Read Online A Series of Murders by Simon Brett - Free Book Online Page B

perhaps not. I’m not sure. I know she published a few before the war, and at that time apparently they were spoken of in the same breath as Dorothy Sayers and Margery Allingham. Then I think she went on till . . . late fifties, maybe? I certainly haven’t been aware of any new titles since then. But I’m really not up-to-date. Ages since I’ve read one. Mind you, they were very important during my adolescence. Read all of them then; it felt like dozens. I had these fantasies of marrying someone as suave and debonair and brilliant as Stanislas Braid.’
    â€˜Good heavens. Did you really?’
    â€˜Yes, I did. And look what I ended up with.’
    â€˜Thank you, Frances, for those few kind words. Anyway, you will no doubt be impressed to hear that I am going to have tea with W. T. Wintergreen herself on Tuesday.’
    â€˜Are you really?’
    â€˜Mm. Shall I tell her my wife’s a fan?’
    â€˜Yes, by all means.’
    â€˜Right, I will.’ A silence hung between them. ‘Frances, I was actually ringing to see if we could meet up.’
    â€˜Ah.’ She didn’t sound one hundred percent welcoming to the idea.
    â€˜We did talk about it.’
    â€˜
You
talked about it.’
    â€˜Yes. Well?’
    â€˜When do you want to meet?’
    â€˜Soon. Sooner the better.’
    â€˜Well, I’m leaving this afternoon to go and stay with some friends for the weekend.’
    â€˜Oh.’ He felt a stab of disappointment.
    â€˜School as usual next week, and at the moment I find I’m too tired really to enjoy going out weekday evenings. Next weekend, perhaps?’
    â€˜Yes.’ Now he was near to clinching the date, Charles felt unaccountably gauche and unwilling to firm it up. Almost as nervous as he had felt in such circumstances during his teens. And this was with his own wife, for God’s sake. ‘Well, look, I’m not absolutely certain of the schedule on the series for this week. They add odd days of filming and things. I think next weekend’d be all right, but can I get back to you on it?’
    â€˜Yes, fine,’ said Frances. But she made it sound as if it didn’t really matter to her a great deal whether he did or not.
    He had his designer lunch in the pub. Dutch Rollmop Ploughman’s. That really was taking the Common Agricultural Policy too far, he reckoned. Still, it gave him a good thirst for the beer.
    He felt pretty good, really. Almost content. There was no one in the pub he knew more than to nod at, but that suited him fine. And of course no one recognised him as an actor. He wondered idly if that situation would change once
Stanislas Braid
was being funnelled into the nation’s sitting rooms. Six months thence, if he sat on the same chair, would he be aware of people on the fringes of his vision nudging each other and whispering, ‘Isn’t that . . .?’ The idea seemed ridiculous. But the extrovert in Charles Paris, the part that made him an actor, wasn’t wholly repelled by it.
    He picked up a tabloid newspaper that someone had left on the table and glanced through it. World news didn’t seem to get any less depressing. In fact, now it seemed to him that the bits that weren’t depressing or horrifying were just boring. He tried to remember when he’d last read something in a newspaper that had
interested
him. A very long time ago. Dear, oh, dear, he was becoming a cynical, desiccated old stick.
    His eye was caught by a familiar name on the gossip-column page, and he read the snide little paragraph with fascination.
    â€˜Everyone knows there’s nothing wrong with gilded warbler Jimmy Sheet’s marriage. He keeps telling us that after the threatened earthquakes of last year it’s as solid as a rock. So no doubt loveable cockney Jim has told his wife all about the mystery brunette he squired to Stringfellow’s on Tuesday night. Otherwise one might say that Jimmy, now