Killings on Jubilee Terrace Read Free Page A

brassy woman of forty-two. Maybe the returned Hamish, who was in real life as hetero as the character he played was homo.
    One thing was for certain: she would be outto humiliate him, but now he would be just as determined to humiliate her. He remembered, back in the days when EastEnders was watchable, Dirty Den serving divorce papers on Angie as her much-trumpeted Christmas present. Pity Christmas was so far in the future. Hallowe’en would hardly have the same effect. Even Easter would have been something. Still, he could make it as public as possible.
    Then he sighed.
    He wasn’t that sort of man. Not loud, not public, not demonstrative. He’d do things privately, softly, considerately. He wondered in his mind whether Bet had ever done anything considerately in her life. Never, he thought. Never.

C HAPTER T WO
A Wedding
    The vicar who married Arthur Bradley and Maureen Cooke was drunk.
    ‘Will you shake this woman—?’ he asked, his voice wet with spittle.
    Arthur and Maureen stood there, he uncomfortable in his best suit, she in a white dress she was scarcely entitled to, and both looking miserable and embarrassed.
    ‘Will you take this woman,’ the vicar tried again, ‘to be your awful wedded wife. Hey! Thatsh Dylan Thomash. I was in that play once.’
    ‘Cut!’ shouted Reggie Friedman. He marched up to the vicar in one of his great rages. ‘You… are…drunk.’
    ‘Sho what? The vicar of St Jude’s has analcohol problem. Wouldn’t be the firsht time in the Shurch of England.’
    Reggie, getting pinker by the moment, poked his finger into the vicar’s surplice.
    ‘The vicar of St Jude’s does not have an alcohol problem. You have an alcohol problem. Or, to put it more plainly, you have become a congenital drunk. You have also become a liability to Jubilee Terrace . Go away and put your head under the cold tap, and come back in five minutes. If you can’t get it right then, you’re out . Get me? OUT! Location filming costs money, and I’m not going to waste any more of it on your imbecilities.’
    He strode back down the aisle of St Peter’s, Northwick, the Victorian Gothic edifice that always stood in as St Jude’s, the Jubilee Terrace parish church, on such occasions. Reggie was livid. George Price had once been a reliable small-part actor. Now he was a lush. He felt the sleeve of his jacket being pulled, and he looked down to see Gladys Porter, in the shape of Marjorie Harcourt-Smith.
    ‘You can’t really mean that you’d sack George,’ she said, too short-sighted to see the implacable expression on Reggie’s face. ‘He’s always been the St Jude’s vicar. He married the Kerridge boy, did Dawn’s confirmation and buried—’
    ‘Spare me the hatches, matches and dispatches, Marjorie.’
    ‘But you wouldn’t sack him, would you, Reggie? So publicly? He’s always been the Jubilee Terrace vicar.’
    ‘So you keep saying. But actually it’s only been for the last five years. I gave him the part, and I’ve had my eye on him, believe you me. He’s made most of the funerals almost jolly. So unless he comes back sober, this is the last sacrament of holy matrimony he will conduct in this church.’
    Marjorie and Carol Chisholm, sitting together, looked shocked at his relish. He could have been a malignant Archbishop of Canterbury.
    ‘But how will you explain his being replaced?’
    ‘Crisis of faith? Gone to a retreat? Gone into rehab?’ He straightened and regarded the congregation – Winnie in the row behind, Bet Garrett, just slipping in through the front door, Susan and James, sitting together but separate, Liza Croome looking concerned but understanding. Then he swivelled round to see the happy couple, with Bill Garrett being best man before the altar. He muttered to Marjorie in a very distinct and determined mutter: ‘Upstairs in my filing cabinet I’ve got a hundred reasons for writing new characters in and a thousand for writing old characters out, either temporarily or