A Reconstructed Corpse by Simon Brett Read Free Book Online Page A

on the verge of asking about her, but again what was the point? He knew Frances would only remind him that he had Juliet’s phone number and was quite capable of ringing her himself. The emptiness ballooned inside him.
    â€˜Well, anyway, Frances . . . As I say, I just rang to see that you’re OK.’
    â€˜And, as I say, I’m fine.’
    â€˜Yes. Well . . . I’ll be in touch.’
    â€˜Fine.’
    â€˜Goodbye then, Frances.’
    â€˜Goodbye, Charles.’
    Was he being hypersensitive, or had she put the phone down more abruptly than was strictly necessary?
    Charles mooched disconsolately along the landing towards the door of his bedsitter. There was the remains of a half-bottle of Bell’s in there. At least he thought there was. On those days when he started sipping early, it was always difficult to remember how much there was left.
    He was stopped by the sound of the phone ringing. To his amazement, it was Maurice.
    The agent’s mood had changed totally, its previous euphoria supplanted by a dull gloom.
    â€˜What’s the matter?’ asked Charles.
    â€˜Malcolm Tonbridge. Bloody Malcolm Tonbridge.’
    â€˜What about him?’ A churlishly appealing thought insinuated itself into Charles’s mind. ‘Columbia haven’t gone off the idea, have they?’
    â€˜Oh no, Hollywood are as keen as ever. Keener if anything.’
    â€˜So?’
    â€˜Malcolm just rang me. Said now his career’s taking off, he needs to be with a bigger agency.’
    â€˜Oh.’
    â€˜People who specialise in movies. People who’ve got “representation on the West Coast”. He said he was grateful to me for all I’d done for him, but he’s moving into a very specialised area and he needs to be looked after by specialists.’
    â€˜I see.’
    â€˜God, Charles, I feel a complete failure.’
    â€˜Well, I’m sorry, Maurice. But why on earth did you ring to tell
me
about it?’
    â€˜Because, of everyone I know, you’re the one person who I thought’d really
understand
.’
    â€˜Oh,’ said Charles Paris, ‘thank you
very
much.’

Chapter Five
    ONCE, IN A moment of eloquence assisted by Arthur Bell’s distillery, Charles Paris had defined the life of an actor as like that of a child’s glove puppet, spending most of its life crumpled and forgotten in the corner of a toy cupboard, and only fully alive when a warm hand was inserted into it. At the time the references to inserting warm hands into things had triggered a burst of crude innuendo, but Charles still thought there was something in the image. The hand of course, which animated the actor’s personality, was work. Give an actor a job, and suddenly he exists.
    Pursuing this image through, it could be said that Charles Paris spent the four days after the first
Public Enemies
programme crumpled up and forgotten in the corner of a toy cupboard. He had made the necessary – or perhaps unnecessary – phone calls, to Maurice and Frances, on the morning after, and didn’t feel inclined to ring either of them again. From his agent he would only get more unwittingly dismissive references to his own career and reproachful catalogues of the perfidies of Malcolm Tonbridge.
    And from his wife he would get . . . He didn’t quite know what he would get, but he didn’t relish it. Something basic seemed to have changed in his relationship with Frances. Ever since he’d walked out – and indeed for much of the twelve years before – the marriage had been an on-off affair, but in the past he had always felt confident that any ‘off’ would eventually give way to an ‘on’. That core of certainty had now gone. The relationship had descended to a new bleakness, and the cold prospect that they might permanently lose contact had become increasingly feasible. Maybe Frances, finally and irrevocably, had had enough of him.