by Amy Myers
‘Can you tell me what’s going on here apart from the film, Miss Shaw?’ I asked, as the tour seemed to be nearing its conclusion. ‘Something seems wrong.’
‘Call me Louise,’ she said absently. Then: ‘I don’t mind telling you. But first, do you think you’ll get the Auburn back?’
‘Truth is that I don’t know. If it was a straightforward theft I’d stand a better chance, but from what I’ve seen here, that might not be the case. Any chance it was a home-grown job?’
‘Every chance, I’d say. It could be disastrous for the film if it’s not found quickly. This is a relatively low-budget film like Running Tides. That was one of those outsiders that come out of nowhere and take practically every award going. Roger’s hoping Dark Harvest will do the same, but every penny counts. If schedules get disrupted—’
‘And Auburns lost.’
Louie smiled. ‘Quite. You can see for yourself how much planning goes into just one scene, and once Bill gets an idea in his head, such as the Auburn, he won’t be budged. But I can’t see why anyone would want to scupper the film. Quite the opposite. We all have mouths to feed, people to look after.’
A husband? I wondered. I could hardly ask straight out. Too early.
She broke the pause that followed. ‘Do you know anything about Dark Harvest?’
‘Not the plot or your role, but Bill explained the revenge theme and how the cars fit in.’
‘Good. We actors don’t usually notice the overall effect, the mood, as we shoot scene by scene, partly because they’re usually out of order. On this film, though, if we look at the storyboards before we shoot, or watch the dailies, the rough cuts, afterwards, we can sense something unnerving, almost menacing.’
‘Clouds in the bright blue sky?’ I contributed, not very brilliantly.
‘At least one can see clouds. Here that’s not always the case. But this time it’s not only the film itself, but the studios, this set, this production. It seems dogged by bad luck at the very least.’
‘And at worst?’
‘Someone intent on ensuring it doesn’t succeed.’
‘You talked of the Auburn as the last straw.’
‘If the theft was only a practical joke,’ she said, ‘the car might reappear next Monday.’
‘Why a joke? Have there been others?’
‘A whole spate of them. That cable you tripped over. It shouldn’t have been there. Dead against the gaffer’s rules. It was probably meant for me. When we blocked the scene yesterday, I was to dash from the daybed to try to escape Cora’s fury. I’d have fallen right over that cable, but Bill switched the move at the last moment.’
In anyone else I would have thought this a case of paranoia but this was Louise and I believed her.
‘We’ve had a series of odd happenings, first in London and now here,’ she continued, ‘and several of them have involved me. Individually they mean nothing, but added together it’s not only scary but ominous. I lost my mother’s charm bracelet, my car wouldn’t start but it proved to be something quite simple. There have been one or two threatening letters and other minor irritations. Angie’s historical notes file was found in charred pieces. The worst hit was the caretaker.’
‘What happened?’
‘He’s permanent staff and does all the maintenance work. His dog Henry made a good guard dog, but Henry was a great scrounger round the canteen waste bins. Sometimes his own plateful was put out for him, but last Thursday morning he was found poisoned.’
The day the Auburn was taken. Coincidence that the guard dog was eliminated? ‘That sounds more than creepy, Louise. It sounds vicious. What about Angie Wade? Anything else happen to her apart from the burnt file?’
‘She’s public enemy number one, and she had a particularly vitriolic poison pen letter. She accused me of sending it, and being Angie she did it publicly. So the car, as I said, is the last straw.’
‘Although it’s technically Bill’s?’
‘Sure, but identified with Angie. The word goes round that “here comes Auburn Angie”, not “Auburn Eleanor Richey” who drives the car in the film.’
‘What part does she play?’
‘Cora Langton.’ Seeing this meant nothing to me, she continued, ‘I’d better explain the plot. It centres on Tranton Towers, as it’s called in the film, which is owned by Lord Charing, big in government. I play Julia Danby, his discarded mistress, married to Charles but bent on revenge on his lordship. I plan it for the Jubilee Ball weekend at Tranton Towers. His son Robert is about to get engaged to rich American heiress Cora Langton, which would greatly help the depleted fortunes of the stately pile. However, enter the great seductress, me, planning to bust up the cosy engagement. The way I do it, you won’t be amazed to hear, is by seducing Robert over the weekend. Robert falls for me in a big way, and the affair – once we’ve got rid of Cora temporarily – proceeds to the point where Lord Charing is so desperate that he tells his son about his own relationship with me. Shock, horror. His lordship then kills himself and, full of remorse, Robert goes back to Cora. Got it?’
I thought it sounded disappointingly standard stuff but I could hardly say so. She laughed, as she saw my expression.
‘There’s a twist. I then make the unhappy discovery that I’m actually in love with Robert. Too late, too late.’
‘Sounds a negative sort of outcome,’ I ventured.
‘It could be, but not in Bill’s hands. He’s a genius. You wait till you see how it works out.’
‘The mood?’
‘Yes. Cora’s the bright American lass with whom the good solid Englishman gets hitched, whereas Julia and husband are captivated by the fascists. Hence the cars. Miss America drives the Auburn, and the ultra English Robert drives the Bentley. Von Ribbentrop drives the German Horch, and I share the Italian Fiat with my fascist husband. Justin Parr’s playing Robert. You’ve seen him on TV, I expect. He’s a poppet.’
I disliked him already. ‘The theft could have been intended to spite either Angie or Eleanor then?’
‘Angie’s the more likely. Ellie’s harmless. She’s new on the block, whereas a lot of us know Angie of old.’
‘You couldn’t have been in Running Tides? You’d have been in your cradle.’
‘I didn’t put you down as a line-shooter.’
‘Fair hit,’ I conceded.
‘I wasn’t in it. I was still struggling doing bit parts on TV and since then I’ve run across Angie from time to time.’
‘Why does she have so much influence? She seems to act more like a prima donna than an adviser. Director’s wife or not, she shouldn’t be in a position to get Tom sacked once, let alone try for a second go. Why doesn’t Bill or Roger rein her in?’
‘Roger has a soft spot for Angie, chiefly because she’s best chums with his wife, who holds most of the purse strings. Not an easy situation. Bill could overrule Angie, but he won’t. Everything takes second place to the film while it’s shooting. This film is going to be tricky, especially when we go on location next week, so endless squabbles with Angie won’t help either Bill or Roger.’
‘How much more shooting is there to do?’
‘About another three or four weeks. It can’t be more. We’ve all got other commitments after that, so we have to stick to schedule. It’s one hell of a problem, and you, Jack, are the angel who’s going to solve it for us.’
‘Thanks for your faith,’ I said wryly. Another three weeks and she might walk out of my life. I pulled myself together. She wasn’t even in it yet. ‘What about the car adviser?’ I asked apparently carelessly. ‘Doesn’t he have emergency solutions?’
She looked at me rather oddly. ‘He’s not into detective work.’
‘I’m glad. I wouldn’t be here if he was.’
She laughed. ‘How’s the ankle? Can it make it to a brief look at the other two studios and then the canteen for a quick coffee?’
Louise’s company was so enjoyable that it would be easy to persuade myself that hunting down th
e missing Auburn could only be done at the studios – and who was to say that wasn’t right? ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’, as some character in Hamlet observed. For me, substitute Stour Studios. Except for Louise. Nothing amiss there. Walking beside her, I felt as if I’d known her for ever and that it was going to continue that way.
The set dressers, she explained, were still finishing up in Studio One for the love scene between herself and Justin Parr being shot that afternoon. I tried not to imagine too vividly what it might consist of, and instead took a curious look at a few of the people who theoretically might have stolen the Auburn. The set was of a small drawing room and lighting technicians were focusing stand-based and overhead lamps, while around them buzzed half a dozen set dressers adjusting cushions, furniture, and family photographs.
‘Is Justin around?’ I asked, as we stood inside the doorway.
‘No. Far too early. We’re called for two thirty, another two and a half hours, and he’s well known for walking in on the dot. Me, I need a few minutes on set to complete the change from being Louise to Julia Danby.’
‘Is that difficult?
‘No. It’s a routine. I just shut my eyes and seductress Julia slowly takes over.’
I definitely didn’t want to know what kind of love scene would follow. ‘Show me how you change character.’ I’d keep the seductress Louise for later – if and when.
She took me at my word. She shut her eyes and the face became expressionless and immobile. Then it began slowly to alter and when the eyes flew open again the woman before me was a stranger, full of contradictions, doubts, determination, malicious, vulnerable, and with the face of a Delilah. Then she relaxed and Louise was back with me.
‘Did you see?’ she asked doubtfully.
‘I prefer Louise to Julia.’
‘Thank you, Jack.’ Then she kissed my cheek.
It had been meant lightly, but something had happened between us. From her look of sudden bewilderment she too realized that and wasn’t sure she liked it. My move. I took her hand, and she smiled.
‘Is there a Mrs Colby?’ she asked.
‘An ex of twenty years standing. Is there a Mr Shaw?’
‘Yes.’
I knew life couldn’t be this kind to me.
‘Two in fact,’ she continued. ‘My father and my brother.’
‘They’re wonderful people,’ I said fervently.
‘You’ll like them.’
This studio wasn’t Number One, it was Cloud Nine.
‘The tour,’ she added pointedly, and I promptly leapt off my cloud and returned to business mode. Studio Three was vast. It was here that the Jubilee Ball was to be shot, and if someone had told me that there were a thousand people working on this set I’d have believed them. The crew was here in force, with generators, lamps, candles, cameras, moving platforms, Steadicams, and audio equipment, plus a construction team setting up the ballroom. There was accompanying noise, with shouts, cries and general hum so loud that it assaulted the ears. It was like being faced with the merry old land of Oz, watching people busily rigging lights, adjusting camera angles and polishing the floor. And Bill Wade was the wizard in charge of the lot.
‘Crew time,’ Louise told me, ‘uncontaminated by cast or extras. We’re not shooting here until tomorrow.’
‘Are there many extras?’
‘You bet, though they’re often called background now. Roger’s rubber-stamped a hundred and fifty for two days’ work. Costume’s been stretched to produce enough dress jackets and evening gowns for that number. Let alone the tiaras.’
‘Would there be lists of both cast and background for the days when the incidents occurred?’
‘Sure to be. Ask Casting.’
‘Er . . .?’ I tried to place this but failed.
‘Their room’s in the production building, first floor somewhere.’
‘Great.’ I could see that trying to approach the case by eliminating them one by one was likely to be a non-starter. I had to plough on, however, if the answer to the Auburn theft lay within the studios. It seemed Kafkaesque; I would be plunging through a never-ending fog towards some indication of where that beautiful object now was. In a scrapyard? No one could be so crass as to destroy it. A thing of beauty was a joy for ever, Keats said, and he would have drooled over the glories of the 1935 Auburn. Those amazingly elegant pontoon fenders, that breathtaking boattail, that gleaming cream paint . . .
‘Let’s have that coffee,’ Louise suggested. ‘I’ll grab a sandwich too, and then I’ll have to disappear. And you can get your cast lists. Did someone give you a security pass?’
‘Someone did.’ Reception had unbent sufficiently to hand me one with her own fair hand.
The canteen was plush and huge, so plush that I wondered how the hospitality suite could better it. I suppose the canteen needed to be on a grand scale with that number of cast and crew to be fed and watered all day long. It was nearly lunchtime, and it was reasonably full. There were plenty of crew here, plus some costumed cast, judging by the odd dress suit and plus fours. One or two of the women were in slinky cocktail dresses.
‘I always feel half in character here,’ Louise said. ‘A sort of betwixt and between place. Don’t worry though. I won’t seduce you here.’
‘Pity,’ I said lightly. I was conscious that we both seemed to be skirting round the edges of the next step – if there was one.
Muted conversations seemed the order of the day here too. I could see Tom sitting at a table with several other men and a pleasant-looking woman of about forty, all talking earnestly. Louise and I found a table nearby and I went to get some coffee. ‘This car adviser . . .’ I began, as I returned bearing the cups.
‘You’ll meet him on Monday.’
‘Who—?’
At that moment I saw Angie striding in, clad in designer jeans and expensive jewellery, with – of course – large sunglasses on top of her head and an expression that conveyed that she was important. She looked both a joke and formidable, as she swanned over to Tom. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but the meaning was clear, because Tom pushed back his chair, got to his feet and walked out, white-faced. As he passed us, he managed a wink. ‘It’s the push again. Collect the cash and go.’
One of his companions, a man who looked in his mid thirties, with a gentle face and dark hair plastered back, no doubt for thirties’ style, stood up to confront Angie. ‘You can’t do this,’ he yelled at her, visibly trembling, as she stalked off to the counter. ‘Not again.’ The room was suddenly hushed.
Angie stopped in her tracks and spun round. ‘I have done it, Chris,’ she said coolly. ‘Or rather Roger has.’
‘We all know it’s you who wants Tom out.’
‘Sit down, Chris,’ one of his neighbours said quietly. ‘You won’t do Tom any good.’ He was older, perhaps fifty or so, and certainly wiser. Chris reluctantly obeyed, looking near to tears either with frustration or fear.
‘Good is what I want,’ Angie said coolly. ‘The good of the film. Whatever it takes.’ She was infuriatingly calm, seeming almost bored. She must have strong cards in her hands, I thought, to risk being so unpopular.
‘That’s hard to see,’ the older man remarked.
‘No doubt it is – for you, Brian,’ Angie said.
At this, Brian seemed about to leap up to defend himself, but the third man at the table (‘Graham,’ Louise hissed) stopped him. The woman (‘Joan Burton’) said sharply, ‘Don’t, Brian.’
Angie smirked – no other word for it – clearly aware that she was the object of fascinated attention. ‘We require high standards here. From both cast and extras. Do remember that, Chris. I hope your work lives up to it. Yours too, Brian. And Graham, isn’t it?’ She then added as an afterthought, ‘And even you, Joan.’
The meaning was crystal clear to everyone. Shut up or get out. No ‘background’ for her. They were mere extras.
With that, Angie decided to leave the canteen, perhaps thinking
that coffee wasn’t such a bright idea after all.
‘Sure this isn’t a scene shoot?’ I asked Louise in wonder.
‘I wish it was. She’s for real, unfortunately. You think that’s bad. You should hear what she spits out in a one to one confrontation.’
‘As bad as that?’
‘Oh yes. That’s why I didn’t intervene just now. It would have made things worse. Luckily she can’t give me a lethal wound but others aren’t in such a good position. Chris Frant and Graham East are basically non-speaking, although they’re playing von Ribbentrop and the Prince of Wales respectively. Brian Tegg, the older man, might seem less vulnerable because he’s a supporting actor playing Lord Charing, but she has him in her sights in a big way. If she gets nasty he could be recast even at this late stage because his big scenes are still to come. Joan’s playing the housekeeper, another supporting role, but I think she’s safe; she’s everyone’s favourite. Everyone’s but Angie’s, that is.’
‘But Angie can’t touch you?’
‘Afraid she can. My script gets mysteriously changed every now and then. Nothing you can put your finger on, but the result isn’t quite as strong as the original – which incidentally wasn’t written by her. She merely tinkers with it.’
‘What has she against you?
‘I suppose it just comes back to power. I’m not part of the old gang, but Bill and I have to spend a lot of time together.’
‘By old gang you mean from Running Tides?’
‘Yes. Everyone at Tom’s table stems from those days and there are others around.’
I took another look – Chris still looked white-faced, Brian Tegg seemed to be doing his best to cheer him up and Graham East, who was about Chris’s age and seemed the serious, quiet type, was talking to Joan.
‘Does Margot Croft fit into that story?’ I asked.
