"It's good to have you back." "After the land of raw fish, that tongue must be ready for something without gills." "You go away and get back on western time for tomorrow." "We'll give you a birthday you'll never forget." "Take care, baby." " Love the shirt." " Love you." "Afternoon." "What can we get you?" "Whatever it takes to wow a young lady." "It's her birthday." "I want it to be special." "We'll do something nice." "What about a message?" "What would you like to say on the card?" ""To my dearest dreamboat, you are everything to me and more," ""constant, unfailing..." ""vision of loveliness." ""The sight of you lights up my life in ways I can't begin to describe." ""You must know by now..." "I am hopelessly in love with you. "" "Mimi Tranter." "What sort of name's that?" "It was a running joke on the news desk." "Mimi was always "Me me!" Super-glam girlie reporter." "The type women can't stand but men dribble over." " Bit like a urinal." " But without the charm." "What she wants to meet you for, I shudder to..." "What?" "Two sorts of people to avoid - serial killers and women who spell "Thanks" with an "x"." "I don't know how much longer I can wait." "We've got a show tonight..." "Oh, no!" "Oh, spare us that, please!" "Ruddy oompah band again practising outside." "Every hour of the day, driving me witless." "You dare start up that racket." "I forbid it!" "Yes, you with the trombone!" "I'm warning you." "One peep out of that and..." "Hey, fellas!" "Fellas!" "Love that sound to bits, but if you could just take a breather, be ever so grateful." "No problem!" "So you're Jonathan, the magic man." "I've got a little something might be up your street." " Coffee?" " Have you got iced tea?" "We just sucked the last bag." "Listen." "I just loved that trick on the show last week." "Dismantling the body in the boxes." "It was obvious how it was done." "With the dummy feet and the girl squashed up." "And the bit with the crossbow." "Brilliant." "You could see that it didn't really fire and there was a duplicate bolt on a fish wire or something, but the fact that you can always work them out is the fun of it for me." "I'm running a bit late." " Robin's picking me up at 12." " Robin?" "I tell you, he is complete and utter heaven." "In every department." "He's also married with a six-month-old daughter, but when did life ever run smooth?" "And this time I wasn't looking for it." "Why would I be interested in a Mr Robin Priest?" "Some sales rep who's won first prize in a national story writing competition." "Then, I don't know..." "whatever it is that happens, happened." "His wife was there but you could see it wasn't right." "They just didn't fit together." "But for us it was like, I don't know..." "the end of the rainbow." "The last thing I want to do is wreck someone's marriage." "But. hey..." "But there have been a few more "business" trips in his diary." "Then, the other night..." "What are you doing?" " No!" "It's Ghost's Forge." " What is it?" "When I asked him what or where was Ghost's Forge, he hadn't a clue." "Ghost's Forge." "Then it came back to him." "He'd read an article about this unsolved murder." "The old bloodhound instinct, I looked it up." "Turns out to be a mystery that they never got to the bottom of." "Ghost's Forge, apparently, was this spooky old place in the wilds of Norfolk whose owner, a guy name Ezra Carr, had led a hermetically-sealed existence, locked away from the world, for 20 years." "Ever since his wife died." "Well, 18 months ago..." "The gist of it, all here in the police report, which the lovely detective inspector copied for me, is as follows." ""The owner of the house, Mr Ezra Carr," ""was found deceased in the north-facing upstairs bedroom in the east wing... "" "".. although pathology showed this blood did not belong to the murder victim. "" "So?" "Big deal." "Old bloke found dead." "Where's the story?" "Where's the motive?" "He knew no one, no one knew him." "There's all kinds of valuable stuff there, but nothing was stolen." " Next of kin?" " He had none." "His stuff's been gobbled up by the state." "House is being done up to sell as flats." "I thought, if we could get inside, have a little nose about..." " I've talked the agent into letting us in." " Get inside to look for what?" "What do you always say?" ""Don't know till you've found it. "" "Why don't I leave all this here for you to absorb properly..." "That'll be my lift." " Hi." "Find the address OK?" " No problem." "Maddy, Jonathan, this is Robin." " Pleased to meet you." "Hi." " Hello." "What's this?" " I was telling them about Ghost's Forge..." " Yes." "We don't have a lot of time, so nice to have met you." "Right." "Thanks." "Bye." "Well..." "Got some spunk, hasn't she?" "I can hardly let her down." "She specially asked for my help." "I despair of men generally." "Everyone here?" "OK, Jonathan, the floor's yours." "Right." "Water tank." "Yesterday's dry run, if I can call it that, all went very smoo... .. smoothly." "Tim, you said the main thing to... .. is that the cameras don't go in on the false floor." "One other thought." "Let's have a fireman standing by with an axe." "It'll help build up the ten..." " What am I looking at?" " "The Macclesfield Echo"." "A Duggie Dawson." "Who cares what he thinks?" "Mr Great Big Nobody from Nowhere Land." "The guy's a total irrelevance." "So we're looking for our first stagger at 2.30 and tech one at 4.00?" "Thank you, folks." "On the fireman, let's get Nick rather than some dancer who'll look like the Village..." " Good point." " What the hell is this?" "Sorry?" "Oh, yes." "I thought, why not?" "Let it be there." "Let the audience make up their own minds." "If you'll excuse me, I have a special lunch date with a very special lady." "Oh, this is Samantha." "Catch up with you later." "And where are you tonight?" "At this precise moment..." "halfway up the M1 to Sheffield." "Yeah?" " What the bloody hell?" " Filth is what you are!" "I know what's going on with you and Robin!" " Robin...?" "No..." "You've got it all wrong." " I found your address in his pocket." "You could at least have the decency to own up." "I didn't write this." "This is..." "You've got to be joking!" "I can't believe she would do that." "I'm really sorry." "That stuff's lethal, I'm telling you." "By the way, fantastic show again this week." "The old water tank thing." "I guessed how it was done, obviously." "Some kind of pipe under the stage that went to another tank that he just swam through." "The audience, you could tell, were really gobsmacked." "Here we are." "One creepy old house." "One property agent with keys." "We're 50 minutes late." "He's going to kill me." " We should be so lucky." " Sorry." "Hello." " Oh." " What is that?" "Some local rag?" "The latest salvo from the "Macclesfield Echo"." "Guy prints a snide remark about the show," "Adam makes a big deal of it, so now he's gone to town on him." "Pages on the "unbearable vanity of this shallow showbusiness man" ""who puts the sham into shambolic. "" "What does that even mean?" "Hello?" "Yes." "Just this second, Adam." "I told you these people always have the last word." "If you want to throw him, invite him over to a rehearsal." "Be super-nice to him to make him feel guilty about all this stuff." "The hostage bonding with the kidnapper." "You're very welcome." "Interesting." "There's our first curiosity, the house sign." " What about it?" " Don't worry." "He sees things that are invisible to us mortals." "I mean, this is absolutely beezer, isn't it?" "Not only are we 18 months late, the place is empty and the decorators have moved in." "Are we hoping the killer's going to pop back and say, "Did I leave a knife behi...?"" "What?" "What?" "What?" "Remember those blood spatters?" "They're still here." "Caused by some sort of fight between Carr and the guy who killed him?" "Or more logically by someone falling down the stairs." "If only there was a secret relative or something... no one knew about who stood to inherit." "But then no one ever came forward." " What are you thinking?" " Nothing." "I just can't get past the name of this place." "Ghosts Forge?" "Where does that come from?" "According to those cuttings, there was never a forge here." "Or any kind of ghosts." "It almost makes you wonder if..." "What was that?" " It's coming from the attic room." " The decorators don't work weekends." "Aaagh!" "Aaagh!" "God, it's the ectoplasm!" "Coming out of her mouth!" " What have you found?" " I don't know." "A package of some sort." ""The Grave Digger", by Gerald Eastland." "Five copies." "This would be the north-facing bedroom here." "Where the body was found." "Now all been renovated, of course, but..." "Why is this locked when none of the others are?" "Something in there." "Looks like the key." "Suddenly more promising." "A locked room mystery?" " It won't budge." " There'll be a ladder somewhere." "Come on, Mims, we'll race him." "I think I spy a slightly open window." "Hang on." " You there yet?" " Hang about." "I'm just coming." "Any joy there yet?" "Hello?" "What are you playing at in there?" "Maddy!" "Are you out there?" "She's in there with you." "She's not." "She went up the ladder, but..." "She must have come out through this door." "How?" "I can't even get the thing open." "Stay put." "I'm coming round." "No key on this side." "It looks like it's been snapped off in the lock." "This doesn't make sense." "She came in through the window." "I saw her." " We're not in the wrong room?" " I think we'd notice." "This is just totally not happening." "There is no way she could have got out of here." "I swear." "We'd better call the police." "What am I going to say?" "My friend's just vanished into thin air?" " Or not, as the case may be." " What?" "Wing mirror." "You all right?" "Look as if you've seen a ghost." "What's going on here?" " Did you get...?" " Yes?" "Oh." "Clever." " Call yourself a conjuror." " How did I miss that?" " Very neat." " Thought you'd like it." "What's the matter, Mimi?" "A trick you can't work out?" "But you're so good at them." "That apart, the room didn't really tell us much about the murder, so we've probably seen all there is to see." "Adam Klaus." "It's a name to conjure with." "Like I'm the first person to ever say that." "The first?" "Absolutely." "The very first one." "You know, you have the most perfectly dazzling smile I think I've ever seen." "Just give me two minutes to freshen up." "Come on." "Thought I'd buy us a champagne supper to celebrate my first great triumph as a professional illusionist." "I can't tell you how delicious it was to wipe that cocky smile off her face." "Just waiting now for her to come begging me to explain how it was done." "I had you fooled for ten minutes." "You're not still on this Ezra Carr thing?" "Some old bloke got it in the neck from someone who didn't like him." "What's that?" "She said he'd won first prize in a national short story writing competition." "This lover boy of hers, Robin Priest." "Out of idle curiosity, I tracked down the magazine it was printed in." " It makes interesting reading." " Why?" "What's it about?" "What it's about is not what's interesting." "Sorry?" "What are you trying to say?" "You think this Robin is mixed up in it all?" "What did she say about him and his wife Shirley?" "They didn't fit together?" " What do you think?" " I can see what she means." "That stuff with him talking about the house in his sleep..." "I don't buy that explanation that he'd read about it in an article." "The weirdest part is this stupid house name, which doesn't make any kind of sense." "And for a very good reason." "This is not the name of the house." "You saw that sign on the gate." "What did you notice about it?" "There was no apostrophe." "Have you ever read "Finnegans Wake" by James Joyce?" "Nor has anyone else." "It's unreadable." "One interesting thing about it is the title." "There isn't an apostrophe." "It's meant to be ambiguous." "One Finnegan's funeral wake or several Finnegans wake up." "So what does "Ghosts" with no apostrophe give you?" "There was more than one ghost?" "Forget about it." "What do we know about Gerald Eastland?" "Cabinet minister during the late 1980s." "Flashy bastard who's not my favourite person in the world." "Contrary to expectations, turned out to be a nifty novelist." "Died about four years ago." "Hardly James Joyce, but he had a similar taste for puns and playing with words." "Like this one. "The Grave Digger" is nothing to do with a man who digs graves." "It's about this very miserable Australian." "Sorry, I don't..." "Oh." "Grave Digger." "Very clever." "Why do you suppose someone would send six copies of this book to Ezra Carr?" "Where do you get six?" " There are only five in there." " You can see one's been removed." "Come on." "Ghosts Forge?" "Gerald Eastland - the most unlikely author you can imagine." "It's here in front of us." "Sorry." "You're going to have to spell it out." "Sit down." "Perfect." "How was it for everyone else?" "My one concern is that maybe the skirt is too short." "There are women for whom this could be considered exploitative." "You know how I feel about cheap sexual titti..." "Jonathan, my uniquely gifted collaborator." "Can I introduce you to Duggie Dawson, who I invited along today to see how we put these crazy shows together." "OK." "So if no one has any problems..." "Just the one tiny problem, Adam." "I'd like to know why you did a runner from my bedroom last night." "Samantha." "What a lovely..." "When you'd been telling me I was the most perfect creature you'd ever seen." "What can it have been, I wonder, that changed your mind?" "No, to be honest..." "Next time I take my grandmother to the hospital after a stroke," "I'll make sure someone else looks after her teeth." " How about we talk about it?" " No." "That's fine." "I only came by to say thank you for showing me how little I mean to you and what a shallow set of values you live by." "He picked me up while he was ordering flowers for his girlfriend." "This man has all the depth and sensitivity of a dog turd." "That's Samantha Clarke - with an E." " Any joy?" " Bucketloads." "I had an interesting chat with Gerald Eastland's publishers." " And?" " Looks as if you were right." "What the hell are you doing here?" "Are you mad?" "She knows anyway." "What's the deal?" "It's not going to go away, Robin." "We may as well confront it here and now." "Shirley." "Sorry, that was my chum you got the other night." "Otherwise I'm afraid it's all true." "We are very much in love." "And Robin would like a divorce." "Oh, Mimi." "You have no idea what you're saying." "And why should you?" "You walk into my life, you think you can take it over, you think it's easy." " I have no life." "I have no future." " What are you talking about?" "I killed him!" "I murdered Ezra Carr!" "Hi." "Sorry to butt in, but the back door was open." "Perhaps when you've sorted your daughter out, we should talk." "Listen, Mr Dawson..." "Duggie." "That little outburst - I wouldn't take it too seriously." "Samantha's a lovely girl, but prone to irrational mood swings." "Women who have the measure of me can tell you the kind of guy I am." "I don't doubt it, Mr Klaus." "Nice shirt, by the way." " Bought by a girlfriend?" " Actually it was." " Kind of sweet." " Very." " You speak Japanese?" " I can't say that I do." "I was there for seven years with Reuters." "Became quite fluent." " Really?" " And, yes, you're right." "Any woman who buys you a shirt with "I am full of shit" on it has got the measure of you very well." "Bye, Mr Klaus." "Thanks for the bubbly." "It was hard to get the whole picture with everything firing in different directions." "But once you bolt it all together, you start to see." "One or two key details tell the story." "That slightly wonky house name." "Ghosts Forge?" "And that parcel with the books in." "Why order six copies of the same book?" "Five had just been left in the attic to gather dust." "I'm afraid I was painfully slow getting to that one." "Author's freebies." "The writer of a book usually gets half a dozen copies." "In my case, it can double the print run." "But why had these been sent to Ezra Carr?" "The author was Gerald Eastland." "Or so we're meant to believe." "Gerald Eastland - tedious MP in the '80s who wouldn't have won awards for his literacy or wit, turns out a series of skilfully crafted, best-selling novels." "Not without help, I suggest." "A guy at the publisher's came clean." "Eastland's name was used to sell all these titles, but he never wrote them." "All that wry humour and verbal gimmickry was down to Mr Carr." "The kind of man who might have left an ironic clue to what he did... in the name of his house." "Break it up like a cryptic crossword." "Ghosts Forge... becomes "Ghosts for GE."" "In effect, here lives Gerald Eastland's ghostwriter." " But Eastland's been dead for five years." " Four and a half." "He didn't have anything to do with the murder?" "The pivot to this affair was in the motive." "The police accepted no robbery had taken place - valuable stuff had been left - but the police were wrong." "What was removed from Ezra Carr's house that night was more priceless than any money or jewellery." "It was Ezra Carr himself." "Interesting how a name always conjures up an image of someone." "How Ezra Carr just has to be some grizzled, Dickensian old fogey... when it could just as easily be a charming young man in his late 30s." "A man who tragically lost his wife while they were both young." "Who hardly met another living soul for 20 years." "Should we be surprised we got it wrong?" "The man they found dead in that room wasn't actually Ezra Carr at all." "Not Ez...?" "But..." "Then who was he?" "Your father?" "Stepfather?" "Sorry, Shirley." "I think you'll have to fill in the gaps now." "Oh, don't!" "Where do you want me to start?" "The whole sordid bit?" "How a 15-year-old girl was defiled by her wicked uncle?" "A man three times her age?" "How I suffered in silence, ended up scarred for the rest of my life?" "Scarred, yes... but I enjoyed every minute of it." "Me and my Uncle Bill." "It was like suddenly I'd learnt to fly." "I was in love, so I thought." "Who cared if we were breaking all the rules?" "And then, of course, one day I noticed... he wasn't an older man any more." "Just an old man." "He wasn't my lover." "He had become my jailer." "Sometimes I'd manage it." "Give him the slip." "Maybe for months on end." "But he'd always hunt me down." "Claw me back into his life." "Eventually... when I hadn't any skin left to bruise or bones left to break and the fight had gone out of me..." "I just gave in and stopped running." "I realised late in the day just how evil he really was... and I was part of that evil." "For half my life, we kept each other company in hell." "House breaking was one of our many specialities." "I'd call in at the front door, keep them talking, while he'd slip in and turn the place over." "I told him my car had broken down, could I use his phone?" "He couldn't do enough to help me." "Though she died, I swore that everything that was precious about her - her warmth and kindness..." "After all those years on his own, writing another guy's books, he just wanted someone to talk to." "And suddenly, I've forgotten why I'm there." "I'm just listening to this really sad story." "How he had lost their wife when they were both 18." "And I'm staring into his eyes... all these wild fantasies whirling through my head." "Fantasies I knew could never come to anything." "I mean, who the hell was I?" ".. And purity and sanctity of her memory." "I don't know." "Maybe I hadn't forgotten." "Maybe I wanted him to get caught this time." "What the hell do you think you're doing?" "Get your hands off those!" "Come on, then." "Let's see what you're going to do about it." "Bill!" "He'd killed him." "I couldn't believe it." "And he didn't care." "By this time, neither did II" "Oh, my God!" "I'm sorry." "Something was wrong." "From the concussion, he could remember a struggle and a knife." "The rest was a blank." "His life, identity, everything." "Maybe I'd never have had the idea if he hadn't said it first." "I killed him." "God help me." "I can't seem to focus." "At that moment, he needed someone and, dear God in heaven, I needed him." "Robin?" "I'd known a boy with that name." "I couldn't stop myself." "Robin, it's me, Shirley." "You must remember." "Shirley, your wife." "Look, it was an accident." "You didn't mean to do it." "It was an accident." "But who's going to believe that?" "We've got to go." "We should never have come to this place." "I told you that." "I told myself, convinced myself, that I was helping him escape from that mausoleum." "From now on, his previous life was whatever I wanted it to be." "Gradually, I... rebuilt his memory." "We'd been childhood sweethearts - always on the wrong side of the law." "We'd got to use this experience to sort ourselves out, settle down, start a family." "It was insanity to believe I could get away with it." "Sooner or later you'd remember, see me for what I was." "18 months." "I just lived from day to day clinging to every moment while it lasted." "The one thing I never expected..." "just couldn't handle... was that you would find someone else." "You programmed me like some kind of doll." " You made me think I'd..." " That's why you were haunted by it." "When you started writing again, it was a give-away." "Even in a short story for a magazine, the prose style had an uncanny echo of someone else, suggesting that Robin Priest and Ezra Carr might just possibly be the same person." "Still, I can't see it." "Why can't I see it?" "Maybe it's better you don't." "20 years of grief is enough for anyone." "So... we'll have to leave that one with you, folks." "Oh, yes, Mimi." "I nearly forgot." "You must be going mental by now wondering how I disappeared from that room." "Oh, yes, actually." "Oh, good." "Bye." " You planning to water the carpet?" " It's for the window box." " You haven't got a..." " Never you mind what it's for." "In case I need it... suddenly." "One thing you still haven't told me, with all your masterful deductions in this case, is what gave me away." "You didn't tumble it straight away." "I think what sealed it, in hindsight, is when we heard that noise on the landing." "What's that?" "It's coming from the attic room." "How did you know that was the door to an attic room?" "You'd never set foot in there before." "Or maybe you had." "Maybe you'd paid a little visit earlier on to try and get ahead of the game." "Ran into the decorators and hatched a rather dastardly plan." "Oh, but it was a gift, Jonathan." "Two doors - one into a corridor, one into a cupboard." "Now I'm starting to think like you." "What if the one on the right was blocked off on the inside?" "Plastered over to make it look like a wall." "The possibilities were joyous - worth a backhander to the lads who'd have to make it right again." "They were so up for it when I told them about Mimi." "They'd done such a fab job." " You there yet?" " Just coming." "Madam comes in." "She's absolutely no idea she's shouting into a cupboard." " Maddy, are you out there?" " She's in there with you." "I wish I'd seen her face." "No, she's not." "My favourite bit of improv was when I heard you rattling the door handle." "Come on, then." "Marks out of ten." "Hmm." "A grudging six." "Oh, that's got to be a nine in anyone's..." "Out in the bloody road this time!" "Well, I'm sorry, but they're going to find out what "anti-social" really means." "Let's see how you play with this up your spout!" "Right." "You wait there, I'll... get a cloth."