Read Online Situation Tragedy by Simon Brett - Free Book Online Page A

spreading.’
    â€˜Oh.’
    â€˜I only hear this from the girls, you know. I keep offering to go and see Angela, but they say, no, she doesn’t want to see me and . . . I don’t know, it makes me feel terrible.’
    â€˜Let me get you another drink.’ Charles tried another way of breaking the flow, but when he returned with a large gin and tonic and a pint of bitter for himself (still irrigating the brain, move back on to the scotch later), Walter continued.
    â€˜You break up a marriage because it doesn’t work and because you want to get around a bit, see a few more other women, have a bit of life for God’s sake, before you’re too old, and then you come up against something like this. And you realise perhaps you are too old, that you’re now in the generation to whom illnesses happen, and you should have just stuck together, because there really isn’t any time.’
    Charles felt a cold pang of depression. Walter’s situation was too close to his own for comfort. Suppose something happened to Frances. Suppose she became ill or, worse, was suddenly killed in an accident, and he was nowhere around . . . He must ring her.
    Walter’s tale of woe wasn’t making it easy for him to get round to the real purpose of their meeting. It was bad enough suspecting a friend of murder, but to interrogate a friend in this sort of state was really kicking a man when he was down.
    Fortunately, Walter seemed to realise how low he was getting and made a determined effort to pick himself out of his slough of despond. With something approaching the old bravado Charles remembered, he said, ‘Still, a man has to do what a man has to do. I don’t really regret any of it. Okay, I was very cosy at the BBC, and, to some extent, at home, but I was dying on my feet. At least I’ve seen a bit more of life and things by cutting loose.’
    â€˜Things . . . being women?’ Charles fed gently.
    Walter responded to this man-of-the-world approach. ‘Oh yes, there have been one or two. It’s only when you’re on your own that you realise quite how many of them there are.’
    Charles laughed conspiratorially, hoping to stimulate further information, but got nothing more than an answering chuckle. He would have to be a bit more direct in his approach. ‘Down at W.E.T., the other day, someone was saying you’d had a bit of a fling with someone there.’
    â€˜Oh yes.’ Walter smiled a Lothario smile, but then seemed to recollect something unpleasant and changed his manner. ‘Yes, it was very unfortunate. The girl died.’
    â€˜Really?’ said Charles ingenuously.
    â€˜Yes, she was . . . well, you were there.’
    â€˜I was there?’
    â€˜When you were making that pilot, you remember, the girl who fell off the fire escape.’
    â€˜Oh, Good Lord, you mean that PA? What was her name . . . Sadie?’
    â€˜Sadie Wainwright.’ Walter nodded. ‘Yes, we had a thing. It went on . . . well, on and off . . . for two or three months.’
    â€˜How awful for you, for her to have . . .’
    â€˜Yes, it was pretty upsetting. But in fact the affair was over, had been for a month. Didn’t work.’
    â€˜But I seem to remember . . .’ (Charles tried to disguise the interrogation in casualness) ‘. . . that you said you’d talked to her on that evening.’
    â€˜Oh, talked to her, yes. We were still on speaking terms . . . at least I’d thought we were.
    â€˜You mean she wasn’t pleased to see you?’
    â€˜She was bloody rude, if you must know.’
    â€˜Seems to have been a habit with her.’
    â€˜Yes, she had a sharp tongue. Mind you, that was only her manner. She could be very . . . well, different.’ Walter Proud seemed to recollect some moment of tenderness, but quickly snapped out of the mood. ‘No, I’d gone to see her because she knew everything that was going