Paul Royce’s lip curled. ‘Well, if you’re never going to try anything new. .’
Walter Proud came in quickly, placating. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll have a look at that sketch.’
‘Not have a look at it — cut it.’
‘We’ll see, Lennie, we’ll see. Now if we can get on. I had a few points which — ’
‘There’s a whole lot more too,’ said Lennie Barber. ‘Stuff that’s going to have to be changed.’
Everyone looked at the comedian with annoyance. He was not making himself popular. And yet Charles found his respect for the man increasing. Having seen Barber work, he knew the fine instinct that made him function as a comedian. If he said he wasn’t happy with the material, the chances were that he was right. He could only work efficiently with jokes he trusted.
Ignoring the wall of cold looks around him, Lennie continued. ‘A lot of it’s far too up-market for me, anyway.’
Paul Royce was again offended. ‘What do you mean — up-market? You should never underestimate your audience. They understand more than you give them credit for.’
‘It’s not a matter of whether they understand it; it’s whether they expect to hear it from me. I mean, for example, that joke about Oedipus doing the week’s shopping down at Mothercare.’
‘That’s a bloody good joke,’ snapped Paul Royce. ‘Just because you’ve never heard of Oedipus — ’
‘Of course I’ve bloody heard of Oedipus. He killed his father, Laius, King of Thebes, and married his mother, Jocasta, but that is not the point. The audience would not expect the Lennie Barber they remember to tell a joke like that.’
‘That’s assuming any of them remember Lennie Barber at all,’ riposted Paul Royce venomously.
Walter Proud rushed in with his can of oil for troubled waters, which is standard issue equipment for all producers. To shift the mood of the conversation, he brought in the director. ‘What’s your feeling on this, Wayland?’
‘I don’t know.’ The dreamy eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses came back lazily from their reverie. ‘I was just trying to paint a picture of that final monologue. I think we should probably shoot it through something. Ferns, maybe. With the set almost burned-out behind.’
Charles got the feeling that The New Barber and Pole Show would not be a completely trouble-free production.
There was a pay-phone in the corridor outside the Drill Hall and he went to it in a rehearsal break. Through the arguments over the script, he had been formulating his next move in the case of Bill Peaky’s murder.
A girl answered. ‘Miffy Turtle Agency.’
Her voice was Cockney. They were all Cockney — Miffy, Carla, the late Bill Peaky. But the feeling they all gave Charles was not of loveable, Dickensian Cockneys, rather of potentially criminal, Kray Brothers type of Cockneys. Miffy particularly, with his solid frame and his flashy jewellery, seemed only one step from a gangster.
‘Could I speak to Mr. Turtle, please?’
‘Who wants him?’
‘My name is Charles Paris.’
“Ang on a minute.’ Silence. A click. ‘You’re through.’
‘Hello, Charles. What can I do you for?’
‘Miffy, I wondered if I could come and talk to you.’
‘What about?’
‘Well it’s about my working with Lennie Barber. I mean, you represent him, don’t you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, the fact is. .’ Time for a little tactical disloyalty. ‘I’ve been with the same agent for some years and I can’t honestly say he does a lot for me.’ (That bit, at least, was true.) ‘I was thinking, if this partnership with Lennie develops into anything, there might be arguments for us being jointly represented.’
‘You might have a point.’ Miffy didn’t sound too bowled over by the idea. ‘Of course, I do specialize in the variety area. Clubs, summer season, panto, that sort of scene.’
‘Yes, well, that seems to be the way my career’s moving at the moment.’ Absolute lies, Charles thought as he said it. On the other hand, it was moving more in that direction than it was in any other. In every other area of the entertainment business its customary stasis obtained.
‘OK. Come and have a talk about it. Fill me in a bit on what you done and so on. We’ll see if an arrangement is going to be mutually beneficial. How’re you placed?’
‘As you know, we’ve just started rehearsals for the telly. But I think there’s going to be some kind of script conference this afternoon that won’t involve me. So I’ll be free later.’
‘OK. Come along about four then. You know where we are?’
‘Yes.’
‘The name’s not on the door yet, ’cause we only just moved, but when you get here, it’s second floor.’
The new address of the Miffy Turtle Agency was, Charles decided, a step up in the world. It was in Argyll Street, just next to the London Palladium, maybe in the hope that success would rub off by contiguity. Miffy Turtle obviously had hopes of expansion to afford such an address; it also explained his anxiety at the prospect of losing his most lucrative clients.
The move had been very recent. The reception area was littered with half-emptied boxes and piled-up folders. The girl behind the typewriter looked as Cockney as she had sounded on the phone. Sharp, pert little face, sharp, pert little body. The sort of girl you’d never dare make a pass at for fear she’d laugh at you.
‘Mr. Paris, innit? OK, I’ll just go in and see if Miffy’s free.’ She went through the door to an inner office and returned after a brief exchange. ‘Won’t keep you a minute. Take a seat.’
He could hear a low hum of conversation from the office. It sounded like a female voice with Miffy’s. A large framed poster leaning against the wall prompted visions of a leggy chorus girl and Charles fantasized a little as to what would come out of the office. In a rather adolescent way, he had built up an image of Variety work as sexier than legitimate theatre.
But he couldn’t indulge in such fantasies; it was more important to prepare himself for the approaching interview.
It struck him that he was in danger of becoming a joke figure for his repeated murder accusations. Like a pimply youth proposing to every woman he meets, he seemed constantly to be gearing himself up to another confrontation. Janine Bentley, Paul Royce, now Miffy Turtle. Thank God he felt confident that he was finally on the right track. If this proved to be another mare’s nest, he would look ridiculous. He decided that in future murder investigations (if any) he should try to avoid confrontations. Just build up a dossier of evidence and then hand it over to the police. Though, in this case, there would be a hell of a lot of explaining to do before he could get down to details and, from his own experience, the police welcomed amateur detectives about as avidly as elephants welcome umbrella-stand manufacturers.
Something buzzed on the girl’s desk and she ushered him into Miffy’s office. Charles did a slight take when he saw that the agent was alone. There was another door facing his desk, which must lead to another exit. The fantasy chorus girl had gone that way.
In spite of the chaos in the outer office, efforts had been made to put Miffy Turtle in a setting worthy of a West End agent, or at least the setting in which West End agents appear in West End plays. He sat in a swivel chair upholstered in dark brown leather. Across the large mahogany desk his clients were offered a matching reproduction Chesterfield. On the wall there were framed photographs of people Charles didn’t recognize, girls in sequinned dresses, men with big bow ties, all with insincere smiles and insincere messages scrawled across them. Either side of the window red velvet curtains hung, the skimpiness of their cut suggesting that they were not designed ever to be pulled.
Miffy maintained the image. He wore a pale green three-piece suit; the heavy gold cuff-links and chunky identity bracelet were very much in evidence. He looked like a footballer giving a pre-match interview.