‘What’s she like? Is she married?’
‘Several times, I believe. Her first venture was with Lord Somebody-or-Other, when she was in musical comedy.’
‘Lord Roxbury of Brene,’ said Monica automatically.
‘Something like that. Her second venture, more recent and still in operation, is with Kurt Gagern, or von Gagern.’
Monica stared at him. ‘But I never heard of him!’
‘You will,’ the other assured her. ‘Gagern is the rising star hereabouts. He was a director for UFA before the Nazis threw him out of Germany. He’s strict Aryan; one of the old ‘von-und-zu’ aristocrats, I believe; but he didn’t get on well there. He’s now assistant director to Howard Fisk for Spies at Sea. In some way he hypnotized the Admiralty into letting him get all the authentic naval stuff, for exteriors, at Portsmouth and even at Scapa Flow.’
There was a curious tone in Cartwright’s voice, which Monica did not notice. In the first place, she was rather annoyed with her idol for getting married without her knowledge. In the second place, they had now come round to the front of the main building.
Inside, where it was cool, she found the atmosphere she had been expecting: the atmosphere of hurry, ultimatums, and slammed doors. The building was a hive of long galleries, with little offices set side by side like ships’ cabins; and most of the activity seemed to consist of opening and shutting doors. People stalked; typewriters ticked; there was a heavy smell of paint. A page-boy emerged from the canteen, eating a chocolate bar. Cartwright went down a long open passage – a sort of glass-enclosed Bridge of Sighs – running through bright gardens to the sound-stages at the far end.
The corridor beyond was immense. It was of concrete, rapping with echoes, and reminded Monica of an airport. From it, sound-proof doors opened into the stages. The red light was burning over the door of number three, to show that you must not open the door during sound-recording. Cartwright beckoned Monica to wait; and he listened, with diabolical glee, to the conversation of two men who were standing in the middle of the corridor.
One was a short fat man with a cigar, the other a tall spectacled young man with an ultra-refined accent.
‘Lookit,’ said the fat man. ‘This ballroom sequence.’
‘Yes, Mr Aaronson?’
‘This blow-out,’ explained the fat man, ‘that the Duchess of Richmond gives before the Battle of Waterloo.’
‘Yes, Mr Aaronson.’
‘Well, I’ve just seen the rushes. It’s lousy. There ain’t enough hot-cha in it.’
‘But, Mr Aaronson –’
‘Now lookit,’ said the fat man. ‘What it wants, see, is a song for Erica Moody to sing. Luke Fitzdale, he’s just turned out a hot number that’s a honey. So here’s what we do, see? The Duke of Wellington says: “Ladies and gentlemen, we got a big surprise for you to-night,” see? So the Duchess of Richmond sits on the piano and sings it.’
‘But I really don’t think she would have done that, Mr Aaronson.’
‘You don’t think so?’
‘No, Mr Aaronson.’
‘Well, that’s what she’s going to do in this picture. And another thing. There’s another spot for a song that’s a natural. We’ll have her sing again before the battle, to cheer the troops up. I got it all figured out. The Duchess of Richmond –’
The red light over the door went out.
‘In you go,’ said Cartwright. He knocked out his curved pipe against the wall, and pushed Monica ahead of him into darkness.
2
The sound-stage inside was rather like a barn, a Gargantuan barn covering some half an acre. Like a barn, it was darkish and cluttered. It looked a hundred feet high. Hollowly, innumerable small noises made a tinkling background: footsteps, iron cables dragging, the rasp of a saw, muttered voices. Though there appeared to be a good many persons moving about, they moved as shadows. Lights, dead-pale lights – all very distant, and none apparently directed towards what you were looking at – threw a bluish pallor to join the few gleams of daylight from under the roof.
It was a mass and a mess. They had built everybody’s house, everybody’s garden, everybody’s nightmare; built it, and then broken it up.
With Cartwright’s hand firmly clasping her elbow, Monica stumbled through a submerged world. Fragments of a prison (the black-painted wooden bars looking very unconvincingly) were stacked in flats against one wall. They passed a hotel kitchen, and a part of Westminster Bridge. They crossed a suburban street, of which the principal house – that of a homicidal physician, from a story by William Cartwright – was a complete, practical-built house from the last grey-painted brick outside to the last stick of furniture inside. The street looked bluish and dingy and unpleasantly sinister. It seemed to Monica that they had been groping for miles before a murmur of voices rose ahead, and a core of brilliant light became visible across the floor.
‘Silence, please!’ shouted a voice. ‘Silence!’
‘There she is,’ said Cartwright.
They were looking, as though deep under a hood, into the bedroom of a luxury suite aboard an ocean liner. And in the middle of the cabin, wearing a low-cut gold evening gown, out of which her full shoulders rose superbly, stood Frances Fleur.
The aching clarity of the light made every colour and detail more vivid than life. Pink-and-white panelled walls, white upholstery, mahogany round the port-hole windows, all glowed and glistened. The toilet articles on the dressing-table appeared to be made of gold; the white door stared; even the lamp and the water-bottle glittered on the table by the bed. Frances Fleur’s make-up, the skin a super flesh-tint like orange-gold, contrasted with her long, narrow eyes and rich black hair. The face was broad and rather high of cheek-bone, incuriously placid, and the eyebrows looked as though they had been painted on oiled silk.
‘Look out for that cable!’ muttered Cartwright, and caught Monica as she tripped. She had been walking on tiptoe since their entrance. ‘Move over here. Ss-t!’
‘SILENCE, PUL-LEASE!’
All noise was blotted out. At the edge of the lights there were silhouettes, ghost-faces, and the Martian shapes of machinery.
‘Roll ’em!’
A faint bell rang twice. A young man in a sweater stepped out in front of the camera, holding up a smallish square wooden board.
‘Spies at Sea. Scene number thirty-six. Take two.’
The lower edge of the board, set on a spring, clicked sharply. The young man stepped back. And Frances Fleur came to life.
The plump, handsome brunette seemed undecided. Her features expressed this. She moved her smooth shoulders above the gold gown. She glanced towards the door. Then she pressed a bell-push. With a celerity unknown in any ocean-liner since the Ark, her summons was answered by a stewardess.
This stewardess, obviously, was up to no good. She was a middle-aged woman with a tough, leering face. Any Secret Service agent, after one glance at that dial, would promptly have locked away his papers and sat down to guard them with a gun.
‘You rang, my lady?’
‘Yes. Did you deliver my message to Mr De Lacy?’
‘Yes, my lady. Mr De Lacy will be here at once.’
‘Cut!’ whispered a new voice.
Then everything stopped.
Monica’s first impression was that something must be wrong. But neither Frances Fleur nor the sinister stewardess nor anybody else seemed to find anything unusual in it. They merely waited. The sinister stewardess, it is true, appeared to be in a state of agitation bordering on tears. Otherwise everything seemed to move in slow-motion.
After a decent interval, evidently for consultation in the gloom, a tall, grey-haired, semi-bald man stepped out on the set. He was very thoughtful. He wore a modest tweed suit, a mild-coloured pullover, and huge country shoes. The lights glinted on his mild pince-nez, and the high, narrow arch of his forehead. Monica, having seen his picture, knew him at once for Howard Fisk, the director.
What Mr Fisk said to the two actresses is n
ot known. If he had a fault, it was that of being almost completely inaudible. At a distance of more than six feet, it was difficult for the keenest ear to detect a single word he said. To Monica – who had rather expected him to yell through a megaphone, and bring down the house – this came as a shock.
But he made gestures. He patted the sinister stewardess on the back, and seemed to be talking kindly to her. He held an intimate and ghostly conversation with Frances Fleur; interrupted by long pauses during which he looked thoughtfully round the set, and appeared to meditate. Finally, he nodded, smiled to them, waved his hand, and left the set.
Monica drew a breath of relief.
‘Spies at Sea. Scene number thirty-six. Take three.’
The sinister stewardess appeared again.
‘You rang, my lady?’
‘Yes. Did you deliver my message to Mr De Lacy?’
‘Yes, my lady. Mr De Lacy will be here at once.’
‘Cut!’
Mr Fisk walked out on the set. His visit was rather longer on this occasion.
‘Spies at Sea. Scene number thirty-six. Take four.’
The sinister stewardess appeared again.
‘You rang, my lady?’
Monica could not control herself. ‘But why don’t they get on with it?’ she whispered. ‘Why do they keep taking just that little bit over and over again?’
‘Sh!’ hissed Cartwright.
‘But how many times are they going to take it?’
This question was answered by the sinister stewardess herself. The agitation of the sinister stewardess had been steadily growing throughout. When asked for the sixth time whether she had delivered the message to Mr De Lacy, she lost her nerve, said: ‘No,’ and burst into tears.
Mr Fisk was understood to say that they would take a short break.
3
‘Well?’ inquired Cartwright. ‘How did you like it?’
‘It’s the most fascinating thing I ever saw.’
‘So! – You don’t by any chance notice anything wrong here?’
‘Wrong?’
Monica stared at him. The group round the set had begun to dissolve. A sound-truck clattered, setting the lights vibrating: some of them had been turned off. William Cartwright stood looking from side to side, hesitantly, as though he were sniffing the powder-scented air. The curved pipe, empty, was again hooked to his lower teeth. He seemed quite serious.
‘Wrong,’ he insisted, making the pipe waggle. ‘In the first place, though I’ve seen several people have hysterics with good reason, I never knew it to happen to old MacPherson before.’ He nodded towards the sinister stewardess, who was still standing on the set, being comforted by Howard Fisk. ‘There’s something in the air. Half the people here have the jitters; and I wish I knew why.’
‘Aren’t you imagining things?’
Miss Frances Fleur had walked regally off the set. She was now sitting on a camp-stool not far away from them, just beyond the range of the lights. She was alone except for a (real) maid who even here wore cap and apron, and who was studying her make-up. It was difficult to associate Frances Fleur with any nervousness. Her placidity looked unbroken and unbreakable. During the long monologues of Howard Fisk, she had merely nodded and smiled and done it all over again. She did not appear to be thinking about anything.
‘In the second place,’ pursued Cartwright, ‘it’s unnatural. There are too few people here.’
‘You call this too few?’
‘I do. To say nothing of extras, where’s the usual gang of visitors, friends, retainers, and hangers-on? Look! The place is practically deserted. You and F.F. and MacPherson and F.F.’s maid are the only women here. I don’t even see the continuity-girl: which is impossible. Something’s wrong.’
‘Still –’
‘Oh, it’s probably nothing. But I was wondering about Tom Hackett. Anyway, there’s your F.F. in the flesh. Would you like to meet her?’
‘I would, rather. I’d been wondering whether I ought to or not.’
‘Why not?’
Monica had a burst of honesty. ‘I’ve sometimes wondered whether she might not turn out to be some dreadful pain in the neck. But she doesn’t look like that.’
‘She isn’t … Frances!’
The large brunette turned her head from staring at nothing, and smiled. She seemed to come to life exactly as she had come to life before the camera.
‘Frances, may I present a great admirer of yours? Miss Stanton – Miss Fleur.’
‘How do you do?’ smiled Miss Fleur.
She was transfigured. Her smile grew warm, showing fine teeth. Yet she did not, so to speak, turn it on. The process was not as mechanical as that. Her charm of manner was perfectly genuine; she liked to be liked; and, when you expressed admiration for her, it pleased her and you felt the physical glow of response which emanated from her.
‘Miss Stanton,’ Cartwright explained, ‘is here to do some work for Tom Hackett. By the way, she is the young lady who wrote Desire.’
Frances Fleur paused in examining a scarlet finger-nail, and looked up. So far she had seemed amiable but perfunctory. It was slightly different now. She looked at Monica. She looked at her again.
‘Not – ?’
‘Yes,’ said Cartwright firmly.
‘Is it really? How nice to meet you! That’s to be my next part, you know.’
Monica stared at her.
‘Eve,’ explained Miss Fleur. ‘Not Eve in the Garden of Eden, that is, but Eve in your book. Do come and sit down here. I must talk to you. Eleanor, bring a chair for Miss Stanton.’
Eleanor did so. Monica was placed in such a position that Miss Fleur could see her in a good light. For Miss Fleur was genuinely curious. She had not actually read Desire, but she had got her husband to read all the best bits aloud to her; and she was interested. Her appraising glance ran and rang like a cash-register. What she thought was not apparent.
‘Is this your first visit here?’ she asked. ‘I hope you like it. I did so enjoy your book.’ Here she looked at Monica even more curiously.
‘It’s awfully good of you to say so.’
‘Not at all,’ laughed the other. ‘My husband – Baron von Gagern – loved it too. He chooses all my parts. You must meet him. Kurt! Kurt!’
She looked round.
‘Where on earth is Kurt? It’s not like him to disappear like that. Have you seen him?’
‘No,’ answered Cartwright. ‘And I haven’t seen Tom Hackett, though he must be here somewhere.’
A glance flashed between them. Frances Fleur’s eyes were very expressive. ‘In that case,’ she went on, deliberately avoiding whatever subject he meant to introduce, ‘she must meet Howard, of all people. Howard! Will you come over here a moment, please?’
The director administered a last squeeze to the shoulder of the sinister stewardess, who was wiping her eyes. He seemed to have cheered her up considerably. Then he lumbered across in his big shoes. Seen at close range, he had the appearance of a distinguished doctor or scientist. He was rubbing his hands together, in a smiling, and satisfied way, as he approached the group. At a distance of three feet his mild voice became audible.
‘Well, we’re getting on,’ Howard Fisk confided. ‘Yes, definitely we’re getting on.’ He stopped to reflect. ‘One of those takes ought to do. And Annie MacPherson is feeling much better.’
‘Howard, may I introduce the new script-writer?’ Mr Fisk woke up.
‘Ah, yes. The expert from Hollywood. Hackett mentioned it. How do you do?’ he said, enfolding Monica’s hand in a large paw, and beaming on her. ‘I hope you won’t find our English ways too slow for you.’
‘No,’ said Cartwright, slowly and distinctly. ‘This is another person. Miss Stanton wrote Desire. She has never had any film experience.’
Mr Fisk patted her hand.
‘Is that so? Then you’re still more welcome. Were you watching the takes? What did you think of them?’
‘She thought you took a dev
il of a long time over them,’ answered Cartwright, with (deliberate?) tactlessness. Monica, hot and tongue-tied, could have flown at his beard and pulled it. Her anguish was the worse in that both Frances Fleur and Howard Fisk were smiling at her. And her mind seethed with the injustice of it. She was suddenly conscious of a great shrewdness behind Mr Fisk’s pince-nez.
‘You mustn’t confuse patience with incompetence,’ the director told her. ‘Unfortunately, the first requisite here is patience. And the second.’ He meditated. ‘And the third. Besides, we had an unpleasant bit of business at the rehearsal.’
‘So?’ said Cartwright. ‘Is that why Tom Hackett told us there’d been a mix-up in which someone nearly got killed?’
Mr Fisk was amused. He continued to pat Monica’s hand: it was beginning to make her uncomfortable.
‘Tut, tut! Nothing like that. Only a foolish piece of carelessness on somebody’s part. I’m going to be firm with those property men this time.’
‘But what happened?’
A shade of discomfort passed over the director’s face. Still without relinquishing Monica’s hand, he turned round and nodded towards the set.
‘You see that water-bottle? On the table beside the bed? There – just by the door?’
‘Yes.’
Though less well lighted now, the rich colours of the cabin still showed like a distant picture post-card. Again they noted the glass water-bottle on the table beside the bed, spick and span and glistening.
‘There was no harm done, I’m glad to say. Though Annie MacPherson got a shock, because she was nearest. We were all on the set at rehearsal, and I was explaining the business to Frances and Annie. I can’t think how it came to happen.’
‘Go on!’
‘Well, I was moving about; and making gestures, I suppose. Gagern and I were talking, and I was walking backwards, and he said: “Look out!” I bumped into that little table by the bed, and over it went. There was a sizzling kind of noise, rather unpleasant. The water-bottle had fallen off on the bed, fortunately. A whole section of the counterpane, and the sheets underneath, and even the mattress, started to shrivel and blister and rot away like wasp-holes in an apple. The water-bottle hadn’t been full of water. It was full of oil of vitriol – sulphuric acid.’
And So To Murder Page 4
