Read Online So Much Blood by Simon Brett - Free Book Online

been a contemptuous challenge to him. She had not been in Edinburgh at the time of the murder, and in the Truth Game Willy had specified that the person whose secret he had discovered was connected with the Derby group. No progress.
    He felt in need of company. As a long shot, he tried the bell of Anna’s flat as he passed. Just after twelve, no reason why she should be there.
    She wasn’t. He went into the Highland chic of the Ensign Ewart pub opposite and started drinking whisky. As he drank, the whole business of playing at detectives seemed increasingly pointless. If only there were someone around he could discuss the case with. Maybe some great detectives manage on their own, he thought as he downed the second large Bell’s, but right now I’d give anything for Dr Watson to walk through that door.
    But the Doctor did not come and Charles drank too much on his own. The whisky did not make him think any more clearly. He looked round the pub. The office workers of Edinburgh were in huddles with their backs to him. A loud group of American tourists was being ignored at one table. The Festival influx was not welcomed by the residents. Charles tried to get another drink, but could not attract anyone’s attention. Being invisible at a bar is one of the loneliest experiences in life and he felt depressed for the first time since his arrival.
    It was the interview with Jean Mariello that had done it. Up until then he had been cheerful, even buoyant after the night with Anna. But Anna was not there and it did not take long for her image to get distorted. He needed her presence to restore reality. But she was as elusive as Dr Watson.
    His eyes gave up trying to catch the barman’s attention and wandered over to a notice board on which the grudging management had stuck a few of the dozens of handbills which earnest theatrical groups had thrust on them. They were on a metal clip. Oxford Theatre Group on top. That was inevitable. Their headquarters was opposite the pub and so they had a head-start on that pitch in the popular Fringe game of sticking your poster over everyone else’s.
    Beside the Oxford bill was another that looked familiar. Good God, it was one of the greatest DUDS on the Fringe, Charles Paris’ So Much Comic, So Much Blood , opening Monday 19th August at one fifteen p.m. He felt a sense of urgency that amounted almost to panic.
    â€˜Yes, sir, what can I get you?’
    â€˜Nothing. I’ve got to rehearse.’ The barman’s bewildered stare followed him out of the pub.
    Outside in the street he realised that he had had an excessive lunch for a working actor and trod with care down the steep steps of Lady Stair’s Close to the Mound. The light seemed very bright. He thought he saw the familiar figure of Martin Warburton ahead. He hurried to catch up. ‘Martin!’
    But the figure did not stop. It turned right at the bottom of the steps and Charles saw the beard and glasses. It was not Martin.
    He awoke on his camp-bed at about five with the worst sort of afternoon hangover. The urgent rehearsal schedule he had promised himself had petered out rather quickly. He hoped that he had not been seen lying there by too many of the group. A middle-aged man asleep in the afternoon. No doubt snoring. The monotone of the piano upstairs indicated a revue rehearsal. He hoped Anna had not seen him.
    A cup of coffee might help. He eased himself downstairs to the kitchen. The day’s cook, a large girl with corkscrew curls, was chopping up more of the inevitable cabbage.
    â€˜Where’s the coffee?’
    â€˜Over there, behind the cornflakes.’
    â€˜Oh yes.’
    â€˜I’ll make you some . . .’
    â€˜Thanks.’ He made to sit on a chair by the table.
    â€˜. . . if you don’t mind doing something for me.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Just empty that, would you?’
    â€˜That’ was a large cardboard box full of rubbish—papers,