She leaned back, all tension gone, exhausted. ‘I think you must be mad. Or is this another of his elaborate games?’
‘Whose?’
She looked piercingly at him for a moment. ‘Never mind. So you are asking me for an alibi, are you? For the interval?’
‘That’s right.’
‘As it happens, by coincidence, I have one.’ The words were spoken without irony, just with infinite weariness. ‘I sat with the theatre St. John’s Ambulance man right through the interval until my taxi arrived. His name’s Harry. You can check with him. He’s at the theatre for most performances. So many old bods go to the shows there, they need someone standing by with the oxygen mask.’
‘Oh. I will check,’ said Charles assertively. But even as he said it, he knew she was telling the truth. As so often in his detective career, he felt his paper house tumbling around him at the first seismic tremor of logic. There was a pause. Then he asked, ‘Who beat you up?’
‘It’s not your business.’
‘Was it your boy-friend?’
A tremble of her features betrayed the truth, but she repeated, ‘I told you, it’s none of your business.’
‘And that’s why you left the group so suddenly?’
‘I could hardly turn up and dance sexily like this, could I? Assuming I could even move at the time, which I couldn’t.’ Her retort had a spark of character that suggested a warmer, livelier Janine who would be nice to know in happier times.
‘And you thought your boy-friend had sent me to duff you up some more?’
‘He said he’d kill me.’ In her fear she forgot to deny that the beating-up was her boy-friend’s work.
‘When he found out about you and Peaky?’
‘Yes. Oh, it was all such a mess. I had been with him for two years and, I don’t know, I suppose I thought all relationships were like that, all the anger and the silences, seeing no one else when we were together, all that. Then when I met Bill, he was nice to me, sort of jolly, didn’t seem to take life seriously. And I thought it’d work.’
Poor kid. She was one of those girls doomed from the cradle only to get mixed up with men who were bastards. Gently Charles asked, ‘How old are you, Janine?’
‘Nineteen.’ As she said it, she looked ten years younger, a child who had fallen over in the playground.
He felt a surge of anger. ‘Good God. What kind of bastard does that to a girl?’
‘You don’t know him. He can be so kind, so gentle. He gets these black moods, though, and, well, he’s got problems.’
‘He certainly has.’
She looked at him, puzzled, then seemed suddenly to see an implication of his remark that worried her. ‘Mr. Paris, are you sure Bill was murdered?’
‘Pretty sure.’
‘I see. I think you’d better go.’ She rose painfully to her feet.
Charles’ reasoning was a few seconds behind her’s, but now he understood what had caused her anxiety. ‘I suppose,’ he began casually, ‘that your boyfriend’s revenge might not have stopped with you.’
‘I said I think you had better go.’
‘He might see Peaky as equally guilty. Possibly more guilty.’
‘My mother will be back soon.’
‘And the kind of guy who would beat you up like that’s not going to be too squeamish about murder.’
‘I said go.’
‘No. You tell me who he is. Who is your boy-friend?’
She stood before him, battered but defiant. ‘I’ll never tell you. And you won’t find out from anyone else, because nobody knew.’
The second part of her assertion he doubted. If they had lived together for two years, even in the anonymous world of London flatland, someone must have seen them together.
But the first part he accepted. She wouldn’t tell him. In spite of her injuries, she had an indomitable will. And Charles was feeling so depressed by the waste of her beauty that he could not bring himself to try to bully it out of her.
He left.
On the bus back to East Croydon Station, his mind worked slowly and logically through all she had said. And its conclusions were encouraging. Although Janine had not told him her boy-friend’s name, she had narrowed down the possibilities dramatically.
Her sudden change of mood and subsequent shielding of his identity had shown that she believed in her boy-friend’s guilt. Which meant that he must have had the opportunity to commit the crime. Which meant he must have been down at Hunstanton on the relevant afternoon. And must have been backstage during the interval.
It couldn’t be anyone in the company. There was no way that he wouldn’t have found out about the affair between Janine and Peaky when it started. Anyway her boy-friend was reported never to have gone on tour with her.
Charles thought back. Four people had gone backstage at the interval. Dickie Peck. Miffy Turtle. Paul Royce. And Walter Proud.
Dickie Peck Charles discounted as having nothing to do with the case. (For rather unprofessional reasons, as it happened. He had once suspected Peck in another case and been proved wrong.)
Miffy Turtle and Paul Royce, Charles knew little about. But anyway his thoughts leaped past them as a new suspicion took hold of him.
Walter Proud had divorced his wife a year before. How many middle-aged men before him had chucked up their settled, life for a last fling with a young girl? Walter Proud used to be moody and was now drinking heavily. In a drunken fit he would be capable of acts of violence.
What was more, Walter Proud had started life as a sound technician. He understood the mysteries of electrics and wiring.
From every point of view, he seemed to be the likeliest person to have murdered Bill Peaky.
CHAPTER EIGHT
COMIC: An agent’s trying to sell one of his acts to a night club owner.
‘You gotta see this girl. She’s got an amazing body. Her vital statistics are 75-23-36. And what an act!’
‘What does she do,’ asks the owner, ‘dance?’
‘No. She just crawls onto the stage and tries to stand up.’
Fate seemed to read his thoughts and when Charles got back to his Hereford Road home he found a note, scrawled by a Swedish girl from one of the other bedsitters, that ‘Moritz Skollen’ had phoned and, when he rang Maurice Skellern, he was given a message to contact Walter Proud at the television company which made The Alexander Harvey Show. Fate seemed to be setting up a confrontation.
After a bit of trouble with the switchboard, who didn’t appear to have heard of Walter Proud, Charles got through. He found his prospective murderer in a buoyant mood.
‘I’ve pulled it off, old boy.’
‘What?’
‘A pilot of a show with Lennie Barber. Nigel Frisch saw the interview with Alex and he thinks we may be on to a winner. May have just judged the nostalgia cycle right. So it’s all systems go.’
‘When does it happen? The year after next?’ asked Charles, familiar with television scheduling.
‘No, it’s a real rush job. In the studio in six weeks.’
‘Phew.’
‘The studio date was reserved for a special with Bill Peaky.’
‘What? The thing you were seeing him about?’
‘Yes, yes.’ Walter brushed the idea aside and pressed on. ‘But it’s really great news, isn’t it? I mean, it won’t just be recreating Barber and Pole routines, though there’ll be a bit of that. Lots of new material, really make it a kind of sketch show, with variety acts, of course. Pop singer guesting, maybe, a few dancers.’
‘These Foolish Things,’ Charles threw in, to see if the name prompted any betraying reaction.
It didn’t. ‘Shouldn’t think so. Should be one of the bigger names. Well, what do you say? Great, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, certainly,’ said Charles with guarded enthusiasm. Guarded because, though it was possible that Walter was ringing to say that, after his initial success in the role of Wilkie Pole, he would play the part again in the new show, Charles had been in the business too long to make that assumption. It was just as likely that Walter was ringing to tell him, thank you very much, thought you were super, love, but I’m afraid the part’s going to the Dagenham Girl Pipers.