And So To Murder (6 page)

‘She thought you took a devil 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.’

1

‘S
ULPHURIC
acid?’ repeated Cartwright.

He took the empty pipe out of his mouth. There was an expression on his face which Monica could not read.

‘Let me get this straight,’ he said. ‘Are you under the impression that it was a mistake on the part of the prop department?’

‘Of course.’

‘Yes. One property-man says to another: “Oi, Bert: this bottle. There’s no water-tap handy, so just fill her up with sulphuric acid; it’s the same colour.” God Almighty!’

‘You don’t know the facts.’

‘What are they, then?’

‘Sh!’ urged the director, trying to make his voice louder and whirring in the effort. He released Monica’s hand, and addressed her with a confidential air. ‘That’s the trouble with these writers, Miss Stanton. Particularly Cartwright, here. All’ – he made gestures as of a balloon rising – ‘up in the air. Cartwright can see an ingenious poisoning-plot in green-apple colic. Still, we must be charitable. After all, that’s his business.’

He looked tolerantly at the offender.

‘What are you suggesting, my boy? That it was deliberate?’

‘What do you think?’

Fisk’s eye was quizzical. ‘I know. I know. You’re hot on the scent of mystery. It was all a trap. Somebody – during the course of the shooting – was to pour out a glassful of sulphuric acid, and drink it off in mistake for water. Somebody was to get it spilled over him, or thrown in his face. Was that your idea?’

Frances Fleur shivered slightly. Throughout this she had not moved; her eyes seemed to have been turned inwards. She lifted her hand and passed it over her thick, glossy black hair, which was parted in the middle and trained down to heavy waves across her cheeks. Then, with her finger-tips, she lightly touched her face.

It was a suggestive movement. She shivered again.

Howard Fisk laughed.

‘Now listen to the facts, my boy,’ he said firmly. ‘
That water-bottle didn’t figure in the scene at all
.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘Just that. Nobody was to drink a glass of water. Nobody was to pour out a glass of water. In fact, nobody was to touch the bottle or go anywhere near the table. Do you follow that?’

‘H’m.’

‘The bottle was just a piece of property. In the ordinary course of events, it would have been removed when the set dismantled, emptied, and put away on the shelf. It was only a million-to-one chance that I, in my clumsiness – which I admit – happened to knock the whole thing over. Very well! I know you’ve got imagination, my lad. I admire you for it. But, tut, tut! Suppose somebody did put the stuff there maliciously? Suppose somebody did intend to do damage? What in the world would be the sense of planting a pint of sulphuric acid in the one place where it couldn’t possibly hurt anybody?’

There was a silence.

Howard Fisk more than ever resembled a distinguished doctor, expounding something. Little wrinkles radiated from the corners of his eyes behind the pince-nez. He kept his hand on Monica’s shoulder, and his tweed coat was redolent.

‘But, hang it all, what did you do?’

‘Do? Why, we had the bedding changed and went on,’ said the director simply.

‘No. What I mean is: didn’t anybody show the least curiosity as to how the acid got there? Didn’t you inquire into it?’

‘Ah, that. Yes, I believe Gagern was trying to.’ He craned his neck round. ‘Gagern was upset about it. I don’t know what he found out. And Hackett, when
he
got here, had very definite ideas about it: he’s a whirlwind, that fellow is. He seems to think it must have been sabotage.’

‘Sabotage?’

‘Yes.
Spies at Sea
,’ explained the director, to Monica, ‘is very strongly – and, I hope, effectively – anti-Nazi. Hackett seems to think that some “heiling” enthusiast may have tried to put a spoke in it. Tut, tut! That’s no way to go about sabotage. But as for me, I don’t want them to get worried. Besides, we can’t have the ladies alarmed, can we?’ He winked at Frances Fleur. ‘Slowly and easily. Gently, gently. Step by step! That’s the way to do things. I think I can assure you there is absolutely no troub …’

A voice spoke sharply:

‘Howard! Bill! Will you come over here, please?’

The voice belonged to Mr Hackett. He was standing near the set. There was sweat on his swarthy forehead, and his wiry black hair looked rumpled.

‘So!’ observed Cartwright. ‘You may say, if you like, that a bottle of the deadliest corrosive acid known to chemistry knocking about like water is a mere entertaining blunder on the part of the prop department. Nevertheless, I will make a small bet. I will bet you that there is real trouble now, and that Tom Hackett has found the body. Come on. – Will you excuse us for a moment? Frances, I leave Miss Stanton in your charge.’

Monica watched them go. She was roused by Frances Fleur’s voice.

‘Don’t you like Bill Cartwright, my dear?’

‘I-beg-pardon?’

‘Your expression. It was positively murderous,’ said Miss Fleur, with real interest. ‘Don’t you like him?’

‘I loathe him.’

‘But why?’

‘Don’t let’s talk about him. I – I – Miss Fleur, are you
really
going to play Eve D’Aubray?’

‘I expect I am, if anybody does.’

‘If anybody does?’

‘Well, my husband says that if there’s a war it will be very bad for the film business. He says that Hitler has just made an alliance with the Russians, and that’s very bad, too. And don’t mind Howard: just between ourselves, there is something very queer going on here.’

‘That acid, you mean?’

‘That. And other things.’

‘But weren’t you at all nervous when the acid tipped over?’

‘My dear,’ said Miss Fleur, ‘when I was on the stage they shot me out of a cannon once. That is the sort of thing men expect you to do, and they get extremely annoyed if you don’t, so it’s best to do it. And in one of the Blenkinsop shows they made me dive thirty feet into a glass tank without any clothes on. I
did
have a headache by the end of the run. But vitriol – ugh! No!’

‘You do like the part, don’t you? Eve D’Aubray, I mean?’

‘It’s terribly good. May I have a mirror, Eleanor, please?’

‘You see, I wrote it for you.’

Frances Fleur paused in the act of holding up the mirror, and tilted her head back to study the dark-red make-up of her mouth.

‘You see, I thought it would suit you.’

Miss Fleur handed the mirror back to her maid. Her eyes, of a dark amber colour under waxy-looking lids and brows on which the eyebrows made thin lines, now had a curious expression.

‘It is a bit like me,’ she conceded, after reflexion. ‘Fancy your knowing that! And fancy your knowing … how old are you? Nineteen?’

‘I’m twenty-two!’

The other woman lowered her voice. ‘Well, I’ll tell you something. I –’

It was not to be heard. Frances Fleur, bending forward, happened to glance over Monica’s shoulder towards the other end of the sound-stage. Her look hardly altered, nor did her voice; it slipped so smoothly into another sentence that it was as though she had been saying this all the time.

‘Please don’t think me rude, but I must go. There’s something I must see to at once. You do understand, don’t you? I have so enjoyed our talk. We must go on with it another time, and soon. There are several things I’m dying to ask you, if you know what I mean. But now – well, you do understand. Of course, Eleanor! Follow me, please.’

She swept to her feet, magnificent in the gold gown, stirring the air with faint perfume as she rose. Leaving Monica with a stricken sense of having said the wrong thing somehow, Frances Fleur smiled with ineffable sweetness as though to an audience, beckoned to her maid, and swept away.

2

So she only looked nineteen years old, did she?

Grr.

Pulling another chair closer with the toe of her slipper, Monica Stanton hooked her heels over the rung of the chair, planted her elbows on her knees and her chin on her fists; and brooded.

Above all things she had wanted to impress Frances Fleur as a woman of the world: a subtle, world-weary person who might have graced the marble benches of ancient Rome. She had geared herself to do this, to such an extent that she barely heard a word of what was being said around her; and instead she got nineteen years old when she was actually twenty-two and thought she looked a good twenty-eight.

All noises in the dim, echoing barn went unheeded. A property man passed in front of her, carrying a big mirror. Monica was confronted with her own image: her heels cocked up on the chair-run, her chin in her fists, and her mouth darkly mutinous. She saw the fair hair, worn in a long bob; the wide-spaced eyes, of a shade between grey and blue; the short nose and full under-lip; the plain grey tailored suit, with white blouse: all in contrast to the broad charms of Lady Thunder. As a result of this inspection, Monica made such a hideous, bitter face at the mirror – not unmixed with the suggestion of a raspberry in pantomime – that the property man, who was looking straight into her unseeing eyes and had worked hard all day, was not unnaturally indignant.

Frances Fleur must think her an awful ass.

And yet, in a dim sort of way, it seemed to her that there was something not quite right about Frances Fleur.

She hesitated over this. It was not that she was disappointed; not
exactly
. No! Miss Fleur was undoubtedly beautiful. And she was very pleasant. Nobody could help liking her. Yet it seemed to Monica, whose mind worked even in a bedazzled haze, that she was not very intelligent.

It also seemed to Monica, who was very fond of ancient Rome, that Miss Fleur somehow did not belong there. That phrase: ‘My husband says –’ slipped over her tongue with the glibness of long use. Monica had a very keen ear in this respect, since Miss Flossie Stanton’s conversation was almost exclusively concerned with: ‘My brother says–’ or: ‘As I said to my brother.’ Again, be fair. It was not that she expected Miss Fleur, in private life, to sparkle with epigrams, recline among doves and courtiers, and call for the liquidation of Christians: which, as every filmgoer knows, is the only thing anybody ever did do in ancient Rome. But there are feelings in these things. There is instinct and sure knowledge. And it occurred to her that Miss Frances Fleur had not got the right Roman spirit.

Whereas the unspeakable Cartwright, on the other hand –

‘Miss!’ said a voice beside her. ‘Miss Stanton!’

She did not hear it.

She saw a mental picture of Cartwright dressed up in a Roman toga, his Sherlock-Holmes pipe in his mouth and his hand uplifted for didactic utterance. She sat back and whooped with laughter; the first time she had laughed that day.

Bad as he was, give the man his due. Cartwright as an ancient Roman would not do too badly. He would argue the ears off the
quirites
and sit up all night explaining why somebody’s epic poem was rubbish. If only he would shave off that sun-glinting, that lint-catching, that super-comical beard.

A voice at her elbow urged:

‘Please, miss!’

Monica descended from the Palatine Hill to find a page-boy, all shining face and shining buttons, plucking at her sleeve. Having caught her attention, the page threw back his chest and intoned.

‘Mr Hackett says, will you come with me, please?’

‘Yes, of course. Where?’

‘Mr Hackett says,’ piped the boy, with the air of a miniature sergeant-major, ‘will you go to the practical house on Eighteen-eighty-two, and see him in the back room?’

‘Where?’

‘It’s a set, miss. I’ll-show-yer.’

He strode ahead, his chest out and his arms swinging. Monica looked round. She could not see Cartwright or Hackett or Fisk or anyone else she knew. The sound and camera crews were packing up and leaving; it gave Monica an odd feeling of uneasiness.