‘Ah. Well, I don’t have a problem with that. But what exactly is the distinction you’re making?’
‘The distinction …’
The Frenchman leaned back in his chair in a manner ominously suggestive to anyone who’d already heard him expatiate on the topic.
‘I would say that the distinction between a film theorist – one who writes in the obscure journal, no? – and a film critic – one who writes in the daily newspaper – it is the same as between an astronomer and an astrologer. You comprehend? The first one creates a theory in order to describe the cinematic cosmos. The second concerns himself only with the stars. Avec les vedettes, quoi. I think that you in particular will appreciate, Inspector –’
‘Actually,’ said Calvert hastily, ‘What I’d really like to –’
‘No, no, you please must let me finish. You and I, we are like a pair of peas. And why? Because we both have theories, n’est-ce pas? For what are detectives but the “critics” of crime? And what are critics – true critics, theoretical critics – but the “detectives” of cinema?’
While Trubshawe could be glimpsed mouthing ‘Potty! Absolutely potty!’, Calvert made a new attempt to stem the flow.
‘Interesting … So shall we agree that you’re a purist and be done with it?’
‘A purist, yes, yes, that is the truth, we French theorists are all of us purists. Par exemple. I have a colleague who claims that the cinema, it died – it died, you understand – when it started to talk. Pouf! As simple as that! I have another colleague who is such a purist he will watch only films that were made in the nineteenth-century. For him mil neuf cent, 1900, it is the end of everything. Moi, I specialise in the oeuvre of a single cinéaste, the great, great Alastair Farjeon.’
Relieved that Françaix had done him the favour of at long last coming to the point, Calvert pounced on the name.
‘Alastair Farjeon, yes, precisely. You’re writing a book on his work, I believe?’
‘I am, yes. I study his films for many years. He made many chef-d’oeuvres.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t quite hear that,’ said Trubshawe. ‘He made many what-did-you-say?’
‘Chef-d’oeuvres. Masterpieces. He was a very great director, the greatest of all British directors. You know, we French sometimes say that there is an incompatibilité – what is the expression in your barbaric language? – an incompatibility? – between the word “Britain” and the word “cinema”. But Farjeon, he was the exception. He made films that are the equal – qu’est-ce que je dis? – that are more than the equal, much more than the equal, of any in the world. Beside Farjeon, the others are so much vin ordinaire.’
‘Monsieur Françaix,’ said Calvert, ‘if I may now come to the business at hand.’
‘Ah yes, the death – the murder – of poor Miss Ruzzerford. It is very sad.’
‘It is indeed. You, I believe, were actually on the set when it happened.’
‘That is correct.’
‘Then you must have seen her drink from the poisoned glass?’
‘Yes, I see her.’
‘And collapse on the ground?’
‘That too. It is horrible, horrible!’
‘Now, before it happened, was there anything at all, anything you observed, that struck you as, well, queer – unusual – out-of-the-ordinary? Think hard, please.’
‘Inspector, I have not the need to think. I observe nothing of the kind you say. I am here to watch the shoot. I place myself in a corner and I take the notes.’
‘For your book on Farjeon, no?’ (The French style, Calvert ruefully realised, risked becoming contagious.)
‘Yes. The last chapter is going to be about If Ever They Find Me Dead. It will be a very curious chapter – not at all in the style of the rest of my book …’
As his answer died away rather inconclusively, Evadne seized the opportunity to put one of her own questions.
‘Monsieur Françaix,’ she began, ‘you will remember, I’m sure, that yesterday we lunched together in the commissary.’
‘Mais naturellement. I remember it very well.’
‘It was during lunch, was it not, that you told us about the interviews you’d been conducting with Farjeon for your book?’
‘Yes.’
‘And, above all, about your admiration for his work, an admiration which you’ve just reiterated?’
‘That is so.’
‘But you also told us, practically as an afterthought, that you considered him to be a despicable human being. If I may quote you, “a pig of a man”. Am I right?’
‘Yes, you – you are right,’ he replied, his eyes indecipherable behind his thick dark glasses.
‘Well, my question to you is this. Why? Why was he a pig of a man?’
‘But everybody knows why. It is dans le domaine public. It is public knowledge – his reputation – I repeat, it is a known thing about him.’
‘That’s quite true,’ Evadne continued. ‘Yet I had a feeling, a very distinct feeling, that when you spoke about him, the violence of your condemnation was based not just on public knowledge but on private experience, personal experience.’
Françaix pondered this for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders.
‘Qu’est-ce que ça peut me faire enfin?’ His dark glasses looked the novelist directly in the eyes. ‘Yes, Miss Mount, it was based on personal experience. A very unpleasant experience.’
‘Will you share it with us?’
‘Why not? You see, I devote my life to Alastair Farjeon. I study his films, I watch them many, many times, and each time brings new discoveries, new and fascinating details I never notice before, the films are all so rich and strange. Then, at last, I take the courage in my two hands to write to the man himself, here at Elstree, and I propose something completely inédit – how you say? – untried? A book about him, but not a monograph, no, no, a book of interviews. To my surprise, he agrees. I at once catch the boat-train to Victoria and we sit down together, not here but at his splendid villa in Cookham, now alas no more – and he talks and I listen. He talks and he talks while I listen and I take notes. It is extraordinaire, what he says, it is tout-à-fait époustouflant! I am so very happy. I begin to think I will publish the greatest book about the cinema that there has ever been.’
His baldness was glistening with minute beads of sweat.
‘But there is something else. Inside every film critic is a film-maker who cries to get out, you comprehend? And I am no different. I am so impregné with Farjeon’s work I myself start to write a scenario – with his style in my mind. I work on it for many months till I feel it is ready for him to read. Then I send it to him with a nice, timid letter in accompaniment. And I wait. I wait and I wait and I wait. But I hear nothing, nothing at all. I cannot understand. I think maybe I must telephone to ask if he receives it. Then I read in the newspaper that he prepares a new film. Its title is If Ever They Find Me Dead. And I do understand – enfin.’
‘What do you understand?’ asked Evadne Mount quietly.
There was a brief pause. Then:
‘My scenario, it is called The Man in Row D. It tells about two women who go to the theatre and one of them points out a man who is seated in front of them and she says to her companion –’
At which point of his narrative he and Evadne chimed in together:
‘“If ever they find me dead, that’s the man who did it …”’
‘“If ever they find me dead, that’s the man who did it …”’
‘Snap,’ said Evadne gravely. Then she added, perhaps unnecessarily, ‘He stole your script.’
‘He stole my script, yes. That is why I say he is a genius but he is also a peeg.’
‘Curious …’
‘What is curious?’
‘The way Cora described the plot to us, the man was sitting in row C.’
Françaix allowed himself a mirthless laugh.
‘So there is at least one thing he changed.’
‘That, and the title
.’
‘And the title, yes.’
‘Was there nothing you could do about it?’ asked Calvert.
‘Nothing. I had no proof. No copyright. Nothing. I was so avid that Farjeon is the first to read it, this scenario I write for him, that I do not show it to my friends or my colleagues or speak about it to anybody. And all that, see you, I write in the nice, timid little letter I insert inside the manuscript. I was – how you say? – the perfect sap.’
‘You can’t blame yourself,’ Evadne Mount maintained. ‘After all, how were you to know he would be so unscrupulous?’
‘But yes, I was to know!’ Françaix exclaimed, slamming his fist down hard on the desk.
‘But how?’
‘It is all there – in his films! I see it again and again, but I do not comprehend what I see!’
‘You know,’ said Evadne pensively, ‘I really must try to catch up with a few of those pictures myself.’
‘Ah yes? You are curious to discover Alastair Farjeon’s work?’
‘Well, of course I am.’
‘Then you must permit me to escort you. Tonight, if you are free. It will be a great honour.’
‘Escort me? Tonight? Heavens, where?’
‘To your Academy cinema. At midnight there is an all-night show of his films. An hommage. You did not know?’
‘No, I didn’t. Well, I hardly dare recall how long ago it was I stayed up all night, but this hommage is too important for me to miss. Monsieur Françaix, you have a date.’
*
The last of the sessions, that with Lettice Morley, was equally the briefest, in part because she had so impressively presented the case against herself in the commissary the day before and in part because she struck them all as far the least likely of the five suspects. Calvert’s questions, then, were mostly routine, her answers no less so. She had seen what everybody else had seen and had reacted much as everybody else had reacted. It was, in fact, only when the proceedings were drawing to a slightly anti-climactic close that she added anything of value to her questioners’ store of knowledge.
Just prior to that, however, there had taken place an odd little diversion. So monotonously repetitive had Evadne Mount begun to find the alternating sequence of questions and answers, she’d actually nodded off. “Nod” was indeed the word as, to Trubshawe’s amusement, when doziness eventually shaded into unequivocal slumber, the novelist’s head would tip over to left or right before at once jerkily righting itself. Then, a few minutes later, even as she was attempting almost manually to prop up her eyelids, it would happen all over again. And then again.
The fourth time it happened, she did somehow contrive to prise her eyes open before actually sitting upright. And what she saw at that instant, what proved to be directly in her line of vision, was a small wastepaper basket tucked away out of sight under Rex Hanway’s desk. It was stuffed to the brim with assorted papers – presumably old letters, obsolete contracts, pages from rejected scripts and suchlike. On top of them all, though, poking out of the basket, was an oblong strip of paper, badly singed on both sides, which had clearly been ripped from a much wider sheet. Her sleuthial instincts stimulated by the sight of one of those trifling but, as invariably turned out to be the case, vital scraps of paper, discarded if not quite destroyed, which had so often figured in her own whodunits, she shot out an arm as deftly as an ant-eater its tongue, clasped the paper between her fingers and took a few moments to peruse it before sticking it unobserved (so she imagined) inside her handbag. Then she drew herself up erect on her chair and endeavoured to give her full attention to Calvert’s interrogation.
‘Come now, Miss,’ she heard him saying, ‘you must have been sickened, to put it mildly. A famous film director invites you down to his villa to discuss plans for his latest picture and then, without warning, attempts to – well, to ravish you. What respectable woman would not be sickened by such reprehensible behaviour?’
‘At least in the film business, Inspector,’ Lettice answered, ‘only a very foolish woman would be sickened by it. A real namby-pamby. Oh, I see how shocked you are and, I assure you, it’s not because I treat rape lightly. Yes, I repeat, rape. What Farjeon tried to do was rape – not, as you coyly put it, “ravish” – me. He tried to rape me, just as I’m certain he tried to rape Patsy Sloots. Unlike poor Patsy, though, I know how to handle men, especially when, considering Farje’s reputation, I suppose I’d half-expected it to happen in the first place.’
‘How did you handle him?’
‘I tore myself away from his clutches – and, incidentally, tore a new and rather pricey Hartnell frock in the process – I ran from the villa, found a half-decent B & B in Cookham, where I spent the night licking my wounds, and caught the first train back to Town next morning. More or less in one piece.
‘Naturally, after my rejection of him, I was convinced I was off the film – I had been Rex Hanway’s assistant – and that I’d better start looking around for another position. Then I read, first, about the fire at Farjeon’s villa and, three or four weeks after that, about Rex himself being assigned to direct If Ever They Find Me Dead. I rang him up and – not surprisingly, considering how long and how well we’d worked together – he offered me his own old job.
‘So no, Inspector, to answer your original question, I was not at all devastated, as you put it, by Alastair Farjeon’s death, for the reasons I’ve just given you.’
Sitting back in his chair, Calvert almost fondly contemplated her.
‘Well, I think that’s all I wanted to know. I’d like to thank you once more for coming in, Miss Morley. If I may say so, you’ve made a remarkable impression on us all. Almost unnerving. I only wish all the witnesses I’m obliged to question were as lucid and level-headed as you.’
‘Well, thank you too, Inspector.’
She stood up and unaffectedly smoothed out her skirt.
‘Goodbye, Miss Mount. Mr Trubshawe. It’s been an interesting experience meeting you both. I do mean that.’
As soon as she had closed the door behind her, Trubshawe said:
‘There’s one young woman who’s got her head screwed on tight.’
‘She certainly has,’ agreed Calvert. ‘I’ve come rather to admire her. What say you, Miss Mount?’
‘What say I? I say I need a drink. Especially if I’m going to spend the whole night watching pictures at the Academy Cinema.’
‘Then, my dear Evie,’ said Trubshawe, ‘let me offer you, in the first instance, a lift back to Town, mais naturellement, and, in the second, a brace of double pink gins in the Ritz Bar.’
‘Both offers, my dear Eustace, gratefully accepted.’
‘Good, good. How are you fixed, Tom? You won’t be needing a lift, I suppose?’
‘No thanks, I’ve got my own car. But just let me say how grateful I am to you and Miss Mount for agreeing to participate in this little experiment of mine. Also for putting some very germane and’ – he couldn’t resist stealing a mischievous glance at Evadne – ‘trenchant questions. What I would ask you to do now is let your minds dwell on everything we’ve heard this afternoon and, if and when you have any new ideas you feel you ought to communicate to me, please don’t hesitate to ring me up. I meanwhile will let you know how things go at the inquest.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ said Trubshawe with an enigmatic half-smile, ‘I fancy I already have an intriguing new slant on the whole case. If you’ve no objection, though, I’d like to let it simmer awhile before running it past you …’
Chapter Thirteen
To begin with, on the journey back from Elstree in the Chief-Inspector’s Rover, neither he nor Evadne appeared to have much to say to one another. Yet, notwithstanding the policeman’s phlegmatic temperament, coupled with his aversion ever to declaring his hand prematurely, doubtless a product of his years of service at the Yard, she couldn’t help observing in his demeanour a barely repressed excitement that was most unlike the Trubshawe she already felt she knew of old.
&nb
sp; ‘Eustace, dear?’ she finally asked after having been driven by him in silence for about twenty minutes.
‘H’m?’
‘You’re awfully quiet. There isn’t something you’re concealing from me, is there?’
‘Yes,’ he was forced to avow, ‘there is. I swear to you, though, “conceal” isn’t really the right word. All will be revealed when we get to the Ritz. I’d rather not talk about it and drive at the same time.’ Then he added, ‘But, Evie, what about you?’
‘What about me?’
‘Only that I have reason to believe you’re concealing something too.’
‘Am I?’
‘I think you are. Out with it.’
‘Out with what, pray?’
‘You know what. Thought nobody noticed, did you?’
‘Eustace, will you please stop speaking in riddles. If you have something to say, then for goodness’ sake say it.’
‘That scrap of paper you snatched from Hanway’s waste-basket. Oh, you were very nimble, very sly. Quite catlike, in fact. But you didn’t fool old Inspector Plodder. We’re partners, aren’t we? Is there any point in not letting me in on the secret?’
‘No point at all,’ she replied. ‘Unlike you, I don’t play Hide-And-Seek.’
Whereupon she opened her handbag, extracted the crumpled-up piece of paper and flattened it over her knees.
‘Shall I read it out to you?’
‘If you will.’
‘All it says – and all of it, mark you, in block capitals – is: “SS ON THE RIGHT”.’
The ex-policeman mulled this over.
‘SS ON THE RIGHT, eh? SS ON THE RIGHT … It mean something to you?’
‘Not yet,’ Evadne prudently replied.
‘Could be anything, anything at all. Could even be some sort of a code.’
‘A code? Lawks Almighty, Eustace, I never thought I’d be the one to make such a remark, but you’ve been reading too many detective stories!’
‘A fine thing for you to say. If this were one of your whodunits, that piece of paper would automatically – I repeat, automatically – constitute a crucial piece of evidence. I can just see it. SS ON THE RIGHT? Why, of course. Benjamin Levey! Since Levey only just managed to escape from Nazi Germany, obviously the SS, the Gestapo – what’s left of it – is hotfoot on his trail.’
A Mysterious Affair of Style Page 15
