Dead Room Farce: A Charles Paris Mystery (Unabridged‪)‬

It's not Beckett exactly, but a three-month run of
Not on Your Wife!, a new farce by the prolific British farceur Bill Blunden, is not to be sniffed at by a jobbing actor. Which is why Charles Paris is standing on stage with his trousers around his ankles, playing Aubrey, the older lover of GIlly, wife of Bob, whose young mistress Nicky he is passing off as the property of his neighbor Ted. Rehearsals have gone well, the laughs are coming, and if his marriage is on the skids again there's always the consolation of Bell's - and the uncertain attractions of aging ingenue Cookie Stone. But by the time the troupe reaches Bath a darker mood has set in. Cookie Stone seems to think she and Charles are practically married (if only he could remember what happened!), and Charles' old friend Mark, who runs a recording studio in Bath where Charles is making a talking book, has a drinking problem that amounts to a death wish. But it's not the drink that kills Mark, it's somebody in the cast who has a dirty little secret that Mark must not be allowed to reveal...