It was a very abstracted Brother Benedict who walked his way through The Habit of Faith that Saturday night. He’d checked with Kell, who said she wasn’t expecting Seamus Milligan to be in that evening. He was there quite often, kept a close eye on the show. Or maybe he just revelled in seeing his name outside a West End theatre. Kell said Seamus had talked of coming to see it again one day the following week.
Charles could have phoned the writer from his dressing room – the mobile number was on the company contact sheet – but he didn’t want to rush into a confrontation. Apart from anything else, Charles wanted time to assess his recent conversation with Justin. Although the star had dealt very fluently with the potential accusations, Charles was not a hundred per cent convinced of his innocence. For the time being, until he’d thought the situation through, he gave equal weight to Damian Grantchester’s testimony.
Then there was the business of Seamus Milligan’s eyes following Liddy Max’s every movement ‘like a devoted puppy’. Charles knew he could sometimes be unobservant, but his antennae for the complex business of attraction and counter-attraction in a rehearsal room were usually pretty acute.
And the setting up of the spy camera … He still felt certain Gideon had done that. He remembered Baz’s words about his friend doing ‘little jobs’, cash in hand, for ‘people’ at the Duke of Kent’s. Justin Grover had known the stage doorman well from a previous occasion when he’d worked there. Gideon would have liked the idea of doing a secret ‘little job’ for an international star, particularly if there was money involved.
Whereas, Seamus Milligan … Charles had never seen the writer even acknowledge Gideon. The idea of the two of them being complicit in setting up the spy camera didn’t feel right.
And Justin’s talk of being ‘represented by some of the best lawyers in the world’ and their ‘Rottweiler tendencies’ … well, the more he thought about it, the more he identified it as a subtle form of bullying. You mess with me and you’ll regret it.
No, Charles Paris was far from convinced that all the mysteries surrounding Liddy Max’s death had been solved.
He was still troubled and preoccupied when he left the Duke of Kent’s that evening. By chance, Grant Yeoell was only a few paces ahead of him. As Charles emerged from the stage door, he heard the tall actor call out, ‘Night, night, Shell’, before setting off for whatever excitements the night ahead promised him.
Shell. Shelley. Charles recalled an earlier conversation with Grant Yeoell, when the actor had criticized him for referring to his fans as ‘groupies’. He had then spoken of one fan who turned up every night for the entire run of a West End show he was in. She’d been called Shelley. Was it possible …?
He felt an idiot for not having thought of her before. He’d been conscious of the girls outside the stage door every night, but never looked closely at them. Never thought of them as potential witnesses.
The girl was looking disconsolately in the direction that the now invisible Grant Yeoell had taken, as Charles approached her. ‘Big fan of his, are you?’
‘His Number One Fan,’ she asserted. Her voice was very young, with a London twang.
‘Want to talk to me about him?’
Shelley stepped into the light and looked Charles up and down. She was a slight figure, with huge dark eyes set in a very thin face, which was framed by the fur hood of a parka. ‘All right,’ she said.
The pub, the one he’d been to with Gideon, had now been brightened up with some premature Christmas lights. The bar was Saturday night noisy, and it took him a while to get in his drink order. Vodka and Coke for Shelley, sparkling water for him. He was half afraid she’d have slipped away from the cramped corner where he had left her.
But, when he returned, she was still there, resisting the banter of a bunch of rowdy men with football scarves. She took a long sip from her drink as soon as it was handed across. ‘Bloody cold out there,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Charles agreed. ‘Do you wait for Grant every night?’ She nodded. ‘You certainly must be his Number One Fan.’
‘He’s nice to me.’
‘Nice in what way?’
‘Always calls me by my name. Called me “Shell” tonight. After he first found out my name, he used to call me “Shelley”. Now he knows me better, it’s “Shell”.’
‘When you say he knows you better, how much better does he know you?’
The girl looked puzzled. A wrinkle appeared between the brows of a face that was otherwise wrinkle-free. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Has Grant ever taken you out?’
‘Of course not.’ She giggled at the absurdity of the idea.
‘Have you ever had a long conversation with him?’
‘He chatted quite a bit when he first signed my programme.’
Charles noticed she was still carrying one, crumpled and a bit wrinkled where the damp had got to it. There must have been rain on some of the nights she maintained her vigil outside the stage door.
‘And have you had any long chats with him since?’
‘Sometimes he says a few words.’ She looked earnestly at Charles. ‘I do love him, you know.’
‘I’m sure you do.’
‘I think he’s realizing that, slowly. You know, in time I’m sure he’ll come round to the idea. I bet I’ve watched his movies more times than anyone else does.’
‘You probably have. And have you got a boyfriend?’
‘No. Just Grant. It is true love, you know, Grant and me. He will realize it some time. He’ll marry me in the end.’
‘Right.’ Charles cleared his throat, and couldn’t help himself from saying something terribly old-fashioned. ‘What do your parents think about you being out in the West End every night?’
‘I don’t see my parents. I was in care for a long time.’
‘And now?’
‘I manage.’ But the ‘woman of the world’ air with which she tried to carry this off didn’t quite work. Charles looked at her more closely. Under all that make-up, she really was very young. Fifteen, possibly only fourteen. He remembered Justin and Grant’s banter about checking passports.
‘And when did you first come to the Duke of Kent’s; you know, how soon after The Habit of Faith opened?’
‘I was here from the start.’
‘The Press Night?’
‘I don’t know what you mean. First night I came was the day you started rehearsing here.’
‘The Monday?’
‘Yes.’
‘How did you know we were rehearsing here?’
‘Got a friend who works up the West End. She saw some people going in the stage door. Including Grant. She told me to get round there as soon as I could.’
‘Is she a fan of his too?’
‘Yes, but not, like, not his Number One Fan. I mean, she came, like, for the first few days after the show opened. She hasn’t been for weeks now.’ The words were spoken with a mixture of contempt and satisfaction.
‘Could we go back to that first Monday when you came to the theatre?’
‘OK.’
‘What time did you arrive?’
‘Like, late afternoon. Five o’clock, maybe. I couldn’t get here earlier.’
‘But we’d stopped rehearsing by then.’
‘I know. I was told that.’
‘By whom?’
‘The fat man by the door.’
‘So then did you go home?’
‘No. I thought, like, if this is where Grant’s working, then he might come back.’
‘And did he?’
‘Yes. I saw you first. Round quarter-past six, half-past maybe, I was going to give up, but then you went into the theatre and I thought, well, if Charles Paris is going in, maybe they are rehearsing, and Grant will be along in a minute.’
‘How did you know my name was Charles Paris?’
‘I didn’t then.’ She tapped the programme. ‘But now I know the names of everyone in the cast.’
‘Who else did you see go in that night? After me?’
‘The girl, Liddy Max, she went in. Then, a little after that, Grant appeared. I was so excited, because I hadn’t seen him – like, in the flesh – since the press launch for Vandals and Visigoths 5: Revenge of the Skelegators. But he didn’t see me that evening. He had his coat collar turned up, and a hat down over his eyes, but I knew it was him. I’d recognize Grant Yeoell anywhere.’
‘And did you see him come out of the theatre?’
‘Yes. Like, half an hour later, maybe. And I went forward to, like, say hello, but he blanked me. I felt terrible. He’s been nicer to me since I’ve seen him since, but then I felt, like, Oh my God, it’s so awful!’
‘What happened next? That evening?’
‘I went back.’
‘Home?’
‘Where I’m staying.’ She made the distinction clear.
‘And you didn’t see anything else?’ asked Charles, disappointment and frustration welling up inside him.
‘No.’
‘You didn’t see any of the other actors go in through the stage door?’
‘None of the actors, no.’
‘What do you mean? Somebody else went in?’
‘Yes.’ Shelley opened her programme and, knowing her way well around its contents, opened the relevant page. She pointed to a photograph. ‘He went in.’
It was Seamus Milligan.
‘I can’t thank you enough,’ said Charles.
‘Don’t thank me.’ The girl giggled. ‘I haven’t done anything yet.’
‘What do you mean?’ And then he suddenly did realize what she meant.
‘There’s a room I can use, just round the corner. What it’ll cost, of course, depends on what you want.’
‘I don’t want anything, Shelley.’ He reached into his wallet, pulled out a couple of twenties and thrust them into her hands. ‘There, you take that.’
And he rushed out of the pub.
Charles couldn’t make sense of it, the naiveté of an underage girl who made her living as a prostitute and was sustained by the fantasy that she would end up marrying an international movie star. He tried not to think about Shelley, of how she spent her life, of where she would be going when she left the pub. It was too upsetting.
He was wandering aimlessly. The temptation to have a drink was overpowering. It was only quarter to eleven, nothing to stop him from nipping into one of the many pubs in the West End and downing a quadruple scotch. Nothing to stop him from buying an overpriced bottle of Bell’s at one of the West End’s many convenience stores and going back to Hereford Road to numb himself quietly at home.
But he resisted the temptation. Though the sessions at Gower House had done nothing yet to cure his addiction, they had adjusted the time-clock of his guilt. Now he felt guilty when contemplating having a drink; previously he’d only felt guilty the morning after having had too many of them. Was that a kind of progress?
Suddenly, standing in front of the Christmas-lit frontage of an electrical store on Old Compton Street, Charles had total recall of what he had seen on the night of Liddy Max’s death. The reality was more disappointing than he’d hoped.
He remembered, when he’d woken up in his dressing room, he’d had recollections of actions seen and conversations overheard, but he now knew those were just dreams. He hadn’t been in any mysterious fugue state, simply drunk.
And when it returned, the memory of the one part of the evening that had been wiped away turned out to be surprisingly banal. He had woken at a quarter to eleven, panicked about having stood Frances up, grabbed his bottle of Bell’s, and rushed out of the dressing room.
But he hadn’t gone straight down the two flights of stairs. On the first-floor landing, he had seen Liddy Max’s door open, and gone to investigate. The dressing room was empty, but that was when he had seen its interior. That’s why he recognized it.
He had then continued down the second flight of stairs and found Liddy’s body.
It was nothing, a tiny detail, but it frightened him. If alcohol could erase that memory, it was capable of erasing much more important ones. And erasing recollections of his own actions and behaviour.
Charles couldn’t have said whether it was by coincidence or his own volition that he next found himself standing outside the metal door of the Techie’s Drinking Club, but it was certainly by his own will that he entered the premises.
The place was full, but not as rammed as the Saturday night pubs, so its members found the place a welcome haven.
And Charles felt it was where he should be, too. After his moment of total recall, he had a strange sensation that the events of the rest of the night were preordained.
So, it was no surprise to him to meet Baz, smellier and more trembly than ever, holding a bottle of vodka, which was easier to manage than a glass.
‘Bad news about Gideon,’ said Charles.
The little man looked up at him suspiciously through the glaze on his eyes. ‘Who are you?’
‘Charles Paris.’ The name did not register. ‘We met before. I’m in the play at the Duke of Kent’s.’ Still no recognition. ‘The one with all those bloody monks maundering on, and Justin Grover poncing around in a cassock.’
Having his own words quoted back to him did spark something in Baz’s memory. ‘You came with Gid.’
‘That’s right. I was just saying, bad news about what happened to him.’
‘Oh, it was his own fault,’ Baz went on in pious tones. ‘People who drink too much must accept the consequences.’
‘Do you know anything about how he died?’
‘He drank too much. He choked on his own vomit. That is why,’ said Baz, still mocking, ‘on the rare occasions when I have had too much to drink, I am always very careful to go to sleep lying on my side.’
‘I found Gideon in here,’ said Charles.
‘Did you? And were you the one who called the police?’
‘No.’
‘Somebody did. We only just had time to get the body out on to the street. Otherwise the police would have been all over this place, asking unhelpful questions about licensing and that kind of nonsense.’ Baz took a long swig of vodka to restore his equilibrium.
‘Did you see Gideon the night he died?’
‘“Night he died”?’ The eyes had glazed over again. ‘When was that?’
‘A few weeks back. I reckon Gideon must’ve come in here out of normal opening hours.’
‘Ah. That could be right. He had a key.’
‘Did he often come in out of hours?’
‘Not often. Sometimes.’
‘Ever with you?’
Baz nodded sagaciously, and took another pull on the vodka bottle.
‘Recently?’
‘I can’t remember when. Dates, not very good at dates. Not very good when I went on dates, either. Brewer’s droop.’ He seemed to find this very funny. His laughter set up a bout of coughing, which he pacified with vodka.
Charles shifted the point of attack. ‘Last time you came here out of hours with Gideon, was it just the two of you?’
‘Just the two of us.’ Baz nodded vigorously.
‘And anyone else?’
He nodded again. ‘And someone else.’
‘Who?’
‘A pal. A drinking pal.’
‘And did you all leave at the same time?’
‘What time?’
‘The same time. Did you all leave together?’
Baz pondered this question. ‘Out of hours. Did we all leave together?’
‘That’s it.’
Charles waited, not very hopefully, but then Baz said, in a tone of some bewilderment, ‘Gid didn’t leave. Gid died.’
‘Here?’
‘Yes.’
So at least that probably meant they were talking about the right date. Charles persevered. ‘Were you here when he died?’
‘No, no. He lay on his back. Always sleep on your side.’
‘So, when you left, Baz, was Gideon alone?’
‘Don’t drink alone. Bad thing to drink on your own. Drinking should be a social activity. “Hail, fellow, well met”, and that kind of thing. Don’t drink alone.’
‘But did you leave Gideon on his own?’
‘No, no. Drinking companion. I had to go. Pressing appointment, can’t remember what. They went, I stayed. No, no. I went, they stayed.’
‘Gideon?’
‘Yes.’
‘And who?’
‘Well, the person we came here with.’
Charles tried not to let his exasperation show. ‘And who was that?’
Baz raised a quivering finger and pointed across the room. ‘He’s over there.’
‘I thought you were a Guinness man?’
‘Needs must when the devil drives. Nothing on draught here. Just bottles.’ Seamus Milligan had one of Jameson’s in front of him. ‘Do you want to fetch a glass, Charles?’
‘No, I’m fine, thank you.’
‘Good. Nice when we’re all fine, isn’t it?’
‘Kell said you weren’t going to be in today.’
‘I wasn’t in. To the theatre. I’m here.’
‘Yes.’
‘Anyway, where I am and what I do there, I would have thought is my business.’
‘Certainly. So long as Justin approves.’
‘And what the hell do you mean by that, Charles?’
‘I mean that you and Justin seem to be quite close.’
‘If you’re insinuating that he and I—’
‘I’m certainly not insinuating anything of a sexual nature. More of a mutually backscratching nature. You both have reasons for doing each other favours.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Let’s start with one very simple question, Seamus. Would The Habit of Faith be currently running in the West End if Justin Grover wasn’t involved in it?’
‘Quite possibly. It’s a play which I’m very proud of, and I’m sure with another actor …’ The playwright wasn’t even convincing himself.
‘No. “With another actor”, it might get a few weeks at some regional theatre, a brief tour, but West End? No. You know that as well as I do, Seamus. But with Justin Grover’s name attached, a West End run is guaranteed. A reading of the Yellow Pages with Justin Grover’s name attached would get a West End run.
‘So why, when Justin sees a break coming in his Vandals and Visigoths schedule, a break into which he could fit three months in the West End, why doesn’t he go for a classic play, or a new one by one of the vibrant young playwrights who keep being discovered? Why does he go for The Habit of Faith? It has to be because he owes you a favour.’
‘Justin has admired my work for a long—’
‘Or, of course, because Justin knows that you could do him a disfavour.’
‘Meaning what exactly?’
‘Meaning that you know something from his past, something which might rather discredit his image in these hypersensitive times. Something like the fact that Justin Grover enjoys a little voyeurism.’
The expression on the playwright’s face told Charles that he was on the right track, and emboldened him to go on assembling his theory out loud. ‘Some years back, you were down at Bridport, being shown round the theatre by Damian Grantchester, because one of your plays was in rehearsal there. The previous production had been Hamlet, in which Justin and I had given our Rosencrantz and Guildenstern – or possibly the other way round. You were with Damian when he was shown the hole that Justin had drilled through from our dressing room into Ophelia’s. You saw the evidence that Justin Grover was a Peeping Tom.’
Seamus’s face still gave Charles no discouragement from continuing, ‘Well, you sat on that information for a long time, didn’t you? I’m not sure why you suddenly decided the moment was right to use it. Was it the change in the world of showbiz, the new climate in which big names were being exposed for long-ago “inappropriate behaviour”? Was it the ever-increasing international profile of Justin Grover? Or was it some decline in your own personal circumstances that meant you needed the money? I don’t know, and the details aren’t really important. But the outcome was that The Habit of Faith, written by Seamus Milligan, appeared in the West End, starring Justin Grover.’
There was a silence. Then the playwright said, ‘You have no proof of any of this.’
‘No? Maybe not. But that’s the history. Let’s move up to the present, shall we? What about the death of Liddy Max? Shall we talk about that now?’
The boisterous noise-level around them should have made conversation difficult, but in the two men’s cocoon of concentration they might have been alone in the room.
‘And what about Gideon’s? Let’s deal with Liddy first. Shall I tell you what Justin’s version of events is?’
‘Why not?’
‘He’s fingering you as her murderer.’
‘What?’
‘He said you pushed her down the stairs backstage at the Duke of Kent’s.’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘According to Justin, because you were in love with her.’
‘What!’ That was clearly not the answer Seamus had been expecting.
‘Yes. You’d had your eyes on her right through rehearsal, apparently. And when you saw her making love with another man, you flipped your lid and killed her.’
‘Is that what Justin said?’
‘Yes.’
‘And did he say how I happened to see Liddy and Grant making love?’
‘No, he didn’t,’ said Charles, salting away the useful nugget of information that Seamus knew the identity of the girl’s lover.
‘I’ll tell you how it happened, Charles. That Monday evening, I went round to Justin’s hotel room, by arrangement. I knocked on the door, got no response and went in. The reason he hadn’t heard my knock was that Justin was in a … state of some excitement, watching a live transmission on his laptop of Liddy and Grant having sex!’
‘So he was lying when he told me you loved her?’
‘Absolutely. I’ve never had any interest in Liddy. Apart from anything else, I’m still a Catholic, so far as marriage is concerned. I may no longer be faithful to the Church, but I have been faithful to my wife since the day of our wedding!’
‘So,’ asked Charles, ‘if it wasn’t the passion of a jealous lover, what was the reason you killed Liddy Max?’
‘I didn’t go near the Duke of Kent’s after lunchtime that day.’
‘Oh, you did. A witness saw you entering the stage door some half-hour after Grant left the theatre.’ There was no response. ‘Shall I suggest something that might have happened, Seamus?’
‘I can’t stop you.’
‘I think Justin told you to do it. I think Liddy had somehow found out about the secret filming and had called him, probably while you were still in his hotel room. A call was definitely made from her mobile after Grant had left. She threatened to expose Justin to the press. He couldn’t risk that, so he sent you round to deal with her.’
‘And why would I do that? According to your analysis of my motivation, all I wanted to do was get The Habit of Faith into the West End. I’d achieved that. Why would I agree to do a favour for Justin?’
This was not a question for which Charles had been prepared, but he quickly improvised a response. ‘I think he was holding out some other offer for you. A nice writing berth on Vandals and Visigoths, maybe? I’m sure he has the power to recommend new writers to the producers. The money you’d get for that kind of screenplay would come in handy, wouldn’t it? Nice pension for a writer your age.’
The playwright said nothing, but something in his eyes told Charles he was very close to the truth.
‘So, Seamus, shall we move on to Gideon’s death? Again, I think you did that under orders from Justin. Gideon was a loose cannon, particularly when he’d got a few drinks inside him. Maybe he even threatened to tell the police about Justin paying him to set up the spy camera. He was a risk, anyway, and also a very easy person to kill. Given his weight, given his general state of health, given his alcohol habit … someone just had to sit with him for long enough, ply him with vodka for long enough; see that, when he passed out, he was lying on his back … and let nature take its course …’
‘And you think I did that, Charles?’
‘Yes. Right here. In this very room.’
‘Nonsense!’
‘What’s more, I have a witness.’
‘Who?’
Charles pointed across to where his witness, overcome by excess, lay crumpled on the floor.
‘Baz?’ said Seamus contemptuously. ‘Who’s going to believe someone like him?’ Then he turned back to Charles and said, ‘Well, I feel congratulations are due. You’ve got a lot of things right. I did cause the deaths – I’m not going to say “murdered” – of both Liddy Max and Gideon. And do you know why I have no anxiety about telling you that, Charles?
‘It’s because I know for an absolute fact that you haven’t a hope in hell of proving any of it.’