Authors: Simon Brett
Dead Room Farce
Table of Contents
The Charles Paris Mystery Series
CAST, IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE
SO MUCH BLOOD
STAR TRAP
AN AMATEUR CORPSE
A COMEDIAN DIES
THE DEAD SIDE OF THE MIKE
SITUATION TRAGEDY
MURDER UNPROMPTED
MURDER IN THE TITLE
NOT DEAD, ONLY RESTING
DEAD GIVEAWAY
WHAT BLOODY MAN IS THAT?
A SERIES OF MURDERS
CORPORATE BODIES
A RECONSTRUCTED CORPSE
SICKEN AND SO DIE
DEAD ROOM FARCE
A Charles Paris Mystery
Simon Brett
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This title first published in Great Britain in 1997
by Victor Gollancz
eBook edition first published in 2012 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Copyright © 1997 Simon Brett.
The right of Simon Brett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0021-1 (epub)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
This eBook produced by
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Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.
To David and Jacqui
THAT September morning Charles Paris had his trousers round his ankles, but it was for entirely professional reasons. He was taking part in the final London rehearsal for the forthcoming three-month tour of
Not On Your Wife!
, a new farce by the prolific British farceur, Bill Blunden. Charles was playing Aubrey, the older lover of Gilly, wife of Bob, the advertising executive who was pretending that his young mistress Nicky was in fact the property of his hapless neighbour, Ted, played in this Parrott Fashion production by the well-loved comedy actor, Bernard Walton. In the scene they were rehearsing, Charles Paris, as Aubrey, had just arrived for a bit of illicit afternoon pleasure with Gilly . . .
The set is the sitting rooms of the two flats, divided by a common central wall, The flats are identical in dimensions, and both have French windows opening on to a balcony running along the back of the stage. Gilly and Bob's flat (Stage Left) is smart and fashionable; Louise and Ted's (Stage Right) scruffier and more lived-in. Louise sits in her flat in an armchair, reading a magazine. (The lights on this area are dim; the lights are up on Gilly and Bob's flat.) Gilly, an attractive redhead in her thirties, has just let in Aubrey, her wealthy lover, in his fifties. As soon as they enter the room, they go into a clinch.
AUBREY: I'm sorry I couldn't come any quicker.
GILLY: I never want you to come any quicker.
AUBREY
(after a tiny pause to give the audience time to pick up on the innuendo)
: I got tied up.
GILLY: You naughty boy! And I thought I was the only woman in your life.
AUBREY
(tiny pause)
: No, no, one of the secretaries at the office had made a cock-up and I had to have her on the carpet.
GILLY
(tiny pause)
: I don't think you're making things sound any better, Aubrey:
(starting to undo the buckle of his trouser belt and pulling him by the belt towards the bedroom door)
You're going to have to make it up to me. In bed.
With her spare hand, she opens the bedroom door
.
AUBREY: Oh dear. I'm not sure that I'm up for this.
GILLY
(as she pulls him through into the bedroom)
: You'd better be!
They disappear into the bedroom. The door slams shut behind them. There is a moment's silence, then the doorbell is heard. It rings a second time. Gilly comes bustling out of the bedroom, followed by Aubrey. He has his trousers round his ankles, to reveal boxer shorts that are a bit too young for him.
AUBREY: Oh Lord, who could it be?
GILLY: I don't know, do I? But, whoever it is, they can't see you here. I'm a respectable married woman.
The doorbell rings again
.
AUBREY
(trying to run in three directions at once and finding it difficult with his trousers round his ankles):
Oh, goodness! Where can I go?
GILLY
(pointing to the French windows)
: Over there.
AUBREY: Over there? But we're on the fifth floor.
(letting out a wail)
I'm too young to die!
GILLY: No, I didn't mean over the rail.
(hustling him towards the French windows)
I just meant on to the balcony. You can come back in when whoever it is has gone.
AUBREY: But suppose they don't go? Suppose it's your husband. He might never go. He lives here.
GILLY
(opening the French windows)
: He also has a front door key, so he wouldn't use the bell, would he?
AUBREY: He might have lost it.
GILLY
(pushing Aubrey out on to the balcony)
: Not as much as you seem to have done, Aubrey.
AUBREY
(as she closes the French windows on him)
: Ooh, my good Gawd! It's cold enough out here to freeze the ba . . .
The closing of the French windows cuts off the end of his line. Running her hands through her hair to tidy it, Gilly hurries towards the door to the hall. On the balcony, Aubrey, shivering and still with his trousers round his ankles, scurries off towards Stage Left. Unable to proceed further in that direction, he scurries back the other way. He has just gone out of sight behind the central division between the two flats, when Gilly returns from the hall, ushering in Willie, a flamboyant interior designer, who wears a brightly coloured silk suit with a diaphanous scarf floating around his neck
.
WILLIE: Ooh, I'd nearly given up on you. I thought you must've been having a bit of an afternoon snooze. Go on, were you having a bit?
GILLY: Very nearly.
WILLIE
(tiny pause)
: I'm your interior designer.
(reaching out to take her hand and give it a flamboyant kiss)
I'm called Willie.
(coyly)
Not without reason.
GILLY
(tiny pause, gesturing to the flat)
: Well, here's the flat. This is about the size of it.
WILLIE: As the bishop said to the actress.
(looking round the flat with disapproval)
Oh dear. Who on earth did this for you? These designs have got all the razzmatazz of a civil servant's Y-fronts.
GILLY: That's why they need changing.
WILLIE: That's what the civil servant's wife said.
Gilly watches anxiously, as Willie continues to look disparagingly round the flat. On the balcony, Aubrey's head has appeared behind the French windows, peering nervously round from the central division.
WILLIE
(still facing out front, taking out a notebook)
: Maybe we should start with those dreadful 1950s French windows. Hm, is the balcony only as wide as the windows themselves?
(He turns to face Gilly
.) Or do you have a bit on the side?
GILLY
(guiltily)
: No, I certainly don't! What on earth gave you that idea?
WILLIE: Well, let's see just how bad these windows really are.
(He swings round in a flamboyant gesture. Just in time, Aubrey's head disappears behind the central division
.) What do you keep on the balcony?
GILLY
(very quickly)
: Nothing.
WILLIE
(moving towards the balcony)
: I bet you do. Everyone does. I bet you've got some revolting old crock out there . . .
GILLY: No, I haven't!
WILLIE: Some mouldy old creeper that took your fancy . . .
GILLY: No.
WILLIE: Well, let's have a look!
He throws the French windows open. Gilly covers her face with her hands in horror. As Willie opens the windows, Aubrey appears suddenly on the balcony outside the French windows of Louise and Ted's flat. (The lights now go up to half-f on Louise and Ted's flat.)
WILLIE
(picking up a flowerpot with a shrivelled plant in it)
: See, I knew I'd find some wizened old weed out here.
GILLY
(her hands still covering her eyes)
: It's all right, I can explain everything. He's the window cleaner!
WILLIE: What?
GILLY: Yes, and his ladder fell down!
WILLIE: His ladder?
GILLY: Yes.
(taking her hands away from her eyes and seeing what Willie is holding)
Oh, that kind of weed. Yes, yes, of course.
Willie gives her a strange look
.
(The lights go down on Gilly and Bob's flat and up to full on Louise and Ted's
.)
Aubrey, afraid of being seen by Willie, opens the French windows, and steps into the other flat. He still has his trousers round his ankles. Louise looks up from her magazine in horror
.
LOUISE: Oh, my goodness!
(thinking he's the escaped prisoner, âGinger' Little)
Are you Little?
AUBREY
(looking down at his boxer shorts)
: Quite possibly. But it is very cold out there.
LOUISE: No, I mean â are you âGinger'?
AUBREY: Certainly not!
(He pulls his trousers up
.) Nothing funny about me. I'm as straight as the day is long.
LOUISE: But today's the shortest day.
AUBREY: You don't need to tell me.
(He turns away from her modestly to try to zip himself up. As soon as his back is turned, Louise reaches in panic to a drawer in a desk beside her chair
.) Ooh, it was so cold out there. Goodness,
I thought I'd â
LOUISE
(producing a pistol from the drawer and pointing it at Aubrey's back)
: Freeze!
AUBREY: Exactly.
(He turns back to face Louise. Seeing that he's looking down the barrel of a gun, he throws his hands up in the air
.) Aagh!
His trousers once again fall down
.
The general feeling about the run-through had been pretty good. At the end, Rob Parrott, of Parrott Fashion Productions, who had watched it, was cautiously complimentary. True, there was a lot still to do; and true, everything would be different when they actually got the show on to the proper set in Bath; but at least for the time being
Not On Your Wife!
seemed to be in pretty good shape.
The director certainly thought so. But then David J. Girton was not the most demanding of taskmasters. His background was in BBC Television Light Entertainment. Until recently he had been a staff producer/ director with an extensive portfolio of inoffensive sofa-bound situation comedies behind him. But the changing world of the BBC in the 1990s had seen him edged out, still brought back on contract to produce the occasional series â in particular, the relentlessly long-running
Neighbourhood Watch
â but now with freedom to âdo other things'.