The Cinderella Killer Read Free Page B

face of Dwight Bredon beamed out, a tribute to expensive dental work, five times the size of any of the other cast pictures. He was dressed in a shabby eighteenth-century frock coat, whose slight misalignment suggested that his head might have been superimposed on the costume by some photographic wizardry. And below his name was the legend: ‘As Baron Hardup’.
    The poster was new because of his relatively late booking. Earlier versions had been dominated by the names and photographs of two British soap stars. Cinderella was being played by Tilly Marcus ‘from TV’s
Gatley Road
’ while one of the Ugly Sisters, Nausea, was to be Tad Gentry ‘from TV’s
Frenton High
’. Furious negotiation between the two actors’ agents and the theatre management had led to them being given exactly equal billing, in terms of font and photograph size. But Tilly Marcus, whose name appeared on the left-hand side of the poster and would therefore be first to catch the eye, might feel that she had gained a tiny advantage over her soap-star rival.
    The actor playing the other Ugly Sister, Dyspepsia, was called Danny Fitz and he was way down the poster, both in position and font size. The fact that he was one of the most experienced and brilliant pantomime dames in the country went for nothing – he didn’t have any television credits.
    The show’s Buttons was to be Felix Fisher, who had plenty of TV panel shows to list after his name. He had started out as a very gay foul-mouthed stand-up, wearing flamboyant costumes and heavy make-up, and was now negotiating the difficult passage towards lovability and hopefully hosting a television game-show. The theory was that Buttons, the cheery kitchen boy of whose adoration Cinderella is unaware, would be a perfect stepping stone on that journey. And no one in the production company putting on
Cinderella
seemed to have seen anything incongruous in casting in the role someone whose shtick was his gayness. Maybe the thinking was that the kiddies in the audience would not find anything odd in his avowals of love for Cinderella, and the older members would find humour in its irony.
    Certainly nobody involved in the production seemed to have thought that changing round the casting of Tad Gentry and Felix Fisher might have been a good idea, thus achieving a straight Buttons and another camp Ugly Sister. But no, the thinking had not gone that far. All the production company wanted was names with television credits to put on the poster.
    Charles Paris was amazed that they’d even found a couple to put by his name. Neither series had been much of a success, and both had been an extremely long time ago, but sure enough under his name was the byline ‘from TV’s
The Strutters
and
Stanislas Braid
’. Mind you, in the lowly role of one of the Broker’s Men, he didn’t justify a photograph.
    His fellow Broker’s Man, however, did. In the bizarre manner of celebrity casting for pantomimes, the part had been given to an ex-boxer. A promising light-welterweight as an amateur, Mick ‘The Cobra’ Mesquito had turned professional at the age of nineteen. Having moved up to the welterweight division and defeated most domestic opposition, he had had one shot at a world title, when he’d been humiliatingly thrashed by a Puerto Rican. He continued fighting against ever less distinguished opposition until a detached retina caused him to hang up his gloves.
    It was then that a pushy management company decided to promote the media career of Mick ‘The Cobra’ Mesquito. He was initially put forward as a pundit on boxing coverage, but they had ambitions for him to go further. He was good-looking and the genes from his Caribbean father had given him a colour that was very attractive to television companies in search of diversity. The fact that he was no good at any of the presenting roles he’d been given had not so far impeded the progress