A Series of Murders by Simon Brett Page B

anonymous.
    For a moment, as he looked around the room, he contemplated moving. Why not? Buy somewhere, put a foot back on the bottom rung of the property ladder he had formerly climbed with Frances. After all, at the moment he could afford it. W.E.T.’s fees were very generous. And, in spite of Rick Landor’s gloomy prognostications for its success, there had been talk of a second series of
Stanislas Braid
. According to Will Parton, there were enough W. T. Wintergreen titles to do at least six more. And then they could move on to new story lines, ‘opening the writing out,’ as Dilly Muirfield put it (or ‘wheeling in the massed hacks,’ as Will put it).
    Yes, this one could run and run. And having his face seen in the country’s living rooms on a weekly basis might bring Charles Paris the actor back into fashion. (Well, into fashion – he had to admit he’d never really been there before.) Yes, it might all be all right. He probably could risk the commitment of buying somewhere.
    But even as he had the thought, he knew he’d never do it. It wasn’t really lack of money, it wasn’t his environment either that was at fault. It was him. Wherever he was, he would still be Charles Paris. And Charles Paris would always feel transitory, never quite committing himself to an environment, a community, perhaps even an identity. That was the reason he was an actor. So much easier to channel yourself into other personalities than to stand up and be counted on your own.
    Anyway, he felt more at ease – or if not more at ease, at least less challenged – living in anonymous surroundings, seeing as little of them as possible, and then ideally through a permanent haze of Bell’s whisky. That was just the way he was.
    Having dispelled from his mind the idea of moving, Charles found it quickly filled with thoughts of Sippy Stokes’s death, or as he preferred to think of it, Sippy Stokes’s murder.
    Maurice’s words about the police still investigating encouraged this conjecture. Yes, it could have been an accident, but why should the shelves suddenly have toppled over when Sippy was in the props room? Why should she have been in the props room, anyway? And why should she have had the bad luck to be hit by a randomly falling object?
    The idea of her having been hit by a carefully aimed object was much more attractive. And the idea that that object was the temporarily removed candlestick was even more appealing.
    Charles thought back forty-eight hours and tried to remember the exact sequence of events.
    On the Wednesday morning, when the studio broke for coffee after recording Russell Bentley’s cutaway shot, Charles remembered seeing Sippy Stokes alive and well. She had turned down his casual invitation to join him in the canteen. It was only about half an hour later that he had found her body, still warm and bleeding, in the props room.
    The actual coffee break had only been twenty minutes, but Charles thought it reasonable to assume that that was when the murder had taken place. Then the studio and its environs would have been almost deserted; to commit a murder once the cast and crew had returned would be much more risky.
    But who could have been in the studio during the break to do the deed? Charles focused his memory, trying to re-envision who had been in the canteen and for how long.
    Rick Landor hadn’t been there at all. Nor had Russell Bentley. Nor, come to that, had W. T. Wintergreen and her sister. Any of them could have been anywhere during the break.
    Will Parton had been in the canteen but been dragged away before the end of the break by Ben Docherty and Dilly Muirfield. However, their proposed script discussion hadn’t taken place, so any of those three could in theory have gone back to the studio to dispose of Sippy Stokes.
    Jimmy Sheet had left at the same time as Will, claiming he was going to look through some lines in his dressing room. But