A Comedian Dies by Simon Brett Page B

well. Gastric trouble.’
    Fairly easy to fake. Lots of visits to the lavatory and nobody would question their authenticity. ‘So, what . . . she went home?’
    â€˜Back to her digs, yes. Got a taxi. Actually . . .’ Norman dropped his voice for the great daring of an opinion, ‘I think it could have been caused by the emotional upset.’
    Charles agreed, but didn’t say so. ‘Do you happen to remember when she got the taxi home? Straight after their opening number, or what?’
    She may have ordered it then. I don’t think it arrived till the end of the interval.’
    Giving her plenty of time to tamper with the amplifier extension. ‘Look, I want to get in touch with this Janine. Any idea where she lives?’
    Anyone would have asked why Charles wanted to contact the girl, but Norman del Rosa wasn’t going to get involved. ‘I don’t know, Charles. I mean, I know where she was staying in Hunstanton, but she’ll have gone from there.’
    â€˜Give me the address anyway. She must have told the landlady where she lived.’
    Norman gave the information, again making no concession to curiosity. Maybe he regarded this as the price of Charles’ silence over his own sad little secret.
    â€˜And if I don’t get any joy there, do you know who the group’s agent was?’
    Again Norman obliged. Then, with ill-disguised relief, he put the phone down.
    Janine’s Hunstanton landlady had stepped straight out of
Your Favourite Seaside Landlady Jokes.
As she fulminated down the phone, Charles visualized a McGill postcard figure, arms folded righteously beneath her enormous bosom, bottom thrust backwards with rectitude, body swathed in a print overall and curlered hair scooped up into a red print handkerchief.
    Basically she was offended by his call. And she let him know it. ‘I keep a respectable private hotel and I don’t give the addresses of my clients to any Tom, Dick and Harry who phones up out of the blue. I’ll have you know, I only allow in a very respectable type of client. I don’t want you to think that I’m prepared to act as a mere convenience. I don’t set up assignations for girls who come and stay here. You ought to be ashamed at your age – chasing after young girls. She’s not been here for weeks, anyway. I know you dirty old men, pestering girls young enough to be your daughters. Well, I don’t keep a licensed brothel and –’
    â€˜Look, all I’m trying to do is to contact the girl to –’
    â€˜Don’t you come the heavy breather with me, my man. Oh, I know your sort. You think just because a girl’s a dancer, because she’s prepared, for her art, to show a little leg onstage that –’
    The pips went. Charles decided it wasn’t worth putting in more money.
    He stood irresolute by the pay phone on the landing of the Hereford Road house where he lived. One thing the affronted landlady had told him was that he needed a cover. Unless he found some story to explain why he wanted to find the girl, all his inquiries were going to be met with the same suspicion. Maybe he even needed another identity to help him out. With a little bubble of school-boy excitement, he went into his bedsitter to look at his range of clothes.
    The man who walked into the office of Alltalent Artistes in Berwick Street was wearing a trilby hat and a long beige mackintosh. The trilby dated from the days when men actually wore trilbies and the raincoat Charles had bought at a jumble sale during one of his economy drives and never worn because it was too big. He thought the image was not inappropriate to an insurance salesman. The potential shabbiness of the garb was offset, he felt, by a rather distinguished pair of silver-rimmed half-glasses and a slim black briefcase.
    The girl in the hardboarded-off cupboard which served as reception was not impressed. She peered over her typewriter and