He moved across the room and pointed to a row of matching blue spines. ‘Here we are. R. Q. Wilberforce. The only one I haven’t been able to track down yet is Death Takes A Back Seat. But here we have Death Takes A Tumble, Death Takes The Wrong Turning, Death Takes A Drive, Death Takes A Stand and Death Takes A Short Cut. I also have some manuscripts and drafts of stuff that was never published, if that’s of interest.’ He gestured towards a rank of metal filing cabinets.
‘Did you collect them all one at a time?’
‘No, not the R. Q. Wilberforces, actually. I do with most of the stuff, get it from publishers or through dealers, but in fact I got all this lot together. Just after the war I wrote to R. Q. Wilberforce and asked if he’d got any material he wanted to get rid of. To my surprise he sent me the lot. With a very strange letter. Said that he had been going to throw it all away, said that the War had changed everything, that there was no time for frivolity any more, that life had been shown up in its true colours and it was a tragic business. He said that R. Q. Wilberforce was dead and he never wanted to hear anything about him again. The letter was very odd, sounded a bit unbalanced.’
‘Did he sign his own name?’
‘He signed R. Q. Wilberforce, I don’t know whether that was his name or not. I’ve got the letter filed if — ’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
Stanley Harvey smiled a self-satisfied smile. ‘So I got a nice little haul there for nothing. Shows what a letter arriving at the right time can do. Always worth writing a lot of letters if you’re building up a collection.’
‘Yes.’ Charles looked at his watch. Half-past six. And he looked at the thickness of the five blue books on the shelf. ‘Look, perhaps you could save me a bit of time. All I need to find out is about the deaths in the books. Perhaps you can remember something of the plots.’
Stanley Harvey looked at him in amazement and stroked his little beard. ‘Good Lord, no. I only collect this stuff, I don’t read it.’
Stanley Harvey perched watchfully at his desk in the middle of the library while Charles did his research. The circular room strengthened the impression of a spider at the centre of his web, as did the little man’s suspicious eyes. He clearly expected Charles to try to leave with an illicit Margery Allingham under his jacket.
But once he got into the books, Charles was too intrigued to be inhibited by any hostile spectator. He read with fascination as the pattern he had suspected unfolded in all its lunacy.
He soon realised that he wouldn’t have to read all the text. The relevant bits were not hard to find.
He opened each book and checked the date to confirm their sequence. There was a dedication in each one, too. In the first, Death Takes A Tumble, it read ‘To Darling Hilary’, and in the subsequent ones, ‘To Hilary again, with all my love’. That introduced a new element. Barton and Aurelia’s had always been hailed as the great example of a show business marriage that remained faithful, and yet who was this Hilary to whom he had dedicated five books? Charles knew he would have to find that out.
But for the moment he was more concerned with the deaths. They were easily found. Barton Rivers, in the guise of R. Q. Wilberforce, wrote his books to an unerring formula. In Chapter One, Maltravers Ratcliffe would return to his wife, Eithne, from some gallant exploit, arid they would decide to go away somewhere to escape all thoughts of crime. In Chapter Two they would arrive at their destination, and, on the last page of the chapter, someone would die. Maybe this total predictability was one of the reasons why R. Q. Wilberforce couldn’t find a publisher and had to produce the books himself.
The murders made fascinating reading. In Death Takes A Tumble, the victim apparently fell from a fire escape on the tower of a baronial castle. In Death Takes A Wrong Turning a rock, cunningly placed round a hairpin bend in the Dolomites, caused a young playboy to drive his Hispano-Suiza to destruction down the face of a cliff. In Death Takes A Drive the victim was run down by a Bentley that didn’t stop (thus causing, because of the make of car, suspicion to fall on the spotless Maltravers Ratcliffe). And in Death Takes a Stand a young man in a stately home was killed by the apparently accidental fall of a heavy wall-mounted light-stand.
In each book the manner of the death was, either punningly or directly, suggested in the title.
And, in every case, whoever had actually committed the crime, behind it, masterminding the operation, had been ‘the evil genius of von Strutter’ (usually followed by an exclamation mark!).
And so, in these old blue volumes were prefigured the deaths of Sadie Wainwright, Scott Newton, Rod Tisdale and Robin Laughton. Their individual identity had not been important; so long as they were connected with the series called The Strutters they had earned the right to die.
Charles returned the four volumes to their shelf long before Stanley Harvey’s deadline. He didn’t look at Death Takes A Short Cut. He knew what happened in that one.
Someone got impaled on a Japanese samurai sword.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The tower block of W.E.T. House looked unchanged, modern, impassive, but internally it was crippled. There was no canteen or bar service, the security men’s go-slow continued and members of other unions formed little mumbling groups. The company was like a very old man’s body, in which no one knew which organ would fail next. Senior management sat like anxious doctors in their offices, waiting for the loudspeaker announcement or phone call that would signal the end, or at least the lapse into coma, of their patient.
But Peter Lipscombe was not the man to let that sort of atmosphere get him down. With Boy Scout brightness he welcomed each member of The Strutters cast into the building, and assured them all that everything was okay.
And so indeed it seemed. Costumes were laid in dressing-rooms, make-up girls waited to administer their tantalisingly short caresses, cameramen and sound-boom operators drifted towards the studio, Vision Mixer and PA to the control box, Sound and Vision Controllers to their adjacent stations. The set was up, and there seemed to be no reason why the rehearse/recording of Episode Eight of The Strutters should not start on camera at ten o’clock as scheduled.
Charles Paris wasn’t there on the dot of ten, because, from force of habit, he had gone to the big Studio A, where Wragg and Bowen were having an uphill struggle with new directors and scriptwriters, and beginning to question the wisdom of their hugely expensive transfer from the BBC. (Why did they think they could change the inalienable law of television — that no comedy star was ever improved by moving from the BBC to ITV, and that for most a commercial offer was a sure sign that they had passed their peak of popularity?)
Charles realised his mistake as soon as he saw the set of garish tinsel and dangling silver bicycle wheels. As he turned to leave, he nearly bumped into a familiar, and not unattractive, figure. ‘Jay!’
Actually, I call myself Jan Lewis now. It looks better on the roller caption.’
‘Uh-huh. Well, how are things?’
‘Fine. This Wragg and Bowen show is so complicated. There’s lots to learn.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Did you hear what happened yesterday?’
‘Don’t think so.’
‘Oh, it was an absolute disaster. You know, this programme for the elderly. .’
Oh yes, the Franchise-Grabber. He nodded.
‘Well, you know they’d got this wonderful old boy in to front it. Ian Reynolds, he’s nearly eighty.’
‘Yes, I had heard.’ A few times.