Star Trap (25 page)

Charles heard another creak and slight knocking of two pieces of wood from the far wings, but Lizzie was too absorbed in her memorising to notice. The creaks continued, almost in rhythm, as if something were being unwound. Lizzie Dark danced on.

Charles looked anxiously across into the wings, but he could see nothing. His eye was caught by a slight movement of a curtain up above, but it was not repeated. Just a breeze.

The noise, if noise there was, had come from the wings. He peered across at the large flat opposite him and wished for X-ray eyes to see behind it. There was another, more definite movement from above.

He took in what was happening very slowly. He saw the massive scaffolding bar with its load of lights clear the curtains and come into view. It hung suspended for a moment as if taking aim at the oblivious dancing girl and then started its descent.

With realisation, Charles shouted, ‘Lizzie!'

She froze and turned towards him, exactly beneath the descending bar.

‘Lizzie! The lights!'

Like a slow-motion film she looked up at the massive threatening shape. Charles leapt forward to grab her. But as he ran across the stage, his feet were suddenly jerked away from him. His last thought was of the inadvisability of taking laughs from Christopher Milton, as the Star Trap gave way and plummeted him down to the cellar.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE FIRST THING he was conscious of was pain, pain as if his body had been put in a bag of stones and shaken up with them. And, rising above all the others, a high, screaming pain of red-hot needles in his right ankle.

He lay like an abandoned sack at the bottom of the Star Trap shaft. It was even darker in the cellar. He didn't know whether or not he had passed out, but time, like everything else, seemed disjointed. He remembered crying out to Lizzie, then crying out as he fell and then he remembered being there swimming in pain. There was an interval between, but whether of seconds or hours he didn't know.

He was aware of some sort of commotion, but he couldn't say exactly where. Onstage maybe, or in the auditorium. A door to the cellar opened and light flooded in.

Len was the first to arrive. The old doorman came towards him nervously, as if afraid of what he would see. ‘It's all right. I'm alive,' Charles said helpfully, hoping he was speaking the truth.

‘Who is it? Mr Paris?'

‘That's right. Is Lizzie all right?'

‘Lizzie?'

‘Lizzie Dark. Onstage. There was a bar of lights that –'

‘It missed her. She's all right.'

‘Thank God.'

‘Can you move?'

‘I wouldn't like to make the experiment.'

Other people came down to the cellar. Lizzie. She looked pale and on the verge of hysterics. Some of the staff from the general manager's office who had heard the commotion arrived. So did Dickie Peck. Spike and a couple of his stage crew came from the workshop. Charles lay there in a daze of pain. He knew that he had been the victim of another of Christopher Milton's insane jealousies, but there seemed nothing to say and talking was too much effort.

They carried him upstairs. Spike and another of his men took an arm each. As the shock of the various pains subsided, it was the ankle that hurt most. It was agony when it dragged on the ground, so they lifted him up to sit on their joined hands. It still hurt like hell.

Since the dressing-rooms were up more stairs they took him into Len's little room by the stage door. There was a dilapidated sofa on which he was laid. The general manager's staff went back to phone for an ambulance. Len went off to make some tea, which was his remedy for most conditions. Dickie Peck and Lizzie Dark vanished somewhere along the way. Spike stayed and felt Charles' bones expertly. ‘Used to do a bit of first aid.' His diagnosis was hopeful for everything except the ankle. Charles wouldn't let him get near enough to manipulate it, but Spike insisted on removing his shoe. Charles nearly passed out with pain.

‘Spike,' he said, when he was sufficiently recovered to speak again. ‘That Star Trap, it must have been tampered with.'

‘Yes.'

‘The locking bar was right out of position.'

‘Yes, and someone had scored through the leather hinges with a razor blade. It was a booby-trap, meant for anyone who stepped on it.'

‘I think it was meant specifically for one person.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Never mind. You'll all know soon enough.'

‘Hm.'

‘Well, this sabotage to the show can't go on, can it?'

‘You think it's a connected sequence of sabotage?'

‘Sure of it. And after today I think a police investigation can be started. It's sad.'

‘Sad?'

‘Sad because we're dealing with a madman.'

‘Ah.'

There was no point in hiding the facts now. It would all come out soon. ‘Christopher Milton. A good example of the penalties of
stardom!
'

‘So it was him all along. I wondered.' There was suppressed excitement in Spike's voice as if at the confirmation of a long-held suspicion.

‘Yes.'

A pause ensued and in the silence they both became aware of Len's radio, which was still on. ‘. . . so all I can say in answer to that question is – I beg yours?'

It was Christopher Milton's voice. An American female voice came back, ‘Well, on that note, thank you very much, Christopher Milton.'

A hearty male voice took it up. ‘Well, there it was – an exclusive for us here in the studio on Radio Brighton – for the past half hour you've been listening to Christopher Milton live. And just a reminder that
Lumpkin!
is at the Queen's Theatre until tomorrow and it opens in the West End at the King's Theatre on November 27th. And incidentally the interviewer with Christopher Milton was Suzanne Horse.'

‘Horst,' said Suzanne's voice insistently.

Spike went to turn off the radio. Too quickly. He turned back defensively to Charles. The light caught him from behind and only the shape of his face showed. The blurring marks of acne were erased and the outline of his features appeared as they must have done when he was a boy.

Charles recognised him instantly and like the tumblers of a combination lock all the details of the case fell into place and the door swung open. ‘Gareth Warden,' he said softly.

‘What?'

‘Gareth, if Christopher Milton has just been in the studio at Radio Brighton, he couldn't have been here tampering with the Star Trap.'

‘He could have done it earlier and left it as a booby-trap.'

‘And released the bar of lights to fall on Lizzie Dark?'

There was a silence. Spike, or Gareth Warden, seemed to be summoning up arguments to answer this irrefutable logic. The ambulance arrived before he had mustered any.

Len fussed around as Charles was loaded on to a stretcher and taken to the ambulance. The doors were about to close when Charles heard Spike's voice say, ‘I think I'll come with him.'

The realisation of the true identity of the criminal he had been seeking seeped slowly into Charles' mind. Strangely he didn't feel afraid to have the man beside him in the ambulance.

They travelled in silence for some minutes. Then Charles asked softly. Why did you do it all?'

Spike's voice had lost its hard professional edge and now showed more signs of Ellen da Costa's painstaking elocution lessons. ‘To show him up. To let people see what he was really like.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I mean I just realised his ambitions. All he ever wanted to do was to get his own way and destroy anyone who challenged him. He was always totally selfish. And yet the public loved him. Look at the Press, everywhere – it always says ‘
lovable
' Christopher Milton. I just wanted to show the public what a shit their idol really was. All I did was to put into action what he was thinking. It was wish-fulfilment for him. Everyone who got in his way just vanished. That's what he wanted.'

‘But he never actually hurt anyone.'

‘But he wanted to, don't you see? He was never lovable, just evil.'

‘And you hoped to bring public disgrace on him?'

‘Yes.'

‘But how? You must have realised that sooner or later you were going to make a mistake, commit some crime at a time when he had an alibi. Like this afternoon, for instance. He'd never have been convicted.'

‘He didn't need to be convicted. The disgrace of the allegation would have been enough. Reports of the investigation would have brought up all the rows at rehearsals and showed the kind of person he really was.'

‘But what made you think that there would be an investigation? The management have done everything to keep the whole affair quiet.'

‘Au, but they put you in the cast.'

‘You knew I was there to investigate?'

‘I was suspicious early on and when I saw you with Winifred Tuke's gin bottle, I was certain. That's why I fed you so much information, why I planted the clues for you in his car, why I told you to ask Julian Paddon about him.'

‘I see.' Charles' detective achievements were suddenly less remarkable. Why did you hate him so much?'

‘I've known him a long times He's always been like this.'

‘No, there's more to it than that. Has it anything to do with Prudence Carr?'

Spike/Gareth flinched at the name. ‘What do you know about her?'

‘Just that you were all three at stage school together, that she was very beautiful and talented, that nothing has been heard of her for some time, that you and he were both maybe in love with her.'

‘I was in love with her. He was never in love with anyone but himself. His marriage broke up, didn't it?'

‘But he wasn't married to Prudence,' Charles probed gently.

‘No, he wasn't. He didn't marry her.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘He just took up with her, he unsettled her. He . . . I don't know . . . changed her.'

‘In what way?'

‘He destroyed her confidence. He crushed her with his ego. She could have been . . . so good, such a big star, and he just undermined her. She never stood a chance of making it after she met him.'

‘A lot of people don't make it in the theatre for a lot of reasons.'

‘No, it was him. He destroyed her. Because he knew she was better and more talented than he was. She stood in his way.' His words were repeated in the monotone of obsession.

‘And where is she now?'

‘I've no idea. But wherever she is, she's nothing – nothing to what she could have been.'

‘And you loved her?'

‘Yes.'

‘Did she love you?'

‘Yes, at first. Then he came along . . . I wanted to marry her. She refused. Said she loved him. That's impossible. There is nothing about him to love.'

‘And what happened to you? Why did you give up acting? I know you started at Cheltenham.'

‘My, you have done your homework. Why did I give up acting? I gave it up because nobody wanted to employ me. I'd had a good run as a child star, but it's difficult to make the break from child to juvenile. And I lost my looks, which didn't help. I developed this acne, my hair turned darker. Nobody thought I was pretty any more. I had three years of nothing. And then I thought, stuff it, I'll go into the stage management side.'

‘But didn't Christopher Milton recognise you when you started on this show?'

‘I don't know. I doubt it. He's totally unaware of other people.' There was another pause. The ambulance moved slowly through the Friday afternoon traffic.

Charles began again. ‘But, Spike, why? I can see that you hated him, I can see that you wanted revenge, but why do it this way?'

‘I had to show him up in public for what he was,' Spike repeated doggedly.

‘But the things you had to do to achieve that . . . I mean, beating up Kevin McMahon, running Pete Masters over . . . It's all so cruel, so mean.'

‘Exactly,' said Spike as if this proved his point. ‘Christopher Milton is cruel and mean. That's what I had to show the public. I have seen inside his mind. That's what he would have wanted to happen to people.'

‘But he didn't do it, Spike. You did it.'

‘He wanted to.' The line came back insistently.

‘But, Spike, people got hurt. Mark Spelthorne got killed. That's murder, Spike.'

‘It was suicide. I had nothing to do with that.'

‘Do you mean it?'

‘Christopher Milton drove him to suicide.'

‘And you didn't help him on his way?'

‘No.' The answer came back so casually that Charles believed it.

‘But, Spike, I still can't understand why you did it.'

‘Perhaps you can't, but then you didn't grow up with him, you didn't see him use people, destroy people, always. You didn't see the smile of satisfaction on his face when someone was removed from his path. You didn't feel him all the time undermining your confidence. You didn't see him grinning with triumph every time he came out on top. He is a monster and the public should know it. Someone like that shouldn't be allowed to win all the time.'

‘What do you think made him like that?'

‘Ambition for stardom, He wants to be the best. Oh, I know what it's like. I was big in my teens. I was hailed as the great white hope of English theatre. I was going to get to the top. I understand the kind of pressure that puts you under. And I know that you've got to get out of it and love people, not treat them like dirt.'

‘Hmm.' Charles was about to comment on how Spike had treated people but he went on on another tack. ‘Do you think he's happy?'

‘Happy? So long as he's on top, yes.'

So Charles told him what he had discovered that morning, how Christopher Milton could not face life without an hour of psychoanalysis a day, how he lived in fear of discovery of his weakness, how his life was split between public acclamation and private misery. ‘How can he be happy when he doesn't even know who he is? His changes of mood are so violent because he has no real identity. That's why he clings to his fictional self. Lionel Wilkins is more real to him than Christopher Milton and it is only when he is in that character, hearing the adulation of an audience, that he feels alive. You hate him, you can despise his behaviour, but don't ever think he's happy. His desperate concern for his career is only because he lives through it. Take it away and you kill him.'