A Mysterious Affair Of Style Part 14

'Naturally, we are. This is a business. Our obligation is to the living, not the dead. Upward of sixty people were employed on If Ever They Find Me Dead. Surely it would be more humane to try and save their jobs than to spend valuable days, even weeks, mourning Miss Rutherford's death, unfortunate as it is.'

'If I may change the subject, Mrs Farjeon,' said Calvert, nipping back in before the novelist had time to remount her hobby-horse, 'I understand that, if Mr Hanway was commissioned to take over the direction of the film, it was because you found a particular doc.u.ment among your husband's papers?'

'That's right.'

'You wouldn't have that doc.u.ment on you, I suppose?'

'Of course not. Why should I? When I came here this afternoon, I had no idea I was going to be questioned by the police. Even if I had, I doubt it would have occurred to me to bring it along.'

'I trust, though, it's still in your possession.'

'Naturally.'

'And there's no doubt at all that it was written by your husband?'

'None whatever. I ought to know Alastair's handwriting.'

'When you were going through his papers, was it that specific doc.u.ment you were looking for or did you come across it by chance?'

'I could scarcely have been looking for it. I didn't even know of its existence.'

'What were you looking for?' Evadne Mount asked.

Hattie Farjeon's withering tone, when she answered, conveyed the impression that she was so utterly undaunted by the novelist's discourtesy she couldn't even be bothered to take offence.

'If it really is any business of yours, I was looking for Alastair's will.'

'Ah ... his will,' said Calvert. 'Did you find it?'

'Yes, I did.'

'No unpleasant surprises?'

This time the implication was visibly upsetting to her.

'Certianly not. Alastair and I drew it up together. And may I say I find that an impertinent question to be asked, Inspector.'

'I'm sorry, it wasn't intended to be. But to come back to this strange doc.u.ment from what I've been informed, it stated that, if anything were to happen to your husband which might prevent him from shooting the film, the direction was to be handed over to Rex Hanway. Was that the gist of it?'

'It was not only the gist, it was all there was to it. Just that one statement. And Alastair's signature, of course.'

'H'm. Did your husband go in fear of anything, Mrs Farjeon? His life, maybe?'

'What a preposterous idea.'

'Why, then, would he entertain such a queer hypothesis?'

'To be honest with you, Inspector, it wouldn't at all surprise me to discover that Alastair had drawn up a similar doc.u.ment before each and every one of his earlier films. Naturally, I cannot say for sure since, if he had, he'd doubtless have torn it up it once the film was completed. My husband was a brilliant man but, like many brilliant men, he simply couldn't cope with the real world. He was, as I already told you, childishly superst.i.tious. And my own belief is that, by committing such a statement to paper, he was actually hoping to outwit Fate. You know, by what they call reverse psychology? Or perhaps what I mean in Alastair's case is reverse superst.i.tion. By pretending to Fate that he feared something dreadful might happen to him, he hoped that Fate, being as contrary as we all know it to be, would then make sure it didn't. I realise how infantile that must sound but then so, in many respects, was Alastair himself.'

'That's interesting, really most interesting,' said Calvert, who couldn't mask his surprise at having received such a detailed response to one of his questions.

'None the less,' said Trubshawe, taking advantage of the momentary silence, 'it would be useful for us to know if your husband actually did have any enemies. Or, should I say, given his power and prominence, if he had many enemies.'

'Childish as Alastair could often be,' his widow replied after a moment of reflection, 'he was at least shrewd enough to make friends of those with power and enemies of those without.'

There was suddenly a faint, thin-lipped trace of menace in her voice.

'I was the sole exception to that rule.'

And on that chilling note the interview was brought to its end.

After Hattie Farjeon's departure the three friends glanced at one another.

'That woman,' Trubshawe eventually remarked, 'knows more than she's prepared to let on.'

'I shouldn't wonder,' said Calvert.

Calvert began his questioning of Francaix, as he already had with his previous interviewees, in a blandly conversational mode. He a.s.sured the Frenchman that the interrogation to which he was about to submit himself was no more than a formality, that all he sought of him was that he relate whatever knowledge he had, no matter how trivial it might initially have struck him, of the circ.u.mstances surrounding Cora Rutherford's death.

'Mais naturellement. I will tell you everything I know.'

'Then just let me first run over a few of the chief points. Your name is ...?'

'Francaix, Philippe Francaix.'

'And you are, I believe, a film critic?'

Francaix made a moue of squirming deprecation.

'I'm sorry,' said Calvert, 'have I got that wrong? I was certainly advised you were a film critic.'

'Oh, it is not, as you say, the large deal. It is just that I prefer the term theoricien. How you say in English? Theorist?'

'Ah. Well, I don't have a problem with that. But what exactly is the distinction you're making?'

'The distinction ...'

The Frenchman leaned back in his chair in a manner ominously suggestive to anyone who'd already heard him expatiate on the topic.

'I would say that the distinction between a film theorist one who writes in the obscure journal, no? and a film critic one who writes in the daily newspaper it is the same as between an astronomer and an astrologer. You comprehend? The first one creates a theory in order to describe the cinematic cosmos. The second concerns himself only with the stars. Avec les vedettes, quoi. I think that you in particular will appreciate, Inspector '

'Actually,' said Calvert hastily, 'What I'd really like to '

'No, no, you please must let me finish. You and I, we are like a pair of peas. And why? Because we both have theories, n'est-ce pas? For what are detectives but the "critics" of crime? And what are critics true critics, theoretical critics but the "detectives" of cinema?'

While Trubshawe could be glimpsed mouthing 'Potty! Absolutely potty!', Calvert made a new attempt to stem the flow.

'Interesting ... So shall we agree that you're a purist and be done with it?'

'A purist, yes, yes, that is the truth, we French theorists are all of us purists. Par exemple. I have a colleague who claims that the cinema, it died it died, you understand when it started to talk. Pouf! As simple as that! I have another colleague who is such a purist he will watch only films that were made in the nineteenth-century. For him mil neuf cent, 1900, it is the end of everything. Moi, I specialise in the oeuvre of a single cineaste, the great, great Alastair Farjeon.'

Relieved that Francaix had done him the favour of at long last coming to the point, Calvert pounced on the name.

'Alastair Farjeon, yes, precisely. You're writing a book on his work, I believe?'

'I am, yes. I study his films for many years. He made many chef-d'oeuvres.'

'Sorry, I didn't quite hear that,' said Trubshawe. 'He made many what-did-you-say?'

'Chef-d'oeuvres. Masterpieces. He was a very great director, the greatest of all British directors. You know, we French sometimes say that there is an incompatibilite what is the expression in your barbaric language? an incompatibility? between the word "Britain" and the word "cinema". But Farjeon, he was the exception. He made films that are the equal qu'est-ce que je dis? that are more than the equal, much more than the equal, of any in the world. Beside Farjeon, the others are so much vin ordinaire.'

'Monsieur Francaix,' said Calvert, 'if I may now come to the business at hand.'

'Ah yes, the death the murder of poor Miss Ruzzerford. It is very sad.'

'It is indeed. You, I believe, were actually on the set when it happened.'

'That is correct.'

'Then you must have seen her drink from the poisoned gla.s.s?'

'Yes, I see her.'

'And collapse on the ground?'

'That too. It is horrible, horrible!'

'Now, before it happened, was there anything at all, anything you observed, that struck you as, well, queer unusual out-of-the-ordinary? Think hard, please.'

'Inspector, I have not the need to think. I observe nothing of the kind you say. I am here to watch the shoot. I place myself in a corner and I take the notes.'

'For your book on Farjeon, no?' (The French style, Calvert ruefully realised, risked becoming contagious.) 'Yes. The last chapter is going to be about If Ever They Find Me Dead. It will be a very curious chapter not at all in the style of the rest of my book ...'

As his answer died away rather inconclusively, Evadne seized the opportunity to put one of her own questions.

'Monsieur Francaix,' she began, 'you will remember, I'm sure, that yesterday we lunched together in the commissary.'

'Mais naturellement. I remember it very well.'

'It was during lunch, was it not, that you told us about the interviews you'd been conducting with Farjeon for your book?'

'Yes.'

'And, above all, about your admiration for his work, an admiration which you've just reiterated?'

'That is so.'

'But you also told us, practically as an afterthought, that you considered him to be a despicable human being. If I may quote you, "a pig of a man". Am I right?'

'Yes, you you are right,' he replied, his eyes indecipherable behind his thick dark gla.s.ses.

'Well, my question to you is this. Why? Why was he a pig of a man?'

'But everybody knows why. It is dans le domaine public. It is public knowledge his reputation I repeat, it is a known thing about him.'

'That's quite true,' Evadne continued. 'Yet I had a feeling, a very distinct feeling, that when you spoke about him, the violence of your condemnation was based not just on public knowledge but on private experience, personal experience.'

Francaix pondered this for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders.

'Qu'est-ce que ca peut me faire enfin?' His dark gla.s.ses looked the novelist directly in the eyes. 'Yes, Miss Mount, it was based on personal experience. A very unpleasant experience.'

'Will you share it with us?'

'Why not? You see, I devote my life to Alastair Farjeon. I study his films, I watch them many, many times, and each time brings new discoveries, new and fascinating details I never notice before, the films are all so rich and strange. Then, at last, I take the courage in my two hands to write to the man himself, here at Elstree, and I propose something completely inedit how you say? untried? A book about him, but not a monograph, no, no, a book of interviews. To my surprise, he agrees. I at once catch the boat-train to Victoria and we sit down together, not here but at his splendid villa in Cookham, now alas no more and he talks and I listen. He talks and he talks while I listen and I take notes. It is extraordinaire, what he says, it is tout--fait epoustouflant! I am so very happy. I begin to think I will publish the greatest book about the cinema that there has ever been.'

His baldness was glistening with minute beads of sweat.

'But there is something else. Inside every film critic is a film-maker who cries to get out, you comprehend? And I am no different. I am so impregne with Farjeon's work I myself start to write a scenario with his style in my mind. I work on it for many months till I feel it is ready for him to read. Then I send it to him with a nice, timid letter in accompaniment. And I wait. I wait and I wait and I wait. But I hear nothing, nothing at all. I cannot understand. I think maybe I must telephone to ask if he receives it. Then I read in the newspaper that he prepares a new film. Its t.i.tle is If Ever They Find Me Dead. And I do understand enfin.'

'What do you understand?' asked Evadne Mount quietly.

There was a brief pause. Then: 'My scenario, it is called The Man in Row D. It tells about two women who go to the theatre and one of them points out a man who is seated in front of them and she says to her companion '

At which point of his narrative he and Evadne chimed in together: '"If ever they find me dead, that's the man who did it ..."'

'"If ever they find me dead, that's the man who did it ..."'

'Snap,' said Evadne gravely. Then she added, perhaps unnecessarily, 'He stole your script.'

'He stole my script, yes. That is why I say he is a genius but he is also a peeg.'

'Curious ...'

'What is curious?'

'The way Cora described the plot to us, the man was sitting in row C.'

Francaix allowed himself a mirthless laugh.

'So there is at least one thing he changed.'

'That, and the t.i.tle.'

'And the t.i.tle, yes.'

'Was there nothing you could do about it?' asked Calvert.