by Simon Brett
‘Really? You mean Mimsy La Pim’s career is skidding down the slippery slope to oblivion?’
Hank Urchief nodded. ‘That’s about the size of it. Her agent’s phone’s gone silent. There’ve just opened up a new can of younger, prettier actresses to tie to railway lines.’
‘Are you saying that Mimsy might have to move out of this place?’
‘No, she’s all right, so long as she’s got Lennie to protect her.’
‘Lennie?’
‘Lenny “The Skull” Orvieto, the Mafia boss. Mimsy La Pim’s his current bit of skirt.’
Twinks was silent, thinking how desolated her brother would be to hear that news.
But before anything else was said, the couple were interrupted by a cry of ‘Hold the front page! And the back page! And all the pageroonies in between! Hunky heartthrob Hank Urchief seen in cheeky clinch with new baberoonie starlet!’
The woman who approached them was tall, wearing a scarlet dress with high lapels and a matching hat the size of a traction engine wheel.
‘I am not’, said Twinks, once again showing a disturbing family likeness to her mother, ‘“a new baberoonie starlet”. Nor am I in a “cheeky clinch” with anyone.’
Hank Urchief grinned. ‘Don’t worry, babe—’
‘I am no more a “babe” than I am a “baberoonie”!’
‘Don’t let it get to you,’ he said. ‘It’s just how she talks all the time. Let me introduce you. I’ve forgotten your proper name.’
‘Honoria Lyminster,’ came the icy reply. ‘I am the daughter of the late Duke and the sister of the current Duke of Tawcester.’
Hank Urchief gestured to the two women. ‘Honoria Lyminster, this is Heddan Schoulders, who is just about the most famous gossip columnist Hollywood has ever seen.’
‘Hey, Hank, what’s with the “just about”?’ the woman screeched. ‘Heddan Schoulders is the most famous gossip columnist Hollywood has ever seen. Hell, Heddan Schoulders invented the job!’
‘If you say so.’
‘I do say so! And don’t you forget, Hank Urchief, that I was the one who put you on the Hollywood map. Didn’t I? With that first interview I did with you, when you were just a poor boy from a turkey farm in Minnesota.’
‘I’ve always been grateful to you for that,’ he admitted.
‘Do you remember the headline I wrote for that interview?’
‘I sure do.’
‘“SLICK HICK CLIX IN PIX!”’ Heddan Schoulders recalled proudly.
‘I’ll never forget it.’
‘Anyway,’ she said, turning to Twinks, ‘always a big buzz to see a new face in Hollywood. The old ones are looking so tired – even the ones that have been lifted. In fact, especially the ones that have been lifted. But yours is a stunner. “STUNNER STARLET SECRETLY SNAFFLES SEXY HUNK HANK.” That’ll be the headline for my column.’
‘Oh, for the love of strawberries, I’m not snaffling anyone!’
‘So, Honoria, spill me all those beans about what slick flick you’re strutting your stuff in?’
‘Is there nobody out here in Hollywood who can read my semaphore?’ Twinks demanded despairingly. ‘I am not in any movie! I am not an actress! I can’t act!’
‘Couldn’t matter less,’ Heddan Schoulders reassured her. ‘Being able to act just gets in the way. All you have to do is stand in front of the camera and make the faces the director tells you to. A cauliflower could do it.’
‘Better than a lotta the people who are doing it,’ commented Hank Urchief. ‘And a cauliflower would get as much fan mail. You’d have to write about the dirty doings of cauliflowers in your column, Hedda.’
‘I’ll believe that when it happens. Mind you,’ she went on, ‘when the talkies come in, that’ll weed out the cauliflowers who can’t act. And the ones who can’t speak English. And the ones with squeaky voices.’
‘It’ll never happen,’ said Hank. ‘It’s just a gimmick.’
‘Oh yeah? They’re testing out a new sound system at Warner Brothers. It’ll come.’
‘And men’ll walk on the moon,’ said Hank dismissively.
‘Just you wait. The movies will always be a glamorarium and . . .’ said Hedda, turning back to Twinks, ‘you got glamour in barrowloads. Someone picture-book pretty like you must be in the movies. Hank, surely there’s a part for this dreamcake in The Trojan Horse?’
‘There might just be. I heard about an hour ago that Lita Bottel, our Helen of Troy, has been arrested for shooting her Mexican pool boy.’
‘Hey, that’s great. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’
‘I’ve hardly had a chance to—’
‘“LOVE TRIANGLE SHOOTING STAR TOTALS UNDERAGE LOVER”!’ Heddan Schoulders announced. ‘That’ll be my headline for the pool boy story.’
‘But do you know that Lita Bottel was involved in a love triangle?’ asked Twinks.
‘Oh, purr-leeze . . .’ said Heddan Schoulders. ‘I’m a gossip columnist. I don’t do truth.’
Hank Urchief elaborated. ‘Here in Hollywood, Twinks, publicity is what matters. Nobody gives a damn whether what’s reported is accurate. Just so long as it keeps your name fresh in the public consciousness.’
‘Well, I think that’s fumacious,’ said Twinks, uncharacteristically prissy. ‘In England we believe in telling the truth at all times.’
‘Yeah? Even in the newspapers?’
‘Well, not in the newspapers, obviously.’
‘And was the success of the British Empire’, asked Hank sardonically, ‘always based on telling the truth to the natives whose lands they seized? Like, say, the native tribes who lived here before the Pilgrim Fathers arrived?’
Twinks was beginning to feel she’d got off on the wrong foot and that the conversation might be improved by a change of subject. ‘Anyway, I’ll be pretty vinegared off if I find any lies about me appearing in a gossip column.’
‘It’s not something over which you have any control,’ said Hank, and Heddan chuckled in agreement.
‘You mean gossip columnists can write whatever they want about people?’
‘Sure can.’ Heddan Schoulders nodded complacently.
‘Don’t you have libel lawyers out here?’
‘Oh, hell yes, Twinks,’ said Hank. ‘Hollywood is full of lawyers of every kind. You can’t move for them. There are probably at least fifty at this party. And a lotta them are very good at taking libel cases to court.’
‘To ensure that justice is seen to be done?’ suggested Twinks.
‘Hell, no. To get more publicity. All going to court ensures is that the libel gets repeated by everyone in Hollywood.’
‘Well, Heddan,’ Twinks turned to the gossip columnist, ‘it so happens that I don’t wish you to write anything about me. I’m appealing to your better nature.’
‘Don’t have one,’ came the reply. ‘And listen, babe, you’re a story. Nothing in the world’s going to stop me writing about you.’
‘No?’
‘No.’ Inspiration glowed in Heddan Schoulders’ eyes. ‘And I’ve got the perfect headline for you.’
‘What?’ asked Twinks wearily.
‘HUNK HANK CASTS BRIT ARISTO SQUEEZE AS HELEN IN TROJAN HORSE FLICK.’
‘Oh, stuff a pillow in it!’ said Twinks.
9
Virtue in Danger?
Blotto still hadn’t seen any sign of Mimsy La Pim. Nor, after being introduced to and removed from the company of her husband, had he managed to evade the close surveillance of Zelda Finch, who kept plying him with alcohol, mostly very fine single malt whiskies, desecrated with ice, from the trays of the passing waiters.
He didn’t dislike Zelda, he just wasn’t very interested in her. And he found it enormously frustrating actually to be in Mimsy La Pim’s home without yet having had a sight of his hostess. But the politesse of his upbringing prevented him from telling Zelda of his feelings. He had been taught enough about women to know that, generally speaking, they didn’t like men talking exc
lusively about other women in their presence. If Zelda raised the subject of Mimsy, then fine, but if not, his frustration would just have to continue. Sometimes, he thought not for the first time, it was hell being a British gentleman.
He was encouraged, however, when Zelda suggested they go upstairs. Maybe she was catching on to what he really wanted to do. The owner of a house was much more likely to be upstairs than any of her guests. Perhaps Zelda was leading him towards Mimsy.
She certainly seemed to be looking for someone. On the landing with its long wrought-iron railings she kept opening bedroom doors and then closing them very quickly when she heard squeals and shrieks from inside.
Finally, she found one that seemed to be unoccupied and led Blotto inside. The room was huge, and the bed, with wrought-iron details at its head and foot, was also enormous. Even huger were the stout wooden doors that enclosed the wardrobe.
‘You are about to find what you’ve always been looking for,’ Zelda sultried.
‘Toad in the hole!’ said Blotto, for whom things seemed suddenly to be getting better.
‘Sit on the bed, darling,’ said Zelda, ‘while I organise something that will make your evening even better.’
Obediently he sat on the bed, but he was slightly puzzled by what she did next. He couldn’t see what it had to do with finding Mimsy when she got a small package out of her handbag and lay lines of its white powdered contents on the glass surface of the dressing table. Nor did her producing a fifty-dollar note and rolling it into a tube seem likely to bring his idol any closer. Still, he also knew it wasn’t polite to question the actions of a lady. They had their own rules of behaviour, inexplicable to the understanding of the average male.
‘Have you done this before?’ asked Zelda.
Blotto wasn’t sure what she was referring to, but a ‘Great Wilberforce, no!’ seemed to cover most possible eventualities.
‘It’s very easy, and it’ll really give you a buzz,’ said Zelda. ‘You know what this is, don’t you?’
‘White powder,’ Blotto hazarded.
‘Sure it’s white powder, and white powder that’ll really blow the top off your head.’
‘Good ticket,’ he said, slightly uncertain.
‘Powder for the nose.’
Finally understanding, he nodded and said, ‘On the same page.’
‘Powder to put up your nose.’
Blotto chuckled. ‘Ah, now you’re jiggling my kneecap.’
‘What?’
‘You’re taking me for a starling with half an eggshell still on its head.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Look, Zelda, I may not know a lot about the whole rombooley of things ladies get up to in the privacy of their toilettes, but I’ve been in my sister’s boudoir often enough to be sure of one thing.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘Ladies don’t put powder up their noses, they put it on their noses, usually with a powder-puff.’
Zelda Finch’s eyes rolled heavenwards as she bent down towards the line of white powder and snorted the whole lot up the fifty-dollar bill into her nose. She was still for a moment, waiting to feel the effect, then proffered the improvised tube to Blotto. ‘D’you want to . . . ?’
He chortled at the incongruity of her suggestion. ‘Boddoes in England, you’ve clearly forgotten, don’t use make-up. It may be the thing over here in Hollywood, but if any of my old muffin-toasters from Eton heard I’d been using face powder . . . well, they’d definitely think my banana was bending the wrong way.’
Zelda gave up. She threw the bank note down on to the dressing table and draped herself languorously over the huge bed. ‘Well now, Blotto,’ she throbbed, ‘I think it’s time I really gave you what you want.’
‘That’d be really fizzulating, my old fruitcake,’ he admitted.
She patted the coverlet beside her. ‘Come and sit here.’
‘Tickey-Tockey,’ he said. He couldn’t think why she wanted him to sit there, but once again it didn’t do to question a lady’s instructions.
Zelda Finch laid an expensively manicured hand on his muscular thigh. ‘You see, I know what you want, Blotto . . .’
‘Good ticket.’
‘. . . possibly better than you know yourself.’
‘Well, I do know myself quite well,’ he objected. ‘I mean, I have been sort of hanging round myself for a very long—’
‘Don’t let’s get caught up in words, Blotto. Let’s cut to the chase.’
‘Hoopee-doopee!’ he said.
‘You came to Hollywood looking for something, didn’t you, Blotto?’
‘Well, the stated purpose of the visit was to play cricket.’
‘I know that, but there was something else you were really hoping to find.’
Blotto looked a little shamefaced. ‘Gosh, you see through a boddo like a medic with a microscope.’
‘I think it’s fair to say I have a pretty good understanding of human psychology – particularly masculine psychology.’
‘Double echo to that, Zelda.’
‘You really came to Hollywood looking for a woman . . .’
‘Well, I’ll be snickered.’
‘The woman of your dreams . . .’
‘You’re bong on the nose there,’ he admitted.
‘A woman whose image you have admired ever since you first saw it flicker across the silver screen’
‘This is spookiferous, Zelda. It’s like you’ve got a front stalls ticket to my brain.’
‘As I said, I always know what men are thinking. It’s not too difficult, actually. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the old adage about men only thinking about one thing turns out to be true.’
Feeling some kind of appropriate comment was required, Blotto fell back on, ‘Beezer.’
The hand on his thigh was now stroking vigorously. ‘And isn’t it marvellous, Blotto,’ Zelda purred, ‘that you’ve found what you are looking for right here.’
‘Here?’
‘Here, in this very room.’
‘Toad in the hole!’ he exclaimed. ‘Here in this very room?’
He sprang up from the bed, crossed the room in two strides and pulled the massive wardrobe doors open . . . to reveal nothing but a selection of expensive clothes.
He turned back in disappointment to face Zelda Finch.
‘So where is Mimsy?’ he asked.
Mimsy La Pim’s absence from her own party had now become an obsession with Blotto. It was something that demanded an explanation. Everything within told him that he had to find her.
He did not notice the expression of pique on Zelda Finch’s face as he swept out of the bedroom. Opening every other door on the landing, he took no notice of the embarrassing combinations of movie stars he found within (there were enough to keep Heddan Schoulders in scurrilous columns for a year). All that registered with Blotto was the fact that none of the bedrooms contained Mimsy La Pim.
He went downstairs again and trawled through the posturing crowds in the interlocking corridors and courtyards, but still with no result. In the humid candlelit gardens and on the tiled edges of the two swimming pools he still found nothing that resembled Mimsy.
He asked everyone he encountered, but no one seemed to have seen her.
Eventually he decided it was worth checking out the servants’ quarters.
And there, in one of the huge kitchens, he found it.
A sheet of paper pinned to a huge oak table by a vicious-looking knife.
On it were scrawled the words: ‘WE’VE GOT MIMSY LA PIM. YOU WILL BE CONTACTED ABOUT THE RANSOM ARRANGEMENTS.’
Blotto shuddered. Mimsy La Pim had been kidnapped!
10
A Chivalrous Quest
Blotto looked impossibly noble as he announced, ‘Now I have a quest. Like one of the knights of King Arthur’s Round Table. Like Sir Gallipot.’
‘Galahad,’ his sister suggested gently.
‘Yes, one of those greengages, anyway.’
They were in Twinks’s suite at the Hollywood Hotel the day after the disappearance of Mimsy La Pim. For a moment Blotto’s expression was tinged with regret. ‘Wish I had Mephistopheles here with me.’
Twinks knew he was referring to his hunter, safely stabled back at Tawcester Towers. ‘Why, in the name of strawberries, do you want him out here? Do they hunt in California as well as play cricket?’
Blotto was sidetracked for a moment by the attraction of the idea. ‘Crusty crumpets, I wonder if they do . . . ? It’d be a beezer wheeze if they did. Then a boddo could hunt here when it was closed season back in old GB . . . as well as playing cricket all year round. You know, I may have said some tinglish things about the US of A at times, but in some ways it’s a spoffing well-organised society.’
Twinks brought him back to the subject in hand. ‘You were talking about Sir Galahad, not Mephistopheles . . .’
‘Yes, Twinks me old bootscraper, but the two are connected.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’d feel more like the gallant Sir Galahad setting out on a quest if I was on a horse.’
‘Riding a horse on the streets of Los Angeles, you’d stick out like a puppy in a basket of kittens.’
‘You’re right, sis,’ he said regretfully. ‘I’ll have to put the candle-snuffer on that idea.’
‘And you weren’t thinking of decking yourself out in full armour, too, were you?’
‘Great Wilberforce, no!’ Blotto lied.
He noticed the pile of newspapers scattered over his sister’s dressing table. ‘Anything in any of those smut-rags about Mimsy’s disappearance?’
‘That’s what I was running the peepers over them for. But since it only happened yesterday, few of them have caught up.’ She picked up a newspaper. ‘Only snoop who’s on the case is – no surprise there – Heddan Schoulders.’
‘Who’s she?’
‘Oh, you didn’t meet her at last night’s bunfest, did you? Heddan Schoulders is, according to herself, the biggest gossip columnist in Hollywood. And, of course, because she was actually at Mimsy La Pim’s last night, she’s got the exclusive.’
