Best Served Cold Read online

  ‘Excellent! Well done!’ Cotton said. He turned to the rest of the company. ‘Well, people, what are we waiting for?’ he asked, walking across to the door which led into the auditorium and pulling back the curtain. ‘Let’s go and see whether we’ve got the kind of theatre in which we can put on a play which will wow the critics and thrill the punters.’

  The cast filed through the door with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Tony Brown and Phil McCann seemed interested, and perhaps even excited; Jerry Talbot stepped carefully, as if expecting an ambush; Bradley Quirk managed to convey the air of a man who had decided that since he was there, he might as well take a look; and Lucy Cavendish glided in like a star ready to take her bows.

  Geoff Turnbull took the opportunity to walk over to where his stagehands were still standing.

  ‘You’d better go into the auditorium,’ he said. ‘The cast may have questions they’ll want to ask you.’

  And as he was speaking, he was studying their faces, and saw that none of them was looking him in the eye.

  They were disappointed in him, he thought. They’d listened to his tales of how the company used to be, and expected Mark Cotton to be pleased to see him as he’d been to see Mark – and Cotton hadn’t even recognized him at first.

  It was a tremendous loss of prestige, but he was sure that once they saw him working with the actors, they’d start to respect him again.

  ‘Well, off you go then,’ he said, attempting to replicate Cotton’s jauntiness with the cast.

  The stagehands did as he’d said, but he got the feeling that was more to do with getting away from him than it was about obeying his instructions.

  He noticed he still had Mark Cotton’s bloody overcoat in his hands, and felt a sudden urge to throw it to the ground and trample all over it. Then he saw that Cotton had not entered the auditorium himself, but was still standing in the doorway, watching him.

  ‘I’ll … err … put your coat on that, shall I?’ he asked, indicating the usherette’s chair. ‘Is that all right?’

  Cotton nodded.

  Turnbull placed the coat carefully on the chair, and when he saw that Cotton was miming a cigarette, he reached into his pocket for his Players’ No. 6.

  ‘Oh, those cheap nasty little things!’ Cotton said in disgust. ‘You don’t happen to have a packet of Benson and Hedges Special Filter about your person, do you?’

  ‘No, sorry, only these.’

  ‘Then I suppose they’ll have to do,’ Cotton said, extracting a cigarette and putting it in his mouth.

  ‘They’re the only ones I smoke,’ Turnbull explained, as he lit Cotton’s cigarette. ‘Listen, Mark, I’d like us all to meet later, so I can say a few proper words of welcome and hand out the rehearsal schedules.’

  The remark seemed to puzzle Cotton.

  ‘Rehearsal schedules?’ he repeated.

  ‘Yes, don’t you remember?’ Turnbull asked. ‘One of the things I pride myself on when I direct a play is that the cast always knows where it should be, and when it should be there.’

  ‘Ah, we seem to have had a little bit of a misunderstanding,’ Cotton told him. ‘I’ll be directing.’

  ‘But I’m the one who’s overseen the entire restoration of the theatre,’ Turnbull said.

  ‘Yes, and without even going into the auditorium, I can see, just by looking around the foyer, what a splendid job you’ve done.’

  ‘And I directed the play the last time that you performed it. I made a good job of it.’

  ‘Yes, you did, but times change and things move on.’ Cotton put a comforting hand on Turnbull’s shoulder. ‘Look, I don’t want to direct, Geoff,’ he said. ‘As far as I’m concerned, just acting the role of Hieronimo is a big enough job for any man. But it’s the backers, you see – the money men. They want me to direct. In fact, they insist I direct.’

  ‘So where does that leave me?’ Turnbull asked miserably.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Geoff, don’t look so down in the mouth. You have bags of experience, and anyone who didn’t take advantage of it would be a complete bloody fool. You have a great deal to contribute to this production.’

  ‘Really?’ Turnbull asked.

  ‘Really,’ Cotton assured him. He reached into his wallet and took out two five-pound notes. ‘The buffet car on the train was serving food I wouldn’t offer to a dog, and the whole company’s teetering on the verge of starvation.’ He held out the notes to Turnbull. ‘Take these and buy us a positive mountain of sandwiches, there’s a good chap.’

  There had been a time when the sound of approaching footsteps would have thrown Maggie Maitland into complete panic.

  But that was in the old days.

  Back then, she had been like a caterpillar – slow, wriggly and oh-so-squashable. Now, as a result of her raw courage and determination, she had pupated. Now, she was a Death’s-head Hawkmoth.

  The Hawkmoth did not run away from its enemies. Instead, it flew directly into the centre of their world – into the very jaws of their empire. The Hawkmoth would go right into the beehive – one frail creature taking on thousands of bees. And once inside, she would mimic their smell and steal some of their honey – take from them, in other words, a little of the one thing that the colony needed to survive.

  ‘Now doesn’t this place bring back loads of memories, Bradley?’ she heard a man say.

  ‘Indeed it does, Tony,’ a second man agreed. ‘It brings back memories of backbiting and egos as big as an elephant, memories of petty theft and even pettier betrayals.’

  ‘There were good times, too,’ the first man said. ‘There were nights when we laughed so much we thought we would burst. There were times when one member of the company would do another a small, unexpected kindness, and you felt your faith in humanity had been restored.’

  ‘Funnily enough, I don’t remember any of those times at all,’ the second man said.

  ‘If you really feel like that, Bradley, then why – in God’s name – are you here?’ asked the first man exasperatedly.

  ‘I’m here, Tony, to squeeze what I can out of the situation – to grab, for my own advantage, whatever Mark Cotton hasn’t already nailed down.’

  ‘It must be a very sad thing to look at the world through your eyes,’ the first man said.

  ‘At least it is the world – the real world – I’m seeing,’ the second man countered.

  They turned and walked away, their footfalls getting fainter and fainter with every step.

  Florrie Hodge flung open the front door before Phil McCann had even had time to ring the bell.

  ‘Welcome, welcome!’ the old woman said. ‘How wonderful to see you all again!’

  ‘It’s lovely to see you, too, Mrs Hodge,’ Tony Brown said, and the rest of the cast – to a greater or lesser extent – agreed with him.

  ‘Well, don’t just stand there on the pavement,’ Florrie Hodge said. ‘Come inside before you all catch your deaths of cold.’

  She led them into the hallway with a stag’s antler coat rack and an elephant’s foot umbrella stand.

  ‘You’ll find everything is pretty much as it was …’ Florrie Hodge said.

  ‘Oh God, how terrible!’ Bradley Quirk muttered under his breath.

  ‘… the dining room to your left, the lounge to the right. Your luggage is up in your rooms. I’ve already unpacked Mr Brown’s and Mr Talbot’s, hung their shirts and trousers up in their wardrobes, and put their socks, vests and underpants in their chest of drawers. I had hoped to do the same for the rest of you, but you arrived a bit earlier than I expected.’

  ‘Which room is mine, Mrs Hodge?’ Lucy Cavendish asked.

  ‘Well, I know the ladies like to be near the bathroom, so I’ve put you in number three, on the first floor. The Misses Audley will be your neighbours, and also Mr Brown, because I know I can trust him to be around the fairer sex. The rest of the gentlemen will be on the second floor, which will suit Mr Cotton –’ she flashed him a roguish grin – ‘because that wa
y I don’t have to hear all the hanky-panky he gets up to.’

  ‘Actually, Mrs H, I won’t be staying here,’ Cotton said.

  The landlady looked devastated. ‘But why won’t you be? Don’t you like it here?’

  ‘I love it,’ Cotton said smoothly, ‘but I just couldn’t bear the thought of your beautiful home being invaded by some of my half-crazed fans.’

  Mrs Hodge was somewhat mollified, but enough of her disappointment and resentment was still bubbling under for her to say, ‘Well, the least you could have done would have been to tell me you didn’t want the room before I went to all the trouble of making it up.’

  ‘But I did tell you,’ Cotton protested. He clicked his fingers. ‘No, I’ve got that wrong – I asked Phil to tell you.’ He turned a reproachful gaze on McCann. ‘Did you forget to tell our lovely Mrs H that I wouldn’t be staying here?’

  McCann – who had been asked to do no such thing – blinked uncertainly.

  ‘No … err … I didn’t forget,’ he extemporized. ‘The fact is, your security people didn’t think it would be a good idea.’

  ‘They probably don’t trust you, Mrs H – but then they don’t know you like I do,’ Cotton said. ‘I always say you can have absolute faith in Mrs H.’ Cotton paused. ‘There’s one thing I need you to do for me, my lovely landlady – if any reporters come knocking on your door and ask if I’m staying here, and pray God that they won’t, you’re to say that I most certainly am.’

  ‘Why?’ Mrs Hodge asked, puzzled.

  ‘Phil?’ Cotton said.

  ‘If the reporters find out that he’s staying in the Royal Victoria, it might give them the wrong impression,’ McCann told the landlady.

  ‘I see,’ Mrs Hodge said despondently – though it was perfectly plain that she didn’t.

  ‘Believe me, it’s much better for all of us that I stay somewhere else,’ Cotton said soothingly.

  ‘If you say so,’ Mrs Hodge conceded. For a moment, she looked really dropped on, then she brightened and said, ‘Now who fancies a nice cup of strong hot tea?’

  Maggie Maitland felt a pain shoot up her leg. That was because of the cramped conditions she was forced to endure, she realized.

  It didn’t matter. Later, when she was sure that the building was empty, she would walk around to relieve the stiffness. Later, she would survey the geography of the place, and work out her plan down to the last deadly detail.

  She had supplies which, though they were monotonous, were sufficient to sustain her over a long wait. And she had the patience which that wait would demand of her.

  ‘I am the Death’s-head Hawkmoth,’ she sang softly to herself. ‘I will hold back until the time is right – and then I will suck the sweet-sickly life out of this place.’

  FIVE

  21st March 1977

  ‘Thomas Kyd was born in 1558, which made him six years older than William Shakespeare,’ Mark Cotton said, looking into the camera with eyes that suggested both sincerity and scholarship. ‘His father was a scrivener, which means that he knew how to read, and how to write letters, an important skill at a time when many people – including much of the aristocracy – were illiterate.’

  The BBC team, consisting of two cameramen, a sound man and a director, had arrived that morning, and the moment they had set up the cameras, Cotton had insisted on them filming what he called his introduction.

  ‘Kyd’s father seems to have been very good at his job, since he was eventually appointed warden of the Worshipful Company of Scriveners of the City of London …’ Cotton continued.

  ‘Goodbye to the Whitebridge Theatre Company, and welcome to the Mark Cotton Show,’ said Bradley Quirk, who was watching the interview from the wings with Jerry Talbot.

  ‘You’re spot on,’ Talbot agreed.

  ‘Of course, he’s overplaying his hand right from the beginning,’ Quirk said. ‘There’s no way that this pompous little lecture of his will go into the final documentary.’

  ‘So why is the director even bothering to film it?’

  ‘Because he’s playing his own game – just like Cotton is playing his. He needs to get his teeth into something meaty, but he can’t do that if he’s already been kicked out of the dining room, so he’s pretending to cooperate. He’s a bit like Hieronimo in that way – all smiles and affability as long as it’s necessary, but sticking the knife in as soon as he has the chance.’

  ‘Kyd wrote The Spanish Tragedy sometime in the late 1580s, which means it was contemporaneous with – or even a little before – Shakespeare’s first play,’ Cotton told the camera. ‘It was a great success, and – for a time at least – Kyd was considered one of England’s pre-eminent dramatists.’

  ‘I’m betting our Mark didn’t actually know any of that stuff,’ Quirk told Talbot. ‘He’ll have looked it up in the public library, and now he’s trotting it all out in much the same way as a reasonably intelligent parrot might.’

  ‘Don’t you ever get tired of being so cynical about everything, Bradley?’ Jerry Talbot wondered.

  ‘Not at all,’ Quirk replied. ‘My cynicism is as necessary to me as a hunting knife is to an Eskimo, or a tin opener is to a modern mother – in other words, it is a survival tool.’

  ‘As someone reminded me just the other day, without Mark this probably wouldn’t have happened,’ Talbot said.

  ‘And that “somebody” was probably Phil McCann, the Henry Kissinger of assistant bank managers,’ Quirk said.

  ‘Yes, it was, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Would you mind if I were to ask you one simple little question?’

  ‘It depends. What is it?’

  ‘We have a six-night run here. On how many of those nights has Mark Cotton agreed to let you play Hieronimo?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘That sounds fair, given that he’s a major television star and you’re dancing fruit,’ Quirk conceded. ‘But, of course, it will never happen. All actors are conceited – it’s an essential part of their nature – but standing Mark Cotton’s ego next to yours would be like placing a matchstick next to a giant oak tree.’

  ‘What exactly are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying there’s absolutely no way that he’ll give you one third of the glory.’

  ‘He better had do, or …’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘Well, I don’t exactly know – I haven’t worked it out yet.’

  ‘Get this into your head,’ Bradley Quirk said. ‘Mark Cotton is in charge. We may extract our petty revenges along the way – I certainly intend to – but mainly we have to roll with the punches and accept what crumbs Cotton sweeps off the table for us.’ Quirk grinned. ‘That’s mixing my metaphors, but you know what I mean.’

  ‘Yes,’ Talbot said miserably, ‘I do.’

  ‘Thomas Kyd was arrested for heresy, and was probably tortured while he was in prison,’ Mark Cotton was telling the camera.

  The documentary director glanced down at his watch and sighed softly to himself. His surname was Sikes, and his parents had chosen to christen him William. He had never asked them whether they had done out of a complete ignorance of the major works of Charles Dickens, or because they had a particularly warped sense of humour, and since they had never volunteered the information themselves, they had taken their motivation to the grave with them. He had once thought of changing either his first name or his second, but had decided against it. He would tell his friends that it was a name which opened doors – well, after all, Bill Sikes had been a burglar, ha ha! – and it certainly insured that people he met at cocktail parties hadn’t forgotten his name the following morning, when they sobered up.

  ‘Kyd was eventually released without charge, but he was a broken man, and he died at the tragically early age of thirty-five,’ Mark Cotton concluded. He looked across at Sikes. ‘Was that all right?’

  ‘It was perfect,’ said the director, but – as Bradley Quirk had predicted – he had already decided to bin it.

  The acting chie
f constable was still a bit of an unknown quantity, but, sitting opposite him, Paniatowski had already decided that he was a true political animal in a way that George Baxter could never have been.

  ‘The town council is very much behind this play, Monika,’ Pickering said.

  ‘I gathered as much,’ Paniatowski replied warily.

  ‘And it’s not just the BBC documentary or the restoration of the theatre that’s got them worked up into a positive lather,’ Pickering continued. ‘They see before them a tremendous cultural renaissance in Whitebridge. In their minds’ eyes, they’re already picturing the Whitebridge Cultural Festival of the future, with famous dancers holding workshops, eminent painters displaying their newest pictures, and best-selling authors queuing up to sign their books.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Paniatowski asked, non-committally.

  ‘It won’t happen, of course,’ Pickering told her. ‘But when the council – several members of which sit on the police authority and allocate our budget – is excited, then we’re excited, too. Isn’t that right, Monika?’

  ‘We’re absolutely bursting with excitement, sir,’ Paniatowski said.

  Pickering smiled. ‘I thought that might be the case – which is why you’ll be only too delighted to meet the Kindly Witch from Friday Corner.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Sarah Audley. The actress.’

  ‘Why should I want to meet her?’

  ‘Because she wants to meet you.’

  ‘Me specifically?’

  ‘No, not you specifically, but apparently she’s doing research for her next role and has asked to talk to a high-ranking woman police officer who works in our CID. Now which of the women who fulfil all her requirements do you think she should talk to, Monika?’

  ‘There is only one – and that’s me,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Exactly so.’

  ‘I don’t suppose I’ve any choice, have I?’

  ‘Of course you have a choice. It’s a private matter, totally unconnected with your duties, and you could – should you so wish – choose to disappoint both the town council and me.’

  ‘Could you ask your secretary to set up the meeting?’ Paniatowski said, resignedly.