grass.
Bloody farm indeed, he thought, it’s just a stretch of marsh land where nothing would grow and cows would sink into the ground if they stayed still. The Red Trees Caravan Site! He wondered whether to get dressed. It was cold to be hanging around in pyjamas and a silk dressing gown, and the matching silk scarf wasn’t keeping death from laryngitis at bay.
He looked up as he heard somebody whistling. It was Arnold Cookson, threading his way cheerfully through the neighbouring caravans with two pints of milk in his hands.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ Desmond Blane asked roughly.
‘Up to the farmhouse.’
‘I’ve just heard the radio. Skibby’s dead.’
‘Oh.’ Arnold Cookson pursed his lips in a silent whistle. He was a much older man, in his early sixties perhaps, and he seemed upset by the news. ‘What about Larry and Ray?’ he asked.
‘They weren’t mentioned.’
Arnold Cookson pushed past him into the caravan. He poured some milk into a saucepan and lit the Calor gas ring. He was preparing breakfast.
‘Why does a farm sell milk in milk bottles?’
‘I don’t know.’ Arnold examined the milk bottle. ‘Perhaps it’s a good thing,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘Skibby would have talked.’
‘So what makes you think Ray will keep his big mouth shut?’ Blane spoke loudly, blustering with nerves. ‘Once they start asking him awkward questions –’ His voice faded into silence. ‘Who’s this?’
There was a lorry bumping its way noisily down the lane to the caravan site. ‘Joseph Carter & Co.’ it proclaimed on the side. Blane walked suspiciously across to the gate.
‘We weren’t expecting you until this afternoon,’ he called.
Gavin Renson jumped cheerfully from the driving cabin. ‘I know, but we thought we’d come for breakfast.’ He took a large black leather bag from the tool compartment under his seat and strolled past Blane towards the caravan.
‘Come on, Jackson,’ he called to the dog. ‘Come and have your porridge.’
Paul Temple tried to relax in the tip-up chair; he closed his eyes while the girl clattered her implements about on the ledge by his head. She adjusted the chair slightly and shone the light full in his face. It was like being at the dentists, except that Miss Benson was younger and prettier than any dentist Paul had been treated by. And she made him feel much more nervous. He didn’t feel happy having his face made up.
‘Do I have to be made up like this?’ Paul protested as a matter of form.
‘Oh yes, it’s terribly hot under the lights. You’ll perspire, and we wouldn’t want you to look shiny, would we?’
‘Heaven forbid.’
Miss Benson put the finishing touches to his lips, patted his face with powder and then whipped away the towel from under his chin. ‘There, now you look like an extremely well preserved novelist.’
He rose from the chair and scowled. ‘I am an extremely well preserved novelist.’
‘Exactly.’
Another girl popped her head round the door, exactly on cue, and said, ‘Are you ready for Hospitality now, Mr Temple?’
‘I suppose so.’
Paul waved a resigned farewell to Miss Benson and followed the second girl to a room at the end of the corridor. Four brightly attractive young ladies were chatting up four nervous middle aged men.
‘My name’s Andrea Turberville,’ Paul’s bright young lady told him. ‘I gather you’ve been through all this before.’
‘Yes. What happens next is that you conjure up a very large whisky and ginger wine.’
‘That’s right,’ she said, ‘and a small sherry for me.’ In fact they were conjured up by a chirpy young man. ‘Not nervous, are you?’ Andrea asked.
‘Terrified.’ He wasn’t, but it seemed the right thing to say. Paul didn’t want to appear blasé. ‘I’m always tempted on occasions like these to hire a professional actor, so that he can project his personality and remember all the witty lines I think of afterwards. Do you know any good professional actors?’
She laughed as if it were all part of her job.
‘Don’t worry. Brian’s terribly good at putting people at their ease. He’ll help you out if you forget the title of your latest novel or if you suddenly become convinced that your flies are undone. Brian’s terribly professional.’
Paul glanced cautiously down at his trousers.
‘By the way, have you met your fellow performers? Let me introduce you –’
Brian Clay conducted a chat programme for ITV that aspired to treat serious subjects in a serious way between interludes of pop song and dance. The serious subject this week was crime. Paul Temple had just written a series of newspaper articles in which he claimed that crime was no longer a haphazard collection of underdogs dabbling in a spot of burglary, as it had been, but an organised business with no place for the amateur. So Paul Temple was on the show.
He would be talking to Freddy the Drummer, a man who had spent most of his life in and out of approved schools, borstals and gaol, to a retired agent of MI5 or MI6, nobody seemed sure which, and to an elderly MP who wanted to bring back the birch and arm the police.
Paul said hello to them and mentioned the weather. It would take all of Brian Clay’s well known sincerity and charm to produce brilliant talk from this bunch of egotists, Paul decided. The MP was talking as if he feared that once he paused for breath somebody else might speak, and the braying tones were designed to wake up apathetic voters at the back of the hall.
‘What do you think of this circus?’ Paul asked the MI5 or 6 agent.
‘I think everybody’s terribly talented and sincere,’ he said absently. His brightly attractive young lady was keeping him primed with a continuous supply of whisky. ‘Terribly professional.’
Paul nodded and wondered whether to talk instead to Freddie the Drummer. But Freddie was sprawled in an armchair, sprawling lower and lower in an attempt to get a better view of Andrea’s mini skirt.
‘I think it’s time we went onto the set,’ said Andrea Turberville. ‘It’s a few minutes early, but we ought to see you under the lights. I’ll take you to Richard Cross. He’s the director.’
The set was the usual table surrounded by armchairs. There was water in carafes and there were ashtrays everyone was told not to use while on camera. Andrea sat them all down to face a tiered audience of two hundred people. There was a stage over to the right where the dancers would dance, and behind the stage a dance band was playing to warm up the
