by Alice Duncan
I guess Phil didn’t approve of Ernie supplying me with that sort of information, because he shot Ernie a “shut-up” look. Ernie only shrugged, and I began to recall why I basically liked him. He trusted me. If he didn’t trust me, he wouldn’t have told me the d’Agostinos’ real name and marital status, would he? No, he would not.
“But your friend Mullins isn’t lily-white, either,” said Phil, hurrying slightly as if he were trying to prevent Ernie from leaking any more information to me. “Turns out his mother and Mrs. Hartland grew up together. What’s more, Mullins has a record.”
“Not a very big one, though,” I said, then wished I’d taped my mouth shut before work that morning.
Phil’s eyes narrowed into little squinty slits. “And exactly what do you know about Rupert Mullins’s record?”
I sighed. “Not much. Only what Lulu told me this morning. I didn’t know it before, or I would have told you. She said he knocked over an outhouse, broke somebody’s arm, and left Oklahoma before his trial. I guess that makes him sort of a fugitive.”
“Sort of?” Phil lifted an intimidating eyebrow.
“An outhouse?” Ernie burst into guffaws. “That makes him the outlaw of the century, Phil.”
“It’s not funny, Ernie. The kid’s a criminal.”
“A very minor one,” I said, feeling sorry for Rupert. Even his crime was silly. I mean, if you were going to be sent up the river for something, wouldn’t you rather it be for—oh, I don’t know—robbing a bank or something like that? How’d you like it if you had to go to court and be sentenced for tipping over an outhouse? The entire gallery would laugh, just as Ernie was doing then.
“It gives him a motive,” Phil said in all seriousness.
I swallowed my burgeoning giggle. “You mean you think he might have killed Mrs. Hartland to keep her quiet about his outhouse caper?” It sounded far-fetched to me.
“People have killed for less,” said Phil sententiously.
“I think you’re grasping at straws,” I said. “What about the O’Doyles? They seem more likely as the culprits than poor Rupert.”
“We’re looking into them, don’t worry. We won’t leave any stones unturned.”
“You won’t? Then do you know whether or not George Hartland was really sick the night of the séance?”
Phil frowned at me as if he didn’t appreciate my curiosity. “We’re looking into it.” Wooden. Very wooden.
“And what about the poison? Do you know what kind of poison killed her? It must have worked awfully fast, because I sure didn’t hear anything at all. Not even a gasp or a scream or a thump when she hit the table.”
“We’re working on that, too. It was probably some kind of alkaloid.”
“What’s an alkaloid?” I asked before I could stop myself. What I should have done was keep my big mouth shut and visited the library on my luncheon break. Well, I could still do that.
“It’s a poison derived from a plant,” Ernie said helpfully.
“Oh. You mean like that poison that comes from apricot pits?”
“Yeah. Like that,” said Phil, grunting slightly as he rose from the chair beside my desk. “Well, I can’t think of anything else to ask at the moment, Mercy. If you think of anything, please give me a ring.”
“I will,” I promised him. “Good luck. I’m sure it wasn’t Rupert.”
He said, “Hmm.” Not awfully encouraging, that.
“Have fun interrogating your next witness.” Ernie snickered.
“Huh,” said Phil, but his face flushed slightly.
“Who’s your next witness?”
“Miss Jacqueline Lloyd,” Ernie said with a grin.
“Oh, are you going to her home?” I wondered where she lived, and if it was a fabulous mansion or a smaller abode, like that of Mr. Easthope.
“Naw. Phil’s getting two birds with one stone this morning. Carstairs and Miss Lloyd, both, in Carstairs’s office.”
Oh, boy, I wish I could sit in and hear what they had to say! Since I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask, I did. “May I go with you and listen? I’ll be happy to take notes for you. I’m very good at shorthand.”
I was right in that it didn’t hurt a bit to ask. Phil’s curt refusal to allow me to accompany him, in spite of my shorthand skills, stung slightly but not too much. However, I didn’t have time to fret about it, since the telephone rang. Ernie turned on his heel and headed to his office.
As Phil exited the office, I heard Ernie flap open the Times and clunk his shod heels on his desk.
“Mr. Templeton’s office. Miss Allcutt speaking.”
The rest of the morning was busy—my advertising dollar and a half at work—and I didn’t have much of a chance to think about the Hartland/Heartwood murder. Ernie left for lunch a little early, claiming he was sick of the telephone bell and me “yammering” (his word) into the receiver. Therefore, I didn’t feel guilty at all when, a couple of minutes before noon, I scooted down to Sylvia Dunstable’s office, hoping to find out if she’d overheard any interesting tidbits when Phil interviewed Mr. Carstairs and Miss Lloyd.
You could have knocked me over with a spring zephyr when I opened the door and saw not only Sylvia Dunstable, but Jacqueline Lloyd herself, seated beside Miss Dunstable’s desk. Both women turned to look at me. It appeared they’d been having a comfortable coze before I interrupted them.
You’d think that since I’d come to live with Chloe and Harvey, I’d have become accustomed to seeing actors and actresses in person, but I hadn’t. Perhaps it’s because the silver screen projects such large images, but I’m always taken aback when I see a screen personage in the flesh. And nervous. I’m always nervous at such times. Such is the power of the flickers.
“Oh,” said I. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were busy.”
“That’s perfectly all right, Miss Allcutt,” said Miss Dunstable in her pleasant, well-modulated secretarial voice. “Please come in.”
Both ladies had very nice smiles. Any one of Miss Dunstable’s smiles could have made its recipient feel warm and welcome, and it did the same to me. Miss Lloyd’s smile could have illuminated the entire world with some light left over for Mars or Venus.
This points out a fact that I’d come to appreciate fully since I moved to Los Angeles. I’ve heard it said that makeup can do wonders for almost anyone, but it takes more than makeup to create a true presence on the silver screen. I first noticed this phenomenon in a small way when my uncle Threnody (it’s too long to explain, so it’s best not to ask about the name) purchased one of those Brownie box cameras and tormented the family with it during a Christmas get-together at my aunt Augusta’s house. He took pictures of all of us, including my mother and father over my mother’s strenuous protests, which points out the strength of Uncle Threnody’s character.
Well, when the photographs were developed, I was most awfully disappointed by the way I looked. I’m not bad looking in person, but I decided after that unfortunate episode that I’m definitely not what they call photogenic. Chloe fared much better than I, although neither of us possessed what has become known as star quality.
Both Allcutt girls would have been entirely eclipsed by Miss Jacqueline Lloyd who, either in person or on film, had star quality in abundance overflowing. She was the most ethereally lovely creature I’ve ever beheld, on or off the screen.
It was mid-August and the temperatures in Los Angeles had hovered in the upper nineties and low hundreds for days. In deference to the weather, Miss Lloyd had dressed all in white: a perfectly splendid drop-waist white suit with a tie on the side; a pair of simple white pumps that probably cost more than the Figueroa Building; and a glorious confection of a white hat that sat atop her sleekly shining dark head. She was the loveliest thing I’d ever seen. She almost took my breath away, and I’m not easily moved by human beauty.
“Miss Allcutt,” said Sylvia Dunstable, breaking into my awestricken stupor, “I believe you’ve met Miss Jacqueline Lloyd.”
; “Er,” I said, coming back to my senses, “yes. We met at Mr. Easthope’s house.” Collecting my courage around me like a cloak, I stepped forward and held out my hand. “How do you do, Miss Lloyd? It’s a pleasure to meet you again.”
“Miss Allcutt,” she murmured, taking my hand. “So pleased.”
I sank into a chair in front of Miss Dunstable’s desk. “It’s been a pretty awful couple of days, hasn’t it?” I asked, hoping to convey my empathy and none of my perhaps-unseemly curiosity.
Jacqueline Lloyd shuddered delicately. “It’s been perfectly horrid. My nerves are shattered.”
Miss Dunstable clucked her tongue in sympathy. “Mr. Carstairs has been upset too.”
“I’m sure he has. It was . . . ghastly.” Another delicate shudder trembled through Miss Lloyd’s slender form. “To think that I was actually holding the hand of a . . . of a dead person.” She put a white-gloved hand to her alabaster forehead. “It doesn’t bear thinking of.”
“I’m so sorry,” said I, although I’d been there too and didn’t feel particularly shuddery. On the other hand, it truly was fairly appalling to think about holding the hand of a corpse for several minutes before you realized she was dead. “Had you met Mrs. Hartland before the night of the séance?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know her well?”
“No. Only slightly,” said Miss Lloyd. “She was the reason Mr. Carstairs asked me to attend the wretched thing.”
“Oh, really? Why is that?” I hoped she wouldn’t mind my asking.
“Well, she is—that is, she was—” Another delicate shudder made the white veil on her hat tremble. “—the most important columnist in the industry. Mr. Carstairs thought it would be good publicity for me to be seen to be interested in spiritual matters, and since she was there she’d surely write about my attendance.”
I considered this information for a second before blurting out, “Couldn’t you just go to church or something?”
Miss Lloyd peered at me as if I’d spoken to her in one of the lesser-known Germanic dialects, if there are such things.
Sylvia Dunstable laughed softly. “Oh, my goodness, Miss Allcutt, that wouldn’t do at all.”
“It wouldn’t?” I didn’t understand.
Fortunately for me, Miss Dunstable was happy to enlighten me. “You see, it’s like this: everybody goes to church. Only a very few of us can afford to hire spiritualists and delve into the realm of communication with the departed. To participate in a séance lifts one out of the commonplace. If you’re an aspiring motion-picture star, you can’t allow yourself to be lumped among the masses. You must do everything in your power to transcend the ordinary. Mr. Carstairs leaked a story to the press about Miss Lloyd seeking to communicate with her late, beloved mother.”
“Ah,” I said, comprehending at last. Maybe. “I think I see what you mean.”
“A true star must be perceived as apart from the horde.”
“Ah,” I said again, in lieu of anything more cogent.
“It’s the difference between . . . oh, say, Gloria Swanson or Pola Negri or Lillian Gish and a swarm of other girls who come to Los Angeles in pursuit of a career in the pictures,” Miss Dunstable continued. “A thousand other girls might well be pretty, but a star has a certain exceptional excitement about her. A girl has to have it to begin with, but then it must be nurtured assiduously. Mr. Carstairs knows how to create a star, and he’s leading Miss Lloyd in the right direction. She must always be seen to possess a certain quality that others lack.”
“Yes. I see what you mean,” I said. And I did. The quality of ambition and luminosity Miss Dunstable was describing was the difference between Jacqueline Lloyd and . . . well . . . Lulu LaBelle, although I hate to say it. Lulu was pretty and she very well might possess talent. She might even look good on the screen. But she clearly didn’t have that single-minded passion to be famous that led people like Jacqueline Lloyd to do nothing that didn’t further their careers. If she did, she wouldn’t be sitting in the lobby of the Figueroa Building day after day filing her nails, but would be out pursuing stardom.
It sounded like too much work to me. I’d rather be the assistant to a private investigator and take my observations home and write books about them without always worrying over who was watching me do it. I’m not much for the limelight, I guess.
Then again, Miss Lloyd’s travels on the road to fame and fortune bore some slight resemblance to my mother’s societal aspirations for her daughters back home in Boston. Mother was always showing Chloe and me off at big society gatherings, hoping, I’m sure, to snabble so-called “suitable husbands” (men with money and power) for her chicks. She made us attend all the “best” parties. She was particularly pleased when she garnered an invitation to a function sponsored by Mrs. Lowell. Although the Lowells were reputed to speak only to God, Mrs. Lowell occasionally spoke to my mother, who was almost as exalted as a Lowell, at least in her own mind.
Oh, dear, I shouldn’t have said that. I’m such an undutiful daughter.
“Um . . .” I said after a moment spent digesting the interesting differences between movie stars and the rest of us mere mortals. “. . . so you had met Mrs. Hartland before that get-together at Mr. Easthope’s house?”
“Once or twice,” said Miss Lloyd.
“It was very important to stay on Hedda Heartwood’s good side,” put in Miss Dunstable. “Mr. Carstairs has often told me that he tries always to make sure his clients are seen only under favorable conditions by her. Or he did, that is.”
“Really? Why is that?”
“That woman could make a person’s career,” said Miss Lloyd, her voice going a bit stiffish. “She could also ruin a career. She could be vicious.”
“My goodness.” Perhaps that ferret-like quality I’d noticed in Mrs. Hartland’s features revealed more about her character than I’d first thought. “I didn’t know that.”
Miss Lloyd sniffed.
Miss Dunstable said, “There are lots of pitfalls on the road to cinematic fame, Miss Allcutt.”
“I guess so. Had you ever run afoul of Mrs. Hartland?” I asked, perhaps not very diplomatically. “I mean, had she ever written anything ugly about you?”
“Certainly not,” said Miss Lloyd with hauteur. “There is nothing about me that cannot stand the light of publicity.”
“That’s good.” I felt a little ratty about having asked that question, but I really wanted to know about the business. “It must be awful to have to keep secrets.”
“I wouldn’t know.” Miss Lloyd rose from her chair. “I really must be going,” she said. “I have a perfectly hideous headache from all those questions. My nerves have been unstrung since that awful woman was murdered.”
That awful woman? Hmm. I wondered what Jacqueline Lloyd knew about Mrs. Hartland that I didn’t. I was on the verge of asking when she forestalled me.
“If you must know about Hedda Heartwood, Miss Allcutt, perhaps you should speak with Mr. Carstairs. He knows ever so much more about her than I do. I must leave now.”
“Of course.” Sylvia Dunstable rose to her feet, too, and skirted her desk in order to see Miss Lloyd to the door.
This points out yet another difference between people like Jacqueline Lloyd and me. Secretaries escort picture stars to doors. They let people like me find our own way.
“Well,” I said to Miss Dunstable when she returned to her desk, “I truly didn’t mean to interrupt you.”
“Think nothing of it, please. Miss Lloyd and I were just chatting.”
My goodness. To think of “just chatting” with a big name in the motion-picture business boggled my mind. Although, come to think of it, I just chatted with lots of people like Harvey and Mr. Easthope all the time. That wasn’t the same, though. The people I knew might be of major importance in the industry, but for the most part they were behind the scenes and nobody but those who worked in the business knew who they were. The people whom everyone idolized were the stars, the actor
s and actresses whose faces were known worldwide.
The whole motion-picture mystique was beginning to sound silly to me, so I left Miss Dunstable’s office and went to my own. There I slapped on my hat, grabbed my handbag and headed to the library.
Chapter Ten
I spent almost the entire hour I was allowed for lunch in the library, reading all about poisons made from plants. For instance, I learned that an alkaloid is an amine produced by a plant. That didn’t mean a lot to me, but I gathered that there were a whole lot of them, and they were all toxic to a greater or lesser degree. I also learned that alkaloids tasted bitter, contained nitrogen, and occurred generally in seed plants.
After reading for nearly an hour, however, what puzzled me most about alkaloids was how someone could come by one. I mean, it’s one thing if you’re an explorer traveling down the Amazon River or up the Nile, but most household cupboards weren’t stocked with stuff like codeine, morphine, strychnine, datura or curare. I guess some folks had supplies of codeine and morphine, but I couldn’t figure out how a fatal dose of either of those substances could have been delivered by a prick to Mrs. Hartland’s back. Datura and curare killed extremely fast according to the books I looked at, and many Indian tribes used arrows dipped in those two poisons. Oddly enough, when the substances were eaten, they produced no ill effects on the person doing the eating.
But where would a person living in Los Angeles, California, get his or her hands on a supply of poison-tipped arrows? I hadn’t a clue, and none of the library books helped me find one.
At any rate, after almost an hour, I had a notebook full of information about alkaloids and possessed not a single notion as to what to do with it when I left the library. I grabbed a tamale and a paper cupful of lemonade from a street vendor (in Boston, you’d probably get a Coney Island and a Nehi, but the principle’s the same) and headed back to the Figueroa Building. Ernie hadn’t returned from lunch yet, so I ate my own lunch at my desk and perused my notes. I didn’t feel as if I’d made any appreciable progress in the solution of Mrs. Hartland’s murder by the time one o’clock rolled around and the telephone started ringing again.
