Dead on Cue by Sally Spencer Page B

asked.
    â€˜No,’ Houseman replied – far too quickly.
    â€˜No one at all?’ Woodend persisted. ‘You’ve never heard anybody threaten her? Anybody say they wished she was dead?’
    Houseman sighed. ‘Of course I have.’
    â€˜Who?’
    â€˜Everybody in the cast, at one time or another. But you have to understand that what we’re dealing with here is actors.’
    â€˜Would you mind explainin’ that?’ Woodend asked.
    â€˜I’ll do my best,’ Houseman agreed. ‘Actors live in a very strange world. At nine o’clock in the evening, they’re strutting around the stage with the eyes of the entire audience on them. They can bring forth from that audience both tears of joy and shudders of fear. It gives them a tremendous feeling of power.’
    â€˜It must do,’ Woodend agreed.
    â€˜Then the performance is over, and by eleven o’clock they’re sitting on the last bus home, worrying about where they’re going to find the money to pay the rent for the crummy little bed-sits they live in. Do that for a while, and it’s bound to have some effect on you, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Could you be more specific?’
    â€˜Since drama is so much more rewarding than real life, they infuse real life
with
drama. So when they threaten to kill someone, they really believe that they mean it. But only for that moment. Then the scene changes, they’re in a different play, and the former object of their hate becomes their dearest love.’
    â€˜You’re talkin’ about strugglin’ actors here, aren’t you?’ Woodend asked. ‘Actors whose only reward is the audience’s applause. I would have thought your cast had other compensations. Aren’t they quite well-paid?’
    â€˜They’re
very
well-paid,’ Houseman said. ‘But they
have
all struggled in the past, and it’s not a mantle they can easily shrug off easily.’
    It’s not a mantle you can shrug off easily, either, if I’m readin’ you right, Woodend thought.
    â€˜Val Farnsworth never even considered the possibility that she would end up a star,’ Houseman continued. ‘She had the wrong accent, for a start. And then, suddenly, a star was what she was. But that doesn’t mean she felt secure. None of them do, because part of their mind is always back in that tatty bed-sit.’
    An’ I bet you could describe yours in great detail, even now, Woodend thought.
    â€˜So Val was never happy with what she had,’ Houseman said. ‘She always wanted more. More lines, better lines. And she wanted the very faults and weaknesses which had made her character so popular written out of the script. If she’d had it all her own way, Liz Bowyer would have become a perfect being – and incredibly boring. But Val wasn’t the only person suffering from actors’-disease. Every member of the cast, from the stars right down to the humblest walk-on, feel exactly the same way.’
    â€˜But they don’t all have the power to turn their wishes into reality,’ Woodend said thoughtfully. ‘I imagine Val Farnsworth was popular enough with the audience to make things go pretty much the way she wanted them to.’
    Houseman laughed, but without much evidence of genuine amusement. ‘If I may say so, you’ve completely misunderstood the situation. Actors are rather like children. Or perhaps dogs. Of course, they’d rather have things going entirely their own way, but I can’t allow that. I treat them firmly, but kindly, and eventually they end up doing what
I
want them to do.’
    â€˜So you’re sayin’ you had Val Farnsworth under control?’
    â€˜I have everyone who’s concerned with
Maddox Row
under control. That’s my job.’
    â€˜You don’t seem to have had the murderer under control,’ Woodend pointed out.
    Houseman winced. ‘That was a