Murder of a Movie Star

by L. B. Hathaway

  ‘Dolly!’ said Posie, shocked. Dolly wasn’t normally so harsh on people.

  Dolly shrugged. ‘Oh, you’ll see. I met her on a committee for a theatre project last year. We were both trustees. She was awful: questioned every last penny spent, and questioned everything, in fact; so much so that the project, which was for penniless jobbing actors, fell apart and never got anywhere. I think that’s what she wanted! And then she upped and moved to Italy. She’s a nasty piece of work. I’d watch her, if I was you. And watch her with Alaric, for all her fancy Italian Count. Who, rumour goes, only married her for her sticky sweet fortune. It certainly wasn’t for her fat face!’

  ‘I see.’ Posie absorbed this new information and finished her coffee. The morning was taking an unexpected turn and it wasn’t yet six-thirty. She dabbed at her mouth, liking the feel of Alaric’s hand on her leg beneath the table, the steady weight there.

  ‘What sticky sweet fortune, Dolly?’ she found herself asking, hating the fact she was clinging to a silly detail. ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘Humbugs!’ said Dolly, almost triumphantly, grinding out her smoke. ‘The Alladice family were industrial barons on a grand scale: sweets and chocolates and that type of thing. Humbugs, mainly. As I said, sticky sweet. They had a great factory up in the north somewhere, apparently. All sold up now, of course. Not that that’s stopped Bella from eating all the sweets she can get her hands on, by the looks of things.’

  Posie turned to Alaric suddenly, frowning, thinking about timings and time in general.

  ‘But darling, there’s simply ages between now and November. Couldn’t we get a shuffle on before that?’

  Alaric shook his head and his tanned face flushed red. ‘’Fraid not, darling. I’ll definitely be staying here until my birthday party in two weeks’ time, because I’m doing some talks for the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington, but after that I’m heading to Delhi.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Posie was just running through this latest and surprising news bulletin, working out exactly how she felt about it, when then there was an almighty banging at the front door. They all jumped.

  ‘OPEN UP! OPEN UP, I SAY!’

  Constable McCrae had darted out, once again armed with his cricket bat, and Alaric had risen, serious and worried, his arm stretched out to shield Posie from whatever trouble might come.

  Then the door to the living room was opening and the Chief Inspector was standing before them, Sergeants Binny and Rainbird hovering behind him like twin dark shadows. They were all distinctly ashen-faced and Lovelace looked more dishevelled than Posie had ever seen him. Which was saying something, considering they had been in a few bad scrapes together before.

  ‘What?’ Posie asked shrilly. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s Silvia Hanro,’ said the Chief Inspector, his face flat with dread.

  ‘She’s dead. She’s just been found murdered.’

  Posie gasped, a sickening feeling rushing through her. She thought she might gag. Alaric squeezed her hand.

  Lovelace nodded.

  ‘In her dressing room. The call came in twenty minutes ago. We were all in for an early meeting to plan for this big Wrap Party, and we beetled over here as quickly as we could to pick you up.’

  Lovelace was pulling at his hair frantically. He saw the coffee pot on the table and poured the pithy last dregs into an empty water glass and swallowed the lot without waiting for any milk.

  ‘You ready, Posie? And you, Lady Cardigeon? Let’s go. And I want you, Lady Cardigeon, to stick like glue to one of Posie or myself. Got it?’

  Dolly nodded meekly.

  ‘I can’t deal with anything else going awry today,’ muttered the Chief Inspector. ‘This here murder is probably more than my job is worth, as it happens. Blue Plumes don’t count for much today, eh? Especially given the fact that Miss Hanro was reported missing last night. It doesn’t look good for me. Not good at all. It’s catastrophic, actually.’

  ‘For me too,’ said Posie softly.

  The Inspector continued in a calm but numb voice:

  ‘They’ve sealed up the room for now and not entered it. Mr Samuelson, who I understand owns the place, is watching the room, with a couple of his own employees. I thought it was best to have a so-called third party to man the fort until we get there. Of course, I’ve arranged for some of the police at Richmond to attend but they’ll only be arriving there now, I guess.’

  ‘Well, those arrangements all sound eminently sensible, sir,’ said Posie reassuringly, but with a frog in her throat. She was trying to banish the thought of the apricot-wearing swirling figure from her mind.

  ‘As a matter of interest, sir, who found the body?’

  ‘It was the Producer, Brian Langley.’

  ‘Very convenient.’ Posie nodded, her face setting in grim lines, trying to imagine the scene.

  ‘Apparently he’d been up all night, but upstairs in the projection room. He was going to grab some early breakfast downstairs when he saw the door to the dressing room was ajar, and he looked inside. Fella’s in a bad way, apparently. It was his secretary, this Reggie Jones, who called the thing in.’

  The Chief Inspector seemed to gather his wits together and barked out his usual orders:

  ‘Right, let’s go. We need to look snappy. Constable, you drive me and the ladies. You two,’ he motioned to his Sergeants, ‘follow in the other car.’

  The Sergeants nodded. Posie grabbed at her bag of party clothes automatically, without thinking. But the swirling girl in apricot refused to dance away from her thoughts. She looked over at Binny and Rainbird.

  ‘Sergeants, can you stop on your way at Piccadilly?’

  ‘Posie,’ growled Lovelace, ‘we really don’t have time for some unnecessary fact-finding mission. That can all be done later. We need to hop to it. We have a national tragedy on our hands, and both our reputations are on the line.’

  ‘I know, sir. But this is important. Crucially so. I just need the men to look for two items at the Albany. And it’s a tiny flat, sir. They’ll be not more than ten minutes, I swear it. It could help us to work out why Miss Hanro was getting death threats in the first place, and help us to work out what she was up to in her final hours.’

  Lovelace sighed testily. ‘Oh, go on then.’

  And Posie told the Sergeants just what the two items were which she wanted them to look for.

  ‘Tell the Concierge that you’re there for Mrs Delacroix, if they’re funny with you,’ she said.

  ‘Right you are then, Miss.’ Binny nodded unquestioningly and the two men left.

  The Chief Inspector put on his hat again. ‘You’re staying here, sir, are you?’ He looked across to Alaric, both men knowing each other a fair bit but not having as yet acknowledged each other in all the panic.

  ‘Yes,’ said Alaric, scowling, running his hands through his hair again. ‘I’m not sure there’s much I can do at Worton Hall. I knew the girl, as it happens. But that was almost twenty years ago. A lifetime ago. Beautiful creature, even then. So there’s no help in that, is there?’

  ‘Not much, sir. No. Have a good day.’

  And then Posie, Dolly and the Inspector left in a mad swirling flurry of bags and Bikram’s barking.

  As they went down in the birdcage lift, the flickering electric lights dappled everyone’s faces through the golden metal. Lovelace stared hard at Posie.

  ‘I say.’ He frowned. ‘Are you feeling quite all right, Posie?’

  ‘Right enough, sir. Why?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  The Inspector looked at her in an unseeing, confused fashion.

  ‘You do look like yourself. But not quite yourself, somehow. Like you have a cold, perhaps. Or flu? No. Never mind. It must be my eyes.’

  ****

  Twenty-Four

  The dressing room corridor was thronged with people when they arrived at Worton Hall an hour later.

  It was almost eight o’clock and someone somewhere had been cutt
ing grass and the usually friendly scent lingered in the air, at odds with the ghoulishly expectant atmosphere. Young excitable policemen from the Richmond Constabulary and a bevy of Scotland Yard employees of various professions were hanging around irritably in the already heavy heat, waiting for directions.

  Bertie Samuelson was sitting, implacable and calm, his large bulk square and immovable on a foldable deckchair patterned in blue-and-white stripes, placed right outside the closed door to Silvia Hanro’s dressing room. He looked relieved when Chief Inspector Lovelace introduced himself with a brief handshake. A temporary cordon of string was put in place, slicing the corridor apart. The Chief Inspector turned to the mass of people and boomed authoritatively:

  ‘Everyone back, please. Clear away. There’s nothing anyone can do. I just want Dr Poots the Pathologist to stay here for now, please. And Miss Parker.’

  Inspector Lovelace started talking to Dr Poots in an undertone, going through some sort of police checklist between them.

  Posie was trying to take everything in, storing up the details for later, her eyes darting up and down the hot glass corridor. She noted that Brian Langley was standing on the edge of the circle of people who had been pushed back, and he was watching Lovelace carefully. He looked more rumpled than ever, and his face was as white as driven snow. He was biting down hard on his lip and folding and unfolding his arms, and Posie noticed how dark and hollow his small eyes looked in his face, which seemed full of dread.

  Or was he just a good actor? Perhaps he could be as good an actor as a Producer, or flower-grower? Or military medal-winner?

  He kept swigging from a small silver hip flask. Beside him stood Reggie Jones, the secretary, pale and sweaty, muttering reassurances. On Brian Langley’s other side stood a thin woman in an inappropriately-heavy winter hat and smart navy linen coat. Posie found herself thinking irrelevantly how hot the woman must be, in such formal clothes. The woman was staring intently, almost hypnotically, past the policemen and down the empty corridor. What was she looking for?

  On a second glance the woman was revealed as Mrs Cleeves, Brian Langley’s Housekeeper. Posie was surprised. What had Brian Langley called her in for? Moral support at so early an hour? Or was Mrs Cleeves more than just a Housekeeper?

  Turning to follow the woman’s gaze, Posie saw Robbie Fontaine lumbering along the now-empty corridor, obviously just awake, wearing a burgundy quilted dressing gown and with a bleary look in his eyes, which were very white and crazed.

  ‘What the devil is all this?’ he started shouting, before a burly-armed policeman leapt across the cordon and held him back. And then, and Posie felt her heart lurch, from behind Robbie Fontaine, from the silent staircase to the apartments above, came the running footsteps of Tom Moran. He was nimble on his feet and easily ran past Robbie Fontaine with his policeman, almost rugby-tackling them aside.

  He seemed to have forgotten all caution, all need to play-act his role as impartial colleague of Miss Hanro.

  He, too, had obviously just woken up, and he was only half-dressed, his naked torso riddled with shrapnel scars, his eyepatch on but almost askew, the blue sunglasses at an angle. Lovelace pushed him back gently with the flat of his hand.

  ‘You can’t go through, pal.’

  ‘Is it true what they’re saying?’ Tom Moran gasped desperately, his voice still thick with sleep. ‘She’s actually dead?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. We’re still investigating. Please wait.’

  ‘This is all your fault!’ Tom Moran was shouting over at Brian Langley, watched by a fascinated crowd of perhaps twenty onlookers. ‘You could have protected her! You fool!’

  Brian Langley said nothing, but Posie saw him gulp and look down at the floor. And then in an instant, Tom Moran was down on the lino, curled up in a shaking ball, being violently sick, over and over. Retching as if he had just ingested poison.

  ‘Pull yourself together, man,’ said Dr Poots curtly, moving an immaculate spat-covered shoe out of harm’s way and scrabbling in his bag for a twist of smelling salts. ‘Buck up a bit. Some sort of mad fan, are you, lad?’

  And then the Chief Inspector was ushering Posie into the doorway of the now-opened room and she looked around, her heart racing.

  The girl was lying in the tiny, dim dressing room, flopped over her chair. She was face-down, dangling, a blonde and plaited wig covering her whole head. Her arms hung, flailing. She looked like she had drowned and been pulled from the sea.

  The movie star had obviously been dead for some time.

  ****

  They came out together, and Dr Poots who had come in at their insistence, stayed within.

  ‘It’s not her,’ said Chief Inspector Lovelace to the waiting crowd, shaking his head. The relief he obviously felt was palpable in his words.

  ‘I can confirm that the dead woman inside the dressing room is not Silvia Hanro.’

  Posie stood beside him, trying to fill her lungs with normal air, staring mainly at Brian Langley. He had straightened up, put away the silver hip flask but was still gulping wildly and looking deathly white. He kept shaking his head disbelievingly. All around were mutterings and gasps and the general sense of people melting away, relieved, but robbed of a sensation.

  Lovelace continued brusquely:

  ‘We have a good idea who the dead woman is, but for the moment we are treating the whole incident as suspicious. Mr Samuelson, can my team take over one of your rooms here as an incident room? As a base?’

  The large man, normally so smiley, looked very grave but nodded and indicated backwards, further along the corridor.

  ‘Be my guest, take the Green Room, it’s by far the most comfortable and is set up with all the necessary comforts: tea, coffee, paper, pens. I’ll send in one of my lads to clean it up a bit.’

  He looked over at the Producer. ‘You won’t be needing it today for the extras, will you, Brian?’

  Brian Langley shook his head numbly. ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘Everything is practically finished. I don’t need extras today. I just needed one last take for a scene which we filmed in the wrong light, but it’s just between Silvia and Robbie. And unless she turns up we can’t even do that…’

  Lovelace nodded at the Producer. ‘I haven’t forgotten, sir. For now, Miss Hanro continues to be listed as a missing person. She is a priority and we’ll look into it and talk to you in just a little while. We just need to sort out this current situation first.’

  ‘Of course.’ The Producer was nodding obediently, but then something in him seemed to snap. He frowned and his dark eyes seemed to regain a spark of their usual angry fire.

  ‘But what about the party?’ He checked his watch. ‘I’ll have the cream of the London glitterati arriving here in less than four hours’ time. Are you requesting that we cancel the whole thing?’

  Posie was certain that the Chief Inspector was about to order that it couldn’t go ahead, and she almost fell out of her glacé sandals when he shook his head.

  ‘No. I’m not ordering any such thing. Please proceed. We can contain this incident here, and as far as I understand, the danger centres around Miss Hanro. As she’s a no-show, I don’t see a problem. My men, plus the Richmond Constabulary, will be on guard here anyhow. I insist upon that, at least.’

  ‘Fine.’ Brian Langley nodded. ‘Thank you. I’ll be in the editing suite if you need me.’

  ‘I’ll need to speak to you later, sir, but for now, I want Miss Parker and my Scotland Yard team in the Green Room. Oh, and Mr Samuelson, please. Nobody here is allowed to leave these premises. Please register your names with Constable McCrae over there.’

  Posie looked around her but noticed that Mrs Cleeves, and Reggie Jones, and Robbie Fontaine, and Tom Moran had all disappeared, presumably to recover from the shock of the false alarm. Dolly, too, had also disappeared. Posie felt her heart skip an unwelcome beat.

  While they were loitering outside the Green Room, waiting for it to be cleaned, Posie allowed her mind to dwell once again
on the body in the dressing room.

  It had been the glimpse of orange beneath the green kimono which had done it. The orange shoes.

  And then Posie had known. It wasn’t Silvia Hanro lying dead in that room at all. She had almost shouted in her eagerness:

  ‘It’s Elaine, Silvia Hanro’s dresser!’

  The girl was dressed up as Silvia. And pretty convincingly at that.

  The wig, the kimono, the parasol, all the paraphernalia of the movie star, had elaborately masked the woman’s true identity at first glance. And when that was discovered, it had been the work of a second for Dr Poots to come in, roll the girl over and validate things.

  Elaine’s frizzy long hair, revealed from under the inaccurate Anne Boleyn wig, had trailed out over the floor, in a sort of rebuke that anyone could have mistaken its owner’s true identity.

  ‘What was the cause of death? What do you think, Poots?’ Lovelace had growled. ‘Suicide, or murder?’

  Dr Poots had huffed and puffed his way around the nasty little room, holding things up by the light of a torch and smelling things. He had picked up the water glass and had sniffed at it quizzically.

  The Chief Inspector had paced on. ‘Or a murder made to look like suicide?’

  Refusing to be drawn, after a couple of minutes Dr Poots had covered Elaine’s face up with a piece of green hospital muslin from his bag and put his hands on his hips and sighed.

  ‘You always want it all, Lovelace, don’t you? All I can tell you for now is that she was poisoned, but whether or not she ingested the stuff voluntarily, or whether someone forced her to drink the stuff, or whether they hid it surreptitiously and fed it to her without her knowledge or consent, I can’t yet tell you. She died last night. I’d guess about midnight.’

  Lovelace scowled. ‘Poison? You’re sure?’

  ‘Yep. There’s a bluish tinge to the mouth and tongue. A plant poison, I’d warrant. Belladonna? Digitalis, maybe?’

  ‘Is Digitalis the name for an orchid? That orchid?’ Posie indicated to the reddish spotted flowers in the corner. The big vase they were standing in was empty of any water.