‘And when, exactly, did you hear about it disappearing?’
‘About a quarter to five in the afternoon. Roger Baker rang through from the Library to the sound-stage and told me. I went straight to the Library: that was why nobody could find me. I found out it was true. I came back to the sound-stage about five minutes past five o’clock. Tom Hackett was standing by the door, searching everybody (for acid) who went out. I went straight to a telephone and rang you up; and we were still talking when I heard a window smash at ten minutes past five – the time of the acid-pouring. I did not tell Hackett about the loss of the film until later. He was upset enough as it was.’
‘And who has access to this Library?’
‘Anybody. We share it with Radiant Pictures and S.A.G.’
H.M. eyed him curiously. ‘You treat things sort of careless down in that part of the world, don’t you, son?’
‘Unfortunately, we do.’
‘Well,’ said H.M., ‘I’ve got only one thing to say to you. You two get together and you find me that film. I don’t care two hoots and a whistle for anything else. Now just you beetle off and let me get some work done. Only –’ His big face smoothed itself out. An eye, small and sharp and disconcerting, swung round to Bill Cartwright. ‘Was it her voice, son?’ he asked softly.
‘Whose voice?’
‘Was it Tilly Parsons’s voice you heard outside the window when somebody took a pot-shot at this gal?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Bill abruptly. ‘I’m afraid it was.’
After a silence Bill turned to Gagern.
‘Monica’s downstairs now,’ he went on. ‘I suggest we all have a drink and go into this. I can’t believe that Tilly, of all people, is up to any funny business. But if she is – well, Monica’s the person who has got to know it.’
‘At your service,’ said Gagern.
Captain Blake took them out. The last thing they saw, before the door closed, was H.M. sitting like an impassive and ill-tempered idol, piled behind his desk; and both of them had an idea that H.M. was telling less than he knew. They were let out of the War Office by a different entrance from that by which they had come in, opening into a street parallel with Horse Guards Avenue on the other side; so that they had to walk all the way round the block to reach the main court-yard again. Big Ben was just striking the shock of four-thirty – a fact which later became important.
Monica was not in the ante-room.
They began to search, pushing among the crowd. They were still searching, frantically, when one of the messengers took pity on them.
‘The young lady, sir?’ he said to Bill. ‘Oh, she’s gone. She walked out of here not a minute after you went upstairs.’
3
Up in the little office above the court-yard, growing grey with afternoon light, Sir Henry Merrivale still sat behind his desk and stared at the door. The corner of one nostril seemed to have acquired a permanent twist, as though he were smelling a bad breakfast egg.
Captain Blake closed the door, sat down on the edge of the desk, and looked at him.
‘H.M.,’ he said, ‘what’s the game?’
‘Eh?’
‘I said,’ repeated his companion in a louder voice, ‘what’s the game?’
‘Oh, I was just sittin’ and thinkin’.’ H.M.’s eye wandered round the office, out into the court-yard, and over blank rows of windows. ‘Y’know, Ken – I’m not goin’ to be here much longer.’
‘Nonsense!’ said the other sharply.
‘It’s true, though. This is a young man’s war, Ken. I’m nearly seventy years old: did you know that?’
‘Bah.’
‘No, Ken; I’m not foolin’ this time. I’m surprised it’s lasted as long as this. In another week or so I’ll be gettin’ my walking-papers. And then what? I’ll tell you. As sure as you live and breathe, the hyena-souled bounders are goin’ to stick me straight into the House of Lords –’
Ken Blake interrupted him.
‘But see here, H.M.’ he argued, ‘I don’t see any reason for such a nightmare. Masters tells me you’ve been going on for a long time about being treacherously sand-bagged and shoved into the House of Lords. But why? After all, it’s not obligatory. Even if they do offer you a peerage, you can always politely refuse it, can’t you?’
H.M. regarded him with a dreary eye.
‘Oh, my son! – You’re married, aren’t you?’
‘H’m,’ said the other, enlightened.
‘Yes. In addition to which, I’ve got two marriageable daughters. Ken, what would happen to me at home if I refused a peerage just won’t bear thinkin’ about. It makes me wake up in a cold sweat at night when I dream about it.’
He reflected.
‘I’ll tell you what I’m goin’ to do, Ken,’ he declared quite seriously. ‘If they try any trick like that, I’ll tell you exactly what I’m goin’ to do. I’m going out east and enter a Trappist monastery.’
‘Don’t be an ass!’
‘I mean it, son. They got some vows I rather like. “Chastity, poverty, and silence.” I never was very keen about chastity or poverty; but, burn me, Ken, the silence would suit me right down to the ground. Besides –’
‘Besides what?’
H.M. squirmed. He glared at the pen-holder.
‘Well, Ken,’ he mumbled uncomfortably. ‘I mean, we’re none of us gettin’ any younger. It’s got to be in the nature of things. Three score years and ten. I mean to say, there comes a time in every bloke’s life when he’s got to think about dyin’; when he knows there can’t be many more years to –’
His companion was aghast. In all the moods of grousing which had ever beset H.M. – and the name of them was legion – he had never before gone as far as this.
‘Drop it,’ Captain Blake said sharply.
H.M. continued to shake his head.
‘Well, Ken, y’know –’
‘I said: “Drop it.” I know exactly what’s wrong with you. In the first place, they’re not going to retire you. Even if they do, you’ve still got more intelligence in that nut of yours than the whole crowd of them put together.’
‘That’s what you think.’
‘In the second place, you had lunch with the Home Secretary; and that’s practically fatal. In the third place’ – here he looked hard at H.M. – ‘the final point is that you’d give your ears to go down to Pineham and find out what’s really going on in that film-studio.’
H.M. glowered at him.
‘That,’ insisted Captain Blake, ‘is why I asked you a minute ago: What’s the game?’
‘Game? There’s no game.’
‘H.M., that won’t do. I know you. You’re determined to be the Old Maestro if it chokes you. What exactly is up? This fellow Gagern, or Collins, for instance …’
‘Joe? What about him?’
‘Well, is this the double-twist? Do you think Gagern is the film-stealing serpent, and are you giving him a clean bill of health in order to catch him?’
H.M. shook his head. ‘No, son,’ he said seriously. ‘Joe is absolutely trustworthy: he’s no more a Nazi spy than I am. I was not thinkin’ about that. Only –’
‘Only what?’
H.M. pointed to the mass of loose papers on his desk. He ran his hands among them and threw them about him, scrabbling among them like an elderly cockerel in a barn-yard.
‘It’s rummy,’ he roared. ‘All this is. It smells of rumminess to high heaven. If there were ever a rummier case than this to come and pitch on my desk, this case is that case. Have you read any of this testimony?’
‘No.’
‘Have a look at it, then. At this. And this.’ Papers flew. ‘Y’know, Ken, I doubt if any of ’em down there has the ghost of an idea what’s really going on. And, if my notion happens to be right, it’s nasty. It’s uncommon nasty. I only hope this fellow Cartwright has got that gal safe and sound. Because the person behind this business has now stopped foolin’. It’ll be murder next, Ken: murder with the gloves off,
and no mistake made when the punch goes home.’
‘What are you going to do?’
For a time H.M. did not speak. He sat back and twiddled his thumbs, his lowering gaze fixed on the door. The long afternoon light drew in across the court-yard of the War Office. Presently H.M. shook his head. He reached out and picked up the telephone.
‘Get me Scotland Yard,’ he said.
X
The Disquieting Effect of an Anonymous Letter
1
IT was nearly three o’clock when Monica Stanton walked out of the War Office.
Again truth must be told. At this moment she had no intention of going back to Pineham. She was in no mood for work. What she meant to do was: first, go to Bond Street and buy a lot of new clothes as balm for her angry soul; and, second, go to the Café Royal and get herself picked up by the first attractive man she met.
Why she thought of the Café Royal it would be difficult to say. Lady Astor herself would have difficulty in finding any wickedness at that innocent and indeed exemplary place. But Monica remembered that her Aunt Flossie had once spoken darkly of it. And at least you met a decent class of people there – whereas you never knew what trouble you might find if you went (for instance) to Soho.
‘Ee!’ said Monica to herself, in fury.
In other words, she had reached that state of mind in which no girl, of however lofty character, is safe to be allowed loose.
And Monica’s character, basically, was anything but lofty.
She hailed a taxi in Whitehall. Bill Cartwright had done this deliberately, of course, to humiliate her. He had known all along she would never be allowed into the War Office.
Her mind dwelt with hatred on the picture of Bill as he probably was now. He would be sitting in a spacious office, all mahogany and deep carpets, with bronze busts on bookcases, and an Adam fireplace. He would be drinking whisky and soda – Monica herself, when she reached the Café Royal, was going to have absinthe – and listening to some thrilling anecdote of the Secret Service, told by a tall grey man with a deep voice, who sat at a desk with his back to the Adam fireplace.
Every film-goer knows that this is a true picture of the Military Intelligence Department; and Monica elaborated it until pukka sahibs abounded.
For a second or two she considered the idea of rapping on the glass and asking the taxi-driver to take her to some place that was really low. She had heard that taxi-drivers knew about such things. And that she did not do this was due not to the training of Canon Stanton, but to a disquieting feeling that three o’clock in the afternoon was all wrong: it was unromantic: what she wanted was soft lights, and plush, and an Edwardian atmosphere.
And Bill Cartwright?
At Pineham, for instance –
This was the point at which Monica, her thoughts returning to Pineham for the first time in hours, sat up in the cab with a feeling of something like horror.
It was Wednesday afternoon.
For days, and even weeks, she had had an engagement for this Wednesday afternoon. For days, even weeks, it had been arranged that on Wednesday afternoon she should meet Mr Hackett and Mr Fisk in her office, to show them the script as far as she had written it. She had spoken about it to Howard Fisk on Monday night. The recollection struck her to sheer panic. Yet under the treacherous blandishments of Bill Cartwright, under the hypnosis of the Military Intelligence Department and the glory that went therewith, she had until this moment clean forgotten about it.
Monica flung open the glass panel of the taxi.
‘Marylebone Station, quick!’ she said to the driver.
2
There was no train, of course, until a quarter past four.
Monica paced the platform. She passed the bookstall so many times that she wondered whether the proprietor was beginning to suspect her of shoplifting designs on the Penguins. While the hands of the clock crawled from three-fifteen to three-thirty, she pictured Messrs Hackett and Fisk sitting at Pineham with their watches in front of them: getting madder and madder, and finally deciding to give her the sack.
She gulped a cup of tea in the buffet. She weighed herself. Finally, she remembered that the red-leather Victorian needlework-box, in which she kept cigarettes on the desk in her office, was now empty; and – a fact which was shortly to prove of the utmost importance – she bought cigarettes.
Monica Stanton bought a box of fifty Player’s at the station tobacconist’s, and put it into her handbag without opening it.
Three-forty. Ten minutes to four. The hour itself. She was through the platform barrier the instant it was opened, and waited ten more mortal minutes before the departure of the train. At five o’clock she was put down, aching, in the stillness and cool at Pineham Station.
‘Punctuality,’ Mr Thomas Hackett had once said, ‘has been called the politeness of kings. It’s more than that: it’s plain good business. Now, I’m always punctual myself, and I can’t tolerate unpunctuality in other people. When I find it –’
The usual station taxi, which took you to Pineham Studios for the modest sum of one and sixpence, was missing. Monica set out on foot along the well-worn path over the open fields.
By the time she reached the grounds she was running. The shortest way down to the Old Building, she calculated, was to take the path behind the main building and go down over the lawns. She was hurrying along this path, which had the sound-stages on the left of it and a rail-fence on the right, when, abruptly, she solved one of the small mysteries which had been perplexing her since the start.
On the rail-fence sat a venerable-looking old gentleman, with grey side-whiskers and a cocked hat; he wore the scarlet-and-gold court-dress of the early nineteenth century, and was smoking a pipe. Beside him sat the Archbishop of Canterbury, reading the Daily Express. Three or four officers of the Scots Greys kept a respectful distance from them, and from two other men who stood in the middle of the path.
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. ‘They can’t do this to me. What do you mean, we can’t shoot the Battle of Waterloo? We got to shoot the Battle of Waterloo. All we got to do is shoot the Battle of Waterloo, and the picture is finished.’
‘I am sorry, Mr Aaronson, but I am afraid it will be impossible. The British Army has been called up.’
‘I still don’t get it. What do you mean, “called up”?’
‘The British Army were real soldiers, Mr Aaronson, lent to us by the authorities. They have been called up for active service.’
‘What about the French Army?’
‘The French Army, Mr Aaronson, has enlisted for Home Defence. Napoleon is now serving as an Air Raid Warden.’
‘Well, Jeez, we got to do something! Get extras to do it.’
‘It would be difficult to train them at such short notice, Mr Aaronson.’
‘I don’t want ’em trained. I want ’em to fight the Battle of Waterloo. Lookit, though. Wait a minute. I got an idea. Do you think, maybe, we could finish the picture and just leave the Battle of Waterloo out of it?’
‘I fear it will be imperative, Mr Aaronson.’
‘Then here’s how we do it,’ said the fat man. ‘We do it symbolically, see? The Duke of Wellington is lying wounded on his camp-bed, see? He hears cannon. Biff! Bam! Zowie!’
‘Yes, Mr Aaronson?’
‘The tears are streaming down his face, see? He says: “There are the brave boys mixing it out there, and I can’t help ’em.” Maybe in his delirium he sees a vision of the future, see? Jeez, look! This’ll be artistic as hell. The Duke of Wellington –’
Monica Stanton stopped dead.
She only partly heard the fat man’s inspired words, just as she only saw him in connexion with another person. Along the path was coming the page-boy, Jimmy, who guarded the door to sound-stage number three. He was released from duty, and eating a chocolate-bar. Monica knew now where she had seen him before.
She manoeuvred him into a corner.
‘Jimmy,’ she said.
‘Yes, miss?’
‘Jimmy, do you know what my name is?’
‘Sure, miss. You’re Miss Stanton.’
‘Yes, Jimmy,’ said Monica. ‘But how did you know who I was three weeks ago, when I first came here? You were supposed to give a message to “the lady who came in with Mr Cartwright”: that was what it said on the blackboard. How did you know I was the lady who came in with Mr Cartwright?’
‘’Cos I sawyer come into the sound-stage with Mr Cartwright, miss.’
‘No, you didn’t, Jimmy.’
‘Miss?’
‘You weren’t in the sound-stage then,’ said Monica. ‘I know where I saw you. When Mr Cartwright and I got to the main building, you were just coming out of the canteen, eating a chocolate-bar.’
‘I dunno whatcher mean, miss. S’helpme, I don’t.’
‘Yes, you do. I remember now. You didn’t see us, because your back was towards us, and we went straight through. You couldn’t have seen us. So how did you know I was the lady who came in with Mr Cartwright, and how did you know what my name was?’
‘S’helpme, miss –’
Jimmy addressed the sky so passionately that the present chocolate-bar flew out of his hand. He regarded it with consternation; then he pounced on it and dusted it off. This, he felt, was the heaping measure of injustice. To bring up something that happened three weeks ago, which was as a thousand years into the dim past and which he himself had forgotten, was the sort of unfair trick they were always playing on you.
‘Jimmy, I’m not going to tell on you,’ urged Monica. ‘I know you aren’t supposed to leave the sound-stage, but I’m not going to tell anybody.’
‘I told Mr Cartwright the day afterwards –’
‘Never mind what you told Mr Cartwright. Come on, Jimmy. Tell me. I’m not going to tell anybody.’
‘Criss-cross and hope to die?’
‘Criss-cross.’
‘Well,’ said Jimmy, licking clean one corner of the chocolate-bar, and sullenly starting afresh, ‘I asked Miss Fleur. Crumbs, miss, I didn’t mean anything! I wasn’t gone more’n a minute or two. I came back, and there was the message, and how was I to know who you were? So I ast Miss Fleur. I met her over by Eighteen-eighty-two, and I ast her. She told me. She was drinking beer.’
And So To Murder Page 13
