False Step by Veronica Heley Page A

Frasier.’
    â€˜Damaris Frasier? Never heard of … Damaris. Now, let me think.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Got it. Matt’s second wife had a daughter with a fancy name – might well have been Damaris. Gail, that was her name. The second wife, I mean. He liked his Gs. All three of his wives’ names began with a G. He said it was his lucky letter. Well … not so much good luck as bad, in my opinion. Gerda was the first, yes. Backing singer, not bad. My, that’s going back a few years. Killed in a train crash in the Sixties. Then it was Gail … or was it Gladys next? Not that she used the name Gladys. Goldie, she called herself. A trifle too bright for my taste, but she did well enough as a dancer – Tiller Girls, Bluebell Girls? Tiller girls. Got too old for it and married a magician called The Great Daley, some name like that. Acted as his assistant, all legs and sequins and hair piled up high. That was after she split with Matt, of course. Don’t know what she’s doing now.’
    â€˜So Matt didn’t have any children of his own, but you think his second wife—’
    â€˜Gail. An English teacher. Can’t imagine where they met or why he hitched up with her, it was never going to work. Only lasted a few years. He paid her off with a lump sum to divorce him, bought her a flat or something, and she went back to teaching. I’m not sure she ever stopped, come to think of it. Bossy boots with a cut-glass voice. Drove away all his friends, looking down her nose at them. After they divorced, he used to make fun of her in some of his sketches, not being nasty, you know, but … Lord, he used to bring the house down. I can hear him now. He would dress up as a cleaning woman, and she’d be his employer, giving him a hard time. Makes me laugh, just to think of it.’
    Bea grinned. ‘No wonder her daughter’s not keen to promote his memory. She’s a chip off the old block. Anal retentive? Shocked that he used to dress up in women’s clothes.’ She thought of the red shoes and dress, and shuddered.
    He pushed his plate away, having eaten next to nothing, and ordered coffee.
    She thought about what she’d learned about Matthew Kent from Kasia, from Piers and now from Sylvester. They’d painted a picture of a man she would have liked if she’d ever met him, a man who made his cleaner take a coffee break on his patio, a man who Piers had respected, a man Sylvester had valued as a friend. She accepted that there was a streak of melancholy in most comics, and she could understand – just – why failing health had driven Matthew Kent to kill himself. It was just the manner of his death which she still found disturbing. That over-the-top dress, make-up and shoes.
    The more she learned about the man, the more she worried about His Final Tableau. It really wasn’t like the man she’d been hearing about. But perhaps that was the whole point? That a man whose living had been made by entertaining others, had put on a show for his death?
    â€˜Tell me,’ she said, ‘when he was on stage, did he dress like the pantomime dame, or … how?’
    Sylvester blew his nose with some force. ‘Panto? Never. When he was all got up in one of his slinky outfits, he was more of a woman than any woman you’ll ever meet. Stunning! In real life, of course, he wasn’t a handsome man but nice-looking, if you know what I mean. He laughed a lot; at himself most of the time. His hair was receding, which worried him, but he wouldn’t wear a toupee. Hey, but I’m going to miss him.’
    Bea added this to her knowledge of him, thinking that yes, the over-the-top deathbed scene had been just that. A final gesture, two fingers up. Or perhaps – and here she smiled to herself – he’d done it knowing how it would shock dear Damaris?
    Sylvester blew his nose again, folding his handkerchief over and over.