Scandal in Babylon

by Barbara Hambly

  The studio chief explained, ‘About a year ago some nut broke into Mae Busch’s place in the middle of the night. The couple who did Kitty’s gardening had just quit, and she hadn’t gotten anybody else to live in the cottage—’

  ‘But I never did take it to the house,’ put in Kitty. ‘I mean, I was supposed to get a license for it, or a permit, or something, and we were right in the middle of filming Sawdust Rose, and I just never got around to it. There wasn’t a silencer on it when you gave it to me, was there, Frank?’

  ‘What do we do about the body, Frank?’ asked Fishbein quietly. ‘The gun’s one thing. Do we cop to it, or not?’

  ‘Hell, no!’ He turned back to Kitty. ‘Nobody was with you looking for pipsqueak there?’ He nodded to the little dog still cradled in her arms. ‘You didn’t get the Duchess to help you?’

  ‘I sent her to see Mrs Turnbit to the door,’ reported Kitty promptly. ‘And I thought I could find my little treasure right away. I couldn’t imagine she’d get that far!’

  The studio chief’s eyes narrowed, but Emma could see him studying – as she had – the pristine state of the star’s make-up and drawing the same conclusion that she had. Whatever Kitty had been up to in the almost two hours that she’d been gone, she hadn’t been kissing anyone. Which, come to think of it, reflected Emma resignedly, was a little unusual in itself …

  ‘And you didn’t write those notes?’

  ‘I swear it, Frank! I didn’t know Rex was in town! I didn’t know he was alive!’

  ‘Anyone could have gotten the stationery from her dressing room,’ pointed out Emma reasonably. ‘And the gun, for that matter. The room isn’t kept locked during the day.’ She restrained herself from making the observation that were the evidence not at that moment dwindling into a little pile of ashes, they might have had the handwriting compared against Kitty’s, for forgery.

  The brief glimpse she’d had of it hadn’t looked much like the star’s.

  ‘You,’ said Pugh. ‘Rokatansky. What the hell’s he yakking about?’ He jerked his head at Silver.

  ‘Just asking what’s going on,’ replied Zal.

  Silver declared protestingly, ‘Wenn ein Mann durch eine kapitalistische Verschwörung ermordet wurde …’ and Emma sighed. She had wondered how long it would take the handsome German to conclude that there was a capitalist plot involved in the murder.

  ‘You tell him nothing’s going on. You tell him there was a little accident with one of the maintenance boys who went in to fix the sink in Miss de la Rose’s dressing room, but that the man’s fine and has been sent home. You got that?’

  Zal nodded at once. ‘Sure thing.’

  ‘Kapitalistische Schweine …’

  ‘You. Duchess.’ Pugh rounded on her. ‘You too, Kitty. Mrs Blackstone went with you lookin’ for your little mutt – Zal, you went along, too. You found the pooch and brought it back. You didn’t see anything, you didn’t hear anything.’ He glared at them with his bulging, pale-green eyes. ‘If anybody asks questions about it – cops or reporters or anything – you were out in the back lot from one fifteen to’ – he checked his watch – ‘three thirty. I’ll get a couple of the prop boys to say they saw you out by the Rome set. Got that? Fishy, how much of a mess is there on the floor? How long’ll it take to get the bloodstains out?’

  ‘That’s gonna be a problem, Frank.’ Fishbein shook his head. ‘There’s not a lot of blood, but it soaked straight through the rug and I’m betting it’s stained the floorboards underneath—’

  ‘We can get a new rug.’

  ‘Vinegar or baking soda should take care of the stain,’ provided Zal helpfully.

  ‘Problem’s gonna be getting the body out of there,’ said the publicity chief. ‘We’ll need to keep the place locked until the lot’s cleared tonight, and Scandalous Lady’s shooting overtime on Stage Two, to make up the time they lost when—’

  ‘Send ’em home,’ said Pugh. ‘Tell ’em the wiring on Stage Two needs to be checked overnight ’cause there’s danger of fire. Better yet, get in there and set a fire, just enough to burn about a square yard of wall. And dig up somebody who can be trusted, to help with moving the stiff. And I mean somebody who can be trusted not to come around later with his hand out. You empty his pockets?’

  ‘Surely the police—’ began Emma again, but the producer rounded on her again with those cold protuberant eyes.

  ‘No police,’ he said. ‘Didn’t happen. Or anyway it didn’t happen here. You remember that, Duchess, or you’re gonna be on the first boat back to England—’

  ‘As it happens—’ retorted Emma, nettled, and Kitty sprang to her feet and stood between her lover and her sister-in-law like a diminutive ornamental pigeon pecking at a bulldog.

  ‘Don’t you dare threaten Emma, Frank! She doesn’t work for you, she works for me! And I won’t have you bully her!’ She slipped a protecting arm around Emma’s waist. ‘I mean it. If you try to send her away, you can finish your silly picture by yourself! And that goes for you, too, Fishy.’

  Pugh opened his mouth, then closed it. Conciliatingly, Conrad Fishbein set the gun down on the make-up table and took Emma’s hand in his own plump sweaty ones.

  ‘Mrs Blackstone,’ he purred in his most persuasive tone, ‘I apologize for the misunderstanding. It was entirely my fault that you should misconstrue what we’re asking of you. This is purely a precautionary measure, and a purely temporary one, to avoid adverse publicity. Surely you’ve been in this country long enough to know how the newspapers, and particularly the film magazines, will distort facts and take any statement out of context, with destructive and, I may say, irresponsible results.’

  Behind thick lenses, his wide blue eyes gazed earnestly into hers. ‘Mr Pugh and I are very familiar with this kind of sensationalism, and as a personal favor, I’m asking you to trust our judgment. We will, of course, get in contact with the police and turn the whole thing over to them at the proper time. But in an environment like Hollywood, in the light of sometimes unscrupulous competition from other studios who would like nothing better than to see Temptress of Babylon halt production indefinitely, we need to have a clearer picture of what’s going to be said, and how the situation is going to be handled, before we simply let everyone in on today’s events. Don’t you agree?’

  He looked from Emma’s face to Kitty’s.

  ‘And of course,’ he added, ‘the studio will compensate you for the inconvenience and upset that I know this must be causing you.’

  Emma glanced at the final curl of smoke rising from the ashes of the two notes, while behind her, Mr Pugh instructed Zal in an undervoice to inform Dirk Silver that his Bolshevik arse would be on the first boat back to Germany if he said one word about any of this to anyone. Or, possibly, that he might find himself in trouble with the Bureau of Investigation …

  ‘I’ll let you know,’ Fishbein went on in a helpful voice, ‘when it’s time for you to make a statement, and the whole thing may be easily settled by a written affidavit, without you having to be further troubled at all. Nor, of course, Miss de la Rose.’

  Pugh’s eyes were on Emma’s face. He must, Emma guessed, be a past master of reading those small details of expression and tension that told him when he’d won an argument, or whether he needed to change tactics. Now, after the pause that followed Fishbein’s words, he said in a mollified tone, ‘Thank you, Mrs Blackstone. Fishy, you better get over to Stage Two and give ’em word to clear out. Get Gully Ackroyd to come over here and help with the Dear Departed. After this last time getting fired, he knows he’ll never work again unless he does us a big favor …’

  Emma wondered if this meant that she would not, in fact, be obliged to rewrite scenes twenty to twenty-four, but did not think it the moment to ask.

  Fishbein was already heading toward the door.

  ‘And tell Floyd at the gate to make sure the lot is cleared by six.’

  The publicity chief scooped the gun from the make-up table, opened the dressing-
room door, and found himself face-to-face with the apostolic Pettingers.

  Prudence Pettinger stared at the gun in Fishbein’s hand and gasped. Her brother fell back a pace, shocked.

  Veritas nunquam perit, that other great Roman, Seneca, had said.

  Truth never perishes.

  Frank Pugh, under his breath, said a word that could easily have taken the hide off a charging rhinoceros.

  FOUR

  The police arrived twenty-five minutes later.

  ‘They can’t possibly arrest me!’ Kitty paused, half-in and half-out of the stylish walking dress that Emma had fetched from Wardrobe. Knowing that the star’s dressing room would be sealed, she had borrowed a garment which had made its last appearance in the train station scene of Faithful Nell, rather than permit her sister-in-law to go down to the Sixth Division station house in a diamond-studded brassiere and a pair of spangled briefs that wouldn’t have concealed a packet of cigarettes.

  Now, looking out the slatted jalousies of Nick Thaxter’s dressing room on what Americans called the second floor, Emma would not have bet any substantial sum on Kitty’s being right. In rewriting a scenario at the end of last month (Lost Lamb) she had learned enough about the examination of bullets to be fairly certain that the slug someone would eventually dig out of poor Mr Festraw could be traced to Kitty Flint’s gun.

  And once the Pettingers had seen that gun in Conrad Fishbein’s hand, the jig – as Zal had observed – was definitely up. Trying to conceal the crime at that point would only make everything look a thousand times worse.

  So Mr Pugh had been dispatched to call the Los Angeles Police Department, while Mr Fishbein (after ostentatiously placing the gun on the Volkische Beobachter spread out across Dirk Silver’s make-up table) had taken the two evangelists to his office to ascertain what they may have seen and heard – other than the fact that the publicity chief had had the murder weapon in his hand. And Emma had sought alternative costume.

  ‘Oh, and I look ghastly!’ continued Kitty, regarding herself in Nick’s mirror. ‘Can you come do me up the back, darling? Film make-up is so hideous … Oh, my poor little darling!’ She ducked from Emma’s helpful hands to kneel beside Buttercreme, who was attempting to conceal herself under the make-up table. ‘Don’t be afraid, sweetness! Nothing bad is going to happen … Zal, darling!’ She darted, still exposed from sacrum to fifth cervical vertebra, to the door as Zal appeared in the long window.

  ‘Would you be a complete darling and get Addie from Make-Up to come here? And bring my kit from Stage One. Oh, no, it’s out in the garden now, isn’t it? Nick has absolutely nothing here in my shade … Oh, except this lipstick …’

  Through the open door – from the dusty square below in front of the dressing rooms – Pugh’s voice boomed up, ‘Ask her what the hell’s taking her so long!’

  Considering how long the producer had known Kitty, Emma was a little surprised that he’d ask.

  Three police cars were now parked in front of the Hacienda and it was all Ned Bergen and Mack Farley – the studio’s Head of Security – could do, to keep the extras from gathering around to gawk. Since Thaxter’s dressing room was directly above Kitty’s, Emma could hear the muted grumble of voices below as plump Lieutenant Meyer and cadaverous Sergeant Cusak examined the scene.

  ‘I think they can,’ affirmed Emma, catching up with her sister-in-law and doing up buttons. ‘And I think they’re going to, unless you can prove where you were. I know you can’t have been in the back lot because neither your dress nor Buttercreme’s fur has even one foxtail caught in it.’

  She picked up the Empress Valerna’s discarded robe and held up the sequined hem. Even in the well-trodden purlieu of the main studio compound, trailing gowns, cloaks, and silk stockings were forever picking up the barbed, arrowhead-shaped seedpods that grew so abundantly in California. Emma daily extracted half a dozen from each Pekinese’s fur while brushing them.

  ‘They don’t grow everywhere, darling,’ said Kitty unconvincingly, and sat down at the mirror, to mop cold cream on her face. ‘I swear I was just looking for—’

  ‘Whatever you were doing’ – Zal slipped through the door and shut it behind him – ‘I think you’re going to need a better story than that. Lieutenant Meyer just found three letters from Rex Festraw, dated the beginning of last week, shoved in the back of the top drawer of the vanity in your dressing room, Kit. I thought Pugh was gonna give birth when Meyer brought ’em out.’

  Kitty’s mouth popped open in a shocked O. ‘But I never got any! I really, honestly, never got any—’

  ‘If you’d just tell us—’ Emma began, and her sister-in-law shook her head vigorously, and went back to clearing the pale-yellow maquillage from her face.

  ‘It had nothing to do with Rex. In fact it had nothing to do with anyone. I was looking for—’

  ‘Oh, come on, Kit!’ insisted Zal.

  Emma’s brow puckered. ‘Why would anyone want to frame Kitty?’

  Zal raised his eyebrows and glanced towards the French door. Beyond the walkway outside – and past the railing – Emma could see Darlene Golden scamper across the open ground between the stages and the Hacienda, clothed not in her scanty slave-girl rags, but in even-more-revealing veils from another film entirely …

  And she, clearly, had removed her camera make-up and put on the rouge and powder she would have worn on an evening out with a beau.

  Frank Pugh came out a few steps to meet her, and Darlene threw herself into his massive arms.

  Emma met Zal’s eyes.

  An ambulance van and two more police cars turned slowly through the studio gates from Sunset Boulevard. The guards who let them in sprang to intercept the dozen men – some with cameras – who had been crowded up against the gates arguing with Floyd. Zal sighed. ‘Terrific.’

  ‘Frank won’t let them arrest me.’ Kitty swiveled around from the mirror. Without the thick coating of Motion Picture Yellow and powder, she looked older, and a little fragile. Hollywood, Emma was coming to understand, could be very hard on those who lived there, and she often found herself worrying about this beautiful, maddening goddess who loved her dogs and had made sure that Emma had been invited to the studio Christmas party within a few weeks of her arrival, and who never got enough sleep. ‘We’re three-quarters of the way through filming, and he would never start reshoots this late! It would cost a fortune!’

  Down below, Darlene clasped Frank Pugh’s hand, pressed it to her bosom, and (Emma was certain) assured the studio chief that she, Darlene, would stand by him with unshaken loyalty and love through his coming time of trial.

  A uniformed officer was briefly glimpsed coming out of the main office, then disappeared again under the arcade, clearly headed in the direction of Kitty’s dressing room below. Zal asked, ‘Want me to see what Winged Mercury found out?’

  ‘No,’ said Kitty. ‘I want you to get Addie and my make-up, and take poor little Buttercreme, put her in her box, and take all three of them back to my house. Poor darling, this is so upsetting for her.’ She bent down, picked up the little dog, and carried her to the French door where Zal and Emma were still looking out, though thankfully Pugh and Darlene had disappeared back into the arcade. ‘She’s so sensitive, I’m afraid all this is going to make her ill! And poor Chang, and my darling little Jazz, must be wondering what on earth became of me.’

  ‘They’re not the only ones.’ Zal took Buttercreme into his arms.

  Emma put an arm around Kitty’s shoulders. ‘If you’re in any trouble—’

  ‘I’m not! I was just looking for—’

  Detective Meyer and two policemen appeared at the end of the second-floor walkway, trailed by Conrad Fishbein and Al Spiegelmann, the lawyer for Foremost Productions. Down below, Frank Pugh’s voice could be heard snarling, ‘Get these people out of here!’ and a moment later he, too, lumbered up the steps from below, dark face surly. To Meyer he said, as if continuing a conversation, ‘That coulda been anybody phoning anybody … Rokat
ansky, you tell that kraut muscle-boy if he says one word to those newshounds, I’ll see to it his contract is terminated and his commie ass is on the first boat back to Germany.’

  Down below, the reporters were scattering from the menacing bulk of Mack Farley and three studio guards. Some trailed after Madge Burdon, striding off in the direction of Stage One. Others clustered around the ambulance, doubtless waiting for the coroner’s men to remove Festraw’s body. The Pettingers, pushed to one side, approached one or another of the reporters – undoubtedly with the intention of stating their own convictions about the moral turpitude of Hollywood. But, Emma observed, they were being ignored, a state she knew would last only for as long as it took for the police to remove Kitty from the scene.

  At that point, she guessed, they would become the center of attention.

  Detective Meyer was a short, stout, balding man whose lumpy face was adorned with the style of beard favored by film villains: a black-dyed van dyke with absolutely symmetrical flashes of white at the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Do you identify the dead man as your husband, Rex Festraw?’ He flipped open his notebook as Pugh shut the dressing-room door on the noise from below. Crammed with Fishbein, policemen, and Spiegelmann (who’d been shut out and had to be admitted once Pugh realized it), the room put Emma forcibly in mind of either a sequence from one of the less demanding two-reel comedies which Foremost produced over on Stage Three, or of the sort of exercise undergraduates at Oxford found hilarious.

  ‘You don’t have to answer.’ Fishbein wormed through the press to Kitty’s side.

  ‘Former husband.’ Kitty drew herself up like the Empress Valerna staring down St Peter in scene fifty-eight. ‘I have not seen him since before the end of the War.’

  ‘You received no communication from him?’

  ‘None.’

  Meyer produced and unfolded three sheets of letter paper. Looking over Kitty’s shoulder, Emma glimpsed the words: I’ll come around on Wednesday and if you don’t have $10,000 it’ll be the worse for you. Another proclaimed: I can spill secrets that’ll have you on the street by next week. ‘That his writing?’