Suspicious Circumstances (9 page)

‘What an amusing game. Why don’t you two children play it?’

I was ashamed of her, but I played it and I blush to admit got rather carried away. I can only imagine my system needed some sort of distraction after its surfeit of strains. Needless to say, we didn’t scream 'Tot', we merely murmured it because we were intimidated by the funereal chauffeur.

By the time we reached Westwood Village and could see the crowds teeming outside the church, Delight was two points behind and I found myself beginning to reflect that it wasn’t really her fault that she was a smooth, green-eyed
California red-head and, after all, Monique was a long way away. I even started grudgingly to admit it seemed unlikely that Delight could have been double-faced enough to have sent the anonymous letter. But that — instead of helping me back to ‘positive’ thinking — made it far, far worse, because, if Delight hadn’t sent the letter, then there was someone else who knew. Some unknown person, quite out of our control, who would be a million times more dangerous.

What, I thought, if they sent a second letter? And then a third? Each time exposing more lurid details? Suddenly Uncle Hans and Gino were back being what they had always been, a dear, sweet, semi-genius, ex-yodeler and a cheerful, simple-minded ex-acrobat. Why had I ever let them lull me?

Of course Inspector Robinson hadn’t been fooled about the letter or the paw-prints. And he was going to be at the funeral!

Delight’s knee was back against mine, nuzzling it. Quite unintentionally, because I was too far gone into demoralization to be my own master, I found my own knee nuzzling back.

I talked about crowds ‘teeming’ outside St Luke’s and it wasn’t an exaggeration. Hollywood is funny about Its Own.

Norma hadn’t been a star for years and she had antagonized everyone (How could you fail to be antagonized by Norma?), but even so she was Someone Who Had Achieved Something and, for that reason, the whole Industry was obviously turning out now to see her off. Once the whole Industry turns out for a thing, that’s when the mobs congregate. The whole effect was more or less like a premiere except that there weren’t any floodlights or any grandstands where the fans could sit and yell when Their Favourite Star showed up.

The crowd was very well behaved, for a crowd. Ronnie’s limousine was obviously the Car of the Moment, but, although the mob peered and craned necks and buzzed like nectar-crazed bees, none of them, as I had feared, shook their fists when they recognized Mother and Sylvia La Mann or cried out, ‘Shame. Scarlet Women!’ The car slid to a halt outside the church and, quite unmolested, Ronnie and Mother and Sylvia started up the steps. Even the TV cameras were dignified. I had expected some hysterical MC would clutch Ronnie and drag him to the cameras to say a few well-chosen words, but nothing like that happened. The three of them just disappeared into the church.

The whole thing was easy for us, of course. No one paid the slightest attention to us.

As we went up the steps towards the TV cameras, Delight squeezed my hand and whispered, ‘Sag your mouth, Nicholas.’

I squeezed back just for the reassurance of human contact.

We were in the church then. It was already jammed. I looked tautly around for Inspector Robinson. I couldn’t see him. Distinguished motion-picture actors were being ushers. Brad Yates, who had been signed as male lead for
Eternally Female
, happened, rather embarrassingly, to be our usher. He recognized Pam, of course, and took us down the aisle to Ronnie’s pew. Ronnie and Mother and Sylvia were already seated, with Mother on the outside. I slipped in next to her, then Delight, then Pam, then Uncle Hans and then Gino.

Mother gave me a swooning Madonna look and muttered, like a ventriloquist, without moving her lips, ‘Don’t look, darling, but behind us — Miss Leroy. Pass it on.’

Dutifully I whispered to Delight, who whispered to Pam etc., but I wished I hadn’t known. Miss Leroy was as bad as Inspector Robinson. Although I couldn’t see her, she seemed like an immensely powerful beam of light boring into the back of my neck.

Little does she know! I thought, and self-induced chills scuttled up my spine.

Then I became distracted by Sylvia La Mann, who had ostentatiously plunged to her knees and was pressing her eye-veil against the back of the pew in front of her. What was she doing? Confessing? I hoped not, for if she were the whole front pew might start smoldering.

Although in my various schools I had been submitted to almost every known type of religious ceremony, except a Bantu initiation rite, I had never been to a funeral before. I had been half dreading the fact that Norma would be on show and there would be a terrible march past. But it was all right. There was the coffin but it was massed with flowers. Flowers were everywhere, including a huge horseshoe of purple orchids with a ribbon across the front like the Order of the Garter. Who? I thought. Sylvia La Mann? Mother, I knew, had sent one exquisite white cattleya.

Much to my relief, Sylvia La Mann had resumed an upright position. I glanced at her past Ronnie’s haggard profile. She was trying to look purged. What she looked was immensely pleased with herself. What about? What was all this Sylvia La Mann thing anyway?

‘Nicholas,’ whispered Delight.

‘Yes.’

‘This isn’t my denomination. Do we have to do anything difficult?’

‘I don’t know. I get them mixed up.’

‘Then we’d better follow Sylvia La Mann. Think of the thousands of times she’s had to do this for Metro.’

Mother darted us a knife glance. ‘Hush, children.’

Then the service started.

It all turned out to be simple and moving, except for a couple of immensely distinguished Figures in the Motion Picture Industry who felt it incumbent upon them to give long addresses, one of them extolling Norma as A Symbol Of All That Was Finest In Our Unflagging Effort to Educate The American Public To The Appreciation Of Higher Things, and the other extolling her as A Lovely Lady And A Loyal Wife Who Would Leave A Great Gap In The Social Fabric.

It would have been better, I felt, if they had just left Norma alone.

But Sylvia La Mann was deeply touched by the second speech. She dabbed at her veil with her little lace handkerchief and, to my horror, reached for Ronnie’s hand and gripped it. To my even greater horror, Ronnie let her get away with it. I was terrified that Miss Leroy would have periscope eyes and would be able somehow to bend her gaze at a right angle. I was terrified of Mother, too, but Mother either didn’t notice or, which was almost too much to believe, was rising above it.

When it was all over, the ushers doubled as pall-bearers. While the organ played — not, thank heavens, Did You Ever See A Dream Walking, which had been Norma’s Sweater Girl signature tune — they carried the coffin down the aisle, and our party was the first to parade out behind it. Ronnie went ahead with Mother on one side and Sylvia on the other. We all trooped after them.

This was the part I had been alarmed about. Surely the TV cameras would do something awful when we emerged on to the steps. Surely something would be expected of me. Where was Miss Leroy? Where was Inspector Robinson?

But it wasn’t too bad. When we got out on to the steps, Ronnie moved a little ahead so that he faced the TV cameras alone. Mother turned and drew me up to her with the result that, when Ronnie passed on and the cameras shifted to us, I was standing by her side with her hand lightly on my arm and with my mouth, I’m proud to say, slightly open. Sylvia was on the other side of me and — wouldn’t you know? — when the cameras came full on us, she gave a terrible throaty whimper and made pretty little ineffectual snatches at her person for the lace handkerchief.

For one moment the entire nation was privileged to witness Sylvia La Mann’s great grief, but only for a moment, because Mother, with a lightning movement, snatched the large linen handkerchief out of my breast pocket and literally obliterated Sylvia’s face with it, giving the TV audience at the same time her own perfectly ravishing Expression of Loss.

So that was all right.

Back in our two limousines, we followed the hearse out to the cemetery. It wasn’t Forrest Lawn or anything of that sort. Ronnie was, doing it all with great taste. There was another simple, moving bit at the grave with no melodramatics for Delight. And that was that.

At least, that’s what I thought, but I was all wrong because it was after the ceremony when everyone was milling out of the cemetery that the difficult part began. Presumably, that’s the moment in a funeral when everyone feels they don’t have to be too reverent anymore and a sort of social atmosphere takes over.

All types of stars and directors and things swooped down on us, breaking up the group. Pam and I got caught by a very nice actor and his wife who knew I’d been to Paris and started asking me all sorts of rather arch questions about La Ville Lumière. Delight had drifted off somewhere else. While I was trying to say the sort of things that nineteen-year-old boys are supposed to say about Paris, I began to realize that something was wrong with Pam. She had stiffened. In fact, she was quivering like a thoroughbred mare.

Suddenly I felt her grab my arm. ‘Darlings,’ she said to the actor and his wife, ‘please excuse us. We’ve simply got to get back to Anny.’

And then, as she drew me away, she whispered, ‘For pity’s sake, get Delight.’

She pointed between a Dancing Star and a Singing Star and I saw Delight deep in conversation with a small, rattish-looking middle-aged man with a lot of black hair.

‘Quick.’ Pam was hysterical. ‘Get her. Don’t you know who that is? It’s the Editor of
Bare
.’

Bare was one of the worst of those terrible gutter magazines which make fortunes unearthing people’s private lives. Instantly, of course, I realized Our Peril. I rushed over to Delight and, clutching her arm, said,

‘We’re leaving.’

Delight looked rather startled and then very pleased and, turning back to the Editor of
Bare
, said, ‘This is Nicholas. I am like clay in his hands.’

As I dragged her away, she looked at me with a doting smile. ‘Nicholas, how sweet of you to be jealous.’

‘Don’t you know who that was?’ I said.

‘That little man? He was terribly cozy. He was the only one in this sea of celebrities who bothered to realize what a beautiful soul I have.’

‘He’s the editor of
Bare
,’ I said.

She looked horrified. ‘Oh, my God …’

‘You didn’t tell him anything?’

‘No. No, of course I didn’t. But he was nosing around to Anny. I might have realized. Oh, Nicholas, would you know? There I was thinking I’d found myself a beau and what did it have to turn out to be? The editor of
Bare
. That’s the Schmidt curse for you. It’s hounded me from the cradle.’

It was all right anyway. I saw Pam hovering. I started back towards her and then, just as I did so, I noticed Mother and Ronnie and Sylvia talking to a lady columnist who wasn’t Lettie Leroy but was almost as legendary. That was bad enough, but what made it even more alarming was that, standing with them, crinkling like mad, was Inspector Robinson.

I made a desperate attempt to duck away, but I was too late. Mother had seen me and was beckoning.

‘Nickie dear, come and say hello to Gloria.’

Gloria was the columnist. Delight and I went over. Mother dazzled the Inspector with a smile.

‘Nickie, Delight, this is the wonderful police inspector who took care of everything — just everything for Ronnie.’

I couldn’t bring myself to confront Inspector Robinson. Instead I turned to Ronnie. He was looking even more distinguishedly shattered than he had at home. It was as if he had been bereft of at least twelve wives, all of whom he had worshipped this side of idolatry. Sylvia La Mann, on the other hand, was looking lovely and gracious and British with that same peculiar cream-swallowed look around her mouth.

Gloria, who was always terribly sweet to everyone but who had an eye like a photo-electric cell, greeted Delight and me with just the degree of lack of interest that we rated. Then she put her hand on the Inspector’s arm to show what buddies she was with the Police Department and turned back to Ronnie.

‘Ronnie dear, all of us old battleaxes of the press love you, as you well know, and all of us are feeling nothing but sympathy for you right now. But battleaxes will be battle-axes and there’s that dreadful column breathing down my neck. Ronnie, don’t think this is cold-blooded but so many people want to know. What’s going to happen? Have you decided yet? Who’s going to play Ninon de Lenclos?’

Something made me look at Mother then. She was, needless to say, as beautiful and enigmatic and correct as ever. But in her eyes I detected the faintest suggestion of the Field-Marshal-About-To-Hurl-His-Left-Wing-Into-The-North-West-Salient look. I knew what that meant only too well; that meant — Now. This, Mother had decided, was the very moment for the Tribute to be announced to the world.

As the realization came to me, I knew this was the most excruciating second of my life because, in a blinding flash, I saw the disastrous error we had made in not telling Mother about the Inspector’s visit. What had Inspector Robinson said? 'The Ninon de Lenclos bit was what made me sure it was nuts. Imagine Anny Rood having to bump somebody off to get a part in a movie!’ Maybe Uncle Hans had fooled him with the fake entry. Maybe he hadn’t noticed the paw-prints.
But … but … . Mother, Mother, for pity’s sake, you’re going to plunge into the furnace. You’re going to
…! I couldn’t have spoken even if I’d had anything to say. I felt as if I’d swallowed one of Mother’s divine fondues in its entirety.

‘Well?’ Gloria was laughing archly. ‘Don’t tell me you’re playing this cagey, Ronnie dear.’

I made myself look at Ronnie then. I thought he was going literally to drop dead and that they’d have to call back the men with the spades to dig another seven and a half by three foot hole.

‘Well …’ he stammered. ‘Well …’

That was when I saw Mother drawing herself up. The Tribute Look was beginning around her mouth, the look which she had practiced on me when we were sitting together on the bed.