Lowe and Le Breton mysteries - Death at the Dress Rehearsal (eBook)

1

Edward Lowe let the witless tittle-tattle wash over him and tried to pay it no attention. It was the same every morning. He would arrive with a copy of The Times, take a seat beside John Le Breton, and pointedly and noisily open it. The implication was obvious, surely? That he had no desire for conversation and would appreciate a little silence in which to read the news, first thing in the morning.

And yet, without fail, he would get no further than the first paragraph of the first column before John and whichever girl was doing his make-up would start. Such-and-such was seeing so-and-so, whatshisname was putting on weight, and you-know-who was rumoured to be about to be shifted to a new show on account of his dislike of one of the new producers. It was the banality which grated most – that, and the way in which his girl would invariably get involved. Within two minutes, she would stop mid-application and, in a tone he felt was better suited to Norman Evans gossiping over the garden wall, say, “Well, what do you think of that, Mr. Lowe?”

It really was too much.

“Do you think we could have a little quiet for once!” he snapped, then immediately regretted it.

Everyone was looking at him. It would have been preferable if they’d snapped back, but the closest any of them got was John’s raised eyebrow, and even that was accompanied by that infuriating half smile of his. The girls just giggled. They were used to his occasional outbursts, he supposed. He’d heard one of them say, “you have to make allowances for them, they’re that old” once, and the memory rankled afresh.

“I think we’re done now, in any case,” he grumbled, and pushed himself to his feet, pulling the tissue from his collar and dropping it on the floor. He’d had enough for one morning. He needed some air.

Without another word, he tramped down the stairs of the make-up van and left them to their gossip. There was a bitter wind blowing from the reservoir and it was still an hour before he was needed for shooting, but it would be better to wander across the freezing moorland than stay inside in an awkward atmosphere. He buttoned his coat up, buried his chin in its collar, and set off along the path around the water, away from everybody.

*   *   *

The worst of it was, he knew he was at fault. His mood had been foul since the previous day, when the show’s producer, David Birt, had leaned over the top of the chair in which Edward was almost napping and informed him that the following day’s shooting had been changed.

“Apparently, there’s a problem with the swimming pool we were intending to use, so we’re going to do the scene at a reservoir up the road instead,” he’d explained, with a tiny shrug. Then he’d handed over a thick sheaf of paper. “I know this isn’t going to make you happy, Edward, and believe me, I’d prefer not to be doing it, but there are new lines to be learned, I’m afraid.”

Even if the last-minute change hadn’t been enough to sour his mood, that little dig about new lines would have riled him. He knew it annoyed the others, his refusal to allow work to intrude on his private life. But he was damned if he was going to waste his evenings – which should be spent in front of the fire, with a glass of something decent and good music playing on the stereo – muttering lines to himself, with the script face-down in his hand, like some grubby schoolchild cramming for an examination. Even here, on location for Floggit and Leggit (and what a ridiculous title that was!), he refused to spend his evenings committing tripe to heart as though it were Shakespeare. Close enough was good enough for this kind of thing.

“It’s really not on, David,” he’d remonstrated, knowing it was a futile exercise, but unwilling to let the change pass without protest. “This is the second time in this run, you know? What was the excuse last time? The costumes weren’t ready, wasn’t it?”

“The costume girl’s mother died, Edward.”

“I know that, David! Though you’d never know we employed anyone to look after that side of things, given the shoddy state of some of the props. The antique miniature I was supposed to be appraising last week was a photograph of Guernsey in a plastic frame! As for the costumes…”

His voice had trailed off into ill-tempered silence and he’d taken refuge in lighting a cigarette, conscious that to say anything else on the subject would be to place himself in an invidious light.

“Well, if you could look over the new pages, Edward…” Birt had motioned towards the papers which Edward had already dumped on the table. “Of course, nobody expects you to be word-perfect tomorrow!”

He’d smiled, but Edward had been having none of it. He’d made as non-committal a sound as he could manage and nodded once, almost imperceptibly. Birt had stood for a second, then, evidently deciding no more need be said, smiled again and headed for the bar, leaving Edward to stare at the script with a baleful eye.

Learning lines had been easier when he was younger, of course. When he was doing rep, he’d only needed to look at a script once for it to become lodged in his head forever. He could still quote chunks of any number of long-forgotten plays, whole convoluted speeches which nobody else remembered, or would ever speak again.

Irritated, he peered at the top page of the new script. With a sigh, he skimmed through the episode synopsis.

THAT SINKING FEELING. Wetherby convinces Archie and the shopkeepers to test out a collection of vintage diving gear at the local reservoir. High jinks ensue when Wetherby ends up adrift in a rubber dinghy and Archie attempts to rescue him in a moth-eaten diving suit.

About par for the course, really. Last week it had been Joe Riley, who played local councillor Brian Clancy, and Donald Roberts, as the incontinent Vicar, trapped in a pub cellar with no access to a lavatory. He’d almost called his agent when he’d seen the episode was called “Bottoms Up”. High jinks, indeed. It was just another word for unnecessarily coarse behaviour, in his opinion.

He hadn’t called, of course. He knew exactly what his agent would have said. That Floggit and Leggit was his biggest break in years and that, after a professional lifetime spent as a supporting actor, this was his chance to play the lead on television.

The question he had to ask himself – that he had asked himself every day since he’d signed the contract – was whether being the star of a cheap-as-chips BBC series in which the elderly shop owners of Groat Street Market got into allegedly hilarious scrapes was really the height of his professional ambitions.

He’d really thought that by this stage in his career he might be doing better than playing George Wetherby, the self-important owner of a provincial antique shop in a slightly vulgar situation comedy. If 1972 was anything to go by, this was going to be a tedious decade, professionally speaking.

And it wasn’t as though he didn’t learn his lines, was it? Most of them, anyway. Birt and Bobby McMahon, the writer, could hardly expect perfection straight off the bat, not when he was only given one evening to learn page after page of arrant rubbish. Because the quality didn’t help. Of course, it didn’t. Give me Hamlet or Lear, Edward thought with a burst of fresh irritation, and it would stick like glue. But “hand me that chamber pot, Archie,” and “where have your trousers gone, Malcolm?” Not exactly the Bard, was it?

Perhaps he should just retire and accept his glory days (such as they’d been!) were behind him. He wasn’t the only one, either. Joe Riley might bleat on about working with Hitchcock and his days at the Old Vic, but there was a reason he was reduced to playing a sour-tempered local-government man. And as for Donald Roberts…

He shook his head and smiled to himself, bad temper all but forgotten as he recalled old Donald remarking mildly that, after a lifetime in the business, all he’d be remembered for after this was Malcolm the Vicar’s allegedly hilariously weak bladder and propensity for misplacing his trousers.

At least Wetherby was only the guiding force of the Groat Street pensioners, and not quite one himself.

The thought that, even in his sixties, he was still one of the younger cast members served to dissipate the last vestiges of ill-humour from Edward’s mind, and he finally looked up from the ground to discover where his angry steps had taken him – just in time to stand in something soft and wet. He jumped to one side automatically, but the damage was done. He lifted the offending boot and peered myopically down at it.

Well, that was a relief. No sign of dog’s mess, at least.

He glared at the path and discovered the source of his momentary confusion. A grubby rag had been flattened against the gravel by the pressure of his boot, squeezing a pale, watery liquid into a puddle around it. A little of the liquid had darkened the bottom of his boot, but running the sole across some of the ever-present gorse quickly removed all trace of that.

For the first time since he’d stomped out of the makeup tent, Edward spent a moment taking in his immediate surroundings. His foul mood had evidently caused him to quicken his pace, he realised, for the set was sufficiently far away that he could make out only lorries and a tent, with the figures hurrying around them as indistinct and blurred as if he’d removed his spectacles. Otherwise, there was little to see. Ahead, the path disappeared around a bend and...