Suddenly everyone rushed forward and started heaving at the wood and canvas to lift it off Mark’s body.
‘It’s all right,’ came the familiar drawl. ‘Don’t fret.’
The helpers stood back as Mark extricated himself. He stood up and rubbed his shoulder.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I think I’ll have a bit of a bruise tomorrow, but otherwise, fine.’
‘God, you were lucky,’ said Spike, who was looking at where the top edges of the flats had come to rest. ‘Look.’
The wall had been Mark’s salvation. Because the flats had been a little longer than the floor on which they fell, they had been stopped short when they met the wall, which had taken their weight. Scraping and chipping on the brick showed the force with which they had fallen.
‘No one else under there, is there?’
Spike crouched and looked into the triangle of darkness under the flats. After what seemed a long time he straightened up. ‘No. Look, could some of you lads help me to get these back?’
‘Certainly. Let me give a hand.’ Mark Spelthorne, having inadvertently been cast in the role of hero, continued to play it.
‘That could have been a very nasty accident,’ said Christopher Milton.
‘All in a day’s work for Flying Officer Falconer of The Fighter Pilots,’ said Mark Spelthorne smugly.
‘Whoever tied up those flats should get his cards,’ Spike grunted with professional disgust.
‘Don’t know who did it,’ mumbled one of the Sex of One… crew.
‘Ah well. It happened, not much we can do about it now,’ said one of the dancers brightly. ‘Don’t want to cry over spilt milk, do we? Just mop it up and squeeze the rag back into the bottle, eh?’
This seemed to break the atmosphere. They all helped to push the flats against the wall again and went off laughing and chatting.
Except for Charles Paris. He had seen how firmly the restraining ropes had been fixed to the cleat. He knew what had happened had not been an accident.
PART II
CHAPTER SIX
On the train up to Leeds that Sunday afternoon Charles cursed his lack of detective instinct. He had been present at what was probably a crime and just when his mind should be flashing up an instant recall of every detail of the scene it was providing only vague memories and woolly impressions. Perhaps it was Oliver Goldsmith’s fault. By delaying Sir Charles Marlow’s entry until the fifth act, he had ensured that Charles Paris had had at least two pints too many at the Saturday lunch time, so that the ideal computer printout of facts and details was replaced by a child’s picture in Fuzzy Felt.
He couldn’t even remember exactly who had been there. Christopher Milton, certainly, and Dickie Peck and the driver. And David Meldrum and Gwyneth were somewhere around, though he couldn’t remember whether they were on stage or in the auditorium at the time of the accident. Mark Spelthorne had been there, of course, and Spike and some of the King’s Theatre stage staff… And then who else? Two or three male dancers — Charles didn’t know their names, but he’d recognise them again — and the two girl dancers. Then one or two of the supporting actors and actresses. Charles screwed up his eyes and tried to see the scene again. Lizzie Dark certainly, she’d been there, and Michael Peyton, and some others. The edges of the picture were cloudy.
‘Damn!’ he snapped, and opened his eyes to find that the word had attracted the gaze of a large Bradford-bound Pakistani family. Embarrassed, he closed his eyes and tried to concentrate again. A little chill of anxiety about seeing Ruth kept getting in the way.
Well, the identity parade of suspects wasn’t very impressive, because it was incomplete. But, assuming a crime had been committed, it must have a motive and that might give a clue to the criminal.
The first question — was Mark Spelthorne the intended victim or was it just chance that caught him? Christopher Milton was not far behind and it was possible that the criminal was after him, but misjudged his timing in the dark. Or it could have been meant for any one of the people on stage. Or just a random blow for whoever happened to he there. The last would tie in with Gerald’s original view that someone was trying to wreck the show and didn’t mind how. If it was a personal vendetta against Christopher Milton, then why had the perpetrator bothered to make his first attacks on the pianist and Everard Austick? Why not go straight to his quarry? And why not use a more selective method than a tumbling pile of flats? If, on the other hand, Mark Spelthorne was the intended victim…
Oh dear. He knew it wasn’t getting him anywhere. Any of the people on stage at the time of the accident could have unwound the rope from the cleat. Equally, any of them could have been the intended victim. And since he couldn’t remember exactly who had been there, the possibilities were infinite. Add the difficulty of tying the motivation for that crime in with the other two and the problem was insoluble, or at least insoluble to a forty-eight-year-old actor who had spent too long in the bar at King’s Cross and who was having serious misgivings about going to stay with a woman with whom he had had a brief and not wholly glorious affair seven years previously.
He looked out of the window at the matt flatness of the Midlands. He closed his eyes, but sleep and even relaxation kept their distance. A new question formed in his mind — Did the 15.10 train from King’s Cross to Leeds have a bar? He set out to investigate.
Ruth was disagreeable. As soon as he saw her again he remembered. Not disagreeable in the sense of being unattractive; her trim body with its sharp little breasts and well-defined calf muscles remained as good as ever; she was disagreeable in the sense that she disagreed with everything one said. Charles never had known whether it was a genuine defence from a reasoned feminist standpoint or sheer bloody-mindedness. But it came back to him as soon as she spoke. Her voice was marinated in cynicism. Charles felt a great swoop of despair, as if all his worst opinions of himself were suddenly ratified, as if the thoughts that infected him in his lowest moods had suddenly been classified as gospel. He saw himself as an Everard Austick, an alcoholic whose failure in his chosen profession was only matched by his failure as a human being.
It wasn’t that cynicism struck no chord. He himself tended to attribute the worst motives to everyone and was distrustful of optimists. But like all practitioners of an art, he liked to feel that his version of it was a definitive one. His cynicism could still be unexpectedly erased by the sight of a child or the shock of a sudden kindness or a moment of desire, while Ruth’s blanket coverage seemed to debase the currency of cynicism.
It wasn’t that she’d had a particularly bad life. True, its emotional path had been a bit rocky. In her twenties she had had a series of affairs which never stood a chance of going the distance (Charles would have put himself in that category) and eventually at the age of thirty married a central heating systems salesman five years her senior. The marriage lasted three years until he went off with a croupier and they got a divorce. The fatalism with which Ruth accepted this reverse suggested that she had never had much faith in the marriage and had been undermining it for some time.
‘So you came.’ She spoke with that exactness of enunciation which is more revealing than an accent.
‘Yes, I said I would.’
‘Oh yes.’ The disbelief in her tone instantly put the clock beck seven years. ‘And how are you, Mr Charles Paris?’
‘Fine, fine.’
‘Good. And your lady wife?’
‘I don’t know. Well, when I last saw her. It’s a few months back now. I believe she has a boy friend, someone from the school where she teaches.’
‘Good for her. Not going to wait forever on your filing system, is she? Can I get you a cup of tea or a drink or something? Or should I show you up to your room in true landlady fashion?’ She leant against the kitchen table in a way that could have been meant to be provocative. It was always difficult to know with Ruth. But seeing her, Charles remembered how much he had fancied her. That was really all there ever had been to the relationship. If there were nothing to life except bed, they’d still have been together. He felt a warm trickle of desire in spite of all the gloom which she had generated inside him.