A Series of Murders by Simon Brett Page A

waste of an actress, certainly.’
    â€˜Perhaps not. But a waste of a person.’
    â€˜Maybe to the people who were close to her.’
    â€˜Do you know who was close to her?’
    Jimmy Sheet’s eyes narrowed. ‘Well, I gather Rick Landor wasn’t averse to giving her one every now and then.’
    â€˜I suppose that’s how she got the part.’
    â€˜Can’t think of any other reason. No, old Ben nearly bust a gut when he heard about it. They’d done most of the major casting, and he was still dithering about who was going to play Christina – mind you, I think he’d got that Joanne bird in mind from the start. Then suddenly he hears Rick’s pulled a fast one and put through the booking for his little bit on the side.’
    â€˜Couldn’t Ben have put a stop to it?’
    â€˜Contract had gone out. He’d have had to pay her off for the series. And we saw this morning just how keen he is on writing things off.’
    â€˜Yes. Mind you, he had decided to pay her off after the first episode, anyway.’
    â€˜Had he?’
    Quickly, Charles filled Jimmy in on what Will had told him in the bar after Sippy’s death.
    â€˜Shit,’ said the singer at the end of the account. ‘That Ben Docherty can be a really nasty operator.’
    â€˜Yes. It’s amazing that Sippy didn’t hear from someone what he was planning.’
    â€˜Well, she didn’t. She didn’t have a clue on the Tuesday night, anyway.’
    Jimmy Sheet had given something away there, and Charles pounced on it. ‘Oh, really? Did you see her on the Tuesday night?’
    â€˜What? No. No. Just at the end of the filming, you know, just had a chat.’
    Charles would have recognised that the man was lying even if he hadn’t known of his visit with the ‘mystery brunette’ to Stringfellow’s.
    â€˜So you weren’t one of the people who was close to her?’
    â€˜No. No, course I wasn’t.’ Jimmy Sheet was becoming heated. ‘Shit, just because you’ve worked in the pop business, everybody thinks you’re bloody bonking everything in sight. Look, all right, in what I do, things I’ve done, there’s always been girls around. But I’m a happily married man. I got Sharon and the kids. Okay, in the past there may have been the odd flutter, but that’s all finished – got it?’
    It didn’t take a very advanced student of psychology to recognise that the vehemence of this defence was totally disproportionate to the hint of an accusation that Charles had made. Nor to identify it as the operation of a guilty conscience.
    As if to reinforce that impression – which hardly needed reinforcing – the ectoplasmic waiter suddenly materialised at Jimmy’s side and murmured discreetly that Mr. Sheet’s wife was on the telephone.
    Checking up on him, Charles thought as the harassed husband went off to take the call. There was something amiss with Jimmy Sheet’s marriage. His wife was a neurotically jealous woman, and she didn’t trust him. As the newspaper gossip column had hinted, she could well be the sort to divorce him and take away his beloved children if she caught a whiff of any other extramarital excursions.
    Taking Sippy Stokes out to Stringfellow’s on the night before her death might well qualify under that heading.
    Fine, so long as it remained secret. But it was a risky thing to do. Mort Verdon had seen them there. Any number of other people might have seen them there. It was only luck that the newspaper columnist hadn’t been able to identify the ‘mystery brunette’.
    Anyway, suppose Sippy Stokes didn’t want it to remain secret? Suppose she had threatened to tell the lovely Sharon what had happened?
    Then Jimmy Sheet might well feel that Sippy Stokes needed to be silenced.

Chapter Nine
    â€˜OH, HELLO, Charles. It’s