The Death of an Actor (The Bentley Hill Players Book 3) Read online

  The Death of An Actor

  Bentley Hill Players #3

  by

  Adam G Newton

  Copyright © 2015 Adam G Newton

  ISBN-13: 978-1507608760

  ISBN-10: 1507608764

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First Published, 2015

  Cover designed by Adam G Newton.

  http://www.adamgnewton.co.uk

  Also available in the Bentley Hill Players Series:

  The Ghost Under the Stairs (Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk)

  Christmas at Butler Farm (Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk)

  For my parents

  Who think Jim and Anne are based on them, but they aren't. I am so glad that they aren't.

  Thank you for everything.

  “Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.”

  - Will Rogers

  Contents

  Meet The Players 9

  Chapter 1 13

  Chapter 2 21

  Chapter 3 31

  Chapter 4 43

  Chapter 5 55

  Chapter 6 61

  Chapter 7 73

  Chapter 8 83

  Chapter 9 95

  Chapter 10 103

  Chapter 11 111

  Chapter 12 119

  Chapter 13 129

  Chapter 14 137

  Chapter 15 145

  Chapter 16 153

  Chapter 17 163

  Chapter 18 169

  Chapter 19 177

  Chapter 20 183

  Curtain Call 187

  From the author... 191

  Meet The Players

  Jim Butler … A retired veterinarian, the driving force behind the Bentley Hill Players.

  Anne Butler … The driving force behind Jim.

  Owen O'Donnell … An alcohol fuelled lunatic with a heart of gold. And a large canvas bag.

  Harry Blunt … Middle-aged technical effects expert. A dab hand with a paint brush.

  Christopher Crumple … Harry's best friend. Impulsive. Irrational. Forgetful. And those are his good points.

  Sophie Patterson … Inexplicably in love with Christopher. Occasionally wears glasses, which might explain it. Delightful.

  Emily Ravenscroft … The youngest and most short tempered of all the Players. Left hook is to be avoided.

  Lillian Lovelace … The oldest member of the Players. Actual age indeterminate. Interests include mischief, dancing, juggling, gin.

  ACT I

  Chapter 1

  The dark mahogany furniture had been polished to a high shine, and a glass of brandy had been poured. Harry Blunt sat back in his chair with his long legs stretched out in front of him, and his feet resting on the desk. To his right hand side, a brightly coloured parrot sat in a golden cage, softly muttering away.

  The door burst open, and Sophie Patterson stormed in. Her wavy brown hair was tied back behind her head, exposing her cheeks which were reddened with anger.

  "How could you?" cried Sophie. "He didn't deserve that, no matter what he'd done!"

  "When someone double-crosses me, they end up having to pay for it," said Harry, calmly.

  Sophie walked up to the desk, leaned over it, and stared directly into Harry's eyes.

  "But now I know all about it. Are you going to kill me next?"

  The parrot squawked.

  "Polly thinks I should tell you a little story. Polly likes stories. See, here's what happened. Andy came to me and said he was flat broke. He needed to borrow some money to pay his rent, and to feed his wife and kid. He had no real prospects, he was trying to become an actor. He'd not had a part in anything for nearly a year, but out of the kindness of my heart I gave him the money, told him to get up to date on his bills, and take his family out for a nice meal. But he didn't. He double-crossed me, and he gambled that money away, and his family didn't see a single penny of it."

  "So you killed him!"

  "No, I had nothing to do with it. I talk to people. I may have mentioned what happened to a few buddies of mine, and it seems nature took the course that nature always does. Survival of the fittest."

  The parrot squawked again.

  "You told your buddies to kill him. It amounts to the same thing."

  "No, I didn't. One of them took it upon himself, and that was that. But I'm afraid I couldn't tell you who it was."

  "How could you not know who did it?"

  "Oh no, I know who did it. I just can't tell you, or he'd murder me as well. The death of an actor is bad enough, but the death of a successful businessman would be much worse, wouldn't you say?"

  "But he needs to be brought to justice! You must tell me!"

  The parrot squawked again. "Ca-caw! Ha-haw! Mac Flint did it!"

  "Shut it, loud-beak!" said Harry.

  "Mac Flint? The bookmaker? He's the one?"

  "Ca-caw! Mac Flint did it!"

  "I'm going to the police now, and you can't stop me!"

  Sophie turned on her heel and headed for the door, but stopped at the sound of a metallic click. She slowly turned back around, and was faced the gun that Harry had pointed at her.

  "You wouldn't!"

  "Under normal circumstances, no, I wouldn't, but my life could be on the line right now. Move away from the door, and let's talk a little more. Let's see if we can reach some kind of understanding."

  The parrot squawked. "Ca-flac. Mark Hint did it!"

  "What?" said Harry.

  "Ma-flap. Kaka did it."

  "I don't think he did."

  "Mac Flint. Mac Flint. Ha-haw did it!"

  "Jim! I think the parrot's malfunctioning again!"

  "Mac Mac Back Kak Back Mac Flack Flack Ha Ha Ha HAW!"

  "Sophie, get down!"

  Sophie and Harry threw themselves to the floor just in time. The parrot's head exploded with a loud bang, a puff of smoke, and a shower of brightly coloured feathers.

  "Ruddy thing!" said Jim, walking on from the side of the stage. "I thought you said you fixed the earthing problem, Harry."

  "I did. That sounded like something went wrong with the logic board. Oh, bum. The MP3 player has melted."

  "Good!" yelled Chris from the back of the hall. "Maybe you'll stop playing that Taylor Swift album now!"

  "Nothing wrong with Taylor Swift!" replied Harry. "You listen to worse stuff than that!"

  "This isn't helping," said Jim, shaking his head. "If we can't get a parrot without an exploding head before opening night, we're going to have a big problem."

  A loud crunch, followed by a banging noise, came from under the stage.

  "What was that?" asked Sophie.

  There was a creak, another bang, and a thud, and suddenly Owen O'Donnell was on stage beside them. His 5 foot 6 inch frame was dressed head to toe in green - green jacket, green shirt, green trousers, even green shoes. Nobody else even knew where to buy green shoes from.

  "Hello! Am I needed yet? I was just having a little tipple with Dave under the stage, and I tripped and fell on the oojah, he tried to save me and grabbed the thingy, and we both kind of twisted it, and the trapdoor mechanism went a bit wonky. And here I am. Ta-dah!"

  Owen did a little curtsey, and promptly sat on th
e floor.

  "If it's not an exploding parrot, it's an inebriated leprechaun," said Jim. "Get up you idiot, you're not helping. Emily! Come and help this fool off the stage, please."

  Emily scurried on to the stage from the opposite side, and crouched down next to Owen.

  "Are you OK, Owen?"

  "Ham fine, Hemmily. But you need to turn the motor off."

  "What motor?"

  "The one what's making the room spin round."

  Emily put her arm around Owen's waist and helped him to his feet. As they staggered off the stage together, Harry poked his finger down the neck of the exploded parrot, and was surprised to receive an electric shock.

  "OW! Damn thing is still live!"

  Jim smiled. "Looks like a dead parrot to me..."

  "Don't start. Not again. I know you think you helped write that Monty Python sketch, but that guy you met in that cafe in 1966 was not Michael Palin. We've been through this."

  "But it is dead. Pining for the..."

  "...fresh set of batteries and a new logic board, yes. Have we got the budget to buy a new iPod?"

  "Yes, but it really needs to work now. This is the third one this week."

  Harry disconnected several wires from the tail-end of the headless bird, and dropped the body in a plastic bag he produced from under the desk.

  "Just out of interest, what are you going to say if someone sees that on the way home?"

  "I'll just tell them it was on special offer at the butchers. Lovely plumage and all that."

  ***

  Harry walked home alone as his usual companion, Chris, was too busy wooing the love of his life, Sophie. Sophie herself did not particularly enjoy this, as since Chris had heard the term "wooing" he'd started creeping up behind her and yelling "WOO!" as loud as he could whenever he had the opportunity.

  She tried to explain that wasn't what wooing was, but once Chris set his mind on something, it was quite difficult to get him to change it.

  Harry drew the curtains in his two-up-two-down house, and put the kettle on. While it boiled, he got out his soldering iron, the glue gun, and a packet of biscuits. He sat at his kitchen table with a hot cup of tea trying to repair the decapitated parrot.

  After over an hour of fiddling around, he managed to get the wing motor back up and running, and thought that he'd managed to fix the logic board. The slightly melted MP3 player still seemed to work intermittently, so he gave it a test by pressing a button hidden underneath the parrot.

  The parrot squawked. Still headless, a voice came from within the parrots chest, "Ca-caw! Mac Flint did it!"

  "Yes!" said Harry. "It works!"

  The parrot squawked again. "Oh no! I see a spider web! It's me tangled in the middle!"

  "What the...? That's Coldplay!"

  "Ca-caw! And my daddy said! Stay away from Juliet!"

  "Hmm. Taylor Swift. That's better."

  "Ca-caw! Mac Flint in a spider web! Juliet tangled in my daddy!"

  "Er..."

  "Mac daddy! Julie Flint! Stay away, spider!"

  "No no no..."

  "Yo back up now and give a brother room...."

  "What? Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff? I don't even own that!"

  "...fuse is lit and I'm about to go..."

  BOOM.

  The whole parrot exploded, setting the tablecloth on fire.

  "This will not do. Could kill the entire front row. Gah! Never work with animals!"

  ***

  As Harry crawled in to bed that night, his mind was still full of circuit diagrams and Taylor Swift songs. He fell quickly asleep and dreamed about walking through a forest of exploding parrots. Each parrot was bigger than the last, and the final one he encountered was over ten feet tall.

  The giant parrot squawked. "Ca-caw! I don't think you should do this any more! Parrots don't like having wires stuck up their bums. Parrots don't like having iPods in their tummies. If you value your eyebrows, you'll stop abusing parrots."

  Harry woke up with a start. He was sweating heavily and shaking.

  "I don't ever want to see an electronic parrot again," he said out loud.

  Downstairs, from the kitchen, he heard a noise.

  "Ca-caw. Ca-caw. Mac Flint did it. Did it. Did it. Dit. Didn't. Didn't. Mac Flint didn't do it. Did you do it? Do it. Doot."

  BANG.

  Chapter 2

  Harry, Chris and Sophie sat in the window seats of Blackworth Pizza ("A finer pizza can't be found within 3 and a half miles!") sharing possibly the largest pizza known to mankind.

  "I feel like a bit of a gooseberry sat here with you two," said Harry.

  "Don't be like that," said Chris. "You look more like a strawberry."

  Sophie slapped his arm. "Be nice! He doesn't look very well. Are you feeling OK, Harry?"

  "Yes, thanks, I'm fine. I think it's just that I didn't get much sleep last night. I took the parrot home, and it kept on talking after midnight. Telling me Mac Flint didn't do it, and that I should do it myself."

  "Whoa, weird, mate! You should just have taken the batteries out."

  "Well that's the weird thing. I did take the batteries out, but it just kept on talking. I thought it might be radio interference, making the speaker active or something, but it was still saying the same sort of thing that it was meant to. Just with the words a bit messed up."

  "Do you think it's possessed?" asked Sophie, horrified.

  "No. What kind of critter would possess a stuffed parrot?"

  "One with a sense of humour?"

  They continued to eat in silence for several minutes.

  "Who is Mac Flint, anyway? I mean, is he, like, I dunno, based on a real person?" asked Chris.

  "Doubt it. Mind you, it's a fairly open story," said Harry. "Basically someone got murdered because of gambling money away that didn't belong to them in the first place. Probably happens all the time."

  The immense owner of Blackworth Pizza suddenly appeared behind the counter, which was a miracle in itself. Doubly so, as for him to move quickly was one thing, but for him to fit behind the counter was entirely another. He loudly said "SHHH!", and pointed a remote control at the TV that was hung on the wall in the corner. He mashed the buttons with his sausage-like fingers, and the volume on the previously silent TV increased rapidly.

  "...police say the body was found in Blackworth Abbey Wood, holding a gun. The victim, although yet to be formally identified, is thought to be Bernard Holmes, who went missing last week after running up large gambling debts..."

  "See!" said Harry. "Stuff like that happens all the time."

  "Right, mate," said the owner. "Only not normally to folk you know. He used to fix my car. Poor bloke."

  "Oh, I don't like that," said Sophie. "That's a bit too close to the plot of our show, isn't it? What if people think we're making fun of him?"

  "Well as long as he wasn't an actor we'll be OK," said Harry.

  "...known locally as a mechanic, and for his amateur acting work in Benby Theatre...."

  "Bugger."

  ***

  Chris took the final piece of garlic bread and held it to his lips, in much the same way as an artist would rest the end of a paintbrush on their mouth when pondering where to place the decisive stroke of paint on their masterpiece.

  "What if," he said, "it's a sign? A murdered mechanic, done in because of his gambling debts. It's a sign that we are too close to the truth."

  "What truth?" asked Harry. "Our play is set in 1940s Chicago and is about gangsters and casinos, not a local mechanic who had a couple of flutters too many on the four-fifteen from Market Rasen!"

  "But the parallels are there! He's dead, our guy's dead. He liked to gamble, our guy liked to gamble! I think it would be in bad taste to perform this show so soon after this Holmes bloke died."

  "Chris, it sounds like you've thought this through," said Sophie. "Which normally means you haven't thought this through at all. What's going on?"

  "Nothing."

  "Chris...."


  "Nothing. Nothing I can say while Harry is here."

  "Ooh, that sounds ominous," said Harry. "Tell me more!"

  "No, mate, I wouldn't want to upset you. I've not figured out how I can tell Sophie that I'm afraid of being killed by an exploding parrot yet, and you built the thing, so I don't know how I'm going to tell you."

  Sophie and Harry exchanged a glance, and Harry rolled his eyes.

  "Sweetie," said Sophie, "You aren't going to be killed by an exploding parrot."

  "How do you know? Have you ever looked a parrot in the eyes? Beady little, birdy little, evil little eyes. They aren't human."

  "Uh huh. I think that's a requirement of being a parrot."

  "Well, they should stop it. Freaks me right out."

  "Anyway," said Harry. "I think we should go on with the show. It's not related in any way to what happened to that guy."

  There was a scraping noise as the owner pulled up a chair to the end of their table, and sat himself down in it. He wore a grey (previously white) apron tied up at the front, with a small towel tucked in the waistband. His dark hair was slicked back and covered by a bright orange hair-net, which wasn't a requirement of his job - he just liked the look of it. His small round eyes were set too far apart on his face, but his nose made the most of the room and spread out to fill the gap.

  "I don't know what you're on about with exploding human parrots, but I'll tell you something. Bernie Holmes was a mate of mine, but he was an idiot. I'd not spoken to him in about a year, because he stole money from me. Money he gambled away. I think when they said he had gambling debts on the news, they didn't mean he owes a bookie or anything like that. If I know him at all, I reckon he's borrowed money from the wrong people. And when they realized it wasn't coming back, they decided Bernie wasn't coming back. Anywhere. Ever."