‘I think it could happen again,’ said Walter Proud wisely, as if he was withholding some information on the subject. Charles knew from his experience of Walter’s character that he wasn’t.
‘I don’t think about it no more.’ Barber took a swig from his whisky glass. ‘I’ve heard too many agents and producers saying this is going to be the big one, this time it’ll really take off. I tell you, I been discovered so often that I’m only glad all the discoverers didn’t plant flags on me. OK, a comic has peaks and troughs. I’ve had my peaks, I’m lucky — a lot of comics never even have that. My Dad never made it big. Always a great comic, but nobody remembers the name. And what’s more, it didn’t stop him working.’
The long exposition of his life seemed to have relaxed him. He joked over the choice of sweets before plumping for a Little Nell. ‘I shouldn’t really, but the old guts don’t seem to have taken the first course too badly.’
Charles thought it might be a good time to find out a little background to the death of Bill Peaky. ‘Interesting, the Hunstanton show,’ he began.
Lennie Barber quickly showed up the fatuity of that as an opening gambit. ‘Interesting? I would have thought it was anything but bloody interesting. Now if you’d said boring or dull or terrible, I’d be right with you. But interesting — no. Summer season’s always hell — even pantomime’s better — but Hunstanton was the bottom. Nothing happened there.’
‘Except the death of a comedian,’ Charles offered gently.
‘Like I said, comedians have died in every — ’
‘I didn’t mean that. Bill Peaky.’
‘Oh, him.’ From his intonation, it sounded as if he had genuinely forgotten the incident. ‘Was he a comedian?’
Walter Proud couldn’t forget that he had actually been trying to set up a programme with the dead man. ‘Oh yes, I think he was enormously talented. Would have developed into something really big.’
‘Jesus, Walter, ever since I’ve known you, you’ve always wanted everything to be big. Back in Ally Pally days, when you were just a technical boffin with all the sound recording stuff, you were always talking about things being big. I don’t know whether Bill Peaky was going to be big or not. Personally I couldn’t see anything in his act. He had no technique, no experience. But I’m prepared to believe from the money they were paying him that somebody thought he had a future. But a short one, surely. The public will be fooled by novelty for a bit, but they soon get tired of it.’
‘They didn’t get much of a chance to get tired of Bill Peaky,’ observed Charles.
‘No. Mind you, the rest of the company did. A little of him went a very long way.’
‘Not popular, you mean?’ Charles overlaid his interest with casualness.
‘You could say that. About as popular as a mosquito in a sleeping bag. Always going on about how great he was, how much money he was making, what a big star he was going to be. Fair got up everyone’s hooter. No, he was riding for a fall. Just as well he snuffed it before someone helped him on the way.’
It shouldn’t have been, but it was a shock to Charles to realize that most people still thought of the death as an accident. The presumption of murder had become so much a part of his thinking. ‘Anyone in particular out to get him?’ he asked with the same casualness.
‘Like I say, no one liked him. Big-headed little runt. He was so rude to everyone. My God, the things he said to that poor little pianist, Norman del Rosa. But not just him. Everyone. We were all crap and he was God’s gift to the entertainment business.’
‘What about the girls? Did they like him?’
‘If you mean was he shafting any of them, the answer was yes. I think he was trying to work his way through all the dancers.’
‘These Foolish Things?’
‘Yes. Maybe he thought when he’d had all of them, he could send off for a free badge or something.’
‘How far had he got when he died?’
‘He’d made it with a couple of them, I know. But I think he may have come unstuck with one called Janine.’
‘What, she wasn’t having any?’
‘Oh no, not that. But she got a bit serious about him. He’d seen it as wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, but I think she had something more permanent in mind. They had a fairly major bust-up about it. Lots of shouting in the dressing rooms and slamming doors.’
That confirmed what Vita Maureen had hinted at so decorously.
And suddenly something else slotted into place. Charles thought back to the show in the Winter Gardens, Hunstanton. To the end of the first half. When These Foolish Things had mimed and danced to When You Need Me. When, contrary to all the teaching of Chuck Sheba the great choreographer, there had been four boys and only three girls. Charles reckoned he could put money on the name of the missing girl.
In fact, to find the murderer of Bill Peaky, the first essential was to trace a Foolish Thing called Janine.
CHAPTER FOUR
COMIC: An out-of-work actor came home one day and found his wife in a hysterical state, her clothes torn, her face and arms scratched to pieces.
‘My God,’ he cried. ‘What happened?’
‘It was terrible,’ his wife replied. ‘This man came round and raped me.’
‘Who was it?’ shouted the actor in fury. ‘Who was it?’
‘Your agent.’
‘My agent? Did he leave a message?’
There was only one member of the Sun ’n’ Funtime company over whom Charles had any hold. And fortunately Vita Maureen, anticipating a reciprocal genteel tea party, had given him their phone number in Dollis Hill.
Norman sounded guilty when he answered the phone, as if he had been caught in the lavatory with a dirty book. From what Charles knew of the pianist’s character, it was quite possible that he had been caught in the lavatory with a dirty book.
‘I’m sorry, Vita’s out.’ He didn’t entertain the possibility of anyone wanting to speak to him rather than to his lovely wife. ‘She’s doing an audition for a new rock musical about the Boston Strangler.’
While Charles’ mind stove to digest this incongruity, his voice said he didn’t want to speak to Vita anyway.
‘Oh.’ Norman sounded desperately unhappy.
‘It’s about the dancers in the Hunstanton show.’
Of course Norman took it wrong. ‘Look, you said you’d never mention that. Are you trying to blackmail me, because I daren’t let Vita find out about — ’
‘No, no,’ Charles soothed. ‘I wouldn’t dream of breaking your confidence.’
‘Oh.’ Norman sounded appeased but still suspicious. ‘Then what do you want?’
‘I’m trying to trace one of the dancers. Janine. She was the one who was having an affair with Peaky, wasn’t she?’
‘Everyone reckoned so. Mind you, I don’t think she was the first in the company.’ This was said with a kind of wistful relish. Maybe Norman del Rosa didn’t confine his voyeurism to peeking at girls changing.
‘And she had a row with Peaky on the day he died?’
‘Yes.’
‘When he broke off the affair.’
‘That’s what everyone reckoned.’ Norman del Rosa was unwilling to answer anything off his own bat; he needed the support of majority opinion.
‘And then she went off in the middle of the show?’
‘Yes, she wasn’t well. Gastric trouble.’
Fairly easy to fake. Lots of visits to the lavatory and nobody would question their authenticity. ‘So, what. . she went home?’
‘Back to her digs, yes. Got a taxi. Actually. .’ Norman dropped his voice for the great daring of an opinion, ‘I think it could have been caused by the emotional upset.’
Charles agreed, but didn’t say so. ‘Do you happen to remember when she got the taxi home? Straight after their opening number, or what?’