By chance, Charles left the party at the same time as Grant Yeoell. As they walked cautiously down the steep stairs, he dared to ask, ‘Was Liddy Max among your conquests, Grant?’
‘I don’t think of them as “conquests”,’ came the reply. ‘Just a very pleasant perk of the job I do.’ This wasn’t spoken boastfully, simply as a matter of fact.
‘Going back to Liddy …’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you make love to her?’
Charles was expecting some kind of evasive answer, but he got a direct, ‘Yes.’
‘On the day she died?’
Again, ‘Yes.’ Then, ‘But I didn’t know she was going to die, did I?’
‘I’m surprised you’re telling me this so openly.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, her death was suspicious, and if you were making love to her only hours before …’
‘You mean the police might be interested?’
‘Yes.’
‘They were. So, I told them what happened.’
‘And weren’t they suspicious that you might have killed her?’
‘They might have been, except that Liddy had made a phone call on her mobile after I left. And then someone witnessed me leaving the theatre.’
‘Who?’
‘A girl.’
‘One of your groupies?’
‘I do wish you and Justin would stop using that word. It’s very dated. I prefer to think of the girls as “fans”. Also, Justin keeps implying that I go to bed with all of them. Which I don’t. Most are underage, anyway. Just kids full of excess adolescent emotion that they have to focus somewhere. Last time I did a show in the West End, there was one girl who turned up every night of the entire run. Called Shelley. Full marks for effort, I suppose.’ He shrugged. ‘Presumably she got some kind of strange kick out of doing it.’
‘Going back to that Monday night – how did the girl at the stage door know you were in the theatre?’
‘She’d seen me go in.’
‘When did you speak to the police?’
‘The day after Liddy died.’
The same day they had interviewed Charles; the day when he had been almost immobilized by his hangover. ‘Have you heard from them again?’
‘No.’
‘So, you wouldn’t know how they thought Liddy died?’
‘I assume they thought what everyone else thought.’
‘Which was?’
‘Oh, come on, Charles. What has everyone been saying backstage?’
Charles genuinely didn’t know. He had been so preoccupied with his own assumption of murder that he hadn’t really listened to the company consensus. ‘What have they been saying?’
‘That it was an accident. Liddy tripped. The habit she was wearing was much too big for her.’
‘And you don’t feel any guilt about her death?’
‘Why should I? I’m very sorry the poor girl died, obviously. I quite liked her.’ The way he said this didn’t suggest there had been much love involved in their coupling. ‘But her death wasn’t my fault.’
‘Weren’t you the one who suggested you should dress up in the monks’ habits?’
There was an infinitesimal pause before Grant replied, ‘No, that was her idea. Liddy Max had surprisingly kinky tastes, you know.’
‘And who else has kinky tastes?’ asked Charles.
‘Sorry?’
‘Are you aware of someone in the company who’s a voyeur?’
Grant Yeoell turned his infinitely handsome, infinitely blank, face towards Charles, and said, ‘No’, in a puzzled manner that meant he had to be telling the truth. It seemed he had not known that he and Liddy had been performing for the cameras.
The two had reached the stage door. They handed in their keys to Wallace, who wished them a cheery good night from the cubby-hole which he now seemed to have inhabited forever. Gideon had just melted away into blankness.
As Grant Yeoell went out into the after-midnight darkness, a pair of squealing teenage girls rushed towards him.
‘It is working. To some extent.’
‘Really, Charles?’ Long experience justified the scepticism in Frances’s voice.
‘Yes.’
‘So how many days this week have you done without booze?’
‘Three.’
‘That’s good.’ She sounded impressed. ‘And are you finding it easy?’
‘No. Bloody hard.’
‘Keep at it.’
‘I will. And … how about us meeting up?’
‘I’m going down to Juliet and Miles’s for Sunday lunch. I don’t know if you fancy—?’
‘I don’t think so.’ The prospect of his son-in-law pontificating on his abstinence was not one he relished. ‘I’d rather see you on your own.’
‘Yes, I’d like that.’
‘When?’ he asked eagerly.
‘When you’re off the booze, Charles.’
Playing the part of Brother Benedict, The Monk Who Just Listened To All Of The Other Monks Who Maundered On In Long Speeches About Their Own Internal Conflicts, inevitably had its longueurs. While Abbot Ambrose was hardly off the stage for the duration of The Habit of Faith (surprise, surprise), the rest of the cast had to spend long periods in their dressing rooms.
Some were very organized about this. There was a foursome who gathered in Tod Singer’s dressing room during the second act to play Bridge, and could almost always fit in a rubber (while onstage Abbot Ambrose and The Girl endlessly discussed sex and guilt), before they had to reappear for the last scene.
Charles had two habitual ways of whiling away time in his dressing room. One, which he no longer practised – though not practising it constantly tested his resources of willpower – involved a bottle of Bell’s. The other was The Times crossword. But on the Friday, the day after Justin Grover’s birthday party, there had been a particularly easy puzzle, which he’d finished over a sandwich at lunchtime. So, having forgotten to bring a book with him, Charles had no alternative, in his dressing room that evening, but to sit and think.
He thought first about that day’s ‘Weekend Group’ session at Gower House. Erica had been there to direct the discussion when required, but as usual in those Friday meetings, the participants had done most of the work themselves. Once again, Charles had been impressed by the honesty and humour on display. Though the make-up of the attendance shifted from week to week, there were now enough people he knew for him to join in the general banter. And he had felt the genuine warmth which greeted his announcement of the small triumph of not drinking at Justin’s birthday party. He couldn’t say what in the regime was working, but he was beginning to feel that getting off the booze was not a total impossibility. Just hang on in there.
Then his mind moved on to the crimes at the Duke of Kent’s Theatre.
Grant Yeoell’s openness about being Liddy Max’s sexual partner had rather thrown him. Charles had expected some form of denial or cover-up, but had got neither. Grant had seemed to regard the encounter as just another notch on wherever he cut his many notches. Another significant fact was that he hadn’t asked how Charles knew about him and Liddy. That suggested the information was common knowledge in The Habit of Faith company. Charles had just missed out on the news.
The other question that kept recurring to him was the identity of the voyeur for whom the spy camera had been set up in Liddy’s dressing room. There was no doubt that Gideon had planted the device, but had it been for his own benefit? He was the kind of person who would fit the popular Daily Mail profile of a voyeur. And when he and Charles had met in the pub the day after Liddy’s death, Gideon had spoken of having ‘very secret secrets’. It must have been him.
And yet Charles’s doubt persisted. He was still drawn to the idea that Gideon had been following someone else’s orders.
And he also suspected that that someone had helped Gideon consume all the vodka that caused his death. In fact, that Gideon had been murdered.
A conversation with Kell confirmed that most of the Habit company did now know about Gideon and Liddy’s encounter. But nobody else knew – or had admitted to knowing – that the action had been filmed.
Each night on his walk from the tube to the Duke of Kent’s, Charles looked out for Baz. But Gideon’s companion seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth as effectively as Gideon himself.
The following Thursday, the word on the flipchart at Gower House was ‘Obstacles’, and Ricky led a discussion about the hurdles that lay across the route to freedom from addiction. At the beginning of the session he had introduced a tall, grey-haired man to the group. ‘This is Trevor, who’s going to sit in this afternoon as an observer. He fully understands about the confidentiality issues here at Gower House, so don’t worry about talking freely.’
Charles thought the man looked vaguely familiar, but soon forgot his presence as the discussion developed.
After all the participants had done their ‘check-outs’, assessing their moods at the end of the session, there were a few ‘See you tomorrows’ as they all set off in their different directions. But just as he was leaving the room, Charles was stopped by the tall newcomer.
‘You’re Charles Paris, aren’t you?’
As soon as Trevor mentioned the movie, Charles knew exactly who he was. In fact, given how small his contributions had been to the film industry, he should have got there quicker. Trevor Race had directed one of Charles’s few appearances on the silver screen. The film had been one of those ‘state of the nation’ pieces of the 1980s. Overtly political, Doorstep Sandwiches had been an excoriating attack on the devastation wreaked by the Thatcher government, seen through the travails of a young couple in Doncaster. Charles Paris had taken on the minuscule role of the second bailiff, whose impact had been too minor to garner any press reviews.
Indeed, very little of his film work had ever been reviewed. The only notice he recollected was for an experimental movie called Onion Braids, written and directed by an Oxford contemporary soon after they left the university. (‘Charles Paris wandered through the action with the shell-shocked expression of someone who hadn’t yet recovered from reading the script for the first time.’ Sight and Sound.) The director, recognizing the wrong direction he had taken in life, quickly joined the civil service, where he was still in the Department of Work and Pensions, accumulating a very large pension of his own and likely soon to receive a knighthood. Less shrewd, Charles Paris had continued to pursue a career in the theatre.
Trevor Race had led Charles up to a well-appointed flat on the top floor of Gower House. From the kitchen, where he was tending the coffee-maker, could be seen the wealthy roofs of Finchley.
‘So, Trevor,’ asked Charles, ‘how do you come to be involved in TAUT? Are you on the staff?’
‘Good Lord, no. I’m still making movies.’
Charles gave himself a black mark. He should have known that.
‘No,’ Trevor went on, ‘I started TAUT.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I set up the charity.’ He gestured round the room. ‘This is my house.’
‘Gower House is yours?’
‘Yes. I used to live here. Still use this flat sometimes when I’m in London. Which isn’t very often.’
‘Where are you the rest of the time?’
‘Wherever the current movie’s being shot. I do have a villa on Mykonos, where I go between projects. But I never spend long there.’
‘So why did you set up TAUT?’
‘Ah. You don’t know what it stands for, do you?’
‘No. I keep meaning to ask one of the staff here, but never get round to it.’
‘Right. Did you know an actor called Alan Unsworth?’
‘I may have heard the name.’
‘Alan was in Doorstep Sandwiches.’ There was a note of reproof in the voice.
‘Well, perhaps I wasn’t in any scenes with him.’
‘You were.’ The tartness was now unmistakable. ‘Alan played the neighbour who tried to stop you and the other bailiff from breaking down the door.’
‘Oh yes, of course, I remember,’ Charles lied.
‘He was a very good actor, Alan.’
‘I remember being impressed,’ Charles lied further.
‘He was also the love of my life.’
There was a silence. Charles wasn’t quite sure of the correct response to a statement like that.
‘But Alan,’ Trevor went on, ‘had a kamikaze element in his personality. He kept doing stupid things. That was all right when he was on his own, bouncing in and out of relationships, never knowing what he really wanted in life. But after we got together … we had stability, we loved each other, we had no money worries … and he still had this urge to break it all.’
‘Drink?’ Charles suggested.
‘Oh yes. Drink.’ Trevor Race again gestured around the room. ‘Hence TAUT. The Alan Unsworth Trust, that’s what it stands for. A memorial to him. Not the memorial I would wish for, but … maybe better than nothing.’
‘I’m certainly appreciating what’s going on here.’
‘Good. The staff are brilliant. When I decided to set TAUT up, I wanted to do it properly. Everyone fully qualified. I did a lot of research to get the right people. I didn’t know much about the mechanics of addiction, until it was too late. But after Alan died, I made it my business to find out stuff. I did a lot of research into various different approaches, and hired the people who seemed to be getting the best results. I know the TAUT system doesn’t work for everyone, but if it does for even one person, then I guess my efforts haven’t been wasted.’
‘I’ve noticed that TAUT deals with all kinds of addictions. Was Alan also into drugs?’
‘Alan never did drugs,’ came the sharp response.
‘And you finance the whole thing yourself, do you, Trevor?’
The tall man shrugged. ‘Yes. There’s a lot of money to be made in the film industry. I’ve made a great deal. And there’s nothing I want to spend it on. I travel all the time for work, so there’s not much pleasure for me in exotic holidays. I’ve got as much property as I need. Flashy cars, ridiculously priced watches, I don’t want them.’ He was expressing the familiar dilemma of the ‘champagne Socialist’. Trevor Race had set out on an artistic course which defended the interests of the ‘have-nots’ against the depredations of the ‘haves’. And by doing so, he had accumulated so much money that he could no longer pretend not to be a ‘have’.
‘It would be different, of course, if Alan was still alive. Travelling with him was something else. I never knew what was going to happen next. But travelling on my own … doing anything on my own …’ His eyes misted over. ‘Things have changed so much. There are changes that Alan will never see. The two of us could actually be married now, for God’s sake! But that’ll never happen. So much’ll never happen.
‘I still keep asking myself what more I could have done. Towards the end I stopped working – I gave up a couple of very lucrative movies just to look after Alan. I tried to monitor him every hour of the day and night, see that no booze got into the house. But alcoholics are devious – I don’t need to tell you that, Charles. Whatever precautions I took, he still managed to smuggle the stuff in. Alan really did have a death wish. So, I suppose … he got what he wanted.’
There was a long pause before Trevor pulled himself together, and asked, ‘Is it the booze with you, Charles? Is that why you’re here?’
‘Yes.’
‘No drugs?’
‘No.’
‘That’s good. And how’re you going on the road to total abstinence?’
Charles still wasn’t entirely convinced that was the road he wanted to be on, but he just said, ‘OK.’
‘When did you last work?’
Unusually, he was able to reply, ‘I’m working at the moment.’
‘Good. I’m sorry, I’d kind of assumed that you couldn’t get any work, because of your problem with the booze.’
Before he’d started attending Gower House, Charles’s instant reaction would have been, ‘I’m not that bad!’ He would have separated himself from the people who lost jobs and houses and had their children taken into care, but now he was less condemning. He and the others, they all had the same problem. It was just a matter of degree.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Trevor.
‘Play at the Duke of Kent’s. The Habit of Faith.’
Trevor Race shook his head. ‘Sorry, I’ve been away so much, I’m not up with West End theatre. Don’t know anything about it.’
‘New play set in a monastery.’
‘Oh God.’
‘Vehicle for Justin Grover.’
‘Really? One of those actors who works it all out himself, doesn’t like the intervention of a director.’
‘You’ve described him perfectly.’
‘God, I can’t stand working with people like that! Fortunately, I very rarely have to. Got to the point in my career where I have a veto on casting. But making movies is such a technical exercise, the actors must respect the director’s skills, or the whole thing implodes.’
‘So, when did you work with him?’
‘I never have, thank the Lord. But I’ve heard a lot about him. One of my oldest friends worked with Justin Grover right at the beginning of his career. When he was just one of any number of interchangeable actors, fresh out of drama school. Long before he would bestride the world as Sigismund the Strong.’
‘What was your friend’s name?’
‘Damian Grantchester. He used to run the theatre in Bridport.’