Dead on Cue Read online

  ‘Well, I hardly . . .’

  ‘And for rescuing the Son et Lumière. You truly are a man of miracles.’

  To argue that it had been absolutely nothing to do with him would have been futile. Ivy Bagshot, pillar of the WI and unused to alcohol as she was, was plain old-fashioned drunk.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Nick, and waited.

  ‘Are you there, Vicar?’

  ‘Yes, I’m here, Mrs Bagshot. Was there something else?’

  ‘One small tiny favour.’

  Nick’s heart sank. ‘What might that be?’

  ‘The Odds are extremely short of men, Father. I mean now that the show is proceeding . . .’ But what if it doesn’t, thought Nick, remembering Jonquil Charmwood’s visit.

  ‘. . . we shall need some strong men and true.’ Mrs Bagshot gave a muted hiccough. ‘So I wondered if you, Father Nick . . .’

  ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you but I couldn’t possibly take on anything extra at the moment,’ the vicar answered firmly.

  ‘Oh dear me, are you sure?’

  ‘Certain.’

  ‘But Father . . .’

  ‘Would you believe there is someone knocking at my door,’ lied Nick desperately. ‘I really will have to go. Goodnight, Mrs Bagshot.’

  He put the receiver down, feeling pale, and went to the drinks cupboard and poured himself a small gin and tonic which he consumed with much enjoyment. Then he went to bed.

  The committee of the Oakbridge Dramatists and Dramatic Society was in full spate, shouting at one another loudly while the chairman, a rather handsome and beautifully spoken man who modelled himself on Donald Sinden, was banging on the table with the palm of his hand and saying, ‘One at a time, please. One at a time.’ To which they paid no attention whatsoever.

  The person with the loudest voice, a booming middle-aged man with erstwhile matinee-idol looks, was saying in a well-bred drawl, ‘But dammit all, we don’t know anything about the fella. He comes in here with some cock-and-bull story about playing Ant Man and expects us to hand him a major production on a plate.’

  ‘But if we don’t we’re sunk,’ said an enormous blonde woman with equally enormous locks, hanging to her waist and done in a style dating back to the sixties and Farrah Fawcett. ‘I mean, it will be too much for young Oswald and that’s for sure.’

  ‘Can’t Mrs Wrigglesworth help him?’ said a timid-looking woman with mousey hair scraped back and a shining, earnest face to which make-up had never been introduced.

  ‘I know she has directed for us before but she’s far too busy with her many other interests,’ retorted the big blonde, whose name was Annette Muffat.

  ‘I think we’ll have to take a chance on this Gerry fellow. I mean, it’s either that or we cancel the whole thing,’ said the Oakbridge chiropodist, who was small and purposeful and, apparently, a wizard with verrucas.

  ‘I quite agree,’ said Jonquil Charmwood, raising her voice. She was secretary of the Odds. ‘I mean, what other alternative have we?’

  The chairman at last managed to speak. His voice was huge; a vast, mellifluent thing of which he was inordinately proud. He always captured the big Shakespearean roles and was excessively pleased with his recent Prospero. Almost as pleased as he was with himself. He was a local solicitor and was charming to his women clients, brusque and mannish with the males. His name was Paul Silas which looked very good printed on a theatrical programme, in his opinion anyway.

  ‘It seems to me, as there is obviously disagreement in the ranks, that I must get a feel for what the majority wish. I shall put it to you one by one and I would request that the rest of you remain silent.’ He turned to Jonquil. ‘Madam Secretary, what is your feeling about employing this Harlington fellow?’

  ‘Well I don’t think he’s ideal but what other alternative have we? I mean the show is so advanced. The commentary has been recorded by Rafael Devine, who gave his services free of charge as a favour to poor Ben Merryfield. I mean, what would he say if we suddenly pulled out?’

  Rafael Devine was a long-established actor, a National Theatre player and star of both television and films. Paul Silas personally felt that Devine’s work was inferior to his own but had never publicly voiced such a thought.

  ‘Then I take it we would have an aye vote from you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jonquil. ‘We’re too far gone to draw back.’

  Paul turned to the plain girl. ‘And what about you, Madam Treasurer? How would you vote?’

  She wavered, turning her make-up-less face towards Annette, who glowered at her.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said meekly.

  ‘Oh don’t be so wet,’ said Meg Alexander, who was married to the fading matinee idol and seemed engaged with him on a path of running the whole society. ‘Vote no.’

  ‘No,’ said the poor wretch then went bright red.

  ‘I see,’ said Paul deeply. He turned to the other members of the committee. ‘And what are your wishes, Madam Vice Chairman?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so pompous,’ said the fair-haired woman to whom he was speaking. She had at one time done some paid work in the theatre and was reverentially referred to as an ‘ex-professional’ by the other members of the drama group. ‘I say yes. If this American man turns out to be a turd we’ll just ignore him. But we need someone to pull the show together.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ put in the Oakbridge chiropodist whose name was Barry Beardsley.

  ‘I take it from that that you are in favour of employing Mr Harlington?’

  ‘Well, it’s hardly employing as he is offering his services. But, yes, I would agree to being directed by King Kong as long as we get this bloody Son et Lumière on.’

  The votes having been taken it turned out that they were tied, four in favour and four against using the services of the Wasp Man. It was left to the chairman to give his casting vote.

  Paul Silas sunk his chin into his hand, hoping that he looked like Michael Gambon in a thoughtful posture, and ran his brilliant brown eyes over the assembled committee. They came to rest warmly on Jonquil who hastily gazed in the other direction. He spoke.

  ‘I see that it is beholden upon me . . .’

  ‘Oh get on with it.’ This from the Vice Chairman, Estelle Yeoman, who did not suffer fools gladly.

  ‘To give my casting vote. And though I do so with some trepidation . . .’

  Estelle rolled her eyes at Jonquil, who grinned.

  ‘. . . I have come down on that which I believe will be of benefit to the whole society. I have, after much thought, decided in favour of Mr Harlington.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ said Annette loudly and got to her feet. ‘Well, I’m off to The Royal Oak. Who’s coming with me?’

  ‘I will,’ said Robin Green, a hairy-faced individual of indeterminate age who always insisted, regardless of the weather, on wearing a pair of knee-length khaki shorts and leather sandals.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she answered, but nonetheless left the building with him.

  Jonquil stood up. ‘Well, I’m off.’

  Paul gave her what he considered to be a captivating smile.

  ‘Can I buy you a drink, my dear?’

  She hesitated, then the Oakbridge footman spoke up. ‘Come on, Jonquil. I’ll protect you from strange men.’

  Paul glared but could find no answer and was left with the job of putting the lights out and locking up. Then he slowly walked round the corner to The Royal Oak to join the others, none of whom were particularly glad to see him.

  In the privacy of his study, the medieval walls of which he had hung with full-length photographs of himself in various film roles, Gerry Harlington was sitting at an electric keyboard.

  ‘I gotta tiny longing,’ he crooned noisily, the sound reverberating off the stone walls of the magnificent moated manor house in which he now dwelled. ‘A longing to be free.’

  Satisfied, he repeated the action into several different recording devices, then stood up and paced round the large room, staring at the e
xpensive and in some cases extremely ancient wall hangings which interspersed his photographs and thinking how he would like to tear them down and redecorate the entire place in bright colours. Yet one thing stood in his way, his wife, Mrs Ekaterina Harlington. For all her lack of ambition, the woman had good taste, he had to grant her that. Whistling to himself, Gerry, with a supreme lack of regard for the environment and expense, left the room with all lights blazing and made his way upstairs.

  If truth be told he didn’t like walking round Abbot’s Manor in the half-light. The house was terribly old, some of it having been built in the late thirteenth century. Just to add to its generally spooky atmosphere there had originally been a monastery on the site which had fallen into disrepair and the ruins of which had been built over by one William de Tillburgh in 1287. Gerry Harlington might have played Wasp Man – ‘Kill with a Sting’ – but he firmly believed in the supernatural and always hated walking down the long corridor that led to the master bedroom at the end.

  He did so now with an air of nonchalance but jumped and whipped round, terrified, when a floorboard creaked behind him.

  Ekaterina was sitting up in bed, reading a copy of Vogue. She held it in one elegantly manicured hand while the other held a glass of vodka and tonic, which she was sipping through a straw with a loop in it. She looked up as Gerry entered.

  ‘Oh, it’s you. How did you get on?’

  ‘What a load of merchant bankers,’ he answered, having just heard the phrase that very evening from Barry Beardsley, voiced during Gerry’s interview by the Odds committee.

  ‘What?’ asked Ekaterina, putting down her magazine.

  ‘It’s an English expression. I think it means wankers. Cockney rhyming slang, you know.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Ekaterina had already lost interest and picked up Vogue once more.

  She was the daughter of a Russian oligarch, her grandfather being a peasant from Omsk who had discovered oil on his land and become incredibly rich as a result. Poorly educated but packed full of native cunning, he had invested wisely and thus his son, Grigori – Ekaterina’s father – had become one of the wealthiest men in the world and had emigrated to Britain where he had invested in a football club. Yet money can’t buy good health, as the saying goes. At the height of his powers, with six houses in the United Kingdom, four in the United States, and three in Russia, to say nothing of a fleet of luxury yachts, planes and helicopters, he had been struck down by terminal cancer and had died at the age of fifty-six.

  He had only had one child, his daughter, with whom he had fallen out many years before. Ekaterina had moved with him to America and there she had become involved with a crowd of dope-smoking left-wing poets, who lay on couches, listening to one of their number read absurd poems aloud. Ekaterina, who had inherited her grandfather’s foxlike intelligence, soon got bored with this and used her father’s allowance to drift off to Hollywood where she had some idle notion of getting into films. But she had not acknowledged one thing – her incredible ugliness. She was stick thin, had a pronounced squint and an enormous hooked nose, while her hair simply hung in a mouse-coloured straggle.

  It was at this stage of her life that she met Gerry Harlington, a poorly paid actor starring in a series of low-budget films about wasps. She thought it rather daring to be dated by a young black actor, particularly one who seemed absolutely smitten with her, for she, innocent abroad, had no idea that he had done some research into her surname. They were married in Las Vegas and set up home in a small flat in downtown Los Angeles. And it was there that she received the news that her father had died and that she was his sole heiress.

  ‘So how did you get on with that acting crowd?’ she asked, looking up from Vogue once more.

  ‘They begged me to direct them, that’s all I can say.’

  ‘And will you?’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Gerry answered offhandedly, going into the glorious bathroom that was the one alteration to the building that Ekaterina had allowed.

  She heard him start to run the shower, then secretly looked up at the mirror above the bed that Gerry had insisted they install. A Slavonic but beautiful face looked back at her and Ekaterina smiled at it. She had spent literally millions of dollars on plastic surgery: rhinoplasty, opting for a nose like Julia Roberts; implants put into her meagre breasts; her jaw reduced and her eyes lengthened. She had got rid of her squint by means of an operation in a Swiss clinic. Then she had consulted a leading hair stylist. She had completely reinvented herself and her photograph frequently appeared in gossip columns and also in The Sunday Times Rich List. And wherever she went she made an impact, an impact which did not include her husband for she preferred to appear in public on her own. But for now, moved into this fabulous house in a remote part of Sussex, she had decided to play along with being the quiet-little-wife-at-home image that he was clearly creating for her. For the time being, anyway.

  Gerry came out of the shower wrapped in a red bath towel and posed before a cheval looking-glass. He flexed his muscles and made the sound of a wasp in flight. Ekaterina yawned and said, ‘What was that phone call you had earlier?’

  ‘What phone call?’

  ‘The one that came through about nine? It rang up here but I didn’t answer it.’

  ‘Oh that.’ Gerry looked bored. ‘It was just from the chairman of the drama group. Apparently I was unanimously chosen to direct this little Son et Lumière. My God, it sounds dull as doggie’s do-dos. I think it should be set to music. In fact I’ve already got one or two ideas.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Ekaterina, yawned again, and picked up Vogue.

  FOUR

  Nick was somewhat surprised to receive a letter a couple of days later with a florid crest on the letterhead and the address Abbot’s Manor, Speckled Wood, printed below. It was written in rather a childish hand using a blue felt-tipped pen and had the odd grammatical error. On closer examination the crest was revealed to be a black lion rampant garnished with vivid yellow, sporting two tails and a set of nasty-looking red claws, being viciously attacked by a wasp. The words Vespula Homo in ancient script were written beneath. Nick smiled and shook his head, sipping his coffee.

  ‘Dear Vicar,’ he read aloud. ‘Seems as how I’ve been drummed in to this Son et Lumière thing. Believe me I tried to say no but the guys at Oakbridge twisted my arm, as the proverb goes.’ Nick raised an amused eyebrow. ‘Anyway, this is an apology for my not throwing myself into village activities as I said I would but my time will be taken up, as you can imagine. By the way, the men I saw at rehearsal the other night were either senile or senseless. Any chance of you joining us? Sincerely yours, Gerry Harlington.’

  The idea that it might be rather fun to do – provided that there was no script to learn – suddenly struck Nick strongly. After all, he asked himself, why not? He reached over and looked in his diary for the month ahead. Admittedly there were a few evening engagements, parochial meetings mainly and one he particularly enjoyed, meeting the friends of the church and discussing with them the various ways of raising money through social events. But other than for those it was clear. On an impulse he went to the telephone and dialled the number printed beneath the letterhead. Somewhat to his surprise a woman’s voice answered. He put on his formal mode.

  ‘Hello. Would it be possible to speak to Mr Harlington please.’

  ‘I am afraid he is out at the moment. Who is calling please?’

  There was a subtle but definite accent underlying the way she spoke.

  ‘This is the vicar of Lakehurst. Are you his secretary?’

  She laughed a fraction cynically. ‘Yes, you could call me that I suppose. Actually I’m his wife.’

  Nick nearly dropped the receiver. ‘Good gracious. I’m so sorry. I . . .’ He stopped himself from saying ‘I didn’t know he had one’ and instead said, ‘I’m delighted to make your acquaintance.’

  ‘But we haven’t met,’ Ekaterina pointed out.

  The vicar laughed to hid
e his embarrassment. ‘I hope that will be swiftly remedied.’

  ‘I hope so too. Anyway, he’s not here. Can I take a message?’

  ‘Yes. You can tell him that I’ve decided to be in the Son et Lumière as long as I don’t have to say anything.’

  ‘No, that you will not have to do. It has already been pre-recorded by Rafael Devine.’

  ‘My goodness. How did the Oakbridge people persuade him to do that?’

  ‘I think it was something concerning the man who died. But I truly don’t know any more.’

  ‘Well, thank you anyway. Can you ask your husband to ring me when he gets back?’

  ‘Of course.’

  There was a slight pause, then Nick said, ‘Any hope of seeing you in church?’

  ‘I am afraid not. I will go to the Russian Orthodox in London if I feel the need.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Well, thank you for your help. I do hope we can meet one day.’

  Ekaterina answered, ‘I should like that.’ Then she unexpectedly added, ‘Why not today? Gerry has gone somewhere or other. Let me take you to lunch.’

  ‘Well, I . . .’

  ‘Come now, Vicar. I know no one here. It would be kind of you to say yes.’

  ‘Very well. Shall we say The Great House at one o’clock.’

  ‘I shall be there.’

  Nick arrived ten minutes early and ordered himself a lime and soda, then found a table for two and sat at it. Jack Boggis was a few feet away but did not look up as the vicar approached. For some contrary reason Nick found himself saying, ‘Hello, Jack,’ in a loud voice.

  The Yorkshireman removed his nose from the Daily Telegraph. He looked slightly annoyed.

  ‘Morning, Vicar.’

  ‘I trust you are keeping well.’

  ‘I’ve been better, I’ve been worse.’

  ‘I’m delighted to hear it.’

  There was a tap on Nick’s shoulder and he looked up and into the face of an absolutely spectacular blonde. Enormously wide-set eyes, a smoky mysterious blue, set amongst voluminous eyelashes – could they really be real? – gazed frankly into his. The rest of the features were perfect – a triumph of the surgeon’s art, Nick found himself thinking. A beautiful nose, a chiselled jawline, everything about the woman shouted money, including the designer casuals that she was wearing. A wave of expensive perfume hit his nostrils as he scrambled to his feet.