Aunt Estelle will be here on Wednesday.
Her breath went out in a little sigh.
She said, ‘I knew you’d come. Thank you. And thank you for the Macaulay—’
‘It was that or Lady Paget’s Colloquies With An Unseen Friend.’
Emma shuddered. That congeries of spiritualism, the hollow earth theory, and speculations upon the fate of Atlantis had been a favorite of Mrs Pendergast and she had been obliged to read it aloud not once but several times.
‘Thank you for looking.’ Emma sat again, Zal drawing up the other wicker chair. ‘It wouldn’t even have occurred to me that a sanatorium must have a library – at least it wouldn’t have, last night. Will you have coffee? Kitty telephoned earlier this morning and told the staff here to send Mr Pugh a bill for all their inconvenience – which included accidentally leaving me behind – so they’re falling over themselves to be of service to me … Is that more sandwiches?’ She nodded toward the paper sack he’d set down beside the chair.
‘Underwear,’ he said. ‘And a hairbrush, and a clean blouse, from Make-Up and Wardrobe – I think this was on screen in Sparkin’ in the Dark. Millie Katz put them together when I stopped by the studio this morning to make sure the cameras are set for the retakes tomorrow. And, Madge asked me to ask you to please rewrite scenes eighty-three through eighty-seven and have St Peter actually marry Philomela and Demetrius on-screen, so people won’t think they’re up to anything they shouldn’t be. And she needs this by tomorrow night. They caught Tim Crain.’
Emma drew a deep breath. ‘Did they? Good.’ Nurse Alvarez – who seemed to have been appointed (or appointed herself) guest liaison – appeared under the archways of the patio’s little cloister, and crossed to them.
‘Can I get you anything, Mr Rokatansky?’
‘Coffee, if you would, thank you, m’am. Mounted sheriffs picked him up just north of Granite Mountain, and I guess he was almost happy to be taken in, til he found out he was under arrest. I gather he started out denying he was Timothy Crain – they found his driving license and business cards in his wallet – and then pretended he had amnesia. Meyer tell you what he got out of Gross?’
Emma nodded. ‘Once we knew Gross had met with Crain it was fairly obvious what was going on. If he hadn’t tried to run us off the highway I’m not sure we’d ever have known Gross was in it.’
‘Well, I gather that was the one thing Gross was worried about – that Kitty would start comparing notes with Eliot Jordan about that so-called rendezvous in the film room, and start inquiries on her own. Gross figured if something went wrong, he’d be the guy to take the fall – but if Kitty died in a car smash-up, it would queer Crain’s deal but leave Gross safe. Nice people.’
He shook his head, and ran his fingers along the cover of the Lays of Ancient Rome.
‘Nicer than the Romans,’ Emma pointed out.
Zal looked up and grinned. ‘Meyer told me this morning they’ve already traced the money Stan Markham in New York sent to the Winterdon back to Junior’s account, and the cost of his train ticket out here as well. I guess Junior was putting through a deal for controlling shares of Iron State Copper, that his dad had already turned down. The Long Beach property was his security. You were right – that’s what this was all about.’ And after a moment he added, ‘That, and getting his hands on Dad’s money once and for all.’
Quietly, Emma asked, ‘How is Mr Crain taking it?’
‘He’s leaving for New York in the morning,’ said Zal. ‘With his lawyer, Kitty says, to see if there’s anything he can do for the ex-Mrs Crain. He’s also meeting with the accountants who’re going to go over his son’s books with a nit comb. And signing the papers to cut Junior out of his will. And consulting with Cornero’s PI about how to find out whether the ex-Mrs Crain was in on it as well.’
Emma winced. ‘Whether she was or she wasn’t, that will be hard.’
‘I feel bad for the guy.’ Zal made a small gesture, helpless in the face of another man’s pain. ‘According to Meyer, Crain Senior never saw this coming. He said he’d clashed with his son a couple of times, and knew that Junior had stuck his hand in the till once or twice, and had some bad debts. But you don’t think … Christ, you don’t expect something like this. Not from your son. And maybe your wife.’
Do you do that, Mrs Blackstone? Want to go back and do a second take …?
‘You don’t,’ said Emma softly. ‘And I don’t. And I’m sure that young Mr Crain felt totally justified, because of his father’s affair with – as my aunt would say – a “cinema performer”.’
Zal sighed a little, and whispered, ‘Jesus. Crain says – according to Meyer – that Junior met him just outside the Commercial Exchange Building, as he was coming out at five. I guess the soda jerk in the drugstore across the street can testify that Junior waited at a table beside the telephone there for forty minutes, until it rang. He jumped up like a jack-in-the-box, answered it, and went straight out the door and across the street, so I’m guessing somebody in the building had been paid off to play chicky. Crain says Junior was all over himself about how glad he was he’d caught dear old Dad, and he had to talk to him, and he’d give Dad a ride home.’
He smiled his thanks to Nurse Alvarez, who came out at that point with a cup of coffee, some sugar and a little pitcher of cream on a tray. ‘I appreciate it, thank you, m’am. And thank you – all of you – for putting up with that whole invasion last night.’
‘This is a hospital,’ said the nurse. ‘Most of our patients are tuberculosis cases, and very quiet. But we’re here to help.’ Leaning closer, she whispered, ‘Everybody was thrilled. And Miss de la Rose signed autographs, for the entire crew, including the kitchen staff.’
As she went back into the shadows of the cloister, Zal said, ‘I’m gonna talk to Crain and make sure he writes these nice people a great big check. Maybe they didn’t save his life, but they could well have saved Gross’s … and it’s Gross who’s gonna put Junior behind bars for the rest of his life. Crain says Junior pulled into the driveway of one of those twisty canyon drives above Sunset, got into the back seat with him, whipped out an oilskin wrapper of chloroform rags and slapped it over his face, and that was the last thing Crain knew until he woke up in the hospital. I guess Junior poured about half a bottle of cognac down his throat when he was half-conscious, so the booze would show up in the autopsy. Nice boy. The funnel was still under the seat, with his fingerprints all over it. Thought of everything.’
Emma shivered. ‘So Gross was watching the house all that time?’
Zal nodded. ‘Like I said, he was afraid that if Kitty – or you, because he knew you were part of her household – figured out there was a conspiracy to get her out of the way right at that time, the cops might start looking below the surface, the way you started to. I mean, if Kitty’s husband turns up dead and Madge Burdon, Darlene Golden, Socrates the Elephant and thirty-seven extras all have proof of where she was at the time, so what? It’s her not being able to say where she was, that smears the whole thing all over every newspaper in the state.’
Emma nodded slowly. ‘It had to be notorious,’ she agreed quietly. ‘It had to be a scandal. Kitty had to be the obvious suspect. And she had to keep her mouth shut about where she really was. Gross knew about Eliot, I take it?’
‘Oh, yeah. Gross did a lot of work around the studios. It was a good plan.’ Zal stirred sugar into his coffee. ‘It would have worked, if you’d kept your nose out of it.’
And no one would have cared, thought Emma. Not really.
Yes, there would have been TREMENDOUS hoopla in the papers, and Temptress of Babylon would have done land-office business in theaters because of the scandal and murder and tragedy … But in a year, or six months, or maybe just a few weeks, Foremost would have a new top star, and Mr Pugh would have a new mistress, and the cinema-going public would sigh and forget. If Camille de la Rose disappears – the way Martha Mansfield and Olive Thomas disappeared – there’s always Glo
ria Swanson and Theda Bara and Colleen Moore and all the other Goddesses of the Silver Screen.
And I’d read the news in The Times in the breakfast parlor of my quiet home in Oxford and think, Oh, how terrible! I knew her …
Or alternately, Aunt Estelle would arrive Wednesday and make enquiries at the studio and be told, We’re so sorry, Mrs Blackstone was involved in some sort of accident Friday night …
And Aunt Estelle would cry a little and get on the train for New York and …
And what?
And nothing.
Emma rested her forehead on her knuckles, suddenly weary with the crushing weariness of last night, and last Wednesday, and six months of brushing Pekinese and sorting out Kitty’s checkbook and watching her bring home every good-looking stuntman and saxophone player in Hollywood, and wondering who was going to tamper with evidence and why …
A warm hand rested on her back. ‘Come on,’ said Zal quietly. ‘Let me get you home.’
‘You love this man,’ said Madge Burdon. ‘You lust after him the way you lust after Eliot Jordan and Ricky Dix and that stunt-rider last week at Anita Tempest’s party. And here’s this mealy-mouthed psalm-singin’ Christian prissy-pants all over Demetrius like a cheap suit—’
‘Phillymelly ain’t no prissy-pants!’ yelled Darlene, and cracked her gum. ‘She’s a woman of … of passion and fire, sensuous and unforgettable—’
Emma had the impression she’d read those descriptive words in one of the film magazines, only they’d been applied to someone other than Darlene’s character.
‘Oh, nertz! Demetrius forgets all about her for about seventy-two scenes,’ Kitty retorted.
‘That’s what I want to see, girls!’ cried Madge. ‘I wanna see sparks fly! You run up that staircase like it’s your man’s soul you’re saving from that Babylonian slut! Kitty, I want to see jealousy and contempt in every muscle of your body!’
The marble-and-gold staircase had been reassembled yesterday, just after someone had taken a belated look at the dailies of scene fifty-six and noticed a coffee cup on the bottom step. Given the amount of champagne which Kitty had consumed last night after the dismissal of the Special Hearing – and the very small hour at which she had returned home that morning – Emma reflected that she looked quite good, standing in the royal box with poor Mr Perkins, dog-sick with the hangover of the century, kneeling in chains at her feet.
Emma, who had celebrated much more circumspectly with Zal at the house, had to admit to feeling a bit sleepy herself.
The Rothstein Boys crashed into the middle of Tchaikovsky’s ‘Marche Slave’, and Darlene hurled herself up the stair as if she planned to tear out her rival’s hair, rather than fling her arms around her agonized beloved, at the top.
She didn’t get the chance to do either. Just as she reached the thirtieth of the thirty-two golden steps, Kitty flung up her hand in a gesture of passion and jealousy, took half a step back, and tripped on the side of the throne.
‘Cut!’ Madge yelled, as the empress caught her balance. ‘You OK, Kit?’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Kitty apologized. ‘That was so clumsy of me. I’m just a little … tired this afternoon.’ She smiled sweetly, as if everyone knew why she was just a little tired.
Beside her, Emma was aware of Frank Pugh standing just behind the cluster of chairs and dog boxes, watching the scene with a fatuous smile illuminating his face. ‘Poor kid,’ he said. ‘It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have kept us out so late—’
‘Oh, Mr Pugh.’ Emma raised her eyes to him, just as if she hadn’t spent a good portion of the previous week wondering if he were a murderer … and just as if she didn’t still think him capable of it. ‘After the strain of the last few weeks, you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if Kitty’s all the better off for being able to relax as she did.’
He beamed, as Darlene stomped down the thirty marble steps to the arena’s sands, and took her place like a passionate, sensuous, and unforgettable runner on the blocks. ‘D’you think so, Duchess?’
Languidly, Kitty turned her gaze towards the studio chief and gave him a look of smoldering allure, instants before Madge yelled, ‘Camera! Action!’ and the ‘Marche Slave’ blazed forth once more.
Galvanized with rage, Darlene charged up the stairs. Kitty lifted her hand in a gesture of passion and jealousy, took half a step forward, and stepped on Demetrius’ chains, causing him to sprawl headlong.
‘Cut!’ yelled Madge.
‘I’ve seldom seen her so … so happy as she was when she came in last night,’ said Emma. No harm in laying it on with a trowel. She was fairly certain that Kitty had.
Mr Pugh almost rolled over onto his back and purred.
The morning’s new issue of Screen Stories lay on the make-up table, glorified with the face of Camille de la Rose in the crown of the Empress of Babylon. THE GODDESS OF THE SILVER SCREEN, shrieked the letterhead. The Queen of ‘It’, the Cat’s Pajamas, the One and the Only …
Enough to disgruntle anyone, thought Emma, even were it not plain to everyone in the studio that Mr Pugh had accepted Kitty’s explanation that all those nasty stories about her having dinner at the Coconut Grove with other men were the productions of Mrs Turnbit and her vile ilk. They were all part of the horrible plot to use Kitty as a cat’s-paw in a scheme that involved murder and stock fraud and oil wells on Signal Hill and had nothing to do with genuine romance …
If what exists between Kitty and Mr Crain IS genuine …
‘Take four!’ shouted Madge. ‘Action!’
‘Marche Slave’ thundered into life. Darlene dashed with unflagging malice but a certain diminution of vitality up the thirty-two marble steps … and Kitty turned her head sharply, as if at some noise from elsewhere in Stage One, where Ned Devine’s crew were hammering together flats which tomorrow (God willing) would be the palatial living room of the wealthy Shepherd family, whose son has risked all to marry the raven-haired ‘hot potato’ Cincinnati Wilder, the chorus girl with the heart of gold.
Over a dinner of Chinese leftovers and bootleg champagne in the kitchen, after their return from the Los Angeles County Courts building yesterday, she and Zal had come up with seven or eight completely improbable conclusions to Hot Potato, in between toasting the dismissal of charges against Kitty Flint, a.k.a. Camille de la Rose, a.k.a. Mrs Chava Festraw …
And maybe one or two toasts, Emma reflected, to the fact that she and Zal hadn’t been killed themselves in the process.
During take seven – with Darlene visibly laboring up the steps yet again (Kitty had dropped one of her bracelets) – Emma picked her way through the clusters of light stands on the edge of the new set, to the trestle tables by the door, in quest of cups and her tea thermos and water for the dogs. Aunt Estelle should be calling me tomorrow, she reflected, but her heart felt curiously calm. You HAVE run away with the gypsies, Zal had said to her, in the velvet darkness of the highway beside an ocean turned to liquid silver by the moon.
And she recalled Mr Crain, paraphrasing Cafavy’s poem: Ithaca will not make you rich; it’s the road that makes you rich.
Dodging Laestrygonians and bootleggers, Cyclopes and crooked cops …
But I don’t belong here, she thought. And I could have been killed, Friday night, while my right work, my true work, lies undone back in Oxford …
Do I ever get to make it back to Ithaca?
Or return to my tower of Shalott?
‘Emma?’
She stopped halfway to the trestles with their serried ranks of coffee cups and thermoses.
She had forgotten how much Aunt Estelle’s voice sounded like her mother’s.
Or had put it out of her thoughts, she reflected, for four agonizing years.
The scent of Guerlain’s sandalwood in the dimness, like the whisper of a ghost.
And there she was. Taller than Mother, and stouter. Mother had been the more beautiful of the sisters, but the bone structure that Emma had known all her life was there, and the smile was
the same.
I can go home! For two weeks she had known it, but the reality of it was like waking from a dream, to find the Emperor Claudius’ Etruscan–Latin Lexicon clasped in her arms.
I can go home …
Turning her head she saw Zal Rokatansky, his cap turned backwards so the bill wouldn’t scrape the take-up reel, cranking gently while the wicked Valerna tore the gentle, Christian, and somewhat winded Philomela from Demetrius’s arms, and hurled her to the ground. ‘Get your meathooks off him, bitch!’ cried the empress, a command which would appear on the title-card as: Unhand one whom your better has chosen, wench!
And the thought came to her, But then I will lose THIS home.
As if the words – like the face of Charles I – had been there all along.
Then Estelle was in her arms, saying, ‘Oh, Emma, darling!’ and Emma clasped her close, the familiar scent that dusted her clothing, whispered from her hair – silk-fine and netted close in a tidy snood, still the mousy hue somewhere between brown sugar and barley-straw, like Emma’s own. Mother’s had begun to turn … It would all be silver by now …
She whispered, ‘Aunt …’ and began to cry. She knew perfectly well that her tears were for the home she was losing, as much as for the one she knew now she would choose.
‘Oh, darling!’ Estelle Vambrace was weeping also. ‘Oh, dearest! Oh, you look so much like Sarah … David, doesn’t she look like Sarah?’
Uncle David – so much like a caricature of a colonial official, in his London tailoring and close-clipped mustache that Emma almost laughed through her tears – muttered an inaudible assent and held out an awkward hand. Emma grasped it. ‘So glad,’ she said. ‘So glad!’
‘They said at the office that we should find you here.’ Estelle’s rich contralto was her own, not Mother’s, with a volume that rivaled Madge’s. ‘Good heavens, is that how they film cinema shows?’ She looked out through the great doors into the gardens. ‘How extraordinary! Is that a woman?’ She stared at Madge Burdon in disapproval and didn’t even trouble to lower her voice.
Scandal in Babylon Page 25
