Murder Unprompted: A Charles Paris Murder Mystery Read Free

money.
    So for a year Paul Lexington continued with his other activities, whatever they might be. Nobody knew. Maybe he mounted another Music Hall tour, maybe a pantomime. Maybe he involved his investors in some other production; maybe he made contacts with London theatre managements, so that the delay should be kept to a minimum when the production actually happened.
    The one thing he was known to have done during that period was to try to get a star name for
The Hooded Owl
. As with theatre companies, only he knew how many he approached with the script, how many refusals he got, how many tentative agreements dependent on dates and money. There were two main male parts and one female, so presumably stars of both sexes were approached.
    All that was known was the result of his machinations. A fortnight before rehearsals were due to start, which was the time when Charles Paris was engaged to play the second male lead, it was bruited about in the business that the female lead was to be played by a young lady who had recently, ‘in order to concentrate on her career as a serious actress’, left the cast of the interminably-long-running television soap opera,
Cruises
.
    The fact that she wasn’t much of an actress, serious or any other sort, was irrelevant. The audience would flock to see her. It didn’t matter if she just stood on stage, they would still love her. (In fact, people who had worked with her thought it might be better if she
did
just stand on stage; they knew the hazards of trying to push her beyond her range.)
    Once Paul Lexington had his star name, he was happy to fall in with Peter Hickton’s suggestions for the rest of the cast. So long as they were cheap, competent and available in the event of a transfer, he didn’t much mind who they were. As a result, Peter Hickton cast largely from his regular Taunton company; he knew them, they worshipped him, and he fancied himself in the role of star-maker.
    In the lead he cast Alex Household, an actor in his late forties, who had had early success then a rather bad patch culminating in a complete breakdown. but was now coming back, in the view of Peter Hickton, twenty years his junior, ‘stronger than ever’.
    In the part of the daughter, Peter Hickton cast Lesley-Jane Decker, an actress eight years his junior, who he thought had ‘enormous potential’. And the way he looked at her didn’t suggest he thought that potential was limited to the stage.
    For the part of Alex’s failed brother, Peter reckoned he had had a brainwave. There was no one in the regular Taunton company of the right age, but he remembered an actor he had worked with when Assistant Director at Colchester, who had exactly the right ‘smell of failure’ that the part required. Peter rang the guy’s agent and found, to his delight, that he was free.
    To the agent in question, Maurice Skellem, his client’s ‘freeness’ was no surprise. Charles Paris’s engagement diary was a joke on the level of all those corny old lines about
The Kosher Book of Pork Recipes, Britain’s Economic Miracle or The Pope’s Book of Birth Control
. ‘I’ve sorted out a great job for you, Charles,’ the agent asserted when he rang.
    ‘Oh yes?’ Charles had replied sceptically.
    ‘Sure. Great new play called
The Head Owl
.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘Taunton.’
    ‘Ah.’
    ‘Director asked for you specially.’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘Said he wanted someone who really smelt of failure.’
    ‘Thank you, Maurice.’
    So it was that Charles Paris joined the cast of
The Hooded Owl
.
    It was the day before rehearsals started that the agent of the former
Cruises
star rang to say that she had just signed up to do a series for West End Television of a new sit. com. set in a lingerie shop and called
Knickers;
so, because that was going to keep her very busy, she had flown off the day before to Kenya for a safari holiday. And no, sorry, she hadn’t actually signed
The Hooded Owl
contract.
    Frantic phoning ensued. Paul