“I was on very good terms with the chief of my department, I could give you a note to him if you liked.”
“That would be just the thing.”
“But of course I must give the facts. I must say I’ve met you here and only known you a fortnight.”
“Of course. But you’ll say what else you can for me, won’t you?”
“Oh, certainly.”
“I don’t know yet if I can get a visa. I’m told they’re rather fussy.”
“I don’t see why. I shall be very sick if they refuse me one when I want to go back.”
“I’ll go and see how my wife is getting on,” said Caypor suddenly, getting up. “When will you let me have that letter?”
“Whenever you like. Are you going at once?”
“As soon as possible.”
Caypor left him. Ashenden waited in the hall for a quarter of an hour so that there should appear in him no sign of hurry. Then he went upstairs and prepared various communications. In one he informed R. that Caypor was going to England; in another he made arrangements through Berne that wherever Caypor applied for a visa it should be granted to him without question; and these he despatched forthwith. When he went down to dinner he handed Caypor a cordial letter of introduction.
Next day but one Caypor left Lucerne.
Ashenden waited. He continued to have his hour’s lesson with Mrs. Caypor and under her conscientious tuition began now to speak German with ease. They talked of Goethe and Winckelmann, of art and life and travel. Fritzi sat quietly by her chair.
“He misses his master,” she said, pulling his ears. “He only really cares for him, he suffers me only as belonging to him.”
After his lesson Ashenden went every morning to Cook’s to ask for his letters. It was here that all communications were addressed to him. He could not move till he received instructions, but R. could be trusted not to leave him idle long; and meanwhile there was nothing for him to do but have patience. Presently he received a letter from the consul in Geneva to say that Caypor had there applied for his visa and had set out for France. Having read this Ashenden went on for a little stroll by the lake and on his way back happened to see Mrs. Caypor coming out of Cook’s office. He guessed that she was having her letters addressed there too. He went up to her.
“Have you had news of Herr Caypor?” he asked her.
“No,” she said. “I suppose I could hardly expect to yet.”
He walked along by her side. She was disappointed, but not yet anxious; she knew how irregular at that time was the post. But next day during the lesson he could not but see that she was impatient to have done with it. The post was delivered at noon and at five minutes to she looked at her watch and him. Though Ashenden knew very well that no letter would ever come for her he had not the heart to keep her on tenter-hooks.
“Don’t you think that’s enough for the day? I’m sure you want to go down to Cook’s,” he said.
“Thank you. That is very amiable of you.”
When a little later he went there himself he found her standing in the middle of the office. Her face was distraught. She addressed him wildly.
“My husband promised to write from Paris. I am sure there is a letter for me, but these stupid people say there’s nothing. They’re so careless, it’s a scandal.”
Ashenden did not know what to say. While the clerk was looking through the bundle to see if there was anything for him she came up to the desk again.
“When does the next post come in from France?” she asked.
“Sometimes there are letters about five.”
“I’ll come then.”
She turned and walked rapidly away. Fritzi followed her with his tail between his legs. There was no doubt of it, already the fear had seized her that something was wrong. Next morning she looked dreadful; she could not have closed her eyes all night; and in the middle of the lesson she started up from her chair.
“You must excuse me, Herr Somerville, I cannot give you a lesson to-day. I am not feeling well.”
Before Ashenden could say anything she had flung nervously from the room, and in the evening he got a note from her to say that she regretted that she must discontinue giving him conversation lessons. She gave no reason. Then Ashenden saw no more of her; she ceased coming in to meals; except to go morning and afternoon to Cook’s she spent apparently the whole day in her room. Ashenden thought of her sitting there hour after hour with that hideous fear gnawing at her heart. Who could help feeling sorry for her? The time hung heavy on his hands too. He read a good deal and wrote a little, he hired a canoe and went for long leisurely paddles on the lake; and at last one morning the clerk at Cook’s handed him a letter. It was from R. It had all the appearance of a business communication, but between the lines he read a good deal.
Dear Sir, it began, The goods, with accompanying letter, despatched by you from Lucerne have been duly delivered. We are obliged to you for executing our instructions with such promptness.
It went on in this strain. R. was exultant. Ashenden guessed that Caypor had been arrested and by now had paid the penalty of his crime. He shuddered. He remembered a dreadful scene. Dawn. A cold, grey dawn, with a drizzling rain falling. A man, blindfolded, standing against a wall, an officer very pale giving an order, a volley, and then a young soldier, one of the firing-party, turning round and holding on to his gun for support, vomiting. The officer turned paler still, and he, Ashenden, feeling dreadfully faint. How terrified Caypor must have been! It was awful when the tears ran down their faces. Ashenden shook himself. He went to the ticket-office and obedient to his orders bought himself a ticket for Geneva.
As he was waiting for his change Mrs. Caypor came in. He was shocked at the sight of her. She was blowsy and dishevelled and there were heavy rings round her eyes. She was deathly pale. She staggered up to the desk and asked for a letter. The clerk shook his head.
“I’m sorry, madam, there’s nothing yet.”
“But look, look. Are you sure? Please look again.”
The misery in her voice was heart-rending. The clerk with a shrug of the shoulders took out the letters from a pigeon-hole and sorted them once more.
“No, there’s nothing, madam.”
She gave a hoarse cry of despair and her face was distorted with anguish.
“Oh, God, oh, God,” she moaned.
She turned away, the tears streaming from her weary eyes, and for a moment she stood there like a blind man groping and not knowing which way to go. Then a fearful thing happened. Fritzi, the bull-terrier, sat down on his haunches and threw back his head and gave a long, long melancholy howl. Mrs. Caypor looked at him with terror; her eyes seemed really to start from her head. The doubt, the gnawing doubt that had tortured her during those dreadful days of suspense, was a doubt no longer. She knew. She staggered blindly into the street.
Don’t Look Now
DAPHNE DU MAURIER
THE STORY
Original publication: Ladies’ Home Journal, December 1970; first collected in Don’t Look Now by Daphne du Maurier (Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1971)
FEW WRITERS HAVE BEEN ABLE to so successfully blend various genres in seamless works of fiction as Daphne du Maurier (1907–1989), as she has done with mystery, romance, horror, and historical fiction.
Born in London, she came from an illustrious family. Her grandfather was the famous artist and author George du Maurier, who produced his first novel, Peter Ibbetson (1891), at the age of fifty-six and then wrote Trilby (1894), creating Svengali, a character whose name has become part of the English language. Her father was Gerald du Maurier, an actor who dominated the English stage in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Her mother was Muriel Beaumont, also an accomplished actress. Her older sister Angela, who played Wendy in Peter Pan, was also an author. After her marriage to Colonel Frederick Arthur Montague B
rowning II, who was knighted for his distinguished service in World War II, Daphne du Maurier was also known as Lady Browning or Dame Daphne; she was made a Dame of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II for her literary distinction.
She is much loved by readers worldwide for such successful works as Jamaica Inn (1936), a historical novel about a gang of pirates who run ships aground, kill the sailors, and steal the cargo; My Cousin Rachel (1951), a romantic suspense novel; and The Scapegoat (1957), a tale of switched identities—but it is for Rebecca (1938) that she is best known. One of the most successful novels of all time (it remained on the bestseller list for two years), its opening sentence may be the best-remembered and most often quoted of the twentieth century: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”
This romantic tale of suspense is set in a sinister but beautiful old house based on Menabilly, a seventeenth-century mansion overlooking the sea from the rugged coast of Cornwall that was du Maurier’s home for twenty-five years. The plot focuses on a lovely but beleaguered young wife apparently at the mercy of a strangely distant husband and an inscrutable servant. The difficulties of a naïve second wife will be familiar to readers of Jane Eyre, to which it bears some resemblance—though without the dead body.
Rebecca is only one of du Maurier’s books to have been filmed, though none better than Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, released in 1940. Evidently a great fan of du Maurier’s work, he also directed Jamaica Inn (1939), and The Birds (1963), an ecological horror story, loosely adapted from her 1952 short story of the same name.
THE FILM
Title: Don’t Look Now, 1973
Studio: British Lion Films
Director: Nicolas Roeg
Screenwriters: Allan Scott, Chris Bryant
Producer: Peter Katz
THE CAST
• Julie Christie (Laura Baxter)
• Donald Sutherland (John Baxter)
• Hilary Mason (Heather)
• Clelia Matania (Wendy)
• Massimo Serato (Bishop Barbarrigo)
• Renato Scarpa (Inspector Longhi)
A faithful adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s short story, Don’t Look Now is the story of Laura and John Baxter, a couple grieving over the death of their daughter. They have gone on a vacation to Venice in an attempt to restore some normalcy to their lives. They encounter a pair of sisters, one of whom is a psychic who claims to see their daughter but warns that Venice is dangerous for them and advises them to leave. At the time, the old Italian city is plagued by a serial killer. An element of apparently supernatural events convinces them that they see tiny glimpses of their daughter as it seems that a girl in a bright red cloak is just at the periphery of their vision. In a dark alley, John is convinced that he sees a girl in the cloak and chases after her in the impossible hope—and fear—that somehow it is his daughter.
The real-life couple Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner had been proposed as the stars of the film, but director Nicolas Roeg had his heart set on Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland.
Although a noted mystery and horror classic, the single most memorable moment in Don’t Look Now was a sex scene featuring the stars, who had never even met before being cast for the film. Not in the original script, Roeg had the last-minute idea of including a sex scene since so many other scenes showed the couple arguing.
It was reported that Christie was terrified, so the set was largely emptied, leaving only Roeg and the cinematographer in an empty room with the two actors. It was the first scene shot, as Roeg just wanted to “get it out of the way.” Christie and Sutherland removed their dressing gowns, climbed onto the bed, and Roeg gave constant orders as to exactly what they were to do to each other. One of the most erotic cinematic moments of its time, it barely avoided being given an X-rating by cutting one-half second from the activity. It was shot and edited so convincingly that Sutherland and the producer had to issue denials that the couple had actually engaged in intercourse.
The actor who played the policeman spoke no English. Renato Scarpa merely read the lines of dialogue he’d been handed with no notion of what they meant, making him seem sinister.
Julie Christie had had several roles but was still somewhat unknown when the producers of the James Bond film Dr. No (1962) considered her for the part taken by Ursula Andress, who got the role because she was more generously endowed. Although a star of the brightest magnitude after Doctor Zhivago (1965), Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), and Petulia (1968), she pretty much retired from regular work at that point, preferring to be with Warren Beatty, her lover of seven years, turning down starring roles in Valley of the Dolls (1967), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969), The Godfather (1972), and Chinatown (1974), among others.
Donald Sutherland has appeared in about two hundred films and television shows. He is often cast as a menacing figure, slightly askew. In an interview, he says that he was once up for a part that he really wanted but was turned down, being told, “Sorry, you’re the best actor but this part calls for a guy-next-door type. You don’t look as if you’ve ever lived next door to anyone.”
DON’T LOOK NOW
Daphne du Maurier
“DON’T LOOK NOW,” John said to his wife, “but there are a couple of old girls two tables away who are trying to hypnotize me.”
Laura, quick on cue, made an elaborate pretence of yawning, then tilted her head as though searching the skies for a nonexistent aircraft.
“Right behind you,” he added. “That’s why you can’t turn round at once—it would be much too obvious.”
Laura played the oldest trick in the world and dropped her napkin, then bent to scrabble for it under her feet, sending a shooting glance over her left shoulder as she straightened once again. She sucked in her cheeks, the first tell-tale sign of suppressed hysteria, and lowered her head.
“They’re not old girls at all,” she said. “They’re male twins in drag.”
Her voice broke ominously, the prelude to uncontrolled laughter, and John quickly poured some more chianti into her glass.
“Pretend to choke,” he said, “then they won’t notice. You know what it is, they’re criminals doing the sights of Europe, changing sex at each stop. Twin sisters here on Torcello. Twin brothers tomorrow in Venice, or even tonight, parading arm-in-arm across the Piazza San Marco. Just a matter of switching clothes and wigs.”
“Jewel thieves or murderers?” asked Laura.
“Oh, murderers, definitely. But why, I ask myself, have they picked on me?”
The waiter made a diversion by bringing coffee and bearing away the fruit, which gave Laura time to banish hysteria and regain control.
“I can’t think,” she said, “why we didn’t notice them when we arrived. They stand out to high heaven. One couldn’t fail.”
“That gang of Americans masked them,” said John, “and the bearded man with a monocle who looked like a spy. It wasn’t until they all went just now that I saw the twins. Oh God, the one with the shock of white hair has got her eye on me again.”
Laura took the powder compact from her bag and held it in front of her face, the mirror acting as a reflector.
“I think it’s me they’re looking at, not you,” she said. “Thank heaven I left my pearls with the manager at the hotel.” She paused, dabbing the sides of her nose with powder. “The thing is,” she said after a moment, “we’ve got them wrong. They’re neither murderers nor thieves. They’re a couple of pathetic old retired schoolmistresses on holiday, who’ve saved up all their lives to visit Venice. They come from some place with a name like Walabanga in Australia. And they’re called Tilly and Tiny.”
Her voice, for the first time since they had come away, took on the old bubbling quality he loved, and the worried frown between her brows had vanished. At last, he thought, at last she’s be
ginning to get over it. If I can keep this going, if we can pick up the familiar routine of jokes shared on holiday and at home, the ridiculous fantasies about people at other tables, or staying in the hotel, or wandering in art galleries and churches, then everything will fall into place, life will become as it was before, the wound will heal, she will forget.
“You know,” said Laura, “that really was a very good lunch. I did enjoy it.”
Thank God, he thought, thank God….Then he leant forward, speaking low in a conspirator’s whisper. “One of them is going to the loo,” he said. “Do you suppose he, or she, is going to change her wig?”
“Don’t say anything,” Laura murmured. “I’ll follow her and find out. She may have a suitcase tucked away there, and she’s going to switch clothes.”
She began to hum under her breath, the signal, to her husband, of content. The ghost was temporarily laid, and all because of the familiar holiday game, abandoned too long, and now, through mere chance, blissfully recaptured.
The Big Book of Reel Murders Page 93
