Chapters (156)
- A DATE WITH DEATH
- Also by Mark Roberts
- A Date With Death
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- The Past
- 1977
- Day OneWednesday, 1st December 2021CatoptrophobiaFear of mirrors
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- The Past
- 1979
- Day TwoThursday, 2nd December 2021OneirophobiaFear of dreams
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
- 37
- 38
- 39
- 40
- 41
- 42
- 43
- 44
- 45
- 46
- 47
- 48
- 49
- 50
- 51
- 52
- The Past
- 1980
- Day ThreeFriday, 3rd December 2021MonophobiaFear of being alone
- 53
- 54
- 55
- 56
- 57
- 58
- 59
- 60
- 61
- 62
- 63
- 64
- 65
- 66
- 67
- 68
- 69
- 70
- 71
- 72
- 73
- 74
- 75
- 76
- 77
- 78
- 79
- 80
- 81
- 82
- 83
- 84
- 85
- 86
- 87
- 88
- 89
- 90
- 91
- 92
- 93
- 94
- 95
- 96
- 97
- 98
- The Past
- 1982
- Day FourSaturday, 4th December 2021ThanatophobiaFear of Death
- 99
- 100
- 101
- 102
- 103
- 104
- 105
- 106
- 107
- 108
- 109
- 110
- 111
- 112
- 113
- 114
- 115
- 116
- 117
- 118
- 119
- 120
- 121
- 122
- 123
- 124
- 125
- 126
- 127
- 128
- 129
- 130
- 131
- 132
- 133
- 134
- 135
- 136
- 137
- About the Author
- An Invitation from the Publisher
From the grainy picture, Stone picked out a very young-looking Cecily Levin and skimmed and scanned the newsprint. It was deemed to be a good production with a great performance from Cecily Levin as Mary Boyle: a poignant hymn to a young woman’s disillusionment in the narrowness of human nature.
He flicked through the next few pages and saw more positive newspaper reviews for theatre productions up and down the land in which Cecily Levin was singled out for rich praise.
Turning to the back pages of the book, Stone saw that Cecily was still working prolifically in theatre at the tail end of 1967.
He pushed the first book away from himself and opened the next one at the first page, where he saw a monochrome shot for a TV drama, Z Cars, in which Cecily Levin was dressed and made up to look brassy.
Under the picture, Cecily had written: First break into TV.
Stone’s instinct told him that the pickings were going to be richer in the second scrapbook.
While the pages of the first scrapbook sat level, the pages of the second were parted by bulk. He turned the pages over and over and saw publicity stills from a range of 1960s’ TV shows, all featuring Cecily Levin.
Stone looked at the table next to him and saw that Cole and the constables were already constructing separate sets of receipts.
He looked at the clock on the wall and worked out that DS Terry Marsh was just over an hour and a half into his DNA testing of the hairs found in Edgar McKee’s hairnets from the abattoir. At three o’clock or thereabouts, there would be a result, for better or worse.
With each turn of the page, Cecily Levin’s star rose higher.
Oh my God, thought Stone, as he came to a colour publicity still from The Vampire Lovers: Cecily Levin with fake fangs and a plunging neckline.
In a pair of dusty scrapbooks, she’d walked on to the stage in a Sean O’Casey play as little more than a girl but had waltzed into the Hammer House of Horror as a fully grown woman and screen siren.
As he turned the pages of the scrapbook, the earliest days of his love affair with horror films were brought vividly to life.
In between the film stills were newspaper reviews for shows Cecily Levin had been in at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre, her bread and butter between her work on the big screen.
He smiled at a picture of Cecily Levin and Christopher Lee, a still from Dracula AD 1972.
As he turned the page, Stone realised he had come to the end of his whistle-stop journey into Cecily Levin’s acting career and reached the point where real life had kicked in.