A Comedian Dies by Simon Brett

restaurants, showbiz golf, Royal Variety Show, all the ballyhoo. But if it doesn’t happen, I’ll still be a comic, that’s all I’m saying.’
    â€˜I think it could happen again,’ said Walter Proud wisely, as if he was withholding some information on the subject. Charles knew from his experience of Walter’s character that he wasn’t.
    â€˜I don’t think about it no more.’ Barber took a swig from his whisky glass. ‘I’ve heard too many agents and producers saying this is going to be the big one, this time it’ll really take off. I tell you, I been discovered so often that I’m only glad all the discoverers didn’t plant flags on me. OK, a comic has peaks and troughs. I’ve had my peaks, I’m lucky – a lot of comics never even have that. My Dad never made it big. Always a great comic, but nobody remembers the name. And what’s more, it didn’t stop him working.’
    The long exposition of his life seemed to have relaxed him. He joked over the choice of sweets before plumping for a Little Nell. ‘I shouldn’t really, but the old guts don’t seem to have taken the first course too badly.’
    Charles thought it might be a good time to find out a little background to the death of Bill Peaky. ‘Interesting, the Hunstanton show,’ he began.
    Lennie Barber quickly showed up the fatuity of that as an opening gambit. ‘Interesting? I would have thought it was anything but bloody interesting. Now if you’d said boring or dull or terrible, I’d be right with you. But interesting – no. Summer season’s always hell – even pantomime’s better – but Hunstanton was the bottom. Nothing happened there.’
    â€˜Except the death of a comedian,’ Charles offered gently.
    â€˜Like I said, comedians have died in every –’
    â€˜I didn’t mean that. Bill Peaky.’
    â€˜Oh, him.’ From his intonation, it sounded as if he had genuinely forgotten the incident. ‘Was he a comedian?’
    Walter Proud couldn’t forget that he had actually been trying to set up a programme with the dead man. ‘Oh yes, I think he was enormously talented. Would have developed into something really big.’
    â€˜Jesus, Walter, ever since I’ve known you, you’ve always wanted everything to be
big.
Back in Ally Pally days, when you were just a technical boffin with all the sound recording stuff, you were always talking about things being big. I don’t know whether Bill Peaky was going to be big or not. Personally I couldn’t see anything in his act. He had no technique, no experience. But I’m prepared to believe from the money they were paying him that somebody thought he had a future. But a short one, surely. The public will be fooled by novelty for a bit, but they soon get tired of it.’
    â€˜They didn’t get much of a chance to get tired of Bill Peaky,’ observed Charles.
    â€˜No. Mind you, the rest of the company did. A little of him went a very long way.’
    â€˜Not popular, you mean?’ Charles overlaid his interest with casualness.
    â€˜You could say that. About as popular as a mosquito in a sleeping bag. Always going on about how great he was, how much money he was making, what a big star he was going to be. Fair got up everyone’s hooter. No, he was riding for a fall. Just as well he snuffed it before someone helped him on the way.’
    It shouldn’t have been, but it was a shock to Charles to realize that most people still thought of the death as an accident. The presumption of murder had become so much a part of his thinking. ‘Anyone in particular out to get him?’ he asked with the same casualness.
    â€˜Like I say, no one liked him. Big-headed little runt. He was so rude to everyone. My God, the things he said to that poor little pianist, Norman del Rosa. But not just him. Everyone. We were all crap and