Frequent Hearses

by Edmund Crispin

  “Yes, all right, I heard,” said the voice. “Ask them to come in, please. Come in, Inspector,” she called. “And, Johnny, bring them some tea.”

  From behind a littered but business-like desk, as they went in, she got up to welcome them—a girl in her middle twenties with sleek black hair, cool grey eyes and a clear complexion. She possessed two of the rarest physical attributes of her sex, broad shoulders and long legs; and she wore a tailored navy-blue coat and skirt with an oyster-coloured blouse and a brooch of diamonds encircling a sapphire so dark as to be almost black. But for her intelligence, and the mildly sardonic look in her eye, she would have been what the Sunday Pictorial is apt to describe as “a lovely”. Inside the room Humbleby halted, at gaze; and after no more than a second’s calculation she addressed herself to him.

  “Hello, Inspector,” she said. “Do sit down, won’t you?”

  The windows looked out on to a crossing of asphalt paths, and you could glimpse a corner of the immense carpenters’ shop, with a prospect of trees beyond. Near them was an armchair, and into this Humbleby cautiously lowered himself.

  “This,” he observed, “is Professor Gervase Fen. He is”—and Humbleby paused, momentarily perplexed—“he is assisting me, I suppose you might say.”

  “How do you do,” said Miss Flecker civilly. “I have heard of you, of course. And I was hoping that while you were working here we might be able to meet. How is the Pope film progressing?”

  In default of a second chair, Fen had settled on the edge of the desk, and was regarding Miss Flecker with undisguised approval. “Very little, I should say; but as I’m not familiar with film-making I’m scarcely in a position to judge… There’s a lot,” said Fen pensively, “of quarrelling.”

  “There would be.” Miss Flecker grinned mischievously. “The Cranes enfamille are not a very sedative influence, in my experience.”

  “Cranes?” echoed Humbleby in polite incomprehension.

  “You must be aware of Madge Crane,” said Miss Flecker, “even if you haven’t heard of her brothers.” She turned to Fen. “Madge is playing Lady Mary, isn’t she?”

  “Suitably bowdlerised,” Fen agreed gravely, “and chiefly occupied, when not offering Pope wise and kindly advice about personal matters which are no possible concern of hers, in introducing inoculation against smallpox from Turkey.”

  And Humbleby nodded, enlightened. “Madge Crane is a Star, then?” he ventured.

  “You really hadn’t heard of her?” Miss Flecker chuckled maliciously. “She would be pleased. Madge is one of the First Ladies of British Films.”

  “First La—” Humbleby shook his head in bafflement. “Whatever can that mean?”

  “Well, I think it means that she’s no longer obliged to make films in which she has to show her legs.” Miss Flecker delivered this judgment with notable dispassion. “And that saves everyone a lot of trouble, because they always did have to be filmed very carefully if they were going to come out looking like anything at all.”

  The door opened and the youth called Johnny appeared with two cups of tea, which he handed to Fen and Humbleby. “We’ve finished off the biscuits,” he announced without visible remorse, “so I’m afraid you’ll have to do without… Judy, the L.S.O. is hanging about on Stage Two complaining because Griswold hasn’t turned up. Where is he?”

  “He had to go to Denham to see Muir about something or other, and he said he might be late. Calm them, Johnny, calm them. Tell them to sit down and practise a symphony. Has Ireland arrived yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, mind you behave respectfully to him when he does.”

  “You don’t think,” said Johnny wistfully, “that it would be a good idea for me to run them through a few of the music sections while they’re waiting?”

  “No, I don’t. Go away and get on with your work.”

  Johnny retired in dejection, and Miss Flecker was saying “Well now…” when the telephone rang. “Damn,” she said. “Excuse me… Yes, put him through… Good morning, Dr. Bush—Geoffrey, I should say… Triple woodwind? Well, I imagine it might be managed; I’ll ask Mr. Griswold… It’ll be the Philharmonia, yes.” Dr. Bush crackled prolongedly, “No measurements for reels four and five yet? All right, I’ll nag them… Yes, I know you can’t be expected to write a score if you haven’t got any measurements… No, there’s not the least chance of postponing the recording; you’ll just have to work all night as well as all day… Have you sent any of the score to the copyists yet? … Well, you’d better get on with it, hadn’t you?… See you at the recording… No… Certainly not. Good-bye.”

  She put down the instrument. “A composer,” she explained soberly, like one who refers to some necessary but unromantic bodily function. “I’m sorry things have to get hectic the moment you arrive. Perhaps now we shall have a few minutes’ peace.” She retrieved her cup and drank the tepid tea in it with a grimace. “Oh, Lord, measurements… Johnny!” she called; and when that individual put his head hopefully in at the door: “Johnny, get on to Loring, will you, and tell him Dr. Bush is waiting for the measurements for reels four and five of Escape to Purgatory.”

  “He’ll only go all pathetic on me,” said Johnny, his optimism abating at this request, “and say they’re doing their best.”

  “Tell him they must do better if they want any incidental music for those reels… And, Johnny, see to it that I’m not disturbed for ten minutes, please.”

  With a doleful nod Johnny vanished, and Miss Flecker relaxed gratefully in her chair. “At last,” she said. “And I really do apologise.”

  “Not at all,” said Humbleby. “It’s we who should apologise for interrupting you.” He produced a notebook and a gold propelling pencil and cleared his throat premonitorily. “Now as regards this girl…”

  “Are you in a position”—Miss Flecker spoke a trifle warily—“to tell me why you want to know about her?”

  “Certainly.” And Humbleby eyed her in an innocent-seeming way which in reality masked swift and shrewd powers of observation. “She has committed suicide.”

  For a moment there was silence. Clearly Miss Flecker was shocked, though the only sign she gave was a slight lifting of the eye-brows.

  “Suicide,” she murmured—and during a brief interval seemed preoccupied with rapid inward calculation. “Any reason given?”

  “No. Can you yourself think of any?”

  Miss Flecker hesitated. “The gossip is that she was going to have a baby, but I don’t believe much of what I’m told in this place, so don’t rely on it. In any case, I suppose that an autopsy—”

  “Just so.” Humbleby was at his most judicial. “But may we start at the beginning, please? Your name—” He poised his pencil expectantly.

  “Is Judith Annecy Flecker. Age twenty-six. Occupation, Secretary to the Long Fulton Music Department.”

  “Good. And the name of this girl whose picture you saw in the paper is Gloria Scott.”

  “She called herself that, yes.”

  Humbleby glanced up from the notebook. “That was just a stage name, you mean?”

  Miss Flecker crossed her admirable legs and contemplated them for a moment with a satisfaction in which Fen, who does not scorn simple pleasures, abundantly participated. “I think it was only a stage name,” she said, “but you’ll have to ask someone who knew her better than I did. And if it was, I’ve not the ghost of a notion about her real name, I’m afraid.”

  “You didn’t know her well, then?”

  “Only very casually. But I thought I’d better ring you up about her, because I know what the people here are like. Half a hundred of them will have seen and recognised that photograph, and they’ll all be studiously engaged in leaving the job of communicating with you to someone else. So I thought I’d forestall their havering. Did anyone else from here telephone you, by the way?”

  “No one had when I left,” said Humbleby. “But mind you, that was some time ago, and you got in early. I shall ring up
Charles in a moment—that’s the Superintendent in charge of the case—and ask him if anything else has come through from here. In the meantime”—he smiled with real charm—“I’m very pleased to be able to talk to you. And if you’ll just tell me anything you know about the girl…”

  Miss Flecker nodded, and her gaze moved reflectively about the pleasant, untidy room, with its severely functional windows, its murmurous radiators, its book-case of manuscript musical scores. “Well, you won’t want me to describe her,” she said, “because you’ve got that photograph. It flatters her, of course, but it’s a fair likeness. She was about—oh, nineteen, I imagine.”

  “Married, or engaged?”

  “Neither.”

  “Any particular man?”

  Miss Flecker smiled wryly. “Gossip ascribes her to Maurice Crane and Stuart North, but how much truth there is in it I don’t know. Possibly none. I’ve seen her with both of them, but that means nothing.”

  “And to which of them does gossip ascribe her—um—hypothetical pregnancy?”

  “As far as I know,” said Miss Flecker decorously, “opinion is evenly divided. It’s no use my pretending,” she added with sudden candour, “that I don’t listen to gossip, because I do. I pass it on, too—as you’ll have noticed. But as to believing it, that’s another matter. So I ought to warn you… Oh, damn.”

  She broke off as the telephone rang again, and picked it up with a movement of irritation.

  “Johnny, I thought I said I wasn’t to be disturbed… Oh. That’s different… Yes, you did quite right. Sorry.” She held out the instrument to Humbleby. “It’s for you.”

  “Hullo, Charles,” said Humbleby. “What news?” And for a full minute he remained silent while the receiver, like a witch’s familiar, muttered insinuatingly into his ear. “All right as far as it goes,” he commented at last. “Have there been any further calls from here? None? …No”—he glanced at Miss Flecker—“apparently that was to be expected… Yes, I’m enjoying myself very much, thank you… Don’t expect me till after lunch. If anything interesting develops I’ll phone you… No, not so far: we’re only just getting down to it now… Yes, all right. Good-bye.”

  He rang off. “Gossip was right in one respect, anyway,” he said drily: “they’ve done the autopsy, and she was about three months on the way… Poor silly child. Does that sort of thing happen very often in this profession?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” said Judy. “In spite of popular superstition on the subject, we’re a very respectable community, even if a rather simple-minded one. That’s the reason, really, why there’s been so much talk about Gloria Scott… I suppose that now you’ll be aiming to find out where Gloria and Stuart and Maurice were three months ago.”

  “Exactly. Christmas—which ought to make it a bit easier.” Humbleby was tapping the end of his pencil meditatively against his thumb-nail. “From what you know of the girl, now, do you think this pregnancy could be a motive for her killing herself? Was she the sort of person to get hysterical over a thing like that?”

  “Mm, that’s awkward.” Judy took a cigarette from the case which Fen offered her, and, murmuring thanks, lit it with a heavy table lighter. “You see, I didn’t know her all that well: we had lunch together once or twice in the Club here, and that’s about all. But from what I did see of her, I should say the answer to your question was No. She was emotionally unstable—or anyway, that was how she struck me—but not, I fancy, along quite those lines… I’m afraid all this must sound very woolly and unsatisfactory, but you asked for my impression, and for what it’s worth, that’s it.”

  “But if the man concerned had refused to—to—”

  “To make an honest woman of her? We-ell… She’d certainly have been upset, but I can’t see her going so far as to kill herself.”

  Fen, who up to now had been unwontedly silent, said briefly and directly: “Why not? “

  “Because—well, because she was one of those people whose emotional life is less important to them than—other things.”

  “Ah,” said Fen, “this is more to the point. In her case, less important than what other things?”

  “Well—than her career, say.”

  “She was very ambitious, then?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Was she liked?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Why wasn’t she liked? “

  “She was conceited—aggressively conceited. A lot of people in this business are, but they mostly manage to conceal the fact. She didn’t.”

  “And the faults we most dislike in others,” Fen murmured, “are generally those we unwittingly display ourselves.” He paused to consider this citation, and apparently found it, or his own gratuitous use of it, in some fashion distasteful. “But you yourself—did you like her?”

  “Yes. I did.” Miss Flecker made this admission with a certain reluctance. “She was very young”—Miss Flecker’s twenty-six years were as she spoke mysteriously transmuted to an infinity of rich experience—“and very eager. Oddly defenceless, too, as single-minded people so often tend to be. Yes, I liked her. But there weren’t many other people who did.”

  “With the exception, presumably”—Humbleby’s intrusion on this nebulous duologue was clearly designed to restore a sense of realities—“of Mr. Crane and Mr. North.” And he contemplated Fen with the satisfaction of a man who at one blow has expelled metaphysics with common sense. Fen, however, was unabashed.

  “You miss the point, Humbleby,” he said waspishly. “Sane people commit suicide only from motives which seem to them, rightly or wrongly, to be overwhelmingly important. And Miss Flecker, as a result of my own intelligent questioning, has indicated that in Gloria Scott’s case those motives were probably bound up with her career.”

  “Which leads us,” said Humbleby, not at all perturbed by this reproof, “to enquire what professional set-backs she has suffered just recently.” And he looked enquiringly at Miss Flecker.

  But she shook her head. “It’s rather the reverse, I’m afraid. After she came here—”

  “Wait, wait,” said Humbleby, applying himself hurriedly to his notebook. “When did she come here?”

  “About a year ago, I think. She was taken on as an extra, to start with.”

  “And where did she come from?”

  “I’ve an idea she was in repertory, but which repertory I can’t say.”

  “We ought to find that out easily enough… Sorry to interrupt. Go on.”

  “As I say, she was taken on as an extra. After that she got a cameo part in a film called—damn, what was it?” Judy flicked her fingers irritably. “Oh, I remember—Visa for Heaven.”

  “A cameo part?”

  “Yes, you know: the film equivalent of a bit part on the stage. Something just a little more important than merely walking on. And then the last thing I heard—though I wouldn’t swear to its being true—is that Jocelyn Stafford signed her up for quite a good part in this Pope film.”

  Fen looked up. “Really? Do you know what part?”

  “Martha Blount, she said.”

  “It’s a role which gets more and more etiolated,” said Fen cheerfully, “as one script conference follows another. But even so, not a bad chance for a girl who’s virtually unknown. Have you any idea how she came by the job?”

  “Yes, I rather fancy it was Maurice Crane’s doing.”

  “We seem to be hearing a great deal about this fellow,” Humbleby complained, “but I’m sorry to say that I for one haven’t the remotest idea who or what he is. Do please explain.”

  “He’s Madge Crane’s youngest brother,” said Judy, “the other two being Nicholas Crane, who’s a director, and David Crane, who’s something very minor in the Script Department. Maurice is a camera-man—and a very good one, which means that he’s an influential person hereabouts.”

  “Do you suppose that his getting Gloria Scott this part would be an attempt at reparation for—um—coercing her into maternity?”

&
nbsp; “It might be. If in fact he was responsible for that.”

  “There’s another candidate, of course.” And Humbleby sighed dejectedly. “Of the two men, which would be the more adversely affected by the publication of Miss Scott’s—um—condition? “

  “Stuart North, certainly. Camera-men, however good, aren’t celebrities. Actors are.” Judy replied so promptly that for a moment the tangential nature of the question did not strike her; when it did, she said inquisitively: “Why do you ask that?”

  “It’s possible,” Humbleby answered with reserve, “that someone may have made an attempt to conceal the motive for Gloria Scott’s suicide.”

  “You mean torn up a suicide note, or something like that?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Stuart North would certainly have more reason for doing that than Maurice Crane. On the other hand—” Judy’s grey eyes widened suddenly. “Hell, what a fool I’m being! I’ve just remembered.”

  “Remembered what?”

  “That Stuart North was in America during December and January, doing a short run of a Shaw play on Broadway. And Gloria was very definitely in England. So we’ve been maligning Stuart.”

  “You think, then, that Maurice Crane—”

  “He or someone else.”

  “I suppose”—Humbleby scratched his nose ruefully—“that you can’t think of anyone, Crane apart, who would be likely to know?”

  “There’s one possibility, yes—a girl called Valerie Bryant, who was Gloria’s particular friend.”

  “Where can we find her?”

  “I’ve an idea she’s working on a film now—a musical comedy called Gaiety Sue.”

  “Lumme,” said Humbleby; it was his affectation to relapse occasionally into the milder forms of plebeian slang. “Is she an actress, then?”

  “A chorus girl.”

  “And it would be possible for me to meet her this morning, would it?”

  “That depends on the shooting schedules. The film’s on the floor all right, but they mayn’t today be doing anything she’s concerned in. I can find out for you.”

  “I wish you would.”

  Judy resorted to the telephone. “Johnny,” she said, “get me someone who’s working on Gaiety Sue, will you?… Yes, Weinberg will probably do.” There was a pause; with her hand over the microphone, “Weinberg is the jazz end of this department,” Judy explained. “He’s—Oh, hello, Sam. I want to know what, they’re doing with Sue today. Is the chorus here? …It is? Good. What stage are they working on? …Five? Right. Thanks very much. Bye-bye.”