A Series of Murders Read Online Free PDF Page A

on the head a split second before she got the full weight of the shelves on her.’
    â€˜But what would have made the shelves fall down?’
    This prompted another shrug from the doctor. ‘Who can say? Maybe they were just badly stacked. Maybe the girl was fingering something, trying to pull something out . . . I don’t know. All I do know is that West End Television is going to face a very big claim for compensation.’
    â€˜And you really don’t think there’s any suspicion of foul play?’
    â€˜Come on, Sergeant. Accidents happen. I don’t know, I haven’t done a detailed examination yet, but I’d have thought foul play was extremely unlikely.’
    â€˜Oh,’ said Charles, and the disappointment must have showed in his voice, because the doctor went on: ‘For heaven’s sake, man, stop being so ridiculous. You sound as if you wish there
was
a murder. You don’t sound like a professional policeman at all.’
    â€˜Good heavens. Don’t I?’ asked Sergeant Clump of the Little Breckington Police Station.

Chapter Four
    WHEN, ON THE DOT of six, the plugs were pulled in Studio A, everyone felt that it had been a long day. During the lunch break, the news of Sippy Stokes’s death had spread throughout the
Stanislas Braid
production team, then throughout W.E.T. House, and finally, through the medium of the press and radio, to the outside world.
    Ben Docherty, having had his customary alcoholic top-up at lunch-time, insisted belligerently on continuing recording through the afternoon, though it might have been more appropriate to cancel out of respect for the dead. Or respect for the living, come to that. Everyone on the set was upset by the fact of a death in the studio, though some seemed to be taking it worse than others. Rick Landor, in particular, looked shattered when he heard the news, and though he struggled gamely through the afternoon’s recording, he went through the motions like an automaton.
    It wasn’t an easy afternoon’s recording, anyway. They kept starting to rehearse scenes, only to grind to a halt when someone realised that Stanislas Braid’s daughter, Christina, should have made an appearance in them. And Russell Bentley kept averring that there was no point in recording any more, anyway, because everything they’d already done would have to be scrapped when Sippy’s part was recast. Charles couldn’t help noticing that the star made these pronouncements with considerable relish. For Russell Bentley, Sippy Stokes’s death was unadulterated good news.
    In fact, it was striking how, throughout all the ranks of the production team, though everyone was suffering from shock, no one showed much sign of grief or regret. In her brief time working on
Stanislas Braid
, Sippy Stokes had not made many friends.
    Charles Paris’s name would never appear in
The Guinness Book of Records
, but that was only because there is no section in that work for the event called ‘Getting out of Costume and into the Nearest Bar’. At the end of that studio day, however, he performed another Personal Best and was draped over a large Bell’s before most of his fellow artistes had even made it to their dressing rooms.
    Of course, he couldn’t expect to compete with the production crew, who did not have the handicap of costumes and were halfway down their first pints of lager before he arrived in the W. E.T. bar.
    Nor could he compete with a writer. Will Parton had already downed his first glass of dry white and willingly accepted Charles’s offer of a refill.
    â€˜So,’ said Will, raising his glass, ‘farewell, then, Sippy Stokes.’
    â€˜Farewell indeed,’ Charles responded, shuddering slightly as the image of her body once again flashed up on the screen of his mind.
    â€˜One more unwanted person vanished into the Great Void. Prompting once again the Universal Question: What does it all