Chapter Nineteen

ONE NAME dominated the news pages of the next day’s tabloids: Sally Luther. The death of a pretty actress – prettier in the archive photographs they reprinted from her sitcom heyday – was a good popular story.

Her career was recapitulated and analysed. The days when her face was a fixture on the nation’s television screens were recalled, together with tales of the fervour she inspired in her fans. At her peak she was the recipient of a massive postbag, including the usual creepy, obsessive letters that beautiful public faces inspire.

She’d even had the ultimate showbiz accolade of a stalker, who followed her around for some months. Unusually, she had been pursued and spied on by a woman rather than a man. Though this made her feel less threatened, it was still unnerving. Eventually she had called in the police, and her action had the right effect; the pestering instantly ceased.

As well as recalling her career, the papers were lavish with tributes to Sally Luther from other showbiz names. The television executives who’d turned their backs during the eclipse of her popularity all came forward to say what a fine actress and delightful person she had been, how much they’d loved working with her, and how disappointed they’d be not to work with her again.

The circumstances of her death were described, but few details were known beyond the facts that she’d been taken ill on stage during rehearsal and had died in hospital. One of the papers tried kite-flying the expression ‘mystery illness’, but if they hoped that would give rise to speculation about AIDS, they had reckoned without the affection in which Sally Luther had been held. For the great British public – particularly after her death – she represented the squeaky-clean girl next door; they would never dream of associating her with something as squalid as AIDS.

But if Sally Luther had colonised the front of the papers, the Arts pages were dominated by two names – Alexandru Radulescu and Russ Lavery.

The Asphodel production of Twelfth Night got an astonishing amount of coverage. Neither Pauline Monkton’s cunning ‘targeting of the right individuals’, nor the additional interest given by Sally Luther’s death was sufficient to explain the number of national critics who had been at the first night.

The reason was Alexandru Radulescu. He was – at least for a few months – the current vogue name, and no one who mattered in British theatre wanted to risk missing his latest production. Even if it meant forsaking the West End for the comparative wilds of Great Wensham, they had to be there. No doubt Radulescu and the Radulescu style would soon be condemned as ‘dated’ and ‘meretricious’, but during his brief moment in the sun he was the director who could do no wrong.

His revisualisation of Twelfth Night was hailed as ‘mould-breaking’, ‘daringly different’, ‘a radical reinterpretation of what had always been thought of as a safe old play’ and ‘an evening of pure theatre that challenges the spectator’s every preconception.’

Charles Paris could have spit.

He wasn’t surprised that an untutored audience would go for Alexandru’s flashy tricks, but he was amazed that professional critics could be seduced by such modish claptrap. Surely they should respect Shakespeare’s text, and recognise when it was being traduced – that was their job, for God’s sake! Critics should uphold the enduring values of the great British literary tradition, not be a prey to every new fad that comes along.

Even as he had the thought, Charles Paris realised how impossibly reactionary it sounded. Maybe he really was past his sell-by date. Maybe the values he represented were going the way of the dinosaurs. For a moment he was undermined by the appalling possibility that Alexandru Radulescu might be right.

But if the director was one of the golden boys of British theatre, there was another coming up fast to share the limelight. Russ Lavery had the kind of reviews even he – and his ego was of no mean proportions – would have been too bashful to write for himself.

The words ‘star’ and ‘genius’ were bandied about like small change. ‘A truly great Shakespearean performance,’ one critic enthused. ‘To be at Chailey Ferrars last night was to know what it must have been like to witness the debut of Garrick or Kean.’

Oh, for heaven’s sake, thought Charles. What is going on here? He would never be able to understand the random cycle of critical opinion. He had rehearsed many shows he thought excellent, and then seen them suffer savage dismemberment by the critics. He had been in productions he regarded as total shit, which had received rose-scented notices. It made no sense at all.

All he knew about criticism was that the only reviews he remembered were the bad ones. Over the years he must have had a good few laudatory notices – come on, he must have done – but all that stayed with him were of a type with the one he’d once received from Plays & Players: ‘Charles Paris was also in the cast, though why is a question which neither the director nor the playwright seemed prepared to address.’

The cast were given the chance of a lie-in on the Wednesday morning, but there was a rehearsal call for two o’clock in the afternoon. The triumph of the first night had been the product of luck, adrenaline and a sense of occasion. There were still details in the production that needed to be gone over and fixed.

Needless to say, most of these moments involved Russ Lavery. He was the one who, in his role as Viola, had suddenly taken on a lot of new scenes and, though his first night performance had been stunning, at times he had been flying on a wing and a prayer.

Most of Viola’s important scenes were with Orsino or Olivia, so Sir Toby Belch and his cronies were not called for rehearsal till five o’clock. Charles Paris, who had risen after his landlady had stopped serving breakfast, reckoned that the late call justified a pub lunch.

He wandered out looking for the centre of Great Wensham, but found that, in common with many other English country towns, its centre had been removed. Where one might have expected a characterful town square was a brick-paved pedestrian shopping precinct, featuring Marks & Spencers, Currys, Next, the Body Shop and all the chain-store names that appear in every other English town and city.

Still, he found a pub, Ye Olde King’s Head, which looked as if its construction had been completed the day before. He bought a pint of beer, ordered a lasagne, and sat down with his drink. A compilation of Hits of the Sixties was playing just too loud in the background.

Damn, he’d meant to buy a Times. Then he could have had a go at the crossword until his food came. Without a paper, though, he couldn’t avoid thinking about Sally Luther’s death.

He was convinced she had been murdered, poisoned by a fatal injection pushed through the hessian screen in the wings at Chailey Ferrars.

He was also convinced that her death was the culmination of a sequence of poisonings. Gavin Scholes, John B. Murgatroyd, Sally Luther.

The question was: who had gained from that sequence of events? The obvious beneficiary of Gavin’s removal had been Alexandru Radulescu, who took over the production of Twelfth Night. But the director could not have been directly responsible for the first poisoning because he had been nowhere near Chailey Ferrars when it happened.

The idea of Radulescu having someone doing his dirty work for him, though, was quite appealing. And if he’d had an accomplice, then the obvious candidate for the role was Vasile Bogdan. That would certainly explain the conversation Charles had overheard in the Gents at the Willesden rehearsal room.

But when Gavin’s poisoning was considered in conjunction with Sally Luther’s death, the main beneficiary was undoubtedly Russ Lavery. Because of those two events, he had achieved the Sebastian/Viola double role which had restored his credibility as a stage actor. Was it possible that such an outcome had been planned from the start?

But Russ hadn’t been at Chailey Ferrars either. Indeed, he had made a great public scene about not wanting to go to Chailey Ferrars. Could all that fuss have been deliberately set up to distance the actor from anything that might happen there?

If Russ was involved in Gavin’s poisoning, then he too would have needed an accomplice. Maybe Vasile Bogdan also fitted that role . . .? It was Russ Lavery, Gavin had told Charles, who recommended Vasile as a suitable member of the company. Had there been a mutual exchange of favours between the two actors?

Or were they both involved in a conspiracy with Alexandru Radulescu?

The element that didn’t fit into any of these possible scenarios was the poisoning of John B. Murgatroyd. In rehearsal he’d been proving unreceptive to the Director’s ideas, but surely that wasn’t sufficient reason to have him removed? The only person who had benefited directly from John B.’s illness was Chad Pearson who inherited the role of Sir Andrew Aguecheek, but Charles had great difficulty including Chad in any list of suspects.

On the other hand, suppose John B. had been right when he suggested that his poisoning had been a mistake? And that the intended victim had been Charles Paris . . .

That was a chilling thought, which prompted another, even more frightening.

Suppose Sally Luther’s death had also been a mistake . . .

At the time she was stabbed with the syringe, she shouldn’t have been in the wings anyway. She was only there, sheltering from the rain, while they waited for Charles Paris, who had missed his cue.

The person who should have been there in that cramped space, pressed against the damp hessian, was Charles Paris himself.

Now the sequence of crimes had a logic. Gavin Scholes had been poisoned so that Vasile Bogdan would have the director he wanted. To get the part he wanted, Vasile’d have to remove Charles Paris. He’d made one attempt at the Indian restaurant, and another during the tech run. On each occasion he had caught the wrong victim.

But he was unlikely to let that stop him trying again.

Charles Paris’s lasagne was delivered to his table. He looked down at the greasy, yellow, microwaved slabs, and he didn’t feel hungry.