bit of a sideline for Tony Rees, too, I gather.'

Rick Landor abruptly looked at his watch. ‘Got to get on,' he mumbled. ‘Check out the eyelines we've got on the next set-up.' And he moved away.

Charles stayed looking out over the sea. He didn't seem to have progressed far in his search for the killer of Sippy Stokes. Or the killer of Tony Rees, come to that. He felt certain that the two deaths were linked, almost certain that the same person had perpetrated both.

Jimmy Sheet . . . Ben Docherty . . . Rick Landor . . . Each one of them had a secret to hide. A secret Tony Rees might easily have found out about. Each one of them was a potential suspect.

And of course there was one other potential suspect involved in that morning's filming on Durlston Head.

He found Russell Bentley sitting in a folding chair, a white towel tucked bib-like around his neck, while a makeup girl tried to make him look like a man who has just fallen off a cliff and clawed his way back up to it to find his beloved daughter stranded on a ledge.

The makeup girl's job was not an easy one. While Russell wanted to look authentically battered, he didn't want any marks on him that might be deemed disfiguring. A discreet scratch along the temple was fine, so was a bruise on the cheekbone, but he wouldn't tolerate anything that spoiled the shape of his nose or the outline of his jaw.

The makeup girl did her best to meet these exacting conditions. She had the tools of her trade on a little tray propped up on a stand beside her. Bottles and cakes of various flesh tones. Liner pencils. Spirit gum. Brushes and sponges. A bottle of Arterial Blood to authenticate the scratches. She did not look up from her task as Charles approached.

‘Russell . . .' he began.

The star squinted up into the sun. ‘Oh, hello, er . . .' Once again the name escaped him.

‘Pity about Tony Rees, wasn't it?'

‘Who?' But the star knew; Charles could see it in his eyes. Russell Bentley was just using his notorious amnesia for names to play for time.

‘You know. The one who died up at the castle yesterday.'

‘Oh, yes. Tragic business.' The sentiment was automatic; there was no hint of real emotion in his voice.

‘I suppose so,' said Charles. ‘It seems he was a nasty piece of work, though.'

‘Really? I didn't know him at all.'

‘Apparently he was the kind of person who would find out secrets about people, secrets they very definitely wanted kept quiet, and then he would make the people pay for his silence.'

‘Would he? I don't really see what this has to do with me.'

‘No.' Charles allowed a few seconds' silence. ‘You got your way over the rewrite, then?'

‘Sorry?'

‘The scene with Christina. The one you're about to film.'

‘Yes. Well, it does make the whole relationship much more relaxed. And less emotionally charged. I mean, they are father and daughter, after all.'

‘Yes, and you have your reputation in television to consider.'

‘Exactly.'

‘Wouldn't do for the public to think Russell Bentley was the kind of man to be involved in incest.'

‘No.' The star held up a cautionary hand to the makeup girl, who was poised with her brush and bottle of Arterial Blood at the ready. ‘Not too much of that stuff. Don't want to look like Rocky IV.'

‘Or,' Charles persisted, ‘the kind of man to be involved with underage girls.'

A new light came into Russell Bentley's eyes. ‘What are you talking about?'

‘Some parties back in the early sixties. Involving people working on a film called
The Hawk's Prey
.'

From the expression on Russell Bentley's face Charles knew that, as ever, Maurice Skellern's information had been correct.

‘I don't know what you're talking about,' the star lied, trying to bluster his way out.

‘Oh, I think you do. And I think Tony Rees also knew what I was talking about.'

‘Nonsense. I'm certainly not going to –'

But the star never said what he was certainly not going to do. There was the sound of a gunshot from somewhere behind Charles. He saw the shock on Russell Bentley's face at the sight of the red stain spreading over the towel that covered his throat; there was more expression there at the moment than the star had ever shown in his portrayal of Stanislas Braid.

As Russell Bentley slumped back in his chair and the makeup girl screamed, Charles turned and started up the hillside toward the clump of trees where the gunshot had come from. Brambles snatched at the blue serge of Sergeant Clump's uniform; branches of shrubs slashed at him as he thundered forward. He pushed aside the branches of a tree and suddenly stopped dead.

In front of him stood someone with a bewildered look and a gun.

It was W. T. Wintergreen.

SHE looked at him for a moment, her face still puzzled. Neither of them spoke.

Then, suddenly, she fled.

She showed a surprising turn of speed for a septuagenarian, and given Charles's surprise and the fact that he was out of breath from his dash up the hillside, she had twenty yards' start on him before he got his legs moving.

He pulled after her and might have caught up to her over a longer distance, but W. T. Wintergreen had not far to go. She burst out of the clump of trees from which the shot had been fired and raced across the hillocks of long grass to a rough track, where her old black Beetle was parked.

The driver's door was open. She leaped in and slammed it. By the time Charles was close enough to do anything, the engine had sputtered into life. He just had time to catch a glimpse of the tear-stained face of Louisa Railton in the passenger seat as the car screeched away, sounding like a demented lawn mower.

He stood still, sweating and breathless, as the Beetle diminished into the distance.

Then, attempting to reorganise in his mind everything he had ever thought about the murders, he moved slowly back down the hill.

Russell Bentley was not dead. When Charles came to think of it, he couldn't imagine Russell Bentley ever dying – just going on being Russell Bentley for all eternity.

He wasn't even injured. Nor, though she was in a state of hysterics, was the makeup girl. The bullet fired from the hillside had missed both of them. By remarkable good fortune, though certainly aimed at Russell Bentley, what it had hit had been the bottle of Arterial Blood in the makeup girl's hand. The ghastly stain on the star's towel was courtesy of Leichner rather than of his own arteries.

In fact, except for the makeup girl's hysterics, the incident had had little effect on the
Stanislas Braid
production team. Russell Bentley was of the opinion that it hadn't been a gunshot, anyway; he thought the bottle of Arterial Blood must have been flawed and have broken spontaneously. The makeup girl swore she had heard something, but she was in too emotional a state for anyone to take what she said very seriously.

And Charles Paris, the one person who knew that a shot had been fired, for reasons of his own kept that knowledge to himself.

The filming continued, and the Durlston Head scenes were finished before lunch, much to the delight of Ben Docherty. The weather had cleared completely, and there was every prospect of getting the Corfe Castle scenes shot within the time allotted. His precious budget looked as if it had survived another threat.

Charles Paris went in the W.E.T. coach back to the hotel in Swanage. There was no point in his returning to Corfe Castle, and he told Mort Verdon that he would make his own way back to London.

He packed quickly and at the hotel Reception organised a cab to take him to Bournemouth. From there he caught a train to Waterloo.

And all the time he was on the train, Charles Paris sat and thought.

When he arrived in London, he knew what he had to do, but he felt he needed some bolstering before he did it. Not his customary alcoholic bolstering, though; the situation was far too serious for that. No, he needed human contact. He needed to tell someone what he was about to do.

What he really needed was to talk to Frances. He even got as far as standing in a phone box in Waterloo Station and lifting the receiver.

But he chickened out. Frances would be at school. She could be extremely frosty and headmistressy when he rang her at school. Anyway, the memory of Sunday night's shame was still with him. No, he should wait to ring Frances until he felt cleansed and virtuous, until he felt worthy of ringing her. He had a nasty sense that that feeling could be a long time coming. Reluctantly, he put the phone down.

Then he looked at the departures board for the next train to Richmond.

No killing time before this visit. He asked the taxi driver to take him straight to the cottage and watched as the cab drove away.

The black Beetle was parked outside. He knocked on the door, and it was opened by W. T. Wintergreen.

She looked strained, and her eyes were pinkish from recent tears. But she carried herself with a kind of calm dignity.

‘Ah,' she said, ‘I had expected you might come.' She stood back to let him into the tiny sitting room. ‘Can I offer you a cup of tea or coffee, perhaps?'

There was something incongruous, given the circumstances, about these genteel observances. Charles refused the offer of refreshment with matching gentility.

He sat edgily on the chair his hostess had indicated. Reading his mood, she said, ‘You don't need to feel any anxiety, Mr. Paris. It's all over now.'

He sensed that she was telling the truth and relaxed partially.

‘So I suppose it's just confession time,' said W. T. Wintergreen with a sigh.

‘I suppose it is.'

She nodded slowly. ‘It is my intention to make a full confession to the police. However, Mr. Paris, I am quite happy to run through the details for you if you so wish.'

‘I would be most grateful,' he said, amazed at how easily he was dropping into her own, slightly formal, style of speech.

‘Yes. You see, I have not been unaware of your interest in this little . . . series of murders.'

‘Oh?'

‘And I congratulate you on finding out as much as you have. As someone who has spent much of her life bending her mind round the problems of detective fiction, I can recognise a brain which works in a similar fashion.'

‘Oh, thank you.' Charles really appreciated such a professional compliment, but once again he couldn't help being struck by the incongruity of this conversational square dance.

‘I suppose,' said W. T. Wintergreen in a manner that was almost languorous, ‘it is the fiction that is to blame for everything that has happened. I don't mean because it was crime fiction that I wrote. That is irrelevant. What you have been investigating have not been the actions of an unhinged old lady who can no longer distinguish fictional crime from real crime. No . . .'

She was silent. The faded eyes were unfocused behind their spectacles.

But she pulled herself together before Charles had to prompt her. ‘No, I suppose you might say that I have been protecting my creations.'

‘Stanislas Braid? Christina? Sergeant Clump?'