So Much Blood (11 page)

‘We went up to the Castle Esplanade and wandered around, and I, feeling more and more of a gooseberry, went on ahead on the way back. I started off down the steps that go down to Johnstone Terrace.'

‘Castle Wynd South.'

‘Is that what it's called, yes. Anyway, I was nearly at the bottom, and suddenly I heard this scream. I turned round and saw Lesley, with her arms and legs flailing, falling down the steps.'

‘And that was how she broke her leg?'

‘Yes. I rushed up to where she'd managed to stop herself, and Willy rushed down. She was in terrible pain and I shot off to phone for an ambulance. But just before I went, I heard her say something to Willy, or at least I think I did.'

Charles felt the excitement prickling over his shoulders and neck. ‘What did she say?'

‘She said, “Willy, you pushed me.”'

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE SHOW BIZ RAZZMATAZZ
of first nights was invented before the development of lunch time theatre. There is something incongruous about flowers and telegrams for a first lunch. Charles did not get any, anyway. There was no one to send them. Maurice Skellem was the only person outside Edinburgh who knew the show was happening and he was not the sort to spend his client's money on fulsome gestures. Charles deliberately had not told his ex-wife Frances that he was going up to the Festival as another hack at the fraying but resilient umbilical cord that joined him to her.

But the first night excitement was there. He walked from Coates Gardens to the Masonic Hall with a jumpy step, a little gurgling void of anticipation in his stomach. To his relief, the odious Plug had been replaced by an amiable young man called Vernon, who was not only efficient in the rehearsal but was also staying for the show. It made Charles feel more confident. And more scared. With the technical side under control, no excuses were possible; it was his responsibility entirely.

He calmed himself by hard work. One run of the show for Vernon's benefit, to get the cues right; then a quick double-check through all the slides; finally an as-per performance run which was depressingly pedestrian. As it should be. Charles believed in the old theatrical adage about bad dress rehearsals leading to good first nights.

A few more details checked, then down to the pub about twelve-thirty for a quick one. Just one; mustn't risk slurring. Vernon was quiet and reassuring, a good companion for last-minute anxieties. Yes, he would hold the last fade. Yes, he would anticipate the slide of
The Last Man
sitting on the gallows. No, he didn't think there was too much serious stuff in the programme. No, he didn't think the dark suit was too anonymous.

Back at the hall Brian Cassells was in charge as Front of House Manager. Apparently he felt that evening dress was obligatory for this role, though he looked a little out of place penguined up at lunch time. He admitted to Charles that advance sales were not that good (three seats), but he had great hopes for casual trade during the next twenty minutes.

Sharp on one fifteen the show started. Charles had felt on the edge of nausea as he waited to enter in the blackout, but as usual actually being onstage gave him a sense of calm and control.

The imperfect masking of the hall's windows meant that the audience was visible, but he did not dare to look until he had received some reaction. The watershed was
Faithless Nellie Gray
; nothing expected on
I Remember, I Remember
and the rest of the preamble. But the first Pathetic Ballad should get something.

Yes, a distinct laugh. And the laughs built through the ensuing stanzas. Not a big sound, but warming.

Emboldened, he inspected the audience as he recited. About twenty, which, on the first day of the Festival, with negative publicity, was not bad. On a second glance he realised that a lot of it was paper, members of D.U.D.S. who had been allowed in free. There was a little knot of revue cast, dark figures grouped around Anna's shining head. James Milne leant forward in his seat with intense concentration. There were only about eight faces Charles did not recognise. And some of those might be complimentaries for the critics. Maurice Skellern was not going to be over-impressed by ten per cent of fifty per cent of that lot.

But it was an audience. And they were responding. Charles enjoyed himself.

The Laird insisted on taking him out to lunch. They went to an Indian restaurant on Forrest Place and managed to persuade the waiter it was still early enough for them to have a bottle of wine. After a couple of glasses Charles felt better. The immediate reaction after a show was always emptiness, even depression, and the ability to remember only the things that went wrong. Gradually it passed; alcohol always speeded the process.

So did enthusiastic response to the show. And James Milne was very enthusiastic. He had only known the familiar poems of Hood, the ones which have become cliches by repetition,
November, A Retrospective Review, The Song of the Shirt and the inevitable I Remember, I Remember
. The broadening of the picture which Charles' show had given obviously excited him. The punning and other verbal tricks appealed to his crossword mind. ‘I had no idea there was so much variety, Charles. I really must get hold of a
Complete Works
. Is there a good edition?'

‘There's an Oxford one, but I don't know if it's in print.' You might be able to pick up a second-hand one somewhere. Or there are some fairly good selections. But look, if you want to borrow mine, do. I should know my words by now.' He held the copy across the table.

The Laird was touched. By his values, lending a book was the highest form of friendship. ‘That's very kind. I'll look after it.'

‘I know you will.'

‘And I'll make it a priority to find one for myself. Oh, you know I envy that kind of facility with words. Not just the facility—we all happen on puns occasionally—but the ability to create something out of it. It must be wonderful to be a writer.'

‘I don't know. It was hard graft for Hood. If he hadn't had to work so hard, he might have lived longer.'

‘Yes, but at least it's congenial graft. I mean, writing, you're on your own, you get on with it, you don't have to keep getting involved with other people. You just write and send your stuff off and that's it. A sort of remote control way of making a living.'

Charles laughed out loud. ‘James, you've got it all wrong. Hood would disagree with you totally. He didn't just sit at a desk toying with his muse and packing the products off in envelopes to editors. All his life was spent scurrying round, selling his own work, sub-editing other people's, setting up magazines. No question of remote control, his Liveli-Hood, as he kept calling it, was very much involved with other people.'

‘But some writers don't have to do all that, Charles.'

‘Very few. In my own experience of writing plays, about ten per cent of the time is spent actually writing; ninety per cent is traipsing round like a peddler, hawking the results to managements or television companies.'

‘Oh dear. So what you are saying is that a writer's life is just as sordid and ordinary as everyone else's?'

‘If not more so. Hood himself, in his
Copyright and Copywrong
, said of writers, “We are on a par with quack doctors, street preachers, strollers, ballad-singers, hawkers of last dying speeches, Punch and Judies, conjurers, tumblers and other diverting vagabonds.”'

‘How very disappointing. I think I'd rather forget you told me that and keep my illusions of ivory towers and groves of Academe.'

They talked further about writing. James Milne admitted that he would have liked to produce something himself, but never got around to it. ‘Which means perhaps that I haven't really got anything to say.'

‘Maybe. Though writing doesn't have to say anything. It can just be there to entertain,' said Charles, reflecting on his own few plays.

‘Hmm. Perhaps, but even then the writer must get a bit involved. Begin to identify with his characters.'

‘Oh, inevitably that happens.'

The Laird paused for a moment, piecing his thoughts together. ‘I was wondering if there could be anything of that behind this murder.'

‘What do you mean? Anything of what?'

‘Identification. I mean, if there's anything in the actual situation of the killing, the way it happened.'

‘I'm still not with you.'

‘Willy Mariello was playing David Rizzio in a play based on the life of Mary, Queen of Scots. Now there are certain obvious parallels between Willy and Rizzio. There's the Italian name, for a start. I know there are lots of Scots with Italian names, but it's a coincidence. Then they both played the guitar.'

‘So what you're suggesting,' Charles said slowly, ‘is that someone got obsessed with the whole Mary, Queen of Scots story and identified with Rizzio s murder and . . . Incidentally, who did kill Rizzio?'

‘A lot of people, I seem to recall. I think Darnley was the prime mover. Who's playing Darnley in the show?'

‘I don't know. I could check. And you think when we've got that name we've got our murderer?' He could not keep a note of scepticism out of his voice.

‘It's just another possible line of enquiry. Something that struck me.'

‘Hmm.'

‘Well, we're not getting far on any other tack, are we?'

Charles hesitated. ‘No.'

‘You haven't found out anything else, have you?'

‘No,' he lied. For some reason he did not want to tell anyone about Pam Northcliffe's story of Willy and Lesley. Not yet.

The Laird was going to browse round some book shops, but Charles did not feel like it. He was still wound up after the performance, and, since licensing hours did not permit his usual method of unwinding, he decided an aimless stroll round Edinburgh might do the trick.

The stroll soon ceased to be aimless. He had only gone a few hundred yards and was turning off George IV bridge into Chambers Street when he saw Martin Warburton. Striding along on the opposite side of the road with the same expression of blinkered concentration that he had had the day before. And again heading for Nicholson Street.

It is a lot easier following someone when you know where he is going and Charles felt confident of Martin's destination. He was right. The boy again disappeared behind the blue door.

The excitement of seeing the same thing happen two days running quickly gave way to confusion as to what should be done about it. Charles still did not know which flat Martin had gone into and did not feel in the mood for an elaborate masquerade as a reader of gas-meters to gain access. Apart from the risk of illegal impersonation, what would he say if he did find Martin? There was probably some simple explanation for the boy's actions. He had friends living in the flats. Maybe even a girl-friend. Something quite straightforward. Charles was just letting his imagination run riot and suspicion was clouding his judgement.

But he did not want to go. He might be on the verge of some discovery. Better join the bus queue opposite while he worked out a plan of campaign.

As he stood with the laden housewives and noisy schoolchildren he knew it was not really getting him anywhere. No plan of campaign emerged. If he really wanted to find out what Martin was doing, then the only course was to enter the flats. Otherwise he might just as well give up the whole business, leave Willy Mariello to the police and forget any detective fantasies he might be nurturing.

A bus arrived and the queue surged forward, canny housewives wedging themselves into good seats and practised schoolchildren scampering upstairs to good fooling-about positions. One or two of them gave curious looks to the man at the stop who still queued altruistically without taking his due prize of a seat. The maroon and white bus passed on.

Charles felt exposed and ridiculous on his own at the bus stop. He turned to go, determined to chuck the whole business and resign himself to just being an actor, when he heard the bang of a door on the other side of the road.

It was the blue one, and a thin figure was walking away from it towards the centre of the city. Walking with a determined gait, but not walking like Martin Warburton. It was a slightly unnatural heavier step.

And not looking like Martin Warburton either. A woollen hat gave the impression of short hair. A beard and moustache. Glasses. Dressed in an old donkey jacket and shapeless twill trousers. A khaki knapsack slung across one shoulder. And this strange ponderous walk.

It was the figure whom Charles had seen the previous week on the steps down to the Mound. And it was Martin Warburton in disguise.

By eleven o'clock that evening Martin's identity games did not seem very important. One reason was that the afternoon's adventures had not led to anything. Charles had continued tailing his disguised quarry halfway across Edinburgh until Martin had disappeared inside the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Queen Street. Rather than risk raising suspicions by a confrontation inside the building, the self-questioning sleuth had waited twenty minutes some way down the road. Then he had followed the donkey jacket back to Nicholson Street, missed a few more buses while the young man was reconverted into Martin Warburton and trailed behind that familiar figure back to Coates Gardens. All of which left Charles with sore feet and the feeling that if Martin wanted to do his Edinburgh sightseeing in disguise, that was his own affair. And that Charles Paris needed a drink.